Second Thoughts? - It's odd.

Second Thoughts? - It's odd. At work (at a local engineering company), there's a big, pre-9/11 poster of Manhattan - a big aerial photo taken from south of Battery Park. People walk by and look at the picture, and seem awed by the huge amount of space the twin towers took up in the picture. I've done it myself. From that angle, the World Trade Center took up a very large part of the field of view - and it's easy to see why people feel like such a huge piece of Manhattan is missing.

All this is apropos the President's announcement yesterday that he's not considering moving against Iraq - one of the powers that wants the ability to erase the rest of the Manhattan skyline.

Is Bush dissembling? Is he lying to put the Iraqis at false ease? Is he playing to the room (full of pusillanimous European leftists), for temporary gain? Or has he lost his nerve? Is he (as Andrew Sullivan puts it) surrendering to the terrorists?

What do you think?