I'm intrigued by something in Peggy Noonan's latest column:

Four months ago a friend who had recently met with the president on other business reported to me that in conversation the president had said that he has been having some trouble sleeping, and that when he awakes in the morning the first thing he often thinks is: I wonder if this is the day Saddam will do it.

"Do what exactly?" I asked my friend. He told me he understood the president to be saying that he wonders if this will be the day Saddam launches a terror attack here, on American soil.

There's no way of knowing whether this is true, of course -- but if it is, you have to wonder whether bloodthirsty courtiers are whispering in Bush's ear precisely what they think will motivate him to do what they want him to do. An attack on the U.S. -- by Saddam rather than al-Qaeda or North Korea (or even Hamas or Hezbollah)? And now? Are hawks telling Bush to expect this highly improbable scenario in order to get what they want, just as the trigger-happy FBI reportedly told Janet Reno that children were being abused in David Koresh's Waco compound, knowing that child abuse was a hot-button issue for Reno?

Waco and Iraq seem similar in another way, incidentally: Bush seems to be ignoring the very real possibility that, if attacked, Saddam will choose to go down in flames along with everything around him, just as Reno and the FBI ignored this possibility in the case of Koresh. I'm no Reno-hater, but I never understood this about Waco -- it seemed obvious to me that Koresh's fervor and belief system might well lead him to choose a gruesome death (and, presumably, what he thought would be a glorious afterlife). Saddam seems very much the same -- yet the hawks don't seem to be worried that he might embrace conflagration if cornered. The danger of such a conflagration seems the obvious reason to oppose the war we're on the verge of fighting, and prefer deterrence and containment.

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In her column, Peggy Noonan also says this:

Mr. Bush's passion is well-established. Too much so, actually. Last summer, when Mr. Bush told Bob Woodward's tape recorder that he personally loathes Kim Jung Il, when he spoke of his disdain in startlingly personal tones--and when the world heard it on television, for Mr. Woodward apparently provided the tape to publicists when he was selling his Bush book--well, that was not a great moment in the history of diplomacy. Mr. Bush's father was often accused of allowing himself to express too little. George W. Bush may be remembered in part for allowing himself to express too much.

For a GOP coat-holder of several decades' standing, these are harsh words. If a liberal had published these words, Andrew Sullivan would have declared the writer a "Sontag Award Nominee" or "Krugman Award Nominee," or whatever it is he calls people who don't fully avert their eyes when His Serene Highness the Emir of Bush enters the room.