From the War Resisters League (WRL) website:

The Republicans have chosen to hold their convention in New York City to link George Bush and “Ground Zero.”

Once again, the leftists insist on making an issue out of this. What they never tell you is the Democrats were throwing around the idea of having their convention in New York, but balked when the Republicans decided to hold theirs in that city. But that’s not the main issue here.

The leftists (or whatever you choose to call them) are constantly criticizing Republicans for politicizing 9/11. Yet, one of today’s protest actions was this:

The Scenario. We encourage people to dress in white (representing mourning) to gather on Aug. 31, 2004, 3 pm at the site of the World Trade Center.

Is that not politicizing 9/11? Why is it fair game for the protesters to use Ground Zero as a point of interest in their actions, yet they can take the RNC to task for holding a convention miles away from that point with neither Bush nor Cheney even making a trip to the WTC site?

Well, I never claimed that the leftists had a monopoly on fair play. However, they do seem to have a monopoly on naivete.

In a way, I can sympathize with the lefties. All they want is a little peace, love and understanding. You know, just one big, happy planet where everyone works for the common good, where all people are of an equal class, where there’s a chicken in every pot, (both chicken and pot provided by the government) and where everyone holds hands and sings Kumbaya before retiring for the evening.

Sounds blissful, no? Blissful, perhaps. But oh, so unrealistic.

End all war. Now there’s a powerful statement. If I could find the person who made that sign, I would take them aside and ask them one very simple question: Are you really that naive?

Judging from the sign-holder’s brothers-in-arms, I would venture to say that Miss End All Wars believes the onus to do such rests on the United States of America. The good old U.S. of A, aka the Evil Empire, aka Hitler’s Nation, aka Warmongers, Incorporated.

How in the world can we be expected to End All Wars if the rest of the uncivilized world does not want to comply with us? Even if we were to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, what would that accomplish towards the end goal of world peace? Would that mean less buses blown up in Israel? Unlikely. Would that mean less planes blown up in Russia? Doubtful. Would the wars in other nations like Africa cease to exist? Hardly. Would the Iranian mullahs suddenly become trustworthy? Right, like that will ever happen.

That these people believe America can end all wars is just one of the basic problems with today’s protest movements. To paraphrase Homer, they believe that America is the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. The USA is an evil empire that is poised to take over the world in order to make Dick Cheney rich beyond his wildest dreams, but that doesn’t stop them from constantly asking favors of this nefarious nation, like understanding the plight of the Palestinian suicide bomber or feeding people who have no desire to get off their asses and feed themselves. A chicken in every pot, a justification for every dead Jew.

Oh, there are other problems with the protest movement, not the least of which is their penchant for mashing issues together so one can never figure out just what the issue at hand is. Irony-challenged as they are, the lefties never quite figure out just what’s wrong with wrapping themselves in the garb of a terrorist mastermind while calling for an end to all wars.

They also seem rather surprised when they break the law (obstructing traffic) and then get arrested for it.

WED., Sept. 1, 10:00AM - Protest Appalling Detention Conditions for RNC Arrestees At Pier 57, “Guantanamo on the Hudson” (West Side Highway @ 15th Street)

Not only are they pissed at being arrested for something that’s illegal, but now they are demanding better holding conditions. Just like a leftist to want a better everything for criminals. A better world for the poor, oppressed people who raise their children to be terrorists. A better living arrangement for the murderers and rapists in our country’s prison system. A better understanding of what our enemies are all about - even after they kill 3,000 of us. A better quality of living for for those who choose to live life off of government handouts. Everyone deserves something better, right?

Well, except certain people. While terrorists, oppressors, cop murderers and usurpers get all the support from the activists, our soldiers get death wishes, our cities get, well, death wishes and the whole entire country gets, you guessed it, death wishes.

What do they want, anyhow? Damned if I know. And even if anyone did know, I doubt the protesters’ wishes could be delivered. While there’s nothing very funny about peace, love and understanding, the whole idea behind it is not very realistic when you want those things, but don’t want to fully understand what it takes to get them.

The Party of Peace Kicks Policeman Unconscious

One of the most bizarre things about leftists is that they consistently claim to have the moral high ground. They rant about peace and feeding the poor and saving the bunnies and duckies from chainsaws and bulldozers, but somehow, they end up imprisoned for violent crime at a much higher rate than conservatives, and they’re responsible for virtually every incident of politics-related violence that occurs in our country.

Their rank hypocrisy was obvious to political observers before the Republican National Convention started. We were anticipating violence and property destruction and nudity, long before the first delegates arrived in New York.

We got the nudity before the convention opened, in the form of a bunch of naked morons whining about AIDS. Now we’re getting the violence.

During a march by the “Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign,” which has that familiar Communist-front sound to it, plainclothes Detective William Sample was dragged off his scooter and kicked repeatedly in the head. He ended up in the hospital, in serious condition.

Thank you so much, liberal idiots. Thank you for delivering a message to voters which no convention speech can equal. Thank you for showing the world the kind of people Republicans are up against. Childish, impulsive, violent imbeciles who hate everything that reminds them of order and authority and harmony.

You weren’t even smart enough to pick a Republican delegate to beat on, although I’m sure that’s coming. You picked a cop who was there to protect you. A New York cop like the many New York cops who died when the World Trade Center collapsed. A man whose job symbolizes our struggle against terrorism. Next time, beat on a fireman, or if possible, kick a rescue dog who helped find 9/11 survivors.

The left’s objections to Bush have nothing to do with peace or social justice or the erosion of our rights. It’s just the left’s usual adolescent rebellion, striking out at anyone who reminds them of Mommy and Daddy. And while the Republicans are in New York, everyone who doesn’t look like a member of the cast of Hair is in danger.

I pray to God that someone interviews Detective Sample on national television when he recovers. I want to hear how he feels about the left’s gratitude for his offering up his life every day in order to keep them safe. I’d like to know who he and his friends plan to vote for.

This is only Tuesday. We’re going to see more violence before it’s over. I’m sure the DNC is making calls and so on, begging its affiliates to behave. But these are liberals we’re talking about. There is no way they’re going to listen to reason.

A while back, I criticized the Republicans for choosing the country’s largest hive of liberals for a convention site, but since then it has occurred to me that I was wrong. Leftists are going to behave so badly, showing their true nature, that the whole nation is going to be disgusted, and George Bush will profit from our revulsion. But I hate to see us win by turning Manhattan into a cross and ourselves and the sane residents of New York into martyrs.

Anyone reading this mistake me for a supporter of John F. Kerry?

Anyone not know that I consider the man to be the consumate politician, willing to say whatever is required to get himself elected regardless of the truth, and who has shown a consistent pattern of gross misjudgement when things get difficult?

Good.

I’ve had a critical look at the Bobbsey Kerry twins video, the one that shows them being both cheered (by the glitterati in the foreground) and booed (by seemingly everyone else in the house).

Unfortunately, their message was lost. The snippets I saw said basically, “Get out and Vote. It’s important. (And BTW please vote for Dad)”.

It would strain credulity to think that they wouldn’t put in the Good Word for their father. But that wasn’t the main theme, at least of the bit that I saw.

The first message that was lost was that, Yes, Virginia, it really is important that people get out and vote. Even the Lunar-Right who think the Masons and the Vatican are both Jew conspiracies against the White Race, and the Moonbat-Left who think that Zionazi Bush planned and executed 9/11 (do you see a pattern here?). Ok, maybe neither of those… but everyone else. Just think, your vote could cancel out one from someone with a shrine to Adolf Hitler in his Secret Shelter. Or someone who’s got a stash of weapons to use on the Imperialist JewBanker Pigs when the Revolution comes. And if you don’t vote, they have a say on who controls the world’s supreme military force, and you don’t.

If you honestly think ‘A Plague on Both Their Houses’, the Late, Great Robert Heinlein had this advice : Find a convenient neighbourhood Jerk. An Idiot. Someone whose loathsmeness is exceeded only by their ignorance. Find out who they’re voting for - then go and vote for an opponent. Any opponent. You’ll have done your duty.

The second message that was lost was about ‘Coolness under fire’.

When the boos suddenly started, the Bobbsey (stop doing that!) twins looked around. Heck, I would have done the same, especially if instead of boos inexplicably starting in the middle of what I was saying, cheers had erupted for no apparent reason. As the Mudville Gazette puts it :

Note the ladies glance backwards when the booing begins to see just who the object of that scorn may be. No doubt that was a chilling moment, when they realized for whom that bell tolled.

Unlike Alexandra though, I’m not sure I could have kept my cool and held a finger over my lips, while giving a (no doubt calculated) disarming smile and raised eyebrow. My own reaction would have likely been far less useful, something along the lines of “Let the Lady Speak, You Loutish Morons! What about Freedom of Speech, or even Respect for fellow Human Beings! Idiots!” only screamed at the top of my lungs. As I said, not useful.

I’ve seen this action described thus :

Notice that Alexandra takes after her haughty, French-looking father by instinctively shushing the little people in the crowd.

With respect, I disagree. Or as we in Australia say, “BULLSH..”, well, we say something else. Alexandra Kerry made a, um, Swift, (if you’ll pardon the expression) decision under extreme pressure, and gave a reasonable response. It may have been the best possible, it may not. But it wasn’t completely inappropriate.

Any professional person in the military will tell you that the sign of a Good leader is one who can make quick decisions under pressure. If the decisions are good ones, so much the better.

Now if only I wasn’t completely convinced that Alexandra’s father is a totally loose cannon who gets things consistently wrong under pressure, in Combat and in the Senate.

OK, she came over all haughty and pedagogical with her finger-waving a few seconds later, but that was almost certainly just a sign that she believed too strongly in what she was saying. And she did it to a large, unruly crowd that was jeering her, not a single Marine standing at Attention in a Wendy’s bar. One takes courage, the other merely arrogance.

I’ve also seen the jeers explained away by a misleading introduction : the great unwashed at the back really thought they were booing the Bush sisters. Since the name ‘Kerry’ wasn’t mentioned in the twins’ speech, this may even be true. Without seeing the whole thing, the reaction to the Video of the Bush sisters, and the Kerry ones speaking afterwards, I can’t tell. The excuse smells like spin to me, but I until I get further evidence one way or the other, it sounds plausible, and not improbable. Regardless of whether it’s true or not, this is a hideous embarressment for the Democratic Party. (And in my opinion they thoroughly deserve it).

But as for the Bobbsey (Right! BANG!) Kerry twins, Alexandra impressed me far more than her father ever did. Especially since at the same age he was testifying about mythical war crimes.

Oh yes, who am I voting for? I’m Australian, remember, and will be voting in October, not November (it’s compulsory here). Mark Latham (unlike the lugubrious Kerry) is an unsubtle, even brutal thug (as various people he’s violently assaulted can attest to) : but I don’t think he’d be quite as much of a disaster as Kerry would in office. Hopefully we’ll never have to find out in either case.

Why am I posting about the US elections? Because you, the US Voting public, get to have a say in something that affects the whole planet. The other Billions of us on this ball of rock just have to live with your decision, for good or ill. In some ways, you’re our unelected representatives, and I hope to pursuade you to take this unwanted, un-asked-for responsibility seriously. Please Think. Then Vote. Yes, even if it’s for Kerry.

Video Award Shoutdown Assures Castro Cabinet Post

I don’t watch award shows. As I have explained in the past, this is partly because I am neither female nor gay. But it’s also an integral part of my policy of being completely out of the loop.

I didn’t see the MTV Video Awards this weekend. In fact, I have no idea which night they ran. But I know two things. The show was filmed in Miami, and John Kerry’s daughters got booed off the stage.

I was wondering how that happened. The Kerry girls may be wacked-out moonbats with a chin for a father, but they’re reasonably hot, and the big one, Alexandra, was kind enough to show us her boobs at the Cannes Anti-American Hate Film Festival. In fact, the phrase “Film Festival” could be used to describe her dress.

Then I realized…Miami…that means CUBANS! Yes, my guess is that a whole bunch of Cuban kids started screaming when the spawn of Lurch appeared on the stage.

Cubans are wrong Hispanics. They have never figured out that they’re an oppressed minority, entitled to lie around sucking Uncle Sam’s nipple and being patronized by liberal politicians. So they’re generally conservative, although that becomes less true every year.

It’s always funny to see frustrated liberals come up against Cubans for the first time. A friend of mine went to Harvard for an interview—or maybe it was Yale—and some nut came up to her and said, “I just want you to know I sympathize with your people’s struggle.”

What struggle? The struggle to get property re-zoned “commercial” in Hialeah so they can build more malls? The struggle against mindless leftism? This lady had no idea what she was dealing with, but as is usually the case with liberals, she didn’t care. She saw a Hispanic, therefore she saw a fellow liberal, and an oppressed one at that.

Anyway, some Cubans have drifted away from the GOP lately, but they better come back now. If Stonewall Kerry gets elected, he’ll never forget how Miami’s Cubans treated his daughters. Look for Castro to receive a Cabinet position.

Another funny thing: apparently, the desire to stifle dissent runs in the family. Some photographer shot a picture of Alexandra Kerry holding a finger to her lips, telling the crowd to shut up. It didn’t work with the Swift Vets, and it didn’t work with the Awards crowd, either.

“Shh! Don’t boo my daddy!”

But maybe George Bush should try it in New York this week. “Shh! Stop screaming obscenities! Stop throwing cat litter on the police! Stop trying to confuse the bomb dogs!”

Nahhh. Let’s stick with tear gas and fire hoses.

Some thoughts kick around forever until some event or person provides a focal point. Thank you Mr. Raines.

Intelligence is not the sine qua non as a leadership credential. You can remember the smarty who, in school, would take either side of a question with assurance that he could win any debate. He may have had no convictions, but did he ever have all the answers. His name may not have been John F. Kerry, but there is a reasonable chance that it was.

LBJ was short term naval officer who got us up to our neck in Viet Nam, and it was the epitome of intellect, Robert McNamara who managed the only war we lost. Some look with pride on their contribution to our loss there but they turn a blind eye to the hundreds of thousands we abandoned to death or enslavement.

There was another super intellect naval officer who became President, Jimmy Carter.

There seems to be ample evidence of Kerry’s intelligence and his verbal nimbleness. He seems, forever on both sided of every question. He went to Nam with his 8MM camera and quickly got his ticket punched, and he scurried home in time to get in front of the anti-war movement.

Now then, that is a mark of an intelligent man positioning himself for a political career.

Intelligence is not synonymous with wisdom (or as it is sometimes disparaged, street smarts). Intelligence allows you to ‘nuance’ reports on reality so that you are proven right even if you were clearly wrong. In fact, frequently sheer intelligence is antithetical to wisdom. Wisdom is seldom that is figured out but rather the result of acknowledging and studying your errors. If you never made an error there is small chance that you have gained wisdom.

Of course I’d like a smart leader, but wisdom is far more important. President Bush is obviously intelligent, and he has surrounded himself with people who have earned their intellectual spurs, but more important they have demonstrated their wisdom.

This was originally posted by Mudge at Weekend Pundit.

Recent polls show the Cuban-American support for President Bush is waning. Down from an overwhelming 81% in 2000 to around 66% in this election cycle. The drop is blamed on the new remittance and travel restrictions against Cuba imposed earlier this year.

The polls may be correct. Many Cuban-Americans see the new restrictions as the US government further separating their families. Some noted Cubans, including Jose Basulto of Brothers to the Rescue and Ramon Raul Sanchez, head of the anti-Castro Democracy Movement have come out against the new policy stating that more contact with Cuban on the island is a necessary step in building bridges of communications once Castro is gone.

They may be right. But what if they are wrong? What if Cuban-Americans were allowed to travel freely to the island as before? Sure, they would be happy to see their family members still on the island. Sure, these family members could use the monetary help their exiled Cuban-Americans give them. Sure, they could use bars of soap and medicines and feminine napkins these people would bring them. But this help only serves the short run. What happens in the long run?

Every single cent that enters the island of Cuba ends up in the regimes hand in one way or another. Castro’s government owns everything. The hotels, the restaurants, the resorts, the dollar stores. Everything.

Cuba is an island where everything is for sale and it’s owned by a single proprietor.

You want to open a hotel in Cuba? Sure, no problem, you build it on my land with your own materials and once complete you manage it. I will supply the workforce to build it and charge you top dollar for the labor, whom, I will in turn pay out of my pocket in peanuts. You can manage the hotel once it’s built also, and I will supply the labor as well. For a doorman I’ll charge you $20 an hour and I will in turn pay him $20 a month. Ill do the same with the rest of the hotel staff, who will be more than happy to work there as it may get them the coveted dolares in tips.

The new restrictions are meant to lessen the flow of cash to the island. A flow of one billion dollars a year since the Clinton administration. One billion dollars a year. Thats one billion dollars more that Castro has to export his revolution - read:Venezuela, etal - throughout the Americas. That’s one billion dollars a year for propaganda. One bllion dollars a year to decry the evils of the imperialist yanquis. That’s one billion dollars a year Castro can use to build state of the art medical facilities for the purpose of treating foreigners with dollars. Cubans will still only get their polyclinics that open 4 hours a week.

Unfortunately, most of the Cuban-Americans that are against the new restrictions didn’t come here solely for political reasons. They came here to do precisely what the restrictions are now stopping: to work and send money to relatives. It’s hard to blame them of course. Who wants to be party to hurting someone’s family?

What the anti-restrictions folks fail to understand is that the restrictions are not meant to be permanent. They are meant to cause irreparable damage to Castro’s economy. To keep him from exporting communism. To keep him from further exploiting is people. To break down the two tier system of the island. To make Castro open up the market system in Cuba to allow Cubans to be individuals and create private enterprise.

As I have said before, for Cubans and Cuban-Americans, it’s all about sacrifice.

Cuban-Americans against Bush and his restrictions need to understand that it is not about them, but about us. About we as a people who have endured Castro’s hell for over 40 years. It’s not about a single Cuban but every single Cuban. The majority of Cubans do not have family abroad.

There’s no making deals with Fidel Castro because there’s no way to come out winning. History proves that. If he is still the culprit of his people’s oppression despite a bad economy, imagine the fate of the Cuban people, moreover, the fate of the Americas, with Castro at the helm of a strong and bulging economic state.

Think Fidel Castro is bad? Imagine him with money.

By Val Prieto - Babalu Blog

Then :

…I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of the group of 1,000 which is a small representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at this table they would be here and have the same kind of testimony….

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command….

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

Now

We, the undersigned members of the United States Senate call on you to specifically condemn the recent attack ads and accompanying campaign which dishonor Senator John Kerry’s combat record in the Vietnam War. These false charges represent the worst kind of politics, and we agree with both Senator John McCain and Senator Kerry that a firmly established service record in the United States Military is fully above reproach. As veterans of the armed services, we ask that you recognize this blatant attempt at character assassination, and publicly condemn it.

Our outrage over these advertisements and tactics has nothing to do with the tax code or campaign finance reform efforts of this nation. Our pain from seeing these slanderous attacks stems from something much more fundamental, that if one veteran’s record is called into question, the service of all American veterans is questioned.

Along with This article, still up on the John Kerry website, attacking Bush’s service record.

Then there’s this article confirming that Kerry’s allegations of Vietnam Vets being self-confessed war-criminals were at least partly fraudulent :

Some will excuse VVAW’s actions and hyperbolic rhetoric as necessary tactics or as the work of people understandably disillusioned by an embittering war experience. But there is evidence suggesting that many of the atrocities routinely touted by VVAW were, well, made up.

An excerpt of historian Guenter Lewy’s book According to America posted on WinterSoldier.com discusses the results of a government investigation that attempted to corroborate the claims made at the VVAW event in Detroit. The investigators couldn’t.

According to Lewy, the VVAW had told its members not to cooperate with the government inquiry: a probe that was initiated by Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon in order to verify gruesome claims made at the VVAW-sponsored event. The historian also notes that government inspectors found veterans whose names had been used by people testifying in Detroit that were not actually there.

In other words, some of the “witnesses” in Detroit were impostors, tarnishing the names of real soldiers.

It appears that Kerry was also something of an impostor. During a massive rally in front of the U.S. Capitol, a number of veterans threw their medals over a high-wire fence. One was Kerry. Or at least so it appeared.

Under a section called “Busted by the historians” is an excerpt from Stolen Valor by B. G. Burkett, Glenna Whitley. Money quote: “But years later, after his election to the Senate, Kerry’s medals turned up on the wall of his Capitol Hill office. When a reporter noticed them, Kerry admitted that the medals he had thrown that day were not his.”

As for ‘refusing to disavow attack ads’, there’s this…

The MoveOn.org ads comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler drew rebukes from Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe and liberal financier George Soros in January, but Sen. John Kerry never denounced the controversial ads at the time.

It took the Kerry campaign months to condemn the use of Hitler imagery in a political ad, yet an adviser to the Democrat presidential nominee suggested earlier this week that Kerry had been out in front with his condemnation.

“When these groups go over the line, like one of them did when they compared George Bush to Hitler, John Kerry said, ‘Foul. That’s wrong,’ ” spokesman Michael Meehan said on Sunday’s Scarborough Country on MSNBC.

But a search of newspaper articles and television appearances in January revealed no instance where Kerry or any of his surrogates denounced the ads comparing Bush to Hitler.

Spokesmen for the Kerry campaign and the Democratic National Committee didn’t return calls Wednesday.

Finally, from WinterSoldier.com :

On January 31, 1971, members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) met in a Detroit hotel to document war crimes that they had participated in or witnessed during their combat tours in Vietnam. During the next three days, more than 100 Vietnam veterans and 16 civilians gave anguished, emotional testimony describing hundreds of atrocities against innocent civilians in South Vietnam, including rape, arson, torture, murder, and the shelling or napalming of entire villages. The witnesses stated that these acts were being committed casually and routinely, under orders, as a matter of policy.

In April, the VVAW stormed Washington in a week-long protest. At the height of it, spokesman John Kerry went before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to accuse the United States military of committing massive numbers of war crimes in Vietnam. The appearance launched Kerry’s political career. The charges he made shocked and sickened a nation, changed the course of a war and stained the reputation of the American military for decades.

But the mass murder of civilians was never American policy in Vietnam. War crimes were the exception, not the rule. And the Winter Soldier tribunal itself — which John Kerry had helped moderate — turned out to be, in the words of historian Guenter Lewy, “packed with pretenders and liars.”

Massachusetts elected John Kerry to the U.S. Senate in 1984. Now he seeks the most powerful job in the world.

It can, and has, been argued that Kerry’s inconsistent and changing rebuttals of the SwiftVet’s claims are purely the result of faulty memory on both sides. But I can see no argument against the mountain of evidence that the man is a blatant, serial, and accomplished Hypocrite. The latest Letter to Bush is the capstone of his long and strangely undistinguished Senatorial career.

Cynics (like myself) would say that that makes him the Consumate Politician, and is a reasonable qualification for becoming President of the USA. But Cynics like myself disqualify him from consideration, because of repeated violations of the 11th Commandment:

Thou Shalt Not Get Caught

There’s also a personal matter : I don’t like being treated as a Fool, by an absurdly arrogant man who obviously despises the Sheeple. Bush’s ‘Simple Texan Cowboy’ Act is difficult enough to swallow, but again, it’s about par for a wiley, even sly politician. But Kerry’s Faux-Patriotism is positively nauseating. And in time of war, risky too.

