President Bush's speech to the Nation

Now I hope our French and German and other allies step up to the ball and are as magnanimous in acknowledging what we have to do now as the president was."

Biden also said he supported Bush's call for spending $87 billion on military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, although he said the administration should consider deferring tax cuts to pay for it, instead of simply increasing the deficit.

"I think the American people are ready to sacrifice to win, and I think if we went back to the American people and said, 'Look, the very wealthiest among us, we're going to postpone your tax cut a year or two to pay for this,' I think they would embrace it," he said.

Dear Craven:

Do I have an inkling of the difference?

Wouldn't you say that depends of my values??

I do think that proper respect for "diversity" demands respect for differences in values.

Don't you agree?

I do not wish to nit pick but cicernone imposter's otherwise brilliant essay was marred by what may have been a serious ( inadvertent ?) spelling error.

I am sure that Cicerone Impostor knows the difference between advice(recommendation offered as a guide to conduct) and advise(to give counsel to).


When such errors are made, one has to wonder about the depth of the reasoning offered by the contributor!!!!!

Whether Saddam actually possessed weapons of mass destruction "isn't really the issue," John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control, now suggests. "The issue I think has been the capability that Iraq sought to have," Bolton said in a recent interview.

Benjamin Barber, professor of civil society at the University of Maryland and author of the book, "Fear's Empire: war, terrorism and democracy," said that Bush's recast war rationale makes it easier for administration hawks to justify pre-emptive wars as a means of going after terrorism.

"That's a more serious mistake than to try to claim we were going after weapons of mass destruction," Barber said. "It sends the wrong note to our allies at the United Nations."

The president's congressional allies welcomed his new war rationale.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., called Bush's address "a comprehensive presentation of the scope of our war against terrorism, its current focus, our determination to succeed and the cost."