Maybe it’s me but how is it possible to separate the war on terror from the economy? I found this nugget today in a report on the upcoming election.

While Bush says the economy is strong and getting stronger, Kerry points to the net job loss under this administration and says Bush has the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover in the Great Depression.
Unfortunately for Bush, job losses and economic problems persist in states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, all battlegrounds crucial to the election.

Of course there were net job losses in the last 3 years. At the start of his term the economy was already headed into a recession. Throw in the events of 9/11 and it is not hard to see how it would deepen the recession. NYC alone lost a lot more than just the 3 buildings that collapsed. Several more are still vacant almost 3 years after the attack. I can’t tell you how many small businesses never reopened in the area. Plus I remember reading how many businesses much further away that supplied the towers were affected as well. I read that “Bush was president for the largest stock market drop since the depression”. Again how much of that drop was a result of 9/11? In the 90s I remember reading a story on the hypothetic effects on the economy of nuclear Iraq. It wasn’t pretty and it didn’t even factor in an attack on the states. Does anyone think that the present recovery will continue if there is another major attack? I really wonder what it will take to get the majority of the country to realize that we are at war and that the separation between the economy and the war on terror is a lot smaller than thought.