Air America, the fledgling — and struggling — liberal talk show radio network today began a MAJOR market test that is being closely watched all over the country, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

There are several key reasons why:

(1) The programs, with comedian/activist Al Franken as the biggest name, will be going DIRECTLY against a conservative talk show radio slate. For instance, Franken’s show will air opposite Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly.

(2) The new-York based liberal network’s shows will be broadcast on a station owned by Texas=based Clear Channel Communications. A key executive of Clear Channel has been a big bucks contributor to George Bush’s campaigns and the communications mega-giant was in the news a few months ago from booting radio talk show host Howard Stern from its stations.

Why is Clear Channel airing the liberal slate of shows? The Union-Trib story says:

On the surface, the pairing of Clear Channel and Air America seems a case of politics making strange bedfellows.

Clear Channel and its executives have made more than $300,000 in political contributions since 2000, most of it to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Critics have accused the company of using its radio stations to sponsor “patriotic rallies” designed to win support for the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.

And Clear Channel vice chairman Tom Hicks, a member of the Bush Pioneer club for big donors, bought the Texas Rangers baseball team from President Bush and other investors.

Last year, some Clear Channel country music stations refused to play songs by the Dixie Chicks after the group’s lead singer made an anti-Bush remark. And last month the company was accused by anti-war activists of backing out on a lease for a Times Square billboard that was critical of the war in Iraq.

Robert Thompson, professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University, downplayed political differences between Air America and Clear Channel. In America, he said, the marketplace usually trumps ideology.

“The Dixie Chicks don’t care if everyone loves them; only 1 million people loving them gives them a platinum album,” Thompson said. “And if Al Franken becomes a huge hit and delivers an enormous audience, then of course Clear Channel is going to run with it.”

So it is truly PURELY BUSINESS — the marketplace — which is progress for Air America. The network had become something of a running joke due to its slew of financial and station outlet problems. More from the story:

Air America’s local debut on media powerhouse Clear Channel Communication’s former KPOP 1360 AM station, now renamed KLSD, has been eagerly anticipated by industry insiders and liberal politicos as a key testing ground for the fledgling concept.

Conventional industry wisdom holds that liberal or “progressive” talk radio, which has been littered with failed programs that came off as whiny or milquetoast, can’t match the kind of winning ratings mix of right-wing ideology and vitriol perfected by radio veteran Rush Limbaugh.

But some experts say the time may be right for the left. And Air America, a New York-based company that began airing its style of liberal news and views on a scattering of stations in March, aims to prove it.

A word about KPOP: This station for years carried Golden Golden Oldies such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, but about a year ago updated its songbook with slightly more current tunes. If you follow music and the idea that at times singers don’t become unpopular but their audiences die out, this was a classic case of a radio station that was not in a growth position. So how will it serve Air America? Its frequency is not the strongest but it reaches throughout San Diego County.

Most importantly, though, is the fact that Clear Channel is airing its slate of shows in a clear cut business experiment — and that the shows’ appeal will starting tomorrow be IMMEDIATELY tested against the biggest national conservative talk show competitors in head-to-head competitions. There haven’t been too many markets like this, althoug theere have been somehave been some:

Air America met the challenge, and then some, in Portland, Ore., where Clear Channel first tested the progressive talk format in March at its KPOJ-AM station.

The station went from a 0.4 to a 3.7 market share for ages 12 and up in the spring Arbitron ratings. It hit the No. 3 listener slot with adults ages 25 to 54 – a demographic dear to the hearts of advertisers – up from No. 22 in the winter before the station flipped to progressive talk.

Still, the bottom line about talk radio (and blogs, for that matter) is noted by the newspaper at the end of its report:

“Liberal talk radio will always have a problem because liberals tend to want to see both sides of the picture and argue from there,” said Carl Luna, professor of political science at San Diego Mesa College. “Arch conservative AM hosts are good at simply presenting one side – theirs – and lambasting anything they don’t agree with, which their demographic likes.

“Most people listen to talk radio to only have their existing ideas reinforced, not challenged or expanded.”

KUDOS TO THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR for using the right term when defining ETA, in an unusually balanced article today, considering the precedents in the foreign media:

Compared with the ruinous attacks that struck Spain in March, the bombings over the past 14 days in the northern provinces might be expected to attract little notice: Seven weak explosives, wrapped in plastic bags, and weighing less than 300 grams, caused only slight injuries and minor property damage.

But in Spain, a country that has suffered domestic terrorism for the past 30 years, the explosions were an unnerving reminder that ETA, the Basque terrorist group, was still a threat.

(emphasis mine)

I have complained in the past that the foreign media still uses the stupidly incorrect “separatist group” as the label for a group guilty of more than 800 murders. And there hasn’t been a Franco to resist against for almost 30 years now.

(Crossposted at Barcepundit)

In reply to John Hawkins’ excellent article below, some possible, plausible answers:

1. Had I been able to continue my studies overseas, my increased knowledge of foreign languages would have been useful in my Military career. I had hoped to go into Intelligence, and a knowledge of French would be essential for service in Vietnam. The selective service people didn’t see it my way, and even now I think that was unfortunate. Lacking these additional skills, I thought the best way I could serve my country was to volunteer for the Navy, where my abilities in boating could be put to best use. That’s why I also volunteered for Swift Boat duty, rather than staying on a Cruiser. Next Question.

2. You know memory is a funny thing. We’ve already seen how the guys in my crew have directly contradicted other Swift Boat Vet’s recollections. I’m not saying any of them are lying, I’m saying that details blur after even a few days. Ask any Cop, and he’ll tell you that eyewitness accounts never match exactly, unless they’re all lying. Looking back on it, the celebration fire I took while in Cambodia was probably during Tet, rather than Christmas. That would make sense. But when I testified before Congress, I was convinced it was Christmas, and I was probably mistaken.

3. For OPSEC reasons - that’s Operational Security - I never did learn their names. I don’t even know if they made it out safely, I had no “Need To Know”. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s no written record that the orders were given. You know, in those days “Mission Impossible” was no joke, we always knew that if we got into trouble, it was our ass in the sling, not the generals and admirals and politicians who ordered us in. It was our duty, and we did it.

4. I’ve already answered that one above. But I’ll expand on the issue, it’s important. It’s been well-documented that numerous helicopter insertions of Special Forces took place both before and after I sailed up the Mekong. Has anybody checked with those helicopter pilots about the names and records of every man they took in? No. And I’ll tell you why. They didn’t know. They might know a name or two, but those names may well be false. Why was a junior officer assigned to this perilous duty? Well, I wasn’t alone. You’d have to ask those in the Chain of Command who ordered it, and for their own reasons, they’re not saying. Or they’re long since deceased. At a guess, I’d say it was because a junior officer is expendable, and a cover story about some ‘navigational error’ by a Lieutenant or Ensign more plausible than if by a Lieutenant Commander. But I don’t know, I just did my job as ordered.

5. If that’s the best the Bush Front can do, I’m not worried. Arguing about grammar, and exact meanings of phrases.

6. I don’t remember who treated me, I wasn’t on a first-name basis with the medics. There were so many due to my numerous wounds, for which I received not one but three Purple Hearts remember, that if I ever knew his name, I’ve forgotten it. I certainly don’t remember the details of the treatment, just that it was a relatively light wound that enabled me to quickly re-join combat, and support my men.

7. I don’t know who put me in for a medal. You’re not allowed to write up yourself for one, so obviously it wasn’t me. But looking at the citation, it’s broadly in accordance with what I remember happened that day. As to who approved it, that should be in the records somewhere. Frankly, medals and so on just weren’t that important to me at the time, doing my duty for my crew and my country was.

8.There’s no discrepancy, the wound I got the Purple Heart for was from another cause. We didn’t just get them for minor scratches you know, despite what some are claiming now. The whole fuss demeans the brave men who fought in Vietnam, some of whom lost eyes, limbs, or their sanity. And now ‘National Guardsman’ Bush, hiding behind some Republican-Financed Front organisation just as he hid in the NG during Vietnam, is attacking those brave men who gave so much to our country. Has he no shame?

9. I can’t remember who did what, when. I have to rely on written notes taken at the time, or shortly thereafter. The other Swift boats may well have cleared the area of immediate danger, we often did that when a mine went off, as there’s often more than one. As I remember it, SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) was for one boat to stay behind rescuing casualties, while others raced around using tactical mobility and their weapons to provide suppressive firepower. All boats did their part, it was a team effort. Look, as far as I’m concerned, every man on those boats deserved a Silver Star, and I include the Swift Vets for Truth. I’m sorry they’re being manipulated by the Republicans, but one thing I’ve learnt in politics is that sometimes military men are just too darned honourable to believe they’re being used. I’m on the record as opposing our shameful tactics in Vietnam after the war, and to some, that makes me a traitor. But I wouldn’t have done it had I not loved my country then, as I do now.

10. All the records I have, have been released publicly, except for some medical ones which we disclosed to some reporters a few days ago. I’ll go check to make sure there aren’t any more, but the American Voter has all there is, as far as I can tell. And we know from the President’s sorry evasions about his National Guard days that some records are missing from the archives. That’s not the answer you wanted to hear, but it is the Truth.

Plausible, yes. True? Partially, probably. Did Kerry ever go to Cambodia? Personally, I doubt it. All we have is his unsupported word. and a mountain of circumstantial evidence against. We also have downright lies put out by his campaign team, which indicates incompetence, but not neccessarily falsehood by Kerry.

Or he could be a lying again and again and again, whenever he needs to sway an opinion, he makes stuff up. A few bits of truth, a few bits of unprovable assertion, and a few bits of evasion. Just like I did in the above… which is rather more plausible than anything so far put out by Team Kerry.

I’ll be interested to see if they adopt any of the complete Fantasy I came up with as the Official Story.

I won’t go in to some of the ‘dirty tricks’ I pulled in the above, for example, many of the infiltrators carried in by Helos were Montagnard Tribesmen, for whom there’d hardly be many military records.. let’s just say that I’ve tried to make the evasions and downright lies less than totally obvious to the casual observer. Or to the New York Times. And some of it may even be true. I’ve always been a critic of the way the Vietnam war was conducted, I’ve heard far too many first-person accounts of that monumental SNAFU to be completely sure that even the most improbable deeds were done. 99% yes, 100% no.

But my main criticism has always been that, at the time, far too many Officers in the US were more interested in their personal careers, FITREPs, Medals, and Body Counts than in winning the war, or doing their duty by their men. For a Lieutenant to be like this was unusual (but not unknown - quite a few got Fragged). For a Commander or Colonel, it was all too common. If what the Swift Vets say is true - and on the whole, I tend to believe most (not all) of what they claim - then Kerry would not have been alone in his attitudes. There was a lot of it going around, but usually higher-up the Chain of Command.

The mainstream media has done an extremely poor job of covering the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth story.

When the group first formed in April, the media largely ignored their explosive charges despite the fact that many of the people involved are vets and war heroes who knew John Kerry in Vietnam. Even after the group’s book, “Unfit for Command,” started selling like wildfire & conservative bloggers and talk radio hosts started talking about the story daily, most of the mainstream media continued to treat the SBVFT as a non-story.

Only after John Kerry attacked the SBVFT did most of the “dead tree” media begin to cover the story, if you consider parroting the line taken by the Kerry campaign on the ads and smearing the Swiftees for Truth for daring to attack John Kerry’s war record “cover(ing) the story”.

Perhaps the most disconcerting thing of all has been that much of the mainstream media seems to be simply rejecting the claims of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth out of hand without even bothering to familiarize themselves with many of the charges being made. For example, both Chris Matthews & Jim Lehrer seemed to be totally unaware that the Swift Boat Vets for Truth are claiming that John Kerry received 2 Purple Hearts for accidentally self-inflicted wounds. That’s just embarrassing.

So, in an effort to help everyone out there, journalists, voters, bloggers, you name it, try to get a handle on this whole “Swift Boat Vets thing,” I put together a list of 10 questions for John Kerry prompted by things said by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. While this is by no means a comprehensive list, it covers most of the hot issues in the blogosphere. Moreover, I think you’ll find that these are important questions that John Kerry needs to answer if he’s going to prove the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth wrong when they claim he’s “Unfit for Command”.

1) Isn’t it true that you requested a year long deferment from your local draft board to study in France and only after you were turned down did you actually enlist in the military?

2) There have been numerous explanations of your trip or trips to Cambodia. In 1994, you said you were in Cambodia on Christmas Eve of 1968 and were shot at by drunken Vietnamese who were celebrating Christmas. US News and World Report Reporter Kevin Whitelaw says you told him that you went on “clandestine missions to deliver weapons to anticommunist forces” in Cambodia. Carl Cameron from Fox News says he was told by your staff that you were never in Cambodia, you were just near the country. Now, the latest variation of this story told by Douglas Brinkley is that you went to Cambodia “three or four times in January and February 1969 on clandestine missions. He had a run dropping off U.S. Seals, Green Berets and CIA guys.” Can you explain the discrepancies?

3) Assuming the latest story is the one you’re going with, can you provide any details that support your story? What were the dates of trips to Cambodia? Which Swift Boat Vets were with you on the boat? Who ordered you to go? What are the names of the SEALs or CIA agents you took into Cambodia? What happened on these trips that later led you to believe you were being shot at by your Vietnamese allies who were celebrating Christmas despite the fact that these trips were in January and February?

4) Back in 2003, you told Laura Blumenfield of the Washington Post that you had a “good luck hat” that you kept with you in a briefcase that was given to you by a “CIA guy as we went in for a special mission in Cambodia”. What was the CIA guy’s name and can you give all the relevant details (dates, crewmen who were with you, etc) for that trip?

5) The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth say that your first Purple Heart was obtained fraudulently. Their claim is that the tiny piece of shrapnel you had in your arm was not from enemy fire, but from an accidentally self-inflicted wound caused by firing your M-79 grenade launcher at a target that was too close. Interestingly enough, this passage which was written in your own biography, ‘Tour Of Duty’, nine days after the incident in which you won a Purple Heart, seems to support the Swift Boat Vets for Truth contention that you were not fired upon…

“They pulled away from the pier at Cat Lo with spirits high, feeling satisfied with the way things were going for them. They had no lust for battle, but they also were not afraid. Kerry wrote in his notebook, ‘A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn’t been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven’t been shot at are allowed to be cocky.”

Can you explain the discrepancy between your own biography and your account of how you won your first Purple Heart?

6) Did Louis Letson tend to the “wound” you received your first Purple Heart for and did he treat it with a band-aid as he claims?

7) Grant Hibbard, your commanding officer at the time you received your first Purple Heart, says he turned down your request for a medal because he said you were not under enemy fire that day and your “wound” was comparable to a scratch from a rose bush. Can you explain in detail who approved that Purple Heart, when they approved it, and on what basis they approved it after you’d already been turned down by your commanding officer?

8) Your third Purple Heart was based on “shrapnel wounds in left buttocks and contusions on (the) right forearm when a mine detonated close aboard”. The bruise on your arm alone would not have been enough to qualify you for a Purple Heart so without the wound to your the buttocks, you wouldn’t have received the medal. However, your own biography, “Tour of Duty,” seems to belie the idea that you received the wound in combat. Earlier in the day, you admitted that the wound to your buttocks was accidentally self-inflicted by grenades thrown at rice bins during a non-combat situation…

“I got a piece of small grenade in my @ss from one of the rice-bin explosions and then we started to move back to the boats.”

Can you explain the discrepancy?

9) A January 17, 2004 press release about the event in which you won your third Purple Heart and your Bronze Star says that the other boats fled the scene while your boat came to Jim Rassmann’s rescue,

“Rassmann, a Green Beret, was traveling down the Bay Hap river in a boat behind Kerry’s when both were ambushed by exploding land mines and enemy fire coming from the shore. Kerry was hit in the arm, while a mine blew Rassmann’s boat out of the water. With enemy fire coming from both sides of the river and swift boats evacuating from the area, Kerry’s crew chose to turn their boat toward the ambush to save Rassmann.

This is the basis for the “No Man Left Behind” theme that your campaign has used.

However, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth said that you lied and that YOUR BOAT was the only one to leave the scene and then return. Moreover, the Washington Post, after doing some research and concluding that you and the SBVFT were wrong about some things, seems to favor the SBVT on this particular issue…

“It is unclear how far down the river Kerry’s boat was when he turned around. It could have been anywhere from a few hundred yards to a mile.

O’Neill claims that Kerry “fled the scene” despite the absence of hostile fire. Kerry, in a purported journal entry cited in Brinkley’s “Tour of Duty,” maintains that he wanted to get his troops ashore “on the outskirts of the ambush.”

Could you clarify: Was your boat the only one to leave the scene or did all the other boats evacuate the area while your boat alone went back?

10) You claim that you’ve released your full military records already and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have said that you’re lying. However, after investigating, the Washington Post found that there apparently are large amounts of material in your records that have not been released…

“A Freedom of Information Act request by The Post for Kerry’s records produced six pages of information. A spokesman for the Navy Personnel Command, Mike McClellan, said he was not authorized to release the full file, which consists of at least a hundred pages.”

Why are you refusing to sign Pentagon’s Standard Form 180 which will allow the Pentagon release all of your records and can you explain why your campaign has said that all of your records have been released?

(*** Bonus Question ***) Why do you think it is that your former doctor, one of the men who served on your boat, the majority of crew members whose picture you used in a campaign commercial, every commanding officer you ever had in Vietnam, and large numbers of men who fought beside you in combat on other boats are all coming out and not just saying that they don’t support you, but that you’re telling lies about your war record? Is it just a “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” or is there something else at work here?

P>There are at least two things that make it very difficult to accurately evaluate historical events. The first is that hindsight is 20/20. In other words, we tend to judge what happened in the past without taking into account all of the knowledge that we have acquired after the fact. For example, when we look back at WW2, not only do we know how everything turned out, but we have decades of extensive research to rely on that the actors on the world stage during that conflict did not have access to.

Furthermore, we as human beings often look at historical events through the prism of today’s conditions and standards. Put another way, it’s hard for those of us who live in the world’s most prosperous and powerful nation to truly imagine what life was actually like back in World War 2. We may THINK we know, but there are many things of import that we are wont to discount or shrug off simply because they’re no longer of concern.

Which brings us to the Japanese internment during WW2.

Until recently, there has scarcely even been any public debate about the issue. The Japanese Internment has been written off by most people as another sad, racist, chapter of our history that was wholly without merit.

However, Michelle Malkin argues in her new book, “In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War 2 and the War on Terror,” that things are not as black and white as we’ve been led to believe. To the contrary, Malkin argues that “the national security measures taken during World War 2 were justifiable, given what was known and not known at the time”.

In order to prove this assertion, Malkin paints a picture, quite effectively I might add, of a situation in which the Japanese internment is one of several not very pleasant options that Roosevelt had to choose between. Here’s what I consider to be the crux of the case that Malkin makes….

— The attack on Pearl Harbor severely damaged our Pacific forces and brought America into WW2 - on the side that was currently losing. And this was not like the Gulf War or Vietnam, we could not simply choose to “go home” and end the war. Losing would have likely meant — at some point — marauding Axis armies marching through the countryside raping, murdering, and pillaging everything in their path. The stakes don’t get any higher than they were in a conflict like World War 2.

— On December 11th of 1941, the freighter SS Lahaina was sunk by a Japanese sub off of Honolulu. Another Japanese sub sank the SS Manini in Hawaiian waters 6 days later. On December 18th, another sub sank the SS Prusa near the “big island”. Several other December attacks occurred within 20 miles of the California and Oregon coastlines. On February 23rd, a Japanese sub shelled the Ellwood oil fields in Goleta, California. At least one “high ranking Japanese military official—Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi…was eager to carry the war to the U.S. mainland”.

Secretary of War Henry Stimson also wrote this in his diary on February 10, 1942

“…I think it is quite within the bounds of possibility that if the Japanese should get naval dominance in the Pacific they would try an invasion of this country; and, if they did, we would have a tough job meeting them.”

In other words, Japanese forces were close and the danger to our homeland was very real.

— Richard Kotoshirodo, a Japanese American and John Mikami, who was Japanese, gathered extensive amounts of information while they were spying that was very helpful to the Japanese forces that attacked Pearl Harbor. Japanese-Americans (Yoshio and Irene Harada) aided a Japanese pilot who landed at Niihau island, Hawaii after being shot down while attacking Pearl Harbor.

Cables decoded from the Japanese in May 1941 said in part,

“We have already established contacts with absolutely reliable Japanese in the San Pedro and San Diego area, who will keep a close watch on all shipments of airplanes and other war materials…”

That same cable also stated that the Japanese had Japanese-American spies in the Army and that they were watching traffic crossing the American / Mexican border.

A January 3rd, 1942 army MID memo states, “‘there can be no doubt that’ most of the leaders within the Japanese espionage network of Japanese clubs, business groups, and labor organizations “continue to function as key operatives for the Japanese government along the West Coast”.

So we knew that the Japanese had a spy network in America before Pearl Harbor and we believed it was still operating after the attacks.

— While we clearly couldn’t trust citizens of Japan (or other Axis nations) to run around unsupervised while we were in the middle of a fight to the finish with their home-countries (hence the 11,229 Japanese citizens, 10,905 German citizens, 3,728 Italian citizens and a few others who were rounded up and interned), American born citizens were of course a different matter. Certainly, most of them were loyal. Curtis Munson who was been sent to investigate the issue, estimated that 90-98% of Japanese-Americans could be trusted (although he had his doubts about 9000 Kibei — Japanese-Americans schooled in Japan).

However, Munson also noted that even a very small number of saboteurs could do a cataclysmic damage to the war effort,

“…The harbor at San Pedro could be razed by fire completely by four men with grenades and a little study in one night. Dams could be blown and half of lower California might actually die of thirst. One railway bridge at the exit from the mountains in some cases could tie up three or four main railroads…”

Here’s more on the damage that could be caused by saboteurs from Provost Marshal General Allen Gullion,

“If production for war is seriously delayed by sabotage in the West Coastal states, we very possibly shall lose the war….from reliable reports from military and other sources, the danger of Japanese-inspired espionage is great.”

— America and other nations traditionally interned “enemy aliens” during wars. For example, in World War 1 more than 6300 “European-born civilians” were interned. Moreover, Mexico and Canada both chose to move ethnic Japanese away from their coasts. Also, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that interning Japanese citizens was constitutional.

— Furthermore, Malkin revealed that in 1944, disturbingly “28 percent (of draft age Japanese-American evacuees) refused to swear allegiance to their country or forswear allegiance to the emperor of Japan” and when given the opportunity, 5,620 Japanese-Americans chose to abandon their U.S. citizenship.

— Last but not least, there were no easy options for dealing with the situation. Mere monitoring of suspect Japanese citizens would have likely be too difficult given the number of people involved, the consequences of failure, and the demands of a world war. Criminal prosecutions of suspected spies would have been nearly impossible because intelligence sources couldn’t be revealed and it would be extraordinarily difficult to prove someone who was say simply watching ship movements (so they could later report them) was committing a crime. Another possibility would have been some sort of “quasi-judicial military tribunal,” but there would have been constitutional questions about that and it couldn’t possibly be as effective as evacuating and/or interning Japanese-Americans along the West Coast.

In a nutshell, that’s the dilemma that Malkin is trying to put in front of people with this book. Was it worth causing great inconvenience & infringing on the civil liberties of the Japanese-Americans who were interned, most of whom were loyal, patriotic, Americans, in order to stop the potential loss of countless American lives as a result of the actions of comparatively small numbers of disloyal Japanese-American saboteurs & spies?

