"palaver from a cowboy" was by bon mot.

>>I have it on good authority that the first thing Kerry will do when he gets into office is have all the GPS satellites reprogrammed so that all missiles aimed at the USA will actually land somewhere in Canada.

Yeah, this is why a lot of people up here have doubts about participating in "the US missile defence strategy"

Nice input, bridgman.

pmbuko, I thought for sure that you could find some nice things to say about Kerry (other than his demeanor, tone and posture during the debates, and his new-found ability to appear "presidential").
I've tuned in to a lot of the opposition coverage and, substantively, it is all anti-Bush - not pro-Kerry. Whenever an analyst or regular joe is asked a probing question about Kerry it immediately turns into a slam on Bush. There must be something the guy has done that would uniquely qualify him for the highest office in the land, right?
Seriously, the guy must have something on his resume other than sitting in the Senate for 20 years.
Where's jorge016 with the official party line?

I'm just swooping in quickly to give an interesting link about that Duelfer report that was forwarded to me. It looks like the someone might be trying to give the overall perspective versus the "single frame" that they want us to swallow.

Big Will, Can't give you much party line. The only thing I see that uniquely qualifies Kerry is that the Democratic Party is so pathetic they couldn't come up with anyone else. Look at how hard Kerry tried to enlist John McCain as his running mate and then signs on a freshman Senator. It's not just a problem for the Dems on the national level. Here in Minnesota our version of the Dems (Democratic Farm Labor party) is in amazing disarray. They tend to nominate their candidates based on tenure not ideology or electability. But then what qualified Bush in 2000-weak Governor of Texas or lineage.

In reply to:

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There must be something the guy has done that would uniquely qualify him for the highest office in the land, right?

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If only you could hold the same mirror up before GWB. If anything, for those who support him today, President Bush is a shining example of past experience NOT limiting future performance.

I reckon it is a big jump from governor to President, even from governor of a big state like Texas. I've always heard that folks in Texas were pretty pleased with him as governor and that he did well at bringing the Democrats and Republicans together.
Regardless, being governor is better preparation for the Presidency than being a Senator. I heard someone on TV say that being a Senator is being only 1/100th of half a decision. Being governor forces the candidate to make tough, visible decisions.

How will history reflect on our modern Presidents, Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2? All came in with varying levels of experience/qualifications. Depending on what you use to determine a "successful" presidency-who among this group do you consider successful? What were the qualifications coming into office of that President(s) that you think history will reflect well on. I'm just curious, but do high qualifications coming into office highly correlate with a successful presidential term?

JFK, LBJ, Nixon were congressmen and senators; LBJ, Nixon, Ford and Bush I were vice presidents as well as congressmen: Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II were governors. I doesn’t seem to me that you can generalize about whether Senate or Governor’s experience is better. One job entails more executive experience the other more national and international. It seems to me to depend more on the man and the particular experience than one particular job over the other.

That link definitely deserves discussion. The big picture re Saddam is something that is NOT being discussed by the media. Here are the key findings of the report.

The findings definitely support the viewpoint of the articel linked by TurboDog. Saddam was not a direct threat at the time he was deposed, but he had many systems, illicit deals, and agreements in place to make it easy for him to resume development of WMDs once sactions were lifted.

With this perspective, it is even more clear the Saddam needed to be removed from power. But one important question to ask is this: Would we have known Saddam's intentions as clearly as this report suggests now without needing to invade and remove him from power first? In other words, did we know nothing of the findings in this report until Saddam was removed? The answer is clearly no. We knew Saddam was making deals on the side with countries were supposed to be imposing sanctions on him. We knew the Oil-For-Food program was being corrupted.

The question of whether the War, as fought, was a good idea or not comes down to a question of timing. I believe the details we now know -- chiefly the fact that Saddam had no WMDs at the time we invaded -- would have come to light long before sanctions fell and the building of new WMDs resumed.

But we have the luxury of hindsight now. Many people believed Saddam had WMDs, and that's why we went in (or so we were led to believe). We can only hope that things improve to the point where the whole conflict can be seen to have been worth it.