Yes, I do intend to post on (and condemn) the widening attacks on Bush’s National Guard service during the Vietnam War. Indeed, I can think of few things less important to the nation right now than this continued harping on a war that’s thirty years old. After all, your chance of being attacked in your home by Vietcong irregulars — while perhaps not nil — remains relatively less than the possibility of another al Qaeda attack.
I suspect that a few Democrats and lefties will make the claim that attacks on Bush’s Vietnam-era record are justified under the “two wrongs make a right” theorem (related to the “well, he asked for it by talking about his Vietnam service at the convention” proof advanced by SwiftVet-supports). Save it. Here is all you need to know:
1. Kerry volunteered for and served in Vietnam, and he did so honorably. Yes, he brags a bit about those facts; if you were running for office, wouldn’t you?
2. Bush fullfilled his commitment to the nation by serving in the National Guard. It was an honorably route to go; indeed, it was the route taken by my own father to fulfill his service requirements during Vietnam. I also feel quite comfortable in proposing that Bush and my father had the same, reasonable reason for serving in the National Guard: They didn’t want to die in Vietnam.
3. Kerry was a bit of a horse’s ass when he came back from Vietnam. He went too far in his public statements, as you might expect from a politically-ambitious young man who was punch drunk with the affection of the anti-war movement. No excuse; judgment and perspective.
4. If you base your decision on who should lead this nation based upon the actions of either of these two men thirty years ago, you are an idiot. A lot happens in thirty years. The Bush and Kerry of yesterday are not the Bush and Kerry of today.
5. If you’d like to judge Kerry harshly, please do it by his long Senate record. Similarly, it seems that the last four years under the Bush Administration would be a relevant place to look for fodder for an attack on Bush.
By the way, I might take all this senseless hand-wringing over Vietnam as evidence that the Baby Boomers are indeed the most selfish generation of the planet: I mean, why talk about today’s war when we can re-fight yesterday’s war, which was oh so much more meaningful. (And do you know how much better the music was back then?) I might then say something about the crushing sums that my, much smaller generation will be forced to pay to fund the Baby Boomers’ retirements. I’ll try to avoid such a rant, however, for it would surely only open me up to attacks from Generation Y. (Go back to 1991, slacker! Oh, and thanks for taking all the good jobs during the 1990s boom, you Ben-Stiller-from-Reality-Bites-Sellout.)
Still, message to all those born between 1948 and 1964: Grow up. Let’s start talking substance.
Good post. I agree completely about the sentiments, especially as someone born after 1970.
I believe, but I’m not sure, that you thought similarly and commented similarly, during the Swift Boat stuff.
Who are the prominent voices on the right who have been equally condemming of questions about service 30 years ago? Especially on the right, when the Swift Boat stuff was happening?
Also, I assume that for partisans, “what is good for the goose is good for the gander”, which is why this continues to be an issue. However, I believe that most people want to hear about now, and the future, and not the past.
There is a qualitative difference between true and false attacks. At this point I am quite comfortable in dismissing all the attacks on Kerry, except maybe the Christmas in Cambodia one which I don’t give a damn about, as false. I don’t know about the attacks on Bush. If they are true, and the people repeating them have a credible basis for believing their truth, that is an important difference. And while two wrongs don’t make a right, I do think the first person to throw the punch has less right to complain.
They’re still irrelevant and I still think you could make an equally effective attack on Bush based on his record if you had a competent press corps that cared about the issues and did its job….oh wait.
Polls have shown Kerry has been hurt by the SBVT ads. It’s a little too convenient (not adding you to this von) for some on the right to say, “Okay stop now” just when the comparisons are starting to have some impact on Bush’s service during the same time period.
Only a few weeks ago the press was saying Kerry was sticking to the issues and not addressing the swifters ads. Then when he did they came out and said “people want to hear about the issues.”
What’s that about damned if you do and damned if…
By the way, I might take all this senseless hand-wringing over Vietnam as evidence that the Baby Boomers are indeed the most selfish generation of the planet
As someone who fits solidly into the definition of Baby-Boomer and who was of draft age during the Viet Nam conflict, I couldn’t agree with you more.
I didn’t want to talk much about the Viet Nam war then and I certainly don’t want to re-hash it now. There is one point I’d like to make about the draft and deferments.
For those who are too young to remember draft registration age was 18. Until was it 1969?—after both Messrs. Bush’s and Kerry’s time (George W. Bush is a Baby-Boomer—just—; Mr. Kerry is not) anyone enrolled full-time as an undergraduate at an accredited college or university received a deferment from military service. In 1969 undergraduate deferments were abolished and a lottery (based on birthday) was instituted. Both Bush and Kerry took undergraduate deferments. They were not considered dishonorable at the time.
Every time I hear anyone claiming that either requesting or taking a deferment was dishonorable I want to punch them in the nose. If they were so dishonorable why did Mr. Kerry take one?
Every time I hear anyone claiming that either requesting or taking a deferment was dishonorable I want to punch them in the nose.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.
The fundamental determiner is whatever works. I really wish staying on message while the other party goes with tangential smears was effective, but it seems that it isn’t. Why that is probably has more to do with psychology and sociology than politics, but it’s true regardless. And as long as it’s true, it’ll always be substantially more efficient to drive up your opponent’s negatives with (literally) cheap smears, rather than drive up your positives with ‘complicated’ policy analysis. Attempting to uncoarsen politics by asking Americans to fundamentally change their mindset is a fool’s errand. You have to do it by force, which probably means inappropriate and ineffective limitations on speech.
As an outsider to the Bush campaigns, it strikes me that his recent political history really revolves around the strategy of projecting himself as a neutral reasonably sane fellow, and then defining his opponent as a nutball, so the choice comes down to this normal guy who’s not great, but not terrible, versus an insane guy with a bad temper (McCain primary), a liar (Gore ’00), or a backstabbing liar (Kerry ’04).
As long as that strategy is effective, you’re going to see a lot of it.
von – quibbles of course. I think Kerry served with distinction, not just “honorably”. I think it fair to note that Bush, unlike your father (who felt what about the justice of the war?), got his place in the Guard through family connections, not on his own merits; if Bush admitted as much, and said in hindsight he thinks it would have been better for him to have fought, I wouldn’t hold the issue against him. I think it fair to note that there are reasonable questions about whether Bush actually performed his Guard duty in the way your father no doubt did – with due diligence. If Bush admitted as much, see above. As is I hold him responsible.
Re the SBVT smears, I think Bush has failed to confront them, and that this is a legitimate issue – he could have said, “I agree with John McCain that the ads are dishonorable” and I would have see above.
Oh, and if you think that Kerry’s more overheated statements in the early 1970s were politically calculated to help his career you know very little about politics.
