WAR ON TERRORISM: KERRY V. BUSH

Will somebody please explain to the mainstream media (and the Bush administration) that there is a DIFFERENCE BETWEEN a goal and a plan?

You probably guessed that I just saw a Bush ad.

UPDATE: See? See? I was right. Eugene Oregon of Demagogue reports:

I was listening to NPR on the way into work today and they have been running a series on the key issues in the campaign and the differences between Bush and Kerry on those issues.

Today the topic was the war on terrorism.

Renee Montagne asked Susan Rice, a senior adviser for national security affairs for the Kerry campaign, what is the most important thing Kerry plans to do to prevent another terrorist attack on the US. Rice responded that Kerry's top priority would be preventing WMDs from ending up in the hands of al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations and securing loose nuclear material around the globe.

Montagne then asked Kiron Skinner, an unofficial foreign policy adviser for the Bush-Cheney campaign, about Bush's top national security priority. Here is her answer

"The overarching objective is to protect and defend democracy and freedom. Within that, one is to defend democracy and freedom around the world against brutal dictatorships like that of Saddam Hussein and terrorist actors. And the connection between them is of great concern to him.

Second is to preserve relations among the great powers who are industrialized nations and even those that aren't democracies.

And three, to extend the zone of democracy around the world."

Now Skinner may be an "unofficial" advisor, but she ended up on NPR as the campaign's representative and presumably received permission to serve in that capacity from the campaign itself. And she was obviously given talking points, judging by the fact that she had three main points ready to rattle off in response to the question.
So while Kerry's top priority for protecting America from another terrorist attack is to secure WMD's and nuclear stockpiles, Bush's is to "protect and defend democracy and freedom." And apparently, defending democracy is so important that we will ally with non-democratic countries in order to do it while, presumably, we also try to "extend the zone of democracy" into those non-democratic countries.