Bush still has it when he wants it, at least on foreign affairs:

Most see Clinton as the presidential candidate best equipped to deal with Iran, followed by Giuliani and McCain—but many express uncertainty

A majority of likely voters – 52% – would support a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, and 53% believe it is likely that the U.S. will be involved in a military strike against Iran before the next presidential election, a new Zogby America telephone poll shows.

The survey results come at a time of increasing U.S. scrutiny of Iran. According to reports from the Associated Press, earlier this month Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Iran of “lying” about the aim of its nuclear program and Vice President Dick Cheney has raised the prospect of “serious consequences” if the U.S. were to discover Iran was attempting to devolop a nuclear weapon. Last week, the Bush administration also announced new sanctions against Iran.

Democrats (63%) are most likely to believe a U.S. military strike against Iran could take place in the relatively near future, but independents (51%) and Republicans (44%) are less likely to agree. Republicans, however, are much more likely to be supportive of a strike (71%), than Democrats (41%) or independents (44%). Younger likely voters are more likely than those who are older to say a strike is likely to happen before the election and women (58%) are more likely than men (48%) to say the same – but there is little difference in support for a U.S. strike against Iran among these groups.

American war policy post-World War 2 has been consistent: early hopes of a complete victory, then moving on to a successful spoiling of our enemies. North Korea, North Vietnam, Iraq I, Kosovo, Iraq II all end with a primary enemy identified and forced to take enormous losses such that further expansion is impossible. This sets up the field for what comes next. If we decide to go to war with Iran, what happens next probably won’t be a liberal democracy, but it will also be enormously costly for their Islamic Revolution.

Hat-tip to Democratic Underground.

Catholicgauze has a great, Halloween-themed post on vampires. Not Dracula, but Jewish lore, anti-Catholicism, and charges of real ones in Massachusetts in the 1890s.

Read CG’s “A Short Geography of Vampires“, and then check out “The Shunned House,” the finest American vampire story ever written (by HP Lovecraft).

This weeks poll includes the story of an upset worthy of Boston College. After seeing their FindLaw entry fall a point and a press release fall out of the Top 25 midweek, Dozier rallied to maintain the status quo by beginning of morning Wednesday. Though their eWorldWire fluff piece fall off the radar, John Dozier Jr’s rarely updated personal blog took its place at #23.

The major story is Gamespot, who’s apparently censored story on Dozier inexplicably makes the top 10. Early in the week, gamespot.com also made the Top 25, but finally collapsed. No Top 25 incumbent managed to rise more than one place: this accomplishment was shared by Blog of M’Gath, CLP, and Dreaming 5GW.

The biggest fall is J-Walk Blog, which fell from #13 to not even receiving votes. Of those that remain in the Top 25, I Hate Linux and ihatelinux.blogspot both fell 11 places. In fairness, however, CodePrairie .Net, which appears to be a spidered copying of the I Hate Linux properties, take up two of the four “others receiving votes” slots.

“Others Receiving Votes:” Public Citizen Litigation Group, Code Prairie (23), codeprairie.net, pubcit.typepad.com (24)

“Dropped From Rankings:” J-Walk Blog (13), Topix (20), Public Citizen (21), eWorldWire (22), Code Prairie (23), pubcit.typepad.com (24), WordPress (25)