Pajama Pundits

Three individuals -- Peter Lewis, George Soros and Steve Bing -- contributed more than $50 million to anti-Bush 527s. Thank goodness the McCain-Feingold law got the big money out of politics.

Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! . . . Why kill anyone? Such insanity . . . Let’s mourn, let’s grieve, and when it’s appropriate let’s examine our contribution to the unsafe world we live in.

Your security is in your own hands. And every state that doesn't play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own security.

So what we should do today is contact a friend who is voting opposite from you and say something nice to him/her. Or bake him a pie. Buy her a gift. If you think he's hot but you haven't hit on him because his politics make you sick, now would be the time to engage in a lengthy make out session with him. Wash her car. Cook him dinner. And then, when it gets close to midnight, everyone will exchange presents with their chosen friend. Make the present something that will be useful for the coming days, like mace or body armor or a box of tissues and some Visine.

SHARONVILLE, United States (AFP) - Gun owners in the crucial midwestern swing state of Ohio expressed scepticism at attempts by Democratic presidential contender John Kerry to win their votes.
Kerry has gone hunting and made numerous reassuring comments in recent weeks aimed at the traditionally Republican gun-owning constituency.

Support of the gun lobby could be crucial for Kerry or his Republican rival, President George W. Bush, in Tuesday's vote. But many of Kerry's target are not impressed at his insistence that he supports the constitutional right to bear arms.

"One dead duck and a new hunting jacket doesn't make you a hunter," Doug Rigsby said derisively as he killed time outside a gun show in this southern Ohio town Saturday.

"His voting record is near 100 percent anti-gun. He's voted for just about every piece of gun control program that has come up."

More than just a knee-jerk reaction to a candidate from a party traditionally seen as hostile to gun ownership, the hunters and gun sports enthusiasts say it is Kerry's voting record that has turned them off.

Kerry's votes has been widely exploited by the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) including in fliers and mailers pressed by NRA activists into the hands of the mostly male show-goers in Sharonville.

"If John Kerry wins, you lose," was the message of one leaflet being handed out by activists, accompanied by a selective highlight of Kerry's anti-gun votes and positions. It said he was in favor of banning semi-automatic firearms, including many firearms favored by sportsmen, and supported a law amendment to "outlaw most ammunition used by deer hunters."

KERRY CAMPAIGN BLOWS UP AT FOX, THREATENS TO THROW FOX OFF THE PLANE, BACKS OFF

KERRY CAMP OBJECTS TO 4:00pm FOX NEWS SEGMENT:
ALAN COLMES: "It's not like he [Osama bin Laden] had a Kerry-Edward bumper sticker in his cave." NEIL CAVUTO: "But he's all but doing that, isn't he? I thought I saw a button."

KERRY CAMP ASKS FOR RETRACTION, DOES NOT GET ONE… JOHN SASSO BLOWS UP AT FOX PRODUCER ON PLANE: "Is that the one? Is that her? I want her off the plane tomorrow. I'm not kidding."

COMM. DIR. STEPHANIE CUTTER BACKTRACKS: "He [Sasso] was wrong to say that. We jumped all over him for it."

John Sasso, a senior adviser to John F. Kerry's presidential campaign, threatened to ban Fox News staff from the candidate's plane Friday night when Fox initially refused to apologize for a talk show host's comment that a new videotape showed Osama bin Laden with a Kerry button.

"It's absolutely impossible and irresponsible to suggest that if I were president, he [Saddam] wouldn't necessarily be gone. He might be gone. Because if he hadn't complied, we might have had to go to war. And we might have gone to war." (emphases added)

The US Media, the Democrat Party, The Kerry campaign, The EU and the UN will stop at nothing to tell you tales about how the evil Bush administration has screwed up Iraq, leaving you with a context of lies that Iraq was a quiet little thrid world paradise until we got there and messed it up for everyone.

They will never tell you the other part of the story, the story of the Iraqi holocaust. It's like telling the story of World War II and just "forgetting" to tell the story of the Jewish holocaust because you don't want to offend anyone's sensibilities. You can't understand one without the context of the other. To tell one story without the other is not only irresponsible, it is at its core, racist. Those people who came back from the WWII experience and tried to excuse Hitler's crimes as just accidents or wanted you to look elsewhere at other country's crimes were branded for what they were. Racists.

Pollster Verne Kennedy of Market Research Insight of Pensacola, Fla., said tracking polling through Thursday indicates Bush would carry Louisiana by about 8 points, or approximately 54 percent to 46 percent.

In 2000, President Bush carried Louisiana with 53 percent in racially polarized voting: 72 percent of whites went for Bush and 92 percent of blacks voted for Gore.

Kennedy said this time Bush is getting about 74 percent of decided white voters and 45 percent of black voters.

The NRA ad falsely claims Kerry is sponsoring a bill "that would ban every semiautomatic shotgun and every pump shotgun." That's just the opposite of Kerry's stated position, and falsely characterizes what's actually in the bill that Kerry co-sponsored

(A) The following rifles or copies or duplicates thereof:

(ii) AR-10;

(iii) AR-15, Bushmaster XM15, Armalite M15, or Olympic Arms PCR

(E)(i) Except as provided in clause (ii), a semiautomatic rifle that has a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds.

(ii) Clause (i) shall not apply to an attached tubular device designed to accept, and capable of operating only with, .22 caliber rimfire ammunition.

(D) A semiautomatic rifle that has an ability to accept a detachable magazine, and that has--

(i) a folding or telescoping stock;

(ii) a threaded barrel;

(iii) a pistol grip;

(iv) a forward grip; or

(v) a barrel shroud.

John Kerry and John Edwards will always support the Second Amendment right of law-abiding American citizens to keep and bear arms, such as rifles and shotguns, including semi-automatic firearms used by hunters and sportsmen across this country. Gun rights are fundamental for the sport of hunting, and they will vigorously support those rights as president.

Shotguns designed for military or law-enforcement use are generally quite distinct from those commonly used by hunters or target shooters. For examples of military shotguns that would have been covered by Kerry's proposal, see the Benelli M4 Super 90, the Mossberg 590, the military and law-enforcement versions of the Remington 870, or the more exotic Jackhammer shotgun, which is not the sort of thing normally found in a duck blind or on the skeet range. [emphasis added]

(H) A semiautomatic shotgun that has--

(ii) a pistol grip;

(L) A semiautomatic rifle or shotgun originally designed for military or law enforcement use, or a firearm based on the design of such a firearm, that is not particularly suitable for sporting purposes, as determined by the Attorney General. In making the determination, there shall be a rebuttable presumption that a firearm procured for use by the United States military or any Federal law enforcement agency is not particularly suitable for sporting purposes, and a firearm shall not be determined to be particularly suitable for sporting purposes solely because the firearm is suitable for use in a sporting event.'[emphasis added]

FACT: Kerry co-sponsors a bill that would ban all semi-automatic shotguns and detachable-magazine semi-automatic rifles, a gigantic step toward bringing Australian-style gun control to the U.S.

