President Bush and leading Republicans are increasingly charging that Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry and others in his party are giving comfort to terrorists and undermining the war in Iraq -- a line of attack that tests the conventional bounds of political rhetoric.

...It was the latest instance in which prominent Republicans have said that Democrats are helping the enemy or that al Qaeda, Iraqi insurgents and other enemies of the United States are backing Kerry and the Democrats. Such accusations are not new to American politics, but the GOP's line of attack this year has been pervasive and high-level.

Now read this one from Instapundit:

Charles Krauthammer joins the list of those wondering why Kerry is dissing our allies:

The terrorists' objective is to intimidate all countries allied with America. Make them bleed and tell them this is the price they pay for being a U.S. ally. The implication is obvious: Abandon America and buy your safety.

That is what the terrorists are saying. Why is the Kerry campaign saying the same thing?

Why, indeed.

Notice that Glenn doesn't quote Kerry directly. So what did Kerry say that was so terrible? According to Krauthammer, it was this:

"John Kerry's campaign has warned Australians that the Howard Government's support for the US in Iraq has made them a bigger target for international terrorists." So reports the Weekend Australian (Sept. 18).

Jeez, why would Kerry say such a thing? Like, maybe, because it's true? Just a guess.

(You've probably noticed that in Glennieworld, any news story that puts George Bush in a bad light or John Kerry in a good light is an example of "bias." Whether the story is true or not is never a consideration.)

But we still don't have a direct quote, so who knows what Kerry actually said? Chuckie and Glenn are placing an awful lot of faith in Australian news media, methinks. But Glenn continues: 

UPDATE: It just gets worse:

Democrats moved quickly to fuel skepticism, denouncing Allawi's message in unusually pointed terms.

While Kerry was relatively restrained in disputing Allawi's upbeat portrayal, some of his aides suggested that the Iraqi leader was simply doing the bidding of the Bush administration, which helped arrange his appointment in June.

The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips," said Joe Lockhart, a senior Kerry adviser.

This is behavior that is absolutely unacceptable coming from a Presidential campaign in wartime, and it's not an isolated incident but part of a pattern of such behavior. Joe Lockhart should apologize for these remarks, and Kerry should fire him. Otherwise you're going to hear a lot of people questioning Kerry's patriotism. And they'll be right to.

So, in Glennieworld, pointing to a painfully obvious truth is unpatriotic.

Glenn is a bit vague about which part of "Allawi's message" the Dems disagreed with. Maybe it was the blatant lie about how things are just swell in Iraq. Telling the truth about Iraq is unpatriotic. Questioning the competence of Fearless Leader is unpatriotic.

Next we'll be told that thinking is unpatriotic. All true Americans must check their brains at the door.

Glenn links to a New York Post editorial:

IMAGINE if, in the presidential election of 1944, the candidate opposing FDR had in sisted that we were losing the Second World War and that, if elected, he would begin to withdraw American troops from Europe and the Pacific.

We would have called it treason. And we would have been right.

Let's change that around to this:

As the situation in Iraq moves from bad to worse, the president, based on his public comments, seems to be edging further and further from reality. ...

...

The president said he is personally optimistic and he delivered an upbeat assessment of conditions in Iraq to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. Iraq, he said, is well on its way to being "secure, democratic, federal and free."

If you spend more than a little time immersed in the world according to Karl Rove, you'll find that words lose even the remotest connection to reality. They become nothing more than tools designed to achieve political ends. So it's not easy to decipher what the president believes about Iraq.

This is scary. With Americans, Iraqis and others dying horribly in the long dark night of this American-led war, the world needs more from the president of the United States than the fool's gold of his empty utterances.

Perhaps someone can dislodge the president from Karl's clutches, shake him and tell him that his war is a tremendous tragedy with implications far beyond the election in November.

At the moment there is no evidence the president understands anything about the war. He led the nation into it with false pretenses. He never mobilized sufficient numbers of troops. He seemed to believe the war was over in May 2003. And he seems not to know how to proceed now.

... videos of subsequent decapitations of Americans in the Middle East, while widely described in reports, have been banished to the dark corner of the Net.

The shock sites, occupying that dark corner, wrap themselves in the mantle of free speech to defend their propagation of the videos. ...

It’s worth noting that there’s more than legal and political activism at work here: the shock sites also profit from posting these videos. They sell ad space to other lurid entertainers on the Net, and, perversely, the beheadings seem to enlarge their audiences. Klinker of Ogrish, for instance, claims that visits to his site jumped to 750,000 a day last week from a 150,000 average—though he claims all revenues are reinvested in the site.

Of course, I immediately thought of that other online freak show, the Right Blogosphere. We learned last May from Wizbang that people who don't watch beheading videos, and bloggers who don't link to beheading videos, hate America.

I am relieved that Wizbang points to links to the most recent video, because I'd hate for all those patriots to miss the current attraction.

I notice several commenters refer to a "Blogger Trophy Wall" on the site, which I infer featured Dan Rather's severed head. There were requests that it be removed. Apparently it was, because I didn't see it.

Bush's campaign depends on the containment of any contrary perception of reality. He must evade, deny and suppress it. His true opponent is not his Democratic foe - called unpatriotic and the candidate of al-Qaida by the vice-president - but events. Bush's latest vision is his shield against them.  

