Kathryn:Whether Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein in power, I don’t know. To be blunt about it, I don’t care, either. What are the Iraqis to me?

I do think, though, that administration spokespeople should retire the line about the world being a better place without SH. This line is lame. Setting aside the fact that the proposition itself is arguable, even if it’s true, so what? The world would be a better place without Kim Jong Il, or Robert Mugabe, or Fidel Castro. It’s not the rightful business of the U.S. govt. to go around making the world a better place. It’s their business to defend and advance U.S. interests. There is a case that the d & a of U.S. interests was served by removing SH. Admin. officials should stress that case. But for heaven’s sake spare us the world-saving stuff.

Second-lamest line (I am working here from Cheney’s appearance on MTP yesterday): the one about how SH was so involved in terrorism, because he was paying money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. This is deeply unconvincing. Any secular-Arab dictator looking to do a little triangulation with the religious elements in his population & neighborhood would have done the same. And these folk were blowing themselves up in Israel, not the U.S.A. I don’t approve of suicide bombers, in Israel or anywhere else, but to advance this as evidence that SH was hunkered down in conference with people planning attacks on the U.S.A. is, again, lame.

There’s a case to be made for admin. policy, and it should be made with energy and conviction. Folk like Cheney would be a lot more credible, though, if they’d drop these lame lines. It’s depressing to see someone like the Veep, with all the access he has to ideas people, speechwriters, TV coaches, and so on, coming out with these thin, tired cliches. Leaves the impression that what we have here is a thin, tired administration.