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"Why did Cheney bring up the issue?"
Cheney did not "bring it up". He said it in response to a
question put to him in a Town Hall meeting. This is the only
time Cheney has mentioned it publicly.
Bottom line, this was done intentionally by Kerry/Edwards.
Had they only brought it it up only once, perhaps you could
make a plausible case that Kerry/Edwards had no partisan
political agenda. That they said it twice in a week strains
all credibility. And consider that neither Kerry or Edwards has
mentioned any other individual when discussing this issue. Not
Senator Dick Gephardt's lesbian Daughter, nor any of the openly
gay members of Congress. Not once.
Most Americans consider Kerry's actions inappropriate.
regardless of the current spin. And Kerry claims he has
superior diplomatic skills, yet he has completely misread the
initial reaction & blundered further in his response to the
outrage. The damage is done.....
+++++
Instapundit - FOR ONCE, I'M IN THE MAJORITY:
Fifty-seven percent say being homosexual is the way people are, not the way they choose to be - up from its level a decade ago. But likely voters by 2-1 also call it inappropriate for Kerry, when asked that question, to have noted that Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbian. Cheney himself mentioned his daughter's sexual orientation in a campaign appearance in August. . . .
Indeed only among one group, Kerry's own supporters, does a majority (52 percent) say it was appropriate for him to mention Mary Cheney. Among Democrats, 51 percent call it inappropriate; that rises to 64 percent of independents, 80 percent of Republicans and 82 percent of Bush supporters.
I said it was a mistake.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2004/story?id=169306&page=1
Will U.S. Elections Pass the "Global Test"?
by Thomas Kilgannon
October 15, 2004
Dulles, Virginia – Next month, the United States will have the distinction of having joined the elite club of countries like Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka whose elections are scrutinized and critiqued by international election monitors. It is a national disgrace that is openly advocated by leftist activists and a group of congressional Democrats.
After UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan turned down a request from ten Democrat Congressmen to send poll watchers (he said the petition had to originate with the executive branch of government) the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) gleefully accepted a similar invitation channeled through the State Department.
Soon afterward a Canadian newspaper headline gloated – accurately – "Third World Monitors U.S. Elections."
The OSCE has already dispatched a group of five “election experts” to the United States. There really wouldn't be a problem with the OSCE observing our election if they were here as observers; that is, to learn how democracy works and witness democratic elections in the country that does it better than any other.
But that is not the case. This group of international busy bodies is in the United States to cast judgment and provide support and cover to a hopelessly disgruntled group of partisan Democrats who, if George Bush is re-elected, will contest the election on any and all grounds. In debate on the House floor, Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas said a coalition of "some 10,000 or more lawyers" are ready to challenge election results that favor Republicans.
In its preliminary report, the OSCE began laying the foundation from which liberal partisans can contest the November 2nd results. During their visit here, the agenda of OSCE monitors was overwhelmingly stacked with liberal organizations: Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, NAACP, People for the American Way, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, among others. The group met with eight representatives from Congress – all but one of them were Democrats.
The OSCE echoed Democrat complaints about the Help America Vote Act which established the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). "The establishment of the EAC was noticeably delayed," the OSCE report stated. The report also complained that without a national election guru in Washington, Secretaries of State "were left without needed guidelines, and found it impossible to avail themselves of the funding for new voting technology."
The OSCE carped that voter identification is made more difficult because Americans are not required to carry a "national identification document." This group of outsiders predicted "greater controversy" in the 2004 election than there was in 2000 because voting machines do not "produce the necessary paper trail."
In its history, the OSCE has given its seal of approval to the re-election of national dictators who garner more than 90 percent of the vote. Given that, you might think it would commend the U.S. electoral structure as a system in which vibrant, competitive races take place which often produce close, and sometimes very close, results.
The group also charged that states which allow overseas voters to voluntarily waive their right to a secret vote by faxing a marked ballot are “not consistent with…the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and OSCE commitments.” What the OSCE sees as a violation of a United Nations declaration is what we in America call freedom of choice. If the OSCE demanded we apply Kofi Annan's standards, thousands of U.S. military personnel living and fighting abroad could be deprived of their right to vote.
The OSCE report bemoans the fact that the U.S. has no “central election body” like the IRS which would efficiently administer the presidential election. Our Founders called that federalism and they purposely decentralized the voting process. We believe that citizens can better administer elections at the local level than can bureaucrats in Washington, much less Third World novices. Despite some glitches here and there, voters, poll workers, party monitors and the media apply checks and balances against one another to ensure the integrity of U.S. elections.
These European election police claim authority to sit in judgment of our elections because the State Department consented to the Copenhagen Document, an obscure diplomatic agreement, even though their own report states, "the absence of a central body administering elections in the U.S. creates a lack of clarity as to which authority…should provide accreditation to international observers."
No government authority should have invited international monitors to cast judgment on our elections. They are here only because Democrats, should they lose, will do all they can to embarrass their country. They have submitted our elections to a "global test" and rigged it so that we will fail. Their hatred for George W. Bush has taken them beyond the extreme.
Thomas P. Kilgannon serves as the president of Freedom Alliance.
"Tell us what Bush has to say about her."
Prior to Kerry/Edwards smarmy acts in the debates, I am
unaware of Bush publicly commenting on Mary Cheney's sexual
preference.
Can you link me to any such instances?
Ö¿Ö
Note the almost total absence of reporting by the MSM on
the near total success of the Afghan elections.......
AFGHAN ELECTIONS POST-MORTEM: From who else but our dashing Afghanistan correspondent:
# Posted 8:46 AM by Patrick Belton
OXBLOG
Two of my Afghan friends and colleagues arrived in Washington, DC yesterday. Their satisfaction and enthusiasm with the elections in Afghanistan can hardly be overstated.
Both showed off the fading indelible ink on their thumbs (one of them had initially gone to a polling place where the pens proved delible, but the mistake was caught early and the voters sent to a different polling station). One said, eyes twinkling: “It was a miracle. There were hundreds of us, and everyone was standing in one straight line. Afghans never stand in line, they always crush in together. But that day, we all stood in line and waited to vote.” The other pulled out his mobile phone and proudly showed the digital photo he’d taken in the privacy of the polling booth: a ballot with a big black checkmark next to Hamid Karzai’s picture.
It’s unsurprising that two young, married Kabulis who work for a Western NGO and who backed Karzai would find the election satisfying. They have everything to gain from a continuation of the policies of the last three years. But after the initial shock of the washable ink and the soon-retracted opposition boycott, the reports out of Afghanistan have suggested that most Afghans throughout the country shared my friends’ enthusiasm. The electoral process was extraordinarily popular. When all is said and done, with a mere 43 purported irregularities under investigation by the joint UN-Afghan panel (from over 5,000 polling stations) and all the major opposition candidates committed to accepting the panel’s findings, it is hard to imagine the delible-ink scandal leaving an indelible blot on the Karzai presidency.
The best news of all, of course, was the remarkably limited violence. On September 24, I argued that the former Taliban and other violent malcontents had already lost their chance to derail the election. In the event, they were almost entirely inactive. A Taliban spokesman afterward claimed that this election-day restraint was a deliberate policy to spare the lives of fellow Muslims. Besides this unprecedented goodwill, a few other factors were probably at work:
• The rebels in southern Afghanistan are not meaningfully a Taliban resurgence (as I argued in July), but a loosely organized ethnic-Pashtun insurgency. As the election approached and Qanuni seemed likely to force Karzai into a runoff, community leaders throughout the Pashtun south realized that if their people didn’t make it to the polls, they might end up with a Panjshiri Tajik president. I imagine at this point they made it clear to the insurgents that everyone in their villages would be voting, for the good of the Pashtuns. And the insurgents blinked first.
• Karzai has been working hard at dialogue with the Pashtun insurgent leaders, particularly those from Gulbuddin Hekmetyar’s Hizb-i-Islami party. It’s possible that many more have been won over or bought off than we know about.
• According to my friends’ reports, Pakistan’s President Musharraf quietly but forcefully increased security along the Afghan border and in Afghan refugee camps in the weeks leading up to the election. This did a lot to keep out al-Qaeda troublemakers. (Iyad Allawi, take note).
• The insurgents dedicated significant resources, perhaps even a majority of their resources, to attempted attacks in Kabul which were thwarted by extraordinary security measures.
Whatever its causes, their failure is a major blow to the credibility of the insurgency, and for all its flaws, this election is a heartening victory. The Afghans are rightly proud and excited; they deserve much praise for this imperfect but important step toward stable democratic government. I’ve also talked to Afghans who feel that the U.S. government deserves more credit than I’ve been inclined to offer. They point to the role of Zalmay Khalilzad (American ambassador and Karzai’s éminence grise) in keeping the warlords on board when Karzai began throwing his weight around. As one rumor has it, all three major Panjshiri ministers tried to resign when Marshal Fahim was dropped as vice-president, but Khalilzad summoned them to his residence for a blunt remonstration. “Without America, you would still be isolated in Panjshir, alone and on the defensive. Do you want to go back there?” He’s also been making the rounds of all the opposition candidates, doing what he can to make sure they’re reconciled to a Karzai victory. Khalilzad’s success as horse-trader-in-chief deserves acknowledgment, and reflects well on the administration that appointed him.
But America’s larger failure in Afghanistan remains: we have not committed enough troops to secure the country, nor managed to convince other countries to commit their troops. Our initial policy of Occupation Lite was reasonable, even prudent – no one wanted to trigger the historically familiar Afghan response to foreign armies. By last year, however, all sides recognized that we were well below the troop threshold that the people of Afghanistan would tolerate. When asked, most Afghans responded that they would welcome more foreign troops if that would bring some accountability to the local warlords. NATO accordingly committed itself to expanding ISAF – and did next to nothing. America had committed the bulk of its armed forces to Iraq, and continued to focus its diplomatic attention on getting support for the war there, not on coaxing uncertain allies into securing Afghanistan.
This election is not a vindication of that policy. It would be an understandable but grave error to mistake the lack of violence surrounding this poll for a stable security situation in Afghanistan. While I don’t share the unrelenting gloominess of Human Rights Watch’s pre-election report, they correctly document that the threat of violence remains the primary political backdrop throughout Afghanistan (in particular for Afghans outside Kabul). As most commentators on Afghanistan recognize, the coming parliamentary poll will be far more precarious than the recently concluded elections. Without major improvements between now and then, the enthusiasm and success attending Afghanistan’s first election will be matched by the disillusionment and failure of its second.
In the first place, the south-eastern insurgency isn’t quite as depleted as its feeble voter intimidation efforts would suggest. Many of the Pashtun leaders who united to prevent a Qanuni or Dostum presidency are still hostile to America and sympathetic to the rebels. In the parliamentary elections, without the clear goal of maintaining a fairly popular co-ethnic president in power, the violent rejectionists will face less intra-Pashtun opposition. If they rally, project their power out of remote provinces like Zabul, Uruzgan, and Khost, and frighten voters away from the polls in populous Helmand and Kandahar, the insurgents could actually threaten the legitimacy of the parliament.
But violent rejection by Pashtun insurgents has never been the main threat to peaceful elections in Afghanistan. The greater, more general threat is from warlords who violently support their client candidates, especially in the ethnically divided north. In the recently concluded presidential campaign, violence of this sort was limited, because it would have been ineffective. It was never likely to affect Karzai’s overwhelming lead, one way or the other; and when Fahim may have been tempted to try it, a prompt and forceful response from Khalilzad and NATO deterred him. In the south, Pashtun tribal differences were set aside in the attempt to get out the vote for Karzai.
The game will be entirely different in the parliamentary elections, with scores of local contests at stake and the overall outcome anything but pre-ordained. In constituencies dominated by a single militia commander, any other candidates risk persecution and assassination. In constituencies divided between rival commanders, the race would be real but potentially bloody. With dozens of close races around the country, a great deal will hang on ballot irregularities and perceived interference at the polls. If the parliamentary elections are monitored as weakly as the presidential election, such disputes are all the more likely to be resolved by force.
My friend Mike wryly writes from Kabul, “I get the feeling that it's easy to arrive in Afghanistan, spend a few days looking around, and then confidently announce that the next few months is absolutely critical to the nations’ future, etc etc.” Still, I do think the next months will be as crucial as any time since the Taliban fell. We have a short window in which to prepare for the parliamentary elections. Meanwhile, Karzai has repeatedly said that “the time of horse-trading is over” and that he does not expect warlords to have a strong voice in his cabinet. The big question of the coming winter is whether he means what he says; and whether the warlords will accept a disarmed and diminished role.
So what to do? First: we need to get more troops in there to back up Karzai and Khalilzad – their bold strategy of checking the warlords will sooner or later meet a forceful challenge, especially if they do push the disarmament program. These troops will have to come primarily from Europe. (Russia and India, two countries who at one point considered sending troops to Iraq, are both non-starters in Afghanistan). Fortunately, many countries that wouldn’t consider sending troops to Iraq could be talked into reinforcing Afghanistan, especially since the first election proved to be so very un-apocalyptic. Europe has a strong interest in stemming the flow of Afghan opium and refugees. The bad news for John Kerry is that this “internationalization” probably wouldn’t free up many US soldiers – most of the American soldiers in Afghanistan are chasing bin Laden and the Taliban, a task that neither Kerry nor Bush is likely to “outsource.” But more European troops could be invaluable in the coming election campaigns, to protect journalists and opposition party candidates, and to weaken rumors that America is rigging Afghan elections to its own ends.
Second: we need many more election monitors, much better election security (including stepped-up disarmament and demobilization), and an extensive voter education program. Parliamentary elections are more complex than presidential elections, and we should expect more (and more effective) attempts at fraud. Countering this will require increased funding and attention from foreign donors. Security should be provided by Afghan national troops and police where feasible, by foreign troops where necessary, and by warlord militias as rarely as possible.