In today’s world, even in the context of the war on terrorism, that’s an easy question to answer and indeed Malkin specifically states that she does not support rounding up Arabs or Muslims and putting them in camps. But, given the circumstances we faced in World War 2, Malkin argues that there was justification for interning of Japanese-Americans during World War 2. After reading her book, I can’t help but come to the conclusion that she’s right.

(NOTE: This was posted on Dean’s World, where Joe Gandelman was Guest Blogger this weekend)

You can see some signs of the backlash by reading Jeff Jarvis here and Walter Swann here.

In the past 72 hours two Republicans have told me the same thing (one said she switched to the Democratic party). And my own position — which is akin to Jarvis’ — has been posted on my blog The Moderate Voice (just scroll down and down) many times before. It’s this:

I do not care about George Bush’s military record — so you Democrats are not scoring any points with me. I do not care about John Kerry’s military record — so you Republicans are not scoring any points with me. I do not care about the Vietnam war in this election.

If anything, each day I am finding myself reacting more and more like Jarvis and Swann and find this whole thing reprehensible. (Because there is huge interest in this issue on Dean’s World, I post more here than I do on my own blog on it. I also did NOT post much at all on the Bush military record controversy when that was raging).

Bush hatred is mirrored by Kerry hatred which seemingly drips from radio talk shows, emails and blogs. So both sides can stop wasting everyone’s time with arguments about which side hates the most: BOTH hate the other candidate with equal passion. Bush hatred and Clinton hatred are also the same animals. It’s amazing to hear someone (Democrats and Republicans) say “No I don’t hate so and so” then launch into a rage-filled, name-calling denunciation — and you hear this all the time.

Operatives and supporters on both sides should admit it: hate feels good, it motivates many voters and it gets people on both sides to the polls. It’s also a way for both sides to use some of a campaign’s limited time talking about something other than prickly issues that may lose them votes and be more complex than good guy/bad guy.

In the case of the Vietnam issue, maybe the only way for this country to return to issues is for all of us Baby Boomers to die off or to put all of our energy into getting new face lifts or making sure the Viagra dosage works — and stop reliving past glories and pursuing undying grudges.

And, in November, for some independent voters (like me), the deciding factor often becomes which party ran the less personal campaign. You hold your nose and vote for the candidate that seemed more focused on issues. Right now it appears as if both sides are only at the starting point of one of the most personal campaigns ever. And no matter who wins, the country loses.

(NOTE: This was posted this weekend on Dean’s World, where Joe Gandelman was Guest Blogger)

The Department of Homeland security continues to be the big butt (the latter phrase does not refer to Rosie O’Donnell) of late night comedians’ jokes due to a mini-controversy that emerged when Ted Kennedy was stopped from flying several times for security reasons.

It turned out the Massachusetts Senator — hardly a newcomer to public life and definitely not fitting the profile of a terrorist (they don’t have red noses) - stopped because a name similar to his appeared on the government’s no-fly list of terror suspects.

So Ted Kennedy was on a No-Fly list (versus Bill Clinton who is on a Uses-Fly list). It happened several times so the Senator got a taste of bureaucracy and Big Government at its Best/Worst (Republicans and Democrats: circle the word to make this post a fair one to you, a new feature here..):

Kennedy said he was stopped at airports in Washington, D.C., and Boston three times last March. Airline agents told him he would not be sold a ticket because his name was on a list.

When he asked the agent why, he was told, “We can’t tell you.”

Each time, a supervisor recognized Kennedy and got him on the flight. But after the third incident, Kennedy’s staff called the Transportation Security Administration and asked to clear up the confusion.

That agency said a name similar to Kennedy’s was on the watch list. The agency also said that the airlines did not handle the matter properly.

But twice after contacting the agency, Kennedy was stopped again at the airline counter.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed lawsuits in San Francisco and Seattle over this issue, demanding that the government explain how wrongly flagged travelers can get off the lists.

But maybe there’s something we don’t know.

Why was Kennedy stopped? Perhaps they have a new rule on people suspected of carrying flasks. More:

“If they have that kind of difficulty with a member of Congress, how in the world are average Americans, who are getting caught up in this thing, how are they going to be treated fairly and not have their rights abused?” Kennedy asked the official, Asa Hutchinson, under secretary of homeland security.

Kennedy said he’d been misidentified on the watch list when he tried to board airliners between Washington and Boston. He said he was stopped five times as he tried to board US Airways shuttles because a name similar to his appeared on a list or his name popped up for additional screening.

Hutchinson, who apologized for “any inconvenience” to the senator, testified Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the need for the federal government to take over the watch lists, which are administered by the airlines.

Each time, a supervisor recognized Kennedy and got him on the flight. But after the third incident, Kennedy’s staff called the Transportation Security Administration and asked to clear up the confusion.

But Kennedy is NOT alone:

A second prominent lawmaker said Friday that he’s been subjected to extra security at airports because his name appears on a list designed to prevent terrorists from boarding planes.

Rep. John Lewis, D - Georgia, a nine-term congressman famous for his civil rights work with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has been stopped 35 to 40 times over the past year, his office said.

Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on border security Thursday that he’s been stopped several times because his name appeared on an airline watch list.

Lewis contacted the Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security and executives at various airlines in a so-far fruitless effort to get his name off the list, said spokeswoman Brenda Jones.

Instead, Lewis got a letter from the Transportation Security Administration that he can present to ticket agents indicating he has cleared an identity check with the agency. But the letter warns he might still be subject to extra security checks before being allowed to fly.

Wait…maybe the new list has a profile that screens passengers for veracity and sincerity. That would explain why politicians are being stopped — and why the candidates and staffs of the two presidential candidates use private jets. (Don’t look for them to be flying commercial too soon…)

(NOTE: This was posted on Dean’s World, where Joe Gandelman was Guest Blogger this weekend)

France is quickly emerging as the most anti-semitic country in the non Islamic world. The latest act:

Arsonists have set fire to a Jewish soup kitchen in central and daubed Nazi symbols on the building, police say, in the latest anti-Semitic act in France.

President Jacques Chirac vowed to pursue those responsible and severely punish them.
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said the perpetrators could face up to 20 years in prison or even life imprisonment under a new anti-racism measure in France.

“The country’s forces are mobilised that criminals who carry out such acts are rapidly arrested and severely punished,” he told reporters at the burned-out building where anti-Semitic symbols, including a swatiska in red felt pen, were drawn on the walls.

These proclamations are impressive, except for a couple of things. For one thing, these hate crimes are now nearly commonplace there:

It was the second anti-Semitic act in the French capital in about a week after vandals last Saturday drew a swastika and wrote “death to the Jews” on a low wall in front of Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral early on Saturday.

A wave of such attacks have hit eastern France, with more than 300 tombs or graves desecrated since April — many in Jewish cemeteries but also some Muslim and a few Christian graves.

“There’s no doubt about the stupid and criminal motivations of those who burn down a soup kitchen while inscribing anti-Semitic graffiti,” a spokesman for the Jewish representative council in France (CRIF) said.

“It’s definitely Jewish hatred which inspires them. The CRIF asks the authorities to promptly arrest and sanction in an exemplary manner the perpetrators of this odious act which besmirches France,” he added.

Indeed, several Jewish leaders in recent months have urged French Jews to get out of the country — a country with a large and growing Muslim population with increasing political clout.

(NOTE: This appeared on Dean’s World this weekend, where Joe Gandelman was Guest Blogger)

Here is yet another sign of why we never can let our guard down in the war against terrorism. We face an enemy that is unrelenting — and constantly on the move.

The AP reports:

MONTERREY, Mexico - Governments throughout Mexico and Central America are on alert as evidence grows that al-Qaida members are traveling in the region and looking for recruits to carry out attacks in Latin America — the potential last frontier for international terrorism.

The territory could be a perfect staging ground for Osama bin Laden’s militants, with homegrown rebel groups, drug and people smugglers, and corrupt governments. U.S. officials have long feared al-Qaida could launch an attack from south of the border, and they have been paying closer attention as the number of terrorism-related incidents has increased since last year.

This is one reason why our present immigration set-up along the U.S. Mexico border is so dangerous. The U.S. is caught in a dilemma on that one — no matter what it does, there is a price. But now the scale appears to be tipping on the side of a tougher clamp down — for U.S. security reasons. Read on:

The strongest possible al-Qaida link is Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, a 29-year-old Saudi pilot suspected of being a terrorist cell leader. The FBI issued a border-wide alert earlier this month for Shukrijumah, saying he may try to cross into Arizona or Texas.

In June, Honduran officials said Shukrijumah was spotted earlier this year at an Internet cafe in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Panamanian officials say the pilot and alleged bombmaker passed through their country before the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in May singled out Shukrijumah as one of seven especially dangerous al-Qaida-linked terrorist figures wanted by the government, which fears a new al-Qaida attack. A $5 million reward is posted for information leading to his capture.

Mexican and U.S. border officials have been on extra alert, checking foreign passports and arresting any illegal migrants. In a sign of a growing Mexican crackdown, eight people from Armenia, Iran and Iraq were arrested Thursday in Mexicali on charges they may have entered Mexico with false documents, although they did not appear to have any terrorist ties.

I live about 2 hours from Mexicali and have visited it. The Mexicali/Calexico crossing area tends to be less publicized and a bit more sedate than the San Diego-Tijuana crossing (which is about 20 minutes from my door). All the more reason to keep an eye on what goes on there.

Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, Mexico’s top anti-crime prosecutor, said Mexican officials have no evidence that Shukrijumah — or any other al-Qaida operatives — are in Mexico. But Mexican authorities are investigating and keeping a close eye on the airports and borders.

“The alert has been sounded,” Vasconcelos told The Associated Press last month.

And there’s more (read the whole thing) include:

In Central America, Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez said officials have uncovered evidence that terrorists, likely from al-Qaida, may be trying to recruit Hondurans to carry out attacks in Central America. He did not offer details.”

El Salvador authorities last week reinforced security at the country’s international airport and along the borders after purported al-Qaida threats appeared on the Internet against their country for supporting the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. President Tony Saca, undeterred, is sending the country’s third peacekeeping unit — 380 troops — to Iraq.

Terrorists have struck in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the United States. Latin America could be next, analysts say, especially as it becomes harder to operate elsewhere.

Meanwhile, there are fears the Panama Canal could be a likely target. And there have been suspicions about Paraguay’s border with Brazil and Argentina being used “as an area for Islamic terrorist fund-raising” due to a Muslim community that popped up there in the 1970s.

But the immediate concern for the U.S. is the U.S. Mexico border, “a porous, 2,000-mile border with the United States and is the home to widespread organized crime.”

Some Aeromexico flights were cancelled and forced to turn around in December after takeoff due to terrorism concerns in Mexico. Why? “United States, Canada and Interpol told Mexico that officials suspected terrorists might be using Mexican soil to plan an attack, Vasconcelos said.”

Indeed, a flight from Tijuana could reach the San Diego area — or the San Onofre Nuclear Plant just a brief flying distance up the coast — in very little time.

Mexico is a highly popular travel destination for people trying to sneak in to the U.S., partly because it’s so easy to get in. At the same time, Muslims have trouble legally getting into Mexico. Since 911 Mexico has made it virtually impossible for people from Muslim countries to get visas to come in.

Why is it considered easy to get in? The bottom line is that traditionally BOTH parties have factored in political considerations (read that: making sure they don’t lose or can even gain Hispanic votes) in making not just immigration policy but border policy.

And, although security has clearly gotten tougher, the U.S. Mexico border, for all intents and purposes, remains a loophole for terrorists.

A military journal in Saudi Arabia, that country that is such an anchor to U.S. interests — part of the Middle East that is in America’s interests to defend — has published a mega-anti-semitic article. Isn’t it great that we’re allied with and tacitly defending comments like these?

The majority of revolutions, coups d’etat, and wars which have occurred in the world [in the past], those that are occurring, and those that will occur, are almost entirely the handiwork of the Jews. They [the Jews] turned to [these methods] in order to implement the injunctions of the fabricated Torah, the Talmud, and the ‘Protocols [of the Elders of Zion’], all of which command the destruction of all non-Jews in order to achieve their goal - namely, world domination.

“In addition, they aspire to dominate the world in material, cultural, and spiritual terms in order to annihilate it. They own property and gold and they control the banks and other financial institutions, which [in turn] control the economies of the powerful countries. In this way they controlled the most [influential] people in the world, in whose power it was to entangle their countries in wars that resulted in benefits only for the Jews. Among the enticements [which the Jews used] were: 1) cash incentives; 2) offering jobs; 3) the introduction of religious elements into terrorism.

Hey, I’m Jewish. Where’s the bank I can control? The only religious elements intrduced into terrorism I experienced was the chopped herring and eggplant at my bar mitzvah. Take my circumcision — please…

We don’t want to give these folks more space here with this essay but here are a few points from Ma’ashu Muhammad’s article titled “The Jews in the Modern Era” published in a journal titled “Al-Jundi Al-Muslim” (The Muslim Soldier). It is put out by the Religious Affairs Department of the Saudi armed forces and it appeared in its “Know Your Enemy” section:

—-“”World Jewry has Established a Shadow Government Run by 300 Satans Who Call Themselves ‘Elders’”
And they’re all shouting “GET OFF MY LAWN” as they rush to the airport to catch the next plane to Branson.

—“‘The Jews Caused the Outbreak of World War I and World War II’
Maybe their real goal was to get to China to get more Chinese food. (There is BC — Before Christ — and the Jewish calender BCF — Before Chinese Food)

—“The Jews and the Islamic Caliphate”
Really? I don’t care what these two groups do sexually…

—“The Jews Created Every Scientific or Philosophical Principle or School”
Even the Montessori Schools? How about schools of fish? And is that TRUE about philosophy? So the JEWS were responsible for that boring crap I had to read at Colgate University in my 8 am Philosophy and Religion class?? Then I’ll convert!

—“The Jews and the Arab League”
Cool! What are the names of the baseball teams in both leagues?

Wait — are you accusing us of not taking this seriously? We do. The joke is how the U.S. turns the other way constantly in the case of Saudi Arabia when we denounce the same kinds of sentiments in other non-allied countries.

Now the New York Times has entered the fray with a major story on the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth ad — as have other “mainstream” newspapers — so now let’s step back and look at how the media works.

What follows isn’t entirely opinion: I got my masters in journalism, wrote from India, Spain and Bangladesh for nearly five years, and worked on the staff as a reporter for two newspapers owned by major newspaper chains (Knight-Ridder and Copley Press). This does NOT make all of this the final word, but it really is more than just guess work. When I was overseas I had to anticipate news cycles and hot stories to get my stories and features in the newspapers (I wrote for the old Chicago Daily News, the Christian Science Monitor, self-syndicated to newspapers in Europe, the Middle East, Australia and Canada). I worked with LOTS of editors — and most of them were highly professional and struggled over when and how to run certain stories (quite a few remain close friends of mine).

SO CONSIDER THIS:

(1) Every breaking news story (versus features in general magazines) has a rythm. It may start locally, then slowly spread. One reporter does something on it. Another, then another. Now you have the blogosphere. Blogs can INITIATE a story.

(2) What has been written previously (errors and all in many cases) becomes part of the conventional wisdom and is passed on to future reporters when they hurriedly look at what has been written before. What has been written before provides a context.

(3) Editors read other papers and watch network and cable news. So they know what’s going on. Oftentimes a newspaper or wire service’s criteria is tougher than it’d be for a talk show, cable show or even cable news show.

(4) You almost never can get a political news story in by insisting the paper or broadcast outlet run it. That smacks of politics and editors will feel as if they are being asked to be used as political operatives.. Similarly, you usually can’t get a feature in by saying: “Give me some publicity.” Editors don’t want to be p.r. people (even if lots of what papers and cable/broadcast people run can qualify as positive image stories for corporations and people).

(5)When you think about the press, just think about CAT PSYCHOLOGY. A cat will usually come and jump in your lap. But try and put it in your lap, and it’ll sometimes jump down, because a cat feels it must decide this for itself. Also, many cats decide each minute whether they like you or not; the same with editors and reporters working on stories. They are constantly evaluating credibility. They will call it as they see it (and not always be correct).

(6) If a complex but not massively breaking story is bubbling under the surface and reaches a point where a paper can write what one editor used to tell me was an “upsummer” (sum it all up), they will wait and do it as long weekender since that’s when they have the most space. Or, in the case of a broadcast show such as 60 Minutes, use it to garner ratings with heavy promotion. One of the few papers that will devote huge amounts of space is the Los Angeles Times, which is why its earlier story was so long — and a classic “upsummer” …but it angered many since it seemed to take an immediate political position early in the story (against the Swift Boat vets).

(7) If you notice, the Washington Times can do many stories on some political topics but they won’t hit the biggest newspapers. Why? The Washington Times is perceived by many other papers as paper with an agenda editorially and in its selection of stories (just what Washington Times readers think about the New York Times). BUT: it can help publicize a story until a WIRE SERVICE begins to do a lot on it.

(8) If a wire service picks it up more stories can follow from the big papers.

(9) So in the case of this story, once it hit the L.A. Times and the Washington Post, the New York Times had to run a long piece on it. One editor once called these kinds of follow ups “advancing the story” as in:”So, this story is still alive. What can we do now to advance the story?”

(10) Once a story hits the “big media” the next step is the news media in fierce competition not to be beaten on new twists. That explains the stories now emerging going after the Swift Boat vets: this is a NEW twist, since the other stuff now has a “been there-done that” quality to it. The fear of being beaten on a story is a HUGE FACTOR motivating what news you’re offered to read, see and hear. If it’s a big enough story, careers can be built — and destroyed — on who got what first. Even by minutes.

(11) Everyone involved in a major story like this is fair game. Because if there is something that provides a new twist, it’s a good story.

(12) When one outlet runs a new twist, then the hunt is on by others to make sure they cover that aspect — and find their OWN new twist, so others can cover what they’ve written.

(13) Reporters are paid to ask questions that may make sources and even some readers or viewers detest them.

(14) The Gold Standard for the Conventional Wisdom in the U.S. media remains — for all of its MANY flaws, diminished reputation, and what many contend is an undisguised political bias — the New York Times. How the Times frames a story influences the media and elite consensus. Of course, if a New Twist is discovered by someone else, that changes the conventional wisdom — and the Times will report on that…with it’s “New Twist.’

(15) All stories (except Michael Jackson) eventually peter out. There is a beginning, middle and an end to how a story moves. It’s kind of like doing body boarding or surfing: you wait for the wave, it comes, you ride the wave for as long as you can, then it’s over.

(16) Remember that in bodyboarding and surfing there are accidents and occasionally people are hurt, or even die. In a major news story, every person and institution involved is subject to the most stringent scrutiny — and it can be brutal. The person at the center of the story is one aspect; other key actors in the story are another…and sometimes they’re note prepared for that.

(17) Most reporters aren’t out to “get” a person as much as “get” some material to frame a story, which is almost like an old bedtime story since it has a structure. That may mean asking provocative questions, calling experts all over the country, using inflammatory or highly emotional quotes not only in the story but in interviewing people ….to provoke a heated response (get a good quote).

(17) Once a story is in the mainstream media it takes on a life of its own. The outcome really can’t be stage managed by either side in a controversy.

(18) The news media has an attention deficit problem. A huge story can vanish almost immediately if another one comes up, or if editors simply conclude the story has been done to death, or if they feel it simply doesn’t have many more new aspects to explore.

(19) The is no big media conspiracy. It’s a bunch of editors who more often then not are NOT in touch with fellow editors at other papers, and reporters who work on staffs where they may be “creative” tension where they are pitched against each other to fiercly compete to advance. It isn’t about helping this candidate or hurting that candidate — but about editors and reporters producing news stories that are as solid as they can produce (even if they may fail and show a bias of the right or left)…and so these editors and reporters have some good clips or tapes they can use to send out to advance to other jobs, or be promoted within their organizations.

So, in the case of the Swift Boat Veterans: the story has percolated….now it’s being poured…and the public is tasting it.

Will they say “GREAT” — or puke? Stay tuned……………

UPDATE: Here’s a classic case of how the media processes a story with a new twists. This story begs the creation of a series of follow up stories (striking back daily stories) plus a “trend-spotter” later on (did he neutralize a problem or turn a minus into a plus or did it get worse?). You’ll likely see the message of this story now showing up as part of the continuing context of future election stories.

Well, Iraq managed to beat the crap out of Australia in the Olympic Soccer. My feelings are mixed - chagrined that we lost, but proud that we lost to a country we played a small but vital part in liberating.

With that in mind, and in a bid to remind myself that I’m living here in God’s Own Country, (and in an attempt to inject a note of sanity amidst the vitriol and bile surrounding Senator Kerry) I hereby quote from an article in the Christian Science Monitor, spotted over at CurrencyLad’s blog. :

Maria Karabelas is from Melbourne and is quite proud of both her motherlands. Prior to the ceremony, she had been coy about her role, but she was not the least bit shy about telling us what happened after.

Maria and her friend Efy were part of a group of performers dressed as marble statues.

It seems that Maria’s exit from the field took her right through the VIP section of the stadium and as she was walking along in decked out in full statue regalia, she spied former President George H.W. Bush.

Still riding high on her excitement from the ceremony and being the friendly, enthusiastic person she is, she bolted right for him, with her hand extended and shouted, “Hi! I’m Australian!”

Of course, the Secret Service agents watching it didn’t see the international relations value in this behavior. I’m also sure it would have been tough to explain to the 43rd president of the US that his father, the 41st president, was attacked at the Olympics by a crazed statue.

They unceremoniously grabbed Maria, who in turn shrugged them off.

Acting every bit the offended lady she was, she looked at the chagrined agents and declared, “Leave me alone, I’m Australian.”

Well, this seemed good enough for the former Prez. He told the rather surprised bodyguards, “Leave her alone, she’s Australian.” He then proceeded to invite Maria to join him to watch the rest of the show.

And there she sat for the remainder of the evening.

Onya, George.

From PBS :

SEN. JOHN KERRY: …But here’s what you really need to know about them. They’re funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Republican contributor out of Texas. They’re a front for the Bush campaign.

From the Dallas Observer :

According to a document SBVT filed with the IRS (Form 8872 – Political Organization Report of Contributions and Expenditures), the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth raised $158,750 between April 23, when they were officially formed, and July 15. Over that period they spent $60,403 for research, Web design, a private investigator, political compliance and to pay Spaeth Communications. Of the contributions made to SBVT, the greatest number were small donations made by members of the organization. Only three exceeded $10,000. Two of those were for $25,000 – one by O’Neill, the other by Harlan Crow. Crow, who lives in Dallas, owns Crow Realty Investors and is a major GOP benefactor who has contributed heavily to the Dallas County Republican Party and the Texas GOP. The largest amount given to SBVT by far, however, was a $100,000 check written by Bob Perry, a home builder from the Houston area.
During the 2002 election cycle, Perry contributed more than $4 million to various campaigns and political action committees (PACs). And while some of Perry’s contributions have gone to a few select Democrats over the years, the vast majority have gone to Republicans.

From the Washington Post :

The Democratic 527 organizations have drawn support from some wealthy liberals determined to defeat Bush. They include financier George Soros and his wife, Susan Weber Soros, who gave $5 million to ACT and $1.46 million to MoveOn.org; Peter B. Lewis, chief executive of the Progressive Corp., who gave $3 million to ACT and $500,000 to MoveOn; and Linda Pritzker, of the Hyatt hotel family, and her Sustainable World Corp., who gave $4 million to the joint fundraising committee.

