I JUST GOT BACK FROM WATCHING THE DEBATE WITH JAMES FALLOWS, Deborah Fallows, Michael Lind, Peter Bergen, Jenny Buntman, Andrew Oros, Deborah Fallows, Ted Halstead and about 40 other people.

Josh Marshall has an interesting quick reaction to the debate, untainted by hearing the views of commentators. I just heard Sean Hannity say he had never seen Bush "more passionate, more articulate, more on top of his game." I can't listen to this -- and wonder if Hannity would clarify the criteria when he would say Bush was not at the top of his game.

But I have very complex things going on in my head about this race. I thought it was Bush's night to lose -- and I think he did lose it. But lots of others will see it differently.

But tomorrow morning, with a clear mind -- and with something more than instantaneous reactions -- I will post something worthy of the exchange between these two candidates tonight.

But let me just say that the depression I felt when I spoke to German Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger on the plane from New York tonight has evaporated.

I really think we have a race again.

More tomorrow morning.

-- Steve Clemons

THE PROJECTED ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTE HAS ACTUALLY NARROWED. I check out www.Electoral-Vote.com as often as possible as the proprietor of the site has excellent commentary on the latest polls as well as very informed commentary on the increasing unreliability of these polls.

Last time I checked, Bush had well more than 300 projected electoral votes -- but today, he's down to 280 according to this site. When you look at the state by state breakdown, there are a lot of states and electoral votes tied up in "barely Bush" states. A shift in these could make a huge difference for Kerry.

Of course, Kerry has a lot of "barely Kerry" states -- many more, in fact, than Bush -- and if he flubs the debate, Bush could zoom forward again.

I am just back to Washington, D.C. after several days in New York -- and flying back, I sat next to and talked the ear off German Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, a fascinating and capable diplomat who said that after the debates, he has to send a brief to the German Foreign Ministry by midnight or so (6 a.m. German time).

Like all of us here in the U.S., many in the world are going to be watching these debates and trying to assess if the winner on November 2nd will be clear after tonight's exchange.

More later....after I hear whether Kerry propose "Stock Options for Soldiers." I've had 300 plus emails that think it's a great idea..and about three against.

-- Steve Clemons

I HAVE A REAL PROBLEM WITH PEOPLE LIKE JAMES WOOLSEY who rake in the bucks from a war they helped promote while soldiers risk everything on behalf of their country.

I am working on a concept I am calling "Stock Options for Soldiers" in which patriotic corporations, particularly those whose stock keeps rising because of conflict, not only pay stock options to advisors like Richard Perle and James Woolsey but can contribute stock options to a pool divided and shared equally by all service men and women serving in combat.

At least, we'd be giving the people who have the most to lose some potential gain for their important sacrifice.

The American Prospect's Mark Goldberg writes a very enlightened piece,"Some Gratitude," that argues that the Bush administration has consistently opposed bipartisan efforts that would ensure that National Guard service members have health insurance.

According to Goldberg:

About 20% of all deactivated National Guardsmen and Women are uninsured. This is appalling anyway you look at it, but given the fact that the National Guard makes up more than 40% of our fighting force in Iraq and are deployed to a degree not seen since the Korean war, the least the Bush administration could do is let them buy into the military's low cost health care plan. But, alas, they will not. Though it would cost peanuts by the Pentagon's standards, the DoD has "other budgetary priorities."

With so much rampant war profiteering going on among defense intellectuals like Woolsey, it seems to me that in Thursday's foreign policy debate, Kerry should suggest something like "Stock Options for Soldiers" -- and health care too while we are at it.

And maybe a Harry Truman-like investigation of War Profiteering. Be imaginative, John Kerry.

-- Steve Clemons

IT HAS TAKEN A WHILE FOR JOHN KERRY TO ARTICULATE his strong opposition to the Iraq War, but he finally got there.

Tony Blair may be following his lead in an effort to win back the support of angry Labor Party members. From a Reuters report:

"The evidence about Saddam having actual biological and chemical weapons ... has turned out to be wrong," Blair told Labour's annual conference, his nearest yet to a "mea culpa."

"The problem is I can apologize for the information that turned out to be wrong but I can't, sincerely at least, apologize for removing Saddam," he said. "The world is a better place with Saddam in prison not in power."

Blair's not quite there yet....but getting closer. British elections will probably be in May 2005. Watch the evolution. . .

