But at least for the moment, the sudden emphasis on Iraq has thrown politicians off their game. At county fairs in Nebraska over the August recess, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel was stunned to get almost as many questions about war as demands for disaster assistance against the drought. In Maine, Senator Susan Collins says, she was hearing about Iraq as often as about jobs and the economy. And at a retirement community in a Maryland suburb, elderly voters gave Democratic House candidate Mark Shriver an earful on Iraq before bringing up Social Security and the cost of prescription drugs. "People are confused," Shriver says. "They're confused about the answers to some pretty tough questions."

Tough questions, but not new ones. Bush has been building his case since he branded Iraq a member of the "axis of evil" in his State of the Union speech in January. He made a more explicit argument for pre-emptive action in a June talk at West Point, in which he argued that "new threats require new thinking" and warned, "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long." But without fresh evidence of Iraqi chemical, biological or nuclear weapons ready to be fired at the U.S., it will be difficult for the White House to answer the central question: Why now? Why, 11 years later, is Saddam any more of a threat than he was when the first President Bush left him in power? What's different, Bush will argue again and again, is that today America knows it is vulnerable to attack in a way never dreamed possible on Sept. 10, 2001. At the President's meeting with congressional leaders, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin made the case for containing rather than deposing the Iraqi dictator. Bush wouldn't hear of it, replying, as one aide paraphrased him: "That's not an option after 9/11."

Indeed, the debate on Iraq carries strong echoes of 9/11. After last year's attacks, Bush won praise for effectively framing issues in terms of good vs. evil. With Iraq, those are the tough arguments he has to make; they are less about what Saddam has than about who he is and what he purportedly wants. To help make the case, the White House is working hard to track down one graphic exhibit: a video, which Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan has told Bush about, that is said to show Saddam presiding over the execution of political opponents.

But moral principles gain their power by being consistently applied. If it is dangerous for ruthless dictators to develop lethal arsenals, why attack Iraq but not North Korea? If the Iraqi people deserve to live in a free and democratic state, why don't the Saudi people? If we are willing to pay the price of toppling Saddam, will we also pay the price of staying to clean up the neighborhood? And the thorniest question of all: If the last Gulf War helped inspire evil in bin Laden, will a new one create many more like him? It would help Bush's argument if he didn't seem to be the only world leader making it. In his address to the U.N. this week, Bush plans to sound a more internationalist theme than the world has heard from him in a long while. White House officials say Bush will not initially ask for a new resolution from the Security Council. Instead, by listing the ways in which Saddam has flouted its will, Bush is expected to challenge the U.N. to defend its credibility. "He's going to be very blunt," says an aide. "He's going to say 'Your credibility is at stake. You have to decide whether you're relevant.'" One possible option: Bush may set a deadline for Iraq to comply with existing U.N. resolutions. Ultimately, though, Administration officials concede that Bush will probably have to call for—and do the hard diplomatic work that it takes to win—a new U.N. resolution that gives him the authorization to act. He will need the world's backing for the same reason that he had to turn to Congress for support despite his White House counsel's view that he already has the legal and constitutional authority to launch an attack on his own. Bush's executive experience may have persuaded him to set a goal, but his political skills are what it will take to achieve it. Consensus building may be a time-consuming task, but it is a necessary one before a democracy declares war.

—With reporting by Massimo Calabresi, James Carney, John F. Dickerson and Douglas Waller/Washington

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