Villainous Company

May 01, 2006

Kerry-Rumsfeld Death Match

In our idler moments, the half-vast editorial staff have been known to wonder what would happen if the Xtreme Candidate from Massachusetts were put in a room alone with one of his political opponents.

A cleverly-hidden camera recently caught this clash of the titans. We will leave it up to you to caption their epic battle:

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Posted by Cassandra at 08:48 AM | Comments (8)

KerryWatch®: Dissent Is The Highest Form Of Pandering

"...no wonder Thomas Jefferson himself once said, 'Dissent is the highest form of patriotism'..."

- John Kerry

As they floated out over the hushed crowd, the stirring words of the Accidental Candidate reverberated with the ring of Truthiness. Jabbing the pointy finger of history at a reckless and arrogant administration, Senator John Forgainst Kerry strode forth to remind a waiting nation of the perilous times we live in. A time of midnight knocks on the door. A time when politicians don the mantle of faux patriotism to suppress the speech rights of free Americans. In such times, honest men must step forth to defend the rights of their fellow citizens to speak freely.

Senator Kerry left us in no doubt that he stood solidly against those who would suppress debate:

"The lesson here is not that some of us were right about Vietnam, and some of us were wrong. The lesson is that true patriots must defend the right of dissent, and hear the voices of dissenters..."

Dissenters are not always right, but it is always a warning sign when they are accused of unpatriotic sentiments by politicians seeking a safe harbor from debate, from accountability, or from the simple truth.

Indeed. Who can forget those halcyon days when he used DNC lawyers to keep troublesome speech from his fellow Swift Boat veterans under wraps. Ah, but surely they must not have been true patriots...or perhaps that just wasn't the right kind of dissent?

And Kerry supporters everywhere still celebrate his brave battle to keep highly decorated Vietnam-era POWs from telling their side of the story:

My opinion of Kerry has not improved, after the attempts to suppress this film, so similar to the goon squad tactics used against the Nader people in this past presidential election. Anyone who saw Lawrence Tribe argue for the DNC in front of the Florida Supreme Court (C-SPAN, 9/17/04) to keep Ralph Nader off the ballot will know what I mean.

...As George "Bud" Day, who was imprisoned and tortured for five years and seven months says, "this man committed an act of treason. He lied, he besmirched our name and he did it for self-interest. And now he wants us to forget. I can never forget".

Of course any Kerry supporter will tell you that some speech ought to be suppressed, especially if it's not true. Partisan, "Swift Boat" style charges should never be allowed to see the light of day. After all, some words are dangerous, and we cannot count on ordinary Americans to sift the wheat from the chaff. Viewed in this light, Kerry's attempts to silence his fellow vets were the only honorable course of action. He had a duty to protect impressionable voters from political hacks who will say anything to get elected.

Sadly, the "Swift Boat-style" attacks on this true patriot just keep coming. Rabidly right-wing bloggers have been salivating over reports that the quote that formed the cornerstone of Kerry's recent speech was misattributed and is not, strictly speaking, true. Only the most rabid zealot would stoop to point out the fact that the quote Kerry attributed to Thomas Jefferson was actually uttered by an anti-war historian considered by many in his field to be fatally biased:

“Around 1776,” A People’s History informs readers, “certain important people in the English colonies made a discovery that would prove enormously useful for the next two hundred years. They found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from the favorites of the British Empire. In the process, they could hold back a number of potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support for the rule of a new, privileged leadership.” Forget about all men are created equal, forget about liberty and the pursuit of happiness, America’s founding can be reduced to the pursuit of exploitation and profit.

Zinn continues (without irony): “When we look at the American Revolution this way, it was a work of genius, and the Founding Fathers deserve the awed tribute they have received over the centuries. They created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command.” Rather than an event that inspired movements for freedom and self-government throughout the world through the present, the American Founding is portrayed as a virtually totalitarian system of oppression. If the Founders wanted a society they could direct, why didn’t they establish a dictatorship or a monarchy and model their rule on what was the universal form of government at the time? Why go through the trouble of devising a Constitution departing from a repressive status quote and guaranteeing individual rights, mass political participation, jury trials, and checks on governmental power? Apparently inhabiting an alternate reality, Zinn doesn’t feel the need to account for this and merely explains it away as a charade designed to prevent class revolution. This is conspiracy theory with a vengeance.

Mr. Kerry's critics should be ashamed of themselves. Though the quote he used may not have been uttered by Thomas Jefferson, it felt true, emotionally, and that's all that matters, isn't it? And we understand the Senator's confusion. It must be difficult to distinguish Howard Zinn, who considered the Founding Fathers to be little more than elitist, power-mongering hucksters, from Thomas Jefferson, who had this to say (when he actually weighed in on the subject of patriotism and dissent):

Political dissention is doubtless a less evil than the lethargy of despotism, but still it is a great evil, and it would be as worthy the efforts of the patriot as of the philosopher, to exclude its influence, if possible, from social life.

--Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Pinckney,

Yes, Senator Kerry's stand on this vital issue is crystal clear. Lying, partisan hacks must not be allowed to tell their stories. At the same time, we mustn't discourage noble, decent Americans like Michael Moore from speaking truth to power. The balance between freedom and license is always tricky, but thankfully America can count Senator John Kerry to defend the rights of America's true patriots while protecting us from lying partisans who seek to destroy everything real Americans hold dear.

In the words of one of our greatest Founding Fathers, the truth shall set us free.

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falshood of tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.

- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr (August 19, 1785)

Posted by Cassandra at 06:54 AM | Comments (33)

April 24, 2006

KerryWatch®: Patriotisme! McCarthyisme! DimWitticisme!

Sacre bleu!

The half-vast editorial staff awoke from an uneasy slumber this morning to find an event très cataclismique had taken place. C'est vrai, mes amis! We could not believe it either! But thanks to strictly impartial journalists with no partisan bias, we learn that The Real John Kerry Finally Stood Up, "sharpening values and sketching visions" to applause that was "more than perfunctory"!

On Saturday, Kerry's dissent on Vietnam dovetailed completely with his current position on Iraq ...After the tortured explanations during the presidential campaign and the ad which played over and over about "being for the $87 billion [for Iraq] before he was against it", Kerry's clarity and confidence were even more startling.

His speech was laced with patriotic language and filled with historical examples. Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln were both attacked for opposing the government, said Kerry, who quoted Jefferson: "Dissent is the greatest form of patriotism."

Kerry may be reflecting a new boldness on the part of liberals to come out and say what they believe and to reclaim the moral high ground on patriotism.

The perpetual presidential candidate whose bigger, thicker, better locks have become a national symbol of virility also "spoke eloquently" on the dangers of classified information:

Stephanopoulos: ...CIA official Mary McCarthy lost her job this week for disclosing classified information according to the CIA probably about a "Washington Post" story which revealed the existence of secret prisons in Europe... Your colleague Senator Pat Roberts has praised the action. But some former CIA officers have described Mary McCarthy as a sacrificial lamb who is acting in the finest American tradition by revealing human rights violations. What's your view?

Kerry: Well, I read that. I don't know whether she did it or not. So, I mean it's hard to have a view on that. But here's my fundamental view about this: that you have somebody being fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth, and you have no one fired from the White House for revealing a CIA agent in order to support a lie. That underscores what's really wrong in Washington, D.C. here.

Stephanopoulos: That's one issue of hypocrisy but should the CIA officer be able to make decisions on his or her own...

Kerry: Of course not. Of course, not. Look the CIA agent has an obligation to uphold the law and clearly leaking is against the law, and nobody should leak. I abhor leaking. I don't like it. But if you're leaking to tell the truth, Americans are going to look at that, at least mitigate or think about what are the consequences that you, you know, put on that person. Obviously they're not going to keep their job, but there are other larger issues here. You know, classification in Washington is a tool that is used to hide the truth from the American people. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was eloquent and forceful in always talking about how we needed to, you know, end this endless declassification that takes place in this state, and it has become a tool to hide the truth from Americans.

Now as the HVES was only on its third cup of java at this point so naturallement we were thrilled to have such a clear exposition of an admittedly murky issue. Near as we could tell after our vast staff of itinerant Eskimo typists had translated for us, the Accidental Candidate had just told us that:

1. Classification (by the CIA) is a "tool used to hide the truth from the American people".

2. But it is illegal to leak classified information and those who violate the law must be punished.

3. Brace yourselves, mon amis - the Senator's logic at this point becomes so brilliant that it may be difficult for ordinary mortals to follow. In a dazzling display of the post-Cartesian Multivariate Co-directionality for which he is justly famed, the Junior Senator (who is so much more verbally adept and far smarter than the President) then explained that that we must "end endless declassification" because it is "used to hide the truth from the American people"!

4. And so, mes amis, to sum up: classification is bad because it hides "the truth", but if you reveal our secrets, you must be punished! And de-classification is ALSO bad because it hides the truth, but it is perfectly legal.

Thus, to protect the American people from the illegal, truth-hiding practice of classifying secret information, we must at all costs refrain from the legal process of de-classifying it, because that is also a tool for hiding the truth!

And here we see the Senator's essential brilliance: if we can neither classify nor de-classify information without hiding the truth, the only moral process for getting the truth out is to leak it and then go to jail!

This reminds us of the good Senator's highly-nuanced position on the NSA wiretapping brouhaha just a few short months ago:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: (Off-camera) But let's, well, that's what I want to get to, an issue now is warrantless wiretaps, the president's program, Karl Rove was back out on Friday defending the program and being very aggressive. Here's what he said.