From OpenSecrets.Org, a list of the top contributors to MoveOn.org :

Top Contributors
Soros Fund Management/George Soros	$2,601,000
Progressive Corp/Peter B Lewis	$2,500,000
Shangri-La Entertainment/Steve Bing	$971,777
Shout! Factory	$100,000
Cullman Foundation/Cullman Ventures	$100,000

A list of the Top 50 527’s is available via Opensecrets.Org.

From PBS :

August 19, 2004
[…]
SEN. JOHN KERRY: Of course, this group isn’t interested in the truth — they’re not telling the truth. They didn’t even exist until I won the nomination for president.

From the Washington Post :

By Dan Balz and Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 29, 2004; Page A01

BOSTON, July 28 — John F. Kerry was nominated as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate Wednesday night after running mate John Edwards praised the Massachusetts senator as a decisive and battle-tested leader, and he urged voters to embrace the politics of hope over what he called a low-road campaign by the Republicans.

From Disinfopedia :

The website for SBVT was registered on April 14
[…]
he establishment of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was announced at the National Press Club in a May 4, 2004, news conference
[…]
A return filed with the Internal Revenue Service by SBVT states that between April 23, when it was formed…

From the Boston Globe

The Kerry campaign removed a 20-page batch of documents yesterday from its website after The Boston Globe quoted a Navy officer who said the documents wrongly portrayed Kerry’s service. Edward Peck had said he — not Kerry — was the skipper of Navy boat No. 94 at a time when the Kerry campaign website credited the senator with serving on the boat. The website had described Kerry’s boat as being hit by rockets and said a crewmate was injured in an attack. But Peck said those events happened when he was the skipper. The campaign did not respond to a request to explain why the records were removed.

There were new warnings of a pre-emptive strike today — but this time it was Iran warning the United States:

Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani warned that Iran might launch a preemptive strike against US forces in the region to prevent an attack on its nuclear facilities.

“We will not sit (with arms folded) to wait for what others will do to us. Some military commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly,” Shamkhani told Al-Jazeera TV when asked if Iran would respond to an American attack on its nuclear facilities.

“America is not the only one present in the region. We are also present, from Khost to Kandahar in Afghanistan; we are present in the Gulf and we can be present in Iraq (news - web sites),” said Shamkhani, speaking in Farsi to the Arabic-language news channel through an interpreter.

“The US military presence (in Iraq) will not become an element of strength (for Washington) at our expense. The opposite is true, because their forces would turn into a hostage” in Iranian hands in the event of an attack, he said.

Shamkhani, who was asked about the possibility of an American or Israeli strike against Iran’s atomic power plant in Bushehr, added: “We will consider any strike against our nuclear installations as an attack on Iran as a whole, and we will retaliate with all our strength.

“Where Israel is concerned, we have no doubt that it is an evil entity, and it will not be able to launch any military operation without an American green light. You cannot separate the two.”

A commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards was quoted in the Iranian press earlier Wednesday as saying that Tehran would strike the Israeli reactor at Dimona if Israel attacks the Islamic republic’s own burgeoning nuclear facilities.

There are other sword-rattling statements in the story, which should be read in its entirety. However, the main point is that this is one of the first instances of another country threatening U.S. forces with the same pre-emptive strike policy that Washington has now said is in place here. We may truly be in a new era……

JQuinton is working on a directory of all bloggers who are serving or have served in the military (any military, not just the USA). If you qualify, leave a post in his comments section or link to his article.

Commenter BooPear noted:

"Something I've noted in quite a number of blogs, however, is lots and lots of problems identified, and plenty of talk about those problems, but typically not much offered in the way of proposed solutions.... I'd be very curious to know what you, or Gary, or Praktike, or others here think we need actually need to do, specifically, to solve the problems western civ is facing.

• How DO we encourage some sort of Islamic reformation (or do we at all, and instead just let them sort it out on their own)?

• How DO we reconcile the tremendous cultural gap between the West and Islam?

• How DO we do a better job encouraging political reform in the Muslim world?

• What can we, as private citizens do, to help all of this along?"

Fair qestions. Comments, other blog posts addressing this issue, et. al. are being compiled via our comments section.

N.B. Just be sure to use this format to make all URLs live...

"Highlighted Text":http://theurl.com/ creates a live link
(which becomes...) Highlighted Text creates a live link

Newswires and newscasts yesterday were dominated by reports that a deal with rebel Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had been reached. But, if you look at the latest news, yesterday’s optimistic reports AGAIN underline the fragility of western reporting: today the deal is off.

Yesterday’s reports said Al Sadr had agreed to all of the government demands. The most hopeful of these demands — which would have been an authentic milestone-setting achhievement — included disarming his militia and turning it into a peaceful organization that would take its place in Iraq’s new democratic order.

But now Ad Sadr is essentially saying “Never mind!” and “No way” — and there are growing indications that the government is seriously considering storming the mosque now being used by Al Sadr to as shield him from consequences:

Fierce fighting erupted in the city of Najaf Thursday after a rebel Shi’ite cleric defied an Iraqi government threat to attack his stronghold in a holy shrine and rejected demands that he end his uprising.

Thick black smoke poured into the sky from near the Imam Ali Mosque, soon after Moqtada al-Sadr spurned the ultimatum from interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. U.S. aircraft and tanks pounded the area around the shrine.

It was not immediately clear if the government’s threatened offensive was under way at the mosque, where the radical cleric and his Mehdi Army militia have holed up.

Away from the mosque area, three mortar bombs hit a Najaf police station in quick succession, killing seven police and wounding 21 others, police said.

Sadr reverted to his trademark defiance after two days in which he had appeared to be willing to disarm his militia and leave Iraq’s holiest Shi’ite shrine.

Asked about the latest government demands, Sheikh Ahmed al-Sheibani, a senior Sadr aide and Mehdi Army commander, told reporters inside the mosque, “It is very clear that we reject them.”

This all suggests only one side will be left prominently standing when this is over: the Iraq government’s or al-Sadr. And, the news report says, the government is already suffering from the turmoil:

The two-week rebellion has badly dented Allawi’s authority, killed hundreds and rattled world oil markets. Oil prices hit a new record of $47.95 for a barrel of U.S. light crude.

Iraqi Minister of State Kasim Daoud told a news conference in Najaf the government had exhausted all peaceful means to persuade Sadr to back down and was determined to impose a military solution unless the cleric surrendered.

He said the scion of a respected Shi’ite clerical dynasty was facing his “final hours” before an attack.

Daoud vowed to liberate the Imam Ali Mosque but declined to say whether the government would storm the site itself.

It sounds like one way or another the mosque will be stormed or somehow flushed out. The government (and the U.S. which won’t be sending in troops but will back an attempt to take the mosque) has no choice unless it wants its authority to keep slipping away. No matter how much it’s provoked, storming the mosque will create some new problems — problems al-Sadr and other militant Muslims would like to see the new government (and the U.S.) have.

But now the choice is how to solidify the authority of a new government amid signs the rebellion is already hurting the government. The surprise would be if the government allowed this stalemate to continue.

We would of course not lower ourselves to comment on this hot news flash:

PORNOGRAPHY is good for people, the academic leading a taxpayer-funded study of the subject said yesterday, as the Coalition and Labor traded jibes about an Opposition push to stop online porn reaching home computers.

WAIT: We do NOT CALL IT “porn” anymore. The Moderate Voice (aka Joe Gandelman) insists: it is to be called “interactive visual material.”

Alan McKee, who with academics Catharine Lumby and Kath Albury is conducting the Understanding Pornography in Australia study, said that a survey of more than 1000 porn-users must be taken into account as Labor considers forcing all internet service providers to automatically filter hardcore porn to protect children.
Oh, this story on pornography being good for you is from Australia — from down under.
“The surprising finding was that pornography is actually good for you in many ways,” Dr McKee said.

“When you look at people who are using it in everyday life, over 90 per cent report it has had a very positive effect.”

Yes. Even in Washington, where it apparently increases reading speed. Our sources tell us that Congressmen who read porn later turned lots of pages.

Dr McKee said porn users reported it had taught them “to be more relaxed about their sexuality” and marriages were healthier, while porn made people think about another person’s pleasure and made them less judgmental about body shapes.

So there is hope for Rosie O’Donnell yet…
We cut this penetrating story down to bare-bones so you should read the whole thing.

Good News for all of is: CostCo may start selling coffins. According to the Chicago Sun-Times:

On Monday, Costco Wholesale Corp., better known for bulk chicken and cases of soda, started test marketing caskets along side mattresses in two of its Chicago-area stores.

Each of the six models from the Universal Casket Co., in colors including lilac and Neapolitan blue, is priced at $799.99, made of 18-gauge steel, considered medium weight for caskets, and can be delivered within 48 hours.

But we’re puzzled. Does this article have all the information?

If it’s at CostCo, shouldn’t that mean you have to buy several of them at the same time? That way you could give a casket to your spouse, or to your favorite niece or nephew for their graduation gift? Or (and the article doesn’t say this, either) does it mean that the caskets come in BIG SIZES.

I’d want my casket personalized, too — with the initials D.K.

“Have we got a deal for YEW!”

That’s the message from the every-day-he-makes-us-long-for-Rudy-or-Ed-or-anyone Bloomberg administration to potential demonstrators who might make a lot of noise or wreak havok on the Republican convention.

“Hey, while you’re in New York if you can be designated a “peaceful political activist” (button and all) it could SAVE YOU SOME BUCKS!”

It is a creative idea — and if it works out, just think of how it can be broadened.

The next step will be “non-opposition opponents.”

Here are some of the details (did Alan Keyes think this one up?):

In a transparently mercantile bid to keep protesters from disrupting the Republican National Convention later this month, the Bloomberg administration will offer “peaceful political activists” discounts at select hotels, museums, stores and restaurants around town during convention week, which begins Aug. 29.

Law-abiding protesters will be given buttons that bear a fetching rendition of the Statue of Liberty holding a sign that reads, “peaceful political activists.” Protesters can present the buttons at places like the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Sex, the Pokémon Center store and such restaurants as Miss Mamie’s Spoonbread Too and Applebee’s to save some cash during their stay.

If only the Romanovs had thought of this.

“It’s no fun to protest on an empty stomach,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday, when he announced the program at NYC & Company, the city’s tourism office, which will distribute the buttons to all comers to its Midtown office.

Protesters can also get the buttons from groups that have a legal permit to rally. But Mr. Bloomberg conceded yesterday that not everyone who wore a button would be strictly vetted for his or her peacefulness. “Unfortunately, we can’t stop an anarchist from getting a button,” he said, though he doubted any of them would want to wear one.

Anarchist? I don’t care what religion someone is…But more:

The discount program comes at a time when Mr. Bloomberg is under increasing pressure from the largest protest group, United for Peace and Justice, which is demanding the right to protest in Central Park, a request the city has repeatedly rejected. As a result, the city faces the prospect that the largest rally, planned the Sunday before the convention, will be an illegal gathering.

A spokesman for the group, Bill Dobbs, dismissed the discount program yesterday as a publicity stunt.

The city contends that it wants to give as warm a welcome to protesters as to delegates. “Most times, people try to keep protesters from coming,” the mayor said, “and they certainly don’t go out of their way to accommodate them.”

In offering the discounts, the city also has its economy in mind. Officials want to make sure that hotels and restaurants are as fully booked as possible during the convention week; many have reported that reservations are slow for that week.

The discount program for protesters is modeled on one for delegates to the convention, and there are some notable differences. Protesters are offered $5 off admission to the Museum of Sex, while delegates are not. But delegates get $3 off the space show at the American Museum of Natural History, a discount not offered to protesters. The Republicans get “Rent,” the people who oppose them get “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding.”

Bloomberg administration officials say the list of offerings for protesters may grow. An up-to-date list appears on nycvisit.com; visitors to the site can click on “Welcome peaceful political activists.” There, the discontented but hungry can also find information about the city’s history and tour guides for the “politically minded visitor.”

And there’s a political tie in, too!

Mr. Bloomberg also said that the police officers and firemen who had been holding loud demonstrations at his public appearances in the past few weeks would qualify.

Yesterday, outside the mayor’s news conference, Joe Miccio, a firefighter who came to hector the mayor, fingered the button presented to him by a reporter with some confusion. “We are peaceful political activists,” he said, puzzling over the notion of discounted hamburgers and office supplies (at Kroll’s Office Products, free magic marker included). “We’ll take a look at it.”

AHA! So it’s already working. Throw in some free body piercing, and The Mayah (and the GOP) has a winner…

From reader Max :

In Southern Iraq , quietly, and away from the bulk of media reporting, British Troops have been engaged in a series of savage Battles with supporters of the Iraqi/Iranian Cleric Al Sadr.

The normally low profile softly softly approach has been forced to change. British Tanks and armoured vehicles replacing four man patrols in berets. The heavy metal approach being contrary to normal UK policy.

Even Zeyad commented in his piece from Basra to Baghdad:

We saw plenty of British vehicles and tanks at the main intersection. I actually saw a British Challenger for the first time. The soldiers looked on the alert. No IP presence at all.

The British as always have been very slow in claiming caualties amongst their enemy, but rumour suggests that there has been a degree of “returning fire”, normally with catastrophic results to the health record of those on the receiving end.

Notwithstanding three British soldiers have been killed within the last week, pro rata that would equate to some 29 US KIA over the same period. No pleasure is ever taken in paying these dues, but let those Americans who talk of Unilateral action take note.

America, may lead the Free World. The Bill/Tab is paid by all those who come to the Party, which is of course how it should be. It is easy for American Politicians to suggest that the USA alone acts for the free world, and pays for the free world, that is not entirely the truth. Other countries spend their treasure (the most precious of which are the lives of their young people) alongside the US, and content to do so in such good company.

God bless us all.

And we thought Dennis Kucinich was out there in political outer space: get a cot ready on your right, Dennis…you have company.

Let’s just come out and say it: Alan Keyes is turning into a human political car crash.

You simply can’t manage to divert your eyes as he uses his mouth to cause another huge political wreck that’s going to hurt his party the long run — unless the party’s goal is to turn issues into outlandish sound bites that will scare off anyone in the center who doesn’t have excess ear wax. And you feel so guilty, as you watch his candidacy careen off a political cliff.

But in the end you know he’ll land safety (he’ll get big bucks for a new cable show after his now invitable loss).

Why do we say this? Three things that surfaced yesterday:

(1) The Keyes Reparations Plan. It’ll be interesting to see how GOPers re-adjust their princples to defend THIS:

One day after their first meeting, U.S. Senate hopefuls Barack Obama and Alan Keyes were back on the campaign trail again Monday.

Speaking at a news conference at the Hotel InterContinental in Chicago, Republican Keyes added to his now familiar talking points his stance on slavery reparations.

Prompted by a reporter’s question, Keyes gave a brief tutorial on Roman history and said that in regard to reparations for slavery, the U.S. should do what the Romans did: “When a city had been devastated [in the Roman empire], for a certain length of time—a generation or two—they exempted the damaged city from taxation.”

Keyes proposed that for a generation or two, African-Americans of slave heritage should be exempted from federal taxes—federal because slavery “was an egregious failure on the part of the federal establishment.” In calling for the tax relief, Keyes appeared to be reaching out to capture the black vote, something that may prove difficult to do, particularly after his unwelcome reception at the Bud Billiken Day Parade Saturday.

The former ambassador said his plan would give African-Americans “a competitive edge in the labor market,” because those exempted would be cheaper to hire than federal tax-paying employees and would “compensate for all those years when your labor was being exploited.”

Under Keyes’ plan, African-Americans would still have to pay the Social Security tax, because “it’s not a tax in the strict sense,” said Keyes, calling it instead a payment to support a social insurance program.

Keyes has discussed reparations before with statements that seem to contradict Monday’s comments.

We can hear Daffy Duck say: “Contradictions contrashmictions — it’s only politics…”

James Joyner has one of the most blunt comments on this issue Keyes has plopped on the GOP agenda:

I seriously question Keyes’ sanity. He has long been a rather odd duck, running for president and trying to crash debates just to get attention. His run for the Senate from a state to which he has no connection violates his own, rather recent, condemnation of Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing. Now, he’s adopted an extreme position on race relations that seems in direct contravention to his entire philosophy.

It is quite ironic indeed that Keyes is much closer to Al Sharpton than is Obama. Indeed, taken on its face the concept Keyes proposes is moronic. Regardless of what definition one uses, several generations have passed since slavery ended. The idea that people, many of whom don’t even have a connection to slavery, would be excluded from the most fundamental duty of citizenship for sixty-odd years at this stage is insulting.

(2) Keyes reportedly not only compared abortion to terrorism but suggested 911 was God’s punishment for it. We refrain from comment since the report speaks for itself:

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Alan Keyes said Monday that women who choose to undergo abortions and the physicians who perform the procedure are essentially terrorists because “the evil is the same.”

The remarks came as Keyes was explaining why three months ago he said that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were a “warning” from God to “wake up” and stop “the evil” of abortion.

“Now, you think it’s a coincidence that on September 11th, 2001, we were struck by terrorists an evil that has at its heart the disregard of innocent human life?” Keyes said in a May 7 speech in Provo, Utah. “We who have for several decades killed not thousands but scores of millions of our own children, in disregard of the principle of innocent human life — I don’t think that’s a coincidence, I think that’s a warning.

“I don’t think that’s a coincidence, I think that’s a shot across the bow. I think that’s a way of Providence telling us, ‘I love you all; I’d like to give you a chance. Wake up! Would you please wake up.”

(3) Keyes abominable performance on Alan Colmes’ radio show last night. I was in my car and switched onto a local San Diego station that carried the Colmes show — and it was Keyes being questioned by Colmes and being berated by a caller as a “hypocrite” for having blasted Hillary Clinton for running in New York when he’s apparently indulging in the same “carpetbagging” in Illinois (see James Joyner’s comments above).

How did Keyes handle it? He suggested the caller wasn’t smart enough to comprehend the concept of federalism that differentiated his criticism of Hillary Clinton (she came into the state and they didn’t really want her) versus his action (the state called on him). From a PERSONAL standpoint, I always felt the carpetbagging charges were irrelevant — no matter who they applied to. So I was not in sympathy with Keyes’s critics as the questioning began — but by the time he finished he struck me as one more pol who jettisons principles for expediency.

But even so, some of those pols win (they usually do). Our prediction: unless he moderates a bit, the election will evolve into a repudiation of a campaign that so far seems to be characterized by talk-radio sound bites plus a curious mix of far left and far right ideas.

OTHER VIEWS (a sample):
—Oliver Willis:”The article goes on to explain how this is a flip-flop for Keyes. It doesn’t mention the fact that talking about the Roman empire to justify a crackpot reparations pander scheme is insane-o-nuts. ..I think Obama should change his campaign slogan to “Barack Obama: Not Alan Keyes”.
—Archpundit’s post is headlined:”That Should About Do It”
—Jesse Taylor:”You know, I thought Alan Keyes was supposed to take down Barack Obama. I’d been wondering what I was doing until I found out that Alan Keyes is actually a burgeoning classical linguistics scholar and “Barack Obama” is actually a phrase which, in a little-known dialect of Sanskrit, means “The Credibility of the Republican Party.”
—Orrin Judd in a post titled “KEYES 4, OBAMA 0” notes the report and adds:”That’ll have Mr. Obama squirming.”
—Michelle Malkin’s post is titled “ALAN KEYES IS MAKING A MESS.” She recounts the Chicago Tribune article we linked to above on reparations, then adds:

Two years ago on his MSNBC show, Keyes ridiculed this very idea. Responding to his guest Walter Fauntroy’s call for reparations, Keyes said:

You want to tell me that what they suffered can actually be repaired with money? You’re going to do the same thing those slaveholders did, put a money price on something that can’t possibly be quanitified in that way.

She gives you a link to the transcript of that interview. A MUST READ.

Posted By Joe Gandelman at 09:51 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

An interesting California poll is out:

Democrat John Kerry has opened up a 16 percentage-point lead over President Bush in California, his candidacy boosted by strong support from independents, Hispanics and women, a poll found Monday.

Kerry’s commanding margin in the poll by the Public Policy Institute of California represented a 5-point jump from July, when he held an 11 percentage-point lead over the president.

Firstly, it has never been realistic to consider that in the end the GOP could do anything but have to write California off in the presidential race, or at least put minimum resources here (this blog is based in sunny San Diego, CA). The fact that there was a “bounce” for Kerry can’t be applied to the rest of the country because California is like a separate nation. One sign of it is the strength of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: even if “Ahnold” as he is called delivers a rock-em/sock-em speech at the GOP convention it’s highly unlikely that his appeal to independents can be cloned by GWB.

So the percentage point jump is interesting but it probably has negligible significance nationwide at this point. But this is more significant:

Pollster Mark Baldassare said the Democratic ticket is benefiting from Ralph Nader’s failure to collect enough signatures to make the ballot in California this year as an independent candidate. In 2000, Nader won about 4 percent of the presidential vote in the state.

The poll found that the Massachusetts senator had the support of 64 percent of independent voters, up from 50 percent July.

“There is virtually no support for candidates outside the major parties this time around, and it’s helping the Democrats,” Baldassare said.

This means two things:

(1) Clearly, if Nader was on the ballot it would have some impact. Hence we see GOPers in various states working to get Nader on the ballot (there is nothing illegal or politically unethical about that) to siphon votes away from Kerry. At the same time, Ralph Nader’s comments accepting this GOP help and pretending that the GOP help isn’t aimed at sandbagging the Democrats (which again is NOT a crime: you could even argue that if the GOP didn’t try to help Nader get on the ballot it would be a form of political negligence on their part) has ripped away the curtain that the Third Party Wizard once had and revealed him to be as much of a pol as others (no better, no worse).

(2) The lack of support for Nader is evident this year.

This means that if you track the elections, Nader’s voters could determine the outcome in states where it’s close — but the probability of that is reduced this time around.

The bad news is that all of this is a sign of the times — of an electorate comprised of two deeply-entrenched, firmly convinced camps. Some more:

In another troubling sign for the president’s fortunes in the state, the survey said a broader sample of 2,002 residents found that Bush’s approval rating in California was 40 percent. Sixty-three percent said they disapproved of how Bush was handling Iraq, and voters were roughly split over the president’s handling of terrorism and homeland security.

Likely voters named the economy and jobs as the top issue in the state, followed by Iraq, terrorism and education. Kerry was favored over Bush by a wide margin, 60 percent to 33 percent, among those who identified the economy and jobs as the top issue. Bush was favored by a similar margin among those who identified terrorism as the top concern.

While Bush is struggling in the state, his fellow Republican, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, remains widely popular.

The poll found 65 percent of adults approve of the way the governor is doing his job, including 57 percent of Democrats.
Schwarzenneger — even when he has not lived up to hype — has held onto Democratic support not just because of his celebrity. With some notable exceptions over the past two months, he has generally gone out of his way to extend his hand to and build bridges with Democratic leaders and power-group bigwigs.

Again with a few exceptions recently, he has avoided the polarization game…a game played nationally by both parties…and by a certain third party candidate.

