Bush gets a lot of deserved flack, but this to me is where the rubber hits the road and why I'm a cautious supporter this time:

From the New York Times, "In Bush's Vision, a Mission to Spread Power of Liberty"

It almost always starts with Mr. Bush's description of his warm relationship with Junichiro Koizumi, the Japanese prime minister, and his sense of wonder that he sits down "at the table with the head of a former enemy'' whom his father fought in the Second World War.

Yet it moves quickly to a vision democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then to "free governments in the broader Middle East that will fight the terrorists, instead of harboring them.'' It is Mr. Bush's way of infusing the storyline of his presidency with a sense of mission, one as great as the liberation of Asia and Europe a half-century ago, one with the promise of turning the region into what Japan has become: wealthy, peaceful and its own distinctive form of democracy.

I have yet to hear anyone articulate a more sound plan or one more capable of success. Democracies have never yet warred. The closest we've come was a skirmish about fish between the U.S. and Canada.

I certainly disagree with the Bush administration on much, but I think the Chicago Tribune's endorsement of Bush for President cuts to the quick of the issue:

A President Kerry certainly would punish those who want us dead. As he pledged, with cautiously calibrated words, in accepting his party's nomination: "Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response." Bush, by contrast, insists on taking the fight to terrorists, depriving them of oxygen by encouraging free and democratic governments in tough neighborhoods. As he stated in his National Security Strategy in 2002: "The United States can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. ... We cannot let our enemies strike first."

Bush's sense of a president's duty to defend America is wider in scope than Kerry's, more ambitious in its tactics, more prone, frankly, to yield both casualties and lasting results. This is the stark difference on which American voters should choose a president.

My ReplayTV finally caught both parts of Black Sky - the story of Burt Rutan's Spaceship One.

My wife, being a consumate "google while watching TV" junky, decided to look up the Ansaris of the Ansari X-Prize. I was amazingly happy that at the same time we were fighting radical Islamism in the middle east, an Iranian born business woman and her Iranian brother in law were instrumental in that American success.

I read someone somewhere in the blogosphere make a very good point.

We had been at war with Iraq since 1991. That ended when the IPA took control from us a few months ago.

At the end of operation Desert Storm we didn't sign a peace treaty or an armistice. We signed a ceasefire. The only other place that I know of that we did the same thing was Korea, and we've let that one potentially go too far too. My point is that much of this illegal war chatter misses that this was a war that we've been fighting since 1991. Remember Saddam shooting at American aircraft in the no fly zone up to and through 2000?

I do think that lots of people don't want to admit that we're having to get tough on all of the countries that threaten us to make sure that there is less support for those who would ally against us. I honestly think much of the opposition doesn't believe in getting tough on anyone.

I also think that those that oppose our attempt at finishing the war against Iraq either intentionally ignore or are unaware of the strategic advantages we gained by removing our troops from Saudi Arabia to a country that borders Iran and Syria. We and the Israelis have both of them surrounded and they are the last open renegades left in the Middle East.

Spaceship One winning the X Prize is just such an amazing American achievement.

We are not far from Silicon Valley start ups being able to realistically fund, build, and deliver space based applications.

I find it fitting that a tech entrepreneur provided the funding.