You, like John McCain, use the exact same language to describe both men’s service: “served honorably.” I assume you don’t actually mean that service was exactly the same. Kerry risked his life, and saved some U.S. soldiers lives, and took some other people’s lives. Then he risked his reputation and career, though he did indeed sometimes go too far, to end a war he thought was unjust and leading to unneccesary deaths of his fellow soldiers.
Bush’s decision was entirely understandable and I don’t hold it against him, but he risked nothing at all.
Just because there are two sides to an argument doesn’t mean they are equally good. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but not all wrongs are equal. It is honorable to serve your country in uniform, but serving in the “champagne unit” of the Texas National Guard is not as honorable as serving on a swiftboat in the Mekong Delta. etc. etc.
It is honorable to serve your country in uniform, but serving in the “champagne unit” of the Texas National Guard is not as honorable as serving on a swiftboat in the Mekong Delta. etc. etc
marguerite, that’s an argument I can support. So I don’t get hot under the collar when I hear it.
I am now and have been on the fence. But every time I hear Mr. Kerry, or one of his surrogates, or one of his allies make the distinction as honorable vs. dishonorable—which I have—it makes it that much less likely that I’ll vote for Mr. Kerry in the fall.
If Mr. Kerry (and his surrogates and his allies) think this is a winning strategem, by all means they should go for it. But I think it’s rather more likely that they’ll need every vote they can get.
Every time I hear anyone claiming that either requesting or taking a deferment was dishonorable I want to punch them in the nose.
Context is everything.
There are a good number of folks–who received multiple deferments– out there who claimed to support the Vietnam war and castigated those who didn’t.
There are those–who received multiple deferments–who like to wrap themselves in the flag and beat the war drums because their political opponent didn’t vote for some defense bill.
Punch away. But this liberal punches back.
I’d like to agree with you, von, but you left out a few facts.
Smears work, and the Swiftie smear worked well. OK, so there are a lot of idiots out there. By your logic Bush should retain the benefit of his slime, while Kerry doesn’t get to counterattack.
Questioning Bush’s National Guard record does not imply that National Guard service was dishonorable.
What was dishonorable was supporting the war and using connections to avoid fighting it, and then failing even to fulfill his Guard reponsibiliites. Still, these things are, I think, forgiveable. They happened a long time ago. He was young. But no forgiveness has been requested.
What is dishonorable is the failure to recognize and admit, today, the problems with this history. Bush is not in his 20’s. It’s been over 30 years since his Guard days. He is supposed to be a grownup. I would very much like to hear him say that he now understands now what he perhaps did not understand then: that to support a war being fought by conscripts while using personal connections to avoid the fighting is profoundly immoral. It is equivalent to saying that the cause is worth drafting soldiers and sending them to be killed, but is not worth risking one’s own life for.
This, for me, is what makes the “chickenhawk” argument valid. It is less about what people did in 1970 than their attitude towards it today.
I dislike Bush intensely. I think his National Guard record is scummy, maybe scummier than we know. But I would forgive him a lot if he had the integrity, or thoughtfulness, or just plain conscience, to say that he understands the issue here. And I would respect his defenders more if they said it.
(And, by the way, don’t blame us baby boomers for the deficit. Blame Reagan and W. and the supply-side idiocy).
Being positive and forward looking is what liberals actually try to do and goodness knows enough conservatives advise them that way as well but…
“President Bush handpicked Martinez … considered more centrist than early GOP front-runner Bill McCollum. McCollum, a solidly conservative former House member, lost the 2000 Senate race to Democrat Bill Nelson, and many Republicans felt they needed a more moderate nominee this year.
But Martinez’s campaign was hardly moderate in its homestretch assault on McCollum. First, it arranged a conference call by conservative religious leaders who challenged McCollum’s integrity because of his support of embryonic stem cell research and a hate crimes bill. Enraged, former Republican senator Connie Mack wrote to more than 15,000 state GOP activists, saying Martinez’s campaign “sunk to a new low in Florida politics” by launching a “mean-spirited, desperate and personal attack” that would “only hurt our party and doom us in November.”
A few days later, the Martinez campaign labeled McCollum “the new darling of the extreme homosexuals” because he had supported including protections for gays in a failed federal hate-crimes bill. Editorial pages condemned the comment, and the St. Petersburg Times withdrew its endorsement of Martinez.”
Did it work? Yes:
“Martinez, who had trailed in several polls, won the primary with 45 percent of the vote to McCollum’s 31 percent. Martinez and his allies in the GOP establishment immediately tried to heal the hurts.”
Of course it would be nice if the liberals took the high road so the republicans could focus on winning.
I also feel quite comfortable in proposing that Bush and my father had the same, reasonable reason for serving in the National Guard: They didn’t want to die in Vietnam.
One assumes that none of the 58,000-odd guys whose names are on the Wall wanted to die there either. I’d venture to say that most of them, unfortunately, didn’t have a whole lot of choice.
“Oh, and if you think that Kerry’s more overheated statements in the early 1970s were politically calculated to help his career you know very little about politics.”
Really? Doves couldn’t get elected in the 70s? That is news to me.
Arguable short run benefit outweighed by long term risks. And it’s not like he wasn’t attacked at the time, or like Nixon wasn’t extremely successful until Watergate.
I mean, christ, look what happened to Darby, and to the soldier who first reported My Lai (“Erickson” is the name that comes to mind but I think it’s a pseudonym.)
Bush’s service in the NG doesn’t hurt him.
It’s how he got there and, more importantly perhaps, what he did or didn’t do when he was there that hurts him.
All the rest is strawman.
Of course some feel that any activities Bush engaged in before he was born-again should be off limits because he’s a different man than that man.
“sunk to a new low in Florida politics”
Now that’s gotta hurt.
It’s how he got there
How did he get there? I’ve seen the idea that there was something untoward advanced, but nothing reputable supplied as evidence. What are you saying, here?
Maybe Bush’s absence from service, in 1968, would shed light on the scared little boy’s face, on 9-11. When he learned we were under attack his face seemed to echo something from 1968…a fear…a glare into the void or from the void.
Anyway, he sure doesn’t mind reminding the American people what a great fighter pilot he was during Vietnam.
President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended
I know folks who pulled family connections either political or country club to get out of going over. Bush or his father or his father’s friends (hard to believe it wasn’t discussed ever with the family though) did the same to get him in the guard.
The difference may be small but Bush has said he supported the war at that time. I don’t know if the folks I know could say the same thing.
As I said, more importantly, it may say more about character that Bush then reportedly has been unable to show that he served during large chunks of time when he was fulfilling his requirements.
Kerry was against the war. Spoke about being against it. Served. Re enlisted. Came home decorated. Military records show this.
Bush’s records are conveniently or unconveniently unhelpful in filling in his record.
“Arguable short run benefit outweighed by long term risks.”
Like many in the anti-war movement, Kerry could have seen himself as part of the transformation for the new America. If they had been correct, the long term political benefits to his career would have been obvious.
