A trifecta of links

Apparently, terrorist are like a boy with a baseball bat. They don't care about the politics of the frog, they just want to hit one:

Senior counterterrorism officials say Al-Qaida's threat to attack the U-S prior to November second is not geared at affecting the election's outcome.

Instead, one expert says an attack would be an attempt to make a violent statement to Islamic extremists worldwide.

The official says no evidence has been found that terrorists hope a successful attack might boost the candidacy of Democrat John Kerry. Anti-Bush sentiments are said to be part of a broader hatred of the United States and Western democracies as a whole.

And who had any idea that Europe disliked Bush? We all did. So why do I link to it?

[Bernhard May, a senior analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin] points out that Kerry has already made clear his belief that Europe should participate more in Iraq's reconstruction. The Democratic candidate has called for sending European troops to help with January's elections in Iraq. The county's first democratic elections will probably require thousands of peacekeeping troops to secure election monitors and polling sites amid escalating violence.

Europeans might find it hard to provide such help, because tens of thousands of their soldiers are already deployed in Afghanistan and the Balkans. Yet it would be harder for the continent's leaders to refuse the man they greatly prefer for president over Bush, says May.
"If Kerry is elected, he'll present us with this challenge perhaps in his very first week in office," May said. "Bush won't put the same kind of pressures on Europeans to help out. He's been rebuffed before."

Which proves both that world leaders prefer John Kerry to George Bush, and that John Kerry ability to get more troops and money for Iraq is not as farfetched as it sounds.

Finally, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we all saw this one coming.