The National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund began airing a TV ad Oct. 26 falsely accusing Kerry of voting to ban deer-hunting ammunition. In fact, what Kerry voted for was a proposal to outlaw rifle ammunition "designed or marketed as having armor piercing capability."

The ad starts off saying, "John Kerry says he’s a sportsman, so why did he vote to ban deer hunting ammunition . . .?" In fact, what Kerry voted for was an amendment sponsored by Sen. Ted Kennedy that would have covered rifle bullets capable of piercing soft body armor and also marketed as "armor-piercing," and wasn't aimed at hunting ammunition.

The amendment's actual aim and effect would be to expand the definition of ``armor-piercing'' to include ammunition based, not on any threat to law enforcement officers, but on a manufacturer's marketing strategy. . . . The standards he establishes in his legislation, performance-based standards, ban what is currently on-the-shelf hunting ammunition. Does the hunting ammunition in a high-powered rifle have the ability to penetrate soft body armor? Yes, it does. . . .He says not.
. . .The fact is, virtually all hunting and target rifle ammunition is capable of penetrating soft body armor. That is a reality. So by his definition does that go off the market? I believe it does.

That is why I think it is unnecessary.

Ignored both by Craig and the NRA, however, is the plain language of the amendment itself, which referred to ammunition that could penetrate body armor and is designed or sold as "armor piercing." Both conditions would have had to apply for the ammunition to fall under the proposed ban.

Hunter Thompson is a mildly amusing writer in an overaged class clown sort of way, but to take his advice about anything important is ... well, just about like taking the advice of Timothy Leary, Charlie Manson, and Bagwan Raj-Shinishe, putting it in a blender with a pinch of rat poison, a cupful of cocaine, a fifth of Jack Daniels, and a pound of bullshit, mixing it well, and then mainlining it.

...one must by rights believe that this new, healthier 'Jazeera Osama' has been on comfortably on dry ice--with room service and premium blood transfusions--at a Dubai estate for the last three years, not chased through the hostile hot sands of Waziristan, trailed by a half mile caravan of dialysis tubing. Doesn't this have a foul odor about it? I'm not just talking about a fetid corpse suddenly spring back to health; on that issue, I still remain convinced--along with most all Afghans, Roger L. Simon and Mark Steyn--that the real Osama is playing tonsil hockey with Hitler in Hades these past three years. The real stench, however, comes from the consummate, too convenient sense of timing that--surprise!--completely favors and endorses the Democrats. A tape emerges, late on Friday, the end of a weekly news cycle, just before the networks and daily news writers close down shop for the week. Isn't this always the ideal moment to dump contaminated information on the public, knowing full well it will just sit there uncontested until election eve?

He has stopped talking about the restoration of the Global Caliphate. There is no more mention of the return of Andalusia. There is no more anticipation that Islam will sweep the world. He is no longer boasting that Americans run at the slightest wounds; that they are more cowardly than the Russians. He is not talking about future operations to swathe the world in fire but dwelling on past glories. He is basically saying if you leave us alone we will leave you alone. Though it is couched in his customary orbicular phraseology he is basically asking for time out.

This could be seen as an attempt by Bin Laden to influence the election against Bush; his mocking comments towards the President certainly make it come off that way.

But I don't think it will work, because of a theory I'll call "The Batman Effect".

The communist regime in Hanoi monitored closely and looked favorably upon the activities of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War during the period Senator Kerry served most actively as the group's spokesman and a member of its executive committee, two captured Viet Cong documents suggest.

The documents - one dubbed a "circular" and the other a "directive" - were captured in 1971 and are part of a trove of material from the war currently stored at the Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University at Lubbock. Originally organized by Douglas Pike, a major scholar who is now deceased, the archive contains more than 20 million documents. Many are available online at the Virtual Vietnam Archive and, as the election has heated up, have been the focus of a scramble for insights into Mr. Kerry's anti-war activities. The Circular and the Directive are listed as items numbered 2150901039b and 2150901041 respectively. Their authenticity was confirmed by Stephen Maxner, archivist at the Vietnam Archive.

The two documents provide a glimpse of the favorable way the Viet Cong viewed the activities in which Mr. Kerry was involved. They are from many documents of a kind that were ordinarily sent to a unit called the Captured Document Exploitation Center at the United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, which was headquartered in Saigon. Documents like these that were sent to the center were immediately translated into English and processed for battlefield intelligence for targeting or operations as required, or filed.

The CDEC cover sheet of the "Directive" indicates it was "acquired" on May 12, 1971. The cover sheet itself is dated June 30, 1971, and is entitled "VC Efforts to Back Antiwar Demonstrations in the United States." It shows a detailed knowledge of such VVAW activities as the Dewey Canyon demonstration on the Mall in Washington in April 1971, mentioning the "return of their medals." And the Saigon American military intelligence cover sheet dates the information in that document as being assembled in Vietnam only a week after the Washington VVAW demonstration had taken place.

The CDEC Viet Cong document titled "Circular on Antiwar Movements in the US" notes, "The spontaneous antiwar movements in the US have received assistance and guidance from the friendly (VC/NVN) delegations at the Paris Peace Talks." It also notes that "The seven-point peace proposal (of the SVN Provisional Revolutionary Government) [the Viet Cong proposal advanced by one of its envoys, Madame Binh, operating out of Paris] not only solved problems concerning the release of US prisoners but also motivated the people of all walks of life and even relatives of US pilots detained in NVN to participate in the antiwar movement."

The significance of the documents lies in the way they dovetail with activities of the young Mr. Kerry as he led the VVAW anti-war movement in the spring of 1971.

It was in April that he gave his testimony to the Senate, in which he accused American GIs of having committed war crimes and belittled the idea that there was a communist threat to America. Mr. Kerry had already had, in June of 1970, a meeting in Paris with enemy diplomats, ostensibly, he has indicated, to get a sense of how American prisoners held in Hanoi might be freed. Two historians believe Mr. Kerry made a second trip to Paris in the summer of 1971 and held further talks with the North Vietnamese. The Kerry campaign has denied this.

FBI surveillance and Mr. Kerry's own statements have established his two visits to Paris to meet with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegations to the Paris Peace Talks as taking place in June of 1970 and August of 1971.

An FBI surveillance report dated November 11, 1971, has also established that Mr. Kerry and Al Hubbard, the executive director of the VVAW who had brought Mr. Kerry into the organization, planned to return to meet with them again in Paris on November 15, 1971.