I think it is flatly incorrect that the falsehoods which Kerry unwittingly (giving him the benefit of the doubt) transmitted could not have been seen to be good for a political career in the political circles Kerry inhabited.
The WaPo piece is kind of an unfiltered collection of the various allegations. Unfiltered, I say, because Ben Barnes’ statement that he got Bush in the Guard as Lt. Governor of Texas still stands, despite the fact that Bush began his stint in the Guard in 1968, while Barnes was Lt. Governor beginning in 1969.
Maybe he had a good time machine.
Sebastian
Are you saying Kerry took a risk? That he didn’t play it safe? That he wasn’t frozen with indecision?
He stood up against the war with the hope that he and others like him could convince people of the wrongness of the war policy in Viet Nam?
A calculated risk. Sure (Who wants a fool for a president!) but a risk none-the-less.
Slart, “Maybe he had a good time machine.” is disingenuous – the man mispoke about the coincidence of unrelated facts a generation ago. What’s important is that he was in a position to get Bush into the Guard at the time, and it doesn’t challenge his veracity that he mentioned the wrong office when the office didn’t matter.
It seems Bush served in the TANG for political reasons, as well.
It would guarantee that he stayed alive to run for office.
It would guarantee that he stayed alive to run for office.
Yes, nearly all cowardly, drunken cokeheads are scheming to be President, someday.
“Yes, nearly all cowardly, drunken cokeheads are scheming to be President, someday.”
Sounds like the Young Republicans at USC and Georgetown.
What’s important is that he was in a position to get Bush into the Guard at the time
I’ve not yet seen anything to justify that statement. Besides, if Barnes truly did something, he didn’t do it alone. Can I get a witness?
Not all cowardly cokeheads (who didn’t want to shoot out their eardrums) grew up in such a privileged environment as Bush, but I don’t think he planned to be President. Actually I don’t think he thought about it much one way or the other until he was in office.
Wow…mind-reading, through time and space. Excellent, rilkefan.
http://texansfortruth.com/
“Wow…mind-reading, through time and space. Excellent, rilkefan.”
Slart, in reference to which snark? If the latter, I’m referring to what I see as his life-long lack of interest in governance, his statements at the time about why he was running, the drift of his admin pre-9/11, and the apparent degree of delegation of authority and poor internal conflict resolution (see O’Neill for the last) throughout his term.
Slart: “I’ve not yet seen anything to justify that statement. Besides, if Barnes truly did something, he didn’t do it alone. Can I get a witness?”
Barnes was Speaker of the House in Texas before he was Lt. Governor. Speaker of the House is usually also a position with some pull.
In 1968, Ben Barnes was US Ambassador to Switzerland, IIRC. I’m not sure what pull he’d have as Ambassador.
For questions on Ben Barnes and more: Watch CBS’s 60 minutes II on wednesday.
(unfortunately I receive no enumeration for the previous public service announcement.)
Thorley, your post sounds reasonable, and in theory I might be inclined to agree with most of it, but for a couple of practical problems:
(1) This is what always happens with smear campaigns. One candidate gets smeared, and then either (a) the message becomes “we’re tired of that story” when the attention of the public finally turns from the smearee to the smearers, or (b) the message becomes “we’re tired of smears – no more smears” when the victim decides to fight back. I don’t like dirty politics, but if my team fell behind in the first half, and the rules allowed dirty politics, I’m not going to agree to change the rules at halftime.
(2) Specifically–and now let me caveat this by saying no one can describe the behavior of the electorate with 100% accuracy, even in retrospect–it appears, and I think most political analysts would agree, that but for the SBV ads, Kerry would be leading the election, and because of the SBV ads, Kerry is now losing. That makes it singularly difficult for we Democrats to now blank out of our minds the fact that this ever happened.
Now there is one part of your post with which I disagree strongly, and this is not a matter of discussing practical effects. I believe that Kerry’s greatest heroism, and the greatest service he did to his country, was to come back to the U.S. and agitate against the war as a decorated ex-officer. He may not have done so with perfect timing and execution at all moments, but he gave the nation something we really needed.
Remember the historical situation: April 1971. This was not a time when the debate over Vietnam was at a fever pitch. This was a time when the debate over Vietnam was settled, a time when we knew we were going to leave without finishing the job, but also a time when we were inexplicably dilly-dallying at the job of getting the heck out of there. Every American who died in that war after April 1971–some 1800, not to mention the much more numerous Vietnamese who continued to die–were indeed dying “for a mistake,” as young Mr. Kerry told the Senate.
The last 1800 names to go on The Wall were put up there for no reason at all. Because he was who he was in April 1971, Kerry generated a lot of publicity and a lot of pressure to hasten pulling out. But for Kerry, that wall might be a few feet longer.
Umm, make that von, your post sounds reasonable. . . .
I’m referring to what I see as his life-long lack of interest in governance
Recall that GWB ran for congressional office in Texas in 1978. Upshot is, if you’re at all interested in what he was thinking, speculation is probably the least reliable way to arrive at a some reasonable conclusion.
Last comment, by the way, was me. Damned autocomplete.
Von on Gen Y’s beef with Gen X:
“Oh, and thanks for taking all the good jobs during the 1990s boom, you Ben-Stiller-from-Reality-Bites-Sellout.”
Y’know, there’s some from Gen X who also didn’t get those cushy jobs (dammit, why didn’t I get my MBA two years earlier).
(Actually, almost all the ‘New Economy’ jobs I sniffed around in 1999-2000 were at no-longer-existing firms. I remember being absolutely ripping with envy at a B-school colleague who was Government Affairs director for Enron Broadband. I remember he also bought a vinyard right before the crash in CA wine prices. Did I feel sorry for him? No.)
Slart, I said “governance”, not “office holding”. I should admit that he did appear to have some interest in tort reform and education when he ran for governer, but (esp since the second point was as far as I can tell just a con job as enacted) I think my point stands that by historical standards Bush has been extremely uninterested in governance.
Haven wrote:
Maybe Bush’s absence from service, in 1968, would shed light on the scared little boy’s face, on 9-11. When he learned we were under attack his face seemed to echo something from 1968…a fear…a glare into the void or from the void.
Sorry Haven – but his service record has absolutely nothing to do with his reaction to 9-11. If he took swift action – jumped up and ran out of that school room the press would say the president panicked. And in retrospect – the press, and most of us on the left, are unwilling or incapable of admitting that the president, any president, is just a man. Something as horrific as 9-11 will give anyone with a conscious a moment of pause, even a president.
I wish people would stop making a big deal out of his initial reaction and make a big issue out of his record in office.
In 1968, Ben Barnes was US Ambassador to Switzerland, IIRC.
You do not recall correctly, IIRC.
Starti,
For evidence, there is Barnes’ recent statement, and his sworn testimony in a deposition given a few years ago.
