Asymmetrical Information

Though I read that you want the dashing Prince to come in I think that the Princess is certainly capable of coming to her own conclusions. The reason that no one has sold you the bill of goods on either candidate is that there exists a downside in both candidates for the thoughtful person. We cannot simply cast that aside.

You have options:

1. Bush
2. Kerry
3. Other
4. Abstain

I would tell you what to do but, alas, my own view is not yet fully formulated except to say that I will note vote for option 2.

Right now, apart from the small chance of a thermonuclear device detonated in an American city,. . .

What magnitude of chance are you willing to accept?

. . . it seems to me that the biggest threat to America is not foriegn policy at all. . .

Given that you could be wrong, in which direction do you think we should err?

You have that rare breed, the undecided voter, sitting in your lap, begging you to make up her mind. . .

Isn't that your job? Maybe you are unable to decide because you are going about it in the wrong way. Rather than compare line items from Column A and Column B, you might pick the most important issue and evaluate each candidate on it alone. For a lot of us that issue is the war. Maybe it should be yours as well, given the inherent uncertainty in your nuclear and geopolitical risk evaluations.

1. You're a libertarian, aren't you? Look at the record of each, and think which one is closer to a libertarian point of view?

2. If Bush could provide for tax-free private health care savings accounts (which Kerry has promised to end), consider that a stepping stone to personal retirement savings accounts - especially if the GOP extends its lead in Congress.

3. You mentioned you like Laura Bush better than THK. Well, do you think THK would exert influence in the White House closer to the way Woodrow Wilson's wife did, or closer to the way, well, Laura Bush does?

4. Did Bush make mistakes in Iraq? Maybe. Maybe not. But consider what FDR said as Japan and Hitler were posing their great threat as WWII was under way: "We may make mistakes—but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principle." Ok, you might not like FDR. But every president makes mistakes. The question is: Is it the right kind of mistake or the wrong kind of mistake? Looking at Kerry's rhetoric and his record, which kind of mistakes do you think he'll make compared to Bush?

5. Remember Jimmy Carter's malaise speech? (i.e. America has to lower its expectations, do with less, and stop wanting so damn much.) When you think of Kerry, think of a Malaise Presidency.

No one has offered any reasonable argument that Iraq is not a cluster [expletive deleted].

What were your expectations going in to the war? I mean, on March 18, what did you think the outcome would be? How many soldier killed, what level of destruction of infrastructure, etc? Also how much progress did you think we'd make toward democracy in 18 months? Would we have full elections and a functional government in less than 24 months? Be honest, and tell yourself how badly the current result is compared to that prediction.

I hear you Sister. It's been a rough year for me, and as we get closer, it just gets more gut-wrenching. My struggle has been between voting for Bush and voting for Frank Zappa. I am aware that Mr. Zappa isn't officially running, has never held office, and died in 1993. But it's a rough choice anyway. I cannot vote for Kerry because of his inability to say, a year and a half later, where he stands on the Iraq war. That is unacceptable. A president has to be forward looking, but at the very least, he needs to know where he stands on things that have already taken place.

Regarding the war, here's a small(ish) example: al Tuwaitha nuclear facility. It was a known quantity, the IAEA had been there a month before the invasion doing inspections. The Marines took a while to get there and when they did they didn't stop the looting because they had no orders to do so. As a result 1/5 of the nuke waste from AT went missing. What does that tell you about the war planning?

Convince me that Bush, even if he screwed up in Iraq, won't do so going forward!

Let me try this: if Bill Gates were president, would any Bush supporter honestly think he would have screwed up many things so badly as Bush has done? Even if you, the dear reader, were surrounded by yes-men and sycophantic slags, would you fail to see or accept reality?

Convince me that Kerry's terrible domestic agenda has no chance of passage!

That's where we come in! We the public can put pressure on Kerry and Congress to do the right thing. That's simply not possible with Bush leading the GOP, as the only opposition to some things is from the GOP, and if Bush does something bad the Kool-Aid Krew will fall right in line.

Regarding Kerry, if you haven't already I'd suggest reading up on BCCI and this: Kerry would fight terrorism better.

Some of the reasons why I oppose Bush are to be found at my blog.

"a conflict that ultimately resulted in a bigger and uglier conflict" The Franco-Prussian war of 1870 springs to mind; the French desire for revenge and to reclaim their provinces of Alsace and Lorraine were a major factor in starting WWI, and without Prussia's amazingly easy victory in 1870, it's likely that Germany would still have been divided into dozens of kingdoms rather than being united as Europe's strongest land power. But the war of 1870 was a contest between approximate equals who both followed the rules of civilized warfare. I don't see parallels with the present situation, and I don't understand how such an example would cause you to tilt towards Kerry anyway.

There are plenty of reasons to vote for or against Bush; what exactly are the reasons to vote for or against Kerry? Well, they basically boil down to:

FOR KERRY: Because he's not George Bush.
AGAINST KERRY: It'll really piss off the media.

Twenty years from now, no one will believe the Democrats nominated such a weak challenger to take on such a vulnerable incumbent. Talk about a missed opportunity...

I have decided to vote for Bush rather than a third party for one reason: I think Kerry will screw up in Iraq and in dealing with terrorism in general far worse than Bush might. Either Kerry really is the pacifist he played so well and so often, or he's a vacillator. In the first case, he'll yank the troops out of Iraq, leaving a heck of a mess behind to breed more suicide bombers, and signaling other dictators that it is once again safe to try to improve their political position inside their own country by diverting the radical fringe into anti-American terrorism. In the second case, when problems arise he'll vacillate, take opinion polls, and consult the UN, trying to get permission to take action from those who profited off of Iraq's misery and are no doubt doing profiting off of the new problems.

In military situations, the commander has to decide to do something. Doing something wrong is better than doing nothing. Bush has made wrong decisions, but he made them. I see no signs that Kerry can decide on anything and stick to it.

And this is important, not because of the few dozen or few hundred American civilians that might die in this country in a new wave of terrorism, but because the media gets people so stirred up and terrified at a few deaths that by 2008 they'll vote for anyone who promises to end it, no matter how. It could be the end of freedom...

Yeah, I know people may think I'm nuts, but Iraq isn't a cluster-[censored]. So it's not perfect -- what the heck is perfect?

Read Iraqi blogs. Read about the history of reconstruction in Japan and Germany after WWII. They worked out fine, and they were not a pretty place just after the war.

Moving to a democracy is hard. It's not something that just magically happens, even if it happens peacefully. Russia is still messed up, partly due to an imperfect move to democracy and capitalism.

We're doing a good enough job in Iraq. It will turn out fine. It's like like cleaning -- when you start cleaning up a room, you pull things out of places they don't go, and make a massive mess. Iraq is that mess right now. But as you start to throw out the trash, and put things where they go, and organize, it gets cleaner and cleaner.

We're just still throwing out the garbage.

I think a lot of people have unrealistic expectations about how Iraq would look right now. The same people who are criticizing Iraq now, critized Afganistan and called it a quagmire. I think they're doing pretty darn good right now.

Jane, you descrie yourself as a member of "that rare breed, the undecided voter," and ask me to pursuade your vote?

Honey, you must understand, you are in NEW YORK, and we are nearing the final week of the campaign. It is totally unworth anyone's time to try and persuade you of anything. Anyone who actually cares about this thing should be busy buttering up someone whose vote might actually matter. You want to sit in my lap and beg me to help you make up your mind? Move to Ohio -- then I'll gaze lovingly into your eyes and tell you anything you want to hear...

You're the blogger. You're supposed to be the one gathering information and then writing about it for us. :)

the less I can work up any emotional interest in which man occupies the White House for the next four years.

You know what that really argues towards. And I think many of us have already addressed your arguments against voting for Badnarik. The LP is not able to be moderate in the current system, because the only votes they get are from voters who don't care that they're "wasting" their vote. Until we scrap plurality, they are going to stay extremist. The party you really want to influence is the Republican Party. Punish them for nominating a fiscally irresponsible candidate. Vote Badnarik.

Or Tyler Cowen. That guy's just cool, and he thinks you're ever-effervescent.

What policy issue that Bush said he would put forth has he not? While this may not GUARANTEE that he will TRY to reform the ponzie scheme of SS, at least there is a chance. What has Kerry put forth that he has maintained a position on? Iraq as "cluster **@#**",..... prior too March '03, the estimates (if I recall correctly) were 2 years of fighting, street to street, house to house. 15,000 body bags, and the troops coming home with lungs seared from chemical attacks. Of course those were democrats making the predictions. Next February(less than 2 years) I heard somewhere that elections would be held. Given these things, and what you know of Mr. Kerry, I am in a quandry as to why YOU are in a quandry.

Lonewacko,
I assume (dangerous,I know) that you are referring to Microsoft Bill Gates. He wanted to keep the Inheritance tax didn't he? That in itself moves him behind Pres. Bush in my opinion.

"We're doing a good enough job in Iraq. It will turn out fine. It's like like cleaning -- when you start cleaning up a room, you pull things out of places they don't go, and make a massive mess. Iraq is that mess right now. But as you start to throw out the trash, and put things where they go, and organize, it gets cleaner and cleaner."

Silvermine -- I like that analogy.

