OK - an easy one to start you off:

"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."

WTF with the "global test"?

The Libya thing only works if you’re not aware that the US capitulated on one of the central deal breakers that had been holding up the agreement for the last five years which was the payment of reparations for Lockerbie before the formal lifting of sanctions would go forward. US negotiators reversed course on that issue and that is what got the deal done, not anything that happened in Iraq. For the last five years the position of the US was that we would not entertain lifting sanctions until Libya reparations for Lockerbie. That was Bush’s stance until early this year.

It does get complicated since the UN sanctions were “suspended” in 98 and then Clinton slowly reintroduced bi-lateral diplomatic relations. Fact is that Libya could have been brought back into the fold at any time since ’98. Bush was the one who took a much harder line then Clinton regarding the lifting of US sanctions, then after “mission accomplished” Bush softened in order to get the deal done and claim it was a result of US policy in Iraq.

Also, Moammar Qaddafi was under intense pressure from radicals in his own borders and was much more concerned about that then anything going on in Iraq, also the contract that Royal Dutch Shell made with Libya for natural gas is going to come in handy in the coming years as NG sources in North America become increasingly scarce.

Libya didn’t have much of a WMD program to give up. I realize there are many sources claiming that he was in danger of getting nukes but I have yet to see and real credible evidence that he posed any kind of a threat at all to actually being able to develop real capability. If you have some to share please do, but I think that the danger of WMD from Libya was not very realistic or we would have not been in negotiations with them since the early 90’s. American oil companies had been doing surveys there since ’99 after Libya's 1998 expulsion of the Abu Nidal terrorist group, which many thought was naive at the time. Bush did too, until he had to produce some tangible evidence that his Iraq policy was working.

Bottom line is that the notion that the deal in Libya was a direct result of a muscular policy in Iraq doesn’t pass the laugh test in my opinion. But it has already become an urban legend that will be difficult to counter in the popular imagination, particularly with those that are looking for something to hold up as a tangible positive result of the invasion of Iraq.

This does not mean that I think Kerry can do much better, but I have a pretty llow opinion of what Bush has done so that means that I would vote for just about any warm body who opposed him. I think we have two of the worse candidates running against each other that we have seen in my lifetime and it’s difficult for me to say anything all that positive about either one. The best you can do is to convince yourself that one is marginally better then the other. Again my opinion, YMMV.

kisses.

Maybe if I had medicated myself prior to the debates it woudld have been easier to watch the debates.