The good columns posted on

The good columns posted on RealClearPolitics this morning indicate that Secretary Powell is angry to have persuaded President Bush to bring the case for war against Iraq to the UN, only to be upbraided at the last minute by the French and Germans. The president will not back down now; instead, he will marshall a “coalition of the willing” to take on Iraq, and he will make his case for doing so in Tuesday’s State of the Union message. The reasons for the Franco-German betrayal of the US (and apparently of their word given to Secretary Powell) are not entirely clear. One columnist who manages both to make sense of the situation and to wring some humor, however grim, out of it, is the gifted Diana West. Do not miss Lady Di’s “Sheryl Crow and the Franco-German Union.”