AMEN!

I'm a Marine from Camp Pendleton and I completely agree with you.

I think this says it pretty well.

Drinks for all my friends!

That reminds me... I saw a car the other day with bumper stickers for all the local Republican candidates, and then the Enron/Halliburton sticker. I'm still wondering if they're the "Republicans Against Bush" type or if they're just extremely honest.

Anyone who calls Little Green Nutjobs one of the "best minds on the www" has blown whatever credibility they might have had.

Richard, the post is called pinocchio. With this entry, Greg's nose is probably long enough to make him very popular with the local sororities.

Cam, just for sake of argument, don't you find it a bit problematic to say "my mind has been made up since day one"? While I think it's of course admirable to have conviction and be paying attention, shouldn't any thinking person be open to having their opinion changed? Isn't it healthier to say, "I'm really interested in a full airing of debate on both sides and I'll be paying attention to new perspectives and things I haven't thought of before?" I'd completely respect someone who says, "Well I've listened, but I haven't found any new arguments convincing," but isn't having your mind made up on day one the definition of close-mindedness?

Exactly what does day one mean? Day one since Kerry accepted the DNC nomination or since that cold rainy January morning in 2000?

The reason your state is called a "swing" is because you're not supposed to have made your mind up yet on who to vote for. If you're not going to take advantage of that title please pass it along to California so the candidates will come kiss my butt and give me free balloons.

From casual observation, it seems to me that most (not all) Bush supporters, especially the 'day one' etched-in-stone ones, are of two varieties: either a) the 'rose-colored glasses' group—the it's not so bad, we'll get around to inspecting those containers eventually, what intelligence failures? nevermind Abu Graib, what deficit? folks, or the b) God help us, the sky is falling, the end time is near, we'll get hit again, war-is-peace paranoids who want the world to magically return to the fictionally simple era of Wally and the Beev. News flash: ain't gonna happen.

I think Bush actually did say one thing in debate last night that confirmed my vote won't be for him: His unwillingness to admit a single, personal error over the course of the 'thousands of decisions' he's made over the last four years. When asked this sharp question, he had a great moment to demonstrate the type of humanity and humility you'd expect to see from a inspirational leader, particularly one who cites Jesus Christ as his political mentor. Instead he launched into several minutes of speechifying on what he's got exactly right (while likely desperately thinking of something to say that answered the question), finally coming to the point that he's appointed some people he wishes he hadn't—meaning, his mistakes have only been trusting other people who have screwed up.

This single moment confirms the worst about this man's approach. He's unable to face facts that don't jibe with what he wants to hear, which motivates advisors to hide negative potentialities from him, which in turn means he's often provided with dumbed-down, one-sided assessments on what a situation might really be like, shaped to make the boss feel more happy with himself and the line of thinking he's already embraced. As evidenced by recent history, this can be a very bad thing, leading to grave mistakes, making America look like a dopey global bully, making the rest of the world (particularly those dicey parts like South Asia and the moderate Arab states) less likely to help us, and making America ultimately much less safe with far fewer options (outside of the Marines) to leverage our agenda and persuade others to share our goals.

I am not a democrat or republican, not sure what I am. The only thing I am sure of is that after I watched Farhenit 9/11 I'd burn in hell before I voted for bush.

Say what you want about it being slanted towards the democrats or just a 2 hour flick of Bush battering. What you can't aruge is when Bush sat with those kids for 8 minutes after he already found out that we'd been attacked. I don't think you need to know more about him than that.

Yeah I'm tired of paying for French Fries.

Unfortunately, we're comfortable again. We're back to work and back to life. We've returned to life before the 9/11 attacks, and have forgotten we're at war and shouldn't take any step, breath or day for granted.

I admit, I've forgotten -- even though I donned the "WE WILL NEVER FORGET" bumper sticker. Then I read the post that Scott linked to. And I remember again.

My vote wasn't changed after the second debate. I don't think Senator Kerry could have changed it. But I was distracted by what he said. I got distracted by drugs from Canada, Medicare, and the deficit. I started thinking about the economy and jobs.

But now I remember again. We are at war.

Sure, then it's a street fight. Regardless, life isn't "normal" in the U.S., and we can't vote in November under the impression that it is.

Maybe I'm just feeling the added pressure of this being the second presidentail election I've been able to vote in. I suppose I wasn't as aware of the national climate prior to turning voting age.