Add in the fact that it was hardly unusual in those days to get into the Guard through connections. In fact it was a commonplace; probably most Guardsmen got in that way. I’m very close to the same age as Bush. I remember how it worked. The notion that the son of a prominent and well-connected man got into the Guard just by walking in and signing up is very far-fetched.
toby
“Something as horrific as 9-11 will give anyone with a conscious a moment of pause, even a president.”
He hadn’t seen the images yet so what are you talking about? He could have calmly stood up and explained nicely to the children that he had to leave and then gone to Card and said, “America is under attack? What do you mean?”
At that point he would have seen the images that are so horrific.
However justified anyone might feel about pushing the TANG angle, I just don’t see how it’ll be particularly effective. People don’t know Kerry very well, it was obviously important to his campaign to emphasize the decorated veteran angle as part of assembling his image, and the SBVT stuff has hit him where it hurts. Bush has four years in the white house to judge by, so even if the worst accusations, I just don’t see a 30-year-old story having any impact on people’s impressions of him. Especially since he’s already as much as admitted that he wasn’t a model citizen in his youth — his selling point isn’t a life spent in service, it’s a midlife conversion, so even if it hits, the TANG stuff is a soft blow to the shoulder, whereas SBVT was a right hook to the jaw for Kerry.
kenb
Perfect. “it’s a midlife conversion”
Everything about Kerry reflects on his character but Bush is, you know, immune because he was born-again in his forties.
Unbelievable.
Have you ever heard how Messire Ciapalletto became Saint Ciapalletto?
Starti
Please get it right.
You do not recall correctly, IIRC.
His bio disagrees with you.
Add in the fact that it was hardly unusual in those days to get into the Guard through connections.
Wow. You’ve absolutely cinched the case, there. Other people did it, therefore Bush did. I’ve been so blind.
Let’s start talking substance.
Like this?
Sounds like a comment in a blog, doesn’t it? Would that it were.
Once more, the focus isn’t on the narrow issue of Bush’s rather dubious TANG service. Nobody’s going to rescind his discharge and put him in the brig or require he make up the remainder of his obligation.
The issue is one of character. It is the issue of someone who has been given, not earned, tremendous opportunities–only to mismanage, bungle, or otherwise lose interest in the successful completion of those opportunities. It is the issue of someone who paints failure as success. It is the issue of someone who will stage a dramatic carrier landing, complete with flight suit, to declare “major hostilities” are over. It’s the issue of someone who sends his surrogates out to malign the records of a former POW and a highly decorated vet.
So it’s only if Kerry gets elected that we have to worry about a terrorist attack, is that it? Gosh, I don’t know why we’ve bothered with these Orange Alerts!
I hope they don’t clear 20% of the vote in New York City. If they’re in double digits it’s more than they deserve.
Make of that what you will. Sure, Bush was just sitting there in the manicure chair, while someone dumped the knowledge and ability to pilot a fighter jet into him. Yep.
Slarti last I looked 1968 had twelve months and Ben Barnes was Speaker of the House before he was Lt. Gov. in 1969.
Doesn’t seem impossible to me.
But as I said earlier: watch 60 minutes II on wednesday.
Well said, von. Now if Kerry will only take your advice, stop talking about his time in combat, discuss his 19 Senate years and tell us the real basis for why he is qualified to be commander-in-chief.
I agree, BD — I don’t understand why he pushes his Vietnam service to such a ridiculous extent. But then I’m not a professional campaign manager, so what do I know.
kenB, there’s some thought on the liberal blogs that Kerry pushed his Vietnam service so much (particularly at the convention) in part to stake out a forward position before the SBVT attack (something along the lines of which was expected).
“(unfortunately I receive no enumeration for the previous public service announcement.)”
Sure you do!
1. You probably meant remuneration.
2. Okay, now I’m just being a jerk 😉
KenB — I have always assumed that the reason he focussed on his VietNam service was because some Republicans (not you, Moe! Not anyone here either, as far as I know) have spent so long saying, or implying, that we just can’t trust any Democrat on national security.
No, despite the impulse I will not say another word about VietNam service. Except that none of it would have bothered me had Bush been honest about it, and that what I find troubling is less the guard service than the fact that he apparently blew off his flight exam for no good reason, causing all the money spent training him to be wasted, and then may or may not have completed his duty.
Kerry was a “bit of a horse’s ass,” Von? I’m assuming – for your sake – that you aren’t describing his protesting of the war itself as being a “bit of a horse’s ass,” because decrying a war as abysmally wrong-headed, immoral and disastrous as Vietnam was the right and honorable thing to do.
I’m also assuming you’re not referring to the allegations of “cutting off ears, razing villages in a manner similar to Ghengis Khan, etc.”, because you must know as well as I do that these allegations were not Kerry’s allegations – they were the allegations of others he described to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
I’m also assuming you’re not referring to Kerry’s allegations of war crimes committed by US forces, because you certainly must know that the Geneva violations Kerry did refer to did indeed occur. So please tell me, Von, in what way was John Kerry the protester being “a bit of a horse’s ass”?
If I sound a bit pissed it’s because I am mighty sick of seeing people thirty years after the fact attempt to rehabilitate this war in one way or another. The animus towards Kerry coming from the Swiftvets is inspired, at its root, not by the severity of his wounds or his fitness to serve as commander-in-chief but because he spoke out against a foul and disgusting war our country should have had no part in – a war that, in a sane society, we’d be able to admit we should have had no part in – and by the desire to twist any opposition to any war into a mark of treachery.
The Dallas Morning News made no such claim. Instead, they reported the following:
Critics say there was a waiting list of thousands for Guard slots, but the man in charge of keeping the list said there was no such wait for willing, qualified pilot applicants.
Not the same thing as claiming the newspaper researched the record.
Based on discussions I’ve had with active duty and reserve pilots and aviators, flight training is one of the most sought after and competitive billets–especially in the reserves. By all accounts, Bush did not perform well on his initial pilot aptitude test.
More problematic is Bush’s direct commission. Unless you had a military-desirable skill (lawyer, MD, certain technical skill, etc.), direct commissions are extremely hard to come by. Bush’s application to join the TANG lists special qualifications as “none.”
My apologies: I’m managed to get tied up in something, and won’t be able to respond for some time. But a quick response to what’s closest.
CJM —
Kerry was a “bit of a horse’s ass,” Von? I’m assuming – for your sake – that you aren’t describing his protesting of the war itself as being a “bit of a horse’s ass,” because decrying a war as abysmally wrong-headed, immoral and disastrous as Vietnam was the right and honorable thing to do.
No, as a matter of principle, protesting the Vietnam war (or, for that matter, any war) is fine. That’s America. (Opinions over the justness war differ and, having not been around to hear them first hand, I’ll not employ hindsight to determine which I agree with.) Passing on broad-brush allegations of widespread abuse by troops during wartime is problematic, however, as was Kerry’s evident camera self-love (lampooned in the Doonesbury cartoons of the era, among other places).
fixing italics.
