Anatomy of a Wrong Approach

The question, really, is not whether we have the stomach for the fight but the brains to figure out what to do in Iraq.

The vice president’s effort to reduce it to a question of courage — to suggest that those who want to expand the war are braver than those urging steps to limit it — is a standard rhetorical trick. Whenever any Bush policy is questioned, someone from the administration almost automatically charges that its critics are soft on terrorism.