Megan...thoughts for your consideration:
1)Education. The current state of the American educational system *does* present an existential threat to us, albeit one that operates with a fairly long time constant. I see no possibility at all that the Democratic Party would be willing to do anything structural about this ongoing disaster.
2)Health Care. Kerry is likely to do something like impose price controls, probably in semi-disguised form, and totally shred innovation in that industry.
3)Business/Trade. Kerry shows no evidence of understanding of the nature of a market economy or empathy with people who are trying to run businesses; all his instincts are top-down. His trade proposals in particular show a failure to understand how supply chains work in the real world, and would put American corporations at a serious disadvantage.
4)Terrorism. I think this *is* an existential threat to us. Can you imagine what would happen to the American economy and society if we were subjected to continual small-scale terrorism on a scale comparable to that which is ongoing in Israel. And I'm not sure why terrorism using a nuclear (not thermonuclear) weapon is of such low probability...and an explosion of "only" several kilotons could cause tens of thousands of deaths.
5)Other security issues. Kerry has shown unwillingness to deal in any serious way with the threat from Iran: he rejects the bunker-buster weapon and is hostile toward missile defense. Iran with ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads could cause destabilization throughout the Middle East and in Europe.
6)Above and beyond all specific issues, I think Kerry is a man without imagination, who recites received ideas rather than thinking about the tangible needs of the current situation..whatever that situation may be.

If I had a time machine, I could do much more useful things with it than travel forward in time 4-10 years, look around, and then come back to describe to you what the Future Consequences of Bush/Kerry getting elected turned out to be. :^P

In fact we don't have time machines. Or 20-20 foresight. Or Hari Seldon's "psychohistory". We bipedal primates have to just rely on good old clunky, academically-non-approved intuition ... frustrating as our lack of omniscience is, that's all we've got.

My own intuition is that a second Bush term in office will give us plenty of things to be annoyed by over 4 years but will do a few critical things much better than his critics are willing to admit. My further intuition is that a President Kerry will glide swan-like through his Presidency for 4-8 years, while leaving us with a much worse sequel to 9/11, a triumphant resurgence of anti-American terrorism sponsored by the emboldened national leaders of Iran and North Korea, and a failed attempt to nationalize the pharmaceutical industry, a la Hillarycare in 1994.

But that's just my guess. Free advice, worth what you paid for it...

Silvermine:

You say: "Read about the history of reconstruction in Japan and Germany after WWII. They worked out fine, and they were not a pretty place just after the war."

Except that in the case of the Germans they were surrounded by people that they had previously rolled over - who by and large hated the Germans and welcomed the Allies- and the Soviet Union stepped in which makes comparisons to Germany null and void.

As for Japan, it is impossible to draw analogies there because of the psychological differences between the Iraqi people and the Japanese.

What a good idea! You've collected some interesting posts.

Bush: record of bipartisan achievements both in Texas and Washington.

Kerry: has accomplished nothing to be proud of since Vietnam.

Still undecided who should lead?

Kerry's health care won't pass - Republicans won't be on board, and Democrats won't control both Houses no matter what. Republicans don't want a program that will help the entire middle class and working class (very poor already have Medicaid) because Democrats would run on it till the end of time and scare people with: Republicans will take away your Social Security AND your health insurance.

Republicans out of the White House but still significant will fall back on their time honored role of deficit hawks so they can keep Democrats from enacting their wildest fantasies. Even some moderate Democrats who have made a name as deficit hawks will have trouble supporting such a massive program.

Delay has been a prime mover and arm twister for the Republican pork lately (Medicare prescription drugs, anyone?) and his influence will be decreased or nill after the indictments coming down the pike.

...and a couple more things:

6)Energy...I don't think there's much hope for a favorable result from a galactic megaproject such as Kerry seems to favor. Such things have a way of focusing on the technologies which are popular with currently-influential people rather than those which, in hindsight, will turn out to have been the right ones. The mechanisms that Clayton Christensen described, which work to prevent incumbent companies from taking advantage of transformational technology, also apply...perhaps even more strongly..at governmental level.
7)Kerry has very little experience at actually *running* anything. A career as a Senator is practically a "staff job"...you speak and vote your opinion and may influence the result, but you don't gain the experience of making decisions and then living with the consequences.

Here's a suggestion for you, Jane: Read Grant's memoirs. See if you can figure out why he was so prized by Lincoln (Finally, a General who FIGHTS!).

Then compare what you think are this administration's rife-with-error conduct of the war in Iraq with what passed for good judgement on both sides in our Civil War.

Then tell us how bad things are and are going in Iraq (nothing like having a little perspective).

(1) It is WAY too early to call Iraq a disaster. We aren't even two years into what Bush told us from the beginning would be a long, long battle: building a successful democracy in the Middle East to undercut the islamofascists. So far things are going, I think, quite reasonably well: the people of Iraq defintely welcomed liberation, definitely want to have real elections, and do not like the terrorists among them. We are walking a fine line and are doing a pretty good job of winning hearts and minds. We're in the middle of the tough part right now, which is outlasting the terrorists and proving that beheadings and car bombs won't chase us away, that this isn't another Vietnam or Somalia where we will cut and run. And meanwhile we continue to kill them by the dozens for every one of our soldiers who are lost. We are grinding them down and meanwhile Iraq slowly gets more prosperous and the terrorists have less support. Ask yourself, have we ever fought a war quite like this one before? I don't think so. But have we ever fought a significant war where it would have been safe to say after only 18 months that it was a disaster? No.

(2) As far as I can tell, Kerry's instincts have been wrong on virtually every topic I can think of: he was against all of the major weapons systems we rely on now; he was for unilateral nuclear disarmament; he is on the liberal/socialist end of the economic spectrum and believes (scarily) that government can actually fix things like the health care system rather than make them worse; he believes that the UN and other international institutions can actually solve problems by holding conferences and passing resolutions, when the track record of the institution is one of practically nothing but failure, ineptitude, and corruption. There is nothing I can see that a libertarian would like about Kerry. His ideas are all old FDR/McGovern platitudes that have been proven ineffective in the last thirty years. If Bush didn't have a personal style that rubbed some people the wrong way, there wouldn't be any reason at all to consider a throwback like Kerry. And Bush isn't that bad. He just isn't.

I tell people to look at Bush as your employee, because he is. Then evaluate jrs record giving his various excuses on 911, Iraq, Jobs, Health Care, etc, the same weight your boss would give your excuses for across the board failures.

A third party vote this year makes you the worst type of coward. Dont even bother voting. Theres a very clear choice here, you either support Bush, or you have to vote Kerry. I like Kerry more as a candidate then any presidential candidate in my lifetime. The types of smear campaigns Rove has run against Kerry, Mccain, and Cleeland is the most disgusting politics Ive ever seen. Kerry is clearly the better man.

"I tell people to look at Bush as your employee, because he is." Totally agree. And, having considerable experience in managing employees, I evaluate them in the context of the difficulty of the task. For example, if I gave someone an assignment to run a department that had an array of buried problems, not dealt with properly by prior management of that department, I would bear that in mind in evaluating him. I would also consider (to the extend the information was available) the performance of similar job functions in other companies.

By these criteria, I think GWB looks pretty good.

D Foster, you must be a nice boss, most only care about results. Anyway, 911 is at jrs feet, 20% into his term with no terror policy in place was hardly left to him by Clinton. The jobs the tax cuts were suppose to produce fell millions short of what jr said. If you eliminate the government jobs created, the number is truly pathetic. There are millions of Americans who have lost health insurance despite Bush promising to give millions of more Americans coverage. Then theres Iraq. And the debt. Bush is the worst President in US history.

It sounds like your only real impediment to favoring Bush has to do with Iraq: either we a) shouldn't have gone in, b) should have handled the occupation differently.

If a is the problem, ask yourself what the chances are that four more years of Bush will produce another war. Unless something major happens, and there is a strong consensus among the American public (including yourself, probably) that an invasion is justified, I don't think those chances are very high. The military is stretched thin enough as it is, and the Administration and it's allies in congress have likely been chastened by a public support for preemptive warfare that is shaky at best.

If b is the problem, ask yourself how Kerry is going to handle the occupation, combat insurgents, and (eventually) withdraw any better than the current administration? By summoning all of his "nuance" to "restore our dignity" in the international community, and somehow get France, Germany, and Russia to commit troops for a war he's been calling unjustified?

If you think Iraq is a cluster**** (which I don't - I agree with what silvermine said), but don't think four more years of Bush is likely to yield another cluster****, and don't think Kerry will do any better managing the remainder of this one, then your decision of who to vote for should be determined by other issues. As someone who's adopted a nom de blog of Jane Galt and purports to be a libertarian, I can't imagine Kerry coming out on top there, either.

"across the board failures...worst type of coward...smear campaigns...the most disgusting politics I've ever seen."

If voting for John Kerry didn't also mean legitimizing the barking Begbees of the world, Kerry would probably win in a walk...like Al Gore was supposed to.

But it does, and that's why Bush wins, probably by a surprisingly big (6 points or more) margin.

Geez, if the moonbats are this crazed and angry now, what'll they be like after Kerry loses...?

1) A large American government programme, other than welfare, which has been repealed after it was found to cause bigger problems than it solved, or otherwise not function properly

Here's two:

1) Prohibition. Large government program (law enforcement), tried to keep us all sober, didn't work and caused bigger problems. Repealed.

2) The Works Progress Administration. Large government program (job creation), employed more than 8.5 million people and spent $144 billion in today's dollars, and then was disbanded. Arguably it was discontinued, not repealed, and was a victim of its own success rather than a misguided effort that went off the rails, but still: That's a pretty big program that was ended by the government.

Beyond that I can think of some examples that may or may not meet your criteria for "large" or "programme," like the effort to convert to the Metric System or the House Un-American Activities Committee -- but I think you're looking more for examples that involve reducing the overall size of government.

Silvermine: you're assuming that people aren't standing outside your house tossing trash back through the windows, because they're convinced that God wants it that way ("bless this mess").