-- Steve Clemons

CHALMERS JOHNSON AND DANIEL ELLSBERG are roughly the same age of slightly more than 70 years. They both worked for America's military-industrial complex, Johnson as a CIA consultant and Ellsberg as a Marine and then an an intelligence analyst and strategist.

Ellsberg broke loose earlier than Johnson from his hawkishness and his belief in the mission and practice of American empire, and put his life and career in jeapordy by leaking secret files, known as the Pentagon Papers, from the RAND Corporation on the conduct of America's war with Vietnam.

Chalmers Johnson defected from his role as 'spear-carrier for American empire' in 1995 after the 1995 publication of the East Asia Strategy Report by the Pentagon's Office of International Security Affairs (known as the Nye Report, named after then DOD/ISA Director Joseph Nye). In this report, Johnson saw that America was committing itself to permanent global military engagement despite the fact that it's chief rival in global affairs, the Soviet Union, had collapsed.

Johnson's provocative Foreign Affairs article, "East Asian Security: The Pentagon's Ossified Strategy," argued that such places like Okinawa which then hosted more than 40 separate U.S. military installations on a small island were a crisis waiting to happen. He was prescient. In September of that year, a 12-year old girl was raped by three U.S. military servicemen which helped ignite the largest anti-American, anti-base protests in Japan in more than 40 years.

Chalmers Johnson, who was Chairman of UC Berkeley's Political Science Department during the Vietnam protests and who was not sympathetic with the students, followed this important essay with two best-selling treatments about the blindspots and hubris of American power in the world. The first was Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Power, whose publication preceded 9/11 by about 18 months but like the prescient Hart/Rudman Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, predicted some major shock or blowback to be hurled at America. The second was Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the Loss of the Republic which is still selling strong in bookstores around the world.

Chalmers Johnson and I have collaborated for a long time and have directed together, with his wife Sheila Johnson, the Japan Policy Research Institute -- and for more than a decade have wrestled with the issue of how to get American foreign policy back on track. Chalmers and Sheila are the conveners and cultivators of an alternative assortment of smart thinkers, writers and artists who make a modern foreign policy Bloomsbury Group -- but instead of Bloomsbury Square, the exchanges and debates occur at their home in Cardiff, California -- near San Diego.

As self indulgent as this may sound, visiting them each time I have has the feel of historical importance. I've engaged in discussions with the late Francis Crick in La Jolla -- because of my connections to the Johnsons; had dinner with the late Haru Matsukata Reischauer at their home; and not too long ago enjoyed a provocative evening and dinner with Daniel Ellsberg.

Ellsberg brought with him the very last RAND report he produced in early 1971 -- which was never published by RAND -- which analyzed Johnson's Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China.

These two now aged cold warriors had never met before that night and had provoked each other over the years -- and both felt that America was on a course that would harm liberal democracy and replace the republic with an empire committed to permanent global military engagement that would always seek new rationales to justify the high costs of military expenditures and deployments.

What struck me -- and I mean this as no slight to Ellsberg -- is that he seemed to be tired of the battle. He had just published an important and interesting new book, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers but was not seemingly ready to become a high octane policy activist engaged in similar battles raging today about the proper conduct of American foreign and defense policy abroad, but particulary in Iraq.

Johnson, on the other hand, seemed practically teenager like in his youthful zeal to take on the Bush administration and any one else, Democrat or Republican (or Independent), who shared Bush's illusion of American post-Cold War righteousness in global affairs.

My single contribution at that dinner was to suggest to Ellsberg, who had clearly suffered personally on many fronts because of the stigma associated with leaking national security documents, that he write an article that argued that America should treat as a hero any of the 300 or so personnel in government with a foot-thick set of super secret files that would expose some of the contradictions, fabrications, and lies about the so-called many fronted war on terror. I believed that Ellsberg could help inspire patriotic selflessness in some bureaucrat or analyst who would put career and reputation on the line to fill in the many blanks we have about our engagement in Iraq and about the entire buildup to the war, before and after 9/11.

He liked the idea, and about 18 months ago, I contacted the Washington Post and New York Times who both seemed cautiously interested. But the article never appeared -- mostly because Dan Ellsberg didn't get to writing the piece for some time. I know that the Washington Post Outlook Section did try and commission a piece.

But today, that article -- similar to the one that we discussed at the home of Chalmers and Sheila Johnson -- appears in the New York Times.

