Bobert:

Bushie was persuasive, collected, and read his speech well. It was good rhetoric. In the part I saw he went beyond the margin of reasonable rhetorical devices only once. I only wish I could believe he was capable of writing what he read.

However, I am mindful of McGrath's point -- the qualityy of the rhetric does not change the fact that rhetoric is what it is, and the statements made are intended to be persuasive, not state facts.

Interestingly, the news station kept running a series of knee-jerks bullets along the bottom of the screen, things like "Iraq Trained Al-Qaeda Members" and "Saddame Pursuing Nuclear Capability" -- sort of pargraph headers, unless you were a bit dull and interpreted them as factual statements.

All said, I think Congress is going to give him his endorsement, and he is boldly going into the teeth of a really messy situation which may have some very ugly ttwists and turns.

A