"There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."

Calling it "a confession, a regret, something," President Bush acknowledged in a round-table interview with regional newspapers yesterday..... "Sometimes, words have consequences you don't intend them to mean. 'Bring 'em on' is the classic example.....Or, you know, 'dead or alive' in referring to Osama bin Laden at the Pentagon.

But while the press made a great deal of this orchestrated admission of "mistakes," it downplayed the central thrust of the press conference--the insistence that there would be no change in policy "as long as I'm standing here as the commander in chief, which is two-and-a-half more years." ... But if the war against Iraq was waged on the basis of false claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, then not only have those who organized it perpetrated a war crime for which they should be brought to justice, but the regime that has been set up on the basis of an illegal invasion is itself illegitimate.