KARL ROVE (POLITICAL ADVISOR): President Bush believes if al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why. Some important Democrats -- some important Democrats clearly disagree.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: (Off-camera) He must have had you in mind. You've called the program a clear violation of the law.

SENATOR JOHN KERRY: We don't disagree with him at all. It is a violation of law and we don't disagree with him at all and this is exactly what Karl Rove does. Let me tell you something.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: (Off-camera) How can you think it's a violation and not disagree?

SENATOR JOHN KERRY: Osama bin Laden is gonna die of kidney failure before he's killed by Karl Rove and his crowd and all he does is divide America over this issue and exploit it. And what he's trying to pretend is that somehow Democrats don't want to eavesdrop appropriately to protect the country. That's a lie. We're prepared to eavesdrop wherever and whenever necessary in order to make America safer, but we put a procedure in place to protect the constitutional rights of Americans and what I believe, George, and I believe it deeply, is you can protect the United States of America without devoiding, without ignoring the constitution of the country.

...GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: (Off-camera) So if you think this is a clear violation of the law why not move to cut off funding for the program?

SENATOR JOHN KERRY: That's premature. I think the first thing to do is say how do we, you know, make sure we're protecting the security of the country?

Once again John Foregainst Kerry's incisive wit cuts to the heart of the matter! He observes that "...Congress has proven itself unwilling to do what's necessary to perform its responsibilities". It has also, judging from some accounts proven itself incapable of handling sensitive intelligence:

Congressman Joe Pitts (R, PA-16) sharply criticized congressional colleagues today for leaking intelligence information learned during classified briefings. Information related to the House Intelligence Committee during a Wednesday classified briefing was leaked to the press within hours.

“If you can’t keep your mouth shut, you shouldn’t be serving on the House Intelligence Committee,” said Congressman Pitts. “The National Security Agency has 32,000 employees. They’ve kept this information classified for more than nine months. Congress couldn’t keep it a secret for more than a few hours.”

Of course, this was back in 2002. Fortunately for the American people, some brave truth-tellers who, like Senator Kerry, believe "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" safely navigated the Scylla and Charybdis of classification/de-classification and eventually leaked the whole enchilada to the New York Times, thus prompting the HVES to ask, "What would we do without patriots?".

Indeed.

Posted by Cassandra at 06:46 AM | Comments (8)

April 12, 2006

KerryWatch®: The Final Insult

.... they were astonished, and said,
Whence hath this man this wisdom,
and these mighty works?
But He said unto them:
"A prophet is not without honour,
save in His own country,
and in His own house."

Poor John Kerry. Our favorite Accidental Candidate is looking for love in all the wrong places these days. Now Marty Peretz, the eminently-readable editor-in-chief of the liberal New Republic is dishing on the dashing Senator:

Continuing his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, John F. Kerry addressed (by telephone) a conference convened by that racist hustler and prevaricator Al Sharpton who won, if I'm not mistaken, exactly one delegate [ouch!] at the party convention in 2004. According to The New York Times yesterday, in what appeared to be rather inchoate remarks, Kerry used Iraq as a trope but offered a ten-point plan for the nation from soup to nuts ... well, from getting Osama bin Laden to legislating lobby reform. The Times alluded to Kerry's well-known verbosity. So it wasn't surprising that he also went off and said, "Not in one phrase uttered and reported by the Lord Jesus Christ, can you find anything that suggests that there is a virtue in cutting children from Medicare." I'd actually go Kerry one further: I doubt that Jesus ever mentioned Medicare at all. Still, it's probably significant that some presidential aspirants--Kerry, for one--want to demonstrate that there are among them some real live Democrats for God. Or, as the Times said about him, he is "A Roman Catholic, who has struggled at times to talk about his own faith ...

Now at this point the half-vast editorial staff were almost moved to intervene on behalf of the hapless Junior Senator from Massachusetts, but we confess that we were helpless with laughter:

Mr. Kerry also told the group that he believed 'deeply in my faith'." Now, there are many Catholics including high ecclesiastics who doubt this. But who am I to have a point of view on what is essentially an intramural fight? In any case, as it turns out, Kerry is not only a Roman Catholic but also an ecumenicist. Once again I rely on the Times: Kerry asserted that "the Koran, the Torah, the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles had influenced a social conscience that he exercised in politics." My God, what bullshit politicians feel obliged to utter! Or maybe the bullshit is already second nature, or even first. But since Kerry raised it, let me ask: What hadith of the Prophet influenced him the most, and why? And here I have a personal interest: Which of the injunctions of Leviticus and who among the Prophets have the most meaning for him? Ordinarily, of course, I wouldn't ask such personal questions of a politician. In the spirit of Jesus, Kerry will certainly forgive me for doing so.

Are we the only ones reminded of the time Mr. Kerry attempted to raze Capitol Hill in a fashion reminiscent of Pimp-C?

"I'm fascinated by rap and by hip-hop. I think there's a lot of poetry in it. There's a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you'd better listen to it pretty carefully, 'cause it's important."

Mr. Kerry, when he's not grooving to the anger of the streets, seems to have enjoy mixing it up with our allies in the war on terror:

The greatest position of strength is by exercising the best judgement in the pursuit of diplomacy," he said, "not in some trumped-up, so-called coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted, but in a genuine coalition."

The dashing war hero doesn't take any guff from those we've made promises to, either:

We want democracy in Iraq, but Iraqis must want it as much as we do. Our valiant soldiers can't bring democracy to Iraq if Iraq's leaders are unwilling themselves to make the compromises that democracy requires.

No American soldier should be sacrificed because Iraqi politicians refuse to resolve their ethnic and political differences.

So far, Iraqi leaders have responded only to deadlines — a deadline to transfer authority to a provisional government, and a deadline to hold three elections.

Now we must set another deadline to extricate our troops and get Iraq up on its own two feet.

Iraqi politicians should be told that they have until May 15 to put together an effective unity government or we will immediately withdraw our military. If Iraqis aren't willing to build a unity government in the five months since the election, they're probably not willing to build one at all. The civil war will only get worse, and we will have no choice anyway but to leave.

Well that is certainly first-class thinking - the kind they teach you in those fancy Ivy League schools. The terrorists have only been fighting because they don't have the popular support to get their way at the ballot box. Announcing a deadline for immediate withdrawal of all US troops ought to calm things right down. Surely none of the sectarian groups will get nervous and try to seize power and we just know the terrorists won't just stop attacking until mid-May when they can have everything they've fought for for the last two years without the bothersome necessity of facing 150,000 US troops?

The Senator apparently doesn't believe the Iraqis are capable of working together. He doesn't think they're trying hard enough:

CAMP AL QA’IM, Iraq (March 24, 2006) -- They came from far and near and waited hours in long lines under a hot Iraqi sun in hopes of joining the Army.

Nearly 400 Iraqi males – some as young as 15 – showed up for an Iraqi Army recruiting drive held at the Marines’ battle position in this region along the Euphrates River in western Al Anbar Province.

Of the 400 men who showed up to enlist, 179 were accepted – a substantial number, according to Coalition and Iraqi Army officials.

As Mr. Kerry and the NY Times keep telling us, Iraq will never be able to resolve its ethnic differences:

The recruitment drive was part of an Iraqi Army recruiting campaign aimed at incorporating more Sunnis into Iraqi Security Forces, according to Coalition officials.

The Iraqi Army unit partnered with Marines from 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment to provide security in this region of the Sunni triangle, spent the day screening potential future soldiers.

The Iraqi Government wants to have a better ethnic mix of Iraqis in its Army, and hopes to recruit 5,000 new soldiers by year’s end.

Though many were turned down, the hundreds of Iraqi men and teenagers were not deterred from waiting hours in long lines to see if they were qualified to become part of Iraq’s new Army.

Many recruits, who asked not to be identified, claimed they are joining the Army to protect their families from “bombs and insurgents who come to threaten their families.”

Two recruits, a 20-year-old from Husaybah, the other a 19-year-old from neighboring Sadah, claimed that their families were terrified of sending them to the Army due to the potential threat of attacks against their families.

Both said they’ve heard stories of Iraqi soldiers being targeted by insurgents, but the stories have not deterred them from enlisting. Moreover, their families are now encouraging them to enlist – a change of heart stemmed from an ever-growing presence of other Iraq soldiers working together with Coalition Forces.

Some who were turned down at the recruiting drive haven’t given up hope of serving as part of the Iraqi Security Forces. Many said they will apply for positions with Iraqi police forces.

“I am excited,” said one 20-year-old Iraqi man, through an interpreter. “I am not worried about basic training, but I will miss my family. It took me two days to convince them to let me come here today.”

“It’s expensive to live and the pay in the Army is good,” said another recruit through an interpreter. “I want to protect my family and keep the area safe.”

What a miserable failure. It's a good thing men like Senator Kerry and John Murtha will soon pull the plug on such doomed efforts:

Does John Kerry know that Jack Murtha is saying this?

There are only two plans: mine and the President's. On second thought, there is only one plan: mine. "Stay the course" is not a plan.

Because on CNN yesterday, Kerry took care to explain to Wolf Blitzer that his plan is not the same as Murtha's plan:

I think John Murtha and I agree on more than we disagree on. And I admire his leadership on this and I think it's been terrific. The difference is I've set a date by which I believe we ought to have the two events happen. And I want this international conference. John has talked mostly about the troops and the redeployment.

