"Senator Obama is a perfect manifestation a September 10 mindset,” Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain’s national security director, told reporters on a conference call.  “He does not understand the nature of the enemies we face.”

In response, Obama offered the following observation:

“These are the same guys who helped to engineer the distraction of the war in Iraq at a time when we could’ve pinned down the people who actually committed 9/11,” Mr. Obama said, speaking to reporters aboard his campaign plane.  “In part because of their failed strategies, we’ve got bin Laden still sending out audio tapes, so I don’t think they have much standing to suggest that they’ve learned a lot of lessons from 9/11.”

John Kerry couldn't have made this rebuttal.  Neither John Edwards.  And certainly, not Hillary Clinton.  Why?  Because all three of them "helped engineer the distraction of the war in Iraq" by voting for the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002.  As the war quickly turned sour, these pro-war Democrats were hobbled in their attempt to link the GOP to this greatest of foreign policy disasters.  Why?  Because they voted for it.

This was the main reason John Kerry lost the 2004 election: he had to fight George W. Bush with one hand tied behind his back on the war.  Every time he'd criticize Bush's "conduct" of the war, Bush would toss in that well-worn standby: "Sen. Kerry was for the war, before he was against it".  The GOP used the vote to color not only every aspect of his campaign, but Kerry's character too, and it ruined the Democrats in November.

That's not going to happen to Barack Obama.

John McCain can't tie the Democrat in with his own position this time around.  It's a pure fight, with one candidate—for the war from the beginning—pledging to continue the occupation for 100 years, and one candidate—against the war from the start—pledging to end it.  And guess which position the American public prefers?

This is so much of why I was an Obama supporter from the beginning, rather than Edwards, or Clinton.  It wasn't that I didn't like those candidates, or that I disagreed with very many of their policy proposals.  It was that I simply could not sit through another presidential election where my nominee had to apologize every day for a vote he or she never should have made, and knew they never should have made.  That's not the kind of campaign that wins.  And I want to WIN.

For once, the anti-war position is the winning one.