"Dan Luke" wrote in message
...
[...]
Sadly, Kerry seems to have no ideas that differ in any substantial way
from
the Bush administration's

Agreed...you'll note in my post that I place plenty of blame with US
citizens. Bush presided over the recent events, and indeed his
administration is mostly responsible for the egregious errors and
misinformation that resulted in our situation in Iraq. But in terms of the
overall future of this country, domestic policy issues such as the Patriot
Act and the Department of Homeland Security are at least as significant,
probably more so. And so far, those win high, bipartisan approval.

We're doing ourselves in, and it can't all be blamed on Bush. Nor is it
really all that obvious that Kerry would have handled things much
differently (in spite of what he says now).

That said, our best hope for reconciliation with the rest of the world, to
help us get ourselves out of the mess Bush got us into is to not reelect
him. I obviously can't say whether this blog represents the majority
opinion amongst our potential allies --
http://barlow.typepad.com/barlowfrie...ting_kerr.html -- but
I'd say there's an extremely high chance that it does. It certainly does a
fair job of reflecting my own views. My favorite quote (from a German
citizen): "We can forgive you for electing him once. As we ought to know,
any electorate can make a tragic mistake. But if you elect him twice, we
will start fearing you Americans as much as we currently fear your
government."

Anyway, we're just hours away from knowing how many more weeks or months it
will take before we know who's going to be our next President.

Pete