WALTER SHAPIRO ANALYZES the Bush/Daschle dustup.

UPDATE: MICKEY KAUS has a roundup on this topic (he thinks Shapiro was a bit too gentle on Bush), fact-checks a Gore misstatement, and adds:

The major irresponsibility in Gore’s speech isn’t factual, though. It’s that he never really said what he’d do. If Gore had laid out an alternative course of action — inspections and containment, perhaps, backed by an implicit military threat — and explained why this course wouldn’t have a substantial chance of ending with a biological or nuclear attack on Americans, Gore would have performed a patriotic service even if he lost the debate. And he might have won the debate. (I, for one, am more than ready to be convinced.) Instead, he sniped at the President without presenting a plan of his own, a self-protective tactic that may be appropriate in a debate on, say, how to revive the economy, but that in the middle of a war verges on the unpatriotic.

Yes, it’s the failure to offer any proposals that might be shot at that makes the anti-war effort in general seem so disingenuous. (Oh, and TNR’s editorial, which says something similar, is now readily available on their site. Drudge must have taken down the link.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg says “I told you so” to the editors of TNR. That’s gotta hurt.