Talking of Curiosity.

Yes, that Bush- d'you imagine he's a curious chap?

I only say because it seems to be the killer below-the-belt punch of the Democrats and their sympathisers that he is uncurious- oh, and stupid of course. This post at A Tangled Web (and the comments) set me thinking along these lines-

All the recent exposure of Al Qaeda has proved what clever and imaginative fellows they are- how meticulous and disciplined, and it brought to my mind some words of President Bush's recently, which you may remember:

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we; they never stop thinking- about new ways to harm our country and our people- and neither do we." (report)

The thing is that now, in the light of the emergence of wacky yet articulate plans, I'm quite impressed with Bush's urgency. When you combine it with some of the fruits of Bush's own strategies- such as putting pressure on Musharraf while establishing a presence in Afghanistan- it seems quite a reassuring line.

To take it further, if you imagine a solid pause after the word 'thinking', and perhaps admit that Bush slipped past what should have been a pause because of his animation, you have a picture of a lively president up to speed on the fundamentals- and actually, add the pause rightly and you have a very effective bit of rhetoric. To get the right effect for a piece of speech I've sneakily introduced hyphenation to the passage.

I suggest we could usefully lose the BBC's condescending tone, and certainly the hysterically amused response of the paralysed by prejudice press.