Was Murtha just going for rhetorical effect? Or does he not even take Kerry's plan seriously?

One thing's for certain: with the NY Times and CNN turning out daily diatribes informing the American people about this disastrously-planned war, we can take comfort in one thing: men like Kerry and Murtha have a Plan.

They plan for us to skedaddle with our tail between our legs as soon as possible.

CWCID: Chris Muir

Posted by Cassandra at 12:40 PM | Comments (12)

January 27, 2006

KerryWatch: Countdown To Oblivion

Displaying the political savoir-faire that brought him within strikeout distance of the White House last November, Gunga John Kerry has once again issued a call to action from the front lines...of Davos, Switzerland:

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts could not attend the Senate debate on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. on Thursday. He was in Davos, Switzerland, mingling with international business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum.

But late Thursday afternoon, Mr. Kerry began calling fellow Democratic senators in a quixotic, last-minute effort for a filibuster to stop the nomination.

Democrats cringed and Republicans jeered at the awkwardness of his gesture, which almost no one in the Senate expects to succeed.

"God bless John Kerry," said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican on the Judiciary Committee. "He just cinched this whole nomination. With Senator Kerry, it is Christmas every day."

Steve Schmidt, a White House spokesman working on the nomination, said Mr. Kerry's move "says a lot less about Alito than it does about the Iowa primary in 2008," suggesting that Mr. Kerry, who lost the presidential race in 2004, was playing to his party's liberal base in a bid to recapture its nomination.

Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, sounded almost apologetic about Mr. Kerry's statements.

"No one can complain on this matter that there hasn't been sufficient time to talk about Judge Alito, pro and con," Mr. Reid said on the Senate floor. "I hope that this matter will be resolved without too much more talking."

But not everyone was so disparaging of the dashing Senator's initiative. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, (via James Taranto) rushed in with reinforcements:

The Times is right about one thing, though: If there is to be a really futile and stupid gesture, Senate Democrats are just the guys to do it. Here are some of the highlights of the Democrats' floor speeches in opposition to Alito's nomination:

Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York: "Judge Alito also holds a harshly limited view of what the government can or should do to help ordinary Americans. Judge Alito said it all in 1986, when he was a young lawyer in the Reagan administration. He wrote that in his estimation, it is not the role of the federal government to protect the health, safety and welfare of the American people. Well, I guess that explains the inept, slow and dangerous response to Hurricane Katrina."

Now where could Judge Alito have gotten such a ludicrous idea?

Police Power is the inherent authority of a state to pass and enforce laws to protect and promote the public safety, health, general welfare, and morals of a community. Thus, it is the most expansive power exercised by a government. Under the 10th Amendment, the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. These powers, reserved to the states by the Constitution, include all powers the states retained prior to 1789. (US Term Limits v. Thornton). The framers of the U.S. Constitution understood that the states were empowered, like the British Parliament, with all authority to act on behalf of the welfare of their people.

Federal police power exists only insofar as Congress is legislating for the military, for Indian reservations, for federal lands, or for the District of Columbia.

Clearly the Democrat Party, with Senator Kerry and Hillary Rodham Clinton firmly in the lead, are determined to prevent such antiquated interpretations of the Constitution from taking hold in the Land. With Modern, Progressyve thinking of the Kerry/Clinton mold, American voters can look forward to lots more forward-thinking decisions like Kelo.

Hopefully M. Jean-Fraude won't take it too hard if his little plan doesn't amount to too much in the end. Even tentative supporters like the aptly-named Dick Durbin weren't holding out much hope for its eventual success:

"One of the first responsibilities of someone in Congress is to learn how to count," the Illinois Democrat said. "Having made a count, I have come to the conclusion it is highly unlikely that a filibuster would succeed."

But very likely Kerry has a Plan for that, too.

Posted by Cassandra at 09:03 AM | Comments (1)

January 22, 2006

KerryWatch: Blog Against The Machine

Suffering the unfortunate aftereffects of one too many celebratory libations to the Gods, the half-vast editorial staff woke this morning in need of something to distract us from the alarming sensations emanating from our prefrontal lobe. Accordingly, we donned our favorite red bathrobe and bunny slippers, grabbed a cup of Joe, and set off to poke around a few old haunts. Of course, one can't expect things to remain quite same as they were of old. With the advent of TimesSelect, our trusty elephant gun has been gathering dust in an unused corner of the office and at any rate, with great shaggy beasts like MoDope, Bob Herbert, and Paul Krugman walled off behind a one-way forcefield the contest is hardly equal anymore, is it? So it was with no special premonition of disaster that we set off on our morning rounds.

Sadly, that false sense of confidence lasted only as long as it took us to reach The Corner, where we were suddenly confronted with a sight so horrifying that it froze the very marrow in our bones:

John Forbes Kerry: Blogger

On second thought, we have no idea why this should have surprised us. The Junior Senator from Vietnam with the fresh-def perspective on urban culture has always kept his finger on the pulse of the Me Generation. Senator Kerry seems to be particularly well tuned into the concept of Rage:

"I'm fascinated by rap and by hip-hop. I think there's a lot of poetry in it. There's a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you'd better listen to it pretty carefully, 'cause it's important."

Now that we think of it, every time Kerry opens his mouth he seems pissed off about something. During his campaign he kept telling voters, "I'll fight for you!". Of course Kerry's particular brand of pugilism is the tidal kind, in that it seems to ebb and flow with every fluctuation in the news cycle. The good Senator doesn't want to fight Saddam, bin Laden, or the kind of nutjobs who run around Ginsu-ing the heads off civilian contractors because that would involve reckless, arrogant unilateralism of a kind he's not prepared to endorse without the prior approval of Germany and France.

No, with his unerring instinct for nailing the crux of an issue in hindsight, Kerry has identified the real enemy, as he pompously informed America's youth on MTV:

I mean, there are countless numbers of things that we could be doing to enhance the world's view of us and to minimize the kind of anger and ... almost recruitment that has taken place in terrorist organizations as a result of the way the administration has behaved.

And that’s the second money quote, right there. We stopped pretending we would ratify Kyoto. We only spent $15 billion on AIDS in Africa. We did not take dictation from Paris. If we had done these things, it would minimize the world’s anger.

Is the world angry at Russia, which spends nothing on AIDS and rebuffed Kyoto? Is the world angry at China, which got a pass on Kyoto and spends nothing on AIDS for other countries?

Is the world angry at North Korea for killing its people? Angry at Iran for smothering that vibrant nation with corrupt and thuggish mullocracy? Angry at Syria for occupying Lebanon? Angry at Saudi Arabia for its denial of women’s rights? Angry at Russia for corrupt elections? Is the world angry at China for threatening Taiwan, or angry at France for joining the Chinese in joint military exercises that threatened the island on the eve of an election? Is the world angry at Zimbabwe for stealing land and starving people? Is the world angry at Pakistan for selling nuclear secrets? Is the world angry at Libya for having an NBC program?

Is the world angry at the thugs of Fallujah?

Is the world angry at anyone besides America and Israel?

But even if you admit that the world is angry at America - so angry that the poorest of them can’t wait to come here and stake a claim – you have to stand in awe at the sheer political idiocy of Kerry’s conclusion.

What makes John Kerry angry? Not things like genocide in Darfur or Saddam Hussein burying hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis in mass graves or the incredibly harsh repression in North Korea. He wasn't even angry enough about Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 to support US intervention.

No, Senator Kerry can live with the little mishaps of life like genocide and torture. Who among us has not had a little intentional mass murder in their past? No, it's mistakes that cannot be excused. The idea that our government, over four years ago, with a limited number of troops, could fail to find one man in remote mountainous terrain during wartime just infuriates the good Senator.

He wants answers, dammit, and he's willing to play Hardball to get them. Even if it means joining forces with someone who said this about him:

But what makes me angry was Kerry and his gang's inability to take advantage of the situation. I may regret saying this later, but f*ck it -- they should be lined up and shot. There's no reason they should've lost [...] A Kerry presidency would've been an unmitigated disaster, with a hostile congress, budget woes, the mess in Iraq, etc. Not a good time to be in charge."

Because we all know that if that one man were dead, the GWOT would end, and butterflies and teddy bears would dance for joy in the streets of Baghdad and Kabul.

Word.

Posted by Cassandra at 07:42 AM | Comments (4)

January 20, 2006

KerryWatch: Mullah-ing It Ovah

Yesterday, the ever-vigilant Charlottesvillian tipped us off to the fact that fave Senator Hil's visit to TigerHawk's old scratching ground had made her go all tingly:

A tough-talking Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday suggested she would back a military strike on Iran if that country's radical Islamic government attempts to build nuclear weapons.

Clinton's speech seemed to position her somewhat to the right of the Bush administration, which has stressed diplomacy without ruling out any other option. Most experts on the region say a military strike is not feasible and therefore unlikely.

"We cannot take any option off the table in sending a clear message to Iran that they will not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons," she said.

Dear Lord. Get this woman out of the Blue States and before you know it she's brandishing ballistic missiles and making Clintonesque threats to raize Tehran in a fashion reminiscent of a 1998 John Forbes Kerry:

Senator John Kerry appears on ABC News' This Week and speaks about the situation with Iraq: "I think there is a disconnect between the depth of the threat that Saddam Hussein presents to the world and what we are at the moment talking about doing. If indeed he is as significant a threat, as you heard him characterized by the president (Clinton), the secretary of state, the secretary of defense-can threaten London, threaten the peace of the Middle East, that he is really a war criminal who is already at war with the civilized world-then we have to be prepared to go the full distance, which is to do everything possible to disrupt his regime and to encourage the forces of democracy." Kerry also voices his support for sending ground troops to Iraq because a mere bombing attack would not end the threat. "I am way ahead of the commander in chief, and I'm probably way ahead of my colleagues and certainly of much of the country," Kerry declares. "But I believe this." Further, "If we don't face this today, we will face it at some point down the road."