GWB's attitude is "the only way out is through, tough it out and everything will be OK." JK's is - well - er, um - what is it?

Jane:

I'd point out, as others have, that there is zero chance of Kerrycare going through. Everything looked better in 1992 - Clinton was a better politician, (IIRC) we had the Congress, the country had just dealt with a much worse recession (and I think the first round of white collar layoffs), it was the big issue of Clinton's campaign (as opposed to Iraq now) - and nothing happened. A year later, we got a Republican Congress. We still have that damn Congress - there is no way Kerrycare gets through, and Kerry knows it.

Bush backers:

1. Why do you keep insisting on the comparing this situation to rebuilding Germany and Japan. If we want an even minimally analogous situation in Iraq, we have to kill either 2.5 mil. Iraqis (Germany) or 600,000 Iraqis (Japan). If you think the US has the stomach for that, get some money together and run an ad. I've already got the tag-line: THINGS ARE GOING TO GET BETTER, WE'VE JUST GOT TO KILL 570,000 MORE IRAQIS. If you win the election with that, more power to you.

2. Does anyone really believe we'll still be in Iraq 18 months from now?

3. "Doing something wrong is better than doing nothing." This might be the scariest line of the night - by definition, doing something wrong is not better than doing nothing; it wouldn't be "wrong" then. I think you're confusing what you said with something like, "analysis by paralysis will cost more over the long run than the sum of any wrong decisions you are likely to make." Unfortunately, I think Bush has them confused as well.

4. "The same people who are criticizing Iraq now, criticized Afganistan and called it a quagmire. I think they're doing pretty darn good right now." Two points: (a) I don't know anyone who thought Afghanistan would be "quagmire," or cares very much what it'll turn into once we leave, and (b) wait four years and then tell me how Afghanistan is holding up. (On the plus side, I hear the poppies are blooming again).

5. "Can you imagine what would happen to the American economy and society if we were subjected to continual small-scale terrorism on a scale comparable to that which is ongoing in Israel" Absolutely nothing. Israel, on a bad day, might lose 10 people. We probably lose that many over a weekend right now just in my city. We are significantly bigger than Israel. If 20 people in Atlanta die tonight in a massive several car pile up, or a fire, or whatever, there's a decent chance I'll never know. As for killing proportional numbers of US dead; I don't think that your suicide bomber is magically able to kill more people as he detonates just because the country's population is bigger. I don't think killing works that way. As for the economy - note that there were the same number of non-negligent homicides in 1997 as in 2001 (inc. 9/11 deaths - Interweb figs, feel free to correct). I don't remember anyone complaining about the economy in 1997 and how we just couldn't survive that many deaths.

6. "I think Kerry is a man without imagination, who recites received ideas rather than thinking about the tangible needs of the current situation..whatever that situation may be." This is clearly an ironic joke mocking the importance of a leader being able to think.

7. ", but you don't gain the experience of making decisions and then living with the consequences." Another joke. Bush and the Republicans are completely unaccountable. By what possible metric has he succeed? And when confronted with the problems, what does he say? "It's haaaaard work." He says that some of his appointments have been mistakes, but he doesn't want to say who b/c it would hurt their feelings. Jeebus. Look two posts (of Jane's) above - a fantastic business opportunity awaits.

Lonewacko,I assume (dangerous,I know) that you are referring to Microsoft Bill Gates. He wanted to keep the Inheritance tax didn't he? That in itself moves him behind Pres. Bush in my opinion.

That wasn't my point; I wasn't referring to any of billg's political positions. I was referring to his ability to conduct warfare of a different sort, that of the modern corporate hero. Somehow I don't think that the man who can put together puzzles in four minutes flat would forget to secure nuke facilities or make sure that his subordinates did. If they did not, he would swiftly banish them to Spokane.

4)Terrorism. I think this *is* an existential threat to us. Can you imagine what would happen to the American economy and society if we were subjected to continual small-scale terrorism

Yes, and George Bush is keeping us safe! His commercials tell me he is, and that's all I need to know!

Oh, wait, I just realized I have a whole category about terrorist infiltration of the U.S. via the borders George Bush keeps deliberately porous.

Bush has clearly made the choice that cheap labor is more important than your safety.

Just the other day an Iranian said that if the U.S. has the right to attack Falluja then the terrorists have the right to attack Los Angeles. Because of Bush's policies - policies that fly in the face of the findings of the 9/11 Commission - they probably already have people in place and more are on the way.

Let' see now.... you say you prefer Laura Bush over Teresa Heinz Kerry. OK. what does that tell me about you. Either:

1) You are not a serious person.
2) You prefer your women plastic.
3) You are jealous of a) Teresa's looks (just kidding) or b) money or c) brains.
4) You are just pulling our legs.

Megan, add mine to the voices suggesting that Iraq is not, in fact, a clusterfuck (and please pardon my lack of delicacy). As a Libertarian who's no fan of the PATRIOT Acts, the Department of Homeland Security, spending that would make LBJ blush, the FMA, or Abu Ghraib, I also feel like the Democrats should have a pretty easy time bringing me around to their point of view. But I keep bumping into one thing: the dogged (I'll even go so far as to say "dogmatic") insistence that progress in our foreign policy be monotonic. I hear the 1,000 Coalition casualty number used as if it's a historical horror instead of a miracle of modern warfare, as if the Battle of New Orleans alone didn't result in 10,000 corpses, nevermind Antietam. It's like a piece I once read about the Laffer Curve—I regret that I can't recall whether it was by Martin Gardner or John Allen Paulos—that pointed out that the obvious flaw in the model was that the curve was smooth, when in fact, with enough data, you'd see all kinds of loops, whorls, and eddies along it. It seems to me that foreign policy in general, and warfare in particular, is like that: you hope to move to a different Nash-Bayes equilibrium at some future date, hopefully one without some of the nasty externalities of the current one. Along the way, you may find yourself in some truly awful local minimum. Unfortunately, when you're in one, it can be impossible to tell that the minimum is local, let alone how close or far away the highly desirable equilibrium is.

The reason I'll be voting for Bush this year is that I perceive, accurately or otherwise, that he grasps that progress is rarely monotonic, that sometimes you are left with no choice but to proceed to that local minimum and do whatever you must to move through it to the new equilibrium. By contrast, all I get from Kerry is that the reason for decades of failed foreign policy is that we didn't do enough of it. And if that observation didn't already feel sufficiently lacking, the vacuum of the Kerry campaign's response to the Oil for Food scandal's misdirected money going to bribe UN Security Council member nations sealed the deal for me. They can talk about Vietnam and BCCI until they're bluer in the face than their already-too-blue-blood-for-this-expat-Hoosier makes them. I want to know how exactly this global test is to be scored when some of our erstwhile "allies" in the UN have cheat sheets.

So that's it, at least for me. Admission of difficulty and uncertainty on one side, coupled with outrageous social and fiscal policies; insistence that 1,000 casualties is too many, failure to address UN corruption, better social policies, and probably just-as-bad fiscal policy on the other. This year, I'm voting for the recognition that progress sometimes has real, even tragic, costs, despite my strong misgivings with respect to non-foreign-policy issues. I sincerely hope that you will too, although I have nothing but the utmost respect for those whose analysis of the issues leads them to an alternate conclusion.

You know you libertarians sound like the vegetarian who let his good for nothing uncle manage the family farm. The crops failed, the herd went dry, the bank is getting set to foreclose. An experienced pig farmer proposes you let him manage the farm and you wonder if you should stick with your good for nothing uncle cause 'on principle' you agree.

As an engineer, I find the argument that Bush has screwed up Iraq and the WOT very weak. It's easy decide what must be done when your following a script of something that has been done before. It is easy to see what might have been good ideas with 20 20 hindsight. It is very difficult to make the right decision in real time. In thirty years, I have worked on dozens of development programs. Each one was new, in each one we thought we understood the problems, and yet each one had delays, replans, screw-ups, and real failures. This was without active opposition. (Unless you consider our vendors and subcontractors as opposition.) The type of nation building that we are doing in Iraq does not have a cook book solution. the steps needed to get the Iraqis to take care of Iraq are not written in some great big perfect plan in the sky. Read Belmont club http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/06/grand-bumblers-people-who-really.html to understand real bumbling. You really need to read this to have a perspective.

Kerry's propensity for Monday Morning quarterbacking worries me. His repeated contention that he would have got OBL in Tora Bora is a perfect example. The man who made the decision about what troops to deploy was the local commander. He did it based on current intellegence, threat assessment, and logistics capabilities. Kerry would not and should not have micromanaged him. At best, Kerry would have listened to the general in the field and done exactly what Bush did. At worst he would have delayed any operation while he asked for more information. If we had a shot at OBL we would have lost it. The fact that he continues to make the statement that, if Kerry had been president we would have got OBL, shows how out of touch Kerry is.

Kerry seems to need more information than is available to make a decision. Kerry seems to believe that he can make every decision himself and that, in the end, he (Kerry) knows best. Kerry doesn't seem to be able to organize a staff. I see Bush as more of a "I'll get the best man for the job and let him do it" manager. I see Kerry's entire campaign avoiding any firm position and hollering about the chances Bush has taken. He's hoping that the Monday morning quarterback syndrome will have the voters focus on decision Bush made and not on Kerry's capabilities or record. He's not offering anything more than "my opponent has made mistakes and I'm smarter".

Using Kerry's logic, Eisenhower would have been fired after North Africa, MacArthur would have been fired after Baatan, Halsey would have been canned after the Coral Sea, and FDR and Churchill would have been gone before the end of the war. And Hitler would still be in France and we would have reached a negotiated settlement with Japan.