A November 24, 1971, FBI surveillance report disclosed that Mr. Hubbard had also had meetings on his own with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegations in Paris. It noted that he had reported at a national meeting of the VVAW in Kansas City that the Communist Party of the United States had paid his expenses for the most recent one.

The purpose of these meetings by the two top VVAW members, Messrs. Hubbard and Kerry, has always been assumed to be informational. But the documents in the Texas archive suggest another possibility. On July 23, 1971, The New York Times reported that Mr. Kerry held a demonstration in Washington in support of the "seven-point peace proposal" and, according to the Times, "Mr. Kerry, who is 27 years, introduced wives, parents and sisters of prisoners to plead for support."

The Times's dispatch stated that Mr. Kerry charged "...the latest Vietcong peace offer in Paris, which promises the release of prisoners as American troops are withdrawn, is being ignored by Mr. Nixon..."

The circular in the Texas archive states, "The antiwar movements in the US are trying to find means to cooperate... They are also trying by all means to support the seven-point peace proposal (of the PRG) [Viet Cong] and oppose the distorted interpretation made by the White House, the Pentagon and CIA."

Scientists have found fossil skeletons of a hobbit-like species of human that grew no larger than a three-year-old modern child. The tiny humans, who had skulls about the size of grapefruits, lived with pygmy elephants and Komodo dragons on a remote island in Indonesia as recently as 13,000 years ago.

"It is totally unexpected," said Chris Stringer, director of the Human Origins program at the Natural History Museum in London. "To have early humans on the remote island of Flores is surprising enough. That some are only about a meter tall with a chimp-size brain is even more remarkable. That they were still there less than 20,000 years ago, and [that] modern humans must have met them, is astonishing."

A lot of the coverage, both formal and informal, of the forthcoming apocalypse in Ohio strikes me as implicitly accepting a really quite stupid bit of democratic romanticism: that it is better that 100 illegitimate votes be counted than to let one legitimate vote go uncounted.

Dear Donna,

This morning, The New York Times published a story that offers further proof of how the Bush administration's incompetence and arrogance has endangered the lives of our troops and the American people.

Even before invading Iraq, the Bush administration knew that a huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, contained nearly 380 tons of deadly explosives. Despite the fact that they knew exactly where this facility was and what was there, they took no action to secure or protect the site. Due to the stunning incompetence of the Bush administration and their incomprehensible failure to plan, these explosives have disappeared.

Let me put this in perspective -- the bomb that took down Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland used less than one pound of this same explosive. There were 760,000 pounds at Al Qaqaa.

You can read the article by visiting:

http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/news/news_2004_1025.html

Our troops are the best-trained and best-led forces in the world, and they have been doing their job honorably and bravely. The problem is the commander in chief has not being doing his. George Bush refuses to recognize his failures in Iraq, so he can't fix them and is doomed to repeat them.

Thank you,

Joe Lockhart
Senior Advisor

P.S. Use our online volunteer center to talk to your local media outlets about this story:

http://volunteer.johnkerry.com/speakout/

After being warned about the danger of major stockpiles of explosives in Iraq, this administration failed to guard those stockpiles. This is one of the great blunders of the Bush policy in Iraq. The administration has several key questions to answer:
Why did the administration ignore warnings from the IAEA to secure the nearly 380 tons of explosives in Iraq?

Did President Bush's failure to listen to General Shinseki and others about the troop levels that would be needed to secure Iraq after the initial military operations contribute to the military's inability to secure the site?

How many terrorist bombings in Iraq, Egypt or elsewhere have been carried out using HMX, RDX or PETN explosives since 2002?

Who knew what, when? When was the civilian leadership at the Pentagon told about the missing explosives? When did Secretary Rumsfeld learn that the explosives had gone missing? When was the president's National Security Council informed? When was national security advisor Condoleezza Rice briefed on this? When was the president told?

What is the chronology of action taken by the Bush administration after being informed that the explosives had gone missing?

Has the site been inspected recently?

Why did the Bush administration deny the IAEA's request to go back into Iraq to verify the status of the stockpile?

What action did Paul Bremer take after reportedly being warned in May 2004 that the explosives had gone missing?

In addition to the missing explosives and reports of machine tools that can be used for nuclear and non nuclear purposes, what other sites in Iraq with dangerous material were not adequately protected and subsequently looted?

Is there an estimate for the total amount of munitions, weapons and explosives that have gone missing in Iraq?

Supporter: Kerry's going to take PA.

Liz Edwards: I know that.

Supporter: I'm just worried there's going to be riots afterwards.

Liz Edwards: Uh.....well...not if we win.

Public criticism is not the equivalent of government censorship -- it's the proper alternative to government censorship.

But the real question for me as an altrustic editor was not - "is he right or wrong?" - it was "do ignorant people with ugly opinions have the same first admendment rights as others?" And I must still argue to this day that if we are to be the wonderful democracy I'd like to think we are, the answer must be "yes."

There are two Iraqs.

The one we more often get to see and read about is a dangerous place, full of exploding cars, kidnapped foreigners and deadly ambushes. The reconstruction is proceeding at a snail's pace, frustration boils over and tensions - political, ethnic, religious - crackle in the air like static electricity before a storm.

The other Iraq is a once prosperous and promising country of twenty-four million people, slowly recovering from physical and moral devastation of totalitarian rule. It's a country whose people are slowly beginning to stand on their own feet, grasp the opportunities undreamed of only two years ago, and dream of catching up on three decades of lost time.

"I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable."

"with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein."

"Secondly, I spent a lot of time before the vote looking at this issue. I went up to the United Nations at the request of some friends. And I met with the entire Security Council in a room just like this at a table like this. I spent two hours with them. (inaudible), just me and the Security Council, asking them questions. The French ambassador, "Is there a time when President Chirac would be ready to come on board? What do we need to do to move the French people to a place where they understand the stakes? Are you prepared to spend money? Do you believe we might have to use force in order to disarm Saddam Hussein? At what point would you be ready to do that?" I went through that with all of them. And I left there convinced that the U.N. was prepared to be deadly serious about this."

Because of my concerns, and because of the need to understand, with clarity, what this resolution meant, I traveled to New York a week ago. I met with members of the Security Council and came away with a conviction that they will indeed move to enforce, that they understand the need to enforce, if Saddam Hussein does not fulfill his obligation to disarm.

And I believe they made it clear that if the United States operates through the U.N., and through the Security Council, they--all of them--will also bear responsibility for the aftermath of rebuilding Iraq and
for the joint efforts to do what we need to do as a consequence of that enforcement.

