A change in horses might be a disaster?

Why?

What has George W. Bush done that leads you to believe he's competent? He took us to war on faulty intelligence, wan't prepared for the aftermath in Iraq, and generally has handled the entire situation ham-handedly. Meanwhile, Afghanistan still isn't stable enough to hold elections, mainly because about 80% of the country is warlord-controlled.

What is Bush doing so magically? Because I just don't see it.

Jeff,

STEP AWAY FROM THE DAILY KOS!

He "led us" to war based on the same "faulty intelligence" that led Clinton to attack Iraq *and* call for regime change, *and* led the liberal media itself it conclude, in 1999, that there was a link between Iraq and Al Quaeda.

The Aftermath in Iraq? A country where 70% is as peaceful as New York and 30% bedeviled by revanchists and foreign terrorists - like John Kerry would have been ready for that?

Afghanistan? Jeeez - two years after being dragged out of the 10th century (a century it had never left), they're not a fully-fledged democracy yet. And the blow-dry twins would do better precisely how?

There is no magic, Jeff. There is only the fact that only one candidate is serious about the war we're in. John Kerry has said nothing about how he'd deal with the war on terror - with good reason. He has nothing to say.

I've asked people, here and on the show (including nationwide, filling in for Hewitt) - WHAT, exactly, in specifics, is Kerry going to do to win this war?

No answer. Ever.

Go for it, Jeff. Give us specifics.

Let me answer that for you Mitch... They would have had military powers France and Germany help out, right after we replaced the funding they were receiving in the oil for food scandel. Gotta pay the bills, you know? The only other problem of course, is that France was never going to help anyway, they are not even allowing the NATO anti terrorism force to go to Afghanistan. But it sounds nice anyway, call him unilateralist, and there is the "new" policy the Dems are trumpeting.

Jeff, you do realize that Afghanistan is the most multilateral operation in history?

Anna: cite please.

Mitch: What John Kerry has said he will do to win the war on terror is up, in detail, at http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/homeland/plan.html--read it. It isn't bad. I particularly like this:

“When the threat of terrorism is increasing I’ll do more than simply issue an Orange Alert. As President, I’ll make sure that towns and cities don’t have to bear all the burden of increasing security – a price tag that can weigh in at several million dollars a day. I will create an ‘Orange Alert Fund’ that pays for police overtime and other security enhancements,”

Shocking, I know, actually funding the security necessary to defend our nation.

Look, John Kerry isn't going to unilaterally surender to al Qaeda. He isn't. And you know it. But he will approach the matter competently (come on, Mitch, the problems in Iraq you cite were predicted before the war. If you're going to occupy a country, you can't be surprised that it's hard. Bush was.) I say again: Bush has not been competent. Saying he's got a grand vision is swell. But until he's capable of actually achieving his vision, I'll take the guy who actually knows what he's doing.

Competency!?

He'll competently fight the WOT, even though he isn't really sure who the enemy is, or that there really is one?

The last guy to run on competency got his ass handed to him 434 electoral votes to 104. Sure you want to run on that!?

Well, the link is down.

Using hindsight does not make one more competent. Neither is voting for a war that you oppose every step of the way, and then voting against funding for Iraq and Afghanistan. At least Dean was consistent, Kerry tries to have it every which way leaving me to believe little of what he says.

I remember reading what Anna mentions: that there are more nations involved in Afghanistan than in any previous multinational military operation in history, and that the other nations have a bigger share of the effort than in any other such operation ever. I'll see if I can find it too.

As to Kerry's defense/WOT statement - I'll be fisking that, sometime later this week or weekend.

"(come on, Mitch, the problems in Iraq you cite were predicted before the war. If you're going to occupy a country, you can't be surprised that it's hard. Bush was.) "

Was he? I seem to remember him saying something about this war being long and difficult and requiring sacrifices, and that there would be victories and setbacks along the way.

I seem to remember, however, that one week into the invasion of Iraq, when our victorious armies paused in their advance to rest and secure supply lines and reconnoiter, all the foolish talking heads screaming "Quagmire! It's too hard!"

We who support the president and his decision to take our nation to war against Saddam Hussein understand and understood that it would be hard and that there would be setbacks. We're still ready with our shoulder to the wheel.

We aren't the ones whining about how hard it all is and can't we please turn it over to somebody else like the U.N. (who's forces, after all, would still be made up of US troops so what's the dif?).

Jeff says: "come on, Mitch, the problems in Iraq you cite were predicted before the war. .."

If I recall correctly, the problems in Iraq that were predicted correctly before the war were 'predicted correctly' due only to the vast number of predictions; some of them had to be right.
The really big, wishing-for-disaster predictions didn't happen. Remember the 'inflame the Arab street', the 'huge refugee problem', the 'regional war', the 'half-million dead', the 'breakup of Iraq', on and on.

Even if the problems were predicted before the war by critics, that does not mean that they had any idea what they were talking about. Anybody can be a critic.