Italics fixing. — By the way, von, on behalf of those of us born between, was it 1948? — and 1964, sorry for whatever it was 😉
slanted reporting, Jadegold?
Thanks, Marguerite
Just working my personal issues out in public, Hilzoy. 😉
sidereal
I knew it was somewhere in the -eration family and it had a “n” and “m” and “r” and an “e”.
You say potato. I say toopat.
Thanks…..jerk.
joking
Man, I should give italics a rest. Thanks, Rilkefan.
I’ll bet that Kerry will not go after Cheney nearly as hard for this ridiculous statement, as he went after Bush for accidentally speaking the truth about the war on terror (about the difficulty of ever winning) a few days back.
At some level, the Democratic party is still afraid to say what it thinks. It’s a huge mistake.
(It’s okay by me if we want to say what we think in the style of John Edwards or Barack Obama instead of the style of Howard Dean, but we should say it).
BTW, those of us with posting privileges. On your own posts you can correct runaway HTML coding directly by going into the post and accessing the offending comment. Making changes in other people’s comments is of course bad form, but I don’t feel bad about closing an open tag.
Starti,
His bio says he was
United Nations Representative to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1968.
That is NOT Ambassador to Switzerland. It’s not clear what it is, exactly. If he had even been Permanent Representative to the US Mission in Geneva (who also is NOT the Ambassador) the bio would have said so.
Be more careful.
As far as the connections, my point is that this was a common way to get into the Guard. You don’t have to assume anything rare or unusual happened. I didn’t claim that proved Bush used connections. I did claim that makes it more than plausible, even likely. If Barnes’ statements don’t convince you, nothing will.
Barnes’ position at the time really doesn’t matter. There’s really no dispute Barnes was and has been a mover and shaker in Texas politics. And nobody can seriously dispute he had the ability and wherewithal to get a young, politically-connected ne’er-do-well to the front of the line.
uh-oh – the A.P.’s FOIA found new records on Bush’s Guard service – actually 336 hours sounds like a lot to me – anyway, no doubt there will be more wrangling about this…
336 hours over 3 years works out to about 9 hours per month.
There are no details in the story, but presumably the bulk of the 336 hours occurred during the 1-year active-duty training period that was part of becoming an ANG pilot.
It takes a bunch of hours to get certified as a jet pilot. You have to learn to fly Cessna-type planes first, and I think (although I’m not sure) you have to move on from there to multi-engine planes before you finally get to start training in the jet.
(BTW, the lead in the story says Bush logged 336 hours “in his fighter jet,” but if you read the whole story all it says is that the 336 hours were “mostly” in an F102.)
“By the way, I might take all this senseless hand-wringing over Vietnam as evidence that the Baby Boomers are indeed the most selfish generation of the planet”
Most of the names on that black wall are, stretching just a little, baby-boomers. My red state blue collar relatives and friends, 50 a day, day after day, for the three years 67-69. And the following generations call us selfish. Exactly how did you earn that right to judge us so badly? Exactly what sacrifice did you make?
It was the WWII generation that voted in the generous Medicare and Social Security benefits. Baby-boomers have only had power since about 1990.
“50 a day, day after day”
Geez, and the current three a day is hard to bear. bob reminds me of another reason I’m voting for Kerry – “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” Sadly enough, I suspect Kerry will have to do just that – maybe in his second term.
You don’t have to assume anything rare or unusual happened.
But you evidently need to assume that something untoward and not entirely honest did, because you don’t have a speck of evidence. You’ve got the word of this Barnes fellow, but anyone who might gainsay him (or back him up) is conveniently dead.
And you think the SwiftVets are playing fast and loose.
Oh, and it’s Slart. With an L.
According to Josh, “The big news won’t be how Bush got into the Guard but how he blew off his duties once he got there. Again, new documents — stuff that is clear and straightforward and apparently puts beyond any debate or doubt that the now-President blew off the duties that he said, as recently as this year, that he fulfilled.”
According to Josh. Pardon me while I chortle. This is the same Josh who swallowed the story about the audience booing at the news of Clinton’s hospitalization hook, line, and sinker. The same Josh who beat the Bush-AWOL drum long after any fuel for the fire disappeared. No, Josh’s words carry no weight with me.
As if it weren’t obvious, that, again, was me.
That would be the Josh who reported an AP story about a rally, having for some reason thought that he could write about speeches he had not personally witnessed, if he had a credible source. It would also be the Josh who retracted it as soon as he heard it was wrong. and finslly, the Josh whose views are clear, but who has generally struck me as scrupulously fairminded.
It would also be the Josh who retracted it as soon as he heard it was wrong.
So, when you’ve basically insulted the President AND his entire audience, the acceptable penance is a mere retraction? I think he owes them an apology. I think he also owes Karen Hughes an apology.
Plus, I hardly think:
constitutes a retraction. It’s not even close to an apology.
Oh, and it’s Slart. With an L.
This seems excessively picky coming from someone who’s now failed to get his own handle right twice in the same thread.
B-)
This seems excessively picky coming from someone who’s now failed to get his own handle right twice in the same thread.
Excellent point. I do expect others to do better, though. Especially those from the Smart Party.
:p
you don’t have a speck of evidence. You’ve got the word of this Barnes fellow
You contain multitudes.
“The word of this Barnes fellow” is not “a speck of evidence?” What do you want, signed, notarized, contracts?
Please don’t tell me what I need to assume. You don’t know me. You are not my therapist.
My experience tells me that the type of thing we’re talking about, which you correctly describe as “untoward and not entirely honest” happened often back then. Based on that knowledge, and considerably more than a speck of evidence, my conclusion is that Bush wangled his way in. That’s all.
Swiped from Needlnose:
http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/294
From Elizabeth Drew in the New York Review of Books, on the September 11th commission’s published report:
. . . the commission gives a devastating picture of the chaos within the Bush administration on the morning of the attacks, when the President famously remained in the Florida classroom for some five to seven minutes (according to the report) after learning of the second attack on the World Trade Center. . . . Subtly but damningly, the report makes it clear that after Bush left the classroom, “the focus was on the President’s statement to the nation”—-his “message”—-rather than on taking charge of the nation’s response to the attacks.
And, a paragraph late in an Associated Press story on recently uncovered documents from Dubya’s days playing hooky from with the National Guard:
A six-month historical record of his 147th Fighter Interceptor Group, also turned over to the AP on Tuesday, shows some of the training Bush missed with his colleagues during that time.
Significantly, it showed the unit joined a “24-hour active alert mission to safeguard against surprise attack” in the southern United States beginning on Oct. 6, 1972, a time when Bush did not report for duty, according to his pay records.
. . . As part of the mission, the 147th kept two F-102a jets — the same Bush flew before he was grounded — on ready alert to be launched within five minutes’ warning.
