'The Wrong War in the Wrong Place'

This is a theme that has been repeated over and over on this blog. Mr. Kerry now has taken the offensive on this issue, and it needs to keep being hammered home.

Kerry accused President Bush on Monday of sending U.S. troops to the "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" and said he'd try to bring them all home in four years.

The Democrat set, for the first time, a tentative time frame for completing a withdrawal that Republican opponents say is too soon even to begin.

"We want those troops home, and my goal would be to try to get them home in my first term," Kerry said, speaking to a fellow Vietnam War veteran at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania who had asked about a timetable for withdrawal.

And Mr. Bush is playing into our national psyche: people want to believe him in a time of war:

When war psychology takes hold, the public believes, temporarily, in a "mythic reality" in which our nation is purely good, our enemies are purely evil, and anyone who isn't our ally is our enemy.

This state of mind works greatly to the benefit of those in power.

The point is that once war psychology takes hold, the public desperately wants to believe in its leadership, and ascribes heroic qualities to even the least deserving ruler.

Another president might have refrained from exploiting that surge of support for partisan gain; Mr. Bush didn't.

And his administration has sought to perpetuate the war psychology that makes such exploitation possible.

The president's war front continues to spout his simple-minded campaign theme

Bush rebuked (Kerry) for taking "yet another new position" on the war.

But who is it that is really continuously changing his mind on the war to cover his tail? It's a president who: (1) Told us we had to go to war and that the evidence was unquestionable, (2) Told us Saddam Hussein was tied to Al Qaeda and that he had large numbers of WMD available (3) Told us last week that the war on terror was unwinnable and then changed his mind, (4) Told us that there may have been some miscalculations but that he'd go to war in Iraq again.

This is a president who made a critical national decision on evidence he wanted to believe, and then afterwards had to contrive the reasons why. This is a president who, when he is away from his speechwriters admits that he doesn't have the answers for the war on terrorism and then, when the mistake is revealed, changes his mind.

No, this is the real King of Flip-Floppers. He's hoping that his war psychology will be just enough to get him reelected. He doesn't have anything else, period.