I just watched John Bolton on The Daily Show and he was outstanding. A very impressive man. It was refreshing to hear someone speak so eloquently on so many topics on which I hold a different opinion.

I contrast John Bolton with Tom Delay whose performance on Meet the Press on Sunday was utterly contemptible. He spouted nothing but an endless stream of

• we fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here
• don’t forget they attacked us first on 9/11
• the surge is working – and if it’s not it’s because it’s too early to tell
• anyone who says otherwise is aiding and abbetting the enemy
• we need to support our commander in chief

It was disgusting. He made Richard Perle seem like a decent fellow in comparison.

Best line:

Tom, with all due respect, I think I’d be much more comfortable taking the military strategy advice of Admiral Sestak than, than Tom DeLay.

Ugliest:

MR. REP. DeLAY: Well, I–it, it is my opinion that when you go to war, we ought to all come together. You can debate going to war, that’s a legitimate debate. But once you have our soldiers and our, our young people dying on the battlefield, we should come together, and we shouldn’t have what we had yesterday on the Mall of, of, of–in Washington, D.C. When the–those are not, in my mind–my opinion, patriots that are talking about impeaching the commander in chief, that are–that are–work as, as Tom’s group works….

MR. RUSSERT: But setting a date for–is setting a date for withdrawal…

FMR. REP. DeLAY: …every step of the day, undermine–I think it’s aiding and abetting the enemy. When you tell the enemy what your strategy is, that’s aiding and abetting the enemy because they can use that strategy to come back and harm your soldiers.

Best comeback:

REP. SESTAK: I remember when working for President Clinton as director of defense policy, when I didn’t agree with you, Tom, but that there was the Buyer Amendment to stop in a year any more funding for our troops in Bosnia. And then there was, in 1999, the effort not to place any more troops not–in Kosovo. While I may have disagreed with you, I respected your office, that that is the constitutional duty of Congress, to take pride for the common defense.

And the saddest part of all:

REP. JOE SESTAK (D-PA): Tim, I was on the ground in Afghanistan two months after the war began, over Christmastime, for a very short period of time. I saw what had to be done. I then brought my aircraft carrier battle group back for the retaliatory strikes in that country. I went back to Afghanistan on the ground 18 months later and saw what hadn’t been done. As the general said to me, “Joe, we’ve got our finger in the dike,” because we had diverted our resources and our attention to Iraq, a tragic misadventure. Civil affairs forces, Special Ops forces went to Iraq. This war was never a clear nor present danger. And Afghanistan is a poster child for how our security is hurting around the world as it becomes prey to terrorists and Taliban take over the southern province.Second, how we went about this war. In that carrier battle group, I had–I had 30 ships. Only 10 were United States ships. We were on the Indian Ocean doing our retaliatory strikes when we were told to go into the Persian Gulf to begin potentially the running start to the war. Most of those ships, I had Japanese admirals, I had Australian ships, I had British ships, Italian-Greek ships. Except for the British and the Australians, they were the only ones who went with us. We went into that war having left behind that coalition of the willing that helped us in Afghanistan.