His request for carte blanche discretionarty power over the biggest killing machine is unconscionable, and if congr4ess supports him in this power grab it will be the gloomiest day on the Hill since John Kennedy died. He creates the image of one who will dop anything to acquire power. As regards demagoguery, don't be fooled; his illiteracy is right on the rhetorical wavelength of a lot of people. He is willing to bend the highest sounding phrases to what seem to me to be unscrupulous ends.

Nicole -- your choice of words is interesting. I think it would be nice to put Bush and his weasels into the Big House, instead of the White House. ("Big House" is a 1930's-era slang term used by convicts for the Leavenworth, KS, Federal Prison, I think).

I suspect he will push this country right to the brink and a grass-roots backlash will spread to the point he can't handle it.

None of this is meant to trivialize the problem of Saddam Hussein, or the other repositories of ill-will we have created over the last century. But I do not care for Bush's approach much at all. Maybe we should offer Saddam a nice beer joint in Tijuana to manage. HE would be much happier there, and we could probably arrange a new identity for him.

A