Best Debate moments

The debate transcript reads much better for Bush than it sounded live. Here are some highlights. There's more, read the whole thing. I'm sure some of my excerpt selections are out of context, but I tried to keep it in context, but at the same time highlight some of the best moments. Some of my comments are scattered in [red].



LEHRER: Colossal misjudgments. What colossal misjudgments, in your opinion, has President Bush made in these areas?"



KERRY: "Well, where do you want me to begin?" [nice attitude, Senator]



On Homeland Security



KERRY: The president hasn't put one nickel, not one nickel into the effort to fix some of our tunnels and bridges and most exposed subway systems. That's why they had to close down the subway in New York when the Republican Convention was there. We hadn't done the work that ought to be done.



BUSH: We spent $3.1 billion for fire and police, $3.1 billion. We're doing our duty to provide the funding. But the best way to protect this homeland is to stay on the offense. You know, we have to be right 100 percent of the time. And the enemy only has to be right once to hurt us.



On Iraq



LEHRER: All right, new question. Two minutes, Senator Kerry. Speaking of Vietnam, you spoke to Congress in 1971, after you came back from Vietnam, and you said, quote, How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? Are Americans now dying in Iraq for a mistake? [good one, Jim]



KERRY: No, and they don't have to, providing we have the leadership that we put -- that I'm offering.



I believe that we have to win this. The president and I have always agreed on that. And from the beginning, I did vote to give the authority, because I thought Saddam Hussein was a threat, and I did accept that intelligence.



But I also laid out a very strict series of things we needed to do in order to proceed from a position of strength. Then the president, in fact, promised them. He went to Cincinnati and he gave a speech in which he said, We will plan carefully. We will proceed cautiously. We will not make war inevitable. We will go with our allies.



He didn't do any of those things. They didn't do the planning. They left the planning of the State Department in the State Department desks. They avoided even the advice of their own general. General Shinsheki, the Army chief of staff, said you're going to need several hundred thousand troops. Instead of listening to him, they retired him. [a total canard. read Robert Novak's column]



The terrorism czar, who has worked for every president since Ronald Reagan, said, Invading Iraq in response to 9/11 would be like Franklin Roosevelt invading Mexico in response to Pearl Harbor. That's what we have here.



And what we need now is a president who understands how to bring these other countries together to recognize their stakes in this. They do have stakes in it. They've always had stakes in it.



The Arab countries have a stake in not having a civil war. The European countries have a stake in not having total disorder on their doorstep. [God forbid they do anything about it]



But this president hasn't even held the kind of statesman-like summits that pull people together and get them to invest in those states. In fact, he's done the opposite. He pushed them away.



When the Secretary General Kofi Annan offered the United Nations, he said, No, no, we'll go do this alone. [I seriously doubt that Annan offered the U.N. w/o any strings attached. As I recall, he wanted the U.N. to take over running the day-to-day operations, while we fit the bill.]



To save for Halliburton the spoils of the war, they actually issued a memorandum from the Defense Department saying, If you weren't with us in the war, don't bother applying for any construction. [Halliburton is actually losing money in Iraq. But it doesn't matter. Kerry threw this low blow out to the michael morons]



That's not a way to invite people.



BUSH: That's totally absurd. Of course, the U.N. was invited in. And we support the U.N. efforts there. They pulled out after Sergio de Mello got killed. But they're now back in helping with elections. [Annan offered support, but they cut and run after one explosion. Yeah, we can count on them]



My opponent says we didn't have any allies in this war. What's he say to Tony Blair? What's he say to Alexander Kwasniewski of Poland? You can't expect to build an alliance when you denigrate the contributions of those who are serving side by side with American troops in Iraq. [AWESOME zinger!]



Plus, he says the cornerstone of his plan to succeed in Iraq is to call upon nations to serve. So what's the message going to be: "Please join us in Iraq. We're a grand diversion. Join us for a war that is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time?" [2 awesome zingers, back to back!]



I know how these people think. I deal with them all the time. I sit down with the world leaders frequently and talk to them on the phone frequently. They're not going to follow somebody who says, "This is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time."



