Peggy Noonan is urging President Bush to lower his voice and use the SOTU to take us into his confidence about Iraq.

In an odd way Mr. Bush's passion about Iraq is getting in the way of his message on Iraq. It's not carrying the message forth forcefully, which is what passion is supposed to do. At this point his passion seems to be distracting from the message. ...

Presidents are always bound by the need not to compromise sources or operations, and rightly so. But at this moment, on the brink of war, an immediate and situational new flexibility would seem to be helpful. If you lose a source or an operation and gain more of the understanding of the people of the world and the people of your country--well, that would seem to be a reasonable deal.

As someone who suspects that the Administration does have good reasons for its hard-line Iraq policy, I hope he takes the advice.
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