First New England Republican laid out the case that the news media is not making the same demands for proof from John Kerry on his military service that were made in the case of George Bush. Now Lee Cearnal, special projects editor at the Houston Chronicle, expands upon that argument here in an article titled:”Where’s my colleagues’ interest in Kerry’s war records? Even when he’s caught in a lie, media aren’t scrutinizing him same way they did Bush.”

Both are extremely interesting pieces that make their case well…but we must add this:

There are some swing voters (like me) who will NOT vote on the basis of what we’ve learned or have not learned about George Bush’s military history or John Kerry’s. (I talked with a staunch Republican who intends to vote for George Bush yesterday who said the same exact thing and feels the same way). Some voters feel other issues are vastly more important, think a campaign should focus on where we are and what solutions we need to impliment — and these voters will vote based on candidate’s positions on these issues. The military issues are now getting to be a wash: each side has bloodied the other and neither accusation (GWB or “the new JFK”) has decimated the other.

As for the news media, as someone who worked it in for many years, here’s a fact: it doesn’t operate as a monolith.

Individual stories are done by individual reporters assigned and edited by individual editors who go into “seances” (editors meetings where stories are discussed). There is no big secret commander who says: “Let’s go after Bush!” or “Let’s downplay accusations against Kerry!”

Clearly, the Swift Boat anti-Kerry vets haven’t gotten as much traction as they wanted in the mainstream media. But much in this story can be attributed to the almost magical appearance of a conventional wisdom — or a prevailing consensus among the big publications and big broadcast news departments. The convention wisdom then becomes the prism through which new developments on a given story are judged. It isn’t a filter; it’s like looking at the world through sunglasses: perceptions are altered. But the conventional wisdom emerges…it sort of pops up. Some of it is due to laziness; part of it due to the natural tendency to pigeon-hole.

A major chapter in the Conventional Wisdom was opened today by this Los Angeles Times article (registration required) which goes through various allegations against Kerry but concludes there are many contradictions in the accounts— and then bascially brushes it off. This story did not signal the advent of a major media feeding frenzy (but, especially this year, things can change).

It doesn’t matter WHAT side you are on regarding this issue, this is a fascinating piece to read if you look at it from the standpoint of reportage and the conclusions drawn. This long piece will now become part of the previous stories reporters read while doing a story: they will refer to this story, use it for background summaries and be influenced by its conclusions.

Two hints if you want to truly ponder media coverage:

(1) Media coverage about Dan Quayle and how he never got over it.

(2) Larry Sabato’s book Feeding Frenzy. It’s all about how the media works, perceives, reports on and batters (and doesn’t batter) candidates. Read it. Study it.

Steven Taylor has his excellent Toast-0-Meter political pulse-taking, analysis and round up up. And it is more than worth your time — even if you’re not a political junkie. His verdict: at this point in the race, it’s a tie with a slight edge to Bush.

The first part gives you his always-well-thought-out analysis. He notes that according to the conventional political wisdom, at this point John Kerry seems to have the best shot at winning due to several accepted tidbits of political wisdom. Among them: people make up their minds on the incumbent first, the undecideds then would likely break for the challenger, and Bush’s campaign would now seem locked in with most “growth” open to Kerry’s campaign.

But Taylor thinks these traditional formulas may be off track this year:

However, for a variety of reasons I am not convinced that “the rules” hold in this cycle. For one thing, the clear polarization of the electorate is unusual, historically speaking, and the extremely small number of “undecideds” is an unusual phenomenon as well–especially given that the numbers in question have been steady from very early on in this election.

Further, I don’t think that some of the current analysis takes into account the heavily back-loaded aspect of the Republican campaign. There are three sets of events that have yet to happen that I think will have a important effects on this race: the Republican National Convention (prediction: the “rule” that says that the incumbent only gets 2/3rds of the bounce of the challenger will be broken this year), the 9/11 anniversary and the debates.

While it is true that Kerry’s numbers have improved on issues of national security, if one looks at the Pew number cited below, it is only the hard-core Democratic base who see Kerry as the candidate who will best deal with terrorism. Further, while the Kerry camp argues that the DNC made the case that Kerry could be a credible commander-in-chief, I am thinking that the RNC and the 9/11 memorial will reinforce the image of Bush as CinC. Further, someone needs to put Kerry’s Senate career on a milk cartoon, but it is currently missing in action.

This definitely is one of the best analyses so far — although due to the disdain with which network TV now treats the conventions, I will be surprised (and I have indeed been surprised before) to see a monster jump in GWB’s poll numbers after the convention. Yes, people increasingly get their news on cable networks but those networks reach people who WANT to get news. The folks who used to have it crammed down their throats by extensive convention coverage on all three networks now can watch more interesting shows — or turn to cable and get talking heads giving opinions instead of hearing convention speakers speak.

So there are more OPTIONS to a)watch only information that reinforces your political likes and dislikes, b) avoid watching the conventions by mistake. If you want to WATCH a convention, go to CSPAN.

Yet, Taylor is right on target about the Kerry campaign: Kerry’s advisors — as they did in his acceptance speech — are making a huge mistake by not getting him to talk about his Senate record. It makes it seem as if he’s ashamed to mention it.

Additionally, as this campaign unfolds you do get the sense that Kerry is solidifying Democratic support but not “closing the sale” with swing voters who might be ready for a change. Why? Because the overriding issue in this election may indeed be national security but the parties often seem worlds apart on other issues that may matter to voters, too.

If Kerry loses at this point it’ll will be partly due to his campaign’s failure to enthusiastically lay out his role and votes in the Congress.

On the debates: the Atlantic had an interesting piece a few weeks ago about how Bush has constantly been underestimated — especially in debates. On the other hand, Kerry has been counted out before — and the public KNOWS Bush whereas they’ll watch the debates to get a better idea of Kerry. Kerry therefore has the bigger opportunity — if he talks in specifics and is ready to talk about his Congressional record. If he has decent campaign handlers he will — but at this point it doesn’t seem as if his campaign strategists brilliant presidential campaign will be studied in Political Science clases for years to come.

The Commander In Chief issue is more iffy. It assumes we don’t have events out of BOTH parties’ control. So this issue could may be equalized by events and responses that cheer Bush supporters but leave Bush foes’ cold.

All of our analyses, all of the computer models, all of the urban legends about elections — all mean NOTHING in the face of breaking events that can quickly re-shape the campaign, to either candidate’s advantage.

And the swing voters who don’t belong to either party? Those of us who my comment boxes and emails often tell me don’t really matter in this election are indeed so few in number a private detective may be needed to track us down. But political scientists (sorry commenters) say swing voters could tilt the scale in this close election. So we do exist. And we are watching.

NOTE: Taylor has a GREAT list of political stories and links on his post. This is MUST READING.

Recently, the Bush campaign has put forth a new theme under the rhetoric of “the ownership society.” Paul Krugman of the New York Times writes an interesting opinion piece criticizing the premises of this theme:

A new Bush campaign ad pushes the theme of an “ownership society,” and concludes with President Bush declaring, “I understand if you own something, you have a vital stake in the future of America.”
Call me naïve, but I thought all Americans have a vital stake in the nation’s future, regardless of how much property they own. (Should we go back to the days when states, arguing that only men of sufficient substance could be trusted, imposed property qualifications for voting?) Even if Mr. Bush is talking only about the economic future, don’t workers have as much stake as property owners in the economy’s success?
But there’s a political imperative behind the “ownership society” theme: the need to provide pseudopopulist cover to policies that are, in reality, highly elitist.
The Bush tax cuts have, of course, heavily favored the very, very well off. But they have also, more specifically, favored unearned income over earned income - or, if you prefer, investment returns over wages. Last year Daniel Altman pointed out in The New York Times that Mr. Bush’s proposals, if fully adopted, “could eliminate almost all taxes on investment income and wealth for almost all Americans.” Mr. Bush hasn’t yet gotten all he wants, but he has taken a large step toward a system in which only labor income is taxed.
The political problem with a policy favoring investment returns over wages is that a vast majority of Americans derive their income primarily from wages, and that the bulk of investment income goes to a small elite. How, then, can such a policy be sold? By promising that everyone can join the elite.
Right now, the ownership of stocks and bonds is highly concentrated. Conservatives like to point out that a majority of American families now own stock, but that’s a misleading statistic because most of those “investors” have only a small stake in the market. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that more than half of corporate profits ultimately accrue to the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers, while only about 8 percent go to the bottom 60 percent. If the “ownership society” means anything, it means spreading investment income more widely - a laudable goal, if achievable.
But does Mr. Bush have a way to get us there?

Do the majority of people who vote for Bush benefit from his economic policies? If not, how is the Bush team successful in broadly selling policies to people who derive little benefit from them?

Do wage earners have an equal, or equally important, stake in the future of America as property owners?

Major Embarrassment for the Right

It turns out John Kerry is telling the truth about spending Christmas in Cambodia. A British journalist who worked in Cambodia in the Sixties has just come forward with a recording of the following popular Cambodian folk song:

Grandma got run over by a swift boat
Walking home from our hooch Christmas Eve
You may say Cambodia has no swift boats
But me and Aunt Teresa, we believe

[chorus]

She’d been smoking too much Thai stick
And we begged her to keep low
But she felt like skinny dipping
And she staggered down the bank
into the flow

[chorus]

When we found her Christmas morning
At the scene of the attack
She had Botox in her forehead
And incriminating ketchup
down her back

[chorus]

It’s not Christmas without Grandma
The whole Khmer Rouge is dressed in black
And we just can’t help but wonder
Is Lieutenant Kerry
coming back?

[chorus]

I’ve warned all my friends and neighbors
Stay inside, protect your health
They should never give a medal
To a man who flips his lid
and shoots himself

Many conservatives, myself included, would probably be accused of anti-intellectualism because we, like William F. Buckley, “would rather be governed by the first 300 names in the Boston telephone book than by the faculty of Harvard University”.

However, I believe the term “anti-intellectualism” is a misnomer. Conservatives aren’t hostile to intellectuals per se, many of us simply don’t place them on a pedestal like many other people do. In other words, we’re of the belief that an Ivy League professor isn’t necessarily any more qualified than a garbage man or waitress to comment on issues that are outside of their area of expertise.

Now, why do I say that?

Because we live in an age of very specialized knowledge.

Take an über-genius who may be the world’s foremost expert on chemistry. That same person may very well be unable to change a flat tire, fix a simple problem on his computer, or even program his own VCR. In other words, our expert’s brilliance at chemistry has very little bearing on the worth of his views when he’s talking about things other than chemistry.

Moreover, if you had to pick a manager for your Burger King Franchise that you just bought, who do you think would be the better choice: a Harvard business professor with a 180 IQ & 20 years of teaching experience or a guy who dropped out of high school in the 8th grade, but who also ran the most successful WalMart in his state for 3 years? See, I’d take the drop out in a heartbeat because he has proven himself in the real world, whereas the professor hasn’t.

You may think that’s an insult to college professors, but it’s not. It’s just an acknowledgement that teaching a bunch of 18 year old students and debating with other college professors isn’t the same thing as actually applying your knowledge in a real world situation, with employees, real customers, and money on the line every day. Some professors and/or intellectuals can make that transition from the world of theory and some can’t. That’s just how human beings are.

This is where the so-called “anti-intellectualism” comes in, not only in business, but in politics. Dropping a bunch of 25 cent words into every conversation, spending your afternoons reading Sartre, or having a couple of PhDs doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a great leader, worthy of someone’s vote, or even someone who’s necessarily worth paying much attention to on most matters.

Heck, being an “intellectual” can even be a big disadvantage if you start believing your own hype, hole up in an “ivy tower”, and think that because you know more than everyone else in your own specialized field, that you’re just as competent on every other subject. That sort of intellectual arrogance, which isn’t the least bit unusual by the way, can lead to people who are geniuses buying into ridiculous theories that any average person could figure out won’t work — like Communism for example =D.

So accuse conservatives of “anti-intellectualism” if you like, but I’d argue that if that word fits, it’s only because we’ve had an opportunity to weigh the merits of comments made by many “intellectuals” on a variety of issues and have found them to be wanting…

An article in the Washington Post today makes a self-critical analysis of the newspaper’s editorial policy regarding stories that questioned President Bush’s WMD evidence in the period leading up to the Iraq war.

Days before the Iraq war began, veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus put together a story questioning whether the Bush administration had proof that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.
But he ran into resistance from the paper’s editors, and his piece ran only after assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, who was researching a book about the drive toward war, “helped sell the story,” Pincus recalled. “Without him, it would have had a tough time getting into the paper.” Even so, the article was relegated to Page A17.
“We did our job but we didn’t do enough, and I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder,” Woodward said in an interview. “We should have warned readers we had information that the basis for this was shakier” than widely believed. “Those are exactly the kind of statements that should be published on the front page.”
As violence continues in postwar Iraq and U.S. forces have yet to discover any WMDs, some critics say the media, including The Washington Post, failed the country by not reporting more skeptically on President Bush’s contentions during the run-up to war.
An examination of the paper’s coverage, and interviews with more than a dozen of the editors and reporters involved, shows that The Post published a number of pieces challenging the White House, but rarely on the front page. Some reporters who were lobbying for greater prominence for stories that questioned the administration’s evidence complained to senior editors who, in the view of those reporters, were unenthusiastic about such pieces. The result was coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times.
“The paper was not front-paging stuff,” said Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks. “Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we’re going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?”

As I have said before here on Winds Iran’s Spoiling Attack, Iran will have nuclear weapons early in the next Presidential Administration. This realization is starting to dawn on Media opinion makers overseas and in America. Unfortunately, the Media don’t want to follow the logic chain to its final conclusion and are missing important signs and portents of what is to come — namely, America’s preparations for the military conquest and occupation campaigns against the Iranian Islamic Republic.

When even the New York Times begins to admit that “diplomacy” has failed, you know we are headed for the final acts of this drama. Fareed Zakaria has just recognized some of the implications of Iran’s nuclear program in his latest column in Newsweek. This is Zakaria’s key passage:

“That’s where things stand now, with the clock ticking fast. If Iran were to go nuclear, it would have dramatic effects. It would place nuclear materials in the hands of a radical regime that has ties to unsavory groups. It would signal to other countries that it’s possible to break the nuclear taboo. And it would revolutionize the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Egypt would feel threatened by Iran’s bomb and would start their own search for nuclear technology. (Saudi Arabia probably could not make a bomb but it could certainly buy necessary technology from a country like Pakistan. In fact, we don’t really know all of the buyers who patronized Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan’s nuclear supermarket. It’s quite possible Saudi Arabia already has a few elements of such a program.) And then there is Israel, which has long seen Iran as its greatest threat. It is unlikely to sit passively while Iran develops a nuclear bomb. The powerful Iranian politician Ali Rafsanjani has publicly speculated about a nuclear exchange with Israel. If Iran’s program went forward, at some point Israel would almost certainly try to destroy it using airstrikes, as it did Iraq’s reactor in Osirik. Such an action would, of course, create a massive political crisis in the region.”

If anything, Zakaria is gravely underestimating the time line America is working with. Articles from London papers in late July make that clear…. Read The Rest…

I’m feeling a bit angry lately. No, not just angry. It’s a simmering anger mixed with remorse and dread. Like a mental flu.

I blame myself for catching it because I readily put myself in the midst of the War Against Bush by reading and digesting every single article, interview, bulletin board ranting and blog post available on the subject. But I’ve given up on the idea of living my life in ignorant bliss by turning off the tv and the computer. I’d rather know my enemy than be unaware of it.

James Lileks hit the nail on the head today when he defined his own malaise as SBHFS: Sudden Bush Hatred Fatigue Syndrome.

I’m 41 years old. 16 days away from 42. I’ve been following politics since I took an unhealthy interest in the Vietnam war at the ripe old age of seven. I don’t remember a time when our nation sagged under the weight of such hatred. Perhaps the hatred is more palpable now because there are more venues in which people can make their feelings known. Voices are louder because they are amplified through the internet.

But it’s not just us regular people - the unwashed masses, so to speak - that are participating in this war of ideals. Our own elected officials are taking part in the War Against Bush. Sure, politics has been filled with snideness, ridicule and finger pointing probably since the first caveman was elected keeper of the flame, but it’s reached the point of combustion. We’re making a mockery of America.

Bush administration officials used Sunday’s talk shows to defend last week’s heightened security alerts in three cities and to underscore the administration’s focus on terror threats.

Because the timing of every single thing Bush or his administration does is questioned by everyone from bloggers to appointed officials, he must spend his time defending every move he makes.

U.S Leak Harms Al Qaeda Sting: But some observers have said that Islamabad should not have been compromised by political considerations in Washington.

One senator told CNN that U.S. officials should have kept Khan’s role quiet.

Maybe if Bush wasn’t forced to justify every move he (or his administration) makes, this wouldn’t have happened. But, no. As it is “our duty” as Americans to question authority, we must force the President and his cabinet to go on tv and tell us why he decided to tell us we are in danger. Of course, were al Qaeda to strike, say, the Prudential building, then those same people would be forced to go on tv and tell us why they didn’t tell us we were in danger. Lose, lose.

So the pundits on the left use their venues - whether it be the internet, the newspaper or a wooden box on a street corner - to dispense their hatred towards their president. They promote change for America. Vote Kerry, they cry, and everything will be better. Better for whom?

See, I don’t hate Kerry. I don’t think he would make as good a president as Bush, but I don’t harbor any hatred for the guy. In fact, I almost feel sorry for him. Because if Kerry wins this election, he is in for a rude awakening. Oh, the party will start off grand, but three months into his presidency the same people who are promoting him as just the thing America needs will be protesting him.

Most of these Anybody But Bush warriors don’t even like Kerry. A cursory glance through sites like Democratic Underground or Indymedia (and even some lefty blogs) will find internal arguments over whether Kerry can really run this country or not. But he’s not Bush, which seems to be the greatest thing he has going for him.

So if Kerry wins, there will be further split in the political map of America. The left will split into two separate and very disparate portions. The ABBs will morph into the ABKs and the moderate Democrats will be left scratching their heads. They voted for this guy, but he doesn’t really represent them. They succeed in getting Bush out of the White House, but in the end they’re still not happy. Then what? Form another party? Seek out another candidate to push towards a 2008 run?

Sadly, it’s the ABBs who are the most vocal crowd in this whole carnival. They are most likely to be the ones crying that President Kerry sucks. One can only hope that these people never get their way. Because what they want in a candidate, and in this country, is something that would drive us to the brink of disaster. Free health care for everyone. Free college. Completely open borders, with benefits for all the non- citizens that come through. Free day care. Free food. Free Mumia. Their key word, obviously, is free. They want the world handed to them but they want to do nothing to earn it. Can you imagine this country led by someone who subscribes to those views? You go ahead, I don’t want to.

Back to the SBHFS (Sudden Bush Hatred Fatigue Syndrome) I’ve been afflicted with.

It’s everywhere. It is, like Lileks noticed and I did as well, in our bookstores. It’s in the way the anti-Bush books are piled up by the front door. It’s in the unapologetic headlines splashed across magazines and newspapers.

It’s not just you they’re sending the message to. It’s your kids as well. Planned Parenthood wants your teen to know that Bush is evil. Bruce Springsteen and NOFX are no longer just recording artists your kids listen to. They are telling your children how to vote. They’re not just saying, hey get out there and vote and make a difference. No, they’ve crossed the line between stage and audience. They have grabbed your kid by the collar and said Bush is Evil. Vote Kerry.

We look to the media to dispense information to help us make our choices. But what do you do when you’re met with journalists who don’t even hide their biases?

The hatred towards the president is emblematic of a hatred towards country. Am I questioning your patriotism, ABBs? Damn straight I am. If you loved this country you wouldn’t stoop to the levels of hatred that you have. Have you seen this?

It’s A book about assassinating the president. The sitting president. Put that in your “crushing of dissent” pipe and smoke it. No, stuff it.

Speaking of assassination, Jeff Jarvis on Bush hatred:

….we don’t know where this will lead, but I fear it could lead to assassination. No, Michael Moore will not pull the trigger (he doesn’t like guns, remember). But this atmosphere of hatred could inspire and embolden someone to try. The ultimate extension of presidential hatred could be assassination.

Oh, don’t think that ugly little thought hasn’t been running around in my head for months. Embolden. The hatred is sure to do that. And I’m sure that dissenters the world over, all the socialist-loving conservative haters, are looking at America right now with wide-eyed wonder, reveling in the anti-America feel coming from the haters. How soon before one of those comrades in arms decides to make his venomous brethren happy and do America a favor?

In a couple of years, I’ve gone from far left to moderate left to center and now, I must admit, to the right. And each day I go farther and farther to the right, pushed their by the fact that I want to remain as far away from the left as possible. Each time I read Atrios or make a run through DU, I feel like a grade school kid in need of a cootie-shot. And while I’ll never complete the transformation wholly and end up on the far right I’ve certainly removed myself from the center. I don’t think even centrists know what they want anymore. They don’t hate Bush, but they hate themselves for thinking that maybe they should hate Bush. What’s worse, president loathing, country loathing or self loathing?

For the life of me, I can’t tell the left from the far left anymore. They’ve embraced Michael Moore to the extent that even Kerry is mimicing his talking points. People who consider themselves fair and balanced Democrats are actually shills for George Soros, one of the masters of the Bush is Hitler movement.

I don’t hate the Bush haters. I pity them. I can only imagine what’s going to happen when this election is over. Either the Bush hatred will get ramped up and it’s going to get uglier than it is now, or they will turn in their ABB hats for ABK hats and start over again.

Lose, lose.

Update: Read this. It’s a good companion piece to my thoughts above.

Update II: Read this, also.

In an effort to inject “more light, less heat” in the debate about 2 of the more famous incidents in John F. Kerry’s unusual career, here’s a few facts I’ve gleaned while investigating for myself just exactly WTF is being claimed, by whom and why.

Fiust I state what’s been said about Kerry. Then - and often the most difficult to do - I find out and quote exactly what it was that John F.Kerry actually said about the incident. I then adduce some relevant background and technical facts that often debunk some of the more common (but reasonable) pro/con arguments, and finally (and least valuably given my decidedly anti-Kerry stance in the past) give an opinion based on my analysis.

Fighter Pilot Over Egypt

First, I’ll take the most extraordinary (but less well publicised) claim :That John F.Kerry piloted an Israeli Fighter in an illegal incursion into Egypt.

This one is based on remarks to the Anti-Defamation League, dated May 3, 2004.

And subsequently, we went south. I got to go down to the Ovda Air Base. We climbed Masada. I’ll tell you about that in a minute.

But at Ovda Air Base — I’m a pilot, and I was longing to get up into Israel airspace. And I made several requests of Tel Aviv, and Tel Aviv kept saying, “No, we don’t think this is a good idea, for the senator to go flying.”

Finally, I sort of nudged the colonel that I was with. And he was an ace from the ‘67 war. And I said, “Colonel, is there no way we could arrange this? Would you mind going back and calling Tel Aviv and see if we could do a flight?”

So lo and behold, he gets up from the table. And we’re starting to eat. And he comes back about 10 minutes later, and he says — (speaking with the colonel’s accent) — “Senator, I hope you don’t eat too much. We’re going flying.” (Laughter.)

So the next thing I know, I’m whisked out to the airport, which is right there, out to the airstrip, and he tells me, “Look, I’m not going to have time to give you all the instructions, but the minute we take off, it’s your airplane.” (Laughter.)

Now I had never explained to him whether I’d ever flown a jet before or anything.