I guess you could say going AWOL was his way of training for the future.
_____________________________________________________
The New York Review of Books:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17390
Associated Press
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/09/07/national1937EDT0713.DTL&type=printable
Slart, while trashing Josh for “failing to retract” the fact that he had cited an AP story, you left out a tiny little detail: the story that Josh ran debunking the booing story was original reporting.
If you were following the breaking story, as I was, the AP story came out, and not long afterward some conservative blogger reported that no boos were audible on the audio tape of the event. I didn’t find that particularly impressive, since a good directional mike could miss a fair amount of booing, but the question of whether there had, in fact, been any booing was fairly raised. I participated in this Tacitus thread that debated the issue while it was ongoing, and I news-googled around and checked several breaking news sites trying to find a definitive answer.
The above-linked post from Josh was the very first story I found with reportage from the scene verifying that there was no booing. Perhaps somebody else had already broken it, but I was looking and that was the first one I saw. So, IMO, this incident is an exceedingly poor one to demonstrate his reporting bias.
For the record, I think Josh is a bit of a tease when it comes to pumping the “tectonic plate-shifting” stories he is working on, but I consider his factual reporting top-notch and reliable. He’s putting it on the line here, so if he turns out to be wrong, you’ll sure have some ammo. In the meanwhile, I would suggest keeping your powder dry. We’ll know soon.
Kristoff (who I don’t much like) on Mintz and whether Bush reported to duty in Alabama.
Hey, what the hell. You could always just ask around. Who knows…you might just find someone who remembers Bush in Alabama.
Wonder if Garry Trudeau paid out the $10k bounty. Somehow, I doubt it.
“The word of this Barnes fellow” is not “a speck of evidence?”
I stand corrected. I guess there’s a fraction as much evidence that Bush was placed with a little help from his friends as there was that Kerry’s a big fat liar about his service in Vietnam. After all, there’s a lot more of the SwiftVets than there are of Barnes. So, I’ll admit that there is a speck.
And, by the standards of some who care passionately about this, Barnes has already shown himself to be a liar. Sure, misspeaking about something that happened 35 years ago could be innocent, but only when it’s done by someone whose statements you want to believe.
See, I don’t much care about this political wrangling. What annoys the hell out of me is the idea that, while our guy is pure as the driven snow, your guy is 100% pure evil. Or at least pretending that’s true.
What annoys the hell out of me is the idea that, while our guy is pure as the driven snow, your guy is 100% pure evil. Or at least pretending that’s true.
I find the converse flaw, claiming that both candidates are flawed and therefore indistinguishable, equally annoying. Especially from those — and no, this isn’t aimed at you — who profess to decry “moral equivalency” arguments.
“And, by the standards of some who care passionately about this, Barnes has already shown himself to be a liar.”
Who are you talking to, Slart? Those who weighed the credibility of the SBVTers and found it wanting based on reasonable standards of argument (which I believe is the case for the left here and the places I read)? Actually to me your above seems a bit, well, hasty in bitterness (assessing myself a mind-reading penalty). How about we wait a day or two to see the quality of the evidence (if any) from the various news organizations coming forward this week? If it’s thin gruel to my eyes I’ll gladly say so here. If there’s some substance fairly presented I’ll say lucky for my guy that it might sway stupid voters.
The Globe’s article. Mostly about his service obligations while in Cambridge. Some (to my mind) good points, some letter-not-the-spirit-of-the-lawism.
Well, I’m just sorry that the potential for substantial reconciliation represented by the Kerry candidacy hasn’t worked out. The nominee of the party that includes, as we are constanty reminded from the right, Hollywood Libs etc. embraces his VN service, and is praised for it.
No attempt of the Dem side to re-fight the war, or re-fight the fight about the war, but rather a recognition that service even in that war was honorable, even commendable.
Could have been a healing process, but for the folks who would rather continue demonizing their opponents for positions and actions 30+ years ago.
Von:
As to dating Boomers, I prefer the scheme advanced by Strauss and Howe: those born between 1942 and 1960. This is cultural, not merely demographic. Gen X then would be 1961-1982.
CC ’58
One of the liberating aspects of being “born-again” is the light of Christ reveals the truth of salvation. A murderer or fornicator can face death without fear. A murderer or fornicator can also face judgment, here on earth, without fear. Confess the sin/s to a judge, so that he may accept his punishment with the pure heart of the newly converted. The sinner should not spend his life in fear and lies and avoiding his past. The Born-Again Christian accepts responsibility for his sinful past and with a brave and converted heart accepts punishment from his earthly judge here on earth. God’s radical change in the Christian’s heart can be seen in the way the newly baptized faces his past transgressions.
If Bush went AWOL, or snorted coke at Camp David, or paid for an illegal abortion, or dabbled in homosexual acts, I would hope he appears before a judge and accepts his punishment like a Born-Again Christian would.
Thirty years from now, as my dialysis privileges are revoked because of massive government debt, I hope to give one last cackle as Von’s generation ceaselessly argues over who is precisely where in the 8-trillion dollar holy war being waged in west Asia. Presidential candidate Jenna Bush will be huddling with her advisors, none-of-whom will have served in the military, to decide when the optimal time will be during her campaign to “discover” the thawed corpse of Osama Bin Laden. Republican entrepreneurs will sell bits of the Bin Laden thawed reliquary with a promise to use the funds to keep Yellowstone open.
My corpse will then be displayed in libertarian museums across the country as proof that death is preferable to government-funded health care, and small government is preferable to politically corret commie notions of health care as a right.
😉
Slarti,
You believe the Swifties despite documentary evidence to the contrary, despite the contrary statements of people who were there, despite the fact that the Swiftie leaders contradict their own previous statements, despite the fact that O’Neill has a long-standing hostility to Kerry, despite the fact that they are funded by a big Bush contributor, etc.
There is not a tiny fraction of this much eveidence against Barnes’ statements. He made a minor misstatement about the office he held, and to you he’s a “proven liar.” Let me tell you something. The guy was there, he made the calls, he knows what happened, he’s telling the truth. Believe what you want – you’ll do that anyway – but stop pretending that the facts support you.
You believe the Swifties despite documentary evidence to the contrary
It doesn’t help to start your response by being wrong. Remember me? I’m the waiting-and-seeing guy. I’m just pointing out the fact that at times, the standards for truth are…somewhat flexible.
Great comments — don’t take my failure to respond as an indication otherwise. (And, boy, did I open myself up with my slam against the Boomers.)
BTW, has Thorley shown up yet?
Bernard, I suspect you’ve misunderstood Slart – he’s (I think) urging skepticism all round. I don’t think he’s weighting the evidence on the various sides correctly, but I’m pretty sure your straight-partisan characterization of his position is way off.
Bingo, rilkefan. Or close enough.
