"He forgot Poland, Jim Bob! And Great Britain is two words!"

LEHRER: Just 31 more days of this, Senator Kerry.

KERRY: Thank you, Jim.

LEHRER: Sir?

BUSH: I think it's worthy for a follow-up.

LEHRER: You do that, sir.

BUSH: My opponent says help is on the way, but what kind of message does that send to the troops that I have committed to harm's way?

LEHRER: Senator Kerry, was the rush to war a colossal misjudgment or has the quagmire been a catastrophic success?

BUSH: Wait, I know this one!

KERRY: I believe that when you know something's going wrong, you make it right. I believe that we have to win this. The president and I have always agreed on that.

BUSH: Hey, look what I can do with my upper lip.

KERRY: But I also laid out a very strict series of things we needed to do in order to proceed from a position of strength. They didn't do the planning.

BUSH: But what I really like, see, is this thing with the tongue.

KERRY: When the Secretary General Kofi Annan offered the United Nations, he said, "No, no, we'll go do this alone."

BUSH: Nuh-huh! Rummy was there, too. Where is Rummy?

KERRY: To save Halliburton the spoils of war, they actually issued a memorandum from the Defense Department saying, "If you weren't with us in the war, don't bother applying for any construction." That's not a way to invite people.

BUSH: Is so!

LEHRER: Ninety seconds, Mr. President, not including time to pack a few things.

BUSH: My opponent says we didn't have any allies in this war. What's he say to Alexander Kwasniewski of Poland? Hey, I just said "Kwasniewski"! Not so dumb now, hey, Dad?

LEHRER: Will you be purchasing your bus ticket on Trailways or Greyhound, Mr. President?

BUSH: Jiminy, I know how these people think. I deal with them all the time. I sit down with the world leaders frequently and talk to them on the phone, frequently. I have a phone and a thing that I sit down on and everything. Karl got it for me.

Those combat guys are not going to follow somebody who says, "This is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time." They're going to follow me to the wrong war at the wrong time, and, for the record, I actually know where the wrong place is.

LEHRER: Wrap him up, Senator. I've got a remaindered book to write.

KERRY: At the United Nations, Kofi Annan offered help after Baghdad fell. And we never picked him up on that. Secondly, when we went in, there were three countries: Great Britain, Australia and the United States. That's not a grand coalition. We can do better.

BUSH: Poland! He forgot Poland! And Great Britain is two words!

LEHRER: Mr. President, your ride is here. But first, you have said there was a, quote, "miscalculation," of what the conditions would be in postwar Iraq. What was the miscalculation, and how did it happen?

BUSH: No, what I said was, we achieved such a rapid victory, we didn't have time to whip more of 'em going in, before they got going out. Then they disappeared, see? But then they came back, so the good news is, now that we've achieved such a rapid victory, we can get on with the fighting, and the world is a lot safer, except where all that fighting's going on. I seen it on the TV screens.

And we've got a plan in place. Our intelligence sources tell us that we will find it on the seat of our pants any day now. We're closing in on it. The plan says there will be elections, just not here. We're taking the election over there, so Americans don't have to fight an election here. It is hard work to go from a tyranny to a democracy. But going from a democracy to a tyranny -- dang, that turned out real easy.

LEHRER: Kick his ass, Senator Kerry?

KERRY: What I'm trying to do is just talk the truth to the American people and to the world. The truth is what good policy is based on. It's what leadership is based on. First of all, we all know that in his state of the union message, he told Congress about nuclear materials that didn't exist.

BUSH: La-la-la, la-la-la-la, laaaaa!

KERRY: He misled the American people in his speech when he said we will plan carefully. They obviously didn't. He misled the American people when he said we'd go to war as a last resort. We did not go as a last resort. And most Americans know the difference.

BUSH: They do not!

LEHRER: Mr. President -- ten ... nine ... eight ... .

BUSH: My opponent just said something. That makes him a flip-flopper.

LEHRER: Senator Kerry, a triple Lutz?

KERRY: I've had one position, one consistent position, that Saddam Hussein was a threat. There was a right way to disarm him and a wrong way.

BUSH: Flip ...

KERRY: And the president chose the wrong way.

BUSH: Flop?

LEHRER: And that ends tonight's debate. Impossible to predict the outcome, of course. I'm Jim Lehrer. See you at the Inauguration, Sen. Kerry. And George, have fun storming the ranch.

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