I'm not the one to convince you of anything, since I may still sit this one out (the virulent ugliness of the anti-Bush crowd drives me to cast a vote more than anything), but I think you are off base in a couple of areas. First, everything is hard, very hard, in war, including determining what the current state of affairs is. What if it had been fully understood in the summer of 1968 that the Viet Cong had in fact been completely decimated? True enough, there are more than a few members of the Bush Administration that likely have failed to grasp how difficult every single thing is in the conduct of war, but since I think this war needed to be fought, I still prefer those who were willing to wage it to those who likely would have refrained.

Why do I think it needed to be waged? I agree with you that the Islamic world does not pose an existential threat to the U.S.. However, if the Islamic world does not rapidly change, we pose an existential threat to them, and although being among a few hundred million slaughtered is about as bad as things get, being among those who do the slaughtering of a few hundred million is pretty damned awful as well, and it is worth taking great, great, risks to avoid such action.

In fact, this prospect is so grim, and in my view, so likely, absent rapid revolutionary change in the Persian Gulf , I see no way that Kerry, who is essentially a reactionary, can be worthy of a vote. A politically, militarily, and economically, and technologically backward people who sit atop of the natural resource greatly desired by far more militarily, economically, and economically powerful people, are going to meet an extraordinarily violent end if they exhibit any proficiency for hostile action against the more powerful people. Obtaining and using the technology of the more powerful people for hostile action merely seals their doom. Neither Bush or Kerry is likely to be the 21st century Andrew Jackson or Phil Sheridan, but he will be found in short order absent the people of the Persian Gulf modernizing rapidly.

Sorry to burst your bubble Jane, but the oil situation is gonna get worse no matter who we have in office. Within the next five years all indicators point to oil prices skyrocketing because cheap sources of oil are running out fast.

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0406/feature5/

My friend's mom works for Shell and they've had a couple analysts in saying the same thing. Your best bet would be to get a diesel car that can run on biodiesel. Also investing in companies that make biodiesel and ethanol and hydrogen fuel cells would probably be a good idea in 3-6 years.

As for why you should vote for Bush over Kerry concerning war, You're already linked to Bill Whittle; and his deterrence essays explain it much better than I would.

Jane,

I agree with you in most of your analysis of our predicament. I'm going to vote for Kerry, though my enthusiam for the candidate is zero. Here's why:

(1) I believe that the US political system works better when the government is divided. Under single party rule, whichever party rules, a robust decision-making process is replaced by a robust patronage process. I don't think the Dems are likely to win in Congress, so I'll pull for them in the White House.

(2) As a side effect of (1), I don't think Kerry will succeed at passing simple price controls, de facto socialization, or any of the other proposals he might wish to pass, but that would be dumb. Kerry will succeed only at forcing a real debate about what's wrong with American health care. If something passes, I just don't think it will be that bad. What will happen is that politicians will have to actually make the case against, say, price controls, rather than pretending that "we would import those cheap drugs from Canada, it's just a a safety issue."

(3) I agree that the growing size and insolvency of the Federal government is an impending cataclysm. I don't see either party discussing this seriously, or credibly proposing solutions they have the ability to act on. I consider this another argument for divided government. Divided government may not be able to push through a real solution, but since none is on the table, we can have gridlock as a holding action. (These considerations might have pushed me towards Bush, if he didn't have a record. He says some good things about Social Security reform, market forces in health care, and school choice. But despite a Republican congress, he has failed to stand behind his own ideas, and presided over the most fiscally reckless four years in recent memory. I prefer gridlock.)

4) I agree with many posters that the we face some existential issues, for which Iraq and the "war on terrorism" serve as proxy. I also agree with many posters that Iraq may in fact turn out okay, despite the recent troubles. I strongly supported the Iraq war, and still think it was absolutely the right thing to do. But Bush has failed to convince me that he is more likely than Kerry to bring about a good resolution to what he began. Bush has nearly the right vision, and Kerry precisely the wrong one, but in diplomatic and logistical terms, Bush has been a disaster. I do hold Bush responsible for Abu Ghraib, not because it was policy, or for its human rights ramifications, but because it was forseeable, avoidable, and deeply damaging in practical terms to our real mission in Iraq. Atrocities happen in any war, but the particular bureaucratic trail of tears surrounding Abu Ghraib has persuaded me that the administation's priorities are badly out of whack, or that it is very badly incompetent. From an accountability perspective, much as I share much more of Bush's vision than Kerry's, he just doesn't deserve a second term. Re Kerry, hope is not a plan, but it's all we've got. Bush's performance has simply been unsatisfactory.

Jane,
The decision is easy. It was well spelled out in this NYT editorial endorsement of Kerry:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/opinion/17sun1.html
How you can even contemplate voting for Kerry after this, I don't know. Kerry is not an option.

Jane, you and the guy you quoted are wrong about Kerry's flip flops, because his flip flops on the war matter. Here is a guy whose whole career is defined by being anti-war, anti-defense, anti-intelligence, regardless of how many times he voted this way or that, and now he wants to be commander in chief in the middle of a war? And he says he is going to be tougher than Bush, who he and the Democrats have constantly criticized for being too tough? And he has gone back and forth on what he would do depending on whether he was in the primaries against Dean, or not appearing strong enough against Bush, so he has gotten more and more warlike, finally resulting in the murder of a goose, just to appear different than he did a few weeks ago???

I don't think so. He has no integrity.

You are also wrong about his other flip flops, did you read his article in the WSJ about his economic plan? He is going to cut cap gains more than Bush!!! The guy is just totally lying, and since I can't prove that all I can say is whether he voted 98 times or 62 times to raise taxes, again his whole career has been as a tax and spender. We are supposed to suspend belief about the guys entire life and record because he got in a room with some political consultants who told him, this is what you have to do to get elected, so he just started spouting it.

That is so obviously true, so my conclusion is that you just can't trust him.

With Bush you know what you are getting, and he will take it to the enemy with force. That much we know, maybe too much force, but he will stand up strong, and my vote therefore goes there.

The world is too risky now to be taking chances with someone who reinvented himself in a few months to try to win the Presidency.

I am a moderate or even liberal Republican like yourself, I voted straight Democrat for twenty years but I switched over because I realize the biggest issue we face is the encouragement of victimhood that the Democrats spread everywhere in our society. Bush's ownership ideals speak to that, because the biggest thing people have to own is that they are individually responsible for their own successes and failures. That is so critical, I think, for the success of our society as a whole that that really determines my vote at bottom.

I think you have to look at your own personal philosophy about what you think will make our society more successful and vote for the candidate more likely to do that. Even though Bush has gone bezerk spending, Kerry will spend even more.

The reason both Bush and Kerry spend too much is because people demand it and they wouldn't get elected if they didn't. Rove saw that Bush didn't win the popular vote last time, and to expand the GOP base he has had Bush pushing through popular programs like the drug benefit for seniors, but they have cost plenty. The reason people are like that is that they have been taught that they are all entitled victims by the Democrats, and they are owed. I can't write a book here, but that is a sickness at the bottom of a lot of problems, and we need to head toward Bush's ownership society because that implies and will create a philosophy of personal responsibility.

Bush has positive ideals that he is pushing us toward, more than almost any President I can remember. It is just that he is daily bombarded with withering criticism, and has been since before he took office, and has not been able to create too many of them. Think about all the vision this guy has, though, ownership society is a wonderful huge vision, but it is lost in the crossfire and who knows if he will ever be able to do much with it?

"The biggest threat is failing to deal with budget and other problems inherent in the demographic surge towards an older population, "

Bush at least says he wants to do something, and given a Republican Senate he might actually be able to.

Kerry has come out *against* reforming Social Security.

It's not true that we don't know what Kerry stands for. Here it is, in brief:

1. Foreign policy and security:
Bring the boys home, no overseas intervention, France, the UN and diplomacy to take care of world security. Appeasement of Arabs, Mullahs, Norks. No money for weapons. A replay of Clinton (best case).

2. Domestic and economic:
Social security: fine program, no problem. Tax the rich. More money and Gov. programs for education and health. Kyoto or Kyoto lite. More regulation. Compared to Kerry Clinton was a conservative.

Even if a Rep. Congress will be able to block his worst plans, a prez has a lot of power, to nominate, to regulate, to influence public opinion.

So, if you love Social-democracy, European style, and are a liberal - you vote for Kerry. If not, you don't.

Either [invading Iraq] was inevitably a boondoggle, in which case Bush shouldn't have started this, or it became a boondoggle, in which case we need someone more competent in charge.

There is another possibility. Invading Iraq was almost inevitably a boondoggle, but not invading was almost inevitably worse. Sanctions were on the way out. Saddam was willing and eager to reconstitute WMD programs. He was ambitious and ruthless (as were the sons who would almost certainly be his successors). He would not have given up trying to control his neighbors, and I have little doubt that many of them would have gone along with him out of fear of what he would do.

Sometimes you have to choose between two bad choices. Sometimes you have to choose between a bad and a terrible choice. Bush chose the bad over the terrible.

Paul Snively sez:

"[Kerry] probably just-as-bad fiscal policy"
Worse

"Either [invading Iraq] was inevitably a boondoggle, in which case Bush shouldn't have started this, or it became a boondoggle, in which case we need someone more competent in charge."

Would that the Democrats had nominated such a person. Unfortunatley, they nominated Kerry.

Bush's managment record [my opinion only, of course]-
Oil company: C+
Sports team: A-
Texas: A-
First presidential campaign, B+
USA: B-
Second presidential campaign: A-

Kerry's management record [opinion again]
Swift boat - A+ to here Kerry tell it, F- to hear the SBVT tell it. Call it unknown.
First presidential campaign: C- He has walked face-first into so many things he should have been better prepared for (like the SBVT.)

