Lot’s of election coverage at The Corner and Redstate.

For your polling fix: The Horserace Blog.

Amir Taheri recalls the American hostage crisis in 1979. The column provides an excellent overview of how a potential American ally became an opponent.

It was then that Khomeini coined his notorious phrase, “America cannot do a damn thing.”

He also ordered that the slogan “Death to America” be inscribed in all official buildings and vehicles. The U.S. flag was to be painted at the entrance of airports, railway stations, ministries, factories, schools, hotels and bazaars so that the faithful could trample it under their feet every day.

The slogan “America cannot do a damn thing” became the basis of all strategies worked out by Islamist militant groups, including those opposed to Khomeini.

That slogan was tested and proved right for almost a quarter of a century. Between Nov. 4, 1979, and 9/11, a total of 671 Americans were held hostage for varying lengths of time in several Muslim countries. Nearly 1,000 Americans were killed, including 241 Marines blown up while sleeping in Beirut in 1983.

For 22 years the United States, under presidents from both parties, behaved in exactly the way that Khomeini predicted. It took countless successive blows, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, without decisive retaliation. That attitude invited, indeed encouraged, more attacks.

The 9/11 tragedy was the denouement of the Nov. 4 attack on the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

You should read it all.

This could be the proverbial nail in the coffin of Tom Daschle’s political career.

Al Jazeera has posted a complete transcript of the bin Laden video on its website.

Reading through the whole transcript, I am even more convinced that he has taken his talking point straight from a copy of “Fahrenheit 9/11”. Various parts of his speech refer to the U.S. national deficit and a plan of “bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.”

This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.

And

So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah.

And

Meaning that every dollar of al-Qaida defeated a million dollars by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs.

As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars.

And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the mujahidin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan - with Allah’s permission.

However, America is not like the Soviet Union. We don’t have a centrally planned economy. Our economy can absorb losses like the one that happened on 9/11 and rebound from such losses. Bin Laden has been listening to the doomsayer’s in this country and it shows. Al-Qaeda’s strategy is the wrong one for the wrong enemy.

(From LGF)

Without further ado, here is my Election Prediction:

It’s here. Now get out and vote!

MEMRI has put a translation of the bin Laden video on its website, which seems to suggest that bin Laden is attempting to influence the U.S. election through propaganda, as opposed to terrorist acts. His goal, then, is to divide the nation state by state.

The tape of Osama bin Laden that was aired on Al-Jazeera on Friday, October 29th included a specific threat to “each U.S. state,” designed to influence the outcome of the upcoming election against George W. Bush. The U.S. media in general mistranslated the words “ay wilaya” (which means “each U.S. state”) to mean a “country” or “nation” other than the U.S., while in fact the threat was directed specifically at each individual U.S. state. This suggests some knowledge by bin Laden of the U.S. electoral college system. In a section of his speech in which he harshly criticized George W. Bush, bin Laden stated: “Any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security.”

The Islamist website Al-Qal’a explained what this sentence meant: “This message was a warning to every U.S. state separately. When he [Osama Bin Laden] said, ‘Every state will be determining its own security, and will be responsible for its choice,’ it means that any U.S. state that will choose to vote for the white thug Bush as president has chosen to fight us, and we will consider it our enemy, and any state that will vote against Bush has chosen to make peace with us, and we will not characterize it as an enemy. By this characterization, Sheikh Osama wants to drive a wedge in the American body, to weaken it, and he wants to divide the American people itself between enemies of Islam and the Muslims, and those who fight for us, so that he doesn’t treat all American people as if they’re the same. This letter will have great implications inside the American society, part of which are connected to the American elections, and part of which are connected to what will come after the elections.”

Dan Darling offers some in-depth analysis of the video over at Winds of Change:

Here again is his attempt to “hijack” the pro-democratization movement with respect to the Middle East and rhetorically juxtaposes membership in al-Qaeda with subjugation under the corrupt and despotic governments of the Middle East.

This is truly something that I would be paying attention to if I were a government analyst, because if nothing else it marks bin Laden as an extremely shrewd and manipulative observer of Middle East politics. No longer is he claiming to battle for the restoration of the Caliphate (though one of his lieutenants, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan leader Tahir Yuldashev recently released a video of his own to tell the base that this is still very much on the organization’s agenda) with himself or a puppet like Mullah Omar at its head. Instead, now he is arguing that he wants to overthrow the governments of the Middle East in order to establish a “free ummah,” in many ways echoing statements by President Bush and others about the need to spread democracy in the Arab world.