On Barnes’ veracity:
It seems rather clear to me that saying “lieutenant governor” instead of “speaker of the house” was just a verbal miscue. OTOH, he lied about what he did for over 30 years. That’s a legitimate reason to dispute his credibility. (Although, of course, to the extent that actually aiding the well-connected in getting Guard posts was routine, lying about it was also routine.)
It doesn’t seem that the underlying truth of his assertion that he got Bush into the Guard is that much in dispute. According to this Washington Post story, Barnes testified to the same effect in a 1999 deposition–the first time Barnes had been questioned about the matter under oath. In 1998, Barnes had informed Bush friend Don Evans, now Sec. of Commerce, of his intended testimony. Barnes says he informed Evans that he would say that he had not been approached by a member of the Bush family, but that he might have been approached on Bush’s behalf by a Houston businessman. After this conversation, George W. Bush wrote Barnes the following note:
This is all old news from 1999. It strikes me that what may be of interest in Barnes’ 60 Minutes appearance is not so much the mere allegation that he got Bush into the Guard, but what details, if any, he provides of how exactly it was done.
As to dating Boomers, I prefer the scheme advanced by Strauss and Howe: those born between 1942 and 1960. This is cultural, not merely demographic. Gen X then would be 1961-1982.
I’ll accept that, CC, but I don’t think you can lump those who had their “formative years” in the late 70s/80s together with those who came of age in the 1990s. The tone of the eras are just too different. I’d put Gen X at 1961-1978. (Hmm. Maybe not: this means the youngest Gen-Xer was 13 in 1991, which is still probably too young; maybe ’76 is a better cutoff — 15, i.e., freshman in HS, in ’91.)
rilkefan,
Well, I appreciate skepticism. But I think at some point you have to decide what happened. The very fact that Slarti claims there is only a “speck” of evidence suggests that there is more than just skepticism at work. My arguments, which I’ve repeated several times, are these:
1. Barnes says so, both now and in a deposition given a few years ago.
2. It was the usual way to get into the Guard. This means two things: first, no one would have felt they were doing anything illicit, so you don’t have to assume some big conspiracy or anything. It was a commonplace. Second, there is what I suppose is a Bayesian argument that a well-connected Guard member was very likely to have used his connections to get in.
Slarti keeps asking for more, and it seems to me that he just doesn’t want to draw the obvious conclusion from what is available. There aren’t documents, with seals and signatures, or tapes of the conversations. You have to deal with what there is.
Does the proof meet the standard of “beyond reasonable doubt?” Well, I don’t have much doubt, but if you want to say it’s not that strong I won’t disagree. But this is not a criminal case. Bush is not in danger of going to jail. What we are talking about is a simple question of fact. There is substantial reason, not just a speck, to think that Bush didn’t just walk in and sign up. To deny that is not skepticism.
It was the usual way to get into the Guard.
See, there’s just all sorts of unsupported assertions floating around, there. Far too many to address separately. It’s not a matter of insufficient evidence, it’s that one has to actually want to believe it’s true in order to accept it, given the foundation of evidence. Or lack thereof.
And I’m completely ignoring the clash between the assertion that Bush was a coward for having got in that way, and the assertion that it was the only way anyone got in. Is everyone who got in the guard therefore cowardly? I’m thinking you’re going to piss off a whole lot of guardsmen.
Is everyone who got in the guard therefore cowardly? I’m thinking you’re going to piss off a whole lot of guardsmen.
No. You’ll only piss off those who like to wrap themselves in the flag and pretend to understand the armed services and the reserves. IOW, the ill-informed will be upset.
During the VN war, certain Guard units simply had little to no chance of being mobilized and sent to VN. As it was, 20,000 NG personnel served in VN over a period of over 10 years. 20,000 out of nearly 2.5M who served during the same period.
The myth is that every NG unit–at that time–had an equal chance of being sent to VN. It’s simply untrue.
And I’m completely ignoring the clash between the assertion that Bush was a coward for having got in that way, and the assertion that it was the only way anyone got in. Is everyone who got in the guard therefore cowardly?
It is fair to say that a substantial portion of those who joined the guard during the Vietnam era did so to avoid being drafted. I don’t think I used the word “cowardly.”
What I criticized Bush for, back above, was this:
Bush supported the war. Many of those who fought were draftees. They were there involuntarily. And of course many of them got killed or wounded. And those who did not nonetheless spent a very unpleasant time when they would surely have rather been doing something else. They had “other priorities,” as someone said.
So Bush’s position was that it was desirable to force people to go fight in Vietnam, but it was perfectly OK for him to stay home. Well, that doesn’t strike me as a particularly defensible position.
But lots of people did the same, and he was young, etc. So maybe we really shouldn’t hold it against him at this late date. What we should hold against him, though, is the refusal, now that he is older and has had time to reflect, to recognize that there was any problem at all with this. Repeating what I wrote above, that, for me is why the “chickenhawk” charge has validity, and not just against Bush. Today, looking back thirty-plus years, grown men ought to be able to recognize that maybe there was something wrong with what they did. Especially grown men holding themselves out as great leaders and men of strong moral fibre.
That they can’t, or won’t, is disgusting.
Slarti — I don’t know how typical I am, and I don’t think this ought to be a big issue. (There’s a reason there has not been, and will not be, a post from me called “Why I will Not Vote For Bush: The National Guard Years.) However, for what little it’s worth:
I don’t think all people who served in the guard at that time are cowardly. I do think, however, that people who tried to get out of serving in Vietnam when they believed that the war was right are either cowards, if they did it out of fear, or worse, if they did it out of some sense that other people are the ones who die, not people like me. With people who supported the war, there’s an additional possibility: not wanting to end up killing people in a war you think should never have been begun. I am not saying that all people who got out of service and supported the war had this motive; just that it’s a possibility that’s unavailable to people who supported the war.
For me, the much bigger issues are: (a) did he just bail on his duty? Our country apparently spent a million dollars training him, and then he seems to have just decided to skip his physical, losing his pilot status. This was grounds for getting sent to Vietnam. Then there seems to be no one who recalls his being there, except for one person who got the times all wrong. See here, for instance. But this is about not completing one’s service, not about serving. (b) did he lie about it more recently?
But even though these are, for me, “much bigger” than how he got into the guard, they are absolutely dwarfed by his attitude towards the Constitution, his conduct in the War on Terror, the invasion of Iraq, the deficit, his environmental record, and so on and so forth.
Oops: last sentence, second para, should read: “I am not saying that all people who got out of service and did not support the war had this motive…”
I tried to edit it with my special magic posting powers, honest I did…
You can only edit the comments on your own posts. ;)Though I presume Moe could edit everywhere.
“So Bush’s position was that it was desirable to force people to go fight in Vietnam, but it was perfectly OK for him to stay home. Well, that doesn’t strike me as a particularly defensible position.”
