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The more intelligent minds of the right know exactly what John Kerry meant by his comments in last Thursday's debate which included the two-word phrase "global test".

Just as a refresher, here, from the transcript, is what John Kerry said:

LEHRER: New question. Two minutes, Senator Kerry.

What is your position on the whole concept of preemptive war?

KERRY: The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control.

No president, though all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.

But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

Here we have our own secretary of state who has had to apologize to the world for the presentation he made to the United Nations

Got it? Your next President just told you that he'll never cede his right to preemption to protect our country and our people.

Let's parse it further: What's the first thing he mentions immediately after saying "global test"? Did it have anything to do with this mythical "international veto" Bush has been stumping about? Nope; rather it was about justifying our actions to our own friggin people.

Even further: "you can prove to the world". "can prove".Think hard, conservatives. That statement renders irrelevant any opinion France, Germany, Britain, Turkey, Indonesia, or any other individual might have about our preemptive action. What do you think all that WMD and links-to-Al-Qaeda stuff was about? It was about proving to Americans and the world that we were preempting for legitimate reasons. Of course, all that stuff turned out to be bullshit, but that's another story.

The difference between Bush's position and Kerry's position isn't as much about actual policy as it is about sincerity and competence. In fact, on just about everything foreign policy related -- Iraq, homeland security, preemptive action -- that's the difference Kerry is selling: seriousness. Seriousness breeds credibility, and that's why Kerry brought up the DeGualle story right after that.

Anyway, the right is trying to latch on to two words, out of context, and sell them to the American people as a drastic policy difference from the President, one that points to Kerry's supposed weakness on national defense. They know what he meant, but they go ahead anyway.

With that in mind, here's an example: see if you can spot the problem with this piece by Anne Bayefsky of the National Review:

Kerry put U.N. centrality this way: "You don't help yourself with other nations...when you refuse to deal at length with the United Nations." Speaking of Iraq, "at length" meant "We needed to go to the U.N. The president needed the authority to use force...." Any use by a president of the option of a "preemptive strike" must be done "in a way...that passes the global test where...you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

Bayefsky goes on to lambast the UN for several hundred words, which is expected. But in order to squeeze Kerry's "global test" into the piece, she had to stick an ellipsis over the very first bits of context Kerry provided regarding that phrase. Her piece is about "the graders" of the test, but the very first "graders" (to use her terminology) Kerry identified were . . . US! The American people!

Almost every criticism of anything Kerry has said since his campaign's inception has involved taking whatever it was he said drastically out of context.