Third: we need a counter-poppy strategy that is also pro-farmer. Stepped-up interdiction is essential; Karzai should use his strengthened position in the wake of elections to take on the drug lords as well as the warlords in his country, lest it turn into a narco-state. But aggressive eradication strategies will turn rural Afghans against the occupation and the Kabul government. We may hope that this year’s glutted market and price collapse will lead to fewer hectares of poppy cultivated next year. But the primary standard for success in the next few years should be increased hectares of alternative crops and better Afghan agricultural processing facilities, with diminished poppy cultivation as a secondary, dependent indicator. Until there are genuine alternative income sources for rural Afghans, we can’t start ploughing up the poppy fields.
Finally: the United States should be prepared for Hamid Karzai to lose the next presidential election. The enthusiasm with which Afghans are embracing elections recalls nothing so much as the first electoral rounds in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. There, the bubble of expectations surrounding democracy was quickly deflated by harsh economic realities, and (to the horror of many in the West) the second round of elections went to former Communists. It’s easy to imagine a similar scenario playing out in Afghanistan at the end of Karzai’s term, with a disillusioned, still-impoverished electorate responding to the nationalism of a former warlord. The first reports from the vote-counting have Qanuni at 17 percent, compared to 15 percent for Abdul Rashid Dostum. We’ll see how things look when all the ballots have been counted. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we see one of the two succeed in four years. As we negotiate the roadblocks of the next few years, we should keep such a contingency always in mind, and not back ourselves into a corner where Karzai becomes indispensable. There’d be no quicker way to dispel Afghans’ enthusiasm for democracy than to foolishly rig the election in Karzai’s favor next time.
(N.B. Many thanks to Mike, by the way, whose dispatches from the frontline have kept me up on events despite the fact that I’m out of the country. His analyses combine equally keen insight and humor, as for example:
“My favorite election quote to date comes from our Uzbek friend General Dostum, at a recent election rally: ‘It will be clear very soon who is a warlord and who is the people’s lord.’ Because ‘people’s lord’ has such a nice, democratic ring to it.”)
Oil-for-Food IS the Smoking Gun
Roger L Simon
Those in denial about the links between Saddam and Terrorism... vast proportions of the mainstream media and the huge numbers of Americans (mainly Democrats) that have been deluded by them... ought to read The Scotsman this morning:
<<<The PFLP [People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine], whose history of terrorism dates back to the "black September" hijackings of 1970, was personally vetted by Saddam to receive oil vouchers worth 40 million British pounds.
The deal has been uncovered by US investigators, trawling millions of pages of documents showing a network of diplomats bribed by Saddam's regimes, and political parties who qualified for backhanded payments from Baghdad.
The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which is still working its way through 20,000 boxes of documents from Saddam's Baath party discovered only recently, found a list of pressure groups bankrolled by Saddam.
Using the United Nations' own oil-for-food scheme - ironically intended as a sanction to control the behaviour of his dictatorship - Saddam gave Awad Ammora & Partners, a Syrian company, two million barrels of oil.
Documents handed over to US authorities by a former Iraqi oil minister only four months ago show that this was a front for the PFLP - which was then embarked on a spate of car bombings aimed at Israeli officials.
The Iraqi records show only one six-month period - suggesting the payments could go on for much longer. While some allocations to the likes of Russian political parties were not cashed in, the PFLP oil deal was carried out in full.>>>>
Is this surprising? Not to anyone who has been following the scandal surrounding the UN Oil-for-Food program. When the history of this period is written, the likes of The New York Times, Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times will look peculiarly disgraceful for this reason. Claudia Rosett who has been covering this matter continually for the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere deserves the Pulitzer for at times being a lone voice (accompanied by a few bloggers who have virtually no investigative facilities) in this matter. (via Power Line)
http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2004/10/oilforfood_is_t.php
Debate, Declaim, Debacle
By DAVID BROOKS
SCHIEFFER: And our first question goes to Senator Kerry. Sir, your spending plans will cost over a trillion dollars. Your combined tax plans will cost $500 billion. How are you going to balance the budget?
KERRY: Bob, I'm glad you asked me that question, but before I dodge it I'd like to thank you for moderating this debate, I'd like to thank Arizona State University for being such wonderful hosts and I'd like to thank Dick Cheney's daughter for being a lesbian - in case anybody didn't know.
Bob, as you know, this nation is on the brink of an apocalyptic catastrophe. Civilization as we know it is hanging on by a thread. Our culture has collapsed, our economy is in tatters, the human spirit is extinguished, children never laugh, God is dead, and families like Dick Cheney's are ashamed of their daughters, one of whom is a lesbian. All of this is because of George Bush.
Did you know that right here in Arizona the average share of the national debt on a per capita basis is rising faster than the inverse of the median lost wages ratio of the typical swing voter in Ohio, Missouri and Florida combined?
Bob, when I'm president, we're going to have a president as gloomy as this country should be. But the difference is that I have a plan to balance the budget. In fact I have seven plans. Seven and a half if you count the one I was working on in the limo, not even counting subclauses. When I'm president, our country is going to marry a really rich country, which will pay for everything. Thank you.
SCHIEFFER: Mr. President?
BUSH: You need a plan. I know that. I'm president. I wake up every day looking for a plan. In fact, I supported Mitch McConnell's plan. But my opponent voted to raise taxes 1,500 gazillion bazillion times. He even voted for some of my budgets, which have created deficits as far as the eye can see! He's a liberal!
The first thing we need to do is cut back. I'm not going to have a flu shot this year. I'm not even going to take a Tylenol. I'm going to have a root canal right here on this stage without Novocain. But we also need to declare an international war on deficits.
I'm excited about 19-year-old girls in Afghanistan who are voting in favor of the line-item veto for the first time ever. I'm excited about the millions of Iraqis who have been liberated from Saddam's Hussein's trial lawyers and their frivolous lawsuits.
SCHIEFFER: According to the prearranged rules of this debate, each candidate will now have two minutes to spew forth sentimental blather in order to connect with the American people.
KERRY: Thank you Bob. I'm a Catholic. I was an altar boy. In Nativity plays I was usually cast as one of the posts holding up the manger. I know that a lot of people are tired of politicians who just tell them what they want to hear. America, I want to look you in the eye and pledge I will never pander to you.
Spirituality is important to me. I've always felt that we humans are insignificant maggots scuttling across the muck of the universe, and that life itself is just a meaningless moment of agony between the suffocating stench of the womb and the foul decay of the grave.
SCHIEFFER: Thanks for that uplifting message. Mr. President?
BUSH: America, we've been through a lot together. Imagine how bad things would be if I'd made any mistakes. But we've come through it.
We haven't enforced the Dred Scott decision. And what about my timber company? Can you believe the networks? Oh, never mind. Do you want some wood? How late does this go, anyway? I'm losing it.
SCHIEFFER: As I was driving in tonight one thing occurred to me: All three of us are surrounded by strong women. What the hell are we doing up here? Why aren't they running the country?
KERRY: Bob, it's true that I am married. She's my second wife, to be precise. Can't recall her name at the moment, but she's fully funded. And I've got two beautiful daughters. Heterosexuals, both of them.
I want to tell you about my family unit and what it means to me. We're in the 79th percentile in most demographic categories. Our compatibility fitness score is within the standard deviation for median households worldwide. ...
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
delete duplicate
UNFIT TO COMMAND
E P I LO G U E
John Kerry never saw them coming: not the book, the ads, or the
250 veterans of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. When the DRUDGE REPORT broke the story, an enraged spokesperson who was traveling with Kerry told DRUDGE, “They hired a goddamn private investigator to dig up trash!”
1 The next day, Senator John McCain, without having ever studied the charges, called the Swiftees “dishonest and dishonorable.”
2 Several days later, the New York Times declared the group to be a “shadow party” of the GOP.3
None of these unjustified attacks mattered to the Swiftees. They knew these attacks were not true. But more important, none of it mattered to the American people who wanted to find out the truth for themselves. In a few weeks, Unfit for Command was #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list, #1 on BarnesandNoble.com, and then #1 on the New York Times list for four weeks in a row. And even though in those early days when the Swift Boat vets could only afford to buy airtime in a handful of markets, polls showed that roughly half of Americans already saw or knew of the ads.
The truth was out.
From Minor Annoyance to Full-Scale Attack
At first, the Kerry campaign tried to treat the book and the ads as an irritation. They ignored the charges; dodged questions. It didn’t work. The Kerry camp then launched an orchestrated plan to discredit the Swift Boat vets. Television stations that aired the ads were threatened
with lawsuits. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was accused of being run and funded by Republicans. The Kerry camp “googled” coauthor Jerry Corsi and used his statements in an Internet discussion forum to attack his character. They accused co-author John O’Neill of holding a thirty-year-plus vendetta against John Kerry. They demanded that Regnery, the book’s publisher, pull the book off the shelves.
None of it worked.
Now the Kerry campaign is engaged in an all-out effort to brand the vets as liars, even though they do not have any evidence that the vets lied about the charges. The Kerry camp is hoping that if they repeat it often enough, Americans will come to accept it. But so far, this strategy hasn’t worked either. Indeed, it may already be too late. We believe that truth has won.
The Liberal Media Falls in Step
The liberal mainstream media employed a parallel strategy. First, they ignored the Swift Boat vets, and then dismissed the charges. All the while, they gave tremendous play to those attacking President Bush. The NBC Today Show, for example, gave Kitty Kelley’s anti-Bush book three straight mornings of airtime, but refused to interview the authors of Unfit for Command even once. NBC was more than willing to provide a forum for an author whose chief source denied the book’s account, but they ignored Unfit for Command even though the latter relied on documented evidence and multiple eyewitness accounts from veterans who had signed affidavits.
Then Dan Rather and CBS enjoyed a holiday from the truth. They proclaimed that they had documents criticizing President Bush’s National Guard service, charges that were accepted as fact by the mainstream media and widely reported. Even when it was quickly and universally concluded that the documents were forgeries, CBS stuck by their story for weeks. While CBS dismissed the meticulously documented Swift Boat charges, they continued to defend their fraudulent documents until poor ratings made it impossible to do so. Perhaps the most telling example of the liberal media’s bias was the condescending manner in which they treated the Swift Boat veterans.
Pat Oliphant’s cartoon depicting them as illiterate drunks4 was an insult to veterans old and young. And yet, there was virtually no media outcry. On the NewsHour, Tom Oliphant declared that Unfit for Command was not up to journalistic standards.5 From what we’ve seen in the press, we believe the book’s standards are higher.
In this epilogue, our goal is to review the key arguments of the book that have been under attack and the statements the Kerry camp has made in response to the charges. There are still many unanswered questions. We are confident that after reviewing the summary and documentation, as well as Kerry’s statements, readers will conclude that the charges in the book are not a “pack of lies” as Kerry claimed.
Unfit for Command presents serious charges backed up with serious research. We intend for this epilogue to reinforce that conclusion.
Epilogue 3
The Purple Heart Hunter
Unfit for Command charged that John Kerry’s first Purple Heart involved an accidentally self-inflicted superficial wound suffered on a training mission—the “Boston Whaler Incident.” The book asserts that Kerry launched an M-79 grenade too close to some rocks along the shore, causing a tiny piece of shrapnel to lodge loosely in his arm.
The Kerry camp’s first salvo was to charge that the physician quoted in Unfit for Command, Dr. Louis Letson, was not the physician who treated John Kerry. In the letter written by Marc Elias, general counsel of the Kerry campaign, to various television stations planning to air the first Swift Boat Veterans for Truth commercials, Mr. Elias placed Dr. Letson’s name in quotation marks, subtly raising doubt about Louis Letson’s qualifications. Mr. Elias also charged that Dr. Letson did not attend Kerry’s wound because Dr. Letson’s name did not appear on Kerry’s sick call sheet. Instead, Mr. Elias noted, the person who signed the medical report was J.C. Carreon, since deceased. The Kerry camp contended that Dr. Letson was lying in his affidavit when he claimed that Kerry’s wound was superficial and that the shrapnel was removed with tweezers, the injury requiring no more medical treatment than the application of topical antiseptic and a band-aid.6
Dr. Letson quickly replied that J.C. Carreon was a lower-ranking corpsman who regularly assisted him at the sickbay and affirmed his initial report. Many vets who served at Cam Ranh Bay came forward to confirm that Dr. Letson was indeed the division’s physician. Furthermore, Dr. Letson had approached his local Democratic Party chairman about Kerry’s self-inflicted wound even before the controversy began. As for the hostile fire, those on the mission with Kerry, including Retired Rear Admiral William L. Schachte, the officer who commanded the Boston Whaler that evening, all maintained there had been no enemy fire.
4 Epilogue
Kerry’s surrogates next claimed that Schachte was lying, and that he was not on the boat. But Schachte in an in-depth interview with reporter Robert Novak, proved his credibility:7 “Kerry nicked himself with a M-79 [grenade launcher].”
Schachte said in a telephone interview from his home in Charleston, S.C. He said, “Kerry requested a Purple Heart.” Schachte, also a lieutenant junior grade, said he was in command of the small boat called a Boston whaler or skimmer, with Kerry aboard in his first combat mission in the Vietnam War.
The third crew member was an enlisted man, whose name Schachte did not remember.
Two enlisted men who appeared at the podium with Kerry at the Democratic National Convention in Boston have asserted that they were alone in the small boat with Kerry, with no other officer present. Schachte said it “was not possible” for Kerry to have gone out alone so soon after joining the swift boat command in late November 1968.
