The Wall Street Journal has skewered John Kerry over his crassly opportunistic, morally and intellectually vacuous speech to the Democratic Convention. Having rightly torn into him for facing all ways over both Iraq and any future theatre of engagement in the war against the west -- and having also sharply criticised President Bush for not properly targeting Kerry's key weakness -- the Journal delivers the following devastating put-down:

'Mr. Kerry's votes were consistently dovish and wrong and are thus a harbinger of weakness if elected. While he now praises Ronald Reagan, in the 1980s Mr. Kerry fought every one of the Gipper's successful policies. Mr. Kerry's speech provided new targets too. His main vow was that "I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: the United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to." This would have ruled out Kosovo, Bosnia and Haiti--three military actions the Senator endorsed. Not to mention World War I and Korea. This is a repudiation of pre-emption, but worse it sounds like a return to the pre-9/11 policy of waiting until terrorists hit us, rather than taking the war to the terrorists on their turf. This is a debate Mr. Bush should also want to have. How odd, too, that in 46 minutes Mr. Kerry couldn't manage a single line lauding U.S. forces for liberating Afghanistan and Iraq. He devoted paragraphs to praising his comrades from Vietnam (and thus himself), but he couldn't acknowledge just once that our current military sacrifices are for a just cause.'

The Democrats' signature theme is now clear. It is concealment. Both Kerry's speech and the surrounding hoopla were all designed with one overriding aim -- to conceal from the American public the truth about John Kerry: that he is a big-state, UN and Old Europe-loving, politically correct, dhimmified, every-which-way facing appeasenik who would wring his hands but fail to act to prevent the next terrorist atrocity; and such is the contempt the Democrats have for the American people, they believe all that can be concealed by relentless propaganda about a decades-old war record, which in any event was obviated by their candidate's subsequent behaviour as an anti-war campaigner.

The bottom line is surely this question. Would America be safe with this man? The answer must be no. The next question is: will it be safe with Bush? And the answer to that is: only if the public urges him to deal firmly -- and pre-emptively -- with Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, and if the militant appeasenik front is defeated. And at present, it would be a rash person who would bet the ranch on that.