Pardon us while we wipe a patriotic tear from our eye. The half-vast editorial staff bets her newfound hawkishness is every bit as heartfelt as that of the Junior Senator from Massachusetts, too. But wait!!! There's more where that came from:

She also blasted the Bush administration for allowing European countries to lead negotiations with the hard-line regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"I believe that we lost critical time with ... Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations," she said. "I don't believe ... in standing on the sidelines."

...because we don't want any of that dangerous multilateralism, do we?

Apparently not. The arrogant, unilateralist Cowboy President who rushed us into war last go-round is now being criticized for.... [wait for it] listening too much and not rushing us into war fast enough:

The approach the Bush administration has pursued towards Iran -- multilateralism, private and public diplomacy, occasionally deferring to allies -- is besotted with the very tropes that liberals like to see in their American foreign policy. I'm still not sure what the end game will be with regard to Iran, but to date I can't see how a Kerry administration would have played its cards any differently than the Bush team.

Tom Bevan comments that after offering Iran a "grand bargain" and mucking about with our "special friends" in Europe (these would be the ones who refused to join the coalition...you know, the ones whom Monsieur Kerry was finally forced to admit wouldn't help him either, were he were elected), we'd very likely be in exactly the same place we are now.

Up the creek.

Which makes all this ridiculous talk of the Iraq War diverting resources we haven't the slightest intention of using rather silly, now doesn't it?

Posted by Cassandra at 12:10 PM | Comments (1)

August 12, 2005

KerryWatch®: Winter Soldier, Reporting For Duty

The fog of war: I have always found this a particularly apt term for the confusion and chaos that result when men contend on the field of battle. As the daughter of a Navy captain and wife to a Marine, war has been a constant refrain in my life, a song playing in the background. Mostly quietly, at times receding to a barely-heard whisper; then suddenly, without warning growing to a menacing roar before subsiding to a gentle murmur again.

I grew up with Vietnam. If anyone asked me a few years ago, I'd have told them it had little effect on me. I was just a child, you see. I'd have been wrong.

During the election when John Kerry simply would not shut up about Vietnam I was surprised to feel a growing anger. Where did it come from, this cold rage, this bitter sorrow that overtook me when I least expected it? Why did I care? I was so small then. I didn't really understand it until Laura Armstrong, another service junior, contacted me and I did something very strange for me: I decided to attend the KerryLied rally in DC. I didn't want to go, really - I can't stand that sort of thing. But I felt compelled, somehow, to be there. And standing in a crowd of people I did not know that sunny day, at times with tears running down my face, it all came flooding back. How I felt as a little girl, watching my parents' black and white TV set as the news anchor read the body counts.

Because that was the war, for me. The magic of television brought the war home, right into my living room. Through the fog that permeates battles going on half a world away, that is all we can ever know of bloody struggles taking place in places we will never see. And it was enough. It was more than enough.

I remember, at times, leaving the room silently and curling up in my bed and trembling, just thinking of all those brothers and daddies who would never come home. I wasn't afraid, really, for my Dad: he was 10 feet tall and bullet-proof. Dads are that way. They fish monsters out from under your bed and fix your bike when it doesn't work; a tiny country in SouthEast Asia ain't no big thang to a dashing hero with a battleship and gold braid on his uniform.

I cringed at the body counts and sterile recitations of battle statistics. But towards the end of the war when journalists began to discover activism, I discovered there were worse things. I hated the napalm pictures and the graphic pictures of the wounded and the way nothing good ever seemed to be reported. I noticed that, even as a child, because my Dad was in the Navy.

Today's coverage of the war is so different. It's even more pronounced because as an "insider" I know more about the successes we're having and I see so few of them reflected in TV and newspaper accounts of the war. Where does this "news" go? What filter separates the good from the bad, allowing only the dismal and discouraging details to penetrate the fog of war?

I wrote these words back in April. As almost always happens to me when I write about war - this war, or that long-ago war which should not have touched my young life at all, but seems to have stayed with me nonetheless, I found myself typing through furious tears. I'm doing it again now. I can't write about it nearly as often as I'd like to. My stomach ends up in knots for the rest of the day and I find myself staring off into space at odd times, my eyes suddenly betraying me when I least expect it. It infuriates me. I can't afford that sort of idiocy during the work day.

Conservatives are always accused of loving war, of hungering after it. I don't know about that. It often seems to me that we are the ones who end up living with the consequences of war. For it is largely conservative families who make up the armed forces. Who fight, and die, and return home with that far-off look in their eyes. Who wait patiently for a loved one to return.

Or not.

Who watch the news every night, and tally up the cost of their convictions, and live with the knowledge that in the real world there truly is no free lunch. Yet we are trained from birth to pick up our loads and keep going. But oh! the cost! Is it worth it? Are we asking too much of ourselves? Of our men and women in uniform?

How wonderful it must be to be on the other side. The one that pays no awful price for its beliefs. The one that sees things with such moral clarity. Oh! to be the New York Times, with its flexible urban viewpoint:

Like a live hand grenade brought home from a distant battlefield, the 34-year-old antiwar documentary "Winter Soldier" has been handled for decades as if it could explode at any moment.

Now, the 95-minute film - which has circulated like 16-millimeter samizdat on college campuses for decades but has never been accessible to a wide audience - is about to get its first significant theatrical release in the United States, beginning on Friday at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Its distributors say that the war in Iraq has made the Vietnam-era film as powerful as when it was new, and its filmmakers are calling it eerily prescient of national embarrassments like the torture at Abu Ghraib.

National embarrassments? In vain I searched the Times' glowing two-page review for any mention of the national disgrace of a young Naval Lieutenant, a commanding officer, who used a little-known regulation to flee the combat zone a mere 4 months into a 12-month tour. Who then returned to tell the Senate:

I would like to talk on behalf of 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. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

Now this was an extremely interesting allegation for the dashing young officer to make. Did he personally witness such incidents? If they were "committed on a day-to-day basis", he must have.

And if he witnessed such acts, it was his duty under the UCMJ to report them. Yet he did nothing.

Is it then-Lt. Kerry's contention that the men under his command committed such acts? That makes him, as commanding officer, fully complicit. For by his own testimony these atrocious acts were performed "with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. What kinds of acts are we talking about, anyway? Surely not the dreaded Fruit-of-the-Loom underwear, placed on the heads of unwilling Viet Cong?

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.

Yet then-Lt. Kerry said nothing. And apparently, he felt no responsibility to stay and try to stop the carnage, for he fled the scene, landing himself a cushy admiral's aide's job in Washington DC.

I also searched in vain for any mention that the authenticity of the Winter Soldiers was ever questioned - that their shocking charges were ever looked into. An earlier Times review states:

This important 1972 documentary, which is reportedly well-researched and factual, was refused airing on the television networks of its day. It concerns reports of atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam and includes numerous interviews with Vietnam veterans who either saw or participated in them. The anguished testimony of these soldiers is difficult to refute. The film is based on the 1971 Detroit Winter Soldier Investigation, which interviewed over 200 G.I.s. The film weaves footage of their testimony with shots taken in Vietnam, and details how ordinary people can learn to become brutal in combat situations. Because of the challenge this film offered to the U.S. government at the time, the filmmakers, frightened, asked that their names remain anonymous.

How odd. According to Macubin Owens, after the Senate heard the Winter Soldier testimony, Senator Mark Hatfield asked the Commandant of the Marine Corps to conduct a full investigation. Now what are the chances that after 200-odd "highly decorated Vietnam vets" testified on the Congressional record to electrocuting genitals, raping and vivisecting innocent Vietnamese, the Senate would just turn around and say, "Well isn't that special... have a nice day."

The ensuing NIS investigation was revealing:

When the Naval Investigative Service attempted to interview the so-called witnesses, most refused to cooperate, even after assurances that they would not be questioned about atrocities they may have committed personally. Those that did cooperate never provided details of actual crimes to investigators. The NIS also discovered that some of the most grisly testimony was given by fake witnesses who had appropriated the names of real Vietnam veterans. Guenter Lewy tells the entire study in his book, America in Vietnam.

But the Times continues to perpetrate John Kerry's lies about Vietnam Vets:

The relevance of this grainy, ancient documentary comes from descriptions of abuse that could have been ripped from contemporary headlines, notwithstanding the changes in today's professional soldiers and their evolved, high-tech methods of warfare.

Listen, for instance, to the former Army interrogator as he describes using "clubs, rifle butts, pistols, knives" to extract information - "always monitored" by superiors or military police, he says - and recounts his superiors' overriding directive: "Don't get caught."

Or hear the former Marine captain, speaking of "standard operating prtocedure," describe how easily individual transgressions, overlooked by superiors, became de facto policy: "The general attitude of the officers was - I was a lieutenant at the time - 'Well, there's somebody senior to me here, and I guess if this wasn't S.O.P., he'd be doing something to stop it.' And since nobody senior ever did anything to stop it, the policy was promulgated, and everybody assumed that this was right."

