Kerry’s debate experience showed last night. If only he had more than one expression. I kept wondering how much botox, exactly, has come his way.

On the other hand, Bush looked, as my coffee lady Kathy put it, “like a baby with a bad case of gas.”

Seriously, though, I did think that Kerry came out ahead. Kerry came out slugging and kept the pressure on while still managing to respond to accusations of indecisiveness. Bush started out strong, but by the end of the first 30 minutes he was starting to stumble over his words and kept repeating the same scripted responses. There were times when he appeared to competely lose his train of thought.

Kerry had the best zinger of the night:

You can be decisive and still be wrong

He went on to say that, if you are wrong, you need to own that and correct your course. This is a point that Bush does not seem to understand.

I did think that Kerry missed an opportunity at one point late in the debate. Both candidates were asked to clarify if they agreed on the dangers of nuclear proliferation. Bush responded, “In the hands of terrorists.” I thought that Kerry’s response would have been stronger had he pointed out that this is a fundamental difference between he and Bush, as Kerry does not limit the danger to only terrorists.

In other news, John Eisenhower has changed his registration from Republican to Independent and will vote for Kerry. Eisenhower, the son of Dwight D. and a lifelong Republican, says that, rather than his own views changing, the GOP has left its own values behind. The article is an interesting read!

History professor Juan Cole over at Informed Comment has written a short, but gripping piece on what America would look like if it were improving in the same way that Iraq is reported to be improving. It’s well worth the few minutes it takes to read it.

So, how is it really going in Iraq? This in today from Reuters, in a story by Tabassum Zakaria:

A U.S. intelligence report prepared for President Bush in July offered a gloomy outlook for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst scenario being a deterioration into civil war, government officials said on Thursday.

The alarming possible future in Iraq as outlined in the classified National Intelligence Estimate is in line with the view of many analysts and members of Congress…

Remember that Bush has had this report since July. And how were things in July?

The report was initiated under former CIA Director George Tenet, who stepped down in July. The conclusions were reached before the recent worsening of Iraq’s security situation. (ed: emphasis mine)

So the situation in Iraq is actually worse than it was when this report was first released in July. But it doesn’t sound as though the Bush Administration were very concerned. In response to the release of the July report, Whitehouse spokesman Scott McClellan said:

it was up to policy-makers to address the challenges outlined.

However, he added, “The Iraqi people are proving that those scenarios are wrong by the progress that they are making to build a better future.”

Policy-makers… That would be our President and his cabinet? And what is the response from Bush? In another Reuters story, Caren Bohan reports on the Bush rally in St. Cloud, Minn.:

President Bush said on Thursday freedom was on the march in Iraq even as a U.S. intelligence report depicted a bleak outlook for the country’s future.

Bush insisted the U.S. strategy in Iraq, where more than 1,000 U.S. troops have died, was working as he campaigned in Minnesota, a traditionally Democratic state that Republicans are targeting in the Nov. 2 election.

“In Iraq, there’s ongoing acts of violence,” Bush told a rally here. But he added, “Freedom is on the march,” emphasizing his campaign image as a “war president” in the election battle against Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry…

Bush did not mention the intelligence report in his speech at the rally but White House spokesman Scott McClellan said he disagreed with its pessimistic assessment.

“The Iraqi people are proving that those scenarios are wrong by the progress that they are making to build a better future,” McClellan told reporters.

Oh… Kay… So our policy-makers believe that a sand dune is a good place to stick your head. I get it. Perhaps Dubya doesn’t understand that being a “war president” is only good for your campaign if you are actually winning. Or, perhaps he understand that all too well, but just doesn’t understand that continuing to ignore negative reports, and continuing to ignore questions about why he’s ignoring the negatives, will eventually be noticed by a majority of voters. Or, worse yet, perhaps he believes that it will not be noticed.

At the rally, dozens of anti-Bush protesters stood outside carrying signs that read, “Preemptive Peace” and “Iraq Has Nothing To Do With Our Freedom.”

I’m fairly certain that Bush did not see those signs, given his penchant for keeping dissenting voices out of his rallies.

And people sneered when I said I worried about Iraq becoming the next Viet Nam. Those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

Dubya… What color is your sky?

I don’t necessarily believe that all correlation is more than coincidence. But here are a couple of really interesting entries from Julius and Biltud over at JuliusBlog:

This one shows the correlation between Bush’s approval rating and terrorism alerts:
Chart: Bush Ratings vs. Terror Alerts
Remember, though, that correlation does not imply causation.

And this entry details the timelines of alerts and how they relate to the national news headlines in the days just prior to the alert:
Timeline of Terror Alerts
I find this one less compelling, simply because it lists only headlines that were not flattering to the Bush Administration, and lists only headlines before each terror alert. It would be interesting to see what else was going on in the news at that time, both before and after each alert.

There’s a lot of info here, and it’s well worth checking out!

Not political? Suuuuuuuure. I have a hard time believing that. It’s also going to be hard to prove, though.

This in today from The New York Times:

A Candidate Who Says What He Means (Most of the Time)
By CARL HULSE
Published: August 5, 2004

This no doubt confirmed the worst fears of President Bush’s most severe critics.

As he signed a $417 billion Pentagon spending bill today, the president offered his own unique take on how the money would be used. “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we,” Mr. Bush said. “They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people — and neither do we.”

Obviously, the president didn’t mean it quite that way.

Yeah… Sure he didn’t. 😆 😆 😆

The article continues with a report of John Kerry’s trip to Missouri, where he spoke to a convention of minority journalists. One of the questions he fielded had to do with how he would have reacted, had he been reading to school kids on 9/11. His response:

“First of all, had I been reading to children, and had my top aide whispered in my ear, `America is under attack,’ I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to, and I would have attended to it,” Mr. Kerry said to applause from the group.