This concerns me for a number of reasons. The Cold War and post-Cold War world is full of examples in which entirely legitimate pro-democracy or self-determination campaigns often became every bit as bad or worse than the regime they were fighting. A lot of people in the US foreign policy establishment are more or less wanting to pull the plug on calls for greater efforts to democratization in the Islamic world, instead favoring stability in the region. Without getting into the merits or lack thereof of this approach, if the US pulls the plug on the pro-democratization initiative in the Middle East, bin Laden seems to be more or less positioning himself to fill the void. In other words, in the absence of respectable actors, the not-so-respectable ones are going to take over.

Dan in his analysis, disagrees with MEMRI’s take. I’m not really sure what all this means, but you should read it for yourself.

(From Captain’s Quarters)

Not that it matters much, but the Telegraph has endorsed Bush.

Here are a few items from National Review Online, I had meant to post sooner:

• First up, the incomparable Victor Davis Hanson explains why the stakes are so high in this election:

In the heart of even the most ardent liberal lies a dormant but still alive desire for victory, and in every strutting hawk there lingers the fear of abject defeat. Had we secured Iraq by June 2003, the sputtering Kerry candidacy would by now have been faulting Bush for not going into Iran. But blink, falter, and witness beheadings and hostage-taking on television, and Kerry can reinvent himself as the apostle of peace all along – and a bizarre group of creepy people come out of the woodwork professing Biblical wisdom about George Bush’s purported catastrophes.

In short, the more sophisticated, the more technological, the more hyped and televised war becomes, the more pundits and strategists warn us about “fourth-generational,” “asymmetrical,” “irregular,” and “new dimensional” conflict, the more we simply forget the unchanging requisite of the will to win that trumps all other considerations. John Kerry has no more secret a plan than George Bush – because there is no secret way to pacify Iraq other than to kill the killers, humiliate their cause through defeat, and give the credit of the victory, along with material aid and the promise of autonomous freedom, to moderate Iraqis. Victory on the battlefield – not the mysterious diplomacy of “wise men,” or German and French sanction, or Arab League support – alone will allow Iraq an opportunity for humane government.

Meanwhile, we all vote. One candidate urges us to return to the mindset of pre-September 11 – law enforcement dealing with terrorists as nuisances. He claims the policies that have led to an absence of another attack at home, the end of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, idealistic efforts to extend freedom, and radical and positive changes in Pakistan, Libya, the West Bank, and the Gulf have made things worse. In contrast, the other reminds us that we are in a real war against horrific enemies and are no longer passive targets, but will fight the terrorists on their home turf, win, and leave behind humane government. No choice could be clearer. It is America’s call.

• Next, we have a Kerry Spot item which makes the argument for why the Bush campaign is confident of a favorable result Tuesday.

• Lastly, here is Jonah Goldberg on Kerry’s foreign policy:

Whatever Bush’s faults, the one thing a majority of Americans are confident of is that he wants to win the war on terror in Iraq and around the world, no matter what. About John Kerry they just can’t be too sure. That’s why I think Bush will win, and why I think he should.

Jonah’s analysis is spot on. Kerry has gone to great lengths to obscure his stand on the war in Iraq and that war’s place in the greater conflict with global terrorism. In doing so, he has come out both for and against the war in Iraq in an obvious attempt to appeal to both his base, which doesn’t support the war in Iraq, and those voters for whom intervention in Iraq was a necessary part of the larger war on terrorism. For some, like Andrew Sullivan and Daniel Drezner, the duplicity of this stand has worked; never mind, that Kerry hasn’t shown a spine in his 30 years in the Senate. They believe we should trust that Kerry is only pandering to his base when he sounds off against the war. Only his Senate record leads me to the conclusion that he really is a dove at heart, and the hawkish noises he occasionally makes are the aberration. Those who support the war and are supporting John Kerry are doing so at the peril of this nation, because they believe that he has no choice but to see the war in Iraq through. But in a post September 11th world, what if he faces a tough choice, and what if he makes a poor one?

Yesterday, I referenced a Boston Globe editorial that criticized Kerry’s lack of political courage. What if Kerry’s tendency to make the politically expedient choice shows itself (as I believe it will) when he is confronted with a hard choice? Simply put, I think Kerry is not a man of principle (or at least a man with not enough principle). Kerry’s lack of principle sets him apart from George W. Bush, whose defining quality in this area is that the President is a man of his convictions, for right or wrong, and will act upon those convictions even when the option to do otherwise is popular or easy.

This election is going to be seen abroad as a referendum on the Bush administration’s approach to terrorism and sponsoring states. Has the President and his staff made mistakes? Absolutely. Should they be given a chance to see this thing through and have time to correct them? I can’t help but think of the old saying, “Dance with the one what brung ya.” All right, I’ve said my piece, so I’ll wrap-up by telling you that I’ve already made my choice: I voted for Bush in early voting the first chance I had. Tomorrow, we’ll see if America agrees with me.

Duke University is handing out iPods to its current Freshman class. The plan is to use them for educational purposes. I wonder how long that will last?