Michael Kelly reports on an interview that he and several others conducted on Monday with a "senior administration official" (which is what the press calls any administration official speaking off the record); the subject was the State of the Union address scheduled for the next day, and naturally, matters turned to Iraq.

"We cannot allow Iraq to get to the same position where North Korea is," the official said. "This guy is richer (than Kim Jong Il). He's in an incredibly strategic location. He professes hatred for us, our friends, our closest allies in the region. He is a man who could create great havoc if not dealt with. And he is a man, as a result of his dealings with a shadowy network, who can harm Americans themselves. .... And that's why we are going to deal with him."

The verbiage of the interview seems neither as hawkish as Rumsfeld or Cheney, nor as dovish as Powell, and more folksy than any of the foreign policy heavy-hitters. (Can you imagine Condi Rice referring to Saddam as "This guy..."?) Perhaps more telling is that the interviewee never refers to the President in the third person, and at least once uses first person singular ("I believe") when describing the administration's position. It's apparent that the "senior administration official" was in fact Bush himself.

Not that the interview contains much that wasn't in the address itself. Though it's amusing that Kelly found a way to write about the SOTU address, in a column that had to be turned in before the address was given.