Kerry supporters said no critics of the Democratic presidential nominee ever were aboard a boat with him in combat. Washington lawyer Lanny Davis has contended that Schachte was not aboard the Boston whaler and says the statement that Schachte was aboard in Unfit for Command undermines that critical book’s credibility.8 (emphasis added)
Epilogue 5
Novak also interviewed Swift Boat veterans Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, two Kerry supporters who claimed to be aboard the skimmer that night. But neither Zaladonis nor Runyon has ever asserted that they saw enemy fire. Novak also interviewed Tedd Peck and Mike Voss who confirmed to him that Schachte was the originator of the technique to use the skimmer in missions designed to flush the Viet Cong out on the banks of the waterways along the Mekong River so larger boats could move in and destroy them; both men also confirmed to Novak that Schachte was always aboard the skimmer when it was used in such missions.
Unable to discredit the rear admiral’s account, the Kerry camp then engaged in an ad hominem assault. The strongly pro-Kerry Media- Matters.org, for instance, noted that Admiral Schachte had contributed $8,500 to federal candidates or national political organizations since 1997, of which $6,750 went to Republican candidates or the Republican Party, including donations of $1,000 to George Bush in each of his 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns.9 To leftist critics, Admiral Schachte’s political contributions disqualified him from giving a truthful affidavit.
As the controversy over the first Purple Heart progressed, a previously overlooked passage from Douglas Brinkley’s campaign biography came to light. The date of the skimmer incident was December 2, 1968. According to Brinkley, Kerry had written in his private journals that on December 11, 1968, just after he turned twenty five, his crew had not yet come under enemy fire, even though the date was nine days after the skimmer incident, when Kerry had claimed he was wounded by enemy fire.
Regarding the events of December 11, 1968, Kerry wrote the following journal entry:
<<<They pulled away from the pier at Cat Lo with spirits high, feeling satisfied with the way things were going for them. They had no lust for battle, but they also were not afraid. Kerry wrote in his notebook, “A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn’t been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven’t been shot at are allowed to be cocky. 10>>>
Taking at face value Kerry’s description of December 11, 1968, he and his crew had not yet experienced enemy fire, a statement that sounds like an implicit admission that the injury for the first Purple Heart was not suffered under enemy fire.
The Final Admission
John Hurley, veterans coordinator for the Kerry campaign has now admitted that it is possible that Kerry’s first Purple Heart was awarded for an unintentional self-inflicted wound.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS FOR KERRY
1. What really happened in that incident on December 2, 1968?
2. How did you end up getting this Purple Heart? From whom?
3. Why was a Purple Heart issued only after Hibbard and
Schachte left?’
LOL! I provide factual evidence from a well known expert to
prove Kerry & Edwards lied & pandered.
You have ZERO expertise & ZERO evidence to support your POV.
So what do you do?
You call me names & claim I have no understanding of stem
cell therapy.
Spoken like a hard left leaning, inflexible ideologue. I
seriously doubt you have a clue how out of touch with reality
you appear.
"Diplomacy begins with honesty."
Diplomacy is the art of forwarding your position without
offending your opponent.
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
diplomacy
1 : the art and practice of conducting negotiations between nations
2 : skill in handling affairs without arousing hostility : TACT
"I don't understand the brouhaha."
Kerry loudly proclaims he would be a superior diplomat.
Homosexuality is an issue that has a large partisan divide. An
accomplished diplomat should be able to answer the following
question & not set off a huge firestorm.....
"Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?"
Kerry's answer has millions of Americans legitimately upset.
That is a diplomatic failure no matter how you slice it. Even
his response shows a lack of diplomatic deftness.
Cheney's cool response when Edwards discussed his daughter's
sexual preference in front of 50+ million people made it
clear Cheney was not pleased. Where were Kerry's superior
diplomatic skills by not taking note of this?
Why was it necessary to violate an individual's privacy &
speak about their sexual preference for a second time in a
week?
"I was trying to say something positive about the way strong families deal with this issue,” Kerry said in a statement"
If that was the case, why were millions of people outraged in
the first place?
How does this show superior diplomatic skills when his
response to the original blunder leaves the offended still
offended?
"Cheney was the first to inject into politics his daughter's orientation"
Cheney mentioned it once publicly & there weren't 50+ million
people weighing every word at the time. Kerry/Edwards did it
in front of 50+ million viewers, not once, but twice.
Cheney's cool reply after Edwards gratuitously brought it up
made it clear he was not pleased. Kerry said it intentionally
in the next debate. Either that or he has poor diplomacy
skills.
An Illustration of the Importance of Putting Major Corrections on the Front Page
Liberal Media Blog
During my vacation, the L.A. Times made a mistake in its coverage of the Swift Boat Vets' criticism of John Kerry. Now that is certainly nothing new -- but I think that the nature of the mistake, and the way it came about, illustrate three theories that I have been advancing on these pages for as long as I can remember:
Almost nobody reads the correction sections of even the major newspapers;
Therefore, newspapers should give more prominent placement to corrections of important errors on the significant issues of the day; and
Newspapers should assign someone with editorial responsibility to read blogs on a regular basis.
Here's what happened:
The Times's error was made in this story, which stated:
[T]he Swift boat group has launched a new cycle of campaign ads claiming that Kerry "betrayed his fellow veterans" by meeting with "enemy" Vietnamese negotiators in Paris during the Vietnam War.
. . . .
During his 1971 speech to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry talked about private meetings he had attended the previous May in Paris with representatives from the U.S.-backed South and communist North Vietnamese governments.
In other words, the story says, the Swift Boat Vets said that Kerry met with the "enemy" (note the sneer quotes), but in fact he met with both sides.
Except that, as PoliPundit noted, he didn't. He met with the enemy, and the enemy only. Let's roll the tape of Kerry's own description of his meetings in Paris:
<<<I have been to Paris. I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government.>>>
As Polipundit noted, this translates as: "I met with the communists and the Viet Cong" -- groups collectively known as the enemy (with no sneer quotes necessary, L.A. Times).
A Beldar reader (and no doubt some others) wrote the Times, and a correction was issued in fairly short order. The correction did not mention the Swift Boat Vets or say that their claim was correct, and it appeared (as is the Times's and most newspapers' common practice) in a small box on Page A2.
So why do I say that this mistake illustrates my theories above? Well, recall the context. As Beldar reminds us, the New York Times made the exact same mistake last month, three times in a row. Beldar (and no doubt some others) wrote the Times, and a correction was issued in fairly short order. The correction did not mention the Swift Boat Vets or say that their claim was correct, and it appeared (as is the Times's and most newspapers' common practice) in a small box on Page A2. (Sound familiar?)
And then, the L.A. Times made the exact same mistake, and corrected it the same way.
I believe that the L.A. Times reporters ultimately got their incorrect facts about Kerry's meetings from the New York Times. They may have obtained the incorrect information directly, from one or more of the New York Times articles, or it may have been indirect -- possibly from some secondary news source that relied upon the New York Times stories as a primary source. But my guess is that the New York Times was the ultimate source for the incorrect information printed in the Los Angeles Times. Where else would it have come from? I haven't seen that particular error made anywhere else. It has to have been the New York Times.
Here's the thing: the New York Times error was corrected on September 29. The L.A. Times story did not appear until October 5. But the L.A. Times reporters didn't know about the correction.
Why do you suppose that is?
I'll tell you why -- and here's where my theories come into play. It's because almost nobody reads the corrections sections of even the major newspapers. The fact that the L.A. Times reporters simply missed the New York Times's corrections illustrates this point better than anything I could say.
They probably would have seen those corrections if they had been printed on the front page. Or if they (or their editors) had been reading blogs. But instead, they printed the erroneous information, and then their paper corrected it in yet another correction that nobody will read.
I say: stop the madness. Leave the corrections of the spelling of an athlete's name on Page A2. But when you screw up a major item in a significant news story, put it on Page One, guys, where people will actually look at it. The public will be better informed, and you might even save your colleagues at other newspapers some embarrassment.
http://www.thatliberalmedia.com/archives/002868.html
Of Lesbians and Diplomacy
Slings and Arrows blog
Kerry is defending his declaration of Mary Cheney's sexual orientation by saying he was trying to be sensitive:
<<<“I love my daughters. They love their daughter. I was trying to say something positive about the way strong families deal with this issue,” Kerry said in a statement released from the campaign trail in Las Vegas. >>>
In other words, Kerry was trying to show how the Cheney family is the example of a strong family dealing with the issue of homosexuality. Fair enough, except that is not the way it came out and it is definitely not the way the Cheney family took it.
One may say that the fault lies with the Cheney family who took Kerry's comment in the worst light because of their partisan nature. This may be so, but one of the lynchpins of Kerry's bid for president is that he is a better diplomat than President Bush.
Diplomacy is the art of forwarding your position without offending your opponent. Real diplomacy never happens between friendly parties. If two parties are entirely in agreement on every issue, no diplomacy is unnecessary. Real diplomacy involves conflicting interests, conflicting positions, and often times conflicting personalities.
Kerry says he was trying to be positive. He says he was trying to point out what strong families do. What he did instead was anger a huge number of people. What we saw in Kerry's comments about Mary Cheney was the extent his diplomatic skill in miniature. And his diplomacy was a miserable failure.
The Therapeutic Choice
A war for our lives, or a nuisance to our lifestyle?
— Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His website is victorhanson.com.
Americans are presented with a choice in this election rare in our history. This is not 1952, when Democrats and Republicans did not differ too much on the need to stay in Korea, or even 1968 when Humphrey and Nixon alike did not wish to withdraw unilaterally from Vietnam. It is more like 1972 or 1980, when a naïve McGovern/Dukakis worldview was sharply at odds with the Nixon/Reagan tragic acknowledgement of the need to confront Soviet-inspired Communism. Is it to be more aid, talk, indictments, and summits — or a tough war to kill the terrorists and change the conditions that created them?
Mr. Kerry believes that we must return to the pre-9/11 days when terrorism was but a "nuisance." In his mind, that was a nostalgic sort of time when the terrorist mosquito lazily buzzed about a snoring America. And we in somnolent response merely swatted it away with a cruise missile or a few GPS bombs when embassies and barracks were blown up. Keep the tribute of dead Americans low, and the chronic problem was properly analogous to law-enforcement's perpetual policing of gambling and prostitution. Many of us had previously written off just such naïveté, but we never dreamed that our suspicions would be confirmed so explicitly by Kerry himself.
In the now-lost age of unperturbed windsailing and skiing, things were not all that bad before al Qaeda overdid it by knocking down skyscrapers and a corner of the Pentagon — followed by George Bush's commensurate overreaction in Afghanistan and Iraq that brought on all the present messy and really bothersome cargo of IEDs, beheadings, and promises of dirty bombs to come. The Taliban and Saddam were, of course, bad sports. But really, going all the way over there to topple them, implant democracy, and change the status quo of the Middle East? Tsk, tsk, tsk — well, that was a bit much, was it not?
Terrorist killing, like the first World Trade Center bombing or the USS Cole, certainly was not seen as the logical precursor to 9/11 — the expected wages of a quarter century of appeasement that started with the weak Carter response to the Iranian hostages and was followed by dead soldiers, diplomats, and tourists about every other year. No, these were "incidents" like 9/11 itself — "law-enforcement" issues that called for the DA, writs, and stern prison sentences, the sort of stuff that barristers like Kerry, Edwards, Kennedy, and McAuliffe handle so well.
This attitude is part of the therapeutic view of the present struggle that continually suggests that something we did — not the mass murdering out of the Dark Age — brought on our present bother that is now "the focus of our lives." We see this irritation with the inconvenience and sacrifice once more reemerging in the Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, and the New York Times: We, not fascists and Islamist psychopaths, are blamed for the mess in Iraq, the mess in Afghanistan, the mess on the West Bank, and the mess here at home, but never credited with the first election in 5,000 years in Afghanistan or consensual government replacing autocracy in the heart of the ancient caliphate.
Sometimes our problems arise over our past failure to chastise the Russians over Chechnya. Or was it not enough attention to Mr. Arafat's dilemmas? Or maybe we extended prior support for corrupt sheiks? All that and more — according to rogue CIA "experts," best-selling authors, and the omnipresent Richard Clarke — earned us the wrath of the Islamists. Thus surely our past transgressions can be alleviated by present contrition, dialogue, aid, and policy changes of the European kind.
To all you of the therapeutic mindset, listen up. We can no more reason with the Islamic fascists than we could sympathize with the Nazis' demands over supposedly exploited Germans in Czechoslovakia or the problem of Tojo's Japan's not getting its timely scrap-metal shipments from Roosevelt's America. Their pouts and gripes are not intended to be adjudicated as much as to weaken the resolve of many in the United States who find the entire "war against terror" too big, or the wrong kind, of a nuisance.
Instead, read the fatwas. You hear not just of America's injustice in Palestine or Chechnya — not to mention nothing about saving Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo or Afghanistan of the 1980s — but also of what we did in Spain in the 15th century and in Tyre, Gaza, and Jerusalem in the 12th. The mystery of September 11, 2001, is not that it happened, but that it did not quite happen when first tried in 1993 during Bill Clinton's madcap efforts to move a smiling Arafat into the Lincoln Bedroom and keep our hands off bin Laden. Only an American with a JD or PhD would cling to the idea that there was not a connection between Group A Middle Eastern terrorists who attacked the WTC in 1993 and Group B who finished the job in 2001.
A Kerry presidency, we know now, will go back to the tried and true institutions so dear to the therapeutic mind that please the elite and sensitive of our society. How silly that most Americans are about through with the U.N. Indeed, we Neanderthals want it relegated to something like the Red Cross tucked away at the Hague, if not on the frontlines in Nigeria or Bolivia. Yes, we dummies have seen enough of its General Assembly resolutions aimed at the only democracy in the Middle East, its promotion of rogue states such as Syria, Cuba, Iran, and Libya to human-rights watchdogs, its corrupt Oil-for-Food program, and its present general secretary and his role in nepotism and sweet-heart contracts at the expense of the Iraqi people. No surprise that a shaken perpetual-president Hosni Mubarak is calling for a U.N. conference on terror with wonderful Arab League logic: 'You kill Jews on your own soil, good; you kill them on mine and lose me money, bad.'