I talked to Secretary General Kofi Annan at the end of last week and again felt a reiteration of the seriousness with which the United Nations takes this and that they will respond.

has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements) --DSM-IV

...if there's four words I never want to hear again, it's "prescription drugs from Canada." I'm Canadian, so I know a thing or two about prescription drugs from Canada. Specifically speaking, I know they're American; the only thing Canadian about them is the label in French and English. How can politicians from both parties think that Americans can get cheaper drugs simply by outsourcing (as John Kerry would say) their distribution through a Canadian mailing address? U.S. pharmaceutical companies put up with Ottawa's price controls because it's a peripheral market. But, if you attempt to extend the price controls from the peripheral market of 30 million people to the primary market of 300 million people, all that's going to happen is that after approximately a week and a half there aren't going to be any drugs in Canada, cheap or otherwise -- just as the Clinton administration's intervention into the flu-shot market resulted in American companies getting out of the vaccine business entirely.

While there are several categories of discharges beneath honorable, including general, medical, bad conduct and other than honorable, it is very likely that Kerry's discharge was dishonorable.

However, according to legal scholars, John Kerry's meetings with enemy agents from Communist North Vietnam on multiple occasions between 1970 and 1972 are not covered under [Carter administration pardon] EO 4483. For that reason, we delivered to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft on Monday of this week a "Petition for Investigation and Indictment," calling on the Department of Justice to determine conclusively whether Kerry's actions, in direct violation of UCMJ (Article 104 part 904), U.S. Code (18 USC Sec. 2381 and 18 USC Sec. 953) and other applicable laws and acts of Congress, constitute treason. (To read the text of the petitioners' request, go to http://patriotpetitions.us/kerry/letter.asp )

The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?

The poll finds large differences between the beliefs of Bush and Kerry supporters. But the striking finding is how many Kerry supporters (usually sizable minorities) believe the president’s views are accurate; for example, 39 percent of Kerry supporters believe history will credit the U.S. for bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq. Even more striking, fully 31 percent of Kerry supporters believe several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on 9/11 were Iraqis, and 37 percent believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al Qaeda.

The germ of the idea was so good, it breaks my heart that the campaign didn't capitalize on it. Imagine what the script for the ad could have been.

We are not a warlike people. Quite the opposite. We always seek to live in peace. We resort to force infrequently and with great reluctance -- and only after we have determined that it is absolutely necessary. We are awed -- and rightly so -- by the forces of destruction at loose in the world in this nuclear era. But neither can we be naive or foolish. Four times in my lifetime America has gone to war, bleeding the lives, of its young men into the sands of beachheads, the fields of Europe and the jungles and rice paddies of Asia. We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when they are weak. It is then that tyrants are tempted.

We simply cannot learn these lessons the hard way again without risking our destruction.

Of all the objectives we seek, first and foremost is the establishment of lasting world peace. We must always stand ready to negotiate in good faith, ready to pursue any reasonable avenue that holds forth the promise of lessening tensions and furthering the prospects of peace. But let our friends and those who may wish us ill take note: the United States has an obligation to its citizens and to the people of the world never to let those who would destroy freedom dictate the future course of human life on this planet. I would regard my election as proof that we have renewed our resolve to preserve world peace and freedom. This nation will once again be strong enough to do that.

BOARDMAN, Ohio - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry plans to hunt for geese -- and votes -- this morning on a supporter's private property outside of Youngstown.

Kerry adviser Mike McCurry said it's important in the final days of the campaign that voters "get a better sense of John Kerry, the guy."

"If John Kerry thinks the Second Amendment is about photo ops, he's Daffy," says the ad the NRA said would run in The Vindicator. It features a large photo of Kerry with his finger on a shotgun trigger but looking in another direction.

Meanwhile, labor unions have been circulating fliers among workers that say Kerry won't take away guns. "He likes his own gun too much," says one of the fliers from the Building Trades Department of the AFL-CIO that features a picture of Kerry aiming a shotgun.

Hunting is of particular interest in several of the states that are still up for grabs in the presidential race. Kerry bought his hunting license last Saturday in one of the most critical -- Ohio, which has 20 electoral votes.

Kerry has been explaining it more in recent weeks as he campaigns in socially conservative areas like rural Ohio. At a town hall meeting Saturday in Xenia, he talked about taking his rosary into battle during the Vietnam War. "will bring my faith with me to the White House and it will guide me," Kerry said. [emphasis added]


The faith, the baseball, the hunting all come at the end of a long fight against Kerry's liberal elite image -- an image promoted by his political enemies but perhaps aided by Kerry as well. The candidate disregarded concerns from other Democrats that he shouldn't go windsurfing or vacation at his homes on Nantucket and in Idaho's ski country.

McCurry said Kerry is simply doing the things he loves in the final days of the campaign. Asked if it will include windsurfing, McCurry smiled.

"It's too cold this time of year," he said.

"I had forgotten that Mrs. Bush had worked as a school teacher and librarian, and there couldn't be a more important job than teaching our children," Mrs. Kerry's statement said.

"As someone who has been both a full-time mom and full time in workforce, I know we all have valuable experiences that shape who we are. I appreciate and honor Mrs. Bush's service to the country as First Lady, and am sincerely sorry I had not remembered her important work in the past."

In a Thursday morning interview on Fox & Friends, a Kerry campaign spokesman said after long days on the campaign trail, "things come out that you wouldn't have ordinarily said."

He said the Kerrys have "enormous respect" for the Bush family and have expressed that in the course of the campaign. "I think Teresa Heinz is a wonderful homemaker and a wonderful philanthropist," he added.

Asked if the Kerry campaign intends to muzzle Mrs. Kerry, the campaign aide said no way: "I think she really wanted to come out and say very honestly, 'I'm sorry, I may have misspoken, I absolutely respect what you've done and what you do.'"

I don't think the Russian or the French or the Chinese government would allow itself to be bought because some of his companies are getting relative contracts of the Iraqi authorities. I don't believe that at all. I think it's inconceivable, these are very serious and important governments. You are not dealing with banana republics.

These remarks on the Duelfer Report are breathtaking in their arrogance and are a blatant demonstration of the Secretary General’s bias in favor of those nations that had opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.

Annan’s comments are all the more remarkable for the fact that they were made against the backdrop of the biggest scandal in U.N. history, the ill-fated Oil-for-Food program, now the subject of at least four congressional investigations, three U.S. federal investigations, as well as a U.N.-appointed commission of inquiry, the Volcker Commission. In a recent development, the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the role of Kojo Annan, Kofi’s son, in connection to his role as a paid consultant to Cotecna Inspection SA, a Swiss-based company that received a contract for inspecting goods shipped to Iraq under the Oil-for-Food program.

