The Washington Times

As far as legislative affairs go, one of the big differences between Bill Clinton in 1993 and George W. Bush in 2005 is that when Mr. Clinton asked the impossible of a Democratic Congress, he did so in a much more competitive political environment than the one in which Mr. Bush is asking the impossible of a Republican Congress.

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The Washington Times

This is the second year I’ve attended the Munich Conference on Security Policy, a venerable gathering of defense ministers, generals, eminences and (my role) assorted hangers-on dedicated to two days’ of jawboning the state of trans-Atlantic relations and international security. The first time you do something, it’s all new; the second time, you’ve got a baseline against which to be surprised. This one was full of surprises.

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The Washington Times

That President Bush’s second inaugural address is still being parsed and argued over is itself an indication of the consequence sober listeners attributed to it at the time. Nevertheless, there was a passage in the “Freedom Speech” that hasn’t received much attention and probably deserves more, especially in light of the most memorable moment of Mr. Bush’s State of the Union speech – the extended embrace between Janet Norwood, mother of slain Marine Sgt. Robert Norwood, and Safia Taleb al-Suhail, whom the president described as “one of Iraq’s leading democracy and human rights advocates” and whose father was killed by Saddam Hussein.

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The Washington Times

No, I’m not really expecting apologies from the people who told us we needed to postpone the elections in Iraq. But those counseling delay were clearly wrong.

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