The artists, musicians, and entertainers have also railed against the war. In the therapeutic mindset, the refinement and talent of a Sean Penn, Michael Moore, Al Franken, Bruce Springsteen, or John Fogerty earn respect when they weigh in on matters of state policy. But in the tragic view, they can be little more than puppets of inspiration. Their natural gifts are not necessarily enriched by real education or learning. Indeed, they are just as likely to be high-school or college dropouts and near illiterates, albeit with good memories, voices, and looks. The present antics of these influential millionaire entertainers should remind us why Plato banished them — worried that we might confuse the inspired creative frenzies of the artisans with some sort of empirical knowledge. But you can no more sing, or write, or act al Qaeda away than the equally sensitive novelists and intellectuals of the 1930s or 1940s could rehabilitate Stalin.
And then there are the new green billionaires who no longer worry about the struggle to make any more money, much less about state, federal, and payroll taxes that can eat up half of a person's income. A George Soros may have made his pile by trying to destroy the British financial system, but now he wishes to leave the world safe for currency traders to come by defeating George Bush. The up-from-the-bootstraps struggle to create the dough for the Heinz fortune is a century past and forgotten — thus the post-capitalist Teresa in her private jet and John Kerry on his $500,000 power boat can lecture us about Americans' shameless oil profligacy and George Bush's blood for oil gambit in Iraq.
Our mainstream media also cannot quite believe we are at war with evil people who wish us dead — something like the crises that have faced all civilizations at one time or another. Instead, to ponder Rathergate or the recent ABC memo advocating bias in its reporting is to fathom the arrogance of the Enlightenment, and the learned's frustration with those of us less-gifted folk who don't quite wish to follow where they lead us. Such anointed ones have taken on the burden of saving us from George Bush and his retrograde ideas. After all, who believes that anyone would really wish to reinstate a mythical caliphate, a Muslim paradise of sharia, gender apartheid, and theocracy spreading the globe through Islamic nukes and biological and chemical bombs? How one dimensional and unsophisticated.
Meanwhile most Americans have already quietly made up their minds. They think the Democratic party is run not by unionists, farmers, miners, truckers, and average folk, but by those rich enough not to have to make a living, and who wish out of either guilt or noblesse oblige to force the dumber upper middle class to be more sensitive, generous, or utopian. Americans also believe Europe has lost its way and is bogged down in a hopeless and soon-to-be scary task of legislating by fiat heaven on earth. We of the tragic persuasion wish them well with Turkey and their unassimilated Islamic populations, but we don't want our hurtful combat troops there after 60 years of subsidized peacekeeping. Americans also don't care much about the Nobel prizes anymore — not when a Jimmy Carter is praised after trying to undermine his own president on the eve of war, and not when the most recent peace-prize winner rants on that AIDS is a Western-created germ agent unleashed to hurt Africa but silent about $15 billion in American aid to stop what her own continent is spreading.
John Kerry is probably going to lose this election, despite the "Vote for Change" rock tour, despite Air America, despite Kitty Kelley's fraud hyped on national media, despite Soros's moveon.org hit pieces, despite Fahrenheit 9-11, despite the Nobel Prizes and Cannes Film Awards, despite Rathergate and ABC Memogate, despite the European press, despite Kofi Annan's remonstrations, despite a barking Senator Harkin or Kennedy, despite the leaks of rogue CIA Beltway insiders, despite Jimmy Carter's sanctimonious lectures, despite Joe Wilson, Anonymous, and Richard Clarke — and more. You all have given your best shot, but I think you are going to lose.
Why? Because the majority of Americans does not believe you. The majority is more likely to accept George Bush's tragic view that we really are in a war for our very survival to stop those who would kill us and to alter the landscape that produced them — a terrible war that we are winning.
When all is said and done, it still is as simple as that.
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200410150823.asp
Unmasked men
COVER STORY: Leaked Iraqi intelligence documents connect Saddam Hussein to prominent terror leaders, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden. Only question is, when will John Kerry change his stump speech?
by Mindy Belz
WORLD MAGAZINE
Walid Phares thumbed a sheaf of documents, all in Arabic and nearly all bearing the spherical slogan of Iraq's intelligence service, or Mukhabarat. The Middle East scholar, a Lebanese-American Christian who speaks four languages and is a recognized expert on Islamic militants and terrorism, has interrupted a sick day (prior engagement with a root canal) in order to evaluate 42 just-leaked intelligence documents confiscated by U.S. forces in Iraq.
Moistening his finger and translating out loud, Mr. Phares read from the pages in his third-floor office in downtown Washington, where he is taking a year off from teaching at Florida Atlantic University to serve as senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He didn't notice as his narrating voice rose with incredulity. Finishing, he rapped the papers with his fingers and concluded: "This is a watershed. This is big."
Mr. Phares is one of at least four eminent Middle East experts to agree that the documents—published for the first time last week—demonstrate that Saddam Hussein collaborated with and supported Islamic terrorist groups, including the current terror nemesis in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The papers, obtained by Cybercast News Service (CNS) and released Oct. 4, "establish irreversible evidence that there were strategic relations between the Baathist regime and Islamist groups that became al-Qaeda," Mr. Phares said after reviewing them at WORLD's request on Oct. 6. In addition, the documents link al-Zarqawi-associated groups throughout the Middle East, including al-Qaeda, on Saddam's payroll and acting under his direct authority.
Evidence and the word of experts, however, is having little effect on the John Kerry campaign, which has staked its bid for the White House on what it calls a flawed rationale for war in Iraq. Only hours after the CNS website absorbed so many hits over the revelations that its server crashed, vice-presidential candidate John Edwards blasted the president's war strategy in a televised debate with Vice President Dick Cheney. "There is no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11th—period," Mr. Edwards said. "In fact, any connection with al-Qaeda is tenuous at best."
Sen. John Kerry, too, insists on the stump that the president's "two main rationales—weapons of mass destruction and the al-Qaeda/Sept. 11 connection—have been proved false."
But the documents suggest otherwise. They include an 11-page memo, dated Jan. 25, 1993, listing "parties related to our system . . . expert in executing the required missions." The memo cites Palestinian, Sudanese, and Asian terror groups, and shows a developing relationship with groups affiliated with al-Qaeda, including Mr. al-Zarqawi, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar—figures who are now on the U.S. most-wanted list for ongoing assaults in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Jan. 25, 1993, memo also describes an intelligence service meeting with a splinter group led by Mohammed Omar Abdel-Rahman. Mr. Abdel-Rahman is a son of the blind Egyptian, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, accused of inspiring the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and arrested in 1994 for targeting New York landmarks. Pakistani officials caught the younger Abdel-Rahman last year, and say he helped lead authorities to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, one of the 9/11 attack planners.
A separate memo, dated March 18, 1993, asks intelligence officers to provide "details of Arab martyrs who got trained" in conjunction with post–Gulf War "committees of martyrs act." In reply another office supplied 92 names with nationalities, all "trained inside the ‘martyr act camp' that belonged to our directorate." In all, 40 are linked to Palestinian groups, 21 are Sudanese, and others range from Eritrea, Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon, and Egypt. Most of the trainees completed a government-sponsored course on Nov. 24, 1990, and were sent on missions throughout the Arabian Peninsula.
Accompanying the memos are separate notations signed by Saddam Hussein's secretary, suggesting the president himself had reviewed and endorsed each action.
"Saddam was personally overseeing the details" of training terrorists and assigning their missions, Mr. Phares said. "From 1993 on, Saddam Hussein connected with Sunni fundamentalists in the Arab world. He was in touch with the founding members of al-Qaeda."
CNS enlisted its own cast of experts—a former weapons inspector with the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM), a retired CIA counterterrorism official with experience in Iraq, and a former Clinton advisor on Iraq—to review the documents prior to publication. CNS reporter Scott Wheeler received the data from an unnamed "senior government official" who is not a political appointee. The source said the documents have not been made public because Bush administration officials have "thousands and thousands" of similar documents waiting to be translated and "it is unlikely they even know this exists."
Former Clinton advisor Laurie Mylroie, who taught at Harvard and the U.S. Naval College and authored two books on Iraq under Saddam Hussein, told CNS the find represents "the most complete set of documents relating Iraq to terrorism, including Islamic terrorism."
Bruce Tefft, the retired CIA official, described the documents as "accurate." He cited as particularly significant the Iraq link to al-Jihad al Tajdeed. Tajdeed is allied with Mr. al-Zarqawi. Its website currently posts Mr. al-Zarqawi's speeches, messages, and videos—including images portraying the Jordanian terrorist actively participating in the beheading of American Nicholas Berg and, just last month, the beheading of U.S. engineer Eugene Armstrong. At 37, Mr. al-Zarqawi is considered the main instigator behind suicide bombings, assassination attempts, and beheadings in Iraq. The connections "are too close to be accidental," Mr. Tefft told CNS, suggesting "one of the first operational contacts between an al-Qaeda group and Iraq."
Mr. al-Zarqawi is often portrayed as a lone ranger, a cult figure running a nascent uprising in response to so-called U.S. imperialism. Yet these latest documents, along with other emerging reports, reveal Mr. al-Zarqawi's "authority stemmed from specific instructions and guidance" received from Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders. According to terror expert Yossef Bodansky in his new book, The Secret History of the Iraq War, intelligence data shows Mr. al-Zarqawi entered northern Iraq from Iran shortly before the war to oversee a sophisticated guerrilla-war plan crafted in conjunction with Iraqi intelligence agents and Saddam himself.
In addition to the terror-group connections, several pages of the leaked documents also demonstrate that Saddam possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction. They describe Iraq's purchase of five kilograms of mustard gas in August 2000 and three vials of malignant pustule, a term for anthrax, the following month—all at a time when Saddam prohibited UN weapons inspectors from working in Iraq. The purchase orders include gas masks, filters, sterilization, and decontamination equipment.
With this latest release of Iraqi documents, and the assembly of nonpartisan experts standing by them, the Kerry campaign will have to work harder to dismiss Bush administration actions as "a rush to war."
"What you see reading through these documents is that the [Persian Gulf] war did not end. This is a continuation of that war," Ms. Mylroie told WORLD. Saddam's aim, she said, was to "pick off the [1991] coalition" with terror attacks as a means of turning Middle East allies against the United States. That tactic emboldened the kind of transnational terror network described in the documents, continuing through 2001 and beyond. "What is interesting is that Iraq was working with Islamic militants of all stripes. Saddam did not make a distinction between Baathists or Sunnis or Shiites or anyone else," Ms. Mylroie said.
Such conclusions, she said, may prompt critics to call her paranoid and to denigrate the importance of this recent find as outdated and fanciful. But Ms. Mylroie has been called a conspiracy theorist before. Ignoring the evidence of state-sponsored terrorism and its ongoing threat is a zero-sum game for Bush opponents. Focusing only on the role of individual terror fanatics like Mr. al-Zarqawi, says Ms. Mylroie, does "make the terrorist threat appear as terrifying as possible. But authorities can do virtually nothing about terrorism when it is depicted this way."
Despite "missteps" in prosecuting the war, "the war was necessary because Saddam was involved in 9/11," Ms. Mylroie said. "There is no question that Saddam is part of a terror war."
For the Kerry campaign the revelations have come late enough in the election season to inflict lasting damage on his foreign-policy credibility. For U.S. and Iraqi forces fighting terror in Iraq, they have come not a moment too soon. —with reporting by Priya Abraham —•
http://www.worldmag.com/subscriber/displayArticle.cfm?ID=9762
What is your point? Edwards & Kerry lied, pandered to voters
& gave false hope to the infirmed to get their votes. And
for good measure they smeared Bush in the process.
And your response is to smear a wheelchair bound journalist
who received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School
because he happened to expose these snake oil salesmen for who
they are?.
No wonder you have no problems voting Kerry/Edwards.
Charles Krauthammer, M.D.
Council Member
Charles Krauthammer, M.D., Syndicated columnist. Dr. Krauthammer, a board-certified psychiatrist who received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and practiced psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital for several years, writes a nationally syndicated editorial page column for The Washington Post Writers Group. He won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. For 20 years, he has written articles on several bioethical topics, including human experimentation, stem cell research, cloning, euthanasia, and assisted suicide.
Saddam Funded Terrorists
Captain Ed
The Scotsman, doing yeoman work on the Duelfer report on the Iraq Survey Group investigation, reports that recently uncovered documents reveal a series of payments to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP is a PLO splinter group that has spent most of the time since Oslo setting off car bombs to derail the peace processes, such as they are:
<<<The PFLP, whose history of terrorism dates back to the "black September" hijackings of 1970, was personally vetted by Saddam to receive oil vouchers worth £40 million.
The deal has been uncovered by US investigators, trawling millions of pages of documents showing a network of diplomats bribed by Saddam’s regimes, and political parties who qualified for backhanded payments from Baghdad.
The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which is still working its way through 20,000 boxes of documents from Saddam’s Baath party discovered only recently, found a list of pressure groups bankrolled by Saddam.
Using the United Nations’ own oil-for-food scheme - ironically intended as a sanction to control the behaviour of his dictatorship - Saddam gave Awad Ammora & Partners, a Syrian company, two million barrels of oil.
