toledoblade.com --

THAT was a confident, determined George W. Bush who delivered a soft-spoken but rousing call to war against Iraq in his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday night.

He had the Republicans, and even a few Democrats, popping up like pistons with standing ovations after nearly every emotionally charged sentence and gracefully turned phrase. In terms of theatrics and delivery, it might well have been the best speech of his presidency.

Rhetoric, however, is very different from sound policy. Mastering the first doesn't guarantee the second, and that is Mr. Bush's problem.

He had some great lines, to be sure, such as "Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy and it is not an option." But almost no one in the world community trusts the Iraqi dictator about anything, much less his sanity.

What the American people wanted from Mr. Bush was some convincing evidence that Iraq's threat to the United States is both real and imminent enough to require a war. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush did not provide that evidence, deferring to Secretary of State Colin Powell to lay out the details to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5.

In the evidentiary sense, not much has changed since the Bush Administration began making its case against Saddam more than a year ago. The "smoking gun," promised time and again, is yet to be found.

A major obstacle for Mr. Bush is that his policy of "pre-emptive war" casts aside 200 years of international law, which says clearly that one country may not attack another simply because of a perceived threat. The first Persian Gulf War was mounted after Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait, an overt act of aggression.

In an attempt to justify invading Iraq, Mr. Bush continues to talk loosely about Iraqi links with al-Qaeda, which sponsored the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. But he has yet to provide any strong or conclusive proof.

The principle of pre-emptive war may seem bold and decisive, but striking out at someone before he can strike at you is at base the logic of a bully. As a guiding instrument of foreign policy, it is so morally disjointed as to invite other nations, as well as terrorists, to launch unwarranted attacks on the United States.

As for the domestic agenda outlined by Mr. Bush in his speech, some was recycled - such as his child-like belief in tax cuts for the rich even as the budget deficit balloons, and his voluntary "Clear Skies" environmental scheme - but some was striking.

Particularly interesting were the President's proposal for $600 million to fund drug treatment for 300,000 Americans and his poignant plea to allocate $10 billion in new money for AIDS relief in Africa.

Mr. Bush has asked Congress for AIDS money before, including last June, when he promised $500 million to combat mother-child transmission of the AIDS virus. But when the bill came to his desk, he vetoed it. It seems fair to ask whether Mr. Bush means what he says now or was the rhetoric merely a soothing domestic-policy sideshow.

The President's real target in his address was not disability or disease, of course, but Saddam Hussein. While Mr. Bush pressed his case in a more persuasive fashion, he still has not overcome the weight of international law against pre-emptive war.

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