I thought that Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror was the best America could hope for in terms of a guy who let average Americans have a peek inside the realities of Oval Office politics. Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty also helped spill some of the insider thinking and behavior of the administration.

But we still haven't had the equivalent of the Pentagon Papers.

I think it is time that we join Ellsberg's call for a national hero -- as yet unknown in the bowels of this administration -- to come forward with the truth of what has been going on.

Someone leaked Valerie Plame's identity over phone lines of the most intelligence-watched place on the face of the Earth, the White House, and has not yet had to pay a price.

Think about leaking something that would actually help get America back on track -- rather than to harm her interests as the divulgence of a covert agent's identity did.

Here is part of the note in today's article written almost as a letter of support to next Bush Administration "Ellsberg of this era":

Technology may make it easier to tell your story, but the decision to do so will be no less difficult. The personal risks of making disclosures embarrassing to your superiors are real. If you are identified as the source, your career will be over; friendships will be lost; you may even be prosecuted. But some 140,000 Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq. Our nation is in urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials.

I happen to be in New York again courtesy of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund at a conference organized by Leon Fuerth on the challenge of what he calls "Forward Engagement," or forecasting public policy challenges and choices. And one of the great problems of our world is the inability of complex systems, driven mostly by inertia and some sense that what they do tomorrow needs to look mostly like what they did yesterday, to adapt to new information or bugle calls to change course before a collision.

The fact is that American policy makers treat the Daniel Ellsberg's and Chalmers Johnson's of the country as oddities to be avoided -- stepped around -- when in fact they see much more than most of those I know in Washington and have been willing to bet their lives and reputations on their views.

Regrettably, such inspired risk-taking exists only in the smallest nooks and crannies of our government and usually earns expulsion rather than reward.

-- Steve Clemons

MICHAEL FROOMKIN HAS HELPED GET THE GUTS OF THE RNC MAILER posted. I couldn't get the images to load, probably because I left spaces in the file names -- according to Froomkin. Many thanks, Michael.

So, all in one place, here are the various parts of the mailer:

RNC Mailer Cover and Back Graphics

RNC Mailer Inside Section

RNC Mailer Voter Registration Card

-- Steve Clemons

THE BUZZ CONTINUES ABOUT THE RNC MAILER saying that the Dems would ban the Bible and that Arkansas and West Virginia would turn into bastions of sinful homosexual marriage -- or "selfish hedonism" as Alan Keyes called it when referring to Mary Cheney.

John Edwards spoke about the issue at a church yesterday -- something Amy Sullivan and Melissa Deckman write about a lot -- that is Dems need to get religion in their political tool box. I don't agree but appreciate the view. I have very mixed feelings about church pulpits being used for politicking. Bill Clinton engaged in bible-belting at the pulpit frequently -- even when he endorsed Gray Davis against Arnold Schwarzenegger. The argument goes that since the Republicans are doing it -- the Democrats need to, and vice versa.

The perverse side of this trend was the RNC attempting to acquire church directories so that it could mail literature and voter registration materials to church-goers, who it seem are overwhelmingly (but not all!) Republican.

I wrote about the legality of this last month, and it seems that the law smiles on those parishioners who volunteer such directories but frowns on those ministers and priests, or other official church representatives, who formally provide the directories -- even for voter registration efforts.

In the flood of commentary that followed my posting the RNC mailer, I heard from hundreds of people, including some who also received the flier.

One friend of mine who lives in Arkansas and teaches at Hendrix College found a thread between some of those who received the flier -- they belonged to the same church. One of these people apparently had never been involved with any political party or issues and was very surprised to get such mail.

I got on the phone and email to others who had told me that they had received the mailer in West Virginia and in Arkansas -- and asked if they belonged to churches, which they did -- and asked if they could call around to others at their church. Bingo. In three cases of follow up calls, I found that there were in fact church linkages between some recipients of these disgusting mailers.

This puts that issue of the RNC efforts to get the parish directories in a new light, or better yet, new darkness. This seems pretty high profile and risky for the RNC.

Despite the RNC's admitting ownership of this now, how was it that Ed Gillespie didn't know?

Ed, in church -- most of them anyway -- one of the most important lessons is not to lie.

Are you lying, Ed?

-- Steve Clemons

PHILADELPHIA HAS JUST ANNOUNCED FULL ACCESS, FREE WIFI in a two-year project covering 135 square miles of the city.

