The Republican sleaze machine succeeded in attacking John Kerry's war record while all along George W. Bush's National Guard record was extremely questionable. And they were able to highlight some dumb misstatements by Kerry when Bush himself cannot speak a coherent sentence. That the Republicans got away with this in 2004 says as much about the Democratic Party and the American public's willingness to swallow it as it says about the propagandists in the Bush administration.

This time around, the sleaze machine -- aware that Bush's public approval ratings are in the toilet -- are blasting the opposition for kicking out Senator Joe Lieberman, a pro-Iraq war incumbent, in favor of an anti-war newcomer. The failed terror plot in England this week makes things even worse.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that

Republicans began a concerted effort to use Mr. Lieberman's defeat to portray Democrats as weak on national defense, reprising a theme that they made central to the last two national campaigns. The attacks came in searing remarks from, among others, Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee and Vice President Dick Cheney, who went so far as to suggest that the ouster of Mr. Lieberman might encourage "al Qaeda types." "It's an unfortunate development, I think, from the standpoint of the Democratic Party, to see a man like Lieberman pushed aside because of his willingness to support an aggressive posture in terms of our national security strategy,'' Mr. Cheney said in a telephone interview with news service reporters.

Cheney also reportedly said that Al-Qaida is "betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task." White House spokesman Tony Snow put it more succinctly, "A white flag [in Iraq] in short means a white flag in the war on terror." As media analyst Eric Alterman puts it,

"What is so damn ironic about this of course, is the fact that the invasion of Iraq was a present to Al Qaeda, a never-ending recruitment video for them, to say nothing of the fact that the administration's obsessive focus on it is what allowed Bin Laden and his lieutenants to get away."

Friday's New York Times dutifully reported how the failed terror plot will be exploited by the Republicans this fall as they try to revive a sinking political party and once again scare the crap out of the American public:

Republicans seized on the arrests of terrorism suspects in Britain yesterday to bolster a White House campaign to turn national security issues to their advantage this fall, arguing that the nation needs tough Republican policies to protect Americans from threats from abroad.

Officials in both parties said they viewed the arrests as critical in determining how they would approach the fall campaign, with Republicans saying it could be a turning point in a year in which they have been on the defensive over the war in Iraq and other issues.

The developments played neatly into the White House-led effort, after Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, lost on Tuesday to an antiwar primary challenger, to remind voters of the threats facing the nation and to cast Democrats as timid on national defense.

The arrests were announced less than 24 hours after Vice President Dick Cheney and other Republican officials suggested that Mr. Lieberman's defeat reflected the world view of a Democratic Party that was not prepared to lead the nation in such dangerous times.

Mr. Cheney, who a spokesman said had been kept abreast of the investigation, suggested in his remarks Wednesday that the outcome of a Democratic primary in Connecticut could embolden " Al Qaeda types."

These Republican sleaze balls who consistently turn the tables against the opposition party in an effort to make them look weak and unpatriotic grow even more shameful by the hour. Dick Cheney in particular is the attack dog, snarl and all, who uttered in 2004 maybe the worst comment ever made during a presidential election: if Kerry were elected, the United States risked falling back into a "pre-9/11 mind-set" and that "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."

It's funny how the Republicans claim the Democrats are weak on terror, when the Republicans themselves have f*cked up in any number of ways. In covering a recent expose on Rudolph Guiliani, Wednesday's New York Daily News reports that that

as early as 1990, the FDNY was describing its radios in agency memos as "obsolete" and "totally inadequate" - but the same radios were still in use in 2001. The effect was tragic, many believe. Scores of firefighters - equipped with radios that couldn't communicate with NYPD brass - were unable to heed warnings the second tower was about to collapse. "The question of why nothing was done about the radios came up in multiple interviews," said 9/11 commission lawyer Sam Caspersen. "And we never got a good response." The book notes that, in private testimony before the 9/11 commission, Giuliani said, "In my first few years as mayor I thought there was a definite terrorist threat."

So when the Towers were burning and about to collapse, firefighters and police officers could not communicate with each other. It was pure chaos, made worse by faulty and outdated communications tools thanks to the negligence of the Mayor who became a national icon because of his so-called leadership after 9/11.