Catch Up: So, to comment on the events of the last few weeks:

The election has become absolutely insane.

Kerry, who has had about twenty positions on Iraq all through the election, has now landed firmly in the camp of those the myopic, "Bush can do no right," crowd, embracing the two simultaneous contradictory positions that:

a. Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism.
b. Bush is currently losing the war in Iraq to terrorists.

This would be like arguing Vietnam by saying, "There was no communist threat in Vietnam, and the communists whooped us anyways."

In order to make this position sound somewhat more logical, they usually qualify it like this:

a. Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th
b. Bush is currently losing the war in Iraq to freedom fighters.

As if this weren't a war on terrorism in general, and as if these freedom fighters were doing anything but fighting against freedom. Isn't freedom what we're trying to offer?

Of course, there's an even more zany alternate:

b. Instead of making Iraq safer, he's turned it into a haven for terrorists.

This one is hilarious, and my favorite of all the anti-Bush arguments. Why? Because it shows me that somebody on the other side has already realized the best argument for Bush, and tried to pre-empt it.

And what's that? That the war on terror is actually going really, really well, and things are going better in Iraq than we could have hoped.

What in the world am I talking about?

A large part of the reason why we're in Iraq is to draw out the terrorists. By giving them a battleground, we've effectively caused the terrorists to divert people, weapons (guns, explosives, etc.), money, and other resources into Iraq that otherwise would be used against civilians in Israel, Europe, and throughout the world.

It's working. As terrible a price as 1,000 deaths are, remember--fewer people died at Pearl Harbor than on September 11th, but over 400,000 Americans gave their lives to resolve that struggle, to bring peace to the lives of Americans and Europeans. Today, our struggle to bring peace to Americans and Middle Easterners is equally noble.

We are fighting an enemy that is genuinely evil. I was shocked by a quote from John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants, who organized the Moveon.org anti-Bush album "Future Soundtrack for America."

"This is a very different moment than a lot of others," he explains, "where moderate people, people with sensible, measured political opinions are more than a little outraged by what's happening. Everyone has to remember the events of the last election. Things have not gotten better since then; they've gotten worse. There's no reason that we cannot affect a basic change.

"It's just not that extreme. How frequently do people have to get beheaded?" he says, referring to recent kidnappings and killings by extremists in the Middle East. "I mean, I just can't take it. I cannot live in this world."

I don't know if I'm reading this right, but is Flansburgh really asserting that extremists beheading civilians is somehow Bush's fault?

Yes, that makes it a terrible world, but voting out Bush won't change that. The fact is that there are people like this in the world, who do things like this and think it is noble, and while they are usually left to fight among themselves, they've managed the resources to bring the fighting to us.

We were left with no choice but to take the battle to them, and to the regimes that support them, or face the constant threat of possible further terrorist acts.

Sorry. I didn't mean for this to become another diatribe on the war. I've stated and re-stated that.

Back to the election.

The same people who were willing to dismiss, at the drop of a hat, eyewitness accounts regarding Kerry's service in Vietnam, are now carefully and thoughtfully pondering the possibility that, perhaps, it could be, there is a slight chance that some memos CBS aired on TV could potentially be less than accurate. Maybe.

There's always the chance.

Oh, come on.

Actually, I think the best think for CBS to do in this situation is just come right out and say they're liberal. They should become the Fox News of the left. Dan Rather should stop making any pretense of objectivism. This would not only save their flagging ratings, it would get them tons and tons of free publicity.

Or, they should just cancel the news altogether, and show CSI reruns. My wife would love that.