From: "Mark Hessey" 

"Monte Davis"  wrote >Golly,
Mark, it's odd that the Weekly Standard clipped the Kerry quote
>to leave out the sentence immediately before:

Well, I'm perfectly aware that various left or right sources will truncate
and ... quotes to suit and I was looking for the transcript from the debate
on the MSNBC (and NBC and other sites) and didn't find it. Still that
additional passage doesn't change Kerry's overall position (and my intent
is not to say that agreeing with his position is not your right).

>OK: got the point of the need for intelligence? The better it is, the
>less force you have to use.

See, you're looking at the intelligence required to capture EXISTING
terrorists, that does nothing/very little to prevent the ongoing growth of
the terrrorist idealogy.

>Bush & co. moved from a necessary war in Afghanistan that *did* have an
>impact on terrorists to an elective war against Iraq that didn't.

See, this is where we actually disagree - while I do feel the retaliation
against Afghanistan was required and effective, I believe the removal of
Saddam is worlds ahead of capturing bin Laden in terms of eliminating state
support/ignorance of terrorist operations in the long-term and further that
Iraq was the only logical place to take that next step and the sooner the
better.

I'm afraid we're not, neither of us, going to convince the other of the
best approach. I suppose that's why the 2-party system has thrived in the
US for as long as it has. Kerry or whomever, is going get about 40% of the
vote in the general election without breaking a sweat, so is Bush. It's
that other 20% that will determine whether Bush is reelected. If Kerry is
able to elucidate his position of law vs. war effectively, he may just pull
it out. Bush, though, will be strongly forwarding his positions and will be
every bit as effective. I strongly believe that we're much better off with
another 4 years of Bush, but it probably won't be an unmitigated disaster
if Kerry gets in.

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