I didn’t see President Bush’s performance

on Meet the Press. But Andrew Sullivan reports that Bush “used the right words” to defend his policy in Iraq. Those words were: “[Saddam] had used weapons. He had manufactured weapons. He had funded suicide bombers into Israel. He had terrorist connections. In other words, all of those ingredients said to me: Threat. The fundamental question is: Do you deal with the threat once you see it? In the war on terror, how do you deal with threats? I dealt with the threat by taking the case to the world and said, Let’s deal with this. We must deal with it now.”
Sullivan’s verdict is that this is the president’s “best self-defense yet. And I liked his modest way of putting it. In the campaign he can make the case more forcefully, but I’m relieved that on this central question, the White House has belatedly realized it has to make the case again, and explain, and defend itself. It has nothing to be ashamed of, and a huge amount to be proud of, in the battle against terror.”

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses