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CNN Live Today

President George W. Bush Speaks in Pennsylvania

Aired October 22, 2004 - 10:31   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: And we're just a minute past the half hour.
Good morning, once again. I'm Daryn Kagan.

RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, with a little bit of a question mark, by the way?

KAGAN: Many questions about that.

SANCHEZ: I'm Rick Sanchez.

Here's what's going on right now in the news: A woman held hostage by terrorists in Iraq is pleading for help to save her life. The Arabic TV station Al Jazeera has just broadcast a still picture, and audiotape of Margaret Hassan. The British Iraqi national was kidnapped Tuesday. A crying Hassan asks for British forces to withdraw from Iraq. Hassan said, "I don't want to die like Bigley," referring to a British hostage decapitated earlier this month.

There's fallout following last night's killing of a top Hamas military commander in an Israeli missile strike. Palestinian militants hit Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip with mortar fire. The funeral was head today for Adnan al-Ghoul. He's a reputed bombmaker for Hamas.

President Bush is bringing new criticism to the campaign trail today. He's speaking in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania this hour. The president is contrasting his policies with those of Senator John Kerry's stand on domestic issues, like taxes and Social Security. The Bush campaign also has a new ad out today, questioning John Kerry's ability to fight the war on terror.

John Kerry is in Milwaukee this hour. He's getting out his message that President Bush has let women down. The senator is promoting a health care plan that he says will cut costs and expand access. Polls are showing that women voters are evenly split between Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush.

KAGAN: And now the latest in the fight for Iraq. We have new tape that we want to share from Falluja. It is a city that has been pounded by an intensifyingly (sic) U.S.-led assault. This video coming in to CNN Center just a short time ago. The U.S. military says it has wiped out suspected weapons storage sites in Falluja. U.S. and Iraqi forces have been carrying out an offensive for weeks, and recently intensified their assault on the insurgent stronghold. The Iraqi insurgency may be stronger than imagined, both in terms of numbers, placement and financing. U.S. defense officials speaking off the record, but supposedly with Pentagon approval, says the guerrilla movement may have 20,000 activists and supporters. That is three times the previous estimate. The source also says insurgents have heavily infiltrated Iraq's security forces, and have an almost unlimited flow of money through Syria and Saudi Arabia.

And in Baghdad today, a military judge ordered Army Reservist Charles Graner to stand trial in January for allegedly abusing inmates at the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison. A motion hearing is also expected for another reservist, Sergeant Javal Davis.

It is less than two weeks before the presidential election. A top Democratic senator is accusing a senior Pentagon official of distorting intelligence information. The charge comes in a report issued by Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. It accuses the Office of Special Plans, and its boss, Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith, of twisting intelligence to bolster claims of prewar links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The Senate intelligence committee is also investigating those issues.

SANCHEZ: From Capitol Hill to the White House, many of Washington's most prominent leaders have laid blame on the U.S. intelligence community. But now one man, a spymaster whose success depended on secrecy, is speaking out, and he's issuing a warning of his own.

CNN national security correspondent David Ensor has more on this story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He has hung up his cloak and dagger, and now the CIA's longtime spymaster is speaking out, defending his beleaguered agency and warning that there could be major terrorism in the U.S. around the election.

JAMES PAVITT, FMR. CIA DEPUTY DIRECTOR: I think the prospects of that are very high. They're going to come get us again. Now whether it's going to be in the next two weeks before the election, I can't predict. Frankly, I don't think anyone can predict. But I do believe the threat is as genuine today as it was when I left CIA in early August of this year.

ENSOR (on camera): Was there evidence at that time to suggest a particular interest in attacking the United States prior to the election?

PAVITT: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think there was both chatter about that and I think there was some information that suggested they would come at us against targets which were important -- New York City, Washington, D.C., other major capitals.

ENSOR: Does the United States have spies inside the senior leadership of al Qaeda?

PAVITT: I'm not going to comment on a question that could simply make collecting intelligence more difficult.

