The Mandelbear's Musings

... attack your opponents' character. From this article in The Boston Globe:

In perhaps his most aggressive speech since winning reelection, President Bush yesterday attacked Democrats for suggesting that he misled the nation on intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq, saying that such criticism sends the ''wrong signal" to American forces, emboldens the nation's enemies, and tries to ''rewrite the history of how that war began."

...

''While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," Bush said in a speech commemorating Veterans Day. ''The stakes in the global war on terror are too high -- and the national interest is too important -- for politicians to throw out false charges. These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will."

...

But Democrats struck back, calling the speech the desperate act of a weakened president defending an unpopular war.

''The president resorted to his old playbook of discredited rhetoric about the war on terror and political attacks as his own political fortunes and credibility diminish," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said after the speech.

My problem with Bush -- and here, I do indeed address Bush individually, as a guy -- is that during the time that the crisis was developing, from Monday to Friday, he never seemed to experience any actual sense of urgency as a result of the simple fact that people were, minute by minute and hour by hour, dying.

gridlore