Documents handed over to US authorities by a former Iraqi oil minister only four months ago show that this was a front for the PFLP - which was then embarked on a spate of car bombings aimed at Israeli officials.>>>
Unlike other deals listed in the Oil-For-Food program, the AAP deal was completed, meaning the money went to the PFLP as planned. Forty million pounds sterling went from Saddam directly to terrorists, and long-standing terrorists at that. The PFLP accomplished the spectacular simultaneous hijacking of four American jets in 1970, an eerie foreshadowing of 9/11 and likely an inspiration for the al-Qaeda operation. They've focused more on bombings targeting Israel in the past few years, and just announced this week that they would merge with Hamas.
Not only does this show how the UN allowed money to flow through Saddam to our (other) enemies, aided and abetted by our so-called allies that some feel are essential to approving our national-security initiatives, it demonstrates that Saddam had no qualms about funding and supporting terrorists. Bear in mind that these payments went out while Saddam was supposedly "contained" and "in his box", as John Kerry likes to put it. Saddam never had it so good, we now know; he could rely on his European enablers to veto any attempt to enforce UNSC resolutions and to turn a blind eye to the massive corruption that allowed the UN to feed Saddam's iron grip on Iraqi oil revenue. Saddam, in turn, spread the wealth around to terrorists like the PFLP.
Perhaps now the American media will finally start telling the truth about Saddam. Or perhaps they'll continue to wait until November 3.
.
Krauthammer occupies a wheelchair.
An Edwards Outrage
By Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post
Friday, October 15, 2004; Page A23
After the second presidential debate, in which John Kerry used the word "plan" 24 times, I said on television that Kerry has a plan for everything except curing psoriasis. I should have known there is no parodying Kerry's pandering. It turned out days later that the Kerry campaign has a plan -- nay, a promise -- to cure paralysis. What is the plan? Vote for Kerry.
This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."
In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.
Where does one begin to deconstruct this outrage?
First, the inability of the human spinal cord to regenerate is one of the great mysteries of biology. The answer is not remotely around the corner. It could take a generation to unravel. To imply, as Edwards did, that it is imminent if only you elect the right politicians is scandalous.
Second, if the cure for spinal cord injury comes, we have no idea where it will come from. There are many lines of inquiry. Stem cell research is just one of many possibilities, and a very speculative one at that. For 30 years I have heard promises of miracle cures for paralysis (including my own, suffered as a medical student). The last fad, fetal tissue transplants, was thought to be a sure thing. Nothing came of it.
As a doctor by training, I've known better than to believe the hype -- and have tried in my own counseling of people with new spinal cord injuries to place the possibility of cure in abeyance. I advise instead to concentrate on making a life (and a very good life it can be) with the hand one is dealt. The greatest enemies of this advice have been the snake-oil salesmen promising a miracle around the corner. I never expected a candidate for vice president to be one of them.
Third, the implication that Christopher Reeve was prevented from getting out of his wheelchair by the Bush stem cell policies is a travesty.
George Bush is the first president to approve federal funding for stem cell research. There are 22 lines of stem cells now available, up from one just two years ago. As Leon Kass, head of the President's Council on Bioethics, has written, there are 3,500 shipments of stem cells waiting for anybody who wants them.
Edwards and Kerry constantly talk of a Bush "ban" on stem cell research. This is false. There is no ban. You want to study stem cells? You get them from the companies that have the cells and apply to the National Institutes of Health for the federal funding.
In his Aug. 7 radio address to the nation, Kerry referred not once but four times to the "ban" on stem cell research instituted by Bush. At the time, Reeve was alive, so not available for posthumous exploitation. But Ronald Reagan was available, having recently died of Alzheimer's.
So what does Kerry do? He begins his radio address with the disgraceful claim that the stem cell "ban" is standing in the way of an Alzheimer's cure.
This is an outright lie. The President's Council on Bioethics, on which I sit, had one of the world's foremost experts on Alzheimer's, Dennis Selkoe from Harvard, give us a lecture on the newest and most promising approaches to solving the Alzheimer's mystery. Selkoe reported remarkable progress in using biochemicals to clear the "plaque" deposits in the brain that lead to Alzheimer's. He ended his presentation without the phrase "stem cells" having passed his lips.
So much for the miracle cure. Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at NIH, has admitted publicly that stem cells as an Alzheimer's cure are a fiction, but that "people need a fairy tale." Kerry and Edwards certainly do. They are shamelessly exploiting this fairy tale, having no doubt been told by their pollsters that stem cells play well politically for them.
Politicians have long promised a chicken in every pot. It is part of the game. It is one thing to promise ethanol subsidies here, dairy price controls there. But to exploit the desperate hopes of desperate people with the promise of Christ-like cures is beyond the pale.
There is no apologizing for Edwards's remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
The man in the muddle
Mark Steyn says that the nuanced John Kerry is a threat to peace. So it’s a good thing he’s going to lose the election New Hampshire
These days the most devastating profiles of John Kerry are the puff pieces. Take, for example, last weekend’s New York Times magazine, in which Matt Bai attempted to argue that the Nuancy Boy is a kind of strategic genius who was on to this whole terror thing a decade before anybody else. That line of argument gets a little tiring, so midway through Mr Bai included this relaxing interlude:
<<<A row of Evian water bottles had been thoughtfully placed on a nearby table. Kerry frowned.
‘Can we get any of my water?’ he asked Stephanie Cutter, his communications director, who dutifully scurried from the room. I asked Kerry, out of sheer curiosity, what he didn’t like about Evian.
‘I hate that stuff,’ Kerry explained to me. ‘They pack it full of minerals.’
‘What kind of water do you drink?’ I asked, trying to make conversation.
‘Plain old American water,’ he said.
‘You mean tap water?’
‘No,’ Kerry replied deliberately. He seemed now to sense some kind of trap. I was left to imagine what was going through his head. If I admit that I drink bottled water, then he might say I’m out of touch with ordinary voters. But doesn’t demanding my own brand of water seem even more aristocratic? Then again, Evian is French — important to stay away from anything even remotely French.
‘There are all kinds of waters,’ he said finally. Pause. ‘Saratoga Spring.’ This seemed to have exhausted his list. ‘Sometimes I drink tap water,’ he added. >>>
You can lead a horse-face to water, but you can’t make him drink. Not in this election. Imagine the strain of being unable to answer a simple question of beverage preference without flipping through the old mental Rolodex to calibrate the least politically damaging answer. Water, water everywhere, but gotta stop to think, to quote The Rime Of The Ancient Swift Boat Mariner. If George W. Bush happened to enjoy Evian, I don’t think he’d be averse to telling us. I certainly wouldn’t. I dislike France for geopolitical reasons, but I like the wine and the food. I like the women. I especially like the cute little girl bellhops in the Ruritanian uniforms at the Plaza Athenée. But John Kerry has invested so much in his imaginary friend in the Elysée Palace you can’t even ask him, ‘Hey, bud, what’ll you drink?’ without him wondering whether you’re impugning his patriotism. So ask a simple question and get a lot of, as it were, tap dancing.
In the debates, it’s easier. He and John Edwards know they have to sound tough, so their writers generally provide them with a line pledging to ‘hunt down and kill the terrorists’. But it’s exhausting having to remember when to spit out the tough talk and not to get caught in some fake-o water-gate controversy, and so your concentration wanders and you get relaxed and then you say things like this:
<<<‘We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance. As a former law-enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organised crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise.’ >>>
So the Senator has now made what was hitherto just a cheap crack from his opponents into formal policy: the Democrats are the September 10 party.
The ‘I’ll hunt down and kill America’s enemies’ line was written for him and planted on his lips. The ‘It’s just a nuisance like prostitution’ line is his, and how he really thinks of the issue. What an odd analogy. Your average jihadist won’t take kindly to having his martyrdom operation compared with the decadent infidels’ sex industry, but the rest of us shouldn’t be that happy about it either.
Kerry is correct in the sense that even if you dispatched every constable in the land to crack down on prostitution, there’d still be some pox-ridden whore somewhere giving someone a ride for ten bucks. But, on the other hand, applying the Kerry prostitute approach to terrorists would seem to leave rather a lot of them in place. In Boston, where he served as a ‘law-enforcement person’, the Yellow Pages are full of lavish display ads for ‘escort services’. The other day, the Boston Phoenix did a lame hit piece on me, in which, if you could stay awake through the wet cement of the guy’s prose, the main beef was that I was not a ‘respectable commentator’ like David Brooks of the New York Times. ‘Respectability’ seems a weird obsession for a fellow who writes for an ‘alternative’ newspaper funded by ads for transsexual hookers whose particular charms are spelled out at length, so to speak. In other words, while you can make an argument for a ‘managerial’ approach to terrorism, the analogy with prostitution sounds more like an undeclared surrender. This is aside from the basic defect of the argument: if some gal in your apartment building is working as a prostitute, that’s a nuisance — condoms in the elevator, dodgy johns in the lobby; if Islamists seize the schoolhouse and kill your kids, even if it only happens once every couple of years, ‘nuisance’ doesn’t quite cover it.
So the choice of analogy is revealing and, as Kerry says, we’ve been here before. Every so often, back in the Nineties, al-Qa’eda blew up some military housing, a ship, a couple of embassies, etc., and the Clinton team shrugged it off as a nuisance. No matter how flamboyantly Osama bin Laden sashayed down the sidewalk in his fishnets and miniskirt he couldn’t catch the Administration’s eye. In 2000, after 17 sailors were killed on the USS Cole, the defense secretary Bill Cohen said the attack ‘was not sufficiently provocative’ to warrant a response.
So Osama tried again, on September 11 2001. And this time, like the ads in the Boston Phoenix, he was very provocative. And that’s the point: even if you take the Kerry doctrine as seriously as the New York Times does, the nuance of nuisance depends largely on the terrorists. When all they could do was kill a few dozen here, a few hundred there, they were a ‘nuisance’ to Clinton, Cohen, Kerry and co; when they came up with a plan that killed thousands, they became something more than a nuisance. But that change in status was determined largely by them. They might go back to being a mere nuisance for 2005, just blowing up a US consulate hither and yon in places no one much cares about. But in 2006 they might loose a dirty bomb in Chicago and upgrade to über-nuisance again. The Kerry doctrine leaves it in their hands. And, in this kind of war, if you’re not on the offensive, you’re losing.
That’s what John Kerry means when he says ‘we have to get back to the place we were’ — back to the Nineties. Mem’ries light the corners of his mind, misty watercolour mem’ries of the way we were, but the reason they’re misty watercolours is that we didn’t see clearly what was going on. It wasn’t just the nuisance of the biennial embassy bombing, it was the terrorist annexation of flop states and the thousands upon thousands of young Muslim men graduating from al-Qa’eda’s training camps and then heading off wherever the jihad calls. The British Muslim discovered among the Beslan gang, for example: if you downgrade the war to a ‘nuisance’, is that the sort of cross-border trend you’re likely to spot?
‘It’s a different kind of war,’ says Kerry. ‘You have to understand it’s not the sands of Iwo Jima.’ That’s true. But Kerry’s mistake is in assuming that because it’s not Iwo Jima, it’s somehow less of a war. Until recently we thought of ‘asymmetrical warfare’ as something the natives did with machetes against the colonialist occupier. But in fact the roles have been reversed. These days, your average Western power — Germany, Canada, Belgium — is utterly incapable of projecting conventional military might to, say, Saudi Arabia or the Pakistani tribal lands. But a dozen young Saudi or Pakistani males with a little cash, some debit cards and the right phone numbers in their address books can project themselves to Frankfurt, Ottawa or Antwerp very easily and to devastating effect. That’s the lesson of 9/11.
So, for all that Bush is accused of being ‘stubborn’, it’s Kerry who refuses to change. He is, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer in their endorsement of the Senator this week, ‘alert to fresh global challenges, yet rooted in the approaches that made the 1990s so productive’. Well, they’re half right. He’s certainly rooted in the approaches of the Nineties, so rooted that he can’t pull himself up and move on, despite the fact that last week’s report of the Iraq Survey Group completely demolishes every prop of the Kerry world-view. When a man keeps telling you it doesn’t count unless the French and the UN are on board, he’s either a fool or a liar — because no serious person can spend 15 minutes on this issue without understanding that the French state at every level, and quasi-state pillars such as TotalFinaElf, were to all intents and purposes Saddam’s concubines, and that the UN Oil-for-Fraud programme had been transformed into the regime’s most reliable Weapon of Mass Destruction.
The attempt to talk the Senator up into a foreign-policy genius is sounding ever more loopy. ‘He was getting it,’ says Richard Clarke, the embittered Clinton-Bush terrorism ‘czar’ who now supports Kerry. ‘And the “it” here was that there was a new non-state-actor threat, and that non-state-actor threat was a blended threat that didn’t fit neatly into the box of organised criminal, or neatly into the box of terrorism.’
Yes, but what does that mean? Even if he does get the ‘it’ that nobody else is getting, what difference does it make if he doesn’t do anything about it? The ‘blended threat’ may not fit neatly into the box, but Kerry fits in there perfectly neatly — the box of complacent assumptions about the Security Council, the EU, the G8 — and he’s so snug he has no intention of climbing out.
It seems to me that John Edwards has the right idea. In the gym of Newton High School in Iowa this week, he skipped the dreary Kerry-as-foreign-policy-genius pitch and cut straight to the Second Coming. ‘We will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other debilitating diseases,’ he assured the crowd and, warming to his theme, turned to the death last weekend of Christopher (Superman) Reeve. ‘When John Kerry is president, people like Chris Reeve are going to get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.’ Read his lips: No new crutches. Now that’s a campaign promise. President Kerry may be paralysed by nuance, but no one else will be. The healing balm of the Massachusetts Messiah will bring the crippled and stricken to their feet, which is more than Kerry’s speeches ever do. Just because he can’t choose his water doesn’t mean he can’t walk on it.
In its own way, this is easier to swallow than the Richard Clarke line. The notion that he can perform miracles on the wheelchair-bound requires no more of a suspension of disbelief than that he can turn back the clock to September 10.