ENSOR: Johnny Walker Lindh, an American, got into the Taliban, and he got into -- he claims -- a meeting where Osama bin Laden was present. If he could do that, why couldn't the CIA do that?

PAVITT: The honest answer is we did have people like that. But what we didn't have was someone who sat next to Osama bin Laden and knew exactly what he was going to do.

ENSOR (voice-over): Pavitt reacted sharply to reports some administration officials have complained the intelligence the troops got from the CIA before the war was overly optimistic. He decried leaks of intelligence reports suggesting the opposite, that the president was warned in advance how tough Iraq could be.

(on camera): Is there bad blood at this point between the White House and Langley?

PAVITT: Well, there's a lot of the blame game right now and I don't think it's good for our nation. I don't think it's good for intelligence. I don't think it's good for policy. And if it were up to me, I would find some way to stop it.

ENSOR (voice-over): Asked why he decided to come out of the shadows for this interview, Pavitt said there is hardly anyone speaking out for the CIA, which has taken a battering over 9/11 and Iraq. He wants to speak up, he says, for America's unsung heroes.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: There are political lessons in baseball. The Yankees might agree about that.

SANCHEZ: The team in front doesn't always get the win. Comebacks happen, in fact, in both arenas.

KAGAN: And we are watching the political arena. President Bush giving a speech in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania this hour. We will be listening in in just a bit.

Right now, a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: And President Bush, speaking in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Let's listen in.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS) GEORGE W. BUSH (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Americans will go to the polls in a time of war and ongoing threat to our country. The enemies who killed thousands of innocent people are still dangerous and determined to strike us again.

The outcome of this election will set the direction of the war against terror, and in this war there is no place for confusion and no substitute for victory.

(APPLAUSE)

The most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty or weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch.

(APPLAUSE)

Since that terrible morning of September the 11th, 2001, we have fought the terrorists across the Earth, not for pride, not for power, but because the lives of our citizens are at stake.

Our strategy is clear. We're defending the homeland. We're strengthening our intelligence capabilities. We are transforming our all-volunteer Army to make sure it remains an all-volunteer Army.

(APPLAUSE)

We are staying on the offensive and we're succeeding. More than three-quarters of al-Qaeda's key members and associates have been brought to justice and the rest of them know we're after them.

(APPLAUSE)

We are in a real war and the only strategy must lead to victory.

My opponent has a different approach.

He says that September the 11th, quote, "didn't change me much at all," end quote. And that's pretty clear.

He considers the war on terror primarily a law enforcement and intelligence-gathering operation. His top foreign policy adviser has questioned whether it's even a war at all, saying, "That's just a metaphor, like the war on poverty."

I've got news. Anyone who thinks we're fighting a metaphor does not understand the enemy we face and has no idea how to win the war and keep America secure.

(APPLAUSE)

My opponent also misunderstands our battle against insurgents and terrorists. He's called it a diversion from the war on terror. My opponent used to recognize Saddam Hussein as a threat. That's until he started to slide in the polls. Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States. He hated America. He had a long history of pursuing and even using weapons of mass destruction. He had ties to terrorists. He was firing missiles at American pilots enforcing the sanctions of the world. He paid families of suicide bombers.

He was a threat.

(APPLAUSE)

We didn't find the stockpiles that we thought were in Iraq, that I thought was there, that my opponent thought was there, that the United Nations thought was there, that the world thought was there. But I want you to remember, tell your friends and neighbors what the Duelfer report did find.

It said Saddam Hussein had the intent and capability and the expertise to rebuild a weapons program; that he was gaming the system, he was using the oil-for-food program to try to influence officials of other nations to get rid of the sanctions.

And why? Because he wanted the world to look the other way so he could restart his programs.

That was a risk we could not afford to take.

Knowing what I know today, I would have taken the same action.

(APPLAUSE)

America and the world are safer with Saddam Hussein sitting in a prison cell.

(APPLAUSE)

Remember, my opponent called our action a mistake. That's after he started to slip in the polls.

Iraq is still dangerous because terrorists there are trying to stop the advance of freedom and elections.

