Which question do you want to answer?

Supposedly you can beat any lie detector by simply rewriting any question you can't answer in your head to one that you can answer. That's what the Republican party is trying to do going into the 2006 elections. The Democrats want people to ask "Had enough?" referencing the Iraq war, Katrina and other Bush debacles. The Republican question is "Do you want to get blowed up?" which apparently favors them, at least according to Michael Barone's latest article.

And it's a rule that he and Bush -- and events -- have put into operation over the last few weeks. For months, the central issue of the off-year election has been, Hasn't Bush kept us too long in Iraq? Now, the issue seems to have become, Who can keep us safe against the Islamofascist terrorists who want to kill us and destroy our society?

The first question tends to help the Democrats. The second tends to help Bush and the Republicans.

The answer to this is to tie our troubles in Iraq back too the Global War on Terror. Has invading Iraq made us safer from the terrorists? To paraphrase Joshua Micah Marshall, is there anybody who, upon hearing of the foiled London bomb plot, thought "Thank goodness we invaded Iraq"?