by James Glaser
October 1, 2004

George Bush and John Kerry both want to be the leader of the most powerful country in the world and because of that, you would think that these men would be good at explaining what they plan for the next four years, but neither of them could.

Think about this, these two guys are supposed to be the best we have and they sure didn't seem that way to me. I have to say John Kerry looked just a Presidential as George Bush, but George Bush didn't look that good.

I was hoping that these two guys would both sound smooth, like they knew what they were talking about and had a real command of the subject. Bush has been President for almost four years and Kerry has been a Senator for twenty. Neither man sounded like they were totally confident nor did they seem to have concise answers to questions in fact it seemed that many times they avoided answering what was asked.

After a couple of years in Iraq, I would have thought each man could have explained just how they were going to get our troops home and neither could. Bush talked about 100,000 trained Iraqi troops, but several Republican Senators have said that isn't true and really very few Iraqis are trained to take over from us.

John Kerry talks about having a summit with foreign nations to get more help, but what happens if they won't help, there goes his whole plan. Bush talked about how great things are in Afghanistan, but we still guard Hamid Karsai twenty four hours a day with our troops because we can't trust Afghan troops.

Kerry brought up the fact that the new head of Iraq talked about terrorists pouring into his country, but neither candidate talked about closing those borders. Kerry touched on the fact that we are building 14 military bases in Iraq for our troops and Bush never said a word, like that wasn't true. 14 bases? Maybe our troops will never leave and that is part of the plan neither man is telling us about.

I guess I thought one of these men, either Kerry or Bush would have sounded like somebody who was a real leader and neither of them did. If I was a Marine in Iraq, I would be worried big time. Bush talked about giving the troops all the equipment they need. That was just after Kerry talked about communities raising the money to buy body armor for their young people in the service. We don't have enough troops in Iraq and things are going bad over there, but all Bush could say, and he said it a lot of times, "It is hard work over there."

It is hard work and Americans are getting killed and maimed every day and we still do not have a plan to get our troops home. These guys scare me. Bush still has not been to even one military funeral and we still can't photograph the coffins coming home. Both of these guys say we have to stay there, but neither have a plan of action. These two men are not ready to lead America and they are not ready to bring our troops home or tell us what we have to do first to get them home. That has to scare the troops big time.