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"Mr. President, are you most proud of squandering the budget surplus or overseeing massive job loss?" Salon readers pose their debate questions to Bush and Kerry

Compiled by the War Room staff

Sep 29, 2004 | On Thursday in Miami, the first presidential debate between John Kerry and George W. Bush will kick off a series of candidate forums over two weeks that could ultimately decide who wins the White House. We asked Salon readers to play moderator and submit the questions you most want to see put to the candidates.

We received hundreds of replies. More readers, perhaps unsurprisingly, posed questions for Bush. Many questions were a bit more, shall we say, passionate than the queries we can expect from PBS' Jim Lehrer and the other official moderators. Reader questions for both candidates covered topics ranging from missing WMD to exploding deficits to the social lives of the Bush twins. Below is a sample. Unless the question addresses one candidate specifically, it was intended for both Bush and Kerry. And note to Jim Lehrer -- feel free to crib.

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President Bush: You repeatedly say "the world is safer today." Four years ago, North Korea did not have the bomb, today intelligence estimates it has from two to six. Four years ago, Iran did not have the capability to construct the bomb. Today it is well on the way. Four years ago, Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, was a relatively stable state. Today its leader has survived several assassination attempts and there are serious questions about links between Islamic fundamentalists and Pakistan's intelligence and military. Afghanistan and Iraq are in the midst of insurgency wars. There is genocide in Sudan. The Palestinian uprising is in its fifth year. Saudi Arabia is less stable than it was four years ago. The number of terrorist attacks is at its highest point in 20 years. Four years ago the U.S. had military and diplomatic options it no longer does. With specific reference to those conditions, how exactly is the world safer today than four years ago?

-- Bill Capossere

President Bush: As a conservative, which are you most proud of:
A) squandering the largest budget surplus the nation has ever amassed;
B) being part of depriving thousands of Americans of their right to have their vote counted;
C) wasting over 1,000 American lives in Iraq in order to keep Americans from realizing that you have failed in your duty as commander in chief to capture our real enemy, Osama bin Laden; or
D) that you have overseen the loss of more than 1 million American jobs?

-- Darrin Siegfried

Neither of you has got where you are today entirely by your own efforts -- nobody does. Both of you, in particular, are children of privilege who have benefited from wealth, in your immediate or extended family. How have you attempted to understand what life is like for the rest of us, whose families and friends can't usually bail out our businesses or pay for our educations? What obligations do you feel by virtue of what you have been given?

-- Michael Turyn

Next Page: "Mr. President, exactly what mission was accomplished more than a year ago?"

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