The debate Tuesday night between Vice President Richard Cheney and his challenger Senator John Edwards underscored the fundamental agreement between the two big business parties on intensifying the war against the Iraqi people and continuing the policy of global militarism pursued by the Bush administration. ...

Edwards attacked the administration for its "incompetence" in organizing the Iraqi war, indicating that both he and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry had supported military action against Iraq, but that it "needed to be done the right way." ...

While seizing on Bremer's statements about the inadequate size of the US invasion force, Edwards promoted the Democratic platform's call for adding another 40,000 active duty troops to the US military and doubling the size of the US special forces. ...

In the foreign policy section of the debate, the Democratic candidate attacked the Bush administration largely from the right. He chastised the vice president for having "been an advocate for over a decade for lifting sanctions against Iran, the largest state sponsor of terrorism on the planet." He pledged that a Democratic administration would not merely maintain these sanctions, but "strengthen" them. He similarly criticized the administration for failing to take a sufficiently hard line against North Korea.