Politics in wartime now:

The candidates are struggling with the question of what they can say. In recent days Mr. Kerry, in defending his vote in favor of the Iraq resolution, has been criticizing Mr. Bush for what Mr. Kerry suggested was a rush to war. The senator said in an interview in Des Moines that such comments would cease should fighting begin.

"When the war begins, if the war begins, I support the troops and I support the United States of America winning as rapidly as possible," he said. "When the troops are in the field and fighting -- if they're in the field and fighting -- remembering what it's like to be those troops, I think they need a unified America that is prepared to win."

Politics in wartime then:

... perhaps the most ridiculous of these campaign falsifications is the one that this Administration failed to prepare for the war that was coming. I doubt whether even Goebbels would have tried that one. For even he would never have dared hope that the voters of America had already forgotten that many of the Republican leaders in the Congress and outside the Congress tried to thwart and block nearly every attempt that this Administration made to warn our people and to arm our Nation. Some of them called our 50,000 airplane program fantastic. Many of those very same leaders who fought every defense measure that we proposed are still in control of the Republican party - look at their names - were in control of its National Convention in Chicago, and would be in control of the machinery of the Congress and of the Republican party, in the event of a Republican victory this fall.

These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him -- at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars -- his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since.

Some things don't change -- like Republican slime. And another -- even in wartime, it is the prerogative of the loyal opposition to oppose.