Significantly, Annan’s remarks to ITV Newsregarding Oil for Food were coupled with a thinly veiled attack on the Bush Administration just two weeks before the U.S. presidential election. Annan again criticized the decision of the U.S. government to go to war against Iraq, firmly rejecting the notion that the world is a safer place with Saddam Hussein out of power:

I cannot say the world is safer when you consider the violence around us, when you look around you and see the terrorist attacks around the world and you see what is going on in Iraq.

Annan’s remarks echoed an earlier interview with the BBC, where he described the Iraq war as “illegal.”[6] Such remarks are deeply unhelpful at a time when the United States and Great Britain, with the support of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1546[7], are working tirelessly to generate greater international involvement in the reconstruction and stabilization of post-war Iraq. Annan’s comments also undermine the efforts of the interim Iraqi Government in the lead-up to crucial elections in January. The Secretary-General’s description of the liberation of Iraq as a violation of the U.N. Charter merely gives comfort to the insurgents who are determined to prevent the creation of a successful democracy in Iraq.

Unlike the former vice president, who lost a recount fight and the 2000 election, Kerry will be quick to declare victory on election night and begin defending it. He also will be prepared to name a national security team before knowing whether he's secured the presidency.

"The first thing we will do is make sure everybody has an opportunity to vote and every vote is counted," said Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter.

Gore prematurely conceded the 2000 race to George W. Bush, then had to retract his concession after aides said Florida wasn't lost. He never declared victory, an omission Kerry's advisers - many of whom worked for Gore - now believe created a sense of inevitability in voters' minds about Bush's presidency.

Gore didn't plan for the legal showdown, though few could have predicted it before Election Day. And he watched as Bush seized political advantage during the 36-day recount by publicly discussing a transition to the White House.

Six so-called "SWAT teams" of lawyers and political operatives will be situated around the country with fueled-up jets awaiting Kerry's orders to speed to a battleground state. The teams have been told to be ready to fly on the evening of the election to begin mounting legal and political fights. No team will be more than an hour from a battleground.

The Kerry campaign has office space in every battleground state, with plans so detailed they include the number of staplers and coffee machines needed to mount legal challenges.

"Right now, we have 10,000 lawyers out in the battleground states on Election Day, and that number is growing by the day," said Michael Whouley, a Kerry confidant who is running election operations at the Democratic National Committee.

While the lawyers litigate, political operatives will try to shape public perception. Their goal would be to persuade voters that Kerry has the best claim to the presidency and that Republicans are trying to steal it.

Democrats are already laying the public relations groundwork by pointing to every possible voting irregularity before the Nov. 2 election and accusing Republicans of wrongdoing.

Amid the tumult of the 2000 recount, Bush sought to make his presidency appear as a matter of time by leaking word of his national security team and bringing news cameras into his transition meetings. Gore and his staff were more reluctant to talk about the appointment process.

I honestly believe that none of the people I read and respect in the blogosphere, including Hugh Hewitt, really understand what happened Wednesday night and why John Kerry lost the Presidency.

First I'll paraphrase and supplement Karl Rove as he appeared on Fox News right after the debate. The final "undecideds" out there do not vote issues. The people who vote mainly issues made up their minds long ago - some always go right, some left. There is also a middle ground - they weigh the candidate and the issues together to reach a conclusion. After three debates and weeks of campaigning, they are mostly off the table now, too. The remaining undecideds are not overly politically tuned in - they vote the person, first, last and always. It is only from within that group that either candidate could have pulled votes from in the last debate.

Kerry was asked about the women in his life and what did he do? He said "I" fifteen times; he said "me" eight times; he said "my" or "myself" four times. Out of 214 words supposedly about the women in his life, he used 27 first person pronouns, never mentioned a name and only spoke of them in relationship to himself "They keep ME ... They don't let ME..." etc. In fact, he never even described his Mother at all and only ONE sentence dealt with the "women" in his life - "And my daughters and my wife are people who just are filled with that sense of what's right, what's wrong." That's it ... period. One sentence about the supposedly most important people in HIS life. Think about that. ONE sentence!! And his last few sentences actually made Bush look like the better man than he - read it: "I think the president is blessed, as I said last time. I've watched him with the first lady, who I admire a great deal, and his daughters. He's a great father." So, who does Kerry "love," who does he "care for?" Simple answer, folks - me me me me me me me. And Americans simply do not want that type of egotism in their president.

"We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as."

Well, I guess the president and you and I are three examples of lucky people who married up. (LAUGHTER) And some would say maybe me moreso than others. (LAUGHTER) But I can take it. (LAUGHTER) Can I say, if I could just say a word about a woman that you didn't ask about, but my mom passed away a couple years ago...

To listen to them. (LAUGHTER) To stand up straight and not scowl. (LAUGHTER) I love the strong women around me. I can't tell you how much I love my wife and our daughters.

Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.

''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .

''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''

a probable indication that maybe a few others in the Republican Party may have doubts similar to Bartlett's;

ample evidence that those who disagree with President Bush and the way his administration operates find comfort and solace in believing it's because he's too religious;

scanty evidence that some of Bush's more evangelical followers may be a bit off their rockers;

and once removed hearsay evidence that all the above is true.

A nun is driving the convent's car through some very lonely countryside. The car stops and she notices there is no gasl left in the tank. So she walks to the nearest gas station. Being a nun and a little unworldly, she forgets to take along the can. The nice man at the filling station has no can either, so he hands her a chamber pot full of gas. The nun walks back to her car and starts pouring the gas into the tank. A bypassing car stops, and the driver looks out at the nun and says: "Sister, I wish I had your faith."

I don't mean to say that Republicans haven't used dirty tricks, or won't in the future. But I have yet to see them pull anything as crass as replacing a losing candidate with a more-popular one just weeks before election day, and in violation of state law. I have yet to see Republicans calling on the world's most corrupt international organization, run largely by apparatchiks from the world's most brutal dictatorships, to pass judgment on how we run our elections. I have yet to see the Republicans encouraging their own to commit fraud by shouting "Fraud!" where none yet exists, putting at risk everything we've built here in the last 228 years.

I disagree with one aspect, Stephen. This was not an angry post. It's simply an essay with a theme and many facts to back up that theme. I live in Alaska, and as far as the Senate race goes, I was actually undecided. That is out the window. The only way for the Democrats to reform is to crush them first. Then they won't be able to blame it on those million African-Americans who were disenfranchised or anything else they can make up along the way. See if you can get this syndicated in the MSM. I wouldn't change a word.

Maybe it's me, and it's just a raucous and free society adjusting to the paradigm shift information technology has bought into play the last 10 years. I don't think so though. I think the reaction of the left at watching their ideas ultimately rejected in the political arena has cemented their rejection of rational participation in national affairs entirely. The process is snowballing as the loss of control over information they enjoyed the last 20 years exposes more and more of their cherished ideals as mistakes and they are looking for anyone and any reason but those ideals themselves to blame. I really think we are headed for orchestrated violence from the left in this country far beyond trashing campaigns offices and if Kerry loses we'll see the beginning of that violence before the inaugeration up to and including trying to overthrow the election results by any means possible.

