THE TENSION: Counterbalance for Thu 2 Nov.

"He was for the joke before he was against it."
The buzz inside the Beltway outside the mainstream:

Where's Nancy Pelosi?

James Taranto , writing at The Wall Street Journal, says Kerry's apology isn't really an apology at all. Here's a shorter summary of it:
1. What I said wasn't really what I said.
2. I'm sorry if you misinterpreted what I was saying by taking it at face value.
3. Republicans suck.
Why it is so hard just to say, "I'm sorry for what I said"? Watch Taranto in a WSJ video on John Kerry's meltdown

Even some in the typically liberal Brit press notice that Kerry is not as smart as he thinks:
The words were clumsy and, yes, an insult to American troops. I have no doubt that he didn't mean to say that US soldiers in Iraq are dumb cannon fodder but that's what came out. He was trying to say that Bush was stupid (though the Texan's grade-point average at Yale was higher than that of Kerry) – a jibe that plays well in Europe but not in much of Middle America.
It would have been a minor blip in the final week of the campaign if he had apologised immediately and unequivocally and got the hell off the airwaves.
I have sat in Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles with black sergeants from Alabama, marines from Mexico and good ol' boy snipers from Kentucky in places like Fallujah and Ramadi as they described their hopes with an affecting optimism that belied the mortal danger they were in. In many ways, they embody what is great about America.

The Heratige Foundation says liberals have the facts wrong when it comes to our troops. In 2002, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) suggested that poorer Americans and minorities are disproportionately represented in the armed forces. And just yesterday, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) claimed that those who don’t perform well in school “get stuck in Iraq.”

Rich Lowery, writing in the New York Post, notes what a pathetic spectacle John Kerry has become. Twenty-four hours after his instantly infamous "botched joke," he was back in Washington - pulled off the campaign trail as shrewd Democrats hoped he would (please, dear God) stop trying to explain himself.

Markos Moulitsas, the leader of the left-wing blogosphere from his perch at Daily Kos, pronounced himself much pleased: "Kerry responded perfectly." It was the blogosphere that encouraged Kerry to believe that what cost him the election in 2004 was that he hadn't denounced his detractors angrily enough.
In the final analysis, Lowery says, Democrats are afflicted with the Kerry curse: a stark reminder to the public of the Democrats real views.

Amendment 2 Hurts Girls

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, chief spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, on Thursday suggested there's a reason why Americans don't hear as much good news as bad news from Iraq, according to CNSNews.

Caldwell told Cybercast News Service, ""Every time we get ready to talk about a good-news story [about a specific area where U.S. troops are operating], we go through a deliberative process, asking ourselves, 'Are we putting the Iraqi citizens at risk?'
He said the U.S. doesn't want to give the enemy more targets. "We know that as soon as we announce [good news], the insurgents will immediately...target that, in order to discount it." He said the enemy is doing what it can to prove that Iraq is in turmoil and that security isn't good.

Aaron Klein, writing in WorldNetDaily, says terrorists have a message for American voters: Please vote Democrat. Withdrawal from Iraq would embolden jihadists to destroy Israel and America.

Everybody has an opinion about next Tuesday's midterm congressional election in the U.S. – including senior terrorist leaders interviewed by WND who say they hope Americans sweep the Democrats into power because of the party's position on withdrawing from Iraq, a move, as they see it, that ensures victory for the worldwide Islamic resistance.

"Of course Americans should vote Democrat," Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group and the infamous leader of the 2002 siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, told WND.
"This is why American Muslims will support the Democrats, because there is an atmosphere in America that encourages those who want to withdraw from Iraq. It is time that the American people support those who want to take them out of this Iraqi mud," said Jaara, speaking to WND from exile in Ireland, where he was sent as part of an internationally brokered deal that ended the church siege.
Terror leaders reject Nancy Pelosi's comments on Iraqi insurgency.

Many Democratic politicians and some from the Republican Party have stated a withdrawal from Iraq would end the insurgency there. In a recent interview with CBS's "60 Minutes," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, stated, "The jihadists (are) in Iraq. But that doesn't mean we stay there. They'll stay there as long as we're there."

Islamic Jihad's Saadi, laughing, stated, "There is no chance that the resistance will stop."
He said an American withdrawal from Iraq would "prove the resistance is the most important tool and that this tool works. The victory of the Iraqi revolution will mark an important step in the history of the region and in the attitude regarding the United States."
Jihad Jaara said an American withdrawal would "mark the beginning of the collapse of this tyrant empire (America)."
"Therefore, a victory in Iraq would be a greater defeat for America than in Vietnam."

This just in at midnight: William J. Broad, writing in The New York Times, reports last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

Broad says in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

The documents detail accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”

The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.