Frank Rich

"At the tender age of six months, the war in Iraq is not remotely a Vietnam. But from the way the administration tries to manage the news against all reality, even that irrevocable reality encased in flag-draped coffins, you can only wonder if it might yet persuade the audience at home that we're mired in another Tet after all." [more]

"The polls, far from rationalizing the Democrats' timidity, suggest they might have won a real debate had they staged one. Support for an Iraq war is falling, with the dicey 51 percent in favor in the latest CNN/USA Today survey dropping to a Vietnam-like 33 percent support level if there are 5,000 casualties, as there could well be. But even so, the Democratic leaders never united around a substantive alternative vision to the administration's pre-emptive war against the thug of Baghdad. That isn't patriotism, it's abdication." [more]

"Asked by Tim Russert last Sunday if the kind of noise that our intelligence is picking up from Al Qaeda this spring is 'similar' to the noise prior to Sept. 11, Vice President Cheney answered, 'Sure.' If that's the case, it's clear that Ari Fleischer's reassurance to the press in February that Al Qaeda has been 'severely disrupted and severely hampered' is now inoperative." [more]

"This is an administration that will let its special interests ¡ª particularly its high-rolling campaign contributors and its noisiest theocrats of the right ¡ª have veto power over public safety, public health and economic prudence in war, it turns out, no less than in peacetime." [more]