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# Posted 2:11 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

A HANGING CURVEBALL? Josh thinks my criticism of the President for failing to win the support of Republican senators is premature. After all, doesn't debate within the GOP show the world that America tolerates criticism from within? Yes, of course. But shouldn't this sort of internal debate have taken place before the administration declared that Saddam Hussein is an immediate threat to American security? If we need to deal with Saddam now, then the President should have called senior Republicans into the Oval Office long ago to negotiate their support for his policies.

There are two possible reasons Bush failed to address congressional criticism of Iraq -- both Republican and Democratic -- before taking his demands to the United Nations. First, Bush fundamentally underestimates the importance of securing congressional support for US foreign policy. Second, when the President declared the threat from Iraq to be immediate, he didn't mean "immediate" in the sense of this month or this year. Or both.

So all in all, I think Josh has given me a hanging curveball to hit out of the park. Perhaps if Josh had praised Al Gore and Jim McDermott for their criticism of the administration -- because it isn't a "bad thing" that our decision-making process looks messy to outsiders" -- then I might have conceded the point. But all things considered, the dissent of Lugar and Hagel from Bush's foreign policy is evidence of bad implementation of administration policy.

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