A NATO-led peacekeeping force operates in the capital, Kabul, but has not yet been expanded throughout the country, where warlords hold sway and Taliban and al-Qaida militants launch frequent attacks. - AP, November 18th, 2003.

This is abominable. In the upcoming campaign, you're going to hear Bush make his case for reelection based on the war on terrorism.

Even as we have 150,000 people in Iraq, we can't spare the manpower to secure anywhere outside of Kabul, even though Al-Qaida is the direct threat to us, and the Taliban must be crushed to make ourselves safe. A prosperous, secured Afghanistan is the key to our safety. And heck, in Afghanistan, they actually viewed us as liberators.

So I have to ask the President, why are you endangering us all with your ignore-Afghanistan policy?

The most noteworthy part of the Newsweek November 6-7 poll on Bush's reelect numbers is down on the generic question, and the demographic responses to it.

Usually any time there's a poll that reflects party affiliation, or tests generic votes, there's a marked gender gap between the men and the women; the men skewing toward the Republican, while the women lean more Democratic. The gap tends to run around 10% or so. (Say, women go 55-45% to the Democrats, while the men go 45-55%.)

This poll doesn't really show a significant gender gap; the slight one it does show is negligable and in the margin of error, and a majority of men are against his reelection. That surprises me.

Additionally, independents are pretty heavily against Bush, 53-40%, which isn't surpising, given Bush's hard right tendencies.

All the Democrats (with the exception of Gephardt) are within the margin of error against Bush, in the specific matchups. With a 4% margin of error, George Bush's 48% vs. Wesley Clark's 45% is a tie. The dems do well, considering their name recognitions are all very low, and people don't like to endorse candidates they know nothing about.

All in all, Bush's numbers continue to trend down, unlike Clinton's or Reagan's at this point in their terms. That is bad news for GW.

Check out this graph. A lot of combat fatalities in Iraq are piling up. So's the cost.

The derivative of the deaths has been positive, but nearly constant, but in the last month or so, the second derivative is positive.

That means the number of deaths is going up, and the rate at which the number of deaths is going up is going up. 15 killed the other day, 6 killed today. All from the people who wanted us to liberate them.