George Will has questions for John Kerry. Here are a few of them:

Regarding military action, your platform says "we will never wait for a green light from abroad when our safety is at stake." But the platform's preceding paragraph denounces President Bush's "doctrine of unilateral preemption." If unilateralism is wrong, are you not committed to some sort of "green light from abroad"?

And

Your platform says: "A nuclear-armed Iran is an unacceptable risk." But Iran's radical Islamist regime is undeterred by diplomatic hand-wringing about its acquisition of nuclear weapons, which may be imminent. Is preemptive military action against Iran feasible, or are its nuclear facilities too dispersed and hardened? What would you do other than accept Iran as a nuclear power?

(Hell, I'd like to know what the current President would do.)

Your platform says, "The price of gas is at an all-time high." But it isn't as measured in constant (inflation-adjusted) dollars, or as a portion of Americans' purchasing power. Do you have some other way of justifying the platform's claim?

Uh. . .

Throwing caution to the wind, your platform insists that "small towns are at the heart of America." Your sense of America's small-town heartbeat comes from where -- Sun Valley?

Heh.

Why David Brooks is one of the most interesting conservative thinkers in America today.

What do you mean, I didn't get Great Hair my senior year?

What to make of this?

Terrorists updated their plans this year to attack financial institutions, prompting the federal government to raise the threat level, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said yesterday.

"This is actionable information," Mr. Ridge said during a press conference in New York with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. George E. Pataki, both Republicans.

Sure, the information (or at least most of it) is a couple years old. Then again, 9/11-type attacks don't come together overnight; they take years to conceive, plan, recruit, train, and execute. If we had known, even in August of 2001, what had been brewing in Afghanistan since 1998. . . on second thought, let's not pursue that train of thought. It's just too damn painful.

If the intel is good, maybe we'll prevent an awful attack. Or maybe not. Sometimes even "actionable" intelligence fails to lead to the right actions to prevent the attack. It's the nature of bureaucratic inertia. It's the nature of war. It's the nature of playing defense, of those times when the bad guys have the initiative.

And when it comes to terror attacks, the bad guys always have the initiative.

If the intel is bad, maybe we'll have scared people for no good reason. Or maybe not. Sometimes being scared is a good thing all by itself. A little fear can keep us aware, like the passengers on the shoe-bomber's flight. If 9/11 taught us anything, it's that there just might be good reason for a little fear, even if there isn't.

I don't find it remarkable that Howard Dean claims the new Threat Alert is "political." What I do find remarkable is, we're still in the opening phases of a global war, and most of our politics still centers on the economy.

Think about that.

Three years ago, foreigners carved a hole in the heart of New York City. They caused about a trillion dollars in damages – that's about ten percent of what we produce every year. They killed 3,000 people on American soil. They damaged the nerve center of our armed forces. They hurt us, and badly.

And yet.

People keep going to work in skyscrapers. People keep shopping. People keep buying imports. People keep exporting goods to other lands.

A hole was carved in our financial capital and not quite three years later, we're doing OK, considering. We were hurt, and badly. But we weren't crippled. We're still functioning – better, I could argue, than al Qaeda is today.

So then – What's It All Mean?

I don't know. It could mean that, the American people are still resilient as ever, and aren't about to let a bunch of barbarians slow us down much. It could also mean that we still aren't serious about prosecuting this war in a way which would cost us dearly, but cost our enemies even more dearly still.

Which is it? My best guess, judging by both our presidential candidates, is a combination of the two. We're one, perhaps two, horrible attacks away from finding out which direction, in the end, Americans will finally lean.

If we suffer that attack, we can retreat into our shell – and cease being a viable nation. Or – and I fear this almost as much – we'll commit some horrible act of retribution, for which we could never forgive ourselves.

Either way, let's pray it never comes.

You only think they're kidding.

Actually, a New Blog Showcase.

I was about to continue by saying, "we need more of these, to help us find all those great new blogs." And then I realized, that if we get too many more new blog showcases, they'll be as hard to keep track of as all those great new blogs.

Not much to say about Melissa's and my second anniversary, except that everything was perfect.

