"What You're Reading Is Wild Speculation"

So said President Bush during a pro-WoT speech I dropped in on this morning at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Without explicitly pointing to this Seymour Hersh article on White House plans to hit Iran, he talked up "a multinational approach to asking clear questions." The talk was brief, pro-freedom, anti-terrorist. More interesting was the townhallish Q&A afterward. He jumped at a chance to defend his decision to declassify the July 2003 intelligence report on Iraq. And he struck a blow against micro-managers everywhere when he said he couldn't answer two questions—one astute question on sex-trafficking, another on private military contractors—because he delegates such things to other people. Bush came off pretty well, if only because he was set against a backdrop of stuttering grad students who had serious trouble differentiating between defending their respective theses and asking straight questions. Except, that is, for the first kid, who boldly asked, "As aspiring policy makers, do you have any advice for us?" Bush's response: Ignore the polls.