A man named Zarqawi is responsible for planting car bombs and beheading Americans in Iraq. He ran a terrorist training at Afghanistan until our coalition forces destroyed that camp. He then fled to Iraq, where he's fighting us today. To confirm where he's coming from, he recently announced his allegiance to al-Qaeda.

If Zarqawi and his associates were not busy fighting American forces in Iraq, does my opponent think they would be peaceful citizens of the world? Does he think they'd be opening a small business somewhere?

KAGAN: We've been listening in to President Bush. He is in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a town he visited just 16 days ago. The president visiting three key battleground states today, Pennsylvania being one of those, Ohio and Florida being the other two. We are listening in to not only portions of President Bush, but also Senator Kerry. We expects to be speaking in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the next hour or two, and you'll hear portions of that speech right here on CNN as well.

SANCHEZ: We'll be dipping into that. We're also going to follow the very latest on what's going on with Margaret Hassan. Apparently her captors releasing some video or some pictures, stills, I should say, that we're going to share with you.

We've got a lot of news coming up. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: This is a celebration that erupted in St. Louis last night after the Cardinals clinched the National League pennant and a place in the World Series. Game one against the Boston Red Sox is Saturday night in Boston's Fenway Park.

SANCHEZ: So...

KAGAN: So, so as I was saying.

SANCHEZ: Well, it's like baseball stadiums have in common with political arenas. Well, there may be a comparison, especially right now.

KAGAN: And if you want somebody to make that comparison, you call in Jeff Greenfield.

SANCHEZ: Here he is.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): How could you, some sharp-eyed NEWSNIGHT viewers asked having spotted me and my son at the stadium Wednesday night. Was I slacking off my political job by watching the Red Sox make history, of course not.

(on camera): I was hard at work absorbing the critical, invaluable political lessons to be learned from Boston's improbable triumph, lessons we would all do well to remember in the campaign's closing days.

(voice-over): First, the leather-lunged loudmouths of the all sports media are just as thick headed as those of us in the political arena when we enunciate immutable laws.

You heard 100 times that no team in baseball has ever won a post series after falling behind three games to none. As history that was true but unlike say Newton's second law it didn't tell us anything about what could happen, a double bounce into the stands instead of on the field, a run didn't score and, bingo, Boston won game five and headed back to New York.

Remember that when you hear for the 100th time that no Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. If Bush wins Pennsylvania or Michigan, he wouldn't need Ohio.

Is it true that wartime presidents are always reelected? Yes, if you count two in the last century and two others, Truman and Lyndon Johnson, were so unpopular they didn't even try to run. Knowing the past, good idea. Assuming it tells us about the future, not a good idea.

Here's a second rule to keep in mind, rabid partisans are simply not good judges of reality. In the eighth inning of game six, Alex Rodriguez appeared to have turned the game around when a ball flew out of a Red Sox fielder's glove. When the umpires ruled he had slapped the ball away they called him out. The fans went nuts. Riot police were deployed.

The replay showed the umps were clearly right but there's a reason we call them fans. It's short for fanatic. You can be sitting 400 feet away from home plate but you know the ball your pitcher threw was a strike way better than the umpire six inches away.

The lesson, we see it every day in our e-mail, we're covering up the blatant lies and trickery of George W. Bush. We're in the tank for Senator Kerry because we haven't ripped the lid off his mendacity.

Do not get me wrong. We are capable of making plenty of mistakes but the last people to offer a measured look in what we do are the people who view this campaign as the ultimate battle between good and evil.

(on camera): So go ahead call this slacking off. I call it political research. In fact, I think I should expand this research up at Fenway Park this weekend.

Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: Yes, but this time without the beer and the brat.

KAGAN: Is that his way of saying that he has tickets to game one, so he can be behind home plate yet again?

SANCHEZ: Sneaky devil.

KAGAN: Just rub it in our faces, Jeff Greenfield.

SANCHEZ: Yes, political research.

KAGAN: Let's see what the weather is like for game one. We're going to do that just ahead, look at that weather forecast, and plus the rest of the nation, just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) (WEATHER REPORT)

SANCHEZ: The second hour of CNN LIVE TODAY begins right now.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired October 22, 2004 - 10:31   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: And we're just a minute past the half hour.
Good morning, once again. I'm Daryn Kagan.

RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, with a little bit of a question mark, by the way?

KAGAN: Many questions about that.

SANCHEZ: I'm Rick Sanchez.

Here's what's going on right now in the news: A woman held hostage by terrorists in Iraq is pleading for help to save her life. The Arabic TV station Al Jazeera has just broadcast a still picture, and audiotape of Margaret Hassan. The British Iraqi national was kidnapped Tuesday. A crying Hassan asks for British forces to withdraw from Iraq. Hassan said, "I don't want to die like Bigley," referring to a British hostage decapitated earlier this month.

There's fallout following last night's killing of a top Hamas military commander in an Israeli missile strike. Palestinian militants hit Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip with mortar fire. The funeral was head today for Adnan al-Ghoul. He's a reputed bombmaker for Hamas.

President Bush is bringing new criticism to the campaign trail today. He's speaking in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania this hour. The president is contrasting his policies with those of Senator John Kerry's stand on domestic issues, like taxes and Social Security. The Bush campaign also has a new ad out today, questioning John Kerry's ability to fight the war on terror.

John Kerry is in Milwaukee this hour. He's getting out his message that President Bush has let women down. The senator is promoting a health care plan that he says will cut costs and expand access. Polls are showing that women voters are evenly split between Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush.

KAGAN: And now the latest in the fight for Iraq. We have new tape that we want to share from Falluja. It is a city that has been pounded by an intensifyingly (sic) U.S.-led assault. This video coming in to CNN Center just a short time ago. The U.S. military says it has wiped out suspected weapons storage sites in Falluja. U.S. and Iraqi forces have been carrying out an offensive for weeks, and recently intensified their assault on the insurgent stronghold. The Iraqi insurgency may be stronger than imagined, both in terms of numbers, placement and financing. U.S. defense officials speaking off the record, but supposedly with Pentagon approval, says the guerrilla movement may have 20,000 activists and supporters. That is three times the previous estimate. The source also says insurgents have heavily infiltrated Iraq's security forces, and have an almost unlimited flow of money through Syria and Saudi Arabia.

And in Baghdad today, a military judge ordered Army Reservist Charles Graner to stand trial in January for allegedly abusing inmates at the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison. A motion hearing is also expected for another reservist, Sergeant Javal Davis.

It is less than two weeks before the presidential election. A top Democratic senator is accusing a senior Pentagon official of distorting intelligence information. The charge comes in a report issued by Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. It accuses the Office of Special Plans, and its boss, Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith, of twisting intelligence to bolster claims of prewar links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The Senate intelligence committee is also investigating those issues.

SANCHEZ: From Capitol Hill to the White House, many of Washington's most prominent leaders have laid blame on the U.S. intelligence community. But now one man, a spymaster whose success depended on secrecy, is speaking out, and he's issuing a warning of his own.

CNN national security correspondent David Ensor has more on this story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He has hung up his cloak and dagger, and now the CIA's longtime spymaster is speaking out, defending his beleaguered agency and warning that there could be major terrorism in the U.S. around the election.

JAMES PAVITT, FMR. CIA DEPUTY DIRECTOR: I think the prospects of that are very high. They're going to come get us again. Now whether it's going to be in the next two weeks before the election, I can't predict. Frankly, I don't think anyone can predict. But I do believe the threat is as genuine today as it was when I left CIA in early August of this year.

ENSOR (on camera): Was there evidence at that time to suggest a particular interest in attacking the United States prior to the election?

PAVITT: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think there was both chatter about that and I think there was some information that suggested they would come at us against targets which were important -- New York City, Washington, D.C., other major capitals.

ENSOR: Does the United States have spies inside the senior leadership of al Qaeda?

PAVITT: I'm not going to comment on a question that could simply make collecting intelligence more difficult.

ENSOR: Johnny Walker Lindh, an American, got into the Taliban, and he got into -- he claims -- a meeting where Osama bin Laden was present. If he could do that, why couldn't the CIA do that?