One year ago: Speaking at the United Nations, President Bush rejected calls from France and Germany to hasten the transfer of power in Iraq, insisting the shift to self-government could be "neither hurried nor delayed." A federal appeals court unanimously put California's recall election back on the calendar for Oct. 11.

After the end of of the "military phase" in May 2003, Georgie and his crew drifted along for months without a plan for Iraq, beside finding Saddam and those pesky WMDs. Oh, and they had plenty of time to issue contracts and funnel money to major campaign contributors. But the work of putting Iraqis in charge of their own country was strictly back-burner stuff.

This time one year ago, other world leaders were nudging the Bushies to start making some progress. Bunnypants didn't see any need to rush. But less than two months later, mid-November, Georgie was ready to hand off "power" like a hot potato. Who says our boy-king can't flipflop with the best of 'em?

I don't know exactly what prompted Bush to set the June 30 deadline for handover of "power." But all along I had an impression that Bush had done little else but agree to a date. It was up to little people somewhere to make it happen, somehow.

Last April during the famous no-mistakes press conference Bush provided his in-depth plan for the transfer of power:

This morning's speech wasn't as dreadful as the one he gave last year, but it suffered from the same basic inadequacy: He catalogs some of the world's problems, then suggests nothing—not the vaguest plan of action—for how to deal with any of them. ...

It was a puzzling speech from start to finish. Near its beginning, when Bush said, "We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace," was there a delegate in the chamber who didn't wonder at the irony? It was Bush himself, after all, who was quick to choose war in Iraq—insiders' chronicles agree that he decided on that path in early 2002, over a year before the U.N. debates—while the vast majority of the body's members, free and unfree, were striving for a resolution short of conflict.

Editorial, Los Angeles Times:

Bush, still eager to gain more than a token U.N. presence in Iran, gave deserved praise to U.N. personnel who will help conduct elections and perhaps help rebuild Iraq. The U.N. mission was forced from the country when a bomb destroyed its Baghdad headquarters last year, killing the organization's special envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and dozens of others. Praise, however, won't make up for the worsening security situation for all foreigners in Iraq. Besides security problems, Bush's continued refusal to accept that international cooperation means more than doing what Washington orders has made others reluctant to step in.

Without a change in strategy and tactics by the administration, Iraq will be an unavoidable Topic A at the president's annual U.N. speech again next year, with little likelihood of a more stable and secure nation, or world. Bush offered a finely crafted speech and admirably hopeful phrases. Unfortunately, kind words can't erase past slurs — or current ones out on the campaign trail — against the U.N. and "Old Europe," and hope is not enough to change the disaster on the ground.

Editorial, New York Newsday:

In defending his decision to invade Iraq, without the approval of the United Nations Security Council, Bush was rebutting Monday's speech, harshly critical of his war conduct, by his Democratic opponent, John Kerry of Massachusetts. As he did right after Kerry's address, Bush reiterated that the world was better off without Saddam Hussein in power and that Iraq was on its way to becoming a democracy. He minimized the trouble the U.S. military is having in establishing security in Iraq and ignored reports from his own government that there is a significant chance of Iraq devolving into civil war and chaos.

"The advance of freedom always carries a cost," Bush said to the UN yesterday.

Fair enough. But the criticism of Bush doesn't hinge on whether Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator or whether it is good that he is gone. The answer to both is obviously yes.

The question that Kerry raised and Bush can't really answer is whether the Persian Gulf region and the fight against terrorism have been enhanced or hurt by Bush's decision to go to war when he did and in the manner he chose. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence these days that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has made the region less stable and set back the fight against terrorism. And that is because, as Kerry has charged, the Bush administration was not at all prepared for the post-war rebuilding of Iraq or, for that matter, to even bring security to Iraq.

Editorial, New York Times

Mr. Bush delivered an inexplicably defiant campaign speech in which he glossed over the current dire situation in Iraq for an audience acutely aware of the true state of affairs, and scolded them for refusing to endorse the American invasion in the first place.

Even when he talked about issues of common agreement, like the global fight against AIDS and easing the crushing third-world debt, Mr. Bush seemed more interested in praising his own policies than in assuming the leadership of an international effort. The speech would have drawn cheers at an adoring Republican National Convention, but it seemed to fall flat in a room full of stony-faced world leaders.

William Saletan, Slate:

Bush wants you to think that he's the America-first guy, and Kerry is the utopian internationalist. But take a closer look. Yesterday, Kerry asked, "Is [Bush] really saying to America that if we know there was no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to al-Qaida, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer: resoundingly, no, because a commander in chief's first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe."

Notice the references: to America. Should the United States invade. Keep America safe.

Last night, Bush shot back, "It's hard to imagine a candidate running for president prefers the stability of a dictatorship to the hope and security of democracy. If I might, I'd like to read a quote [Kerry] said last December: 'Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe we are not safer with his capture don't have the judgment to be president. … ' I couldn't have put it better."

See the difference? Iraq and the world are better off with Saddam gone. Bush is mistaken: It isn't hard to imagine that a candidate for president would prefer stability abroad to democracy. We're talking about the presidency of the United States, not the world. What's hard to imagine is that the candidate who prefers stability is the so-called liberal and the candidate who prefers democracy and "hope" is the so-called conservative.