...it introduces us to the gentle-sounding, Jesus-like Scott Camil, a former Marine scout and forward artillery observer, who in a whispery voice relates his personal journey from rah-rah patriot to trained killer to medal-winner to self-preservationist Angel of Death. "If I had to go into a village and kill 150 people just to make sure there was no one there to kill me when we walked out, that's what I did," he says.

Like other veterans, Mr. Camil - whose testimony at the Winter Soldier Investigation inspired Graham Nash's song "Oh, Camil!" - conveys how desensitized they became, and how dehumanized the Vietnamese became in their eyes. "Whoever had the most ears, they would get the most beers," he says of his comrades' corporeal trophies. "It became like a game."

Owens comments:

Atrocities did occur in Vietnam, but they were far from widespread. Between 1965 and 1973, 201 soldiers and 77 Marines were convicted of serious crimes against the Vietnamese. Of course, the fact that many crimes, either in war or peace, go unreported, combined with the particular difficulties encountered by Americans fighting in Vietnam, suggest that more such acts were committed than reported or tried.

But even Daniel Ellsberg, a severe critic of U.S. policy in Vietnam, rejected the argument that the biggest U.S. atrocity in Vietnam, My Lai, was in any way a normal event: "My Lai was beyond the bounds of permissible behavior, and that is recognizable by virtually every soldier in Vietnam. They know it was wrong....The men who were at My Lai knew there were aspects out of the ordinary. That is why they tried to hide the event, talked about it to no one, discussed it very little even among themselves."

Why does this matter today? This all happened more than thirty years ago. Who really cares, anymore? Well first of all, the honor of some who served this nation with distinction has been impugned, notably by John Kerry. Where the Times goes to great lengths to imply that there was some sort of plot to suppress the Winter Soldier crockumentary, there was none. On the other hand, John Kerry's lawyers did sue to prevent American prisoners of war from airing their own documentary. Apparently Kerry's conception of freedom of speech did not extend to these men who sacrificed years of their lives in North Vietnamese prison camps. The Times, notably, refers to them only as Kerry's "enemies", as though they could have no other motivation for wanting to get their side of the story out.

Why does this matter now? Because in 1971, John Kerry told the Senate that the Vietnam War turned our servicemen into alienated and deranged psychopaths who were "committing war crimes on a daily basis" and would no doubt continue that behavior once they returned home:

Sixty to 80 percent is the figure used that try something, let's say, at one point. Of that I couldn't give you a figure of habitual smokers, let's say, of pot, and I certainly couldn't begin to say how many are hard drug addicts, but I do know that the problem for the returning veteran is, acute, because we have, let's say, a veteran picks up a $12 habit in Saigon. He comes back to this country and the moment he steps off an airplane that same habit costs him some $90 to support. With the state of the economy, he can't get a job. He doesn't earn money. He turns criminal or just finds his normal sources and in a sense drops out.

The alienation of the war, the emptiness of back and forth, all combined adds to this. There is no real drug rehabilitation program.

I understand 57 percent of all those entering the VA hospitals talk about suicide. Some 27 percent have tried, and they try because they come back to this country and they have to face what they did in Vietnam, and then they come back and find the indifference of a country that doesn't really care, that doesn't really care.

This type of shameless rhetoric is being recycled today in the sillier salons of the Left:

Thirty percent of United States troops returning home face mental health problems three to four months after their return, according to Army surgeon general Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley.

More frightening however is that “30 percent of the cases [of post traumatic stress disorder] don't manifest themselves until 10 years after the traumatic event, according to medical literature,” according to a UPI article, posted on Military.com. Clearly, this will then increases [sic] the overall number of 30 percent.

Actually, the only really frightening things about this article were the author's obvious struggles with subject/verb agreement, his inability to understand basic math (a delayed-onset rate of 30% out of 100% doesn't increase the total number of cases), and his obvious fear and loathing of the military. But is that so surprising? He's had over thirty years of liberal brainwashing. As Macubin Owens, an infantry commander in Vietnam comments:

Kerry's 1971 testimony includes every left-wing cliché about Vietnam and the men who served there. It is part of the reason that even today, people who are too young to remember Vietnam are predisposed to believe the worst about the Vietnam War and those who fought it.

But what does Owens know? He, like the Swift Vets and the Stolen Honor crowd so derided by the NY Times and John Kerry, served his entire combat tour in Vietnam. His word is obviously not to be trusted.

It's deja vu, all over again. This is the kind of nonsense our troops are going to come home to: historical revisionism, slander, and paranoia.

The question is, are we going to let them get away with it this time?

Posted by Cassandra at 06:06 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

July 23, 2005

KerryWatch®: Reporting For Duty

This has not been a good summer for John Kerry.

The good Senator's military campaigns have not exactly covered him in glory. The voting public was allowed only carefully-groomed glimpses of his abbreviated 4-month Vietnam tour, largely through approved hagiographers Michael Kranish at the Boston Globe and Douglas Brinkley. Anyone who was actually there - read the Swift Vets and Stolen Honor (prisoners of war) - was tarred with the brush of partisan politics and teams of DNC lawyers were dispatched to threaten TV stations who aired any non-approved views of Kerry's military exploits.

Sadly, Kerry's more recent adventures haven't gone much better. First the Intrepid One pledged to charge onto the Senate Floor in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan, not resting until the Downing Street Memo shook the Corridors of Power to their very foundations. Err...whatever.

Then it was Count Every Vote... he was just sure there had been fraud in Ohio. Until the DNC's own report came back with the conclusion that there had not. Oopsie.

Then it was L'Affair Plame - he wouldn't rest until he had Karl Rove's head on a pike.

But defeat has not daunted the good Senator for an instant. Now he's after the Dread Pirate Roberts and that gay son of his. Yes, though Mr. Kerry is not even a member of the committee charged with such matters, the man who refused to release his own career military records for years (after voluntarily making his military record the cornerstone of his run for the Presidency) or even his own college transcripts (after making several snide remarks about being smarter than President Bush) is demanding that all records pertaining to John Roberts be released immediately.

Apparently time is of the essence. There is not a second to lose:

Democratic Sen. John Kerry urged the White House on Friday to release "in their entirety" all documents and memos from Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' tenure in two Republican administrations.

In a statement that should have won the Academy Award for Unintentional Irony in a Perpetual Presidential Candidate, Kerry said:

"We cannot do our duty if either Judge Roberts or the Bush administration hides elements of his professional record," said the Massachusetts senator who was his party's presidential candidate last year.

And this year, if he has his way, and next year...

Opening what is expected to be a broader attempt by Democrats to pry loose documents, Kerry issued his statement as Roberts made the latest in a series of courtesy calls on senators in advance of confirmation hearings.

Democratic officials also said Friday they want access to all material regarding Roberts at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. Roberts served in the White House counsel's office from 1982-1986. He was principal deputy solicitor general in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

Tracy Schmaler, a spokeswoman for Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, declined to confirm the disclosure. She said that in general, Democrats intend to seek material relating to Roberts' career.

Kerry is not a member of the committee. But he nonetheless injected himself into the debate at the end of a week in which Bush appeared to catch Democrats off guard by picking a court candidate with conservative credentials, yet one with little judicial experience, and thus, little public paper trail.

It is good to know that in addition to running for the Presidency in 2008 and representing the good citizens of Massachusetts, Senator Kerry also finds time to supervise Congressional committees, of which he is not even a member. Such energy and initiative is refreshing. But as the half-vast editorial staff has noted before, there doesn't seem to be a Democratic meme-wagon the Senator won't attach himself to.

If only it resulted in tangible results more often. His record this summer has been less-than-inspiring.

Posted by Cassandra at 12:13 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

July 13, 2005

KerryWatch®: pLame and pLamer

Poor John Kerry.

Is there any doubt that we've entered the doldrums of Washington's annual silly season? If so, a visit to the Senator's web site will soon dispel it.

Having recently failed to re-take Capitol Hill in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan, the junior legislator from Massachusetts is reduced to circulating petitions on the Internet. But thank God for small favors... intrepid KerryWatchers® should be grateful he's not flogging those horrid canary yellow bike outfits he wears on the Home Shopping Network.

Gunga-John (D, VietNam), having lost the Presidency, bids fair to become the Patron Saint of Lost Causes, leaping half-way onto every DNC meme-wagon that careens his way.

First it was Count Every Vote! Then the DNC's own report came out, concluding there was no fraud in Ohio:

The statistical study of precinct-level data does not suggest the occurrence of widespread fraud that systematically misallocated votes from Kerry to Bush.

• The tendency to vote for Kerry in 2004 was the same as the tendency to vote for the Democratic candidate for governor in 2002 (Hagan). That the pattern of voting for Kerry is so similar to the pattern of voting for the Democratic candidate for governor in 2002 is, in the opinion of the team’s political science experts, strong evidence against the claim that widespread fraud systematically misallocated votes from Kerry to Bush.

• Kerry’s support across precincts also increased with the support for Eric Fingerhut, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, and decreased with the support for Issue 1 (ballot initiative opposing same-sex marriage) and increased with the proportion of African American votes. Again this is the pattern that would be expected and is not consistent with claims of widespread fraud that misallocated votes from Kerry to Bush.

Oops...

Then it was the Downing Street Memo. Kerry led that charge all the way onto the Senate floor... not!

Now it's the hue-and-cry to Fire KKKarl Rove Now!!! Get a load of Mr. Kerry's compelling reasoning:

Karl Rove, your most senior advisor, is embroiled in another controversy – this time for leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent.