Connectivity is one of my pet issues -- broadband deployment, the rural/urban digital divide, the information commons, all of that.

As the U.S. government and Federal Communications Commission screw over AT&T, Sprint, and other long distance carriers who were providing innovative bundled communications services that depended on wholesale access to regional Bells' infrastructure, I think that the rate of investment in broadband will slow and prices for many types of access will rise, in contrast to the fall in prices we've seen over the last decade.

Michael Powell, a very dull bulb as Chairman of the FCC (and Colin Powell's son), seems intent on getting on some boards of directors of lucrative monopolies like Verizon, SBC, and Bell South in the future.

I will be writing more on this new age of corporate monopolies that is emerging as the government undoes the 1996 Telecommunications Act -- but in the meantime, I want to commend the City of Philadelphia for making it easier for its blogging moms, data dads, kids, and other citizens like me to get on line easily. I do not live in Philadelphia -- but from here on out I plan to visit frequently.

What is it with this Seattle city official who isn't sure that the tax dollars are worth it? (see New York Times article) And he can justify all of Seattle's tax revenue financed sports stadiums? Seattle may be losing some of its edge.

-- Steve Clemons

ALTHOUGH CBS SEEMS SCARED TO RILE THE WHITE HOUSE after the Killian memos fiasco and has subsequently decided to delay a much more important story on the potential perpetrators of the Niger uranium documents, they did use the RNC anti-gay mailer posted by The Washington Note as their 3rd story on CBS News Friday night.

Hundreds of sites have linked to my post of the RNC mailer -- but some skeptics wondered whether the Democrats actually produced these fliers to make the Republicans look bad. I have the inside of the flier and the voter registration information for any who would like them. I'm trying to post them but am having difficulty getting the files to load. Send an email to steve@thewashingtonnote.com, and I'll just email any interested parties the other parts of the RNC mailer.

After my post, which other bloggers like Andrew Sullivan, John Aravosis, Matthew Yglesias, and many others posted, CBS News ran a story, followed by a front page story by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Now the RNC mailer issue in Arkansas (as well as West Virginia, which was first noted by the Associated Press) is being reported throughout the major media and blog world.

After all the clamor, the RNC finally admitted that it had indeed sent the mailer.

I have been deluged by calls and emails since I posted this RNC mailer -- thanks to a loyal reader of The Washington Note who sent it to me. And I was hoping to keep this issue going -- but the classic media world took hold of it pretty quickly, which I had hoped it would do.

I don't hold any grudges against CBS News or the Arkansas Democrat Gazette for using the images I posted without attribution -- which they both did -- but I do want to highlight that these two outlets and many of the other news outlets that covered this homophobic electionerring strategy in Arkansas got into this because of the readers and writers of blogs.

In Chicago at an American Political Science Association forum on the "Power and Politics of Blogs" organized by Henry Farrell and Daniel Drezner, the discussant -- Cass Sunstein -- asked whether there was empirical evidence on whether blogs influenced the major media. I think that there are many cases recently, including the flurry over the authenticity questions of the Killian memos.

But highlighting on blogs this disgusting RNC anti-gay, ban-the-bible mailer has clearly had an impact on major media reporting.

-- Steve Clemons

PERVEZ MUSHARRAF HAS MANAGED MUCH MORE CANDOR ABOUT IRAQ than anyone in the White House.

Check out this interview with Paula Zahn posted by John Aravosis.

The whole thing is worth reading, but here is just the first bit that says most of it:

ZAHN: Is the world a safer place because of the war in Iraq?

MUSHARRAF: Well, because it has aroused actions of the Muslims more. It's aroused certain sentiments of the Muslim world, and then the responses, the latest phenomena of explosives, more frequent for bombs and suicide bombings. This phenomenon is extremely dangerous.

-- Steve Clemons

GEORGE W. BUSH, AYAD ALLAWI, AND DON RUMSFELD are committed to elections in January in Iraq no matter how messy.

This New York Times piece today by my friend and colleague Noah Feldman argues that the mania over having the elections no matter how chaotic the environment is wrong-headed.

Jumping to Afghanistan, Mark Goldberg raises good points about paltry election monitoring in the upcoming elections that I haven't read anywhere else -- something that may be relevant in the Iraq elections as well.

Goldberg's piece will appear in the forthcoming October issue of American Prospect -- and I reprint in full here (with permission) as there is not yet a link to the article.

