The words they didn't say

Published October 14, 2004 4:04PM (EDT)

We heard all sorts of things in the six hours of debates that came to a close Wednesday night in Tempe. We heard about "hard work" and a "comprehensive strategy" in the war on terror. We heard about "going it alone." We heard George W. Bush start and abort a weird joke about altered documents from CBS. We heard both John Edwards and John Kerry make gratuitous comments about Mary Cheney's sexual orientation. And God knows we heard a few things about No Child Left Behind.

Here's are some words we didn't hear:

Chads. Butterfly ballots. Disenfranchisement. Ralph Nader. Dick Cheney's energy task force. The Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Duck hunting with Antonin Scalia. Fuel efficiency. SUVs. Mars.

Bushs bulge. Jim Jeffords. Paul O'Neill. Richard Clarke. Valerie Plame. Venezuela. Peru. Haiti. Hunger. MoveOn. Lawrence v. Texas. Jim McGreevey. Martha Stewart. The lockbox.

Jose Padilla. Yaser Hamdi. Guantanamo Bay. The death penalty. Miguel Estrada. Judge Roy Moore. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Texas Air National Guard. Alabama. AWOL. The order to shoot down civilian aircraft. "The Pet Goat."

Ahmed Chalabi. Jessica Lynch. Danny Pearl.

Terror alerts. The Presidential Daily Brief. Condoleezza Rice. Fishing. "Greeted as liberators." Abu Ghraib.


By Tim Grieve

Tim Grieve is a senior writer and the author of Salon's War Room blog.

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