The Cast of Characters

__Mark Shields__

Heeding the voices of combat

A nation unprepared for war

Defiant Saddam spurns U.S. threats

Afghanistan: One year later

"America's defeat of the Taliban was remarkable for its speed, precision and relative painlessness to Americans, judging by U.S. casualties."

Between Iraq and several hard places

"If invading Iraq were really such a terrific idea, would South Dakota Democrat Tim Johnson be

the only United States senator to have a child (his son Sgt. Brooks Johnson of the Army Airborne)

among the 1,055,316 enlisted personnel of the U.S. military?"

__Al Hunt__

Robert Novak

That fateful hatchet job

More on the Plame affair

You can view this bottom feeder's editorials at the Chicago Sun-Times

Or see him at the network fond of picking up the puppies that nobody wants (you know, the ones that can't stop humping legs and squirting piss everywhere).

Kate O'Beirne

She wrote the book Women Who Make the World Worse : and How Their Radical Feminist Assault

Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports

"We depend on manly characteristics to keep us safe."

She also thinks feminism is just a bunch of whining women who didn't get asked to prom.

Yes, she's an idiot.

Margaret Carlson

She wrote the book Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House

September 21, 2002 - 19:00 ET

AL HUNT, WALL STREET JOURNAL: I'm afraid Kate's right, and it's a very bad idea,

although getting Saddam is a good idea. This is a very foolish Gulf of Tonkin

type blank check resolution that has been sent up. A, it makes absolutely false

assertions, I think, or at least unprovable assertions. It says that Saddam is a high

risk to directly attack the United States. It's -- or give, give, give those weapons

to terrorists. If so, do like President Kennedy did 40 years ago and show us the proof.

It is a blank check in the Middle East. We could attack Syria and Iran under this

resolution. The administration's game is clear, Mark. They need two or three months to

forward position. They want to go to war in February or March, not in the summer. And

as Karl Rove said, Let's get the war drums going in the fall.

Congress should carefully look at this. They should decide what effect it has on, on,

on, on allies, they should decide what effect it has on the war on terrorism, they

should decide what the post-Saddam policy is. I don't think they will.

SHIELDS: Bob Novak.

ROBERT NOVAK, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: Tom Daschle made a political decision. We all know

what politics is. He's looked, and the Republicans are coming up. This is an issue that

hasn't been working for the Democrats, so he just said, OK, we'll give you what he want.

I think, I hope, it doesn't have adverse consequences. It's going to be fine if we have a

very easy war. If it's not an easy war, there's not the base of public support, and they

haven't made the case on any basis that there is a, that there is a cause for war. The

one thing that the hawks on Iraq can always depend on is something stupid to be done in

Baghdad, and they did it today. They put out a statement saying that they could not agree

to any conditions by the United Nations or -- so this was a -- this was music to the ears

of Don Rumsfeld, who said, OK, we'll go in with bombs.

MARGARET CARLSON, "TIME" MAGAZINE: You know, what's surprising is that the Bush

administration doesn't even wait for Baghdad to do something stupid, in that Bush was

saying, Iraq won't agree to anything, we are going full steam ahead anyway, as if that U.N. --

he'd made no proposal to the U.N. He doesn't even leave it out there for 24 hours before

he's saying, Oh, no, they'll never go along with it, undercutting his own coalition building.

It's such Kabuki theater that Bush has never held to the fact that he did go to the U.N. and

he did ask for a resolution. Saddam Hussein is not the only one in violation of a U.N.

resolution. Bush is going to be in violation of a U.N. resolution because he doesn't even

stick with it for a couple of days.

December 7, 2002 - 19:00 ET

NOVAK: ... they're not peace. No, they're Americans, they're Republicans. And they say there

is no chemical weapons, there's no biological weapons. The only thing you worry about is the

possibility of a nuclear development. And that's speculative. We have no proof on it.

The one thing I would like to add, though, on this region change, I think that is a huge -- If

we're going to war to make the Middle East safer for Israel, we ought to tell the American people

about it.

SHIELDS: Well, it, let me say, say this. Say we do find weapons, or we find him in material

breach. We are not ready for war. Right? We have (UNINTELLIGIBLE) call 200,000 reservists up, we

heard this week, and then the United States is not ready to go to war in any sense of the word.

HUNT: Mark, we can be ready in six weeks.

SHIELDS: Oh, boy.

HUNT: I think, I think most military experts say you can get ready to mount that kind of

campaign within six weeks. Kate, I'm much closer to Kate's view on this than I am to Bob's, but I

do think that to do it unilaterally or unilaterally (UNINTELLIGIBLE) plus, plus two or three allies

really would be fraught with peril afterwards.