If "competence" is your issue, I'm afraid you're stuck with Bush. He may suck, but Kerry sucks worse.

I don't mean to call you a liar, but in reading your post I don't think you're an undecided voter at all. Why? Go back and read your post yourself again. You've obviously bought into every single bad thing that the Bush campaign and the RNC has said about Kerry with no reservation. What does that say about how undecided you can be?

You ask for Kerry supporters to prove to you that his domestic agenda won't be the disaster you fear. But what about Bush's agenda? The nomination of enough judges like Scalia and Thomas to guarantee anything the far right likes will be found constitutional. (As an aside to that I'd be fascinated to hear your take on the revelation that Thomas, does in fact not believe in stare decisis.) He proposes the partial privatization of social security with not one nod towards how it can be paid for given the massive deficits he's run up. There is lots of talk about how he'll balance the budget but a refusal to accept the pay as you go concept by his party. Personally I like the idea of at least trying to be fiscally responsible but not being straight jacketed into the blind belief in the free market's perfection that seems to be the current Republican religion of choice. Mostly because I think that our current society is discovering its limitations because of the health care system breakdown and globalization's problems. I also think that there is no easy answer and that the human tendency to break things down into labels will prevent any solutions until things get much, much worse. In the modern Republican lexicon anything that isn't pure free market becomes socialism and there can be no original ideas offered with that mind set.

Famed business writer Peter Drucker liked to ask the question, "Are you doing things right or are you doing the right things?"

His point was that approaching the right goal, even imperfectly, is much more important than approaching the wrong goal in the best possible way. Bush has done the right things.

Bush's Iraq strategy has been flawed. The first phase of the war went much better than most of us expected, but second phase has been a lot worse. His Afghanistan war went better than expected in all phases.

The key reason to vote for Bush is that he was right to overthrow these brutal tyrranies and to bring democracy. Polls show a huge majority of Iraqis favor democracy. I think it will work there, despite the strategic errors and horrendous terrorism.

Kerry wouldn't have invaded Iraq. Based on his Senate record of hesitancy, I doubt that he would have invaded Afghanistan. He wouldn't have had the commitment necessary to bring democracy to those countries.

Look at history. Our failures in the Korean War, Iran, and the Bay of Pigs left problems that plague us to this day. OTOH, our successful post-war handling of Germany and Japan created stable, democratic allies.

Decdes from now Afghanistan and Iraq will be stable, democratic allies of the US, thanks to Bush's leadership. He has sought to solve problems, not just manage them.

"You've obviously bought into every single bad thing that the Bush campaign and the RNC has said about Kerry with no reservation. "

I live one state north of the guy, and I had figured all that stuff out for myself long before the Bush campaign publicized any of it.

[begin muttering under breath] I still can't believe they nominated that putz. I still can't believe they nominated that putz. I still can't believe they nominated that putz....[/end muttering under breath]

Remember also that Kerry is beholden to his party. While Kerry may have some cetrist instincts, his party has gone off the deep end. You have the protectionist wing of the Democrats on the rise demanding a return to the bad old days of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in order to "keep jobs here." You have the neo-isolationists who demand an absolute pullout of Iraq, and they're a sizable number within the Democratic party.

I firmly believe that political pressure from the radical wing of the Democratic Party will force Kerry to substantially reduce US troop levels in Iraq, which will leave the country in a state of complete anarchy. Based on that alone, I'd expect crude to hit $75/barrel due to widespread disruptions as Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi expands his terrorist operations. It is as simple as they say - we have the choice of hitting them over there, or waiting until they get here. Kerry's entire policy is essentially reactive - we have to pass that "global test" to take action. Unfortunately the only time that's likely to happen is after a major US city has been vaporized. Imagine the economic reprecussions of New York or LA getting wiped off the map. It could very well spawn the Great Depression redux.

Kerry would pass a watered-down version of Hillarycare which would further cement government control over the healthcare center. He'd undoubtedly add massive entitlement programs to the system. Remember that Kerry is *not* a fiscal conservative in any sense of the word - he only pretends to be to get elected, and his Senate record is illustrative of this.

Kerry would have to institute massive new taxes to pay for his programs. And in order to "soak the rich" expect the divident tax reduction to go away completely. Expect a massive increase in capital gains taxes. Expect economic growth to take a nose dive.

Granted, Bush's record is flawed. Yes, we screwed up several times in Iraq, but not so much as to be irrecoverable. But Kerry would only compound those errors through a policy of force reductions and the use of unreliable foreign or UN troops. Yes, Bush signed a major new entitlement into law that will cause problems for years to come. Kerry would expand it even more. Yes, Bush's record on trade is in some ways worse than Clinton's - but the isolationist wing of the Democratic Party would force Kerry to massively harm the flow of international trade.

I'll give Kerry PAYGO, but when you've already set the budget at massive levels it doesn't matter how easy it is for departments to request more. It's like advocating plugging a leaky sink on the Titanic at that point.

Yes, you may end up holding your nose in voting for Bush. A lot of people will. Were this a choice between Bush and a sensible Scoop Jackson Democrat Bush would probably be toast. But given that Kerry's record has been wrong on nearly everything except money laundering investigations for the last 35 years, it is clear that Kerry just isn't the kind of person this country can afford to have in the Oval Office at this time.

Regarding Iraq being a cluster-#@*!:

I disagree. Remember when we were supposed to become bogged down in a quagmire? We weren't. The army routed around local intransegence, and swept in from the south. In days.

Today, 95% of the country is stable, and beginning to come out of the seventh century. Not too bad! The remaining pockets of resistance in Falluja, Baghdad, etc. have been collecting jihadists, concentrating them to be dealt with at our initiative.

You think things would be better if the moslo-murderers were as before, distributed widely across this region and rest of the world? Do you think you would have better results by negotiating with these people? What possible plan could Kerry have had that would have been more successful than the one we have been following? And please don't tell me it includes the U.N., or France!

Today, you have a choice. You can either neutralize the Islamo-fascists where they have been strategically gathered today, or you can let them slip out of the box, and have to nuke the entire Middle-East tomorrow.

Another thing to consider is the likelihood that the next President will have multiple opportunities to nominate Supreme Court justices. Personally, I don't think it likely that Kerry would nominate justices that a libertarian would be comfortable with.

Jane,

Anyone still on the fence only need to read this.

http://theanchoress.blogspot.com/2004/10/woman-in-black-hijab.html

If this does not tip you in the right direction then I am afraid you just need to stay home on Nov. 2nd.

Cheers,

Jody

Hmmm.

Ok. I'll bite.

1. Iraq-devastation.

It's inescapable that both the Democrats and the MSM have made success in Iraq a moving target. At the outset of the invasion the conclusion was that there would be millions of Iraqi casualties, tens of thousands of soldiers killed or wounded and vast damage done both to Iraq and to American prestige and honor. The inflamed estimates of the number of children killed, alone, were in the hundreds of thousands. Additionally many of the people now screaming at the President about the lack of WMDs were the same ones who were predicting massive casualties from Saddam using those very same WMDS. The forward thinking was that American and Iraqi soldiers would be mostly protected, due to specialized equipment, but that Iraqi civilians, who would be completely unprotected, would be devastated.

Yet nothing even remotely like this has happened.

2. Iraq-looting.

A lot of people fault Bush on the post-liberation looting when they fail to even look in their own backyards. What? Haven't been to a sports event? Professional? Collegiate? Either way how many times have you read of a riot after a sporting event? How many cars burned, shops looted and people arrested? And this is in America where most of those people involved come from middle-class families.

And does anyone actually advocate shooting them?

So what were the soldiers to do in Iraq? In the post-liberation period a lot of Iraqis were overcome by the same sort of feelings that apparently afflict any number of sports enthusiasts all the world over. However in the Iraqi's case I think the reason for their excess is somewhat far more credible considering the enormous psychological pressure Saddam enforced to ensure his survival.

Really. If the orders had been given to soldiers to stop the looting then we would have had a situation where Iraqi civilians would absolutely would have died. Soldiers are NOT policemen. They are NOT trained as policemen. Forcing soldiers to act as policemen will result in deaths because soldiers are trained and equipped to kill. While some soldiers do take some training in handling riots, this is not a normal course given to all soldiers. Meanwhile what would the esoldiers have done with such prisoners? Handcuff them? Take them to a jail? Keep them for indictment by the local prosecutor?

Then there's the reaction of the Iraqis themselves to such actions. How do you think the Iraqi people, assured that the American forces were liberators and not conquerers, would react to having boisterous civilians killed by those very same forces?

The right thing to do, at that time, was to let it go. This is what happens with American riots after all. This is what was allowed to happen in Los Angeles during it's riots and looting. It's better to let it happen and let people get it out of their system and it is to crack down with armed soldiers. Soldiers forced into a role for which they are not trained, and should NOT be trained, will end up killing someone, such as at Kent State. Once people start getting killed this begins a cycle of escalation that can only increase the level of violence in manifold ways.

And why shouldn't soldiers be trained to be policemen? Because there's only so much time and money available for training and if you train soldiers to do something other than soldiering, then they won't be as good a soldier as they could possibly otherwise.

"Either [Iraq]was inevitably a boondoggle, in which case Bush shouldn't have started this, or it became a boondoggle, in which case we need someone more competent in charge."

Do you really think the world is a worse place now that Saddam is gone?

If your answer is No then you are in camp Kerry. If the answer is Yes then the next thing you need to ask yourself is: Has anyone come up with a credible argument of how the Iraq war could have been done better. I'm not talking about picayune Monday morning quarterbacking but real big picture stuff. If you believe Kerry's line about the availability of more foreign support then you are still in camp Kerry.