Pssst...Senator: it's only a controversy because the Democrats are making it one. Let's look at the facts:

FACT: The special prosecutor has stated that Rove is not a target of the investigation.

Could that possibly be any clearer?

I suppose this petition shouldn't surprise me, coming from a man who just demanded yet another investigation into the allegations in the DSM. Allegations which have already been investigated by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee and the Butler Inquiry. I realize you've been busy lately, but do try to focus?

FACT: The authors of the relevant statute say the law has not been violated:

"We made it exceedingly difficult to violate," Victoria Toensing, who was chief counsel to the Senate intelligence committee when the law was enacted, said of the law.

The e-mail message from Mr. Cooper to his bureau chief describing a brief conversation with Mr. Rove, first reported in Newsweek, does not by itself establish that Mr. Rove knew Ms. Wilson's covert status or that the government was taking measures to protect her.

Based on the e-mail message, Mr. Rove's disclosures are not criminal, said Bruce S. Sanford, a Washington lawyer who helped write the law and submitted a brief on behalf of several news organizations concerning it to the appeals court hearing the case of Mr. Cooper and Judith Miller, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.

"It is clear that Karl Rove's conversation with Matt Cooper does not fall into that category" of criminal conduct, Mr. Sanford said. "That's not 'knowing.' It doesn't even come close."

There has been some dispute, moreover, about just how secret a secret agent Ms. Wilson was.

"She had a desk job in Langley," said Ms. Toensing, who also signed the supporting brief in the appeals court, referring to the C.I.A.'s headquarters. "When you want someone in deep cover, they don't go back and forth to Langley."

Insofar as "leaking her secret identity", Joseph Wilson had his wife's maiden name (which critics maintain was "vitally associated with her cover") posted on his official bio on the Internet.

Louis Libby has testified that it was the media who told him Plame was a CIA agent.

Walter Pincus of the WaPo said in 2004 that he believes his White House source committed no crime in discussing the case with him.

And then there's this enticing little tidbit. In addition to the revelation today that Robert Novak has cooperated with prosecutors (could this be why he, unlike Judith Miller, is not in jail?), we learn:

...a U.S. government official questioned by investigators said Novak specifically asked him whether Plame had some covert status with the CIA. The official told investigators that Novak appeared uncertain whether she was undercover or not. That account, on one hand, might lend credence to the claims by Rove and other Bush administration officials that they did not know Plame was a covert CIA officer. Conversely, however, the fact that Novak asked the question in the first place appeared to indicate that he might have indeed been told Plame was a covert operative, and was seeking confirmation of that fact.

The most interesting (and little-mentioned) fact in all of this is the fact that the NY Times knows who the source is and it is not implausible to think it might be Judith Miller:

Miller also had done extensive reporting on WMD based on secret CIA sources, and Plame worked on WMD for the CIA — it's likely that she knew who Plame was. Kincaid told me that this theory was based on his own analysis of the case, but he also drew my attention to this Washington Post article:

Sources close to the investigation say there is evidence in some instances that some reporters may have told government officials — not the other way around — that Wilson was married to Plame, a CIA employee.

Is Miller refusing to testify because she herself outed Plame? Who knows? One thing is for sure: the press wants to have it both ways — attacking Scott McClellan today for not answering questions about Rove's involvement, but reserving a place of honor for Miller, who has done more to obstruct the investigation of this incident than McClellan has. McClellan deserved the grilling he got today, but journalists deserve an equal grilling when they refuse to divulge information that the public has a right to know.

As I pointed out previously, Miller has a history of leaking sensitive information in federal investigations. Her phone calls to a Muslim group under investigation for terrorist activities tipped them off just in time for them to destroy critical documents just before an impending FBI raid. But Mr. Kerry prefers obscure conspiracy theories:

His clear aim was to discredit that agent’s husband who had dared to challenge the administration in the buildup to the war.

This is ridiculous, for two reasons. First, Rove didn't have to discredit Wilson. That very day, George Tenet was releasing a statement that would do that very thing,. That statement would have been released whether or not Cooper ever talked to Rove. Rove knew Wilson was about to get his comeuppance - there was no need to discredit him.

Secondly, it was Cooper who contacted Rove:

...Cooper originally called Rove — not the other way around — and said he was working on a story on welfare reform. After some conversation about that issue, Luskin said, Cooper changed the subject to the weapons of mass destruction issue, and that was when the two had the brief talk that became the subject of so much legal wrangling. According to Luskin, the fact that Rove did not call Cooper; that the original purpose of the call, as Cooper told Rove, was welfare reform; that only after Cooper brought the WMD issue up did Rove discuss Wilson — all are "indications that this was not a calculated effort by the White House to get this story out."

"Look at the Cooper e-mail," Luskin continues. "Karl speaks to him on double super secret background...I don't think that you can read that e-mail and conclude that what Karl was trying to do was to get Cooper to publish the name of Wilson's wife."

Cooper approached him off the record and Rove, OFF THE RECORD, warned him not to go overboard with hyping Wilson's false yellowcake story:

... on the evening of July 11, 2003, just hours after the Rove-Cooper conversation, then-CIA Director George Tenet released a statement that undermined some of Wilson's public assertions about his report. "Karl knew that that [Tenet] statement was in gestation," says Luskin. "I think a fair reading of the e-mail was that he was trying to warn Cooper off from going out on a limb on [Wilson's] allegations."

The fact that the media buried Wilson's humiliation and the revelation that he had been lying all along was something Rove could hardly have foreseen.

You have a choice to make: Spend the months ahead focused on protecting Karl Rove’s job security or spend them focused on protecting America’s national security.

No Senator, YOU have a choice to make. If you really care about our national security, why don't you keep the promise you made after your defeat in November and bury the hatchet somewhere other than in George Bush's back?

Decency—and the interests of the American people--demand an end to Karl Rove’s days in the White House.

No sir. Decency—and the interests of the American people--demand an end to your destructive and wasteful partisan politics. In case you haven't noticed, there's a war going on.

Related: Sissy Willis sticks it to the MSM.

Update: Heh...:

Where were John Kerry and his liberal cohorts when Sandy Berger, a former high ranking Clinton White House official stole documents from the National Archives by stuffing documents down his pants? Of course, they were no where to be found... For Kerry to come out against Rove now is evidence of nothing more than the bitterness John Kerry retains for his overwhelming defeat at the ballot box.

Got bitterness?

Posted by Cassandra at 04:45 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 28, 2005

KerryWatch®: News Flash

Ladies and Gentlemen, the good citizens of Massachusetts are getting their money's worth out of Senator John F. Kennedy Kerry this year. Not only is he trying to launch yet another time-wasting investigation on the basis of unverified thirdhand hearsay from a set of retyped memos whose originals have been destroyed and which contradict each other in several places, but I am pleased to inform you that the Junior Senator from Massachusetts has taken on a new sport: Xtreme Speechifying.

So don't bother to tune in when The Shrub blathers on tonight - we've already heard what he has to say. Senator Kerry already has a Plan: he likes to call it OPERATION VICTORY THROUGH HOPE.

The reality is that the Bush administration's choices have made Iraq into what it wasn't before the war - a breeding ground for jihadists. Today there are 16,000 to 20,000 jihadists and the number is growing. The administration has put itself - and, tragically, our troops, who pay the price every day - in a box of its own making. Getting out of this box won't be easy, but we owe it to our soldiers to make our best effort.

Finally thanks to the work of great Americans like John F. Kerry, voters can go back to sleep and stop worrying about annoying news stories like this one:

Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com, show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders.

One of the Iraqi memos contains an order from Saddam for his intelligence service to support terrorist attacks against Americans in Somalia. The memo was written nine months before U.S. Army Rangers were ambushed in Mogadishu by forces loyal to a warlord with alleged ties to al Qaeda.

Other memos provide a list of terrorist groups with whom Iraq had relationships and considered available for terror operations against the United States.

Among the organizations mentioned are those affiliated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Ayman al-Zawahiri, two of the world's most wanted terrorists. Zarqawi is believed responsible for the kidnapping and beheading of several American civilians in Iraq and claimed responsibility for a series of deadly bombings in Iraq Sept. 30. Al-Zawahiri is the top lieutenant of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, allegedly helped plan the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist strikes on the U.S., and is believed to be the voice on an audio tape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television Oct. 1, calling for attacks on U.S. and British interests everywhere.

Oh... you mean the unbiased mainstream media didn't report this? Or information like this?

Saddam Hussein granted avowed international terrorists refuge in Baathist Iraq. Terror mastermind Abu Nidal also enjoyed his hospitality. Nidal lived comfortably in Iraq between 1999 and August 2002. As the Associated Press reported on August 21, 2002, Nidal’s Beirut office said he entered Iraq “with the full knowledge and preparations of the Iraqi authorities.” 13 Prior to his relocation, he ran the eponymous Abu Nidal Organization — a Palestinian terror network behind attacks in 20 countries, at least 407 confirmed murders, and some 788 other terror-related injuries. Among other savage acts, Nidal’s group used guns and grenades to attack a ticket counter at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport on December 27, 1985. Another cell in Austria simultaneously assaulted Vienna’s airport, killing 19 people.

Our mission in Iraq is harder because the administration ignored the advice of others, went in largely alone, underestimated the likelihood and power of the insurgency, sent in too few troops to secure the country, destroyed the Iraqi army through de-Baathification, failed to secure ammunition dumps, refused to recognize the urgency of training Iraqi security forces and did no postwar planning.

