As wars go, the conflict in Iraq was -- and is -- as good as it gets.

A three week military campaign with minimal casualties, 25 million people liberated from one of the most sadistic tyrants of modern times, the establishment of a military and intelligence base in the heart of the terrorist world. What well-meaning person could oppose this?

In addition, two thirds of the Al Qaeda leadership is gone, and there hasn’t been a terrorist attack in America in more than two and a half years, something no one would have predicted after 9/11.

By any objective standard, the Bush war on terror is a triumph.

These real world considerations are why the campaign waged by the Democratic Party and a Democratic press against the Bush war policy is based not on any analysis of the war itself, but on maliciously concocted claims about the prewar justification for military action. For purely political agendas, the Democrats hope to attempt to convict the Administration of “misleading the American public” and wasting American lives through deception and fraud, and thus to defeat the President at the polls in November.

This is the campaign of the Big Lie.

Four young British Muslims in their twenties - a social worker, an IT specialist, a security guard and a financial adviser - occupy a table at a fast-food chicken restaurant in Luton. Perched on their plastic chairs, wolfing down their dinner, they seem just ordinary young men. Yet out of their mouths pour heated words of revolution.

"As far as I'm concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better," says Abdul Haq, the social worker. "I know it's going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid - I pray for it, I look forward to the day."

This is a fascinating thesis: That the Nasdaq market movers are radical liberals whose George Soros-like hatred for Bush is influencing the movement of Nasdaq stocks. I don’t know if this is the case, but you simply must read it. Starting next week, Ms. D'Anconia will be submitting a weekly report, exclusive to To The Point, indicating the direction she perceives Nasdaq to be moving. -- Jack Wheeler.

I make measurements which indicate the direction the market is moving in the Nasdaq. The data I use are very sensitive indicators of the underlying financial mood of the Nasdaq movers and shakers. I do not try to predict or explain their mood. I just have a way of separating the noise from the signal.

In general, the larger indices (DJIA, SPX etc.) follow the same motions as the Nasdaq, but they do so more sluggishly. Nasdaq is the canary in the stock market mine, in that it is more sensitive and shows motion effects more clearly than the larger indices.

The stock market is one of the most quintessential symbols of American Capitalism. Thus it was with some surprise that since last fall, I found that inflections upward seemed to happen when bad things happened to America. Over the past several months there has appeared to be a correlation between political events and the direction of the Nasdaq. It is possible that these are all just coincidences. Anecdotal evidence is hard to use scientifically. Nevertheless, there appears to be a pattern.

On Wednesday, April 7, 2004, the Washington Post ran this headline:

U.S. Forces Take Heavy Losses As Violence Spreads Across Iraq
About a Dozen Marines Killed; Foreigners, Scores of Iraqis Die

To the fathers, mothers, wives, brothers, and children of the Marines who died, the losses are the heavy indeed. There is nothing so precious as the blood of our soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors, and civilians who willingly lay their lives on the line in service to their country. We can never replace them, and we must always remember them.

Nevertheless, I am angered at the sensationalist journalism that would lead the uninformed to believe our Army and Marine Corps are being bled white in Iraq.

One of the key indicators of Bush’s impending victory on November 2nd is a historic shift in Jewish voting habits. American Jews in unprecedented numbers will cast their ballot for a Republican president. Cliff Alsberg, a writer and television producer in Los Angeles, has written this compelling essay addressed to his fellow Jews still struggling with their reflexive compulsion to pull the Democrat lever. -JW

I am writing to you today as members of my “extended family”—my family of fellow Jews and fellow Americans with whom I most strongly identify and who I most cherish.

Never before have the stakes in a presidential election been greater for us; both here at home and abroad. Never before has there been a clearer choice between two candidates, and never before has so much depended on us-- both as Jews and as Americans.

I’d like to address six key issues that invariably affect each of us as both Jews and Americans. I urge you to read and to “listen” to these issues with an open heart and an open mind. If you are truly “undecided”, I implore you to dig deep within your heart to weigh the consequences of your vote. If you are already a staunch Kerry supporter, I respectfully ask you to remain open and intellectually honest for the duration of this letter.