And he was very trusting. And I got out to the tarmac and I got into my suit and my helmet and jumped into the airplane. It was a trainer, a Fuga trainer. And I got in the front seat, he got in the back. He was indeed very trusting. That’s why he was an ace! (Laughter.) And we take off.

And literally, you know, we’re about five feet above the runway and he gives me this signal with a stick, says, “Your plane.” So I take it off. We go up into the sky. Climb up, head down towards Aqaba. And I wanted to look at Aqaba, so I’m coming down over Aqaba, and I suddenly hear this voice in the intercom and he says, “Senator, you better turn faster, you’re going over Egypt.” (Laughter.) So I started to wrap it in and do a faster turn.

Then I asked him if I could do a loop, a little aerobatics. And he said fine. So I went up to about 12,000 feet and proceeded to go in and do a loop. And I want you to know, ladies and gentlemen, that to be able to come out upside down and look down and catch the horizon in back of me, and see all the way down into the Sinai, to the old base that had been given up, all the way across into Jordan, all the way out into the Gulf of Aqaba, and to see Israel beneath me, and the lines contained, and to see it all upside down was the perfect way to see the Middle East and Israel. (Laughter, applause.)

Now the first thing anyone who’s flown a military jet before is that there is no way a complete novice would be allowed to take off like that! And then, to do aerobatics? This is, on the face of it, a very incredible statement.

But…

The aircraft supposedly involved was a ‘Fuga trainer’. It was most emphatically not a fighter, and he never said it was. The Fouga Magister, updated and revised, is actually a jet-powered version of what was originally a glider. It’s still in Israeli service, and is approaching 50 years old. It is a ‘basic jet trainer’, exactly what you use to transition a relatively skilled propellor pilot onto jets, before going on to an ‘advanced trainer’, and thence to a hot combat aircraft. It’s also stressed for aerobatics, and has been used by the IDF’s aerobatic team. Yes, to take a US Senator for a ride like this against official instructions would be reckless. But Ace fighter pilots of every nation have been known since time immemorial to do things like this, and it’s unlikely they’ll ever stop.

I’m not able to say whether Kerry was lying, exaggerating, or telling the truth, plain and simple. I can say that what he’s saying, unreasonable though it may sound, may be the truth. It’s plausible.

As for the ‘illegal incursion’ bit, the words were

you’re going over Egypt

not

you’ve gone into Egypt

and to an unbiased observer could well have been a warning, rather than a statement of fact.

Conclusion : Until the (unknown) Israeli Ace Colonel speaks out, or the IDF denies that the flight took place, there’s no reason why Kerry should be called a liar on this one. Yes, it surprised me too. As for the “incursion”? Possibly there was a technical violation. We don’t know enough. Certainly it wasn’t serious, or there would have been hell to pay. “Kerry Pilots Israeli Fighter Over Egypt”? Absolutely not. “Kerry Pilots Israeli Trainer Worryingly Close to Egyptian Border”, yes, that’s what he says anyway.

Now for the more contentious and better-publicised claim.

Christmas in Cambodia

The claim here is that John F. Kerry personally commanded a Swift Boat in an illegal incursion into Cambodia during Christmas 1968, to land a CIA operative.

This appears to be an amalgamation of three separate statements by John F.Kerry, one in the Congressional Record, one still to be found on the John Kerry Campaign Site, and one reported in the Associated Press dated 1992, still available through the magic of Google’s Newsgroup Archives

From the Congressional Record :

Mr. President, I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the President of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia.
I have that memory which is seared-seared-in me….

From the Kerry/Edwards for President Site :

A close associate hints: There’s a secret compartment in Kerry’s briefcase. He carries the black attache everywhere. Asked about it on several occasions, Kerry brushed it aside. Finally, trapped in an interview, he exhaled and clicked open his case.

”Who told you?” he demanded as he reached inside. “My friends don’t know about this.”

The hat was a little mildewy. The green camouflage was fading, the seams fraying.

“My good luck hat,” Kerry said, happy to see it. “Given to me by a CIA guy as we went in for a special mission in Cambodia.”

Kerry put on the hat, pulling the brim over his forehead. His blue button-down shirt and tie clashed with the camouflage. He pointed his finger and raised his thumb, creating an imaginary gun. He looked silly, yet suddenly his campaign message was clear: Citizen-soldier. Linking patriotism to public service. It wasn’t complex after all; it was Kerry.

He smiled and aimed his finger: “Pow.”

[Someone fetch me a bucket! But I digress.]

Now from the 1992 AP story:

By JOHN DIAMOND Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Navy Lt. John Kerry knew he had no business steering his Mekong River patrol boat across the border into Cambodia, but orders were orders.
[…]
But for Kerry, who spent six violent months commanding a patrol boat on the Mekong River, there’s always been a ring of truth to allegations of abandoned Americans. By Christmas 1968, part of Kerry’s patrol extended across the border of South Vietnam into Cambodia.
“We were told, `Just go up there and do your patrol. Everybody was over there(in Cambodia). Nobody thought twice about it,” Kerry said. One of the missions, which Kerry, at the time, was ordered not to discuss, involved taking CIA operatives into Cambodia to search for enemy enclaves.
“I can remember wondering, `If you’re going to go, what happens to you,”‘Kerry said.
[…]
Some of the missions were routine cross-border actions, not sanctioned as part of the official U.S. war effort. Others were “black ops,” secret operations far into Laotian and Cambodian territory.
[…]
The military’s falsification of records created a lasting problem in sorting out the killed, captured and unknown.
“The lists are so screwed up frankly that it’s very hard to patch it together,” Kerry said.
Kerry emphasizes that he has no evidence that any U.S. serviceman remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia. Nor does he speak of any Rambo-like rescue mission. Rather, the next step is a methodical and continuing unfolding of the facts.
“It’s not a good story but it’s important that we understand it and it’s important that we put the conspiracy theories behind us if we can,” Kerry said.
“But we’re not there yet.”

No kidding. And there’s so much partisanship on both sides of the question that it’s only just started. Hence this article. Anyway, Onwards and Upwards.

There’s also the statement at US News and World Report from May 8th, 2000, that :

Sen. John Kerry made his first forays into Cambodia during the Vietnam War as a Navy lieutenant on clandestine missions to deliver weapons to anticommunist forces

but without a direct quote in support, I’m discarding this as a journalistic bobble, on a par with the AP’s ‘6 months of service’ instead of the actual 4 months 12 days. Hat Tip to Just One Minute nonetheless for a cracking good piece of research.

The most recent version of Kerry’s Cambodian Experiences is from the 16th July edition of his hometown paper, the Boston Globe, as written by… Michael Kranich. Where have I heard that name before?:

The Christmas Eve truce of 1968 was three minutes old when mortar fire exploded around John Forbes Kerry and his five-man crew on a 50-foot aluminum boat near Cambodia. ”Where is the enemy?” a crewmate shouted.
[…]
On the same night, Kerry and his crew had come within a half-inch of being killed by “friendly fire,” when some South Vietnamese allies launched several rounds into the river to celebrate the holiday.

To top it off, Kerry said, he had gone several miles inside Cambodia, which theoretically was off limits, prompting Kerry to send a sarcastic message to his superiors that he was writing from the Navy’s “most inland” unit.

Yet according to ,a href=”Kerry Haters (not exactly a pro-Kerry source) Douglas Brinkley’s book Tour of Duty (not exactly an anti-Kerry7 source) tells a significantly different story :

The next story is about South Vietnamese troops shooting off their guns to celebrate Christmas. Kerry’s boat returns to Sa Dec. To highlight the geography for us, Brinkley cites Kerry’s war diary, which talks about a … message to the Admiral, “Merry Christmas from the most inland time unit.” He supposedly meant to point out the incongruity of his “crew spending their holiday on a river canal not far from the Cambodian border.” A paragraph or two later, Wasser mentions, “We were coming closer to Cambodia…”

And that is the last confusing version I’ve been able to track down.

From the above, we have the following :
Kerry was in Cambodia on Christmas Day, 1968.
Kerry was in Cambodia when Nixon was both president and denying that US troops were in Cambodia (not neccessarily Xmas 1968) .
Kerry was fired at by Khmer Rouge, Cambodians, and Vietnamese (not neccessarily Xmas 1968) .
Kerry was given a ‘special lucky hat’ by a CIA operative when they both went in to Cambodia on a ‘special mission’ (not neccessarily Xmas 1968).
By Christmas 1968, Kerry’s Unit’s patrols included crossings to Cambodia on a routine basis
By Christmas 1968, apart from these ‘routine’ crossings, ‘black ops’ were conducted by Kerry’s Unit, including deep penetrations into Cambodia and Laos.
Kerry was several miles in Cambodia on Christmas Eve, and spent Christmas day being shot at by Vietnamese in Sa Dec.
Kerry was near Cambodia on Christmas Eve, and spent Christmas day being shot at by Vietnamese in Sa Dec.

Various claims have been made, such as that there were no US forces, covert or otherwise, in Cambodia in 1968. Or that the Khmer Rouge didn’t exist in 1968, so couldn’t have fired at him (they started operations on January 17, 1968 BTW). Or that the Cambodian armed forces didn’t patrol the border, so couldn’t have fired either. Or that a navigational error would be impossible due to a fork in the river. Or that Kerry never said he was ‘in’ Cambodia, only ‘near’ it (some of the quotes above should debunk that last bit ).

From the July 26 1968 State Department Diplomatic Telegram :

On July 17 a US Army utility landing craft (LCU 1577) with 11 Americans and one RVN policeman on board inadvertently strayed into Cambodian waters on Mekong River and was seized by Cambodian Navy.
[…]
4. Action: Please arrange meeting with Cambodian Ambassador Nong Kimny and express to him our urgent interest in release of crew. You should present following facts and US views.

A. Incident was entirely inadvertent, with no hostile intent.

B. LCU 1577 is utility landing craft designed for handling heavy and bulky cargoes. With length 120 feet, beam 32 feet, max speed 8 knots, craft is obviously not one which we would contemplate employing for deliberate or provocative penetration of Cambodian territory. Royal Cambodian Navy possesses several LCU’s and can confirm details of performance. Craft was armed with two .50-caliber machine guns and one M-60 7.62 mm. light machine gun, plus individual weapons of crew members and passengers (M-16’s, carbines, pistols, and one M-79 grenade launcher). This armament exclusively for defense against hostile fire along waterways within RVN. Cargo included 200 drums of solvent, two commercial forklift trucks, 34 drums JP-4 fuel (kerosene), and 6 containers miscellaneous supplies. As make-up of cargo suggests, craft was on routine resupply run to US installations in Mekong Delta. Route was from base at Vung Tau via Mekong River and cut-off to Bassac River, then down Bassac to Can Tho. Apparently craft missed first turning, about seven miles from border, and proceeded up river into Cambodian territory. Navigational error was same as that of Philippine tugboat Bream, which RKG has now returned, following release of Filipino crew and two US military policemen who were on board.

C. We are conducting further investigation to determine how error was made and whether any individual responsibility can be assigned. In addition, we are taking measures to avoid such incidents in future. These include but are not limited to more thorough crew indoctrination and briefing, embarcation of personnel familiar with area near border, establishment of prominent aids to navigation and control points, and provision of positive method to warn shipping of approach to Cambodian border.

From a Top Secret State Department Memo of December 12, 1968 :

Daniel Boone is an intelligence collection program, carried on since May 1967, in a strip 20 kilometers wide within the Cambodian border. Reconnaissance teams of two or three Americans and six to nine Vietnamese and/or Montagnards are inserted in this area by helicopter for observation of VC/NVA presence or activities. Assistant Secretary of Defense Warnke has written you (Tab A) proposing the establishment of a new Daniel Boone operational area to be known as Zone Charlie.
[…]
Six of the seven missions conducted in the proposed new zone took place in the first half of October (the seventh was run in late 1967). On one of these, a gunship was shot down, crashing on the Vietnamese side of the border. All but one involved insertions by helicopter, on which there are now no limitations once a target has been approved.

So we know that :
a) Navigational mistakes had been made in the past, leading to incursions.
b) The Cambodian Navy actively patrolled the border, and had captured 2 US vessels that accidentally crossed it.
c) ‘Black Ops’ inside Cambodia had been launched as late as October, and future ops were being re-considered during early December 1968.

However… the ‘Black Ops’ appear to have been recorded. All but one of the insertions of CIA or Special Force Operatives was done by Helicopter. Moreover, there was especial concern that ‘Navigational Mistakes’ not be made again, as the Cambodian Navy aggressively patrolled the border, and captured any vessel straying into their territory. ‘Prominent Navigation aids’ were to be set up some time after late July 1968.

This is in accordance with the memories of various Swift Boatmen :

HH: What months did you serve with Senator Kerry?

SG: November through January. Here’s what I did. I served two months and two weeks of his four month, 12 day tour.

HH: Alright. Why did you leave off in january. What happened in January?

SG: That was my rotation time.

HH: OK. When you were on the boat, did you ever go into Cambodian waters?

SG: Absolutely not. That was a physical impossibility to go inside Cambodian waters.

HH; Why?

SG: They had four or five, at all times, boats, plus they had it wired with wire, they had concrete pylons down so that thee only time they could get through it was at high tide, and that was just so the sampans and the people that trafficked back and forth could get through.

HH: Now you served with him on Christmas Eve 1968, correct?

SG: That is correct.

HH: What did you do on Christmas Eve 1968?

SG: Well, I damn sure wasn’t in Cambodia, I’ll tell you that.

HH: (Laughter) Do you remember?

SG: We were basically just down in the lower part of the Sa Dec. just patrolling.

Meanwhile, it’s a matter of undisputed hitorical fact that Richard M.Nixon was elected President of the US on November 5th, 1968, but didn’t take office until 1969. It’s also a matter of undisputed geographical fact that to engage in ‘Black Ops’ in Laos, a Swift boat would have to cross through the whole of Cambodia, including the capital, Phnomh Penh, to do it.

Depending upon which reporter you listen to, Kerry was either in Cambodia, near Cambodia, just inside Cambodia, or just outside Cambodia. But he dropped CIA operatives there, and possibly in Laos too. Not just him, “everybody did it”. Unless you believe the (possibly incomplete or falsified) documents, and more importantly, what every other person who was in the area says. Either all of the reporters have gotten it totally wrong, or Kerry’s been telling each of them different stories. I don’t have the foggiest which one it is, let alone what the truth actually is, based on reports of Kerry’s accounts alone. The one clear, incontravertible account we know came from Kerry’s lips is in the Congressional Record - where he states that Richard Nixon was President in Christmas 1968.

There’s been a call for Kerry to open up his military records. I’d settle for a single, clear statement from Kerry or the DNC on exactly how to reconcile all of the above accounts, and why haven’t the gross contradictions been corrected by Kerry before?

UPDATE: From Fox :

In an Oct. 14, 1979, letter to the editor of the Boston Herald, Kerry wrote: “I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real.”

UPDATE: From Human Events Online :

But today, on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends,” Kerry Campaign Advisor Jeh Johnson had this to say to the show’s co-host Brian Kilmeade:
JOHNSON: John Kerry has said on the record that he had a mistaken recollection earlier. He talked about a combat situation on Christmas Eve 1968 which at one point he said occurred in Cambodia. He has since corrected the recorded to say it was some place on a river near Cambodia and he is certain that at some point subsequent to that he was in Cambodia. My understanding is that he is not certain about that date.

KILMEADE: I think the term was he had a searing memory of spending Christmas - back in 1986 in the senate floor in Cambodia.

JOHNSON: I believe he has corrected the record to say it was some place near Cambodia he is not certain whether it was in Cambodia but he is certain there was some point subsequent to that that he was in Cambodia.

Before 9/11, we almost always knew how to win a war – even the people who weren’t in favor of fighting it.

Plenty of people thought we should have just let the Confederate states go their own way in 1861 – but even they knew that if we beat General Lee on the field and occupied enough of the South, that the CSA would cry uncle and quit.

The First World War? Same story. Before President Wilson asked Congress for a war declaration, pro-German sentiment was pretty evenly divided with pro-English sentiment. But once war was declared, everybody knew – drive on to Berlin, and the world would be made safe for democracy. Except the Germans called it quits before the Anglo-Franco-American allies even crossed the frontier, so WWI never quite ended for the Germans. And that brings us, naturally, to the Second World War.

Not a whole lot of pro-German sentiment here for that one, unless you count some of the really fringe members of the America First brigades. (If I need to refer to them later, we’ll call Charles Lindberg, Joe Kennedy & Co. the “Proto-Buchananites.”) Even after Pearl Harbor, there were still a few pacifists in the country, however – but somewhere in their hearts, they knew the war would be won once we had soldiers occupying Berlin and Tokyo.

And so it went. We did those things, we won those wars.

Nuclear weapons and our first-ever defensive alliances complicated matters. Did we win in Korea, by simply holding the line? Or should victory have been defined as reuniting all of Korea under a friendly government in Seoul? Or, since the Chinese proved to be our real foe after Inchon, should we have considered anything less than deposing the Beijing regime to have been something less than victory?

Well. Fighting the Chinese in China would have led to a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. In 1953, we would have won that, too – but is a win still a win when after dozens of nukes have hit us? Some days, the closest you can get to victory is simply not having to fight.

Then there’s Vietnam, which was Korea writ on a much larger scale. We won the battles, as everyone knows, but we lost the war. Or did we? Vietnam was a series of battles in the larger Cold War. Sure, we lost South Vietnam, but we still won the larger war. Former lefty Robert Kaplan argued that fighting in Vietnam was a tragic necessity. Had we not proven ourselves willing to fight for South Vietnam, we could very well have lost our NATO allies without the Reds ever having fired a shot. Was Vietnam a win? A loss? A tragic necessity? All of the above?

As I said, nuclear arms and defensive alliances complicated things for us greatly. Our alliances forced us into wars we couldn’t quite win (because of the nuclear threat), in order to avoid greater losses in future wars (which would have run even greater nuclear risks). Or, to put it in the kind of language I prefer to use when discussing politics, the Cold War sucked.

If you think war has become complex, peace is messier still – and always has been.

Nobody ever knows what the peace will look like. Let’s use our examples from earlier. Even as late as Appomattox, who could have predicted the KKK, Jim Crow, or Radical Reconstruction? No statesmen in 1914 knew that the war they were about to unleash would result in 20 million deaths, Russian Communism, or Nazi Germany. World War II? If you can find me the words of some prophet detailing, in 1940, the UN, the Cold War, or even the complete assimilation of western Germany into Western Europe. . . then I’ll print this essay on some very heavy paper, and eat it. With aluminum foil as a garnish.

NOTE: That’s what gets me about all the complaints that President Bush “didn’t have a plan” to “win the peace” in Iraq. Oh, blow me. Nobody ever has a plan for the peace. Or if they do, it will prove useless. “No peace plan survives the last battle” is the VodkaPundit corollary to Clausewitz’s dictum that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.

By now, you probably know where I’m going with this little history lesson: How do we define victory in the Terror War, and what will the peace look like.

Let’s get the second part out of the way first.

What will the peace look like? I don’t have a damn clue. And neither do you. And if you meet anyone who claims to know, feel free to laugh at them really hard. So hard, you get a little spit on their face. Sometimes, justice can be small and spiteful – ask a meter maid. Anyway.

When peace comes, it could look like whatever Mecca, Tehran, Damascus, Riyadh, Pyongyang, Khartoum, Kabul, Cairo, etc., look like after being hit by big city-busting nuclear warheads. Or it could end with the entire Arab and Muslim world looking like the really well-manicured bits of Connecticut. My best guess is, somewhere in-between. But that’s only a guess.

NOTE: It’s a sad state of affairs (their affairs, not ours) that the first scenario, no matter how repugnant and unlikely, still seems more likely than the second scenario, no matter how virtuous.

Now that we know that we don’t know how we’ll win, that leaves the question (and the oxymoron): How do we win?

Ending the rule of the Taliban didn’t end the war. Ending the rule of Saddam didn’t end the war. We could depose the dictators in every dictatorship, and still not be done with this mess. Our enemy isn’t a nation. It isn’t a leader. It isn’t, despite the misnomer “War on Terror,” a war on terror.

What we’re fighting is an ideology.

First off, let’s brush aside the Loser Notion that if we kill terrorists, we’ll only breed more terrorists. So what? Every dead terrorist is, well, dead. And we can always build more bombs and make more bullets. For 30 years now, the US Army has trained to fight in a “target-rich environment.” Bring’em on.

Now that we have defeatism out of the way, let’s get on with defeating the enemy. “But the enemy is an ideology,” you’ve been told, “and you can’t fight thoughts with bullets.”

Yes and no.

Some people forget (because they backed/worshipped/served-as-useful-idiots-to the other side) that we have fought an ideology before, and – we won. The Cold War was, above all else, an ideological conflict. It was the Great Civil War of Western Civilization. On the one side, you had Western Capitalism, and on the other, International Communism. Obviously, things weren’t that cut and dried. The US certainly doesn’t (to my constant dismay) enjoy a laissez-faire economy, and the European NATO countries even less so. And despite a totalitarian regime, even the Soviet Union tolerated a little samizdat capitalism. Nevertheless, with the exception of France, countries took sides and stayed there.

Which socio-political system was left standing after 45 years of conflict? Oh yeah, baby – despite what you hear on American campuses, the West won. We won completely. We knocked their dicks in the dirt. The bad guys gave up, in the end, without even firing a shot – like Saddam Hussein in his hidey-hole.

How did we do it? How did we endure 45 years of conflict? How did we win? In the end, it came down to one simple thing:

We proved the enemy ideology to be ineffective.

We fought Communism for almost 50 years, and we would have fought it for another 50 – had that ideology not been too incompetent to keep up the fight. Islamism isn’t Communism, however, so the means of fighting it have to be different.

Communism, when it took us on directly, found we were willing to stand up for ourselves and our allies (no matter how undesirable some of those allies were). Korea was ugly and inconclusive. Vietnam was even uglier, and didn’t go our way. But in each case, we sent the same signal to Moscow: Push us or our friends around, and we’ll fight. No one can say for sure that the 1st Air Cavalry Division’s actions in Vietnam kept the Soviets from sending their tanks west to the Rhine – but it sure kept them guessing. And that, in part, was the point.

Communism promised a better life here on earth, but failed to deliver. Selling the Commodore 64 at a retail price of $300 was enough to prove that Communism had failed in comparison to capitalism. The Stealth Fighter just drove the point home.

Meanwhile, not much changed here at home. We lurched from Truman to Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon to Ford to Carter to Reagan – and that entire time, we not only kept up the fight (more or less), but we didn’t change any of the fundamental precepts of our civilization. In fact, thanks to the Civil Rights movement and the anti-draft protests, we came ever-closer to achieving our ideals.

We can out-produce you. We are willing to fight you. We are unwilling to become you. Add those three things together, and we proved that Communism was ineffective. They lost, we won, get over it.

Islamism isn’t Communism, obviously. Out-producing the Islamic world isn’t hard – subtract the oil, and Finland provides more exports than the entire Arab world. But Islamism doesn’t promise a better life here – it promises a better afterlife. Therefore, we aren’t going to dissuade our enemies by producing a $50 iPod, or even a billion-dollar stealth bomber.

Killing our enemies isn’t enough, because death is what they seek. If there were a million terror-sponsoring nations, we could invade them all and never make any headway in any essential sense. So that’s out, too.

