President Bush, in his weekly radio address:

The terrorists cannot defeat us on the battlefield. The only way they can win is if we lose our nerve. That will not happen on my watch.

That's why the recent opinion polls are essentially meaningless. The only poll that matters to the president, it seems, is the one from last Election Day. He knows what he wants to do, and he doesn't have to campaign any more. He's just going to do it: finish the job in Iraq and keep killing as many terrorists as possible.

And terrorists are being killed every day.

The release of all those awful audiotapes and stories from the Sept. 11 attacks jarred many people who had forgotten or buried the absolute, unmitigated horror of that day. And then, by his words and actions, it becomes easy to realize that President Bush hasn't forgotten and has been reliving it every day since Sept. 12.