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Politically, I'm pretty far left of Kerry. Normally, when I think about voting I think about so called "liberal" issues like equal rights, social safety net, environment, and gun control. This election, I don't have to think about those issues at all to decide who to vote for. This year, there is no choice. Our president lied to us to justify going to war when we did not need to, he ignored the expert planners in our intellience and defense agencies, he mismanaged the war to the point of disaster, and from day one he has been stuck in constant political campaign mode -- unable to admit that he or any of his subordinates made a single mistake. The guy should be thrown out of office, right now. I don't even need to talk about how we are mistreating prisoners in Iraq and Cuba. I don't need to talk about US citizens being denied fair trial. Case closed, but that's just me.

Folks are so polarized this year that I don't have a snowball's chance in hell of convincing you Bush supporters to throw the guy out. Maybe some of your conservative brethren can change your mind. This election, many republicans, conservatives, and former Bush supporters are re-considering their candidate and either endorsing Kerry or refusing to vote for Bush. Here are some of them. If you are planning on voting for Bush, please follow the links and these endoresements in full. (the emphasis below is mine):

The Economist: Invading Iraq was not a mistake. Although the intelligence about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction has been shown to have been flimsy and, with hindsight, wrong [ . . . ] But changing the regime so incompetently was a huge mistake. By having far too few soldiers to provide security and by failing to pay Saddam's remnant army, a task that was always going to be long and hard has been made much, much harder. Such incompetence is no mere detail: thousands of Iraqis have died as a result and hundreds of American soldiers. The eventual success of the mission, while still possible, has been put in unnecessary jeopardy. So has America's reputation in the Islamic world, both for effectiveness and for moral probity.

Scott McConnell, American Conservative magazine: The record, from published administration memoirs and in-depth reporting, is one of an administration with a very small group of six or eight real decision-makers, who were set on war from the beginning and who took great pains to shut out arguments from professionals in the CIA and State Department and the U.S. armed forces that contradicted their rosy scenarios about easy victory.

Andrew Sullivan writing in New Republic magazine: The lack of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq remains one of the biggest blows to America's international credibility in a generation. The failure to anticipate an insurgency against the coalition remains one of the biggest military miscalculations since Vietnam. And the refusal to send more troops both at the beginning and throughout the occupation remains one of the most pig-headed acts of hubris since the McNamara era. I'm amazed that more war advocates aren't incensed by this mishandling of such critical matters. But even a Bush-supporter, like my friend, Christopher Hitchens, has termed it "near-impeachable" incompetence.

And carefully consider this list of Republicans for Kerry in 2004

And this blog which documents Republican Swtichers which includes 42 newspapers (compared to 6 that switched the other way)

And this collection of video ads featuring Real People who voted for George Bush in 2000, but will be voting for Kerry in 2004