Jake Tapper of Salon on Bush and Iraq, jn the context of Bush's father. An interesting read indeed:

March 11, 2003 | In his second presidential debate with Vice President Al Gore, on Oct. 11, 2000, Gov. George W. Bush faulted the Clinton-Gore team for not working hard enough multilaterally to keep the heat on Saddam Hussein.

"The coalition that was in place isn't as strong as it used to be," Bush said, calling the previous eight years a foreign policy failure. "It's going to be important to rebuild that coalition to keep the pressure on him." The fact that he was the son of the man who had built that coalition, the 41st president, George H.W. Bush, gave the Texas governor's argument added political credibility.

(...)

But that was three-plus years ago, and now President Bush has a completely different take on things. His father's views on Iraq, which once seemed to guide his own approach, have been drowned out by a chorus from a rival school of foreign policy. No longer does Bush say that the U.S. can't be "arrogant," that we "will not be able unilaterally to keep the peace," that the country needs to "be humble partners in coalitions," as he did to the Washington Post in December 1999. A month later, on ABC's "This Week," he talked about the need "to get the inspectors back into Iraq" and pushed the need for the U.S. to lead internationally, multilaterally. "One of the tests of a leader is to convince your allies what's right and what's wrong," Bush said. "And that's what a leader does. A leader builds up alliances."

That was then. Now the test of a leader seems to be his courage to go it alone. And no longer is mere disarmament -- "take them out" -- his demand. He now insists upon regime change: to "take him out."

What a difference one pronoun can make. The debate over whether we need to get "them" or "him" separates warring factions of Republican foreign policy makers, and it represents George W. Bush's break from the faction of his father. The elder Bush believed in multilateralism and international cooperation and containment. He spent generations fending off the more unilateral, preemptive beliefs of those who now run his son's foreign policy. An ambassador to the United Nations, he believed strongly in that body's importance.

Yeah, it's Salon, so you're probably gonna be subjected to 30 seconds about how much you need a shiny new AmEx card, but it's worth it.