perfidy

Consarn it! Now I have to think about this even further, which I didn't want to do at all.

Were you more heavily moustachioed, I've no doubt you'd be twisting it in a suitably nefarious fashion.

This is apples and oranges. The bombings in Madrid had a clear and obvious connection to the election in Spain. Aznar was winning, then the bomb, then he lost.

We did pull most of our troops out of Saudi Arabia. But between 9/11 and that move, we had won a war in Afghanistan, and were just shy of completing the process of winning in Iraq. Obviously, we weren't rolling over for Al Qaida. Further, the primary reason we had needed that air base was to enforce the southern nofly zone, which by that time was, well, moot.

You are right that it is not the case that everytime a nation does something that the terrorists have demanded, they have caved. But do not use your big-perspective stick too wildly. In context, (and you love context) there is a clear difference between the two situations.

And yes, a vote for Kerry is a vote for Osama. (And Kim Jong-Il, Bashar Assad, and the Mullahs in Iran.)

I call bullshit on that last statement. You are wrong. I'm not going to vote for John Kerry, and wouldn't even if it were a two-man race between him and Regis Philbin, but ultimately I do not believe for a second that Kerry would have us rolling over. Oh, he might try, but the US military is a big stick indeed and at some point any president short of Dennis Kucinich will see the worth in using it.

J,
Peep Kerry's website for some insight on how he intends to prosecute the WOT.

For starters, he will better fund first responders, ie cops and fire-folk, and get more of them. There's also a piece about improving coordination between appropriate agencies in the event of a massive terror attack. He then had the gall to say Bush had done not enough in the fight- only the great and wonderful Kerry would have given soldiers everything they needed to do the job right. Which is actually comical, considering he voted against doing that very thing some 18 months ago.

So the way I interpret that is that he will fight terrorists by more efficiently cleaning up after them when they kill Americans.

GL, I interpret that differently. We already know that Kerry is a mealy-mouthed calculator who says what he thinks will make him the golden boy. So we can figure that part of his flipfloppery is inept politicking.

He's addressing the internal early-response infrastructure because that's somewhere where Bush fell down badly. Right after 9/11 Bush pledged that we'd have a revolution in how the nation's emergency services share information and respond to crises. Did it ever get funded? No. And what we have is a situation where the fire department of Monkeybutt, NC is asked to be ready for a biological attack, but gets no money to buy the equipment or training. And where the TSA is a sub-Police Academy 6 joke. And where the Department of Homeland Security is far less than the sum of its parts.

So Kerry's taking the fight to Bush where he thinks Bush is weak. A good idea? Probably not.

We don't know what Kerry would do as President, really. Remember "Compassionate Conservatism," a smaller military, and noninterventionist foreign policy? Even before 9/11/2001, Bush had chucked those cornerstones of his campaign.

What I need Kerry to say is, "I think it is important to go into terrorists' neighborhoods, wherever they are, kick in their doors, and kill them", or a more PC way of expressing that.

Mumbling about funding first responders doesn't come anywhere close to this. I want to hear that a Kerry administration would be serious about fighting terrorists. And that means fighting, for fuck's sake, not talking about fighting or talking about asking for Kofi Annan's permission. I don't think I'm alone.

I'm completely with you. I just don't think that being a mealy-mouthed rat equates to handing out favors to terrorists.

Johno, you were right to call bullshit, as I was yanking your chain.

However, I remain firmly convinced that Kerry would not even approach the bare minimum level of aggressiveness we need to "go into terrorists' neighborhoods, wherever they are, kick in their doors, and kill them." He wouldn't roll over and hand them the keys, but he damn sure wouldn't take the fight to them. As you all know, I would have Bush pursue the war on terror *more* aggressively. But I think that cooler heads realize that diplomatic efforts and logistical constraints; and the not infinite size of the military mena that we have to prioritize.

I don't think that anyone, even Clinton, could have gotten the French to come on board for what we needed to do in Iraq. Kerry will do no better, no matter how much he thinks they need him now. Add in his reluctance to do it anyhow, and you have a recipe for a do nothing policy on terrorism.