I got a map of Italy from 1863, she got a few pearls. Although I can't wear the old map, I still think I got the better end of the deal -- I've got a thing for old maps. Well, old maps and outspoken brunettes. Especially the brunettes.

If you live in Colorado Springs, visit Walter's Bistro at the new location. It's where Bell's Deli used to be. It might just be the best dining in town. Started off dinner with an appetizer called "Steak & Eggs." Usually, when I order that, I'm at Denny's after Last Call, and I have to use a lot of A-1 to make the meat edible.

Walter's version consists of a superb (by which I mean: "very fresh and extremely garlicky") steak tartare with a sunny-side-up quail's egg on top. Yum. Melissa started her meal with the lobster bisque. I don't usually care for lobster -- too sweet for my tastes -- but this stuff was so good, Melissa had to thwap me on the back of the hand twice for stealing from her bowl.

There was also wine and lamb and veal and three (yes, three) desserts.

Best of all, I got to spend 36 hours with my bride, uninterrupted.

And now we return you to the usual blogging.

Now there really is a Republican attack machine. . .

Well, a band of brothers who really, really hate one of the other brothers.

This is the coolest thing that I have ever seen.

Okay, it's the coolest thing I've seen in the last fifteen minutes. But still...

Taking some time off for our anniversary. See you Wednesday.

Neal Boortz opines,

Just a small wager: I'll collect from you on this on the morning of November 3rd. I'm betting that an impartial observer of the November 2nd election will be able to tell you who won our presidential election merely by watching the video -- no audio -- only the video of any of several Arabic television stations or news channels. Just watch the people in the streets of Tehran, Cairo or Damascus. If they're shouting, celebrating and shooting their AK-47s into the air, you'll know that Kerry won. If there are long faces in the capitols of the sponsors of terrorism, you can get ready for another four years of George W. Bush.

Heck, Neal, there's no need to go and find any Arabic stations. Just watch the networks. The look on Katie Couric's face when the 2000 election was called for Bush was worth the entire recount chaos that shortly followed.

Major New York Times story this morning about how the capture of a Pakistani "computer geek" led to Sunday's unusually precise terror threat warnings from Tom Ridge:

The figure, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, was described by a Pakistani intelligence official as a 25-year-old computer engineer, arrested July 13, who had used and helped to operate a secret Qaeda communications system where information was transferred via coded messages.

Is it a good thing that we (or the Pakistanis) have got a guy like this, to say nothing of the invaluable computer and communications records apparently captured with Khan? (KHAAAAAAN! Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Of course it is.

Was it a smart thing for somebody to tell the New York Times about it? That I'm not so sure about. On the one hand, Khan's compatriots almost certainly know that he's been captured by now, and may well have given up anything he had knowlege of or access to as a lost cause.

On the other hand, there's that little voice that says, "There's no need to brag, guys. Blabbing to the press is how you lost access to Osama's satellite phones, you know." We still don't know what we don't know, and analysis of the KHAAAAN! information will take a long time to complete. Better to call the reasons for the threat warnings "good intelligence," and leave it at that.

Of course, there are some collateral benefits from knowing the quality of the new threat intel so precisely. For one, Howard Dean looks like an utter fool today (not that this was a surprise to anybody outside the Bush-is-Hitler fever swamps):

"I am concerned that every time something happens that's not good for President Bush, he plays this trump card, which is terrorism," Howard Dean, a former rival of Mr. Kerry for the Democratic nomination, told Wolf Blitzer on CNN on Sunday.

"His whole campaign is based on the notion that 'I can keep you safe, therefore at times of difficulty for America stick with me,' and then out comes Tom Ridge," Mr. Dean, the former Vermont governor, added, referring to the homeland security secretary. "It's just impossible to know how much of this is real and how much of this is politics, and I suspect there's some of both in it."

Thank God a man so obsessed with his personal bigotries will never be Commander-In-Chief.

You might as well go apply for a job at Ben and Jerry's, Howard. Kerry won't be returning your calls after this idiocy. You've just condemned yourself to becoming the Pat Buchanan of the Democratic Party. And I have to say, it looks really good on you.