Minimal Monitors

As Andrew Wilder, head of the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit, a Kabul-based nongovernmental organization, told Agence France Presse in September, "If it is too dangerous for monitors to monitor, isn't it too dangerous for Afghans to vote?"
--Mark Goldberg, American Prospect, October 2004

Anyone know about the election monitoring plan in Iraq?

-- Steve Clemons

FROM FOUR UNTIL FIVE P.M. TODAY EASTERN TIME, I will be on the Ben Merens Show on Wisconsin Public Radio that covers about five states in the region.

WPR is launching a new series of shows called "Just the Facts," in which they try to talk policy reality rather than policy spin. I'm going to do my best with this "no-spin rule" over the next hour.

The primary topic will be Bush's and Kerry's respective approaches to foreign policy, anti-terrorism, and any topics raised by callers.

To join Ben's program live, call toll-free 1-800-486-8655 or 227-2050 if you're in the Milwaukee area.

The show is audiocast over the web if you go to WPR's site.

-- Steve Clemons

A LOYAL READER OF THE WASHINGTON NOTE HAS EMAILED ME a copy of the controversial RNC mailer that Associated Press reported had been mailed out in West Virginia. Talking Points Memo had a good post on this on the 17th of September.

The version I have posted was mailed out in Arkansas -- so this template, which Ed Gillespie said he knew nothing about, is being used in multiple states.

The front of the mailer has a picture of the bible with the letters 'BANNED' on top with the letters 'ALLOWED' over two attractive men looking at each other and holding hands -- a very nice picture by the way.

The scare line is: "This will be Arkansas. . .if you don't vote."

Here is the mailing.

This is the kind of right wing thing that has made centrists like myself look like lefists.

-- Steve Clemons

FINALLY. THREE OF TOM DELAY'S AIDES HAVE BEEN INDICTED in the fundraising probe related to the mid-term redistricting in Texas.

Josh Marshall probably wrote more on this story -- the legislators on the lam and Tom DeLay's shady deals -- than anyone. Just do a text search on his site to remind yourself of the details.

I don't see how Tom DeLay could not be next in the indictment list. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

With DeLay's inevitable fall, Congress may wake up to its responsibilites as a check on executive power. Let's hope.

-- Steve Clemons

I LOVE READING THE WHITE HOUSE POOL REPORTS, which are an art unto themselves.

Wonkette posts these from time to time, so you can get a more regular diet of the creative commentary of presidential pool reporter drudgery from her.

While Fox News has been absolutely gleeful about Dan Rather eating crow on the questionable origins of the Killian memos and arguing that Rather didn't really want to confess on TV, but was forced to -- I'd love to see what they are going to say about Bush toasting the United Nations and Kofi Annan's leadership.

Here is today's White House pool report:

Sept. 21, 2004
Pool Report #6
United Nations lunch

"Mr. Secretary-General, with admiration for your leadership and with confidence in this organization," the president said, "I offer a toast to you and your service, and to the United Nations."

The full transcript is posted.

Bob Hillman
Dallas Morning News

Toasting Kofi? Maybe Bush is going to give up on the neocons after all, withdraw from Iraq, and become a genuine multilateral sort of guy next term.

-- Steve Clemons

THIS OBIT FOR JAMES BEASLEY RAN TODAY IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES.

It turns out that Woolsey was out marketing his services as an expert witness on the Saddam Hussein-al Qaeda connection and with Woolsey's help, Beasley won a $104 million suit on behalf of two families of men killed in the 9/11 attacks by al Qaeda.

The judgment has never been collected from either Saddam or bin Laden, but I wonder if Woolsey collected his fees for this case.

Here is the relevant text from the obituary:

Los Angeles Times -- PASSINGS
James Beasley, 78; Sued Bin Laden, Hussein on Behalf of 9/11 Victims

A federal judge agreed that Hussein's Iraq had provided "material support" to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, after Beasley presented testimony from former CIA director James Woolsey Jr. and a photograph by a satellite company showing an apparent terrorist training camp near Baghdad.

I knew Jim Woolsey had some financial conflicts of interest when he asserted the connection between Hussein and 9/11, but I didn't know that he made an industry this extensive out of it.

Wait, I take that back. . .I did.

-- Steve Clemons

NOW THAT THE BUSH-KERRY DEBATE SCHEDULE IS OUT, one of the irritating facts about these sessions is that they create false divides between policy challenges that need to be considered at a systemic level.