Much of this is down to Al Gore. His decision to contest Florida in 2000 showed him to be a lesser man than Richard Nixon, who refused to contest the 1960 election when he well could have. When Nixon has more character than you you're in heap big trouble. And it opened the door for all the violence and lawyering that is occuring now in this election

When the occupant of the office becomes more important than the office itself -- and the process by which such an office is legitimate -- you are (censored). For good.

And the vice president stated no objection when Edwards, a North Carolina senator, brought up Mary Cheney during their debate last week. Edwards expressed "respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing."

Cheney thanked his opponent for the "kind words he said about my family and our daughter. I appreciate that very much."

So why was Cheney's reaction so different this week?

It may be partly that Kerry is the presidential, not the vice presidential, candidate, so the stakes are higher, Graff [Henry Graff, presidential historian at Columbia] said. And it may be how the statement was delivered.

"I think it's the warmth that was lacking," he said. "Edwards' statement was a daddy talking. I don't think I felt the same way when I heard Kerry."

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

“We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me,” said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.

A field director for one of the many national partisan organizations trying to drum up votes in Florida admits to routine efforts to rig the outcome. They include submitting thousands of invalid voter registration cards, as well as failing to turn in boxes of cards filled out to register Republicans.

“There was a lot of fraud committed,” said Mac Stuart, former Miami-Dade field director for ACORN. Among his allegations – that ACORN “quality control” workers routinely kicked back Republican voter registrations while paying for Democratic ones. “They said they had enough,” he said.

ACORN is spearheading both a minimum wage ballot initiative and a voter registration drive. Its top two Florida directors failed to return telephone calls Friday.

The Kerry/Edwards campaign and the Democratic National Committee are advising election operatives to declare voter intimidation -- even if none exists, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal. A 66-page mobilization plan to be issued by the Kerry/Edwards campaign and the Democratic National Committee states: "If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a 'pre-emptive strike.'" [HIGHLIGHT OF ELECTION DAY MANUAL, NOVEMBER 2004. CLICK FOR IMAGE .JPG FILE]

The provocative Dem battle plan is to be distributed in dozens of states, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. One top DNC official confirmed the manual's authenticity, but claimed the notion of crying wolf on any voter intimidation is "absurd." "We all know the Republicans are going to try to steal the election by scaring people and confusing people," the top DNC source explained.

People like Chris Reeve will get out of their wheelchairs and walk again with stem cell research.

Wow! That is going to save a huge amount on health care costs. Kerry-care has just got to be the way to go!

But how does it work, exactly? Somehow Kerry can make the lame man walk, and the blind man see, but what is involved? Do I have to get on a bus and go to Washington, or will Kerry tour the nation working his wonders?

Those who saw Kerry that morning recall mainly that he was furious, an emotion, those close to him say, that comes easily to him in times of trial.

''You know, my instinct was, Where's my gun?'' Kerry told me. ''How do you fight back? I wanted to do something.''

A recent New York Times review of the book about John Kerry in Vietnam -- "Unfit for Command" by John O'Neill -- simply ignores or arbitrarily dismisses the book's charges while calling O'Neill "curdled with hatred for Kerry" and having "a fixation on attacking Kerry."

While Americans are often accused of being ignorant of the rest of the world, I'm hear to tell you that the rest of the world doesn't know a thing about America or Americans. This is in spite of how we spew our culture over the world like an open and out of control 5 inch firehose. What most of the world actually knows about America and Americans could fit into a small monkeys fist.

The idea that our system of government is designed to ensure that it doesnt work very well, is simply beyond them. When I explain that the "Bill Of Rights" does not in fact give you any rights, but actually limits the powers of government, that all rights are believed to be yours to begin with and that most of what the constitution does is limit, form and shape government, and that it does not actually say in any explicit language " you have this right or that one". It does tell every one "government can go this far and no further" on a number of subjects.

Three executives of France's largest oil corporation have been charged in Paris over claims that they funnelled millions of dollars through a Swiss company in order to bribe officials to gain oil deals in Iraq and Russia.

In the Nineties, French oil companies Total and Elf-Aquitaine won the rights to develop the $3.4 billion Bin Umar project and the vast Majnoon field in southern Iraq. Total, which acquired Elf, had been unable to exploit these fields while the UN trade embargo against Iraq was still in place. US hawks have accused France of opposing the Iraq war in order to protect its vast oil interests in the country. The three Total executives, arrested after raids on the firm's French headquarters on 29 September, have all been charged with complicity in the improper use of corporate funds.

Kerry: Ten thousand out of 12,000 Humvees aren't armored. I visited some of those kids with no limbs today, because they didn't have the armor on those vehicles. They didn't have the right body armor.

I've met parents who've on the Internet gotten the armor to send their kids.

BUSH: He complains about the fact our troops don't have adequate equipment, yet he voted against the $87 billion supplemental I sent to the Congress and then issued one of the most amazing quotes in political history: "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

BUSH: Saddam Hussein was a risk to our country, ma'am. And he was a risk that -- and this is where we just have a difference of opinion.

The truth of that matter is, if you listen carefully, Saddam would still be in power if he were the president of the United States, "And the world would be a lot better off."

KERRY: Not necessarily be in power, but here's what I'll say about the $87 billion.

When Kerry first told me that Sept. 11 had not changed him, I was surprised. I assumed everyone in America -- and certainly in Washington -- had been changed by that day. I assumed he was being overly cautious, afraid of providing his opponents with yet another cheap opportunity to call him a flip-flopper. What I came to understand was that, in fact, the attacks really had not changed the way Kerry viewed or talked about terrorism -- which is exactly why he has come across, to some voters, as less of a leader than he could be. He may well have understood the threat from Al Qaeda long before the rest of us. And he may well be right, despite the ridicule from Cheney and others, when he says that a multinational, law-enforcement-like approach can be more effective in fighting terrorists. But his less lofty vision might have seemed more satisfying -- and would have been easier to talk about in a political campaign -- in a world where the twin towers still stood.

You know, the American symbol of freedom tends to be our flag. I suspect the Afghan symbol of freedom may be a voter registration card.

But I know, as I think you do, that our country is strongest when we lead the world, when we lead strong alliances. And that's the way Eisenhower and Reagan and Kennedy and others did it.

