I have no doubt that a democrat would be focused on stamping out terrorism, though I honestly believe that their methods would be a lot less aggressive, much more reliant on diplomacy, and overall less resolute if faced with waning popularity. This may be the approach that you favor, but my central argument is that this approach never works when dealing with madmen (I include Bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and Hussein in that group). In the field of democratic candidates (with the exception of Lieberman, who most democrats regarded as a republican in disquise), I got zero sense that any of them had any resoluteness when it came to waging war. Despite the popularity of it, the war in Afghanistan was purely a voluntary war mostly waged by the US. The Bush administration led the charge, sold it to the American people to the point of unanimity, and the UN was glad to jump on board. I seriously doubt that a democratic president would've been as comfortable using force in Afghanistan when the Taliban was not directly involved in the 9/11 attacks. For a current democrat to make a major commitment of military force, one of only two conditions have to apply: (1) The target country has to be directly involved in an attack on America (The Taliban providing safe haven to Al Qaeda wouldn't have qualified); and (2) There has to be a major humanitarian disaster (Rwanda and other African countries would've qualifed ahead of Afghanistan).
Again, I asked for substantiated claims of civil rights abuses. Most if not all of those detained were violating their visas or flagged for deportation in the first place, and their detentions took place during the immediate aftermath of 9/11, during a heightened state of alert, when it was uncertain if there were other attacks planned, and when it wasn't known who else living in the US colluded with the hijackers. The only knowledge of the hijackers that we had at the time was that they were predominantly Saudi nationals operating under aliases. The only American citizen that remains detained is Jose Padilla, who at the time had changed his name to Abdullah al-Muhajir, and who was alleged to be conspiring to commit a terrorist act. His case is going to the Supreme Court next month, but there is already precedent previously upheld by the Supreme Court: during WWII several Germans (one of whom was an American citizen) were detained as "enemy combatants" for their alleged plan to carry out sabatoge in the US.
We have to admit that Ashcroft's primary responsibility following 9/11 of preventing future attacks is the most difficult job on the planet now. The Patriot Act, which was passed overwhelmingly by both Republicans and Democrats provides some help in carrying out an otherwise impossible task. And, for all the people who've complained about the Patriot Act, I've yet to hear a good alternative that would allow law enforcement individuals to prevent a crime from being committed instead of solving a crime after it's already been committed.
Fair enough. But, given the choice between a bigger deficit with a mild recession vs a mild deficit with a bigger recession (which definitely would've happened had we done the typical wartime response and raised taxes as you suggest), I'll take the bigger deficit anyday. Not only do recessions affect the general populace more profoundly than deficits, but the biggest complaint against deficits (that they correlate to rising long term interest rates) has been proven false. Remember also that tax cuts are only responsible for a third of the predicted swing from surplus to deficit. The vast majority of the deficit was due to the recession.
Yet another illusion sold by Kerry as a "major" problem created by Bush. In fact, according to The Economist, "outsourced jobs are responsible for well under 1% of those signed up as unemployed. And the jobs lost to outsourcing pale in comparison with the number of jobs lost and created each month at home." The outsourcing red herring is simply more populist BS churned out by the Kerry campaign.
The only way to rid the world of terrorists is to create the environment where people who are poor and devoid of any political voice can finally find opportunities to advance in a democratic state. Bush's plan is to introduce democratic change throughout the Middle East, with Iraq and Afghanistan as the springboard, is the boldest vision since the Marshall Plan. I applaud him, and would rather have him reelected and see his plan through than to see Kerry win and have it all rolled back.