PAVITT: The honest answer is we did have people like that. But what we didn't have was someone who sat next to Osama bin Laden and knew exactly what he was going to do.

ENSOR (voice-over): Pavitt reacted sharply to reports some administration officials have complained the intelligence the troops got from the CIA before the war was overly optimistic. He decried leaks of intelligence reports suggesting the opposite, that the president was warned in advance how tough Iraq could be.

(on camera): Is there bad blood at this point between the White House and Langley?

PAVITT: Well, there's a lot of the blame game right now and I don't think it's good for our nation. I don't think it's good for intelligence. I don't think it's good for policy. And if it were up to me, I would find some way to stop it.

ENSOR (voice-over): Asked why he decided to come out of the shadows for this interview, Pavitt said there is hardly anyone speaking out for the CIA, which has taken a battering over 9/11 and Iraq. He wants to speak up, he says, for America's unsung heroes.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: There are political lessons in baseball. The Yankees might agree about that.

SANCHEZ: The team in front doesn't always get the win. Comebacks happen, in fact, in both arenas.

KAGAN: And we are watching the political arena. President Bush giving a speech in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania this hour. We will be listening in in just a bit.

Right now, a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: And President Bush, speaking in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Let's listen in.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS) GEORGE W. BUSH (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Americans will go to the polls in a time of war and ongoing threat to our country. The enemies who killed thousands of innocent people are still dangerous and determined to strike us again.

The outcome of this election will set the direction of the war against terror, and in this war there is no place for confusion and no substitute for victory.

(APPLAUSE)

The most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty or weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch.

(APPLAUSE)

Since that terrible morning of September the 11th, 2001, we have fought the terrorists across the Earth, not for pride, not for power, but because the lives of our citizens are at stake.

Our strategy is clear. We're defending the homeland. We're strengthening our intelligence capabilities. We are transforming our all-volunteer Army to make sure it remains an all-volunteer Army.

(APPLAUSE)

We are staying on the offensive and we're succeeding. More than three-quarters of al-Qaeda's key members and associates have been brought to justice and the rest of them know we're after them.

(APPLAUSE)

We are in a real war and the only strategy must lead to victory.

My opponent has a different approach.

He says that September the 11th, quote, "didn't change me much at all," end quote. And that's pretty clear.

He considers the war on terror primarily a law enforcement and intelligence-gathering operation. His top foreign policy adviser has questioned whether it's even a war at all, saying, "That's just a metaphor, like the war on poverty."

I've got news. Anyone who thinks we're fighting a metaphor does not understand the enemy we face and has no idea how to win the war and keep America secure.

(APPLAUSE)

My opponent also misunderstands our battle against insurgents and terrorists. He's called it a diversion from the war on terror. My opponent used to recognize Saddam Hussein as a threat. That's until he started to slide in the polls. Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States. He hated America. He had a long history of pursuing and even using weapons of mass destruction. He had ties to terrorists. He was firing missiles at American pilots enforcing the sanctions of the world. He paid families of suicide bombers.

He was a threat.

(APPLAUSE)

We didn't find the stockpiles that we thought were in Iraq, that I thought was there, that my opponent thought was there, that the United Nations thought was there, that the world thought was there. But I want you to remember, tell your friends and neighbors what the Duelfer report did find.

It said Saddam Hussein had the intent and capability and the expertise to rebuild a weapons program; that he was gaming the system, he was using the oil-for-food program to try to influence officials of other nations to get rid of the sanctions.

And why? Because he wanted the world to look the other way so he could restart his programs.

That was a risk we could not afford to take.

Knowing what I know today, I would have taken the same action.

(APPLAUSE)

America and the world are safer with Saddam Hussein sitting in a prison cell.

(APPLAUSE)

Remember, my opponent called our action a mistake. That's after he started to slip in the polls.

Iraq is still dangerous because terrorists there are trying to stop the advance of freedom and elections.

