ON NOVEMBER 3, we may look back at October 7 as a very good day–even a turning point–for the Bush campaign. This was the day that news reports, one after another, reminded us that we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Most of the accounts I saw included side-by-side comparisons of language from the Duelfer report and prewar claims made by top Bush administration officials. And nowhere did I see even a mention that John Kerry, John Edwards, and even French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin talked about Iraq’s WMD with much the same certitude as Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney and even Donald Rumsfeld. Daily reporters aren’t good at context.
How, then, was this a good day for Bush? Two reasons. First, John Kerry made the dumbest comment of the campaign so far. Second, the Duelfer report reveals Kerry’s would-be “allies” as the true coalition of the “coerced and the bribed.”