This has been a very dispiriting election, mainly because one party simply refuses to make any intelligent contribution to the debate. John Howard’s splendid victory down under came about at least in part because of the laziness of the Left — Mark Latham’s Labor party offered a new face with not a single new idea. In the US, the Democrats have gone one further — peddling an old face with old ideas on the theory that Americans are worn out by the wild ride of the Bush years and really do long to ‘get back to where they were’, back to September 10, to the summer of shark attacks and missing Congressional interns. But all that going back to September 10 means is that you’ll have to learn the lessons of the morning after all over again: I do believe that if clueless, complacent Kerry won, more Americans — and Britons and Canadians and Australians and Europeans — will die in terrorist ‘nuisances’.
But he won’t win. Because enough Americans understand that going back to where we were means a return to polite fictions and dangerous illusions. You can’t put that world back together.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?table=old§ion=current&issue=2004-10-16&id=511....
What, Me Biased?
Just why are there so many high-profile corrections these days?
— Byron York is also a columnist for The Hill, where a version of this first appeared.
Have you ever heard of Dave Lindorff?
Probably not. But Lindorff, a writer who occasionally covers politics, recently pulled a good one on the Washington Post, New York Times, and a number of other news outlets.
In an article, "Bush's Mystery Bulge," published in the left-wing online journal Salon, Lindorff speculated that President Bush might have been "literally channeling Karl Rove" in the first presidential debate — that is, wearing an invisible earpiece attached to a radio receiver through which Rove could feed him answers to vexing questions.
Lindorff's evidence was a freeze-frame from the debate which he said showed "a large solid object" beneath Bush's suit coat. "Was the bulge under his well-tailored jacket a hidden receiver, picking up transmissions from someone offstage?" Lindorff asked. He didn't know. But he said, "Bloggers are burning up their keyboard with speculation."
No one from the White House or the Bush campaign would talk to Lindorff. Neither would the Kerry campaign or the Democratic National Committee. So Lindorff concluded, "As to whether we really do have a Milli Vanilli president, the answer at this point has to be, God only knows."
On the basis of that good old shoe-leather reporting, the Washington Post ran a story the next day discussing "widespread cyber-speculation that [Bush] was wired to receive help with his answers."
When the Post asked the Bush camp for comment, the president's aides tried to laugh it off. When the paper insisted on a serious answer, several officials "flatly denied" that there was anything unusual about the wrinkle in the president's coat.
The Post had no evidence, beyond the Internet speculation. But that speculation, along with Lindorff's Salon article based entirely on the same speculation, was apparently enough to merit publication.
The same for the Times, which based its story on "rumors racing across the Internet." The paper of record added that, "The prime suspect was Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's powerful political adviser."
In both stories, it appears the Post and the Times placed particular faith in the judgment of Dave Lindorff. And who wouldn't? Just look at some of the things he's written.
A pioneer in comparing George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler, Lindorff wrote last year, on the website Counterpunch.org, that, "It's going a bit far to compare the Bush of 2003 to the Hitler of 1933. Bush simply is not the orator that Hitler was. But comparisons of the Bush administration's fear mongering tactics to those practiced so successfully and with such terrible results by Hitler and Goebbels on the German people and their Weimar Republic are not at all out of line."
A few months later, Lindorff moderated his position just a touch, writing, "George Bush is not Hitler. Yet." But Lindorff added, "It's worth pointing out too that Hitler was not the monster of 1939 when he took power in 1933."
Why would the Post and the Times rely on such a source for the "mystery bulge" story? You'll have to ask them. And then ask a few more questions.
Like, why did the Post run a four-column banner headline which had significant anti-Bush resonance — "U.S. 'Almost All Wrong' on Weapons" — that was itself dead wrong? And then run a brief correction which did not even bother to explain the mistake, because the paper's ombudsman said he didn't have the "room" to do so?
And why did the Times run a "fact-check" story on the Cheney-Edwards debate that got its own facts wrong?
The paper examined Edwards's assertion that millionaires who get rich from dividends pay "a lower tax rate then the men and women who are receiving paychecks for serving on the ground in Iraq." True, said the Times. Except the next day, the paper had to say, Oops, sorry — enlisted troops in Iraq pay no federal income taxes at all.
And why, when the anti-Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ran an ad accusing Kerry of having "secretly met with the enemy" at the Paris peace talks, did the Times publish stories — not one, not two, but three stories — saying the Swifties were wrong, that in fact Kerry himself said he met with "both sides" in Paris?
As it turned out, the Swifties were right, and the Times ran a correction noting that Kerry had said he met with the two Communist delegations in Paris — not "both sides."
Put them all together, and you have a lot of mistakes, all going in the same direction — and that's not counting ABC News' directive to question Bush's "distortions" more aggressively than Kerry's.
Before the first presidential debate, Time magazine's Matthew Cooper told the Post's Howard Kurtz that the press corps was "aching" to write the story of a Kerry comeback. Perhaps some of their recent mistakes are the result of the same longing.
It's a good thing the ombudsmen assure us there's no bias involved. Otherwise, it might appear suspicious.
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200410140850.asp
Mention of Gay Daughter a Cheap Trick, Lynne Cheney Says
By Michael Laris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 14, 2004; Page A06
MOON TOWNSHIP, Pa., Oct. 13 -- Lynne V. Cheney, wife of Vice President Cheney, accused John F. Kerry on Wednesday night of "a cheap and tawdry political trick" and said he "is not a good man" after he brought up their daughter's homosexuality at the final presidential debate.
Mary Cheney, one of the vice president's two daughters and an official of the Bush-Cheney campaign, has been open about her lesbian status. The candidates were asked if they believe homosexuality is a choice, and President Bush did not mention Mary Cheney. Then Kerry said, "If you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as."
Lynne Cheney issued her post-debate rebuke to a cheering crowd outside Pittsburgh. "The only thing I can conclude is he is not a good man. I'm speaking as a mom," she said. "What a cheap and tawdry political trick."
Steven Fisher, communications director of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organization, said Kerry "was speaking to millions of American families who, like the Cheneys, have gay friends and family members."
Kerry's running mate, Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), also made a reference to the sexual orientation of Cheney's daughter, during the vice presidential debates, and Republicans complained that it was an underhanded way of trying to hurt the Bush-Cheney ticket with religious conservatives.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Ace of Spades - Even the ultra-liberal New York Times is now forced to notice this nasty fart of a tactic. I guess the Times' commitment to actual sexual tolerance exceeds its gonzo Democratic partisanship-- for once:
<<<Forget his health care plan. Forget abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Forget even how many times he did or did not vote to raise taxes. Senator John Kerry may have lost three critical votes with a simple aside, when he invoked Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter as part of an answer on same-sex marriage.
"That is very unfair," blurted Patsey Farrell, 64, one of a handful of undecided voters gathered here to watch the final presidential debate Wednesday night. "I'm sorry, that's too personal. That's too hurtful."
Her son-in-law, Kevin Uhde, the 50-year-old elementary school principal who held this pizza party, agreed. "Not by name," he said, shaking his head at Mr. Kerry on the 24-inch Phillips television set a few yards away. "Why single out one person?"
And Mr. Uhde's wife, Karlen, added, "I think it's like a low blow.">>>
Charming man, this John Kerry.
He nastilly injects passive-aggressive homophobia into debates with the ferocity of a, say, Jenjis Khan.
No Surrender, No Retreat
By ALEXANDER DOWNER
October 13, 2004; Page A16
Without seeking to underestimate the role of domestic issues such as economic management, there can be no mistaking the clear foreign-policy choices made by Australia in last weekend's election. Presented with some tough decisions, the Australian people again demonstrated their robust commitment to international order and the common good. With opposition parties promising to bring home Australian troops from Iraq by Christmas, Australians could have taken the easy option to "cut and run." Instead, they strongly re-endorsed the government of Prime Minister John Howard and its promise to stay the course in Iraq.
Having been an original, modest but important contributor to the "Coalition of the Willing," Australia is not about to set any arbitrary deadline for leaving Iraq. We will not let down the Iraqi people. We will not let down our allies. And we will not let down the international community. Our troops are involved in the important work of training Iraqi security forces, patrolling the waters and skies around Iraq and protecting Australia's diplomatic staff in Baghdad. Our commitment also extends to reconstruction assistance, especially in the fields of agriculture and water management.
Australians hold mixed and varied views about the Iraq conflict and it has been a source of some political controversy and pain for our government. But having successfully participated in the liberation of Iraq from a cruel and brutal dictatorship, most Australians realize it would be folly to withdraw now, just when the Iraqi people are on the threshold of a free and democratic future. Australians also realized that to cut and run from Iraq would be to hand the terrorists a massive strategic and propaganda victory in the very battle that British Prime Minister Tony Blair has described as the "crucible" in the war against terrorism.
Despite the vicious terrorist bombing against the Australian embassy in Jakarta a month before our election, the poll result should not come as a surprise. Australians have a proud record of standing up for our values, our allies, our neighbors and our national interests abroad. In recent years we have done this in Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor and the Solomon Islands. The Australian government will continue to show resolve and commitment in the war against terrorism, especially in our own region. We have struck counterterrorism agreements with nine of our regional neighbors and co-hosted with Indonesia a regional summit on counterterrorism.
Our leadership and cooperation on counterterrorism capacity-building will continue apace. We have committed further resources to this task, including a doubling of our commitments to fund counterterrorism strategies in Indonesia and the Philippines. We will also engage fully in the "battle of ideas" to ensure that the war against terrorism is not seen as a "clash of civilizations" but as a battle to root out the extremists. We will co-host with Indonesia a regional inter-faith dialogue to encourage understanding and tolerance in these broader issues.
In the lead-up to our election, Australia's opposition parties argued for a kind of retreat to our region, a retreat to fortress Australia. We, on the other hand, realize the terrorist threat is a global challenge that must be fought both in our region and with the broader international community. In this struggle, Australia's alliance with the United States is fundamentally important.
We will nurture that alliance rather than downgrade it. The alliance is a manifestation of our shared values and is vital in an era of global terrorist threats, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and failed states. Access to U.S. intelligence resources, leading defense technology and other support provides unrivalled assistance in facing these challenges.
Today, Australia's international standing is high because we pull our weight internationally and do not seek to shirk our responsibilities. The coalition government's foreign-policy approach unashamedly puts the security and interests of Australians first -- the sacred duty of any government to protect its citizens. But it is also firmly anchored in the views and values of Australians and a belief that Australia is a significant country that can make a strong contribution to a better world.
Our approach to the challenges we and other nations face is guided by pragmatism rather than hamstrung by ideology. Under the re-elected Howard government, Australia will continue to strive for outcomes that make a real difference to the security and prosperity of Australians and the international community.
Mr. Downer is foreign minister of Australia.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109761731335943403,00.html?mod=opinion%5Fmain%5Fcommentaries
So anyone with an opposing POV is a liar to you?
Zeev, you may find this interview illuminating in regard to
the Swift Boat Vets, John Kerry's Service, his anti-war
activities & the MSM........
Five Minutes vs. Five Years: Interview With Swift Boat Vet George Elliott
** Dean's World Exclusive ** ** Must Credit Dean's World **
I was pleased recently to have an in-depth conversation with retired US Navy Captain George Elliott. We talked about his career in the military and his involvment in the group known as Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth.
The retired Captain Elliott served for decades with the U.S. Navy and won a number of combat and non-combat citations, most of which he is (as I discovered) reluctant to talk about let alone brag about. I also had the pleasure of speaking a few times with his lovely wife, who was helpful in making sure I got our transcribed interview right. --Dean
Dean's World: Thank you for talking to me, Captain Elliott. Can you give me some basic details on when and where you served?
George Elliott: Well I graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1959. I went into the academy directly after High School here in Delaware and served at many different stations over the next 26 years as a commissioned officer, retiring in 1985 with a rank of Captain.
Dean's World: How long were you in Viet Nam?
GE: From August of 1968 through July of 1969.
DW: How long did you know Kerry?
GE: He served at my command at An Thoi--Coastal Division 11---well there were 5 days in December wherein I barely knew he was there, then he returned in January 1969 and departed on the 26th of March. Actually I don't know the exact date but I use the date of 26th of March because that is the last day my fitness report covers him.
DW: But you did know him personally then obviously.
GE: Oh yes.
DW: Are you receiving any sort of compensation for your activities against Senator Kerry?
GE: No, absolutely not. I'm... we've had some of our hotel rooms and bills paid when we've gone to Washington, but I've made a personal committment to donate to the organization whatever I think my expenses are, and a little more.
DW: So you make nothing at all?
GE: Absolutely nothing.
DW: What do you do for a living?
GE: I'm currently retired. I worked for about 10 years after I retired from the United States Navy and now I am a volunteer in my small town of Lewes, Delaware. I'm a member of the Rotary Club, was president of the Lewes Historical Society for seven years and am now a member of the board of directors of a maritime museum here in Lewes. It is a lightship--the former Boston Lightship. I also play a little golf--but certainly not for a living!
DW: How about politics? Do you have much background in politics?
GE: I've avoided it like the plague, but I vote every election.
DW: Are you a Republican?
GE: No I'm not. I'm registered as an independent voter and have never voted a straight ticket in my life that I recall. I have not always voted for one party or the other on the national ticket--presidents, senators, congressmen, so forth.
DW: Is it true that you campaigned on behalf of Senator Kerry in the 1990s, and if so, why are you involved in this effort against him now?
GE: "Campaign" is the wrong word. In 1996 a Boston Globe reporter named, Warsh I believe it was, in 1996, he wrote an article that very strongly implied that John Kerry, in the Silver Star incident, had simply executed a wounded Viet Cong soldier. In Warsh's words, he had isssued a "coup de grace," which we found deeply offensive. So, with several members of John Kerry's crew, Admiral Zumwalt and Captain Adrian Lonsdale and I went to speak out against accusations of war crimes by the Navy.
