Bush is again trying to say that the coalition is broad–but after England, he mentioned Poland. Not exactly a major power. Bush is acting exasperated, a bit upset, with an accusatory tone. I think he knows that things are not going well.

Kerry once again is making his points: the U.N. did not come in fully, no grand coalition.

Bush: What about Poland? Amazing. He’s now acting upset about “denigrating the coalition.” I’ll be amazed if people buy that. Poland makes the coalition grand? Bush’s speech now has a lot of “uh”s and “um”s and pauses. He’s not coming off well. He’s literally pounding the podium at times, seemingly signaling which of his points are practiced so he has to hammer them in.

Kerry is hitting back hard on the coalition: just America, Great Britain, and a few others. And Bush ignored North Korea.

On Lehrer’s question, Kerry is now laying out Bush’s lies: Iraq tried to get uranium from Niger; Bush would go to the UN; Bush would get a real coalition; Bush would plan carefully; we would go as a last resort–Bush “misled” the people on all those points. Kerry wrapped up with building alliances, and how he would be better on that.

Bush responds with feigned incredulity about how Kerry said Osama used Iraq to spread hatred about America, again hitting the concept that somehow the war in Iraq was defensive for the US, closing by almost directly calling Kerry a flip-flopper. At one point he said, “let me finish” when there was no interruption. Kerry hit back: I have been consistent, one view. Bush: he’s consistent only in that he’s inconsistent. That’s a point for Bush: though devoid of structure, it sounds like a hard hit.