At year end, Bush policy triumphant

I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid.

-- Libyan dictator Moammar Ghadafi to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Has any American president had a better three weeks or so than President Bush has in the run-up to Christmas this year?

First the news, now confirmed, that the U.S. economy exploded in growth during the third quarter with an astonishing 8.2 percent rate of expansion. That's the strongest growth rate since 1984, when Ronald Reagan was trouncing Walter Mondale, 49 states to one.

This growth commenced this summer, at the precise moment that President's magnificent tax cuts took effect. Those tax cuts had the exact effect predicted by us supply-siders who, for good reasons now demonstrated yet again, have spent lots of time and effort working for, and defending, reduced marginal tax rates. Reaganism triumphant, again.

Then two weeks ago today, our magnificent soldiers found Saddam Hussein.

The vivid pictures of Saddam's ignominious fate, to be followed by the internationally televised trial to follow, will reverberate throughout the Arab world and Middle East for decades to come. Res ipsa loguitur. "The thing speaks for itself."

The third early Yuletide present was the stunning news of the unilateral statement from Moammar Ghadafi of Libya that he will dismantle his weapons of mass destruction and permit international inspections.

President Bush's Iraq policy is utterly triumphant, as his economic policy. The world is today a safer place because of the leadership of this president and the moral courage he has displayed in following the Bush Doctrine of pre-emption to overcome the new form of asymmetrical warfare known as international terrorism.

And all this is because the counsel of the peaceniks has been conclusively demonstrated to be not just wrong, but gravely, dangerously so. All members of the firm of Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld and Co. understand what the peaceniks don't: That the endless, empty chatter of the peaceniks will bring us more war: More destruction. More aircraft-as-bombs. More anthrax and other bio-warfare. More torture-cellars. More slaughter of the innocent. More mass graves. More children's prisons and "rape rooms" for enemies of the regime.

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Ann Coulter had one of the best quips of the month. "I'm not sure which development hurt (Democratic frontrunner) Howard Dean more: The capture of Saddam Hussein or Al Gore's endorsement."

Scathingly witty columnist Mark Steyn wrote of Gore's declaring President Bush's Iraq policy "a catastrophic failure" before Gore "emerged from his own pit of obscurity" to endorse Dean just days before our soldiers pulled the Butcher of Baghdad out of his wretched spider hole.

George W. Bush and the American military should win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Peter Kinder is assistant to the chairman of Rust Communications and president pro tem of the Missouri Senate.