Goddamn Andrew Sullivan. I know that some of you get annoyed when I post about that simpering little war-monger, but goddamn it. Arrgh!! He's such a fraud, with such a huge megaphone and ... ARRRRGH!

Sayeth the Jaded Janus today:

My only fear all along is that we might fail.

Under this president, we mean to win. To my mind, that's the surpassing political truth of the current administration and the standard by which any Democrat must be judged

Interesting poll in USA Today: 70 percent think things are going moderately well or very well in Iraq; and 67 percent believe that the administration did not deliberately deceive anyone about the WMD threat from Saddam. If I were to poll my own brain, I'd come up with similar results. Sorry, Paul. Try harder.emphasis added

The key point is that Saddam's Iraq was a clear and present danger in that context.
...
That's why the Bush administration seemed at times to conflate the issue of disarmament and regime change.

"BRING THEM ON": No, I don't think it's merely rhetoric. One of the many layers of the arguments for invading Iraq focused on the difficulties of waging a serious war on terror from a distant remove. Being based in Iraq helpsus notonly because of actual bases; but because the American presence there diverts terrorist attention away from elsewhere. By confronting them directly in Iraq, we get to engage them in a military setting that plays to our strengths rather than to theirs'. Continued conflict in Iraq, in other words, needn't always be bad news. It may be a sign that we are drawing the terrorists out of the woodwork and tackling them in the open.