After a day's worth of talking heads in the so-called liberal media it may be difficult to remember that the biggest gaffe of the third debate was not Kerry's mentioning Mary Cheney's lesbianism but this statement by Bush:
BUSH: Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.
Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden. We're on the hunt after Osama bin Laden. We're using every asset at our disposal to get Osama bin Laden.
No, we are not using every asset at our disposal to get bin Laden. Most of those assets are busy in Iraq. And yes, indeed Bush did say that he's not worried about bin Laden, or, rather, that he was not concerned about him:
I don't know where he is. Nor — you know, I just don't spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you. I....I truly am not that concerned about him.
In my dictionary at least, 'concerned' is a weaker term than 'worried', so that if Bush wasn't concerned you can bet that he wasn't worried. And this is not just wordplay:
Remember how everything is supposed to have changed after 9/11? Remember how Americans united behind Bush so that he could avenge this horrendous deed and bring its creators to justice? Remember the name of the man who is believed to have masterminded the slaughter of innocents on 9/11/2001? We should be angry at a president who has taken the power we have given him and who has then used this power to attack Iraq rather than to actually hunt for bin Laden and other terrorists directly responsible for the attacks. That he wasn't even concerned about bin Laden when the rest of the country was very concerned about the same man shows how poorly this man has protected the country.
But it's a lot more profitable to discuss what Kerry might have said instead.