Boy, I’ll bet — rather, I hope — that, after Sunday, Joseleyne Slade of Providence had her fingers crossed that the Providence Journal wouldn’t publish her letter:

The world was in mourning for the thousands killed by or suffering from the tsunami. That disaster he did not plan, but the awful desolation that is accompanying his unilateral attack on Iraq is his responsibility. In an unjustified and illegal war, more than a thousand very young American soldiers have been killed and horribly wounded, and thousands of Iraqi civilians, most of them innocent, have been slaughtered. The end of this disaster is not in sight.

Of course, human beings are capable of transforming vitriolic attacks that turn embarrassing into escalated hatred of their object. But the more healthy choice that all Republicans of good will should hope Ms. Slade has followed is to ponder the imponderable that more prominent figures have voiced: “What if Bush, the president, ours, has been right about this all along?”