The failure in upgrading domestic defense was horrendously clear during the Northeastern blackout in August, when 20 million people lost power. It was shocking to see that nearly two years after 9/11, there was still no emergency evacuation plan in New York to get people across the Hudson River to New Jersey. I monitored the TV for six hours from Philadelphia as over 20,000 people, including old people and pregnant women, were stranded in the baking heat on those wharves like sitting ducks. There were only a few tiny boats ferrying them across the river. Two years, and still no emergency plan to call in the military or National Guard? And there's been no systematic effort to deal with the No. 1 threat to national security -- the container ships unloading at our ports.

I don't personally hate Bush. I think he's sincere and well-meaning. But I feel very sorry for him. Every time I watch him, I feel his suffering, and I suffer with him. But he's out of his depth in this job. His view of the world is painfully simplistic -- like a Wild West video game where the good guys wear white hats and always win. But he's surrounded by manipulators -- like Vice President Dick Cheney, the invisible man, the shadowy puppeteer.

The person I do hate is Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who is out of control and who has trashed what should be the professional cooperation between the State Department and the Pentagon. Rumsfeld is lost in some delusional state. He's like Newt Gingrich in the grandstanding narcissism department. Both Rumsfeld and Gingrich show how narrow-bore thinking can turn high I.Q. into colossal stupidity.

The Bush administration is now in defensive mode to prove it was right about Iraq, while there are huge problems facing the nation in education, healthcare, care of the elderly, Social Security, the infrastructure of our highway system and bridges and public transportation -- the kinds of problems that require massive infusions of cash. And what are we doing? We're throwing our hard-earned tax dollars down that hole over there. Bush has not been a good steward of our treasury or our national reputation, and he's torn this country apart.

The argument against pulling out from Iraq, though, is that al-Qaida is stronger now in Iraq...

Oh, yes, that's the great accomplishment of the Bush administration! They've turned Iraq into a Hollywood studio for terrorism. Al-Qaida was on the run, we were after them in Afghanistan, and now there's been a massive reinvigoration of al-Qaida. They've become heroic role models to Islamic youth. And there's been a poisoning of world opinion against us -- after the sympathy we got after 9/11.

As Salon readers know, I am not anti-military. On the contrary, I believe in just wars and would have been proud to serve in the military. But this Iraq adventure was a grotesque misuse of American power unleashed on a Third World nation. What pleasure can we take from a victory where our high-tech arms were blasting poorly armed foot soldiers to oblivion? Most of the Iraqi Army weren't necessarily Saddam fanatics -- they were working-class people just trying to make a living. U.S. officials don't even bother trying to count Iraqi casualties -- including civilians -- and the American media lets them get away with it. Only American deaths matter; Iraqis are non-persons.

Of course it was worth trying to get rid of Saddam -- but not by an obsessive-compulsive distortion of American foreign policy. It had to be done through the slow, patient process of international diplomacy, to show that our interests weren't simply selfish, that it wasn't just a naked grab for oil. It's pretty clear that we went into Iraq because of the contorted reasoning of neoconservatives who were looking for a staging area to protect our ally Israel and to seize the Saudi Arabian oil fields, should that regime crumble and be overthrown by Islamic fundamentalists. It was a strategic play -- cold realpolitik. But a false bill of goods was sold to the American public, and people should be furious about it.

You're an independent thinker -- but a lifelong Democrat. Who do you like among the presidential candidates? And can any of them win?

Unless there's some huge change, I'll be voting for Dean in the Democratic primary, simply as a gesture for the antiwar side. But I'm not thrilled. I don't think Dean is remotely presidential in manner. He hasn't thought any of this through -- the style of presidential authority. You can't just run around wildly with this dour, dyspeptic, sanctimonious persona. Dean's ability to galvanize a wide-ranging electorate is very limited. I don't see how he's going to inspire or attract African-American or Latino voters, or anyone outside white upper-middle-class professionals and the media elite.

For years, I was looking forward to voting for John Kerry. He is deeply knowledgeable about military and world affairs and is truly authoritative in presence, with a natural gravitas. I once talked in Salon about seeing him on C-SPAN and thinking, wow, he's so articulate and low-key -- how wonderful to have a president like that! This was in the early Bush period when Bush could barely get a complete sentence out. But I've been shocked by Kerry's performance on the stump. His manner is so strained, dead and aloof. One problem is that he's spent way too much time with rich people and fellow thinkers -- that burden of being a Massachusetts liberal that sank Dukakis. And the hair! All that faux-Kennedy stuff that Democrats like Kerry and John Edwards can't get rid of. They're so out of it! Don't they see that hair styles have changed and that flowing locks don't signal authority? Look at Bush's short cut -- it's a Roman general's style. Rush Limbaugh hilariously refers to John Edwards as "the Breck Girl" -- perfect! And Edwards' whole chirpy, boyish manner -- who thinks that's going to fly in the age of terrorism?

But Kerry seems to be a prisoner of his handlers -- that whole venal machinery of political consultants that has taken over the Democratic Party, all in the Terry McAuliffe mold. I loathe McAuliffe -- a cheap buffoon and parasite. Consultants lobotomize the candidates, whose energy then gets sucked dry by fundraising. Kerry's advisors have made him seem prissy. It's a real tragedy because it's Kerry who has the military record and knowledge of the federal government to be president -- he's an insider in the best sense.

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