What we are is why they want to kill us – so even if the US were to become my libertarian wet-daydream fantasyland, it wouldn’t help us win the war.

With all that in mind, I’ve identified three keys to winning this war:

1. Take the initiative.

2. Fight when we have to, even if we can’t win.

3. Remain what we are.

Take the Initiative

If 9/11 taught us anything, it’s that we can’t sit back any longer. Proactive measure are needed, and probably (sadly, tragically) for the foreseeable future. Had the Soviets engineered a 9/11-type attack on American soil, and had we failed to respond in greater measure, then the Cold War would have been lost. A nation unwilling to respond to attack on its own principal city, can hardly be counted on to defend the cities of its allies. Germany would have been reunited, all right – under a Communist regime.

Islamists can’t be deterred the way the Soviets were, and that means we have to be proactive. And that means taking the fight to the enemy, before he can take the fight to us. Doing so doesn’t preclude further 9/11-style attacks on us. But it does mean, at the very least, reducing their frequency. More importantly, it also means keeping our standing as a vital nation. At this stage in the game, failing to be proactive would mean losing whatever allies we have left. (Are you listening, John Kerry?)

Taking the initiative also means discarding fair-weather allies. If France and Germany would rather scuttle NATO than stand by its most important member, then NATO must whither. This is, as I think I’ve already demonstrated, a fight for our very existence. Allies who fail (or refuse) to recognize that aren’t real allies – and should no longer be treated as such. The UN was never an ally, and I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

Taking the initiative is why – despite all the WMD talk – we invaded Iraq. We had to topple the Taliban, because the Taliban was directly linked to 9/11. We had to invade Iraq, because Iraq is directly linked to what is wrong with the Arab world. And unless the Arab world is fixed – either by setting up decent governments (I hope), or by nuclear castration (my nightmare), or something in-between – then this war is not yet over.

Fight When We Have To, Even If We Can’t Win.

The Battle of Pearl Harbor was a lost cause. Korea was nearly one. And Vietnam, given the constraints described above, was almost certainly a losing proposition.

But we fought in those places.

We fought at Bull Run, too. And we fought at Kasserine Pass, and Manila, and Bastogne, and Hue, and on Flight 93. We even won at a couple of those places, even though cause seemed lost.

But we fought.

And that’s the whole point. Going into Afghanistan is October of 2001, we went in without knowing if we could win. We went in, severely outnumbered, trying a brand-new doctrine (forced on the Pentagon by that idiot, George W. Bush) in a nation known as “the graveyard of empires.” But Afghanistan was the sanctuary and training ground of those who hurt us so badly on 9/11. Had we not fought there, the War would have been over, scarcely before it had begun. So we went. And we won. But victory was no foregone conclusion. We went anyway.

Whether we can win (by establishing something resembling decent government) in Iraq is still an unanswered question. But, as I argued in the previous section, we had to go into Iraq and at least try. There is a sickness in the modern Arab world, and it must be cured. Iraq is our attempt at curing it without killing the patient. The prognosis for the patient is still unclear – but, so far, our resolve is crystal clear. But, like a oncologist, we had to go in no matter what the risks.

There will be other battles we may have to face, no matter how dubious the outcome. Will Iran be next? Will we finally lose patience with the Saudis? Will we find evidence that Syria, or Yasser Arafat’s West Bank cronies are now in charge of Saddam’s old chemical weapons?

I don’t know. And nobody knows where such battles might lead us. But, if we want to win this war, we can’t be afraid of fighting any necessary battles.

Remain What We Are

You don’t defeat the enemy by becoming him. We didn’t beat the Soviets by establishing our own Five Year Plans, and we won’t beat the children of oppression by becoming oppressors.

We might stop an attack or two by militarizing our borders, but what would we lose? We’d be three, maybe four, short steps above the dictatorships we so rightly despise. And we’d be this much closer (hold your thumb and index fingers very close together for visual effect) from breeding our own homegrown crazies, just like they breed them Over There.

We might stop an attack or two by inspecting every single cargo container coming into our country – but the economic repercussions would kill more people than a dozen 9/11s.

We might stop an attack or two by nuking every Islamic city from Tangier to Islamabad – but, come morning, we’ll have to look ourselves in the mirror. What that means is, just because you don’t agree with the millions and millions of antiwar Americans, doesn’t mean you may discount completely their opinions. Want a civil war in your own country? Then start nuking other countries indiscriminately.

Defeating terror can, I hope, be done without becoming terrorists, ourselves. But the war is young, and we didn’t nuke Hiroshima until Japan was already almost entirely beaten.

Taking the initiative, fighting where we must, remaining free – those are the keys to victory.

If we show our enemies that they aren’t the only ones who can take the initiative. . .

If we show our enemies that we are willing to fight them, even when the odds are slim. . .

If we fight and fight and fight, without ever giving up those freedoms we’re fighting to defend. . .

. . . then we will have proven, no matter how long it takes, that their ideology is ineffective. We won’t just take it. We won’t retreat. We will not change.

We will have proven that their way is the way of death; our way is the way of life.

How it will all play out is anyone’s guess. But I do know this much. Anyone who claims we should just suffer attacks on our homeland, or retreat before all hope is lost, or surrender our liberties when those freedoms are what we live for –— the only thing that person offers you is the same thing offered you by our enemies:

Defeat.

Stick to the game plan. We can win.

WSJ editorializes on the Kerry budget plan (with tough words for all players):

According to last month’s estimate from the National Taxpayers Union, Senator Kerry is promising to increase net spending by $226 billion in the first year, or $6,066 per taxpayer over four years. And that’s a lowball figure. The calculation used the lowest cost estimate of each spending proposal. …

[H]ow can Mr. Kerry blow out the budget so badly? It’s not hard if you promise to be all things to all people. On top of Mr. Bush’s huge education spending increases, the Democrats want to add $75 billion more in the first year alone. Another $56 billion is earmarked for public works and social programs. The Kerry health care proposals will cost another $71 billion that year, or $653 billion over 10, according to a former Clinton Administration economist. His original estimate was nearly $1 trillion until he found some miraculous savings.

…

The Democrats are trying to spark nostalgia for the Clinton era of supposed fiscal discipline. But remember the latter was achieved largely by cutting military spending. As the table nearby illustrates, Bill Clinton and a GOP Congress balanced the budget by withdrawing a “peace dividend” at a time when al Qaeda was declaring war. Mr. Bush, and presumably a President Kerry, must now walk that back up the hill.

Yes, you may be saying, but John Kerry says he can pay for all this by taxing those who make more than $200,000 a year — raking in $860 billion over the next decade. There are just a few problems. Current budget projections are based on current laws, which say the Bush tax cuts will phase out over the next five years unless Congress renews them. So the real take from soaking the rich a few years early will be modest, while the deficit projections will increase by a much larger margin if the middle-class tax cut is made permanent, as Mr. Kerry promises. Over the 10-year horizon his overall tax plan would reduce revenue by $602 billion, according to the Urban Institute.

The biggest canard is that Mr. Kerry will control spending by relying on spending “caps” and restoration of the “paygo” system, which required legislators to find offsets for any new tax cuts or spending. These only apply to the discretionary portion of the budget, not entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. The U.S. has just created the biggest new entitlement in half a century with the drug benefit for seniors, and Mr. Kerry wants to expand health spending still further. So paygo will do nothing to control the biggest sources of new spending.

The entire editorial is worth your time.

USA Today editorializes on John Kerry’s plan for Iraq, some pieces of which seem to be missing or unrealistic:

It all sounds so good and plausible and logical. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, so say his advisers, didn’t dwell much on his plans for Iraq at last month’s convention — a turn-away-and-you-miss-them 55 words or so in a 45-minute speech — for good reason. The nation, they say, needed to get acquainted with him as a person. So it was more about biography: presenting the Vietnam War hero, the man who would transfer his courage under fire to the tough role of commander in chief.

That is the norm for conventions. But take a trip to www.johnkerry.com, Kerry’s campaign Web site, and just what a President Kerry might do in Iraq remains elusive.

The reasons have partly to do with the politics of the Democratic Party, which is torn between the many who opposed the war in the first place and the few, like Kerry himself, who supported it. But the result is that with the election just three months away, Kerry has done little to separate his views from those of President Bush.

Both want more international military and financial help, a stable and relatively democratic government, an intensive training of Iraqi security forces and a gradual drawdown of U.S. troops. But who wouldn’t? The question is how to get there.

Kerry’s main difference with Bush, and one he underscores, is that he would be better able to get other countries to help by returning to a more traditional inclusiveness. Involving allies heavily in everything from reconstruction to discussions on Iraq’s future, Kerry says, is the way to bring more international troops to Iraq, lessen anti-U.S. hostility and start bringing U.S. troops home.

Kerry might, indeed, be better received than Bush, who has angered allies by trying to dictate policies from Iraq to global warming. But help in Iraq isn’t likely to be on the way anytime soon — at least not in numbers that would change the U.S. burden.

Since the Cold War, Europe has slashed defense budgets, and NATO already is stretched thin stabilizing Afghanistan. Even if more forces were found, the question remains: How would their inevitably small numbers change the role of the 140,000 U.S. troops already there?

Kerry suggests that they might be used to train Iraqi troops and patrol Iraq’s borders, but that, presumably, would leave the U.S. to fight the insurgency until an Iraqi force could manage on its own.

Nor are Muslim forces the answer. They could even exacerbate the problem. Workers from Muslim countries are already being targeted by hostage-takers.

Politically, the war’s unpopularity in both Europe and the Muslim world gives their leaders powerful political incentives to stay out. Kerry suggests that sharing economic opportunities, such as oil contracts, would bring others in. But so far, the insurgency is driving companies away, even those from areas eager to share in the contracts, such as Turkey.

Bush faces the same issues, of course, but he is forced to defend his actions frequently. Challengers prefer to camp out in the chorus of critics and offer generalized solutions.

Thirty-six years ago, Republican candidate Richard Nixon made a similar pitch for ending the Vietnam War: He slammed the Democrats as incompetent, called on allies to bear more of the burden and suggested that he had a plan to end the war that he couldn’t disclose until he was in office.

Four years later, he still had no answer.

Iraq isn’t Vietnam, and Kerry’s plan isn’t quite as opaque as Nixon’s, but the historical echoes are strong enough to suggest that if Kerry has a credible proposal for Iraq, he needs to fill in the blanks.

Friday evening, Paul at Wizbang reported on a video apparently showing an American being beheaded. The person on the video said:

“I am from San Francisco, California,” the young man in the video said, dressed in a plain beige T-shirt and seated on a chair. “We need to leave this country right now. If we don’t, everyone is gonna be killed in this way,” he said.

“I have been offered for exchange for prisoners here in Iraq,” the terrified-looking American said, rocking back and forth in his chair, his hands tied behind his back.

“We need to leave this country alone. We need to stop this occupation”. The video then showed a hand with a large knife slicing through the neck of a limp body.

Paul smelled something rotten and he was right.

The man from San Francisco, said he videotaped the staged beheading at his friend’s house using fake blood.

On the tape, Benjamin Vanderford, 22, sat on a chair in a dark room, his hands behind his back, trembling and rocking back and forth.

Interestingly enough, there is Benjamin Vanderford from San Francisco running for office (District 5 supervisor seat, running as Independent).

A little research later and yes, they are the same person.

Vanderford, 22, said he began distributing the video on the Internet months ago in hopes of drawing attention to his one-time campaign for city supervisor. When his political aspirations waned, he thought the video would serve as social commentary.

So, his political hopes dashed, he decided to engage in some recreational deception instead.

The video was titled “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Slaughters an American.” Zarqawi is an Al Qaeda-linked militant whose group, Tawhid and Jihad, has claimed responsibility for numerous deadly attacks across Iraq, including the beheading of U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg.

Vanderford’s video also showed images of disfigured and injured people in Iraq. A recording of the Quran, Islam’s holy book, played in the background.

Sipping soda in his kitchen, a shirtless Vanderford said he spliced images he took from a Hamas Web site showing mutilated bodies. He later edited the 55 second video to downgrade the quality so it would look similar to beheading tapes distributed since the war in Iraq began.

Vanderford offered no apologies for his stunt.

“That was another experiment that was part of this to see how quickly that system will spread news,” Vanderford said.

What a way to get your point across. Benjamin gets my nomination for Idiot of the Day. Maybe even the year.

I’m sure the families of those who were really beheaded by terrorists appreciate having to relive their nightmares over again when Benjamin’s stunt made the news. And I’m sure the Muslims in his community equally appreciate Benajmin’s big lie.

James Joyner has more.

Update: A co-producer of the video defends his actions, saying it was neither a pro-war nor anit-war statement, but an indictment against the media.

Ed. note: This is part one of a two-part piece, written by Tatictus of RedState.org. It appears here with permission of the author.

_______

In case you’ve not been paying attention, the Sadrist revolt in Iraq is back in full swing. Cherub-faced paranoiac mullah Moqtada al-Sadr used the months since the May truce to rest, re-equip and re-arm with Iranian help.

And he used them to recruit, having lost a few thousand of his fanatics in the spring battles: survival being victory when it comes to fighting Americans, he was able to present himself as a winner to the credulous masses. Now, once more, they are out for mayhem in the streets of south and central Iraq, joining Fallujah’s shameful example in demonstrating that there is never an upside to strategic or operational restraint with violent Islamists. They are fighting the Americans (and getting slaughtered by the hundreds). They are fighting the British. They are fighting the Italians. And they are, take note, fighting the Iraqis. For once, I agree with

Juan Cole: this has all the feel of an endgame. Certainly Iyad Allawi’s administration is making noises about the iron fist:

Iraqi officials said Thursday that they were not interested in trying to make deals with Sadr.

“We are not going to negotiate,” Interior Minister Falah Nakib said at an afternoon news conference in Baghdad. “We are going to fight this militia. We have enough power and strength to kick those people out.”

Asked whether he had a message for Sadr, Nakib replied, “Don’t kill yourself.”

Watch these events: They are bellwethers not only for the new Iraqi government, but for the future of the war itself. Lest we forget, these battles come even as the de facto spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shi’a, the Ayatollah Sistani,travels to Britain for medical treatment. (Guess the kafir’s science isn’t entirely najis after all!) If, as is rumored, he is a dying man, then the Sadrist power play becomes even more fraught with significance.

Why, you ask, is this on Red State, and what has it to do with American politics?

The obvious connection with American politics is of course its effect on the President’s reelection campaign. Now, I’ll fess up: I’m a supporter of the war.

I’m not much of a supporter of the way the war has been waged, and even less of a supporter of the way it’s been sold to the American public. (Call me, if you wish, a penny-ante Niall Ferguson in such matters.) The decision to go to war was bold and decisive; the subsequent political management of the war has been markedly less so. The reason for this failing, as far as can be discerned, is that Administration appears to buy into the myth of American casualty-phobia. But myths are, well, myths. As Victor Davis Hanson (to name only the latest of a long line of scholars of history) has noted, democracies are well-suited for the waging of long, bloody wars given adequate leadership and motivation. Defeat typically comes when the political classes lose heart: and that is almost always long before the people as a whole do. Look, for example, to the two modern events cited as supporting evidence for this myth:

Beirut 1983 and Mogadishu 1993. The story goes that the American public, scarred by televised images of bloodied sons in battle, withdrew its support for both ventures, and the men in the field soon withdrew in turn. Lawrence Kaplan demolishes this falsehood in an apt and too-little known piece in TNR.

In Lebanon, for example, public support for the U.S. intervention increased after the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. But, when President Reagan backed away from the operation, that support evaporated.

Similarly, when 18 Rangers were killed in Mogadishu, NBC, ABC, and CNN polls found that 61, 56, and 55 percent, respectively, favored sending more troops to Somalia. That support, too, disappeared as it became clear the president himself no longer backed the mission.

In an election season, then, in which the President presumably wants the Iraq war off the nightly news, the lesson here is that the American people will not hold the war against him so long as he is resolute and clearly intent upon decisive victory.

This is still possible: see Falah Nakib above.

The import of the Iraq war and the latest phase of combat does not begin nor end with President Bush. This war is one of many things that John Kerry hopes to inherit in January, and so it’s worth examining his thoughts and plans on the subject. He’s been famously inconsistent on the former (for, against, for, against, according to the political winds), and famously reticent on the latter — see his insistence hitherto upon the electorate’s belief in his secret plan to make things in Iraq right. Hitherto, because as the Kerry campaign festers on, it’s becoming increasingly clear just what the secret plan actually is. The signs are, to say the least, profoundly disturbing.

Sometimes you’ll hear things that are so out of left field, so unexpected, or so troubling that you don’t register them at first. Only later, be it seconds or days, do you recall the words with a flicker of surprised recognition. Such was my reaction to yesterday’s interview between John Kerry, John Edwards, and NPR’s Steve Inskeep. (Realaudio stream here; no official transcript, so all mistakes below are mine.) It’s worth going through this piece by piece, not in the spirit of “fisking,” which tends to promote shoddy writing and thinking in equal measure, but with the intent to parse.We’ll return to a synthesis and conclusion at the end.

The section of the interview we’re interested in begins at roughly 3 minutes, 45 seconds into the audio stream:

Inskeep: Moving on to another subject, now — Iraq. You have said that you would try harder to bring in America’s allies. But, that said, if you look ahead a year, two years, if you win this election, how is the situation on the ground in Iraq going to be any different than it is now?

Kerry: Well, it has to be different from the way it is now. It is not safe today. It is not working for Iraqis. I believe it is critical to our success to have a fresh start. This President, regrettably, rushed to war, without a plan to win the peace, he pushed our allies aside, we’ve lost our credibility with the world, we need to restore that. And I think I can do that.

Inskeep: This is what I’m wondering, though: In a year from now, since you do want to remain committed to Iraq, isn’t it the case that there will still be many, many thousands of American troops there, still fighting the insurgents if the insurgents want to fight?

Kerry: Ah, no, not necessarily at all, because I think our diplomacy can produce a very different ingredient on the ground. And if it can’t produce a different ingredient on the ground, lemme tell you something, that says something about what Iraqis want, and what the people in the region want. I believe that within a year from now, we could significantly reduce American forces in Iraq. And, ah, that’s my plan.

What do we take away from this? John Kerry asserts that diplomacy will change things in Iraq. John Kerry allows that diplomacy may not change things in Iraq.

John Kerry refers to the requisite transformative diplomacy in the context of diplomacy within Iraq and the region. It is this diplomacy that he expects to bring American troops home. Let’s move on:

Inskeep: A year from right now?

Kerry: Absolutely we could reduce the numbers. You bet.

Edwards: Can I just add to what John’s saying? What he’s describing just creates an entirely new dynamic. These are not abstract concepts — he’s really thought this through. For example, bringing in NATO, and having a new President, a fresh start, dealing with the international community, can convert this from an American occupation to an international presence helping the Iraqis provide for
their own security. So, a year from now, which is what you’re asking about….

Inskeep: Sure.

Edwards: ….We could have a completely different dynamic than what we have today in Iraq.

Herein we see more of the mythmaking that drives modern Democrats. Elections they lose are stolen. Those who voted for this war don’t include them.

Nato is not involved in Iraq. The international presence in Iraq is zero.

Viz., British and Italians fighting and dying as you read this; linked above. The strategy of “helping the Iraqis provide for their own security” does not presently exist. Viz., our Iraqi allies fighting and dying as you read this; linked above.

And the greatest myth of all: that the sine qua non of any improvement is a President John F. Kerry. The man who would be him speaks on:

Kerry: Let me give an example. If I get other countries involved in the training of troops, and we’re training them more rapidly, the Iraqis themselves can take over a great deal more of their own security. But you need stability to be able to do that. How do you achieve the stability? You need to have more people involved in the process. We have not seen this Administration do the statesmanship, do the diplomacy necessary, and America is paying a very high price both in terms of the lives of our young, and the money that’s coming out of the taxpayer’s pockets. I will do a better job of building those alliances and getting our troops home. And I will do a much better job of reducing the burden on the National Guard and Reserves and their families who are paying a very high price for the President’s rush.

But we’ve already seen, other countries are involved in the training of troops. And is it not something of a poor plan that depends wholly upon the unproven and historically untrustworthy goodwill and independent volition of other nations? In his acceptance speech at the DNC, Kerry vowed: “I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security.” And yet, his plan of action here does just that: indeed, it is premised upon those nations whom he assumes will treat him well not exercising that veto.

And if they do? If the hope-and-pray option doesn’t work? What then? John Kerry does not say. Indeed, like the neocon ideologues he decries, it does not appear to occur to him that Option A may fail. And like them, he will proceed with the intended consequence of Option A even in its absence.

Inskeep: Regarding the effort to reduce the burden on the National Guard — you’ve promised there will be an additional 40,000 US troops.You’ve said —

Kerry: Active duty. Not in Iraq.

Inskeep: — and you want to double the size of the Special Forces.

Kerry: Yes.

Inskeep: Given that it will take some time to build up those forces —

Kerry: Yes it will.

Inskeep: — and given that you want to reduce the number of US troops in Iraq rather quickly, within a few months after assuming office —

Kerry: Well, those are two different situations.

Inskeep: Well, I want to know — the question is, I want to know where are you intending for those troops to be used?

Kerry: We have huge obligations around the world still. North Korea … we have Europe … uh, Bosnia, Kosovo. We’re not even doing what we probably ought to be doing in Darfur, in Africa. This Administration never responded fast enough to Liberia because of how overextended we are. So I believe —

Edwards: And reducing the burden on our Reserves and our Guard.

Kerry: — the way you do it is by getting those active duty in place over a period of time. Now, ultimately, I want to reduce the size. I want to reduce the deployments. And if we have the proper effort over the next few years, my vision with respect to North Korea, and our presence in Europe, if the European defense force emerges, as they are talking of it, we can begin really bring some of America’s troops home and begin to reduce our overall military burden. But for the moment, for this moment in time, we need these extra personnel.

Inskeep: Senators John Kerry and John Edwards, thanks very
much.

We have already here noted the Kerry plan,cribbed from an extant plan of Rumsfeld’s DoD, for an increase of 40,000 men in our armed forces (presumably meant for the Army). Now we see that even though those men are meant to compensate for a shortfall in wartime, they will not be sent to the actual theater of war. (Let us note, by the bye, that both Rumsfeld’s actual 30,000 and Kerry’s imaginary 40,000 are both insufficient to truly cover the shortfalls at hand.) One might rightly ask whether they will free up other soldiers to go to war themselves; one would then have to note that this would involve both a rupture in the Army’s current standards of enlistment — by which you are, ultimately, sent wherever the Army pleases — and a negation of John Kerry’s own obvious dogged determination to reduce troop levels in Iraq no matter what.

And it’s not just in Iraq — he envisions a reduction of American military commitments abroad in all theaters. Kerry simultaneously reproaches the Bush Administration for not getting militarily involved in more operational theaters — Liberia, Darfur — and speaks of a desire to withdraw around the world.It is a desire so strong that he is already mentally offloading strategic responsibilities to entities, like the pan-European defense force, that do not exist in any meaningful form. It is a desire so strong that he is quite obviously prepared do to it no matter what.

Think about that last bit. Think back to the interview excerpt’s beginning. John Kerry avers that “diplomacy” can secure a peace or stability of sorts from groups and peoples with whom we are at war and whom we have yet to defeat.

