Rich – I half-agree with Cohen. I don’t think we are safer today than we would have been if we hadn’t toppled Saddam. But we will be safer. I don’t think America was safer one month after FDR declared war on Japan and Germany, but everyone understood that it was something we had to do for the long-run safety of the country. I don’t understand why Bush can’t make that point. Indeed, it turns Kerry’s “values” argument on its head. Saddam was a long term strategic threat even if he wasn’t one in the short term. The window of opportunity for ever getting rid of the guy was closing and Bush took it. Bush was making the world safer for our kids even if he was making things a bit more dangerous right now. If I remove a beehive from my backyard before my daughter gets stung, I’m creating a more dangerous situation in the short term in order to create a much less dangeous one in the longterm. A Middle East without Saddam and with a stabilizing, democratizing, prospering Iraq is the best bet for the US in the longterm. Let Kerry defend being a short term thinker.