Jim Lehrer will moderate the foreign policy debate, and domestic policy will come as the last of the three scheduled exchanges. Are energy questions domestic or foreign policy? Do drugs and organized crime constitute a domestic or foreign policy challenge? Do the topics of alternative fuels and global warm remediation efforts fit on the domestic agenda or foreign policy agenda? And what about the jobs question we used to hear so much about but hardly seems part of political discourse right now.

I subscribe to Alan Tonelson's Globalization Factline -- and often get some very interesting factoids that are fun to probe and prod speakers with. The September 16th Factline fax reports:

JOBS OF THE FUTURE KEEP VANISHING

# of U.S. high tech jobs lost from end of last recession, November 2001 to April 2004: 206,300 jobs

I have been mired in some of these questions on trade adjustment, retraining, outsourcing, and the impact of productivity gains on the jobs base for quite a while and don't feel that there is a silver bullet policy fix that will solve America's job loss problem. What is clearly missing, however, is an honest discussion of these issues -- and the Bush team seems to be arguing that no strategy is the best strategy for this economy.

For a contrasting set of views from the U.S. Business and Industrial Council, where Alan Tonelson works, you can hear a roster of speakers at a Cato Institute/Economist forum who 'mostly' toe the manic neoliberal line.

This conference, titled "Trade and the Future of American Workers," takes place all day on 7 October and features Roger Ferguson, Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board; Council of Economic Advisors Chairman Greg Mankiw (remember his debate with Laura Tyson recently?); Economist Economics correspondent Zanny Minton Beddoes; Cato VP for Research (and major thorn in the side to those who worry about dumping in American markets) Brink Linsey, McKinsey Global Institute Director Diana Farrell (oversaw McKinsey's controversial outsourcing study), and the Washington Post's Sebastian Mallaby (Zanny's husband and an important writer whom I've discussed on The Washington Note before and who used to be at the Economist).

I like these folks and intend to take part in the conference, but I think that the audience will have to be the generator of alternative policy notions. Sebastian and Zanny, married but not always in agreement on policy, both think neoliberalism -- while preferable generally -- can be taken too far, or at least be applied poorly in terms of policy. When one current and former Economist magazine correspondent represents the left flank of opinion at a forum like this, well....

But I give credit to Tonelson as well as to the Cato Institute and the Economist for organizing a forum that has nothing to do with Bush's National Guard service, Kerry's war medals, or the CBS memos.

We need to be debating the important things. I'm trying and hope others will as well.

I like giving informal advice to the Kerry campaign through this blog. I know that some of them are reading it -- and occasionally sneer at stuff I suggest.

But, wouldn't it be cool if John Kerry showed up on the steps of Cato and gave his own recipe of policy proposals to seriously address the question of "Trade and the Future of American Workers"?

George Bush hasn't done this -- and Kerry might appeal to some of the 1.2% of the electorate committed to a libertarian presidential candidate out there who might be impressed with such a move. Yes, in this race -- those small slivers of voters really matter.

If you haven't read it yet, do read Clay Risen's "Tanked: How Bush Lost the Libertarians," which ran in The New Republic.

The article is great because it argues that the Cato Institute is no longer dependably committed to Bush, mostly because of the war and big government realities that Bush has brought to his tenure. The truth, however, is far more complex and interesting. Cato is divided between many on its economic team who are vigorous supporters of Bush and the Iraq War -- and those on the defense/security side who are classically libertarian and thus opposed to the muddled over-reach of this administration.

Anyway, John Kerry could have some fun with this if he has any time in his schedule on October 7th.

-- Steve Clemons

AMB. IVOR ROBERTS, BRITAIN'S AMBASSADOR TO ITALY, thought he was off the record when he uttered a controversial truth -- and described George Bush as "the best recruiting sergeant ever for al-Qaida".

One excerpt from the article in The Guardian:

According to one of those present, Sir Ivor had been taking part in a discussion on which candidate Europeans would back if they had a vote in the US election. The ambassador said they would vote for Mr Kerry but some people would want Mr Bush, not least al-Qaida.

"If anyone is ready to celebrate the eventual re-election of Bush, it's al-Qaida. Whereas it is clear that the Palestinians hope that a Kerry victory will unblock the situation," he said.

Sir Ivor has no doubt stirred up reactions that will feel like those