There you go dismissing our allies again. Largely alone? What "advice" do you speak of? Continue the Clinton administration's policy of doing nothing? Continue France, Russia, and Germany's policies of taking Oil-for-Food kickbacks literally from the mouths of the starving Iraqi people? Yes, we did ignore that advice. And behold the tragic results (via Iraq the Model):

Your editor returned to Iraq in April and May of 2005 for another embedded period of reporting. I could immediately see improvements compared to my earlier extended tours during 2003 and 2004. The Iraqi security forces, for example, are vastly more competent, and in some cases quite inspiring. Baghdad is now choked with traffic. Cell phones have spread like wildfire. And satellite TV dishes sprout from even the most humble mud hovels in the countryside.

Many of the soldiers I spent time with during this spring had also been deployed during the initial invasion back in 2003. Almost universally they talked to me about how much change they could see in the country. They noted progress in the attitudes of the people, in the condition of important infrastructure, in security.

I observed many examples of this myself. Take the two very different Baghdad neighborhoods of Haifa Street and Sadr City. The first is an upper-end commercial district in the heart of downtown. The second is one of Baghdad’s worst slums, on the city’s north edge.

I spent lots of time walking both neighborhoods this spring—something that would not have been possible a year earlier, when both were active war zones, where tanks poured shells into buildings on a regular basis. Today, the primary work of our soldiers in each area is rebuilding sewers, paving roads, getting buildings repaired and secured, supplying schools and hospitals, getting trash picked up, managing traffic, and encouraging honest local governance.

What the establishment media covering Iraq have utterly failed to make clear today is this central reality: With the exception of periodic flare-ups in isolated corners, our struggle in Iraq as warfare is over. Egregious acts of terror will continue—in Iraq as in many other parts of the world. But there is now no chance whatever of the U.S. losing this critical guerilla war.

Someone must pay for this travesty. This is what the President should talk about on national television.

What an utter disaster.

Posted by Cassandra at 12:37 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

KerryWatch®: 'Ere We Go, 'Ere We Go!

When last we left Senator Kerry, The Nyet Offensive had ended with a whimper instead of a bang, its principle member having adjourned for a rousing day of windsurfing. Having failed to retake Capitol Hill in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan, the dashing Senator has now resorted to a devastating blitz of...letter-writing. I have excerpted the juicer bits for your delectation:

The memo indicates that in the summer of 2002, at a time the White House was promising Congress and the American people that war would be their last resort, that they believed military action against Iraq was "inevitable."

...And another British cabinet memo says the decision had not been made. Why don't you ever quote that one, Mr. Kerry?

A memorandum written by Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet office in late July 2002 explicitly states that the Bush administration had made "no political decisions" to invade Iraq, but that American military planning for the possibility was advanced. The memo also said American planning, in the eyes of Mr. Blair's aides, was "virtually silent" on the problems of a postwar occupation.

Not daunted by my searing rebuttal, the Senator dutifully marches on:

The minutes reveal that President "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Well we were hardly going to remove him by asking nicely, were we? And regime change was a policy inherited from the Clinton administration. As I detail in this post, the case for war was made on three points, not one. Your case fails on the incontrovertible fact of what Bush actually said when he made his case to the American people.

Unfortunately for you, there are records of his words and we have since accomplished most of what Mr. Bush said he would do.

Saddam has been removed. Elections have been held and the Constitution is almost complete. WMDs were not found, that is true. However two official inquiries have determined that though the intelligence was flawed, that was what we had available at the the time. Rewriting history, based on future knowledge unavailable back then to suit your political agenda doesn't cut it.

The American people took the warnings that the administration sounded seriously-warnings that were echoed at the United Nations and here in Congress as we voted to give the president the authority to go to war. For the sake of our democracy and our future national security, the public must know whether such warnings were driven by facts and responsible intelligence, or by political calculation.

As I mentioned, two inquiries already examined that question. Why are you determined to re-examine it? The intel was flawed. We have since learned better. Is it your contention that the President of the United States should have gone into the field as a spy and personally gathered better HUMINT? Perhaps on his lunch hour?

These issues need to be addressed with urgency.

Yes. The 2006 elections arejust around the corner, aren't they? Let's pretend for just one second that there IS something here. What will you have accomplished for your country? What will change?

We will still be in Iraq, and it will still not be a good (or honorable) thing to pull out now. American credibility will be irreversibly damaged. The trust of our allies - our true allies - will also be damaged beyond repair, but you've already called them names and belittled them for sticking by us in our time of need while sucking up to nations like France who continue to stab us in the back, so perhaps that doesn't bother you.

You will either put the country through the hell of unproductive impeachment hearings during wartime, or you will manage to get Bush impeached and put Cheney in office. He will choose a viable candidate for 2008 as Vice President and the RNC will now have an heir apparent all lined up for the upcoming Presidential election. Nice work, smart guy.

This remains a dangerous world, with American forces engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other challenges looming in Iran and North Korea.

And the same folks who were reluctant to go to war after 12 years of violated UN sanctions and with a trumped-up, so-called coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought, and the extorted international coalition at our sides are suddenly going to approve going to war against North Korea or Iran when neither of those conditions are present? Interesting premise. Let's do lunch and talk some more.

In this environment, the American public should have the highest confidence that policy makers are using intelligence objectively-never manipulating it to justify war, but always to protect the United States. The contents of the Downing Street Memo undermine this faith and only rigorous Congressional oversight can determine the truth.

Yes, by all means Senator Kerry. Please do explain to the American public just why you are making such a big fuss over "questions" raised by:

...unverifiable thirdhand, uncorroborated hearsay regarding meetings with unnamed sources, quoting the [contradictory in places] speculation of other unamed sources about what George Bush may or may not have been planning, contained in retyped documents whose originals have been destroyed.

We remain especially interested in your answers since both the British Butler Report and the Senate Select Intelligence Committee Report, both of which are freely available to anyone with access to Google, examined the intelligence available to the administration and concluded that though it proved to be flawed, there was no way the administration could have known that, and furthermore that there was no evidence that it was manipulated by the administration nor that there was any pressure applied by the White House to skew the findings.

Given these facts, why do you prefer unattributed quotes from an unverifiable, unofficial document whose original has been destroyed to the results of two government inquiries? It almost begins to seem that you are determined to create trouble.

We urge the committee to complete the second phase of its investigation with the maximum speed and transparency possible, producing, as it did at the end of Phase I, a comprehensive, unclassified report from which the American people can benefit directly.

Interesting that you don't quote any of the results from Phase I. Allow me to do so here:

The Intelligence Community did not accurately or adequately explain to policymakers the uncertainties behind the judgments in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.

In the cases in the NTE where the IC did express uncertainty about its assessments concerning Iraq's WMD capabilities, those explanations suggested, in some cases, that Iraq's capabilities were even greater than the NIE judged. For example, the key judgments of the NIE said "we judge that we are seeing only a portion of Iraq's WMD efforts, owing to Baghdad's vigorous denial and deception efforts. Revelations after the Gulf War starkly demonstrate the extensive efforts undertaken by Iraq to deny information.

The Committee found that none of the analysts or other people interviewed by the Committee said that they were pressured to change their conclusions related to Iraq's links to terrorism. After 9/11, however, analysts were under tremendous pressure to make correct assessments, to avoid missing a credible threat, and to avoid an intelligence failure on the scale of 9/11. As a result, the Intelligence Community's assessments were bold and assertive in pointing out potential terrorist links. For instance, the June 2002 Central Intelligence Agency assessment Iraq and al-Qaida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship was, according to its Scope Note, "purposefully aggressive" in drawing connections between Iraq and al-Qaida in an effort to inform policymakers of the potential that such a relationship existed.

Some would call this intelligent pessimism in the face of incomplete information. Of course hindsight sees it differently, but hindsight was not an option back then, was it? Except for critics of the administration.

The information provided by the Central Intelligence Agency for the terrorism portion of Secretary Powell's speech was carefully vetted by both terrorism and regional analysts.

None of the portrayals of the intelligence reporting included in Secretary Powell's speech differed in any significant way from earlier assessments published by the Central Intelligence Agency.

And let's look at the yellowcake uranium claim, upheld by the Butler report:

...on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government's dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that: The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa was well-founded.

There has been a notable lack of enthusiasm in your party for persuing this line of inquiry. Could it be that they remember the conclusions of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee Report?

Could it be that, unlike you, they did not miss 86% of the Senate votes last year?

That would explain a lot, wouldn't it?

Posted by Cassandra at 08:29 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

June 10, 2005

KerryWatch®: I Am SO Smarter Than Gee-Dumbya! Edition

Well this has just been a cliffhanger of a KerryWatch® Week, and no mistake.

Not one, but three updates in a single seven-day period! The peripatetic Senator from Massachusetts is turning his campaign for the 2008 Presidential seat into an Xtreme sport - we're just breathless with anticipation to see what his next move will be.

Monday we took a naustalgic walk down memory lane as we revisited Senator Kerry's longstanding support for military action against Iraq (predating, I might add, the Bush administration).

Tuesday his supporters waited, hearts a-pounding, for the dashing war hero to take Capitol Hill in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan with a veritable blitzkreig of evidence that there has been a government/mass-media Conspiracy to Conceal The Truth about the Downing Street Memo:

"And it's amazing to me the way it escaped major media discussion. It's not being missed on the Internet."

