CORRESPONDENCE

...Remember, George,' she said, 'this is no time to go wobbly.' Those who work with me in the White House know we use that expression often and have used it during some troubling days...

...President Bush's quotation of the "wobbly bit" that day in the East Room, and its frequent use in the Situation Room and Oval Office during the crisis, was the sort of thing done by someone who is confident his audience—and his guest of honor—know he didn't really need the advice...

...If she had had such a thought, she probably would have put it on paper, because both volumes of her memoirs are full of remembered advice to male colleagues, foreign and domestic, on the theory and practice of statecraft...

...McCain is right, but he is not...

...But I never found any weakness in it from the first...

...And she listened to my explanation, agreed with the decision, but then added these words of caution—words that guided me through the Gulf Crisis, words I'll never forget as long as I'm alive...

...As recorded in the official documents of his presidency, Bush said: "In the early days of the Gulf Crisis I called her to say that though we fully intended to interdict Iraqi shipping, we were going to let a single vessel heading for Oman [to] enter port down at Yemen . . . without being stopped...

...We want to fight a war without casualties...

...Thatcher then thanked Bush "for the wonderful things you have said, including that wobbly bit...

...Correspondence INCLUDING THAT WOBBLY BIT In William Kristol and Robert Kagan's editorial, they write that "Margaret Thatcher's famous injunction—'George, this is no time to go wobbly'—helped give President George Bush the moral courage to take Americans to war against Saddam Hussein" ("Mr...

...CHASE UNTERMEYER HOUSTON, TX I am usually in agreement with William Kristol and Robert Kagan on stands of national policy, or can understand when I am not...

...We appear to have a bunch of clowns trying to run a war...

...ARNOLD KRABBENHOFT SPARKS, NV...

...We let the Serbs know what buildings we are going to bomb so that they will be empty, but we bomb a Chinese embassy without any warnings...

...The original quoter was George Bush himself, fondly used on the day he presented the then-former prime minister with the Medal of Freedom...

...They seem to feel it is more important to save face by having total victory in Kosovo than it is to save American servicemen's lives...

...however I cannot understand their point of view regarding our military involvement in Kosovo...

...We are burning up our arsenal of weapons, and the effect is of little consequence...

...Kristol and Kagan think Sen...

...And never, ever will it be said that Margaret Thatcher went wobbly...

...No matter what we do, we will have our forces involved in the Balkans for an undetermined time...

...He replied that he did not—a statement the press took to be a strengthening of his position against Saddam Hussein...

...In her memoir The Downing Street Years, Lady Thatcher headed a chapter "No Time to Go Wobbly" but said nothing about using the phrase to give Bush moral courage...

...Our military strategy is non-existent...

...We did not raise our children to fight in some foreign land and die...

...I am glad we have Republicans in Congress who have the guts to say we are wrong—have the guts to try and stop this insanity and get our military personnel back home...

...We have no business bombing in Yugoslavia...

...The bombs and missiles we use in Yugoslavia are more valuable than the buildings they are destroying...

...On the contrary, she wrote that, "At the press conference in Aspen [right after Iraq invaded Kuwait], the President was asked if he ruled out the use of force...

...You would think he, having been a POW in Vietnam, would be more sensitive to the exposure of our military forces...

...Wobbly," May 31...