We went to Boston to support Kerry in this accusation of a war crime. It was as much to defend the Navy and my outfit as it was to stand with John Kerry. This was a specious inference and we couldn't let it stand. It had very little to do with politics in my view.
In my opening remarks at the press conference on the piers down at the old Boston Navy Yard in Massachussetts, my remarks were, "I am not here to support Senator Kerry, I am here to support Lt(jg) Kerry." And I made that distinction for two reasons. First I didn't want anyone to think I was a carpetbagger there to inject myself into a campaign in Massachussetts, and second I wanted to make it clear that I was there to defend the Navy against accusations of war crimes.
DW: Were you aware of what Kerry said about war crimes in his testimony before Congress in the early 1970s?
GE: Absolutely. At that time I think most of us considered that in the past. As long as John Kerry was a Massachussetts Senator we had no, I had no reason to interject myself into any campaign he was running or not running.
DW: I've also been asked why it is you guys took 30 years to come forward with your allegations against the Senator. Do you have any response to that?
GE: Absolutely I have a response. First of all as I just said, when Kerry was a politician in Massachussetts, representing Massachussetts, we had no stake in that game. Now that he wants to be Commander In Chief, we have a big stake in the game. His actions over the years were despicable and dishonorable. It's now a national position that he's seeking.
DW: The Boston Globe's Michael Kranish accused you of changing your story on Senator Kerry, and claimed you retracted part of your accusations. Can you tell me about that incident?
GE: Yes. When Michael Kranish called that day he had my affidavit which was required to be signed in order to get the book published and to get the commercials on the air. And he referred to a phrase in that affidavit where I said that I was never informed that he had simply shot a wounded Viet Cong in the back. Now those words "shot in the back," those words sort of stuck in my craw because it was reminiscent of Warsh's words that all he had done was execute a Viet Cong. That was the sole issue I had. Quite frankly it was a true statement even with that in there. I was never informed he had simply shot a wounded Viet Cong in the back. But again the phrasing had the harshness of a war crime.
However, if you read Kranish's own interview with John Kerry as published in the Boston Globe, or the biography of John Kerry by "the reporters who knew him best," on page 102 you will read in Kerry's own words in describing the events of that day, and there is no way any rational person could conclude that John Kerry did anything other than shoot a fleeing man in the back.
DW: And that would be a crime?
GE: No, absolutely not. Even given that. This is a combat situation, the man was armed and the fact that he was shot in the back has nothing to do with anything other than the tragedies of combat, at least for that guy and his family. It is not a war crime.
DW: Wait. As I read the Kranish piece, Kerry specifically denies shooting the guy in the back.
GE: Kerry says "He was running away with a live B-40, and, I thought, poised to turn around and fire it." Now, unless the man was running backwards and poised to turn around I conclude there is no way a rational person could conclude that John Kerry did anything other than shoot a fleeing man in the back.
I had read the Boston Globe biography of John Kerry and the incident did not register at the time. However, Michael Kranish took my words and implied that I said it was a mistake to sign the affidavit against Kerry. But that's not what I was talking about, and Kranish knew at the time that there should have been no concern about those words because he had written them himself.
Like I said, being a cagey reporter he had no obligation to tell me that and he didn't when he wrote his story.
Now the story that he wrote, the words that he has in the story that are in quotation marks, those are words that I said. So I was not misquoted. What he did however is, following the words in quotations, he has reached conclusions that misrepresented my feelings and they are not quotations or words that I said. Those are his conclusions. That's what I took issue with, they in fact did not reflect my true feelings.
DW: I'm still a little confused.
GE: He took words that I actually said, put them in quotations, they were all correct. For example, in his story Kranish goes all the way back to 1996. One of the sentences in his story was something like "The affadavit also contradicted earlier material.... saying that Kerry acted properly and deserved the Silver Star." Now that is a true statement. But that does not contradict the fact that there has been a lot of information to come to light since then to shed new light on that action.
This is the same argument that people have used against me when they bring up that I wrote a decent fitness report for Kerry in 1969 and now have changed. Certainly it would change given what's been published...and other things that have since been disputed.
Brinkley's book Tour of Duty brought an awful lot of things to light that people who served with Kerry had no idea about.
DW: I've heard it suggested that you and others are merely being manipulated and misled by a group of big-money Republicans. What do you think of such allegations?
GE: Well I have spoken in public several times, I have had several interviews, I have had calls and talked to reporters on many occasions. I have never had anyone ever tell me what to say. I am told by our steering group members that yes, we have received some fairly large donations on occasion but those donations come with a caveat from us, "look this is our campaign, this is what we're saying, we are not taking any words from you. We'll create our ads and do everything ourselves." And I believe those guys. I don't believe we need anyone to tell us what to say. We are all saying what we believe.
I would also tell you that we now have over 100,000 individual contributions via the internet through our web site. Those are not 100,000 big money Republicans. These are people whose average donation is somewhere in the 60 to 70 dollar range. John O'Neill said once on television we would certainly take some of George Soros' millions if he'd like to send some our way.
DW: Do you endorse everything in John O'Neill's book about the Senator? For example, specifically in chapter 4, the book accuses him of more or less murdering a child in Viet Nam.
GE: The Sampan Incident? Sir, I can put you in touch with the man who actually pulled the trigger on that child that night. He's now one of our members. His name is Steve Gardner. His testimony of the event is the basis for that part of the book, and I believe O'Neill characterizes it as a tragedy, but it was also a false report that John Kerry submitted about that incident.
DW: Do you intend to keep speaking out against Kerry if he is elected in November?
GE: Once it's over it's over. I have no reason to continue, the American people will vote and make their choice. I don't know that I---I would not continue to oppose a sitting American President if the people put him there.
DW: Has the Senator ever apologized to you for his statements about war crimes and atrocities supposedly committed everywhere with the full support of all levels of command in Viet Nam?
GE: Never.
DW: If he did apologize would you accept it?
GE: If he tried to apologize between now and the time of the election, no. Win or lose on the 2nd of November, if he were to stand up and apologize to me and the hundreds of thousands of other veterans that he has offended over the years, I would accept his apology.
DW: Do you think that anyone who protested the Viet Nam war was fink? Are you simply mad at Kerry for protesting the war?
GE: Of course not, of course not. Every American's born with the right to criticize their government. Even Jane Fonda, she didn't have to fight to earn that right, it's a birthright.
What is not a birthright is lying in order to support your protest. And there's absolutely no question in any of our minds that John Kerry lied when he was before Congress. There's no question that he met with the enemy in Paris. And these are things that he does not have a right to do.
DW: Would you use the word "treason" to describe any of that?
GE: No I wouldn't go that far, but in my own mind it comes damned close.
DW: Have you received much support from other vets not in your group?
GE: Absolutely. Not only vets but just ordinary people. Relatives of men lost in Viet Nam or family members who had someone who served. I have received important support from everywhere. A lot of people, not just the 100,000 who donated but the many who have supported us and continue to.
DW: How about harassment?
GE: I haven't had too much of that actually. A couple of radio interviews, you get call-ins that try to drown you out, but I wouldn't consider that harassment. A few pieces of mail, but as long as they sign their name you don't take it too criticially. They have their views.
There's a lot of letters on both sides in the newspapers, and some of those are very negative but many are factual and in support of us.
DW: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
GE: I don't know if this is the place to put this, but, there's one thing that concerns me very greatly, and that is the approach taken by what's currently known as the mainstream media. And I am not saying this to bash the mainstream media, but I think that if they continue to act in such a partisan way that it's not good for this country.
A free and unfettered press is an absolute necessity for this country to survive in the manner that was intended by the forefathers. But if the mainstream press continues acting in such a partisan way that they lose the support of a major part of the population, who is going to get us the real truth? Who is going to beat on the doors of congressmen and secretaries if various departments to answer the people's questions?
You see much of the population veering away from the three TV networks. Of course I don't believe everything on the internet but there's a part on there today about the ABC News director which, if it's even halfway true, it's very telling.
I have very grave concerns about the American people being able to trust what the mainstream media says unless something changes. Maybe our swift boat guys, maybe this will be a greater legacy, will be what we've exposed about the mainstream media than anything we've said about Senator Kerry. I'll give you an example. The closest example to our cause is the fact that CBS admits that they've been five years chasing down President Bush's national guard records.
And they haven't spent five minutes trying to find John Kerry's records!
He has not released his records. The last I heard him say on the news was "I have released all the records I have in my possession." He always has a caveat for anything he says like that. But you will notice that one telling piece of paper that hasn't been released is the original writeup/recommendation for the Silver Star. He did release a recommendation that I wrote for the Bronze star. That's out there. The Silver Star recommendation is not there.
Even a reasonably competent news person would in my view ask "where is that?" It's as controversial as the bronze star. It's not there.
Where are his discharge papers? He has not put up a copy of his discharge from the naval reserve. That should have taken place in 1978 when his service in all forms was completed.
The press seems to have no interest in this.
They continue to call us liars when we mention these things. The facts in John Kerry's own words, as written in Tour of Duty from his own diaries, indicate to anyone who'd look at it twice can see that the third purple heart was a fraud. The shrapnel wound was admittedly from throwing a grenade into a bin of rice. They joked about getting shrapnel and rice into his butt. That's in his own book, Tour of Duty. So why are we liars to point it out? And why are reporters so interested in Bush's National Guard service but willing to call us liars when we've got eyewitnesses, sworn affidavits, and Kerry's own words backing us up? What is the world coming to if the people can no longer trust the press to tell them the truth and look at all candidates equally?
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1097675269.shtml
Poster at site - Tennessee Democrats Compare Republicans To Special Olympics Children
October 12, 2004 – Democrats in a race for a state House seat in District 82, are circulating a flyer that shows a retarded child with President Bush’s face running in a track race. The headline says: “Voting for Bush Is Like Running In The Special Olympics: Even If You Win, You’re Still Retarded.”
Click on Picture to Enlarge http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=1951
The flyer is being distributed by Democrat Craig Fitzhugh. His opponent, Dave Dahl has issued a call to Fitzhugh to stop distributing the flyer.
According to Dahl, “Hard-ball politics is one thing and everyone expects tough battles, but using those who are born with mental disabilities for political fodder is disgusting.”
Dahl says the flyers have been distributed for at least two weeks from Fitzhugh’s campaign office in Ripley, Tennessee. It also serves as the Kerry-Edwards headquarters. “At first, I really did not believe that Fitzhugh and the Democrats would stoop to such gutter politics, but then people started bringing the flyer to me at the end of last week. I was shocked and disgusted.”
“This kind of reckless disregard for those who suffer from mental disabilities is much larger than any state representative race. This act is so atrocious and indecent that my campaign will be sending a copy of the Fitzhugh flyer to the United States Special Olympics Committee, the Special Olympics International Group and state and national advocacy groups who work with and support special needs children and adults.”
This most recent attack on Republicans as mentally handicapped is not new. On October 28, 1994, while in Virginia, then-Vice President Al Gore attacked Oliver North's Senate bid supporters as "the extreme right wing, the extra chromosome right wing." Advocates for those with Down's Syndrome, caused by an extra chromosome, were outraged.
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=1951
Uh huh. Based on what real world facts?
Investigators unearthing mass grave in search of evidence against Saddam Hussein
By Associated Press, 10/12/2004 20:29
HATRA, Iraq (AP) Investigators have begun unearthing a mass grave near this northern Iraqi village, uncovering more than 100 bodies and seeking evidence to use in a future trial of Saddam Hussein.
The bodies, believed to be Kurds killed during Saddam's crackdown in 1987-88, are buried in nine trenches, according to Greg Kehoe, an American who works with the Iraqi Special Tribunal, which is preparing the trial of Saddam and his henchmen.
Kehoe said his team has removed 120 bodies from a trench believed to contain as many as 300 bodies.
He said that because of limited funds and resources, his team can excavate only one mass grave at a time. European teams who worked on Bosnian mass graves are not helping because of their concerns that Saddam could face the death penalty, he said.
''It is my personal opinion that this is a killing field,'' Kehoe told reporters during a visit to the site south of Mosul. ''Someone used this field on significant occasions over time to take bodies up there, and to take people up there and execute them.''
Kehoe said the bodies were apparently bulldozed into the graves.
''Unlike bodies that you've seen in many mass graves they look like cordwood all lined up,'' he said. ''That didn't happen here. These bodies were just pushed in.''
He said excavators found the body of a mother still clutching her baby. The infant was shot in the back of the head and the mother in the face.
Kehoe said that most mass graves in Bosnia largely contain men of fighting age. Graves near Hatra included many women and children, he said.
''Genocide is the attempt to eliminate, limit or exterminate a religious, ethnic, national or racial group,'' he said. ''The Kurds are clearly a different nationality. So could it be considered genocide? It could be. Killing, ethnic cleansing, property relocations, all of those were used to try to limit the Kurdish population. What it is fundamentally is downright murder.''
Human rights organizations estimate that more than 300,000 people were killed during Saddam's 24-year rule, which ended when U.S.-led forces toppled his regime in 2003.
Saddam is expected to stand trial for crimes against humanity and other offenses next year. No trial date has been set.
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/286/world/Investigators_unearthing_mass_:.shtml
Questions for Kerry
New York Times
OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS
A Real Job
By CHARLES MURRAY, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author, most recently, of "Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950''
Five percent of Americans pay 54 percent of all personal income taxes. They do not use more government services than other Americans; they use fewer. Why is this fair?
Would you be willing to sponsor tort reform that requires plaintiffs to have used common sense before being eligible for damages?
