Ed. will listen attentively tonight as President George W. Bush reveals the "State of the Nation" in his televised annual speech.

What Ed. will be listening for is some definitive explanation for why the U.S. keeps insisting that Iraq's Saddam Hussein is hiding Weapons of Mass Destruction (nuclear, chemical and/or biological) and HOW we know he is.

Ed. is guessing that he knows the answer to the question, and he suggests to President Bush that confession is good for the soul.

Could it be that the U.S. Military's knowledge of the purportedly missing/hidden stockpiles of VX nerve Gas, Mustard Gas and other deadly substances comes from the fact that the U.S. either provided the poisons to Iraq, gave over the formulas, funded the laboratories or inspected the stockpiles when Hussein was doing our dirty work and using them against Iran back when hostilities with that nation were at full flame decades ago?

If we "know" there are missing WMD because we gave them the toxins or saw them with a blind eye, then the U.S. ought to simply SAY SO instead of making people wonder why the U.S. is so insistant on the point when UN weapsons inspectors cannot find any evidence that Hussein has or had them.

Once the truth is out, the American people ... no, the World ... can better decide whether Iraq is likely to still have stores of VX gas, etc., and exactly what then to do if he does.

But to be sure, this incredible game of cat-and-mouse can not continue. Americans are losing faith in the process and in political leaders who keep insisting that what cannot be found does, in fact, exist.

Ed. is not against bombing America's enemies into obilvion. But for the sake of the innocent victims of battle, he just wants to know that there is a REAL reason for doing so besides Hussein's generally disagreeable personality.

As has often been said: "... the truth shall set you free."