On Allies



KERRY: And I believe that a fresh start, new credibility, a president who can understand what we have to do to reach out to the Muslim world to make it clear that this is not, you know -- Osama bin Laden uses the invasion of Iraq in order to go out to people and say that America has declared war on Islam. [Osama, builds day-care centers, you know]



We need to be smarter about now we wage a war on terror. We need to deny them the recruits. We need to deny them the safe havens. We need to rebuild our alliances.



I believe that Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy, and the others did that more effectively, and I'm going to try to follow in their footsteps. [Reagan and Kennedy also believed in cutting the top marginal income tax rates as a way to increase economic growth, something that Mr. Kerry chooses not to believe in]



LEHRER: Ninety seconds, Mr. President.



BUSH: My opponent [Ryan, Bush says it, too. But, then again, Kerry isn't president] just said something amazing. He said Osama bin Laden uses the invasion of Iraq as an excuse to spread hatred for America. Osama bin Laden isn't going to determine how we defend ourselves. [MONSTER BLOW TO KERRY!]



BUSH: Osama bin Laden doesn't get to decide. The American people decide. [game, set, match]



I decided the right action was in Iraq. My opponent calls it a mistake. It wasn't a mistake.



He said I misled on Iraq. I don't think he was misleading when he called Iraq a grave threat in the fall of 2002.



I don't think he was misleading when he said that it was right to disarm Iraq in the spring of 2003.



I don't think he misled you when he said that, you know, anyone who doubted whether the world was better off without Saddam Hussein in power didn't have the judgment to be president. I don't think he was misleading.



I think what is misleading is to say you can lead and succeed in Iraq if you keep changing your positions on this war. And he has. As the politics change, his positions change. And that's not how a commander in chief acts.



Let me finish.



The intelligence I looked at was the same intelligence my opponent looked at, the very same intelligence. And when I stood up there and spoke to the Congress, I was speaking off the same intelligence he looked at to make his decisions to support the authorization of force. [Probably one of Bush's best moments of the night]



On Preemptive strikes



LEHRER: New question. Two minutes, Senator Kerry.



What is your position on the whole concept of preemptive war?



KERRY: The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control.



No president, though all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.



But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.



Here we have our own secretary of state who has had to apologize to the world for the presentation he made to the United Nations.



KERRY: I mean, we can remember when President Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis sent his secretary of state to Paris to meet with DeGaulle. And in the middle of the discussion, to tell them about the missiles in Cuba, he said, "Here, let me show you the photos." And DeGaulle waved them off and said, "No, no, no, no. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me." [of course, it was the French president]



How many leaders in the world today would respond to us, as a result of what we've done, in that way? So what is at test here is the credibility of the United States of America and how we lead the world. And Iran and Iraq are now more dangerous -- Iran and North Korea are now more dangerous.



Now, whether preemption is ultimately what has to happen, I don't know yet. But I'll tell you this: As president, I'll never take my eye off that ball. I've been fighting for proliferation the entire time -- anti-proliferation the entire time I've been in the Congress. And we've watched this president actually turn away from some of the treaties that were on the table.



KERRY: You don't help yourself with other nations when you turn away from the global warming treaty, for instance, or when you refuse to deal at length with the United Nations.



You have to earn that respect. And I think we have a lot of earning back to do.



BUSH: Let me -- I'm not exactly sure what you mean, "passes the global test," you take preemptive action if you pass a global test.



My attitude is you take preemptive action in order to protect the American people, that you act in order to make this country secure. [score!]



[HUH?]



KERRY: I have no intention of wilting. I've never wilted in my life. And I've never wavered in my life.



I know exactly what we need to do in Iraq, and my position has been consistent: Saddam Hussein is a threat. He needed to be disarmed. We needed to go to the U.N. The president needed the authority to use force in order to be able to get him to do something, because he never did it without the threat of force. [was Kerry debating himself?]



KERRY: But we didn't need to rush to war without a plan to win the peace. [sigh]