Well, it is defensible in the sense that there’s a rationale behind it. It’s just that you can’t ever actually pronounce that rationale out loud. It rhymes with ‘I got mine’.
Fwiw, here’s Kevin Drum’s take on the latest Guard news: “these four memos are pretty close to a smoking gun…”
But even though these are, for me, “much bigger” than how he got into the guard, they are absolutely dwarfed by his attitude towards the Constitution, his conduct in the War on Terror, the invasion of Iraq, the deficit, his environmental record, and so on and so forth.
I completely concur. The only vague interest I have in this matter is whether Bush lied about it and, if so, why. [Well, that and the whole aircraft carrier stunt.] Assuming the former arguendo, had he just come forth and said, “Yeah, I finked out on my duties but I was young and stupid and I’ve reformed”, a) he wouldn’t really have told us anything new and b) I for one would have given him a pass because Vietnam was a wretched enough time that I couldn’t hold it against him.
FWIW, I suspect that Bush has been trying to cover something up from the late summer of 1972, that it’ll prove embarrassing should it come to light, and that it speaks interestingly to his character, but as far as this election is concerned it’s an utterly moot point: we have bigger fish to fry and current wars to fight.
It was pretty funny watching Dan Bartlett try to spin when asked about Bush’s failure to comply with an ordered physical. You could almost see Bartlett thinking, “They don’t pay me enough….”
But this entire episode points out just how lazy the media is. All this information has been out there for years. Bush’s opponents have been saying it for years, yet the press–for the most part–has been content to rely on folks like Dan Bartlett (BTW, whose story has changed several times).
The most visible smoking gun has been Bush’s failure to comply with an ordered flight physical. Orders aren’t choices and somewhere, someplace there has to be a record that Bush didn’t comply and was reprimanded. Especially for a serviceman Uncle Sam has just sunk a million bucks of training into.
JadeGold, see Kevin above: there is reportedly a
Sounds to me like “a record that Bush didn’t comply and was reprimanded.”
I have to disagree with some of this.
2. Bush fullfilled his commitment to the nation by serving in the National Guard. It was an honorably route to go; indeed, it was the route taken by my own father to fulfill his service requirements during Vietnam. I also feel quite comfortable in proposing that Bush and my father had the same, reasonable reason for serving in the National Guard: They didn’t want to die in Vietnam.
I’ll accept the second part of that. If I had the chance to score a Guard slot, I might have taken it (well, I did score a Guard slot, but this is a different era), but not the first. He didn’t fulfill his obligation. Looking at the paperwork it isn’t clear the Discharge he got from Texas was legit, he may have a different discharge from the Regular AF.
But that isn’t the reason is matters. It matters in the here and now because of what Bush has done about it. He had every chance to step up to the plate and confess that he’s decided business school was the better option, and that he didn’t have time to go to drill in Mass. But he didn’t.
He lacked the moral courage to admit to his past mistakes.
Looking at how he has been handling the office he presently holds, it seems the trait is still extant.
I’d love to see a debate on present issues (such as the recent hikes in Medicare, which combined with last years hikes are pretty damned severe, or the way he plans to spend Social Security money twice, or the complete failure of his Justice Dept. to get any good cases against terrorists, or why it took three years to decide an EPW wasn’t, and send him home, or how we can know there isn’t another Hamidi, or Padilla sitting in the stockade, unannounced [since it was more than a month after Padilla’s arrest that they bothered to tell anyone] or … but the list is too long) but the administration isn’t letting it. And he lies to make his case on policy… Iraq came after Stem Cells (how many of the 60+ lines he said were out there really are… something like a dozen?) We have duplicity in the budget… not even an attempt to factor in the cost of the occupation in Iraq, and then a couple of requests, and then a new budget year and the same methods… No way to know the costs, but no attempts to factor them in.
Kerry has supporters (in a 501(c)3) who said mean things (not false, mind you, but uncivil). Kerry denounced them, made them stop. Bush has supporters (with ties more concrete than those of Al Qaeda to Iraq) whom he won’t tell to stop, even though they are telling lies.
Bush flip-flops on Homeland Security, on chasing bin Laden (dead or alive one week… I haven’t really been thinking about him at all the next), on the war on terror (we can’t win it, oh wait yes we can), on the Social Security Fund (not gonna touch it, well it was just lying there [and don’t try to pawn off that everyone does it, because that’s a two-wrongs argument, and shows a lack of fiber on the part of your man… in either case he looks bad, choose the one which looks worst]), can’t deal with North Korea… have to stop that appeasing bastard Clinton’s bribes… now that we look at it, maybe we should deal with them, in 2000 he was pro-choice, today…., then there’s the right to sue… he was all for patient’s being able to do so in 2000, when he was a candidate, but once he got elected, well you didn’t believe him, did you? “Ahmed, Ahmed, he’s our man… now we want him in the can” From hero to goat in a few short weeks. Free trade, unless it’s steel… for that we have a two-year tariff, until we don’t. Not that we care about the rest of the world’s opinion, until it threatens our chance to get re-elected. Arsenic was harmless at the levels he wanted to leave in, then it wasn’t. Shall we have an outside investigation of… (take your pick… intel failures, the attacks on 9/11, the abuses at AbuGhraib/Gitmo/Baghram)…? No., oh wait, Congress might insist, might make me step up to the plate and try to get it killed in a public way… I’m all for it.
Not an ounce of real spine in him.
Now that I’ve addressed the issues of Bush’s firm stance, we can look at Kerry in the Senate…. Heard of BCCI? Kerry did, and brought it to light… just in case you didn’t know, one of the aims of BCCI was to, “fight the evil influence of the West,” according to the its founder. Since it was also funding terrorists, I’d have to put that in the win column. Mind you he was handicapped by the Reagan (and then Bush) administration’s Justice Dept. telling him to lay off a bit, when his investigation of Noriega’s involvement with cocaine dealers was making them nervous. He spent time, before it was popular on his side of the aisle, pushing for a balanced budget. He has been consistent in his opinion on the war in Iraq… if there were weapons, and the will to use them, we had a right to go in, but more time ought to have been spent making sure of that.
Not a bad record.
3. Kerry was a bit of a horse’s ass when he came back from Vietnam. He went too far in his public statements, as you might expect from a politically-ambitious young man who was punch drunk with the affection of the anti-war movement. No excuse; judgment and perspective.
Again, nope. This is the myth of investment. Soldiers are loath to give up ground they’ve bought with blood, and the feelings of betrayal when someone says what they did wasn’t worth it run deep. But what Kerry did was decide, from experience, that the war wasn’t worth the cost. Being an interrogator I get really pissed when someone tells me I need to torture people… because that is more that just an atrocity, it’s an atrocious thing to say (I’ve been called morally corrupt because I say I won’t).
Silence, when one feels a wrong is being done, is a sin. Teddy Roosevelt said that dissent was the best form of patriotism.