There is really no reason to invade Canada. What have the Canadians ever done to us? I don't think we should take war so lightly that we could invade a nice country like Canada. It's the French who need to be invaded.

Today's Times outlines distinctions. Base your vote on which one sounds right to you. Frankly, I think any reasonable person could agree that there is merit to both arguments:

"The Bush doctrine, which holds that the war on terror, if not exactly a clash of civilizations, is nonetheless a struggle between those states that would promote terrorism and those that would exterminate it. Bush, like Kerry, accepts the premise that America is endangered mainly by a new kind of adversary that claims no state or political entity as its own. But he does not accept the idea that those adversaries can ultimately survive and operate independently of states; in fact, he asserts that terrorist groups are inevitably the subsidiaries of irresponsible regimes. 'We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients,'' the National Security Strategy said, in a typical passage, ''before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends.'

By singling out three states in particular—Iraq, North Korea and Iran—as an 'axis of evil,' and by invading Iraq on the premise that it did (or at least might) sponsor terrorism, Bush cemented the idea that his war on terror is a war against those states that, in the president's words, are not with us but against us. Many of Bush's advisers spent their careers steeped in cold-war strategy, and their foreign policy is deeply rooted in the idea that states are the only consequential actors on the world stage, and that they can—and should—be forced to exercise control over the violent groups that take root within their borders.

Kerry's view, on the other hand, suggests that it is the very premise of civilized states, rather than any one ideology, that is under attack. And no one state, acting alone, can possibly have much impact on the threat, because terrorists will always be able to move around, shelter their money and connect in cyberspace; there are no capitals for a superpower like the United States to bomb, no ambassadors to recall, no economies to sanction. The U.S. military searches for bin Laden, the Russians hunt for the Chechen terrorist Shamil Basayev and the Israelis fire missiles at Hamas bomb makers; in Kerry's world, these disparate terrorist elements make up a loosely affiliated network of diabolical villains, more connected to one another by tactics and ideology than they are to any one state sponsor. The conflict, in Kerry's formulation, pits the forces of order versus the forces of chaos, and only a unified community of nations can ensure that order prevails.

One can infer from this that if Kerry were able to speak less guardedly, in a less treacherous atmosphere than a political campaign, he might say, as some of his advisers do, that we are not in an actual war on terror. Wars are fought between states or between factions vying for control of a state; Al Qaeda and its many offspring are neither. If Kerry's foreign-policy frame is correct, then law enforcement probably is the most important, though not the only, strategy you can employ against such forces, who need passports and bank accounts and weapons in order to survive and flourish. Such a theory suggests that, in our grief and fury, we have overrated the military threat posed by Al Qaeda, paradoxically elevating what was essentially a criminal enterprise, albeit a devastatingly sophisticated and global one, into the ideological successor to Hitler and Stalin -- and thus conferring on the jihadists a kind of stature that might actually work in their favor, enabling them to attract more donations and more recruits.

I used to think about that question early on. I live in South Florida and saw deeply reprehensible behavior by the Republican machine during the whole hanging chad and butterfly ballot period. If he had just apologized for his party and urged unity I could have gone on with a clean slate - instead I've always seen someone who won't hesitate to railroad any of the people he respresents if they don't agree with or understand him. It was clear to me that he doesn't need, want, or care about 49 percent of us. Kerry will be decent, but much, much better than Bush.

Tom, I don't need to readjust my joke filter, we seriously need to invade France! In fact an all out preemptive nuclear attack is not out to the question.

Okay James, I'll give you enough rope: Why do we need to 'seriously' invade France?

And could someone please explain to me why Enron is a Bush issue?

Seriously, sure, he was buddies with Ken Lay. But so was Teresa Heinz.

Bush had nothing to do with the company. If anything, the house of cards that was Enron was set up during the Clinton administration.

And Halliburton? Um, can anyone name one other company in the world capable of rebuilding Iraq's oil pipelines and infrastructure? One that isn't French?

Dave. Who cares if the company named was French or Russian or Chinese? Please stick to worrying about if Freedom Ticklers is the next important sanction to pursue after Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast.

The rest of your pap about taxes and Enron/Halliburton, it sounds stale, like it's from an early-August set of GOP talking points. It's not like you want it explained to you, your mind is made up and so is mine. Bang on.

I'd rather invade the right wing religious infrastructure than France.