"Right now, apart from the small chance of a thermonuclear device detonated in an American city, it seems to me that the biggest threat to America is not foriegn policy at all [don't you know we're at war?--ed. Yes, I do, but it's a smallish war. Absent nuclear or smallpox attacks, it doesn't pose an existential threat to us, and I am not clear, despite the best efforst of my interlocutors, that Bush has made us either more or less safe from those two types of attacks, since the bottleneck to those sorts of spectacular operations would seem to be not The Will, but The Way.]"

Even assuming your analysis is accurate you are not answering your own question. Have the changes in Afghanistan and Iraq improved our safety vs. Islamist terrorists or have they worsened the situation?

I don't want to get all psychological on you, but it really seems that you are avoiding a final decision on your vote as a means of avoiding a deeper decision on the relative seriousness of the Islamist/terror threat.

Fence sitting will not make this one go away.

Well, Dear, I haven't time to read all of the comments or address all of your points immediately, but I will tell you one thing: The very fact that Bush has the cods to bring Social Security reform up is by itself pretty convincing evidence that he means it. There's no other good reason for him to do so. He's taking a tortured licking from the Kerry people for it because they never miss a chance to rack the other side for merely addressing the matter.

I don't know how much you think you know about health care, but I can tell you this: the one, single most effective thing we could do to begin to repair the system is politically impossible, so I fear we are doomed to a government-run (yes, Socialist) system that will be wretched, and those of us who think it's bad now ain't seen nuthin' yet. We need to sever--COMPLETELY SEVER--the relationship between health care insurance and employment. We'll never do it, no one has the cods I mentioned above. It would, in one fell swoop, eliminate a lot of the sources of trouble. But it won't happen. So Kerry and Clinton and all the rest will "give" us the most-worst option sooner or later. We won't be in a hurry to thank them once we're into it, and by then it'll be far too late. Shoot, it's too late now.

The Libyan nuclear program is in Tennesse now.

John Kerry has 20 years in the Senate and the committees he heads up oversee just a billion dollars worth of expenditures. He is not a leader in the Senate and he was parked in the backwater committees because there he could do the least damage. He is a dilettante. He can make up his mind that he wants something, but once he gets it, he does not know how to go about being effective and DOING something.

The war on terror must be your first priority. It is utterly foolish to conclude otherwise. I regret that Joseph Libermann is not the Democratic standard bearer. But that isn’t going to happen. We are not choosing between the perfect candidate and George W. Bush. No, the president’s opponent is John Kerry---a man who possesses a solidly established record of appeasing our enemies. He didn’t even vote for the first invasion of Iraq in 1991. A man of sixty does not readily change the ingrained habits of a lifetime. We are risking too much in the hope that he might. President Bush is the lesser of evils. We should remain with the devil we know during these dangerous times.

My libertarian reason for voting Kerry is simple: A Republican Congress. Unless something incredibly unexpected happens the Republicans will hold the House, and I suspect they will hold the Senate as well. A Democratic President and a Republican Congress will empower the moderates of both parties at the expense of both ideological fringes.

I think that the best chance to get some commonsense solutions to the fiscal problems of over-spending and the insolvency of Social Security will come with divided government.

Additionally, I think that divided government would reduce the frequency that the War on Terror is used as a partisan bludgeon, and with luck, could produce a long-term plan for dragging the Middle East into the modern world that lies between the "Hulk Smash" attitude of the current administration and the "What War?" attitude of the Michael Moore left.

I realize that doesn't actually address either of your questions, but it's at least a line of reasoning as to why one candidate can be considered preferable.

Hello: Just found this fascinating discussion on a link from Instapundit. It is so nice to see reasoned political discourse and a minimum of name calling. Kudos to those on both sides.

I am a fairly libertarian independent who teaches world history at the high school level, and has studied history and politics most of my adult life. So here is my pair of copper portraits of the sixteenth president.

1. No war has ever been fought with a plan for "winning the peace." This kind of monday morning quarterbacking is absurd. And many of those partaking in this argument were the ones who expected 15,000 battlefield dead and a protracted struggle.

2. Pre emption is the key: In the days of suitcase nukes we can't afford to give anybody a first shot. Look at the economic repercussions from the 9/11 attack. Imagine a dirty nuke taking out most of Wall Street? Sorry Kerry fans we can't sit back and do nothing. the September 10th - terrorism is a law enforcement issue - let's send Jimmy (Lil Abner) Carter to make promises to Kim Jong Il and then be completely surpirsed when he breaks his word- mindset is history.

3. Islam has been going backwards intellectually since the 9th century, when Islamic culture was at its height. Less than 100,000 books have been translated into Arabic since then, and that has allowed the nut jobs to take over. Many of those in that part of the world still cannot get over the decline and destruction of the Ottoman Empire. A working democracy needs to be established in that part of the world.

(Yes, I hear you tut tutting, "But Bush was against nation building!" Yes and I agree, but Bush changed after 9/11 as did a lot of us. It took a Republican congress to pull Clinton back to the center didn't it? It was less than 700 days from Clinton waving the pen, promising to enact universal health care to "the era of big government is over!")

For more on the need for Islamic countries to reform themselves I reccomend Ralph Peters' article on the "Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States" that he did for Parameters in '98. See how many of those characteristics apply to the Islamic World.

4. I do not believe the bombs from the right about Kerry letting the UN dicate our foreign policy (welll mostly), but the UN is proving to be a failure as an organization, an utter and complete failure. Sudan is shaping up as another Rwanda and yet they do nothing. Oh wait I think they just passed another resolution condeming Israel.

And why is it that everyone talks about the "rush to war?" Nine months or so and endless foot dragging by this august body, not to mention numerous resolutions that Saddam was laughing at. The UN resembled the joke about the unarmed British policeman yelling at the fleeing thief, "Stop! Stop or I will yell stop again!"

And why does Bush not get any credit for trying to put teeth behind all those worthless UN resolutions, and showing one of the numerous dictators around the world that free nations do mean business?

Those are my big four! As a libertarian I am not happy with a lot of Bush's domestic policy but I see more creeping socialism under Kerry. Mark me in the Bush camp.

Jane-

With all due respect, your discussion is in a way very revealing. You mention a thermonuclear explosion. Taken literally, that is very unlikely coming from terrorists. But perhaps you don't know the difference between fusion and fission. The much more likely concern for us is a fission bomb. How serious would such a thing be? Think of 911 multiplied by 100, at least. Think of the death of New York City. Think of where you live, and so much of it gone it becomes unliveable. How seriously should we take this concern? Perhaps you don't know how ridiculously easy it is to make a certain type of crude fission bomb, with the right material. If not, read about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and most importantly the differences between the two! That material is out there and might well be stolen. It can be made; relevant equipment from Iraq was spirited away and taken to Oak Ridge, TN a few months ago. The administration does not speak explicitly about this threat, at least not often. They couch it in words like WMD. But this is the threat, and listening carefully you can hear Bush and Cheney saying it. Want perfection? Don't we all but we're unlikely to find it. Want an administration that takes its eyes off the ball and allows NYC or DC to disappear? Go with the candidate with the incoherent foreign policy. My choice is made, not because Bush is perfect (he's not) but because he sees the abyss. As the knight said in Indiana Jones III, "choose wisely."

My libertarian reason for voting for Bush is simple: lower taxes, introduction of personal accounts to Social Security and the health care system, less onerous regulation of industry, and federal judges/Supreme Court justices who understand the primacy of property rights in securing individual liberty.

"Deadlock" is a non-philosophy of government, a recourse to which many libertarians have taken flight because they keep losing elections. I prefer a more vigorous response to statism. Bush is far from perfect, but is the least bad feasible choice.

Kerry = 2nd Carter Administration.

Vote accordingly.

A man rushing to the aid of a woman being raped is not making himself safer short term but because of his aid the streets will be safer for everyone.

Diversify your investigation of Iraq. As a blogger it is strange that you seem to have accepted the MSM line that all is disaster.

Kerry has done no single thing that qualifies him to be President: Never met a payroll. Never led anything bigger than his office staff. Never accomplished anything save being elected in a state that has Kennedy as its other senator.

I don't understand your indecision. But then you don't seem to see the danger of radical Islam, either. Why do I think I just wasted my time.

How disappointing that at this point an intelligent person like you can't decide. Does it occur that perhaps after 2 years of speeches your inablity to state what kerry stands for is in itself the answer. Please take Michelle Malkin's advice and stay home election day

How on earth could you possibly be undecided at this point? Just stay home, the Republic is not better served by ignorant or hapless people voting.

Even with unbiased intel, I can't think of a single war that didn't look like a "cluster****" to those observing in real time. But our intel isn't unbiased. The MSM is selling a debacle because that advances its agenda. Same old deal as the Tet Offensive. Militarily we won it in a big way, but the boobs on the toob sold it as a defeat. Compared with, say, operations Torch and Overloard, this one is a short stroll on a pleasant summer's eve. Those operations were successful.

The overarching moral passivity of your request to have someone else convince you unfortunately says more about your shortcomings than either candidate.

There's no sin in being confused, uncertain, or overwhelmed. But, there is a dilemma in not having some sort of moral anchor in a sea of information.

It's not the gale, it's the set of your sail that gets you home. Set your own course. The answers will come.

