One couldn’t help being struck yesterday at the contrast between the hand-wringing among the Democrats, the left-wing critics, and the appeasement camp in Britain, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the president of America. One of the front-running Democrats, Richard Gephardt, was belly aching about Mr. Bush’s “machismo.” The British were in a near meltdown over the tragic suicide of one of its erstwhile weapons inspectors who just wouldn’t confirm the BBC’s account of his characterization of the intelligence on Iraq. The most anti-war of the Democratic candidates, Governor Dean, the former leader of Vermont, was stirring up the voters in California.

Back in the real world, a young American heroine, Private First Class Jessica Lynch, still in a wheelchair after several months in a military hospital, was welcomed home to Palestine, W. Va., after giving a quietly eloquent set of remarks to a world that had been waiting to see her. And the news wires were clacking out the report that Saddam Hussein’s two evil sons, Uday and Qusay, were killed by forces associated with the 101st Airborne Division and Special Operations Forces which had cornered them at the Iraqi town of Mosul.

It must have been an exceptionally satisfying and encouraging piece of news for our GIs, who have been soldiering away in the blistering heat against guerrilla attacks from pro-Saddam remnants. Mr. Bush, in a modest statement that bore no traces of machismo, welcomed the deaths of the Saddam sons as “positive news” that was “further assurance to the Iraqi people that the regime is gone and won’t be back.” It was a reminder that in the quiet center we have a leader who understands what this war has been and still is all about and who has never waffled or shown doubt or regrets.