I wouldn’t choose the defeat of John Kerry, because it was a close election, and even had he won he would have been hamstrung by a Republican house and senate. Left-wingers would have seen it as a vindication, perhaps — but many are convinced that Bush “stole” Ohio anyway and that Kerry really did win. This is a victory that won you no recruits, methinks.

For my part, I think there was some fraud in this election, but likely no more than in any other.

And given the comments spawned here, I think I’m going to have to call out other bloggers more often. Cathy Seipp is evil! Matt Welch is a homo! Glenn Reynolds is a fag heeh heeh heeh! Mickey Kaus is bald!

The inspectors had a list. Saddam kept throwing them out and denying access. That’s not just not playing nice; it’s downright stupid if you believe you will face consequences. He didn’t believe he would face consequences. Before 9/11 we were happy to let the inspectors work on their own timetable; after, it became ours as the problem became too big.

It also didn’t matter if the inspectors didn’t think they were finished because by then politics and corruption had entered the UN fray. One of the former inspectors made a movie on the dime of an anti-war Iraqi-American and the administration was likely looking into whether certain actors were breaking the arms embargo by supplying weapons and whether others were skimming from the Oil for Food program. The last is a surmise based on later known events.

I agree this is getting old and the blogosphere is full of it already. I promise to give you the last word because, um, you have admin privileges.

As for out of town for good, I’m just getting the joint ready for a housewarming party next weekend. As I have a year lease I’ll be here at least that long. Come on down, I got room, and I can sure do something about getting you kissed, no matter what your hobbies.

I will be coming to visit L.A. in late August – early September for a week or two so we should have time to get together. We could even hit a coffee bar or two in Little Saigon.

Kerry was NOT an antiwar candidate in the primaries, nor particularly leftist. Dean, Kucinich, and Sharpton were the ones who ran in opposition to the war, and all three were ultimately written off by the general public as crazies. Kerry voted for the war, was always in favor of staying the course, and only as the war dragged on did he start saying “wrong war, wrong place, wrong time.” He never advocated premature withdrawal, ever, which is why the hard-left (and I mean the real hard-left like Alexander Cockburn, not mainstream Dems like Hillary Clinton) disowned him. One of the major reasons he was the chosen candidate is that he was considered more “electable” due to being less antiwar than many of the rest.

Regarding Saddam — come on, the current war had little or nothing to do with UN inspections. The invasion started before the inspectors were finished. And I’m not sure how you can absolutely prove that someone doesn’t have something.

But I am glad that you make a distinction between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

On an unrelated note: Have you moved out of town for good? If so, you coming back to visit anytime soon?

Luke, I’m simply talking about reading the tealeaves. When a politician talks he’s trying to get elected. During the primaries he’s talking to his philosophical base, when the general election comes he hopes the other side wasn’t paying close attention as he/she moves to the center.

As you consider the pol you’re obliged to split the difference and decide where to add weight. Was the candidate just pandering to the base in the primaries, or did he mean it and think he could get away with it for real? Everybody wants it both ways and a politician’s job is to give it to them.

The enemy I was speaking about is al quaeda and the other radical fundamentalists. As for Iraq, we had been in a state of war since 1991. There was a ceasefire in order to allow him to comply with demands to allow the war to end. One of those demands was to prove that he had destroyed certain weapons that he had; it was not up to us to prove he still had them.

Though it was nice to ask permission to finish him off, technically it wasn’t necessary. Continuing to oppose us and not cooperate when we had other fish to fry was Saddam’s decision. Iraq could still be all flowers and butterflies if he had only played nice with the UN weapons inspectors.

Aside: The suicide terrorists now blowing up Iraqi women and children prove further the main theory of occupation that Bob Pape suggests in his interview, this time concerning his finding on religion. The Sunnis consider the Shiites to be occupiers as well as the Western troops, not to mention the Kurds. It has never been wholly about us, but includes schisms even within Islam. Only Saddam’s boot had kept the ‘peace’ there.

Indeed. Saddam said he had no weapons of mass destruction, and he didn’t!

People can’t have this one both ways.

I remember when Bush was first running, his supporters would say that you couldn’t label him as being like other right-wing Republicans because he said that he wasn’t — he was a “compassionate conservative” who never said a bad thing about gays, for example, and seemed noncommittal on abortion.

Conservatives still get mad when we don’t take Bush at his word, like for instance when we say that he “lied” over “he had bad intelligence.”

Yet Kerry is not to be taken at his word; rather, on the word of his “core supporters.”

Fair’s fair, Pete: If you get to judge Kerry based on what anti-war protestors say, I’ll judge Bush based on what televangelists say.

Actually, I’d prefer neither of us do that. But you catch my drift.

Kerry has been winning elections for quite some time, so I don’t agree that he is simply a bad politician. It has no nuance.

As far as Kerry not wanting to pull out of Iraq, one only need to look to his core supporters and their expectations; minus the bomb throwers of the far-left. I think the public figured it out.

Of course there’s always the Karl Rove as mastermind theory.

As far as understanding the enemy I think they’ve made themselves quite clear. As their actions have backed up their words without any po-mo quibbling, the proper response is to believe them.

In a nutshell for those who haven’t been listening: They want back the Caliphate. Then they want to expand it.

In reading the message board item listed above on suicide terrorists and why they do what they do I agree with the basic theory presented: it’s about the territory. I find the rest of the analysis wanting and I’ll try later to address it on my own blog.