Kerry needs to emphasize Bush's weakness on terror.

[Andromeda]

GEORGE BUSH'S GOVERNMENT IS WEAK ON TERROR

By Paul Krugman
THE NY TIMES , NEW YORK
Thursday, Mar 18, 2004,Page 9
`The administra-tion's actual record is one of indulgence toward regimes that are strongly implicated in terrorism, and of focusing on actual terrorist threats only when forced to by events.'

"My most immediate priority," Spain's new leader, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, declared on Monday, "will be to fight terror-ism." But he and the voters who gave his party a stunning upset victory last Sunday don't believe the war in Iraq is part of that fight. And the Spanish public was also outraged by what it perceived as Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar Aznar government's attempt to spin last week's terrorist attack for political purposes.

The Bush administration, which baffled the world when it used an attack by Islamic fundamentalists to justify the overthrow of a brutal but secular regime, and which has been utterly ruthless in its political exploitation of Sept. 11, must be very, very afraid.

Polls suggest that a reputation for being tough on terror is just about the only remaining political strength US President George W. Bush has. Yet this reputation is based on image, not reality. More....

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