In its Tuesday editorial, the Daily editorial board argued that President Bush’s speech had contributed little of new substance to the ongoing Iraq debate.

Unable to find any noteworthy weakness with the president’s argument for military action against Iraq, the Daily editorial board resorted to making irrelevant observations regarding what President Bush did not argue.

Always the clever sort, the unabashedly liberal Daily editors have evidently taken a page straight from the Democratic Party playbook. The Daily editorial board expressed its outrage that the president, in a speech to the nation regarding the dire threat posed to U.S. national security by Iraq, failed to deal with North Korea or the threat posed to Chechnya by Russia.

No doubt, the editorial board would also have preferred the President to address prescription drugs, Medicare and the host of other issues unrelated to Iraq, but of evidently far more pressing concern.

However, even the editorial board’s irrelevant observations were inaccurate. President Bush argued much that was new. Previously, the president had argued that the United Nations should deal with Iraq, or lose credibility. Now faced with the most forthright manifestation to date of U.N. irrelevance, the president last night argued that America was threatened and that America should act — not for the U.N. and not for Middle East stability, but for the United States. He argued that Iraq sponsored, trained, harbored, and aided terrorists from al-Qaida and other terrorist groups both before and after 9/11.

Iraq then represents the next logical extension of the U.S. war on terrorism. Clearly the board missed this argument, or otherwise thought it unnecessary to address it, since the issue apparently has little significance and urgency in the shadows of Chechnya, North Korea, prescription drugs and cancer research.

The most broadly defined “human rights violations” as well as possession of nuclear weapons by any nation have been everflowing sources of liberal indignation.

Only when America is gravely threatened do liberals reverse course and demand respect for the sovereignty of nations ruled by mass murderers.

Paul Armstrong

Junior

International Affairs

George Washington University

(former ISU student)