WATCHED BUSH’S SPEECH: It was an outright challenge to the neo-McGovernites, and even more of a challenge to those wafflers (and several are beginning to appear) among the Democratic presidential candidates, specifically mentioning Somalia and Beirut (bipartisan bugout history there), and noting that lessening our commitment would be a disaster, and play into the terrorists’ hands. (“They want to shake the will of the civilized world.”) Not bad, but the Administration will have to keep on the ball. The best point was his direct reference to what he said after 9/11, to the effect that this would be a long and multifaceted war. This isn’t a time to go wobbly, and Bush made that clear. If he sticks to it, we’ll win, and so will he.

UPDATE: Here’s the text of the speech.