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I also thought that GWB looked very tired.

I didn't think he looked tired. I thought he looked like a fully engaged man who was totally p*ss*d *ff at the deracinated spin coming at him from his opponent, and was just trying to keep it under control.

Mainly I thought he looked disgusted at the cr*p extruding from Kerry's horse face. [BTW, Kerry is (unfortunately) MY senator... and he's thoroughly disgusted me for some 19 years by now, and has given me no reason to change my opinion of him in recent times.] FWIW.

God bless the president: I thought he performed magnificently tonight. Although I do have to say, I checked out Fox for post-debate commentary, and left in disgust after 5 minutes. I couldn't figure out if they had watched the same debate I did.

My main takeaway from the debate tonight is this: Kerry is obviously totally "logic-challenged." Do the math with me here:

(1) He berates President Bush for not adopting a more multilateral strategy in the prosecution of the war in Iraq. Kerry says Bush didn't go to the UN; but clearly Bush in fact went to the UN, and even got a UN sanction (#17) out of the Security Council that, if interpreted according to the plain language and meaning of the UN Charter of 1948, gave the United States a "go-card" in the matter of confronting Sadaam Hussein.

But then, having said the multilateral route is ever the way to go in international "diplomacy" (such that no war need ever be fought ever again anywhere for any reason), he berates President Bush for not turning the multilateral engagement of North Korea into a US - Pyongyang "dialog" -- which would instantly gut the multilateral effort, and probably insult our colleagues China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia into the bargain. (Try getting a party together including those governments anytime soon, for any reason, if Kerry got his way in this.)

Then Kerry waxes eloquent on the joys of cultivating foreign leaders in multilateral cooperation in order to solve world problems. Then what does he do next? He trashes Ayad Allawi -- and Boris Putin!!!

Personally, I think Allawi is evidently a stand-up guy with a constructive vision for his country, who puts his life on the line every day. Not so with Putin, who is, after all, ex-KGB and probably of authoritarian proclivities to boot. Still, Putin is a pretty solid ally in the war on Islamofascism. Kerry absolutely burned Putin tonight.

Next world crisis comes along, and (God forbid!!!) Kerry is president, does anybody reasonably believe that Boris Putin would be warm to sign up to help us, after the public thrashing he got from Kerry tonight?

Like I said, Kerry is totally "logic challenged." I wouldn't trust him to baby-sit my pet cats, let alone to serve as President of the United States, head of state responsible for state diplomacy with other nations, and Commander in Chief of U.S. military forces.

FWIW.

On the arguments themselves, obviously I agree with you, that Kerry is an empty cup.

One key disagreement was North Korea. Kerry tried to make it seem that NK developed the bomb based on Bush's missteps, when it was quite the reverse. They began violating the agreement they had with Carter and Clinton from the first moment. The cameras the IAEA set up didn't mean anything, since NK merely moved their weapons work to another location. They took our money, took our free fuel oil, we set about to build them a nuclear power plant for free, while they continued working on weapons research.

Bush caught them, and ended the charade. We know that, but Bush failed to say any of that last night.

The second point is that NK is essentially a Chinese protectorate. There is no point in arguing with a sock puppet. Obviously, Bush can't say that, and he didn't. He did say that you have to include China in the talks, and he did repeat it several times, but I don't know if the "undecideds" will grasp why.

Kerry brought up Iran, and again Bush failed to really deal with the question. Of course, there is little he can say publicly. Kerry talked about French and German diplomacy, but that diplomacy is reminiscent of the situation in Iraq before the war, where diplomacy provided cover for business as usual. France and Germany have positioned themselves as Iran's ally against the US. They are not going to apply much pressure against Iran's nuclear program.

And if a military strike is needed to close it down, obviously they will not be on board for that.

And just as obviously, Bush can't say any of that. He could have talked more about the present struggle against the ayatollahs there, he could have talked about Iran's sheltering of terrorists, and the chess game that has placed us on three sides of Iran, but he didn't and maybe he couldn't. So it looked like Kerry carried the day on that argument if you don't know anything about what is happening there.

He did take Kerry to task for insulting our allies, but Kerry continues to get away with implying that we don't have any. The fact is there are 30 or 40 countries there with us, almost everyone is there. The only one who isn't there is France. So when Kerry claims that there is no alliance, all he really means is that France isn't on board. His answer is to buy their approval by returning to them their prewar oil concessions. The Democrats have repeatedly accused Bush of fighting a war for oil, but it is Kerry who wants to parcel out Iraqi oil. Bush has very carefully avoided committing Iraqi oil revenues and oil concessions in any way. Kerry's position, then, on Iraq's oil is supremely hypocritical, but was left unchallenged.

And, finally, Kerry and the Democrat's claim that WMD's were the reason for the war, the claims that there is no connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda, these claims continue to go unanswered. They get covered by the general pronouncement that the world is better off without Saddam, but the specifics go unchallenged. We have traced the connections here but the president's proxies continue to avoid the subject, and that leaves the president very vulnerable in any debate on Iraq.