It is over. Bush has won. What I'm taking away from all this is that part of the reason Bush won is due to the outside pressures from other countries.

To put it bluntly, Americans rally around their President when outsiders threaten our nation or him, in almost any way. The general attitude that "Kerry has to win" that we've seen displayed by what we call our friends just had to influence many voters.

Americans aren't very good at "knuckling under" to outside pressures, and since so many Americans aren't really worldy in their views, they see the outside influences as threats against our country - albeit wrong.

Last night, while sitting around with friends, we began talking about what was happening. Two of the five that were with me commented that they had decided to vote for Bush even though they had really preferred Kerry. Their reasons? Because, voting for Kerry would be a sellout of the people who died in Iraq, and Americans just plain don't do that. They felt the world repercussions were not something that we could afford as a nation, if Kerry unilaterally began withdrawing our people from Iraq.

So, in a way, those nations, and those people who so vehemently opposed Bush have to shoulder a little bit of the responsibility for him being back in office. You cannot force Americans to make a choice between their own nation, and the world nation, without it backfiring in our elections. Just like many of you are "Spanairds first," and world citizens second, the majority of people in the US are "Americans first," and world citizens second.

Just my opinion. You're entitled to your own.

Wolf