Peggy Watch...

Let's get started on Noonan:

The Bush administration, famously inclined toward clarity and bluntness in foreign affairs, did something Friday that seemed almost . . . subtle. Or even obscuring. On the brink of war, with everyone in the world rushing to the radio and TV to see if the invasion had happened or the White House blinked or the Security Council vetoed or Blair cracked, Colin Powell and President Bush marched to a podium in the Rose Garden to announce they were going away. They were going to a sunny island in the middle of the Atlantic. There they would meet with our closest allies and confer at long meetings. And Mr. Bush would be attending those meetings having on his mind his strong convictions regarding a new Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative. [my emphasis]

From CNN:

"Tomorrow is the day we determine whether or not diplomacy can work," Bush said after a one-hour meeting with his key council allies, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.

What? Does Bush live on dog time; 1 hour is equal to 7 Bush hours?

Back to Peggy:

Mr. Bush, the chief executive who went to Harvard Business School, has since Sept. 11, 2001, been businesslike in focusing on and checking off the items on his daily international agenda. This has helped him produce obvious and orderly progress. The terrorists have been and are being removed, arrested and detained; the war in Afghanistan has been prosecuted; an Iraq invasion has been put forward and argued for in the world. The idea that Mr. Bush is now adding a comprehensive Mideast peace plan to the mix seems hopeful--not a widening of fronts but a broadening of focus. And a welcome acknowledgement of the need for a new activism, and a rejection of the idea of hopefulness, in the hottest and most dangerous part, ever, of the world.

Did she really mean to say "a rejection of the idea of hopefulness"?

Read this again:

The idea that Mr. Bush is now adding a comprehensive Mideast peace plan to the mix seems hopeful--not a widening of fronts but a broadening of focus. And a welcome acknowledgement of the need for a new activism, and a rejection of the idea of hopefulness, in the hottest and most dangerous part, ever, of the world.

Let's circle back to Peggy's own words:

that seemed almost . . . subtle. Or even obscuring

Heal thyself...