Dennis Baron

--------------------------------------------

TO RESTORE SANITY ON GUN ISSUE, BRADY CAMPAIGN, MILLION MOM MARCH ENDORSE JOHN KERRY FOR PRESIDENT

For Immediate Release:
10-01-2004

Contact Communications:
(202) 898-0792

Washington, D.C. – The following is a statement from Michael Barnes, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence united with the Million Mom March:

“During the 2000 presidential campaign, the National Rifle Association’s Kayne Robinson said that if George W. Bush was elected President, the NRA would be working out of the White House.

“In test after test, Robinson’s prediction has turned out to be true. The NRA has gotten everything it asked for from President Bush. Every time he’s had a choice, he has sided with the gun lobby and against law enforcement and the victims of gun violence.

“The Bush Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft secured legislation allowing it to destroy Brady background check records a day after the check is completed, against the advice of law enforcement leaders. President Bush signed that bill.

“The Bush Justice Department has made it easier for criminal defendants to challenge gun laws as unconstitutional by insisting that federal prosecutors adopt a view of the Second Amendment that is contradicted by virtually every federal appeals court.

“The Bush Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives secured a law to prohibit disclosure of crime gun records that would reveal the gun dealers supplying most of the guns used in crime. President Bush signed that bill.

“President Bush strongly supported an effort to give gun sellers unprecedented immunity from legal accountability to the victims of gun violence. The bill failed in the Senate – but President Bush supported it. And he signed similar legislation when he was the Governor of Texas.

“And in his most devastating blow to public safety, President Bush broke his promise to renew the Assault Weapons Ban. Instead of renewing the law, he turned his back on the law enforcement leaders and officers who had urged him to save that lifesaving statute, a law that had limited the firepower of criminals. He refused to even meet with police leaders to discuss it. He also turned his back on gun violence victims whose lives have been shattered by these weapons.

“This week, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to repeal local gun laws in the Nation’s Capital. The White House has said President Bush will sign the bill into law if the Senate takes action.

“Time and time again, President George W. Bush has caved in to the gun lobby and failed in his responsibility to keep Americans safe. He has chosen the extreme ideological policies of the National Rifle Association over the need to protect American citizens from gun violence every single time. Not once has the President opposed anything on the NRA’s legislative agenda. This is truly tragic, and it will lead to Americans, including police officers, losing their lives.

“On the other hand, Senator John Kerry has consistently supported sensible gun laws throughout his career in public service. As a prosecutor and as a legislator he has been a leader, working with law enforcement officials on efforts to reduce gun violence. As a hunter and a war hero, Senator Kerry knows that sportsmen do not need military-style assault weapons, and that measures to keep guns away from criminals, terrorists and children are just common sense.

“We urge Americans who care deeply about reducing gun violence in our nation to vote for Senator John Kerry.

“Mr. Bush should seek to be the President of the National Rifle Association. He has earned that job.”

----------------------------------

As the nation's largest national, non-partisan, grassroots organization leading the fight to prevent gun violence, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence united with the Million Mom March is dedicated to creating an America free from gun violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work, and in their communities.

To paraphrase Bill Whittle, the world didn’t change; our view of it did (at least some of us).

It’s almost like being drunk for years and, suddenly getting sober. It doesn’t feel good but things look different—sometimes better, but more often than not, worse--in the light of the cold, un-fuzy day.

In that sobriety, one finds out that there are things to take care of that have gone neglected during the binge. In our national sobriety, we find out that things aren’t what they seemed to be when were under the influence of a great many illusions: that we were safe from terrorists (at least on the home front), that France and Germany were two of our most trustworthy allies and that those same two countries were grateful to us for our role in WWII and for protecting them from the designs of the late Soviet Union. (For the record, I never thought that there was any reason to trust Russia, so the role that that nation has played in the recent dramas of world affairs hasn’t surprised me much.)

In my opinion, Senator John Kerry would have this nation go back to the days when—drunk on our delusions--we thought that all of the above were true. That would be fine if terrorists would magically stop terrorizing and listen to reason. That would be fine if the two afore-mentioned “allies” would behave as true allies. Too bad the senator isn’t a magician.

"CONFIDENTIAL REQUEST.

"ATTN:SIR/MADAM

"This letter might come as a surprise to you, as we are both complete strangers. I got your name and contacts from a business associate of mine who recommends you as a trustworthy person. Due to my position as President of the Republic of Iraq, and due to generosity of the United Nations, I'm in a position to search discreetly and diligently for a foreign partner that could assist us concerning a business matter, which will be of mutual benefit to all. We do require your assistance in the disposition of some US$10,000,000,000.00 (ten Billion United State Dollars) coming into our account as part of the Food For Oil programme."

It was a scam, alright, but the proposal was real. You could even say that the email reproduced above is fake but accurate.

Can the Bush bashers offer a coherent argument as to why Kerry should be favoured over the incumbent? I asked my Bush bashing friends and they all gave me the same answer: Kerry's not George Bush. Some argument. Pressed on the issue, they say that the choice is that of the lesser of two evils, with Kerry clearly the lesser man.

But maybe the real choice is the devil you know over the devil you don't - while we know how bad Bush is, do we really know how bad Kerry's going to be?

You say the scales fell from your eyes on the morning of 11 September. Why? Do you really beleive that our (USA's) conduct has been so fundamentally good and just that we should be loved and respected by the whole world? We DO have enemies, and on that September morning, they got lucky. You then speak of deterring these enemies. Might it not ultimately be more beneficial to examine why we have so many enemies, and to ask ourselves what we can do about it?

When I look at the world three years on, I see a slowly worsening quagmire in Iraq, where the security situation is such that even those who were sympathetic to our cause there are getting fed up with us Yanks. We say that we bring the battle to the terrorists over there so that they dont mess with us here at home. But to the average Iraqi, it is as if we are turning their land into a magnet for terrorists who want to fight us. For what? For 11 September? WHat did Iraq have to do with that? Why should Iraqis be paying the price today for what Afghan based Saudis did three years ago in the USA?

The situation in Afghanistan is only slightly better, and the best we can hope for there is a state on the model of Colombia. (think narcostate...)

You state that we have survived wars on drugs, poverty, and public lasciviousness. Arent these ongoing even today? How many Americans are in prison today for the crime of just trying to get high?

I guess I'd sign on to Bush's vision of an open ended War on Terror if he had first won the war on drugs. THe way I see it, they are about equally winnable.

Come November, I am going to vote for John Kerry. I am an American living abroad, and in my experience the opinion of America (and especially Bush) has never been lower. Contrary to what many conservatives think here, its not about a popularity contest. Its much more important than that. Its about our credibility, and its about working together with others, who share our values, to defeat those who dont share our values.
Im going to support Kerry, because I'm hopeful that his somewhat more nuanced outlook on things will allow for a reassesment of our policy of supporting thugs while talking nice about democracy and human rights. Maybe Kerry will be more willing to do the right thing as opposed to the popular thing in terms of the number one destabilizing issue in the Middle East, if not the whole world: bringing about a just solution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Im convinced that a just solution to this problem will do more in terms of lowering the threat of terrorism against America than anything GWB might consider, whether spending hundreds of billions on the military to attacking all the countries in the axis of evil.