A man named Zarqawi is responsible for planting car bombs and beheading Americans in Iraq. He ran a terrorist training at Afghanistan until our coalition forces destroyed that camp. He then fled to Iraq, where he's fighting us today. To confirm where he's coming from, he recently announced his allegiance to al-Qaeda.

If Zarqawi and his associates were not busy fighting American forces in Iraq, does my opponent think they would be peaceful citizens of the world? Does he think they'd be opening a small business somewhere?

KAGAN: We've been listening in to President Bush. He is in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a town he visited just 16 days ago. The president visiting three key battleground states today, Pennsylvania being one of those, Ohio and Florida being the other two. We are listening in to not only portions of President Bush, but also Senator Kerry. We expects to be speaking in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the next hour or two, and you'll hear portions of that speech right here on CNN as well.

SANCHEZ: We'll be dipping into that. We're also going to follow the very latest on what's going on with Margaret Hassan. Apparently her captors releasing some video or some pictures, stills, I should say, that we're going to share with you.

We've got a lot of news coming up. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: This is a celebration that erupted in St. Louis last night after the Cardinals clinched the National League pennant and a place in the World Series. Game one against the Boston Red Sox is Saturday night in Boston's Fenway Park.

SANCHEZ: So...

KAGAN: So, so as I was saying.

SANCHEZ: Well, it's like baseball stadiums have in common with political arenas. Well, there may be a comparison, especially right now.

KAGAN: And if you want somebody to make that comparison, you call in Jeff Greenfield.

SANCHEZ: Here he is.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): How could you, some sharp-eyed NEWSNIGHT viewers asked having spotted me and my son at the stadium Wednesday night. Was I slacking off my political job by watching the Red Sox make history, of course not.

(on camera): I was hard at work absorbing the critical, invaluable political lessons to be learned from Boston's improbable triumph, lessons we would all do well to remember in the campaign's closing days.

(voice-over): First, the leather-lunged loudmouths of the all sports media are just as thick headed as those of us in the political arena when we enunciate immutable laws.

You heard 100 times that no team in baseball has ever won a post series after falling behind three games to none. As history that was true but unlike say Newton's second law it didn't tell us anything about what could happen, a double bounce into the stands instead of on the field, a run didn't score and, bingo, Boston won game five and headed back to New York.

Remember that when you hear for the 100th time that no Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. If Bush wins Pennsylvania or Michigan, he wouldn't need Ohio.

Is it true that wartime presidents are always reelected? Yes, if you count two in the last century and two others, Truman and Lyndon Johnson, were so unpopular they didn't even try to run. Knowing the past, good idea. Assuming it tells us about the future, not a good idea.

Here's a second rule to keep in mind, rabid partisans are simply not good judges of reality. In the eighth inning of game six, Alex Rodriguez appeared to have turned the game around when a ball flew out of a Red Sox fielder's glove. When the umpires ruled he had slapped the ball away they called him out. The fans went nuts. Riot police were deployed.

The replay showed the umps were clearly right but there's a reason we call them fans. It's short for fanatic. You can be sitting 400 feet away from home plate but you know the ball your pitcher threw was a strike way better than the umpire six inches away.

The lesson, we see it every day in our e-mail, we're covering up the blatant lies and trickery of George W. Bush. We're in the tank for Senator Kerry because we haven't ripped the lid off his mendacity.

Do not get me wrong. We are capable of making plenty of mistakes but the last people to offer a measured look in what we do are the people who view this campaign as the ultimate battle between good and evil.

(on camera): So go ahead call this slacking off. I call it political research. In fact, I think I should expand this research up at Fenway Park this weekend.

Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: Yes, but this time without the beer and the brat.

KAGAN: Is that his way of saying that he has tickets to game one, so he can be behind home plate yet again?

SANCHEZ: Sneaky devil.

KAGAN: Just rub it in our faces, Jeff Greenfield.

SANCHEZ: Yes, political research.

KAGAN: Let's see what the weather is like for game one. We're going to do that just ahead, look at that weather forecast, and plus the rest of the nation, just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) (WEATHER REPORT)

SANCHEZ: The second hour of CNN LIVE TODAY begins right now.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com