Regarding military action, the platform says ``we will never wait for a green light from abroad when our safety is at stake.'' But the platform's preceding paragraph denounces President Bush's ``doctrine of unilateral pre-emption.'' If unilateralism is wrong, is Kerry not committed to some sort of ``green light from abroad''?

Is Kerry glad that in 1981 Israel set back Iraq's nuclear weapons program with a unilateral pre-emptive attack on the reactor near Baghdad?

The platform says: ``A nuclear-armed Iran is an unacceptable risk.'' But Iran's radical Islamist regime is undeterred by diplomatic hand-wringing about its acquisition of nuclear weapons, which may be imminent. Is pre-emptive military action against Iran feasible, or are its nuclear facilities too dispersed and hardened? What would Kerry do other than accept Iran as a nuclear power?

Taiwan has reached an internal consensus that insists on Taiwan being an independent sovereign country. Beijing's military chief recently said Taiwan will be reunified with the mainland by 2020, the first reunification deadline ever set. On an island physically similar to Taiwan, Beijing recently simulated an invasion. Would Kerry respond with force -- unilaterally, if necessary -- to defend Taiwan?

The Clinton years were, Kerry says, glorious because "we were not at war and young Americans were not deployed.'' Did not the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, followed by the attacks on the Khobar Towers, the USS Cole and the East African embassies mean we were at war but were uncomprehending? Have not scores of thousands of young Americans been deployed, ashore and on ships, since 1942?

Kerry supported humanitarian military interventions in Somalia, the Balkans and Haiti. Would Kerry intervene militarily to stop the accelerating genocide in Sudan?

Kerry says, "I stood up and fought against Richard Nixon's war in Vietnam.'' Nixon's war? Did it start after John Kennedy put U.S. combat troops there, and after Lyndon Johnson increased the number to 500,000?

JFK did NOT put combat troops in Vietnam. All troops JFK sent were there in an advisory capacity.

Yes, LBJ did. I would have to grant you that calling it Nixon's war isn't wholly accurate, but Nixon did continue to escalate the war in his attempt to bring us "peace with honor." To be honest and objective, I would have to say this was a political statement on Kerry's part and wasn't completely accurate.