Bush is speaking to the same group tomorrow. Gee, I hope they ask him the same question. 😈

In July, a computer engineer named Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan was arrested in Pakistan. He is accused of acting as an “e-postman” for al Qaeda, distributing coded messages from group to group. In the same raid, officials also “recovered” documents, computers, surveillance reports and sketches — much of it compiled before 09/11/2001 from information publically available on the net or through other open sources. The material apparently concerned US financial areas like Wall Street and the World Bank.

This in from Reuters:

Ridge Defends ‘Three-Year-Old’ U.S. Terror Alert
Tue Aug 3, 2004 12:05 PM ET

By Mark Egan
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The warning that U.S. financial centers may be attacked by al Qaeda was based largely on three-year-old information, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said on Tuesday, but some intelligence dated from January and he insisted the threat was still real.

Ridge’s appearance in New York at the Citigroup building named on Sunday as a potential al Qaeda target came as U.S. terrorism intelligence has come under fire again, this time for forcing police in New York, Washington and New Jersey to massively increase security based on old information.

“I don’t want anyone to disabuse themselves of the seriousness of this information simply because there are some reports that much of it is dated, it might be two or three years old,” Ridge said.

. . .

Ridge said there was no information on the potential timing of any attack and no evidence of more recent surveillance by al Qaeda of the buildings named in the latest terror alert.

So we’re now at “high threat level” (or “orange stars” for those of you following the Persistent Illusion magical Lucky Charms threat level) because of data that is at least three years old, was mostly compiled before 09/11/2001, and might have been updated 7 months ago? (I’ve seen stories that say that the info was updated in January, may have been updated in January, may have been updated at some unspecified time, or hasn’t been touched for years. You pick.)

Why is this coming out right on the heels of the Democrat Party convention?

Said Ridge:

“We don’t do politics in the Department of Homeland Security. This is not about politics. It’s about confidence in government.”

Uh… OK… so I feel really, really confident in my government now, oh yessiree bob! The Bush Administration will lead us to the promised land!

Oh, c’mon. Of course this is political. The guy was arrested earlier in July. Why wait until right after the Demo Con, why alert the nation to a three-year-old threat, if the motivation is not political? It’s obvious this was meant to crush Kerry’s bounce from the convention.

KPAM radio this morning quoted Ridge as saying he felt it was important to get this information in front of the American public so that we could defend ourselves. Huh? How am I supposed to defend myself against an attack by terrorists? Is this a statement that even makes sense?

Our friends overseas get it:

Allies Spurn U.S.-Style Color-Coded Terror Alerts
Tue Aug 3, 2004 10:11 AM ET
By Peter Graff
LONDON (Reuters) – The latest “code Orange” has drawn mild scorn from U.S. allies in the war on terror, who say Washington’s high-profile alerts cause undue panic and could make people less safe by undermining trust in intelligence. Most of Washington’s major allies have avoided color-coded alerts like those Washington introduced in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, saying the public can do little with warnings unless it is told specifically how to respond.

. . .

Kevin Rosser of Control Risks Group consultancy in London said Britain’s approach “is not to make color-coded warnings, not to publish every possible threat, but work closely with institutions that may be affected to help them tighten security and address threats in the least disruptive way possible.

“The problem (with the American approach) is that it creates public anxiety. If the goal of terrorists is to spread fear and unease then to some extent they’ve done that job for them without anybody carrying out an attack.”

Other countries take similar views. A spokeswoman for Germany’s Interior Ministry said it has an internal threat assessment system, but no equivalent of the public, color-coded U.S. scheme, and “we see no advantages” of introducing one.

. . .

“The security services collect intelligence not to issue warnings but to act on it,” Ami Ayalon, former chief of Israel’s Shin Bet security service told Reuters. “When intelligence is insufficient to guarantee a terrorist attack can be thwarted, you pass the partial information to the police, who often make it public.”

“But there is a price to this method, an emotional toll on the public,” he said. “When I was in the Shin Bet, I often preferred to take the risk and not to say anything, because I felt that regular terror alerts can in themselves lead to a terrorized society.”

Isn’t is amazing how it seems that everyone all over the world gets this — but not Dubya? Oh, no, he’s of the “keep them scared and stupid” school of governmental control.

But this is the kind of crap we’ve come to expect from the Bush administration. Prevarication and exaggeration.

Poor Dubya. He seems so far in over his head. He swaggers around like “I’m cool, look at me, I’m Pres-i-dent.” But it was worth the price of admission to Fahrenheit 911 to see the look on Dubya’s face as he is reading a story with a group of grade school kids and is informed that a plane has been flown into the World Trade Center. Does he jump up and excuse himself to the kids, explaining that he’d love to finish the story but important Presidential duties called? Nope. Not our Dubya. He sat there, shrub-like (pun intended) as though he were planted, for 7 minutes. He didn’t look very full of himself then. Doe-in-the-headlights does not begin to describe the look on his face.

Almost I felt sorry for him. Almost. Then I remembered that he wanted to be a war President. OK, Dubya, so don’t just sit there, lead.

I remember an joke I read right after the last election. The old farmer says that Dubya reminds him of a post turtle. “What’s a post turtle?” asks the author. “Did you ever drive down a country road and come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top?” replied the old farmer. “You know he didn’t get there by himself, he doesn’t belong there, he can’t get anything done while he’s up there, and you just want to help the poor thing down. That’s a post turtle.”