It’s easy to debate if you have a day to mull over the moderator’s questions and your opponent’s statements, you can look things up on the Internet, and instead of speaking before an audience of millions, you can compose your thoughts on a computer. With those huge caveats, here are some answers that I would have liked to have heard last night. (My inventions are in italics; the rest is real.)

LEHRER: New question, Mr. President, two minutes.

Do you believe the election of Senator Kerry on November the 2nd would increase the chances of the U.S. being hit by another 9/11-type terrorist attack?

BUSH: No, I don’t believe it’s going to happen. I believe I’m going to win, because the American people know I know how to lead. I’ve shown the American people I know how to lead. …

KERRY: Actually, I would like to hear the President’s answer to your question, Jim. You asked whether my election would increase the chances of a huge terrorist attack. His campaign, and especially Vice President Dick Cheney, have been implying repeatedly that the danger would increase if I were elected. They’re basing their campaign on that idea.

I certainly disagree. The number-one threat to the United States is an attack at home, using smuggled nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons or simple suicide bombs. It is outrageous that we are still not searching 95 percent of the ships that enter our ports. It is outrageous that we are not protecting aircraft against hand-held missiles or x-raying the cargo on passenger planes. Why aren’t we? Because the Administration has had the wrong priorities. They’ve tied up all their energy and more than one hundred billion dollars fighting a reckless, optional war in Iraq; they’ve passed gigantic tax cuts that only benefit wealthy Americans. The President will tell you that they have also increased spending on domestic security. Of course they have–but not by nearly enough.

…

BUSH: … And we’ve been effective. We busted the A.Q. Khan network. This was a proliferator out of Pakistan that was selling secrets to places like North Korea and Libya. We convinced Libya to disarm.

It’s a central part of dealing with weapons of mass destruction and proliferation.

I’ll tell you another way to help protect America in the long run is to continue with missile defenses. And we’ve got a robust research and development program that has been ongoing during my administration. We’ll be implementing a missile-defense system relatively quickly.

And that is another way to help deal with the threats that we face in the 21st century.

My opponent opposed the missile defenses.

KERRY: A.Q. Khan was pardoned by the military ruler of Pakistan, General Musharraf. We were not permitted to interrogate him. He’s a free man today. A.Q. Khan has been part of the Pakistani military elite for decades. He’s not a lone proliferator; he’s a state actor. And we rely on that same state, Pakistan, to fight the war on terror, even though its government is a deeply unpopular military dictatorship, they developed nuclear weapons and bought and sold nuclear materials on the black market, they continue to treat Dr. Khan as a national hero, and they funded and backed the Taliban while it harbored bin Laden. Saying that A.Q. Khan has been brought to justice is like saying, well, it’s like saying that Osama bin Laden has been brought to justice.

As for the missile defense system–what dictator is going to fire a missile at us and then wait for us to incinerate him with a nuclear counterstrike? All he has to do is mail the nuclear weapon to an agent in the US, who would put it on a timer and let it blow up one of our cities after he caught a plane out. We wouldn’t know who to strike back at. The president has budgeted 50 billion dollars for a missile defense system. I’d spend that money on homeland security.