/metaphors off

:o)

I find myself similarly conflicted about what to do with my vote for President, but only because I live in California where my vote is irrelevant (except symbolically). I don't want to vote for Bush due to his record of vastly expanding government spending and entitlements and subsidies. I would not vote for Kerry for a whole raft of reasons; he's worse than Bush on at least 90% of the issues and is willing to say or do anything to achieve his ambitions. I would normally vote for Badnarik, but I am quite unhappy with his position on the War On Terrorism. I may just skip the top spot, but I hate to do that; it would be the first time ever for me.

If I lived in a battleground state where it was just barely conceivable that my vote might actually matter, I'd have to decide on the basis of the War On Terrorism. And I consider this a domestic issue as much as a foreign policy issue. Aside from the actual damage and deaths that a future major terrorist attack(s) could inflict on our country, the potential damage to our economic and political infrastucture might be even more lethal. Look what happened after 9/11. The airlines and travel industries were devasted, hundred of billions of dollars worth of economic activity and jobs were lost, etc. The Patriot Act was rushed through Congress.

Our economy could be hamstrung by another major attack, or by a series of minor attacks. Imagine, for example, a dirty bomb set off in a major city. Such an attack would not be all that difficult; it would require some explosives and (perhaps locally stolen) nuclear waste. Probably no one would die (at least not from the radioactivity), but the public hysteria would force the evacuation and maybe permanent abandonment of the targeted city. The economic consequences would be many times what Florida suffered from the recent string of earthquakes. The political consequences would be new laws to restrict our liberties and invade our privacy.

That's a major reason why Bush's policy of going on the offense against terrorists and harboring nations is valuable. He has kept Al Queda and other groups and dictators on the defensive and on the run. As a result we have not had a significant attack within the U.S. since 9/11. Our economy is now growing, and we're arguing over whether to re-authorize or otherwise modify the Patriot Act. The overall scope of infringements on the freedoms of most Americans has been minimal, and battles are being fought (with some success) in the courts over those whose freedoms were harmed.

That's not a bad place to be, given what might have happened, and given what could happen in the future if the WOT returns to our shores. John Kerry's defensive, law-enforcement approach has a far greater risk, in my opinion, or allowing such attacks and the concommitant long-range damage to occur.

Lonewackoblog claims that if Bill Gates were president, things wouldn't be so screwed up.

I don't buy it. Microsoft's products usually don't succeed until release 3, at which point they become unstoppable. Consider Windows: Releases 1 and 2 were jokes, release 3 was the first one that was usable, release 3.1 was a huge improvement, and after that there was no competition.

What Microsoft has is a willingness to try other things if the first ones don't succeed, and an unshakable determination to lead every market they pursue. That, plus lots of money.

Sound familiar? We're no later than release 2 in Iraq (depending on whehter you count the handover of sovereignty as release 1 or release 0).

Since 9/11, like many others, I've bought a house and started a business in a Republican run, non-union state (FL) that lacks a State income tax and (not coincidentally) has an umemployment rate around 4.5% (far less than the already low 5.4% annually). Sorry a vote for Kerry would be suicidal not just for national security reasons.

I stumbled across this blog this morning. I really do not understand why any intellectually honest person would even consider voting for Mr. Kerry. Our President HAS character, it is what determines ultimately what any individual will do or uphold in the situations of life. You see, having served in Vietnam for 4 months, regardless of the medals or anything else concerned, he ultimately turned on his fellow soldiers. I served in the Army during the Vietnam era also. Our President, has a good, honest track record the last 4 years. Strength of character, caring and even compassion have been seen by the whole world in the heart of this man. Actions speak the heart. President Bush is a man of action, he HAS done the things he has promised as a candidate and President. He keeps his word. A look at what Mr. Kerry has done all his life should really make any sane person uneasy about his heart or his character. After 3 months in Vietnam he used the system to get out of Dodge. He used the honor of all of us who have served out country for his own misguided personal gain. Twenty years in the Senate with virtually nothing to show for it? AND, you have doubts about who to vote for, for President????? I am 62 years old, have lived in Europe for 16 years, am independant, and try to make judgement on intellectual and heart felt honesty. I have made my share of mistakes also. But having said that, at this moment in our county's history, a vote for Mr. Kerry is a vote for uncertainty, weakness, and for a man that has a lack of character. This is a matter of TRUST, and regardless of anything else, I TRUST President Bush, and he has my vote for the second time. You have a thousand times more information than you need, to come to an honest conclusion on the honesty and character of these two men, so you decide, and if you choose Mr. Kerry, I have serious questions about you character and honesty.
May God have mercy on our country.

Well, you can sit on the lap of this long-term undecided and I'll gaze into your eyes and tell you to vote for George W. Bush. But you have all the facts, and if you're not decided at this point, your duty to the American people is to stay home on November 2nd. We live in a REPUBLIC, not a democracy, and the uninformed rabble--which you clearly aren't--were never intended to be part of presidential elections.

It's really simple to someone with little-L libertarian instincts like myself. No matter how much you wonk away on other issues, terrorism/Iraq is the central issue. And yes, they are intertwined, and ALWAYS HAVE BEEN, as everyone in the Clinton Administration used to tell us before it was politically expedient to tell us otherwise. The fact is this: Iraq is a mess. You know why? Because there was a war there, a war that overthrew the long-standing government. That was the long-standing government that made its living by murdering its own people by the hundreds of thousands, by fomenting instability in its neighborhood, by funding and harboring terrorists, and by buidling and using biological and chemical weapons, one of only two governments since WWI (Egypt in 1960 being the other) to use such weapons in open warfare. And now, less than two years later, they will be holding elections, however imperfect (think U.S., 1864). Iraqis, by and large, recognize the threats to the tenuous freedoms they now have and are risking everything to sign up by the thousands to defend them. These are not RNC talking points--these are historical facts, whether you can take it or not! Those Iraqi bloggers aren't making sh$%%& up.

If you think I'm idealistic, too bad. The war is the most important issue, and sometimes I'm almost tempted to return to active duty so I can get sent to Iraq and DO SOMETHING instead of contending with obnoxious Monday morning quarterbacking (note to hacks: don't bother daring me to do so, it's not that simple a process and I have another career to build first).

I'll have to save domestic issues for another post, but the short answer is that Bush is the candidate who BEST FITS my own libertarian/liberal internationalist tendencies. John Kerry is no JFK, no Truman, no FDR...he's not even a Clinton, Lieberman or Gephardt, and if voters don't know that, they're too uninformed to vote. I am decided, and I am going to vote next Tuesday, come hell or high water, for the candidate who sees the world as it really is and has a vision (who knows if he's right? it's just a vision) of how it should be.

All very interesting. I would like to know more about Kerry. That is one thing holding me back from supporting him. Releasing his military records and FBI file so we could see more deeply past the spin would be great. Tax returns would be nice. I think that he did release some medical records, which was good. I worry (a lot) about electing Kerry and then finding out unpleasant truths once he is in office. You are precisly right to say that the Kerry mantra so far has been "vote for me, I am not Geo Bush".

The thought that the anti-war bunch might run this country is frightening. Should Bush lose, no future president will go after terrorists in foreign countries for fear of not being re-elected. Bush had no such fear. With Kerry as president, Iran and N.Korea will have a field day and Taiwan returns to China. The snowball starts rolling.

For anyone living in a non-swing state (Jane lives in NY?), voting is an expressive act of making your voice heard rather than an instrumental act of actually affecing outcomes. In NY, a vote for Kerry is wasted (he'll win anyway), as is a vote for Bush (he'll lose anyway). All votes are 'protest' votes. (To a lesser extent, this is also true in swing states, since your chance of affecting the outcome is virtually nil.)

Being a libertarian-leaning person myself, if I were in Jane's shoes, I would vote Libertarian. The actual Libertarian party is made up of raving moonbats. If they had a chance of actually attaining power, I probably couldn't vote for them. But I'm going to vote Lib to signal to the two major parties that I'm disgusted with them, and that if they move in a Lib direction, they might be able to woo me.

As long as my vote isn't going to affect the outcome, I might as well A) send the right signal and B) vote my conscience.

P.S. As far as I can tell, the Republicans are reorienting from being a coalition of 'small gov' and 'social conservatives' to being more like a European Christian Democratic party -- socially conservative, economically interventionist. To say that free market ideology is dominant on the right may apply to think-tanks and academics, but not to the Republican party.

The comment about Bill Gates is laughable. If the Bush Admin had had as much trouble getting the Iraq war done right as Bill has had trying to get Windows to run, we'd still be 200 miles south of Bagdad, washing the windshield in a sand storm.
An additional problem, is childish expectations. The Pres warned this would be long and difficult. What did that mean? We still have a military presence in Germany, Japan, and Korea. Is 60+ years a good historical benchmark?
This in probably not the answer that the generations of instant gratification would wish. But it is reality.
Which brings us to the real issue. And I believe a thinking person can both recognize the presidents long range vision, and the political impossibility of advancing it as the primal argument.
This is a world war with terror.
There have been over 9700 terrorist attacks, world wide in the past 20 years (U.S. State Dept.)
The keystone of this problem is the middle east. And the over riding issue here is the survival of Israel. The muslim fundementalists want to destroy Israel and kill all the jews. This is their avowed goal, not my words. Before Iraq, the world intellegence community agreed that Sadam had WMD, and we knew he had used them. The argument then is not did he have them, but rather when, where, and how did he destroy or hide them. In any event he had the capability and intent to re-constitute the programs at a time of his choosing. It has been estimated that the biological program could have been functional in 30 days. In the 1st gulf war, when Sadam launched the 1st two skud missles, one was into Saudi and the other was into Israel. For years Sadam rewarded the surviving families of suicide bombers $25,000 for the loss of their martyrs.
Israel has an estimated 100+ nukes. You can bet that in the event of anthrax tipped missles landing on Israel cities, Israel will launch a massive response. There would be a lot of glass lined holes in the sand where muslim cities used to be. This would likely provoke responses from surrounding countries with large muslim populations (as well as nukes), such as southern Russia, Pakistan, India, and the usual Arab states. Nuclear retaliation (an eye for an eye) is likely. And we are commited to the defense and survival of israel, and are now in the midst of a nuclear war. And do you think the rest of the world is going to sit back and let this oil soaked patch of sand go to the lowest bidder?
Now if you're "W" do you think you can sell the American people on the idea that we ought to go to war to save the Jews?
What possible solution is there?
The establishment of mid-eastern democracies, liberty, the people pursuing their own personal self interest, under stable governments. Utopian vision? At least it's a vision. You got a better idea?