Whoever wins in November, terrorism will not be defeated and will not disappear. WHat we can hope for, however, is to reduce the appeal and sympathy that terrorist attacks generate, and eventually, in this way, reduce the likelihood of such attacks being planned & carried out in the first place, or failing this, reducing the chance of such attacks succeeding. Just as we will never defeat the scourge of illegal drugs, terrorism will never go away in an absolute sense. With common sense though, with a little carrot, a little stick, and above all, a little bit more smarts as to how we go about things, we can have a much bigger effect on the chance that terrorist attacks against us will be attempted, period. This is why I am going to vote for Kerry next month.

"I have said again and again that even if Saddam Hussein is captured or killed in the next instant, it won't change my view about how I can run a more effective war on terror or how I can make America safer."

"It's almost sad; it's certainly pathetic, because all they can do is grab a little phrase and try to play a game and scare Americans."

He added, "They're misleading Americans about what I said. What I said in the sentence preceding that was, 'I will never cede America's security to any institution or any other country.' No one gets a veto over our security. No one.

"And if they were honest enough to give America the full quote, which America heard, they would know that I'm never going to allow America's security to be outsourced. That's the job of the president.

LEHRER: New question. Two minutes, Senator Kerry.

What is your position on the whole concept of preemptive war?

KERRY: The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control.

No president, though all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.

But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

"But I can do a better job of protecting America's security because the test that I was talking about was a test of legitimacy, not just in the globe, but elsewhere.

"If you do things that are illegitimate in the eyes of the other people, it's very hard to get them to share the burden and risk with you."

Kerry said he intends to be a president who understands "that America is stronger when we are leading global alliances and when we are leading the world, and that's how we are going to do it. And that's what I meant."

A C-4 bomb tore a 40 by 40 foot hole into Navy destroyer USS Cole. The Cole, with a crew of about 350, was in the port of Aden for refueling when a small boat came alongside and exploded. The suicide-attack boat with two men had been helping moor the Navy ship when it turned and came directly toward the ship and struck it midhull. The Cole had notified local authorities 10-12 days prior that it would port in Aden. Egyptian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack. It is a terrorist group closely linked to Usama bin-Laden's terrorist network and the truck bombings of two US embassies in N.Africa in 1998 although no hard evidence proves this to be the case. Bin-Laden claimed to have no links with those arrested in Yemen on suspicion of carrying out the attack. The mastermind of the terrorist attack was identified as Yemeni Abdul Rahman Hussein Moahmmed al-Saafani, who fled abroad. Eight individuals, including civil servants, implicated in the attack will stand trial in Yemen. 28 suspects have been rounded up so far. A prime suspect has implicated bin-Laden as the orchestrator and US intel has linked him to the attack.

1. those fighting Muslim regimes with allegedly apostate rulers (e.g., Egypt, Algeria and Saudi Arabia);
2. those fighting regimes perceived to be oppressing their Muslim citizens (e.g., Kosovo, India and Indonesia);
3. those fighting to establish their own Islamic state (e.g., Palestine, Chechnya, Dagestan and Mindanao)

1. establish Islamist states throughout the world
2. overthrow 'un-Islamic regimes'
3. expel U.S. soldiers and Western influences from the Gulf
4. capture Jerusalem as a Muslim city

Valley facility linked to al-Qaida
October 01,2004
Alma Walzer
The Monitor

McALLEN — Information provided by a high-ranking al-Qaida operative led authorities to almost a dozen undocumented aliens who worked for the largest supplier of ready-toeat meals for the military, officials said.

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, Michael Shelby, said Thursday an al-Qaida member told U.S. military personnel about the Wornick Co., located here.

The information kicked off a review of all staff at Wornick and eventually led the FBI to Remedy Intelligent Staffing in McAllen, which referred a number of employees to the company. Officials also wanted to know why al-Qaida would be interested in the Wornick Co.

Remedy’s indictment, handed down by a federal grand jury on July 20, was unsealed Thursday by U.S. Magistrate Dorina Ramos.

When British authorities broke up a cell of suspected Islamic terrorists in August, the arrests sent reverberations across the Atlantic. Among the evidence found with the suspects were reconnaissance reports on major U.S. financial sites—including the New York Stock Exchange and the World Bank in Washington. --TIME

INDCJournal: A dirty bomb may not be as destructive as many people think, but the lasting stigma of a radioactive explosion in a dense urban area could be catastrophic news for the economies of places like London, NY and DC ...

in a "...more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history." --John Kerry UNITY 2004 Conference in Washington, D.C. Aug 5, 2004

Football Fans for Truth is dedicated to informing the American sports fan of the great risk that could befall our country. Dino Panagopoulos, Chairman: "John Kerry is a menace to sports fans everywhere. Can we take four years of this? I don't think so." Jeff Larroca, Director: "He is not fit to be our sports-fan-in-chief."

"While acknowledging mistakes in CBS anchor Dan Rather's "60 Minutes" report that questioned President Bush's service in the National Guard, competing news anchors Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings offered support Saturday for the beleaguered newsman."

""What I think is highly inappropriate is what going on across the Internet, a kind of political jihad ... that is quite outrageous," the NBC anchor [Brokaw] said at a panel on which all three men spoke."

About President George W. Bush, though, I felt the satisfaction of absolute certainty, and so uttered the words as essential to my morning as my cup of Kenyan and my dose of high-minded outrage on the editorial page of the Times : "What an asshole."

As easy as it is to say that we can't abide the president because of the gulf between what he espouses and what he actually does, what haunts me is the possibility that we can't abide him because of us—because of the gulf between his will and our willingness. What haunts me is the possibility that we have become so accustomed to ambiguity and inaction in the face of evil that we find his call for decisive action an insult to our sense of nuance and proportion.

The reason he will be difficult to unseat in November—no matter what his approval ratings are in the summer—is that his opponents operate out of the moral certainty that he is the bad guy and needs to be replaced, while he operates out of the moral certainty that terrorists are the bad guys and need to be defeated.

Responding to the deep divisions over the war in Iraq, Annan appointed a 16-member panel last November to determine the threats to global security and recommend how best to deal with them. Its report is due in December.

The secretary-general said he will consider the report and make his own recommendations to world leaders in the spring, in hopes they will arrive in New York next September ready to take action.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh complained about the lack of unity in fighting terrorism and urged nations to show their commitment to fighting terrorism by pooling their resources.

"It is a sad reality that the international networks of terror appear to cooperate more effectively among themselves than the democratic nations that they target," he said.