Poor Senator Kerry... he's going to have to apply himself a bit more if he ever expects to compete with The Shrub... (hat tip, Portia)

But it hadn't "escaped major media." For instance, on May 20, 2005, the New York Times ran the headline, "British Memo On U.S. Plans Fuels Critics." The Washington Post ran a story on it on May 13, and on May 12, the Los Angeles Times reported on a congressional letter, signed by 89 Democrats in the House, to President Bush regarding the memo. And it's been brought up since Kerry's comments by Tim Russert on Meet the Press last Sunday, for example, and Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer during the June 7 confirmation hearing for Zalmay Khalizad to be U.S. ambassador to Iraq.

Of course, if the issue was really about "the truth" Kerry would have also told the town hall audience to keep in mind that, among other things, on July 23, 2002 "regime change" in Iraq had been the official government policy since 1998, that Saddam still had neither accounted for substantial stocks of WMDs nor had he complied with numerous U.N. resolutions--starting with the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire resolution--and that just two months ago former Democratic Senator Charles Robb, co-chairman of the commission that assessed the intelligence failures related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, stated:

We looked very closely at that question. We--every member of the commission was sensitive to the number of questions that had been raised with respect to what we'll call politicization or however you want to describe it, and we examined every single instance that had been referred to in print or otherwise to see if there was any occasion where a member of the administration or anyone else had asked an analyst or anybody else associated with the intelligence community to change a position that they were taking, or whether they felt there was any undue influence. And we found absolutely no instance, and we ran to ground everything that we had on the table. . . . We got a fair amount of information that didn't provide us anything more in this area.

Not to mention that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the 9/11 Commission, and the Butler Inquiry Report have all examined the question of whether there was improper manipulation of intelligence and concluded that there was not. Apparently this is not good enough for Mr. Kerry. I was amused to watch Jon Stewart fence with Colin Powell on the Daily Show last night. Mr. Stewart tried manfully to get poor Colin to admit that going to war had been a mistake - that he'd been lied to shamefully, but there was no joy in Mudville. His frustration was pitiful to behold. Mr. Powell continued to maintain that they acted on the best information they had at the time and that knowing what they knew then, their actions were reasonable.

Stewart was well-nigh apoplexic - he resorted to cutting Powell off in mid-sentence.

Be that as it may, the HVES has been watching The Hill and has seen no signs of an impending attack from Mr. Kerry. Once more the Junior Senator from Massachusetts has let his faithful supporters down. Luckily Ted Kennedy and Common Screams have stepped boldly into the breach.

Why so harsh, dear friends? Perhaps the good Senator is still testing the political breezes?

We were delighted to note that Kerry finally released his military records... to the Boston Globe. Unsurprisingly, the cover piece is written by none other than Michael Kranish, the official Kerry campaign hagiographer:

Senator John F. Kerry, ending at least two years of refusal, has waived privacy restrictions and authorized the release of his full military and medical records.

The records, which the Navy Personnel Command provided to the Globe, are mostly a duplication of what Kerry released during his 2004 campaign for president, including numerous commendations from commanding officers who later criticized Kerry's Vietnam service.

The lack of any substantive new material about Kerry's military career in the documents raises the question of why Kerry refused for so long to waive privacy restrictions. An earlier release of the full record might have helped his campaign because it contains a number of reports lauding his service. Indeed, one of the first actions of the group that came to be known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was to call on Kerry to sign a privacy waiver and release all of his military and medical records.

But Kerry refused, even though it turned out that the records included commendations from some of the same veterans who were criticizing him.

Umm... didn't you just say that two paragraphs ago, Mr. Kranish? Guess you wanted to ram the point home. Of course no one else is being allowed to see these records. What was the point of releasing them? Thomas Lipscomb observes that, contrary to what Kranish says, Kerry has NOT released all his records:

Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has already found a discrepancy confirmed by the Department of the Navy of "at least a hundred pages" missing from those already disclosed by Kerry.

That doesn't sound like "all his records" - it sounds like just what Kranish said it was: not much more than what was already released. Keep in mind that Mr. Kranish is the same man who lied about George Eliott's "retraction" last summer, so his credibility isn't terribly high. I agree with Jim Geraghty that this is pretty much a dead horse. It has provided just about all the amusement value that can be eked from it, but we are never going to see the disputed parts of Kerry's record.

Like the good Senator's supporters, faithful KerryWatchers® will just have to learn to live with disappointment.

Posted by Cassandra at 05:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 07, 2005

KerryWatch®: The Good Senator Goes AWOL?

Yesterday as we left the intrepid Senator from Massachusetts, our dashing war hero was poised to retake Capitol Hill. Rambo-like, he was loaded for bear. His ammunition?

A so-called "bombshell": a 'smoking gun' of a memo revealing allegations I remember reading several years ago (but which somehow mysteriously escaped the good Senator's notice - perhaps because he was AWOL from the Senate?). Revelation followed shocking revelation:

- gasp! pResident Evil had already made up his mind to go to war! (Note to self: is this a crime? especially considering regime change was a strategy inherited from the Clinton administration, which typically did nothing to further the policy it set. At any rate, regardless of his intentions, he still had to get Congress to buy off on the entire scheme. So even if it could be proven, his subjective intent is neither relevant nor criminally actionable.)

- even worse - Intelligence was manipulated to make the case for war! Mein Gott im Himmel! that man is a Teufelhund! To think that the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Butler Inquiry, which all examined the very same question in minute detail were wrong! We must, apparently, redo the entire process yet again. And not only did the President manipulate our intel, he somehow got his hands on foreign intel and either exercised undue influence or manipulated the heck out of that too! The man is a genius! Err...when he isn't a bumbling idiot... a mere figurehead for CheneyHalliburtonEnronExxon. I mean, we all know who is really running this country.

- And the most damning of all, Iraq was never a threat! Or no more of a threat than Libya, Iran, or North Korea. Just listen to the transparent lies of this RNC official as Tim Russert nails him to the wall last Sunday on Meet the Press. I tell you, the Rethuglicans have nowhere to hide:

Russert: The primary rationale given for the war, however, was the elimination of weapons of mass destruction. And again I refer you to the memo of the prime minister's meeting. "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than half that of Libya, North Korea and Iran."

Mehlman:...I would also, though, disagree, as I said a moment ago, with the notion that Iraq was somehow less of a threat. Iran and North Korea hadn't invaded their neighbors. Iran and North Korea hadn't used weapons of mass destruction. Iran and North Korea hadn't, in the same way that Saddam Hussein had, been paying off suicide bombers in Israel and in the Palestinian territories. Iran and North Korea are serious challenges. So was Saddam Hussein, and removing him makes the world safer, makes America safer.

Indeed. We all feel safer knowing that John Kerry keeps his promises to stop divisive partisan bickering, eliminate wasteful government spending, and help America win the war on terror:

"When I go back (to Washington) on Monday, I am going to raise the issue," he said of the memo, which has not been disputed by either the British or American governments.

And by now, it should be obvious to any thinking American just how a redundant inquiry based on a leaked memo from a foreign intelligence official quoting, at third-hand and without attribution, conjecture from unnamed sources who met with other unnamed sources to guess at the intent and future actions of Saddam Hussein and George Bush will accomplish just that. That's what I call an ironclad case. Nossir, you just can't revisit the same question too often during a time of war.

I slept soundly last night, imagining the dashing Senator charging onto the Senate floor, the Downing Street Memo in his hand, demanding answers from the high and mighty...

Umm....err... except I can find no mention, anywhere, that he did raise the issue. Thankfully, John Conyers' blog cleared that little question right up:

Word out is that Kerry will not speak today because Congress is not in session but on Tuesday he will take the floor and raise this issue. Will try to get some more info. In the meantime, VelvetRevolution has contacted the heads of the following orgs and asked them to show their backbone by joining with this campaign: People for the American Way, MoveOn, NOW, NAACP, Common Cause, New Democrat Network, True Majority, and Democracy for America. Feel free to email them and ask them to join.

So today promises to be very entertaining. And speaking of promises...

Sacre bleu, mes amis! I learn, via Cao, that while I was away Jean Fraud has signed his Form 180! Le jour de gloire, at last, she has arrived...sort of:

During an interview yesterday with Globe editorial writers and columnists, the former Democratic presidential nominee was asked if had signed Form SF 180, authorizing the Department of Defense to grant access to all his military records. ''I have signed it," Kerry said. Then, he added that his staff was ''still going through it" and ''very, very shortly, you will have a chance to see it."

The devil is usually in the details. With Kerry, it's also in the dodges and digressions. After the interview, Kerry's communications director, David Wade, was asked to clarify when Kerry signed SF 180 and when public access would be granted. Kerry drifted over to join the conversation, immediately raising the confusion level. He did not answer the question of when he signed the form or when the entire record will be made public.

Several e-mails later, Wade conveyed the following information: On Friday, May 20, Kerry obtained a copy of Form 180 and signed it. ''The next step is to send it to the Navy, which will happen in the next few days. The Navy will then send out the records," e-mailed Wade. Kerry first said he would sign Form 180 when pressed by Tim Russert during a Jan. 30 appearance on ''Meet the Press."

We can only hope that one day, we shall reach the Promised Land. I am not at all certain that we will ever see all of the good Senator's records.

Only time will tell. We can only hope that, having urged President Bush to release his records (which he did), Monsieur Kerrie will keep his word and reciprocate.

What is politics, after all, but the triumph of hope over experience?

Posted by Cassandra at