3. Iraq-post-war.

There have been many complaints about how disorganized the post-war portion of Iraq had been. There is some truth to these complaints but to that I can only offer. So what? This isn't like opening a shop or organizing a bakesale. This is country the size of California with three distinct minorities who basically distrust and hate each other. This is a country brutalized for decades by Saddam in the most incredible ways and who've had their religious, moral and political leaders killed on a regular basis. The aftermath of any great change is going to make for a period of chaos. This isn't something that you can avoid simply because the most valuable thing, that would allow you to avoid that chaos, is something that is never available.

Information.

The amount of solid information coming out of Iraq wasn't all that good. And we're not talking about oil deposits or WMDS either. We're talking information about the electrical grid, water system, sewer system and etc. This stuff isn't easy to find out. The only way you really can find any of this out is by going there and looking. Something not possible while Saddam was in power.

Another point I'd like to stress is that all resconstruction depends on contractors. The amount of terrorism that has gone on in Iraq has largely been responsible for preventing much of the reconstruction. While it's relatively easy to set aside money to effect reconstruction it's hard to do if the people actually doing the work are being attacked. And it's even harder if their work is being slowly destroyed after they finish.

Do I fault the Bush administration for this? No I don't. Who on earth can predict that people, living in a slum with no clean water and open sewers, would actually act to destroy construction projects designed to give them clean water and sanitation? Did anyone predict that Iraqis, endlessly complaining about the level of electricity production, would be also tearing down electrical transmission towers and wires?

Frankly much of the discontent in Iraq is entirely to do with a misunderstanding of America. A lot of people have this image of America where people can wave a hand and anything can be done in a day. Wave a hand and a million tons of new electrical generators arrive to produce all the electricity in the world. No mention of the funds and time to actually build the things, ship them through lousy port facilities, transport enormous machines through half of the country and then install them in buildings that don't exist.

If this stuff were easy and the Bush administration screwed it up, then I could fault them. But it is not easy and anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling himself. It's easy to armchair quarterback and it's even easier to sit on your ass in America and complain. But if you take the time to actually think about how hard this stuff is, particularly when it's done by a government that has never shown itself to be all that efficient, then I think you'll come to a different conclusion.

4. Iraq-reason of war.

A lot of people, yeah that cliche again, talk about the campaign in Iraq in isolation and this is entirely wrong. Iraq is not a separate war but a continuation of the same war that began on 9/11. This viewpoint is important since it's also the viewpoint of the Bush administration. You can disgree of course, but it's illustrative of why Iraq was invaded at all.

The case for Iraq was based on UN Resolutions and WMDs in part as a legalistic justification for some Republicans, many Democrats and Tony Blair. The fact is that we didn't need a justification because Saddam broke the truce long ago. Note that there wasn't a peace treaty, never was. Instead there was a cease-fire called which could always be revoked and forced re-engaged.

In retrospec the time and energy spent on massaging the UN was time and energy wasted. Saddam had plenty of time to cover his tracks in many different ways and to salt Iraq with potential insurgent groups. This also gave France, Germany, China and Russia time to cover their tracks in Iraq with respect to weapon sales and other covert assistance. It was during this time period that the French Ambassador assured Saddam that the French would veto any action against him.

So why invade Iraq?

Well let's leave the WMDs out of it. I don't particularly care about the whole argument over WMDs or their lack. For some people there is a need for a bomb that is marked "WMD". For these people it doesn't matter that it only takes 4 days to manufacture chemical warheads and bombs. For some people you have to have missiles marked "biological agent inside". For these people the fact that, with technology already researched and equipment on hand, it only takes 20-40 days to manufacture biological weapons evidently means nothing. Evidently it also doesn't mean anything that Saddam's technology was crude enough that any WMDs that he did have, had only a short shelf-life that required constant resupply. In other words Saddam's WMD program was designed, by necessity, to build weapons quickly because they didn't last long.

Leaving that behind let's look at the favorite reason for intervention for liberals all around. Humanitarian. How anyone could push the idea that the Balkan Campaign was justified, considering the absolute dearth of mass graves there, while the Iraq Campaign isn't, considering the vast number of mass graves, is completely beyond me. In this regard I think a lot of people, overly dedicated to the removal of Bush from the White House, have permanently damaged their credibility. At any point in the future, their cries for humanitarian intervention will be met with reminders of comparisons with Iraq. If Iraq isn't a prime example of intervention for humanitarian reasons, then what on earth is? 350+ mass graves have been found already that can contain as many as a couple million people. There have been at least 1 mass grave that contained nothing but children, who ranged in age from infants to somwhere around 15 years old. How many mass graves have been found in history that consisted of nothing but children? Before Iraq? None.

So I would suggest that the invasion of Iraq could be justified entirely on the basis of humanitarian grounds. If it couldn't, then what could?

Then there's the geographical, political and *spiritual* aspect of it all. Iraq has the notable situation of being 60% Shia'a, a direct neighbor of Iran and containing much of the Shia'a faith's holy sites. I believe the Shia'a faith requires it's adherents to go on pilgrimages to these holy sites at least once in their lives. The other notable fact is that Iran is 95% Shia'a and so almost the entire population of Iran must at some point in their lives travel through Iraq. In fact a number of cities in Iraq depend entirely on this tourist trade for their local economies. This mass pilgrimage has continued through all sorts of chaos over the years except for some periods of the Iran-Iraq War, where it was sometimes halted due to the fighting, and during Siege of Najaf. It was the fact that pilgrims were being scared away by the violent actitivites of the Sadr militia that eventually wore out their welcome.

The thinking is that a prosperous and free Iraq would be an incredibly corrosive force on Iran and a number of regional governments. Most people in this area have only heard about democracy and freedom and have never experienced it for themselves. A free Iraq would provide a means for conveying this experience to most Iranians who would experience it during their pilgrimage. And it's a pilgrimage that cannot really be stopped. The rulers of Iran are in their position largely due to thier religious influence. I don't believe that they could credibly prevent the pilgrimages for any serious length of time without violating the basic and fundamental rules of their Shia'a faith.

This won't be like the USSR after all, an iron curtain. In this situation it will be absolutely impossible to prevent the cross-border assimilation of new ideas and these ideas will become increasingly dangerous to the ruling mullahs of Iran. In part this is because of the massive corruption that they oversee in Iran. Then there's the rampant nepotism and incompetence that created a 65% unemployment rate and such shoddy construction that the hospitals in Bam, a regional city destroyed by a recent earthquake, were almost the first buildings to collapse. A perfect model of the corruption in Iran is the Caliphate of the Ottoman Empire. Insular, insulated and rotten with corruption and back-dealing. Almost the entire population of Iran is on welfare. Another interesting fact is that young adults, under 30 years of age, comprise at least half of the entire population of Iran, a result of the Iran-Iraq War.

So Iraq is a perfect stiletto to shank Iran with. The way to deal with Iran is not to invade it, something that Bush as studiously avoided. But to corrode it from within. The soft seductive voices of fun, happiness and hope. If you think Iraq is bad, you haven't even begun to look at Iran. Once the violence dies down, Iraq will look like Florida to a study-weary college student. Consider all the things you cannot do in Iran, where religious zealots hold sway, and all the things that are possible in Iraq.

And, if you're a young Iranian adult, all you have to do to enjoy all of it is to join a pilgrimage.

Then there's the "flypaper" strategy.

This strategy is one based on cold realism. There are a large number of trained terrorists in the middle east, or at least there WAS. In addition to these trained terrorists there is also a segment of the muslim population that can be persuaded to go and fight in Iraq. What Iraq has done is provide a huge battlefield that is irresistable to these people. There were many accounts of AQ forces fighting American soldiers during the invasion. Many of these AQ forces ended up dead because fighting soldiers, who are heavily armed and prepared to kill, is a vastly different enterprise than shooting unprepared civilians. Additionally the terrain of Iraq is well suited to this strategy since, first and foremost, it is not America and there aren't that many mountains. The only places to hide are cities and the number of cities are relatively small. In addition the minimal highway system and the distances between cities also allows for the isolation of specific cities for specific operations, something that would be nearly impossible here in America. As anyone local to an area knows, there is always a back way. Unless that "back way" is without any cover at all and the people hunting you have highly specialized sensors.

Then there's the issue of how the terrorists deal with local Iraqis. The simple fact is that most Iraqis want the fighting to end so that they can go on with their lives. This puts many local Iraqis in direct opposition to terrorist groups so the groups have to crack down on the locals in order to maintain control. This isn't a situation that Mao described where insurgent forces swum through a sea of helpful peasants. In this situation the terrorist and insurgent groups have little connection with the locals. In effect there is no "sea" for them to swim in and it leaves them very vulnerable.

Megan-
My choice is incredibly simple...Who do the terrorists want in office? Who do those responible for The U.N.'s food-for-oil scam want in office? Who do the shyster hordes(trial lawyers)want in office?