This, he asserts, will create the conditions for troop withdrawals. Oh, and if it doesn’t? Because it won’t: “[I]f it can’t produce a different ingredient on the ground, lemme tell you something, that says something about what Iraqis want, and what the people in the region want.” The rhetorical ground is prepared. The will-of-the-people rhetoric is deployed. The stage for the grim, resolute, yielding-to-reality (so unlike those neocons!) President John F. Kerry is set.

Remember: if every best-case scenario for withdrawal doesn’t work; if diplomacy(!)mysteriously fails to sway murderous fanatics to goodwill; if the French don’t abruptly dispatch the Foreign Legion to Anbar Province; and if big-hearted Europeans don’t immediately begin training thousands of Jeffersonian-minded Iraqis — in short, if there’s still a war to be won:

He’s going to withdraw anyway.

Remember. Mark it well. He’s going to withdraw anyway. His plan, such as it is, and predicated entirely upon third parties acting just so, could not work at all: and he will withdraw. Beyond Iraq, we are enmeshed in a titanic, global war on terror: and he speaks of withdrawing from every corner of that globe.It’s not a strategy motivated by careful thought or the nuance for which he is so justly famous. It’s an idee fixe. It is retreat and retrenchment as ends in themselves. It is an abdication of the American role in the world not seen since the bitter days of the 1970s. I said before that it took me some time to process the import of Kerry’s words in this interview. I drove on to work, and I sat and
thought it through. And then I typed the transcript out. And then I realized just what the man is proposing to do.

He’s going to withdraw anyway.

John Kerry vaulted into public life on the bloodied backs of the millions of slaughtered, enslaved and expelled Indochinese who suffered their fates — and still suffer their fates — because he and those like him achieved their policy victories back in those aforementioned bitter days. One might expect lessons learned from the experience: some measure of empathy or compassion for the victims deprived of the shield of American might and ideals. It was, after all, not merely the only thing keeping them somewhat free: it was the only thing keeping a few millions of them alive. But it seems he has learned precisely nothing. Now, three decades later, in Iraq and around the world there is another bitter fight — and there is the same instinct to cut and run, dressed up in fantastical hypotheticals and dronings-on about priorities. What man wishes to be President of the United States, even as he wishes to not win its wars? The
names McClellan, McGovern, Debs, and Thomas spring to mind.

He’s going to withdraw anyway.

I’ve had my profound problems with George W. Bush’s handling of Iraq. His strategic management has been uneven; his assessment of his generals has been often lacking; and his direction of certain battles — Fallujah most glaringly — skirts catastrophe. But I rest assured that he will not countenance the greatest catastrophe of all: defeat. Whatever his flaws, the President will see the Iraq war through. We can ask no less of a leader entrusted with our nation’s honor and
future.

John Kerry, by contrast, is planning to abandon that nation and its people. He is planning to allow, if he must, the enemies who massacred Americans in the clear fall skies of three years past to win in Iraq. He is planning to negate and nullify and heroic sacrifices of our Marines and our allies as they crush Islamism in Najaf. He is planning to blame it on events beyond his control: the international community; the current President; the will of the Iraqi people; the realities of resources, of finances, of logistics. Why, after all, close firehouses in Brooklyn yet open them in Baghdad? Callow rhetoric to prepare for callow defeat. The conclusion is that inescapable. And it’s that simple.

He’s going to withdraw anyway. And the price will be paid in blood.

Go to part two.

————-

Tacitus is one of the founders of RedState.org.

Posted By Michele Catalano at 12:23 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The Olympic Games could only have been born (and reborn) in a culture that venerates individual human achievement and this-worldly success.

Written By Andrew Bernstein, reprinted here with permission of the author.

The return of the Olympic Games to the country of their birth is an appropriate reminder of their deeper meaning. The Ancient Greeks founded the games because they valued the spectacle of a great athlete striving for victory. But the veneration of athletic achievement is not a quality one finds in all human cultures. Why did the games begin in Ancient Greece as opposed to, say, Ancient Egypt? And why were they revived in 19th-century Europe, rather than, say, Medieval Europe?

The answer lies in a rarely recognized aspect of the Olympics—and of major athletic competitions more broadly: their moral significance.

Most admirers of the Games can name a particular Olympic moment they found especially inspirational: Michael Johnson in his gold shoes dominating both the 200 and 400 meter sprints in 1996, Nadia Comaneci’s historic perfect “10” in the 1976 Montreal Games, among numerous others. But few recognize the cause of that inspiration: the crucial value of the sight of human achievement.

Those of us who, physically, cannot run the 100 meters in 9 seconds, high-jump 8 feet or even pick up a discus—can still aspire to significant achievements. Watching a great athlete perform remarkable deeds engenders in the best of us the question: what might I accomplish in my field and in my life if I embodied the same degree of dedication? The great athlete is inspiring, because he reminds us how much is possible to a human being. He is living proof that an individual can reach great attainments and that profuse exertion in pursuit of a daunting goal need not be fruitless.

But to derive this sort of value from the sight of human achievement requires that one deem human success and individual achievement important moral values. Classical Greece was the birthplace of the Olympic Games because it was a culture that admired individual human greatness. Greek sculpture, for example, depicted the human form as clean and proud. The Greek gods and goddesses were anthropomorphic beings—they were conceived as powerful and beautiful men and women. In the Olympics, the athletes competed naked in order to better exhibit the perfection of their bodies. This was a culture of man worship, a culture emphasizing the power of man’s mind and the value of human life and happiness on this earth.

By contrast, the Olympics could not have arisen in a culture focused not on living life, but on preparing for death—a culture dominated by obedience to authority and the enslavement of the individual. Compare the Greek legacy of monuments exalting man’s life on earth with the most enduring monument of the Ancient Egyptians: the pyramids—tombs of tyrants built by the decades-long effort of slaves. Likewise, medieval Christians were similarly focused on suffering and death. They regarded man as a depraved being riddled with Original Sin, who belonged on his knees begging forgiveness. This world, in their view, was a mere testing ground of one’s faith in a supernatural being, where earthly success was proof of vice and suffering was proof of virtue. If there had been some kind of Olympic Games among medieval Christians, of what would it have consisted? A competition to see who could flagellate themselves most brutally, or who could endure the most painful hair shirt? The glorification of man’s highest potential and his achievement of this-worldly success would certainly not have been on the program.

The Olympics were then reborn only in the 19th century, during the full fruition of the Technological and Industrial Revolutions—an era in which man’s mind, finally liberated from bondage to Pope and King, succeeded in bringing enormous prosperity and increased life expectancies to millions of human beings. Dominated by a commitment to individual freedom and material prosperity, Western Civilization in the 19th century, too, was a culture of reason and individualism.

Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the Modern games, selected Athens as the site of their revival in 1896 to highlight the reverence for man’s proper stature that his era shared with Ancient Greece. He stated: “The Olympiads have been re-established for the rare and solemn glorification of the individual athlete.”

The Olympics were born, and then reborn, in essentially secular, man-worshiping societies. The reverence for the physical accomplishments of superb athletes, and the inspiration such hero worship provides to individuals aspiring to significant achievements in their own lives, rests on a deeper philosophy upholding the value of human life on earth, reason as the means by which men further their lives, and the potential nobility of the individual human spirit. In the face of current Middle Eastern religious fanaticism that hates every virtue embodied by Western Civilization, it is well that the Olympics remind us of the secular values embraced by the cradle of that Civilization—Classical Greece.

______________

Andrew Bernstein, Ph.D. in philosophy, is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute (www.aynrand.org) in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Copyright © 2004 Ayn Rand® Institute, 2121 Alton Parkway, Suite 250, Irvine, CA, 92606. All rights reserved.

Kevin Drum (who really should be getting a check from the John Kerry campaign for all his one-sided analysis of issues) is slapping around the administration for an apparently blown undercover operation in Al Qaeda:

What in God’s green earth is going on here? I have a whole stew of reactions swirling around in my head about this. I’m beside myself that Bush administration officials are so spineless that they’d kill an undercover operation just to remove some political heat from themselves. But: I’m also angry that the reaction to Sunday’s terror warning from Bush critics was so hysterical that the Bushies got panicked into doing this. And yet: I’m furious that Bush and his cronies have so corrupted our intelligence services that deep skepticism was hardly an unfair reaction. But: why did Tom Ridge insist on politicizing Sunday’s news in the first place? On the other hand: why did the New York Times print this? Did they know they were blowing an operation?

Do you see any mention here of one culpable party who isn’t listed? I’ll give you a hint: Democratic bloggers and former presidential candidates (cough-howard scream dean- cough).

It was Kevin, after all, who accused the Bush administration of deliberately twisting intelligence for political gain.

And of pressuring the Pakistanis to speed up the capture of terrorists. (an accusation thoroughly discredited by others)

And it was Mr. Dean most notably who questioned the timing of the security alert, acting as the designated yuk-monkey of the Kerry campaign.

Dean said. “It’s just impossible to know how much of this is real and how much of this is politics, and I suspect there’s some of both.”

Considering that Dean was playing politics by raising the issue, I guess he’s got his answer. Unfortunately for us, it’s all too real.

And was such “deep skepticism” really such a fair reaction, Kevin. I don’t think so. Millions of Americans don’t think so. In fact, it takes a pretty hard-set ideological divide to suggest such a thing. A deep cynicism that isn’t going to be assuaged by voting for the Caged Hamster and his sidekick, the incredible fountain of youth.

All that said, this is another one of those examples of the pursuit of the story hampering security efforts in war time. Did the Times know that this operative was engaged in an undercover mission? I have to wonder if the leaker even knew. After all, it was an undercover operation. I doubt we’ll ever know the truth. But I suspect that won’t stop Kevin and his ilk from speculating.

So before Kevin climbs back on his Bush-Bashing Brahma, I’d suggest he take a good hard look in the mirror and accept the part of the blame for this fiasco that he shares with his compatriots in the Bush-hating party. Thanks, guys.

(found via el Fat Guy)

Michelle Malkin today posted a Litmus Test of “diversity,” featuring a number of questions that she claimed could be evidence of true “diversity” within journalism, and especially as it related to the Unity conference of journalists in Washington this week. I answered the questions here, but upon further reflection, had these thoughts:

I find this to be perhaps the most odious question:

1. I have never voted for a Democrat in my life.

While there is much that I disagree with in Democratic party politics and platform, I find the suggestion that it is some sort of badge of honor never to have voted for a Democrat to be contemptible.

There are certainly Republicans I would never vote for (like this guy. There are others who would agree). I’m not a big fan of Newt Gingrich, either.

And there are undoubtedly Democrats who are honorable people who deserve votes. I actually respected Lloyd Bentsen for much of the time I observed him in the Senate. I probably would have voted for FDR a few times, as well.

And as I mentioned before, there are parts of the country where until recently there were no Republicans. If you were going to participate in local or state office politics, you voted in the Democratic primary, because that was where all the candidates were.

In this round of Senate elections in South Carolina, Jim DeMint is running against Inez Tenenbaum. Tenenbaum went out of her way to stay away from the Democratic National Convention, probably because she knows the voters in the state are well to the right of the national Democrats.

Read the issues page of Tenenbaum’s Internet site, and it reads like something an “R” would write. Especially this paragraph:

Inez Tenenbaum has championed the values of family and community, and she believes government can’t solve all our problems.  She has encouraged parents to play an active role in their children’s lives, and expanded character education in the schools.  She is also active in countless community organizations.

Now compare that to DeMint’s issues page.

Both candidates are clearly focusing on jobs, health care and national security as key issues for South Carolina voters. It will take more than a cursory examination to decide who has the right plan for solving these problems and others.

In the Senate race, I will weigh the positions and politics of both candidates before deciding to vote for one or the other. I refuse to vote for DeMint just because he has an “R” after his name.

Finally, the mere fact that you’ve voted straight ticket Republican doesn’t make you any more diverse than someone who has always voted straight ticket Democrat. Rather, it would seem to suggest that you cannot rise above party politics to select candidates based on their own record.

It just mystifies me that this would be something to crow about.

While Democratic delegates were conventioning in Boston, video store owners across the country were receiving promotional materials from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment regarding a documentary titled The Hunting of the President, featuring footage of the Clintons, Susan McDougal, Jerry Falwell, James Carville, Robert Bennett, and others. (More information about this film is posted at IMDB.)

Directed by Harry Thomason, a friend of the Clintons and known for his work on television’s Designing Women, and based on a best-selling book, this 90-minute unrated documentary examines “a coordinated effort to discredit [Clinton’s] presidency,” and is targeted at women aged 35-54, adults aged 55+, and registered Democrats.

One of the key marketing points touted in the promotional material is that the release — slated for September 28 — is “perfectly timed to coincide with the November presidential elections.” A separate bullet point notes that the DVD ought to appeal to the nation’s 85.4 million registered Democrats.

Whenever people wax lyrical about campaign finance reform, they always talk about curtailing the undue influence of “big money” vis a vis “the individual voter.” Practically speaking, the actual laws do little to thwart the efforts of sharp thinkers (on both sides of the aisle) to get around such laws, while managing to do a fairly good job of keeping any actual local grass roots efforts in check.

Not that I expect this documentary (a word that means little in a post-Bowling-for-Columbine world) will do any sort of huge business, but coming on the heels of Michael Riefenstahl-Moore’s Farenheit 9/11 fantasy, it does seem a bit… peculiarly timed.

But I must be mistaken. Only Republicans are capable of timing, right?

(Cross posted here.)

<satire>In a surprise revelation today, George W. Bush’s entire chain of command when he was an Air National Guard (ANG) Fighter Pilot condemned him as ‘Unfit to Command’.

A DNC-funded 517 organisation “Delta Dagger Vets for Truth”, comprising approximately 10% of all ANG pilots who ever flew the F-102 like Bush, has condemned the Presidential hopeful as ‘Untrustworthy’ and considered his actions after getting out of the Air National Guard as ‘a betrayal’.

A picture of George W. Bush’s squadron, showing him alongside 19 other pilots, and widely used in the Presidential campaign, has been the subject of a ‘cease and desist’ order from many of those pictured within it. Of the pilots shown, one is currently on the GOP payroll barracking for Bush, and 12 of them actively oppose the Bush campaign. Two are deceased, four refused to comment, and the other four pilots in his squadron (who do not appear in the photo) also say ‘Anybody But Bush’.

President John F Kerry has declined to endorse the pilots’ actions.

As part of a co-ordinated ad-hominem attack on the pilots, GOP Defence Advisor Condoleeza Rice described the Ad put out by the Delta Dagger Vets as ‘Dishonest and Dishonourable’.

Rush Limbaugh wrote ‘The “Delta Dagger” veterans attacking George Bush’s service record are led by veteran left-wing operatives…’

The GOP has pumped tens of millions into each of a number of 517 committees through a variety of Texas Billionaires, In contrast, the DNC is now being lambasted for the $100,000 one local union put into the Delta Daggers Vets organisation, whose total funding is less than $160,000. In the past, the GOP-leaning media has backpaged the whole 517 funding issue, as is only now afroth at a grass-roots organisation receiving less than 1% of the GOP’s massive 517 spending.

Apart from the friends in the media, the GOP has now engaged in a campaign of chilling freedom of speech, suppressing dissent by faxing false accusations about the Delta Dagger Vets Advertisement to any TV station considering screening it.

There can be no doubt that, had any such accusations been made about John F Kerry, a completely different picture would have emerged: the Headlines would have screamed ‘Kerry Unfit to Command’.</satire>

Sorry, that one sneaked in from the Universe Next Door.

It’s interesting though that all the attacks on the Swift Boat Vets fail to note one salient fact :

The Swift Boat Vets for Truth include the entire chain of command above Kerry: Lt. Commander Grant Hibbard, Lt. Commander George Elliott, Captain Charles Plumly, Captain Adrian Lonsdale USCG (retired) and Rear Admiral Hoffmann (retired)

For more details on the Swift Boat Vets Ad, see the 2004 Election post and follow-ups.

The (mis)quote I attributed to Rush Limbaugh is actually to be found over at Salon, and reads in the original :

The “swift boat” veterans attacking John Kerry’s war record are led by veteran right-wing operatives..

And is titled :

Smear Boat Veterans for Bush

You can’t make this stuff up.

From Taegan Goddard:

Overheard on a Train in New York

Q. Do you really think George Bush would scare New Yorkers about a potential terrorist attack if it was only based on four year old information?

A. They invaded a country based on 12 year old information.

Winds of Change.NET has a really sharp comments section, and reader John Farren left a very smart insight the other day. In discussing al-Qaeda and its motivations, he said:

“I wonder if there is any sort of reverse analogy with South Pacific “cargo cults”. Instead of creating symbols in the hope of “magically” obtaining Western goods, [they use] the destruction of symbols to emphasise, and subconciously perhaps “magically” obtain, the rejection of Western contamination.”

UPDATE: Athena has some worthwhile thoughts over in the Winds of Change.NET comments section.

I found this cartoon from Salt Lake Tribune cartoonist Pat Bagley. It provides a little perspective, lest we all get carried away with our comments (me included). For what its worth.

I haven’t seen so much chest pounding since watching Mighty Joe Young. The usual suspects (I won’t link to them. They know who they are and you know who they are) are all clamoring to proclaim that Howard Dean was right and that the Bush administration is politicizing the war on terror. It’s based on this super spinning article in the NY Times that reveals the information which led to increased terror alerts in New York, Washington and Neward is 3-4 years old.

The fact that the bulk of the information is 3-4 years old does not mean the threat does not exist. Does anybody seriously think these attacks are planned a couple of weeks in advance? They take years to plan and carry out. The 9/11 attack plans were hatched 5-7 years before they took place. The African embassy attacks were 3-5 years in the making.

In addition, the information found had been updated as recently as January. What was Tom Ridge and the administration supposed to do? Flush this stuff down the toilet and dismiss it because most of it was 3-4 years old? What if one of these buildings were attacked and the press got wind of the fact the administration was in possession of these documents but said nothing of them? The howl of outrage from the same people feigning outrage today would be loud enough to shatter windows.

In an amazing display of chutzpah, the critics of the administration are now lambasting the administration for doing what they lambasted them for not doing prior to the 9/11 attacks: Issuing warnings and taking steps to prevent such attacks from taking place. The administration is doing precisely what it should be doing.

What would those who are complaining have done? Judging by their reaction, the only possible thing they would have done is: nothing. According to them, it was all cooked up by the administration in an attempt to deflect attention away from Kerry’s mini-bounce coming out of the convention. It’s for that reason alone, that I cannot fathom supporting Democrats in the upcoming election. If they cannot be trusted to take this kind of intelligence seriously, why then should they be entrusted with our national security?

So Shut up and let it Happen

From Hog on Ice.

Today I noticed that Michelle Malkin and Dean Esmay are going at it over the issue of ethnic profiling in the war on terror.

First, I have to say that it’s a relief to see a big-time writer open a REAL blog, as contrasted with the utter phoniness of Wankette (or is it “Donkette”) who sprang fully formed from the head of a publicist. Michelle Malkin links to other bloggers and allows comments, and judging by her traffic at TruthLaidBear, she’s content to earn hits instead of buying them. And she actually writes her blog, instead of hiring flunkies (“wonkies”?) to do it.

Anyway, ethnic profiling.

A Muslim lady—Pakistani—with a South African passport crossed our border from Mexico numerous times, and she was finally caught in an airport on US soil.

Malkin says, correctly, that this shows the importance of watching our borders, and if I am not mistaken, she cites it as a case that shows ethnic profiling is justified.

Now, I hate to get into it with a friend, but Dean Esmay is totally wrong, unless I misunderstand what he wrote.

In “A Challenge for Ms. Malkin,” Dean makes several claims.

Dean says the story isn’t good evidence that our borders are a problem, because the woman was caught. Malkin slapped that effort down by reminding him that the lady in question had penetrated the border many, many times before her arrest.

Dean also argues that the arrestee, one Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed, was not easily identifiable as Muslim. Malkin obliterated that argument simply by referring to Ahmed’s name. That was a little too easy.

Dean seems to believe that since many of our enemies do not “look” Muslim, ethnic profiling is a waste of time. And as evidence, he links to a photo of a female terrorist, which you can see here, and he says the lady in the photo could pass for one of his white relatives. Her name, by the way, is Aaifia Siddiqui.

Now, take a look at the olive-skinned, dark-eyed, black-haired, Mediterranean-featured lady in the photo and tell me she looks Irish to you. Come on, Dean.

There are two arguments neither Malkin nor Dean address, which is sad, because they are central and dispositive. I’ve made both of them here, but I’ll drag them out again.

First, with regard to airplanes, ethnic profiling is essential, because it is impossible to recruit non-Muslims for suicide missions. A hijacking is a suicide mission. Our enemies are motivated by religion, and they believe they’ll be rewarded in the afterlife for dying in the fight against infidels. People outside their religion do not believe in a reward. They have to be paid right here on earth, and they are not going to get in airplanes and blow themselves up for money.

That means EVERY hijacker—and every terrorist on any type of suicidal mission—is a Muslim. If we could magically determine which passengers were Muslim and make them take trains, airline hijackings would end instantly. We can’t do that. But it’s very clear that we should be focusing on Muslims when we screen passengers. And that means looking for Mediterranean features, Arab names, passports from countries with high Muslim populations, and so on.

Dean says not all Muslims look Muslim. That’s beside the point. There are other indicia we can look at.

Right now, screeners can be fined for bothering too many people who “look” Muslims. So if you want to get a bomb on a plane, your best bet is to send twenty decoys through the line, fill the quota, and then send in the guy with the exploding shoes. Thinking like Dean’s makes that possible.

The second argument is this: ethnic profiling is legal and comports with the Constitution. It’s not only a colorable argument; it’s indisputable.

This is where being a lawyer helps.

In this country, the government can discriminate on an ethnic basis if certain criteria are satisfied. First, the discrimination has to be intended to further a “compelling state interest.” Second, the discriminatory practice (such as ethnic profiling) has to be “narrowly tailored” so it achieves the state’s goal with as little collateral damage as possible. You can look this up in any Constitutional Law text.

Thanks to our Supreme Court, there is no doubt whatsoever that keeping terrorists out of the country is a compelling interest. That is beyond dispute. Why? Because in a couple of idiotic opinions issued recently, the Court said diversity in college student bodies was a compelling state interest. Remember Gratz and Grutter? Unbelievably stupid opinions, but they’re the law of the land. Now, if making sure Harvard Law School has enough Samoans is a compelling state interest, there can be no doubt whatsoever that our interest in keeping terrorists out of the country is compelling, too.

As for “narrowly tailored,” what could be more narrowly tailored than keeping lists of Muslims with suspicious contacts and inconveniencing them a little?

What’s a greater imposition? Being denied admission to medical school because you’re white, or having to take off your shoes in an airport?

So with all due respect to Dean, I can’t agree with his argument.

We need ethnic profiling. Our enemies select themselves on the basis of religion and ethnicity, and we need to use those same factors when we try to identify them.

But that won’t happen until enough Americans die. We’ve had three years of freedom from domestic terrorism, and complacency has set in. But sooner or later, we’ll turn on our TV’s and see other American buildings burning or other American airliners smoldering in pieces, and then ethnic profiling will suddenly seem like an okay idea.

When life is easy, wacky liberal notions take root and flower, like ticks on a fat dog. When the going gets tough, however, you do what works.

We’re going to have sensible anti-terror policies eventually. The trick is to stay alive until we get them, and not all of us are going to make it.