Sunday thoughts after a day sail

Since it’s Sunday evening and the Dolphins and Bucs are not engaged today I have some items to pass your way just for the debate value.

I'm not sure why it took so long for someone to find this, given that it's was the cornerstone of Kerry's campaign for president and a repeated debate point that Bush was unable to answer effectively at the time:

...in December 2001, when the Tora Bora operation was under way, Kerry endorsed Bush's tactics during an interview with CNN's Larry King.

Kerry said the Bush plan to get bin Laden "is having its impact, and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will."

Lest anyone mistake his endorsement as half-hearted, Kerry added:

"I think we have been doing this pretty effectively, and we should continue to do it that way."

The quotes, unearthed Saturday by New York Times columnist David Brooks, only add to Kerry's image as a political opportunist who tailors his rhetoric to fit the moment.

According to Kerry, says Brooks: "When we rely on allies everywhere else around the world, that's multilateral cooperation, but when Bush does it in Afghanistan, it's 'outsourcing.' In Iraq, Kerry supports using local troops to chase insurgents, but in Afghanistan he is in post hoc opposition."

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS:

U.S. employers probably added 175,000 workers to payrolls in October, the most in five months, while the unemployment rate held at a three-year low of 5.4 percent, the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists’ shows. . . .

Manufacturing, responding to increased third-quarter consumer demand and business spending on equipment, probably expanded in October, a report tomorrow is forecast to show. The Institute of Supply Management's gauge of factory activity is forecast to hold at 58.5 in October. Readings above 50 signal expansion and the index has shown growth since May 2003.

I'm guessing this report won't get much attention.

And from Charles Krauthammer in today’s WaPo:

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER WRITES on "Kerry's Afghan Amnesia:"

Within days of Sept. 11, the clueless airhead president that inhabits Michael Moore's films and Tina Brown's dinner parties had done this: forced Pakistan into alliance with us, isolated the Taliban, secured military cooperation from Afghanistan's northern neighbors, and authorized a radical war plan involving just a handful of Americans on the ground, using high technology and local militias to utterly rout the Taliban.

President Bush put in place a military campaign that did in two months what everyone had said was impossible: defeat an entrenched, fanatical, ruthless regime in a territory that had forced the great British and Soviet empires into ignominious retreat. Bush followed that by creating in less than three years a fledgling pro-American democracy in a land that had no history of democratic culture and was just emerging from 25 years of civil war.

This is all barely remembered and barely noted. Most amazing of all, John Kerry has managed to transform our Afghan venture into a failure -- a botched operation in which Bush let Osama bin Laden get away because he "outsourced" bin Laden's capture to "warlords" in the battle of Tora Bora.

Outsourced? The entire Afghan war was outsourced. How does Kerry think we won it? How did Mazar-e Sharif, Kabul and Kandahar fall? Stormed by thousands of American GIs? They fell to the "warlords" we had enlisted, supported and directed. It was their militias that overran the Taliban.

"Outsourcing" is a demagogue's way of saying "using allies." (Isn't Kerry's Iraq solution to "outsource" the problem to the "allies" and the United Nations?) . . . .

Once again, the senator's position has evolved, to borrow the New York Times' delicate term for Kerry's many about-faces.

This election comes down to a choice between one man's evolution and the other man's resolution. With his endlessly repeated Tora Bora charges, Kerry has made Afghanistan a major campaign issue. So be it. Whom do you want as president? The man who conceived the Afghan campaign, carried it through without flinching when it was being called a "quagmire" during its second week and has seen it through to Afghanistan's transition to democracy? Or the retroactive genius, who always knows what needs to be done after it has already happened -- who would have done "everything" differently in Iraq, yet in Afghanistan would have replicated Bush's every correct, courageous, radical and risky decision -- except one. Which, of course, he would have done differently. He says. Now.

Ouch.

And finally another gem worth mining on a Sunday:

From George Will:

Reasonable people can question the feasibility of Bush's nation-building and democracy-spreading ambitions. But, having taken up that burden, America cannot prudently, or decently, put it down. The question is: Which candidate will most tenaciously and single-mindedly pursue victory? The answer is: Not John Kerry, who is multiple-minded about most matters.

Tuesday's winner will not start from scratch but from where we are now, standing with the women of Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Back in Washington recently, Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, said those women were warned that Taliban remnants would attack polling places during the Oct. 9 elections. So the women performed the ritual bathing and said the prayers of those facing death. Then, rising at 3 a.m., they trekked an hour to wait in line for the polls to open at 7 a.m. In the province of Kunar an explosion 100 meters from a long line of waiting voters did not cause anyone to leave the line.

Which candidate can be trusted to keep faith with these people? Surely not the man whose party is increasingly influenced by its Michael Moore faction.

Cheers:

JDD