Tom Friedman has an interesting column:

And that is what makes me so sad about this moment. It appears we are on the verge of going to war in a way that will burst all the national solidarity and good will that followed 9/11, within our own country and the world...

Which explains my third gut feeling - that to succeed in such an undertaking, in a country with so many wounds and pent-up resentments, will require an unrushed process that is viewed as legitimate in Iraq, the region and the world. It cannot be done if we are looking over our shoulders every day, which is why U.N. approval and allied support are so important...

So, Mr. President, before you shake the dice on a legitimate but audacious war, please, shake the dice just once on some courageous diplomacy. Pick up where Woodrow Wilson left off: fly to Paris, bring the leaders of France, Russia, China and Britain together, along with the chairman of the Arab League summit, and offer them any reasonable amount of time for more inspections - if they will agree on specific disarmament benchmarks Saddam has to meet and support an automatic U.N. authorization of force if he doesn't. If France [et al. --ed.] still snubs you, the world will see that you are the one trying to preserve collective security, while France only wants to make mischief. That will be very important to the legitimacy of any war.

I think he makes some good points. At the very least, it's obvious that the PR side of this has been severly botched, both here and abroad. The occasionally perfidious nature of the "peace" protesters has not helped, but it has not been dealt with either. And, we have not made our case as strongly as we could have overseas.

The "specific disarmament benchmarks" argument is what Zbigniew Brzezinski makes here:

I think what we need, and I think the British are moving in that direction, is precisely what has been mentioned; namely, a series of more specific thresholds, more specific objectives -- defined so clearly that we'll know whether they're complying or not...we need a series of deadlines on VX, on anthrax, on other sort of items, perhaps biological weapons, delivery systems, indicating data and indicating datelines by which they're dismantling and elimination is completed.

However, Zbig apparently doesn't want regime change.