You promise to create millions of jobs, but many people who run businesses say that nothing in your life has taught you how much effort, risk and sometimes heartbreak goes into creating one real job. Could you describe your experiences when you last had to meet a payroll, or when your boss had to meet a payroll?
Clearing the Air
By CHRISTIE WHITMAN, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from 2001 to 2003
You have been critical of President Bush's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, yet in 1997 you joined 94 of your Senate colleagues in effectively rejecting its terms. What has changed to make you accept now what you then rejected?
The president's Clear Skies proposal calls for a 70 percent reduction in some of the worst air pollutants, including mercury, over the next decade. While the current Clean Air Act has made a difference, it is cumbersome, it almost always involves lengthy litigation that delays any benefits, and it doesn't set any specific level for the reduction of mercury. Why haven't you led the fight to avoid lawsuits and instead demand the results the president has advocated?
Back to Schools
By STEPHEN L. CARTER, a professor of law at Yale and the author, most recently, of "The Emperor of Ocean Park," a novel
During the long period it would take to carry out your plan to improve the public schools, would you, in the interest of racial justice, support a system of vouchers to enable the parents of poor inner-city children to pay for private schooling to cover the transitional years? Throughout the five or more years that your plan envisions, many inner-city children will continue to receive substandard educations, and to suffer in other material and spiritual ways.
If the answer to the first question is no, would you call on well-to-do Democrats to show their support for public education, and for the poor, by voluntarily sending their children to the schools that the inner-city parents are required to use? After all, a sudden influx of middle-class families might force a cure for many of those schools' deficiencies.
If the answer to the second question is no, are there any sacrifices that you would call upon middle-class Americans to make for the sake of improving the condition of the worst-off among us?
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
Duelfer to France: J'accuse!
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
New York Times
Powerful officials and their profiteering friends in France had a reason to try to stop the U.S. from overthrowing Saddam Hussein: they were pocketing billions in payoffs through a United Nations oil-for-food front.
That's the import of the Duelfer report. This nonpartisan investigation team found not only documents "giving economic favors to key French diplomats or individuals that have access to key French leaders," but also got Saddam's mouthpiece, Tariq Aziz, to sing about their purpose: "According to Aziz, both parties understood that resale of the oil was to be reciprocated through efforts to lift U.N. sanctions, or through opposition to American initiatives within the Security Council."
Charles Duelfer's group put on the public record the name of Charles Pasqua, France's former interior minister and now a senator. Pasqua denied all to the BBC and fingered ex-associates: "maybe other former ministers are involved."
The former French ambassador to the U.N., Jean-Bernard Mérimée, is listed as receiving vouchers for 11 million barrels of oil from Saddam, the proceeds from which would beat a diplomat's pay. Another of President Jacques Chirac's friends receiving Saddam's U.N. largesse is Patrick Maugein, "whom the Iraqis considered a conduit to Chirac," according to the report.
Maugein, 58, whose association with Chirac has occasionally been chronicled by the French journalist Karl Laske, is chairman of Soco, an oil company active in Vietnam. He's down for 13 million barrels. French oil companies Total and Socap got about 200 million barrels.
A name that keeps coming up in my poking around is Marc Rich, the American billionaire who was for many years a fugitive, until blessed with one of Bill Clinton's midnight pardons. Rich's company Trafigura, spun off from the Swiss-based Glencore, and its possible dealings with outfits like Jean-Paul Cayre's Ibex have excited the interest of many of the sleuths I've spoken to.
France's diplomats here are apoplectic, calling the unconfirmed Duelfer reports "unacceptable." They note in high dudgeon that U.S. firms involved in the U.N.'s corrupt caper are not named by the U.S. team and deride our excuse about "privacy laws."
However, within 24 hours of the damning report's issuance, Judith Miller and her colleagues had the names of the U.S. companies involved - Chevron, Mobil, Texaco, Bay Oil and one Oscar Wyatt Jr. of Houston, who may have profited by $23 million - on the front page of The New York Times. (Will our runaway anti-press prosecutor try to clap Judy in jail for protecting her confidential government sources on this one, too?)
The Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has issued seven subpoenas and a dozen hard-to-ignore chairman's letters from Senator Norm Coleman to companies in the U.S., as well as to multinationals doing business here. I hear the committee has met no legal resistance so far. Ben Pollner, head of Taurus Oil, active in Iraq all through the oil-for-food fiasco, stiffed Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau's men. (Pollner tells me his dealings were legal, but he clammed up to investigators because he remembers Martha Stewart.)
What also miffs the French is that Russian officials and oligarchs were able to rip off even more than France's predators. Vladimir Zhirinovsky made out like a bandit when his party had some power; so did "the office of the Russian president" and the Peace and Unity Party, both headed by the unmentionable Putin.
As the hares zoom by, Paul Volcker, the U.N. investigative tortoise, tells his people to forget the French and Russians and to concentrate on Kofi Annan's right-hand man, Benon Sevan, and Kofi Annan's son's relationship with Cotecna, the U.N.'s see-no-evil "monitor," The White House is wringing its hands because it needs the U.N.'s blessing on the Iraqi election, and John Kerry must be praying not to be asked about this in tonight's debate.
If I were a French reporter and wanted to lose my job at Chirac's Le Figaro in a hurry, I would drop in at 24 Boulevard Princess Charlotte in Monaco and ask if Patrick Maugein, Rui de Souza or Mario Contini has dropped by to see if Toro Energy and the African Middle East Petroleum company are still there? If that's a blind alley, try the casino.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
JOHN KERRY WANTS TO BE YOUR OWN PERSONAL JESUS
The Democrat Revolutionaries are promising to deliver you a whole new Messiah--miraculous healings and all--come election day.
"When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk. Get up out of that wheelchair and walk again." --Sen. John Edwards
Let me say I have the utmost respect for Zeev. He is one of
the most intelligent, thoughtful, well spoken & generous
people I have had the pleasure to meet in cyberspace.
I could fill this post with hundreds of superlatives about
Zeev. Suffice it to say I listen closely when Zeev speaks.
I made a fortune in the stock market. Somewhere along the
way, I ran into Zeev. For all the stock gurus giving free
opinions on the net, Zeev was & remains one of the best IMHO.
And before my words are misconstrued, Zeev isn't perfect.
He's simply right often enough to turn a healthy profit
consistently. He's also has enough emotional detachment to
know when to cut his losses & stay in the game to fight
another day.
I wish I had listened closer to Zeev when the bubble burst. I
remained a bull when it was clearly a bear market. I paid
dearly for being too emotionally attached to my POV.
I hope that I have learned a valuable lesson from this.
Now how does all of this relate to Zeev & his political POV?
Well, I happened to read some of his politically related
posts here. I knew that what he said didn't match what I knew
to be true. And I was somewhat surprised to read a number of
assertions that I firmly believed were not accurate.
The Zeev I had come to know rarely made unsubstantiated
assertions. Well, the more I read, the more it became clear
to me that Zeev may be allowing a personal bias to cloud his
superior intellect. Perhaps he is not sufficiently emotionally
detached political from his passions to see the world as it
really is. (this is a apartially plagiarized quote from David
Brooks).
I believe this assessment may have merit.
I know I am biased. I have a conservative tilt. However, like
the tough lessons learned from being a raging bull in a bear
market, I remind myself of that bias when I am engaged in
discussing, researching & sharing all things political.
I look forward to sharing, challenging & debating different
political POV's with Zeev as the election approaches. I know
that we will both go into the voting booth with a more
reality based understanding of the issues if we do.
Gotcha!
Fact: Under Bush, air quality actually has improved
Jonathan H. Adler - Op Ed, Inquirer, is an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University, where he teaches environmental and constitutional law
Air quality has improved dramatically over the last several decades. Since 1970, aggregate emissions of the six principal air pollutants have been cut in half. Contrary to claims that the environment is under siege, these trends have continued under President Bush. Emissions of carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and particulates were all lower in 2003 than in 2000, and there is every reason to expect this trend to continue regardless of who sits in the White House for the next four years.
Despite hysterical claims by environmental activists and Democratic partisans, the Bush administration has not "gutted" the Clean Air Act or otherwise endangered the environmental progress of the last 40 years. The primary regulatory standards governing air quality, such as the National Ambient Air Quality Standards and the caps on emissions linked to acid rain, all remain in place, as do regulations that require further emission reductions from vehicles and fuels.
Additional pollution controls are also in the works. The Bush administration adopted new rules to reduce emissions from off-road vehicles and diesel fuel, and is moving forward with the first ever limits on power plant mercury emissions. Another rule will impose tighter limits on upwind sources of pollution so they do not prevent downwind communities from meeting federal air quality standards. While it is fair to say that President Bush has been less aggressive on this score than Gore might have been, charges of a massive environmental "rollback" are simply untrue.
Most critiques of the Bush environmental record have focused on the administration's efforts to reform New Source Review (NSR) - a program under the Clean Air Act that requires new and modified power plants and industrial facilities to adopt state-of-the-art pollution control equipment. Plants built before the adoption of NSR in 1977 were grandfathered by Congress and must adopt such controls only when they are expanded or substantially modified. While well-intentioned, today NSR may do as much to retard environmental progress as it does to ensure cleaner air.
Complying with NSR is costly and time-consuming, so companies seek to avoid facility modifications that can trigger its requirements. In this fashion, NSR discourages companies from upgrading existing facilities to make them more reliable, efficient and environmentally sound. Under the old rules, it is more cost-effective to keep older, dirtier plants in operation as they are than it is to improve their environmental performance or replace them altogether.
"Not only does the New Source Review deter investment in newer, cleaner technologies, it also discourages companies from keeping power plants maintained," according to Robert Stavins of Harvard University and Howard Gruenspecht of Resources for the Future. This is bad for the environment, not to mention worker safety and plant reliability - and the reason that the Bush administration has sought to make NSR more flexible.
While some environmental activists now claim NSR is an integral part of the Clean Air Act, independent environmental analysts have long called for NSR reform. The National Academy of Public Administration and analysts from the Progressive Policy Institute, American Enterprise Institute, and Environmental Law Institute, among others, have all called for replacing NSR with a cap-and-trade program for utility emissions. President Bush's proposed "Clear Skies" legislation adopts just this sort of approach.
If adopted by Congress, "Clear Skies" would reduce utility emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury by 70 percent, and at a substantially lower cost than existing command-and-control regulations. Some claim "Clear Skies" would produce slower reductions than current law, but this assumes new rounds of administrative controls are rolled out on time and not delayed by litigation - a questionable assumption given the history of air pollution controls. The fact remains that if "Clear Skies" is adopted, the nation's air will be cleaner, not more polluted, than it is today.
In the debate over air pollution policy - and environmental protection more broadly - it is important not to let partisan rhetoric obscure the fundamental facts. There is no "war on the environment" and the Bush administration has not undermined the foundations of environmental law. There are more air pollution regulations on the books today than when Bush took office, and air quality continues to improve. While there are real differences between the candidates on how best to address environmental concerns, neither candidate for president is "anti-environment."
We Must Fight to Eliminate Terrorism, Not Tolerate It
By Rudy Giuliani
(Note: The following remarks delivered at BCO4 conference call yesterday)
For some time, and including when I spoke at the Republican Convention, I’ve wondered exactly what John Kerry’s approach would be to terrorism and I’ve wondered whether he had the conviction, the determination, and the focus, and the correct worldview to conduct a successful war against terrorism. And his quotations in the New York Times yesterday make it clear that he lacks that kind of committed view of the world. In fact, his comments are kind of extraordinary, particularly since he thinks we used to before September 11 live in a relatively safe world. He says we have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance.
I’m wondering exactly when Senator Kerry thought they were just a nuisance. Maybe when they attacked the USS Cole? Or when they attacked the World Trade Center in 1993? Or when they slaughtered the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972? Or killed Leon Klinghoffer by throwing him overboard? Or the innumerable number of terrorist acts that they committed in the 70s, the 80s and the 90s, leading up to September 11?
This is so different from the President’s view and my own, which is in those days, when we were fooling ourselves about the danger of terrorism, we were actually in the greatest danger. When you don’t confront correctly and view realistically the danger that you face, that’s when you’re at the greatest risk. When you at least realize the danger and you begin to confront it, then you begin to become safer. And for him to say that in the good old days – I’m assuming he means the 90s and the 80s and the 70s -- they were just a nuisance, this really begins to explain a lot of his inconsistent positions on how to deal with it because he’s not defining it correctly.
As a former law enforcement person, he says ‘I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it.’ This is not illegal gambling; this isn’t prostitution. Having been a former law enforcement person for a lot longer than John Kerry ever was, I don’t understand his confusion. Even when he says ‘organized crime to a level where it isn’t not on the rise,’ it was not the goal of the Justice Department to just reduce organized crime. It was the goal of the Justice Department to eliminate organized crime. Was there some acceptable level of organized crime: two families, instead of five, or they can control one union but not the other?
The idea that you can have an acceptable level of terrorism is frightening. How do you explain that to the people who are beheaded or the innocent people that are killed, that we’re going to tolerate a certain acceptable [level] of terrorism, and that acceptable level will exist and then we’ll stop thinking about it? This is an extraordinary statement. I think it is not a statement that in any way is ancillary. I think this is the core of John Kerry’s thinking. This does create some consistency in his thinking.
It is consistent with his views on Vietnam: that we should have left and abandoned Vietnam. It is consistent with his view of Nicaragua and the Sandinistas. It is consistent with his view of opposing Ronald Reagan at every step of the way in the arms buildup that was necessary to destroy communism. It is consistent with his view of not supporting the Persian Gulf War, which was another extraordinary step. Whatever John Kerry’s global test is, the Persian Gulf War certainly would pass anyone’s global test. If it were up to John Kerry, Saddam Hussein would not only still be in power, but he’d still be controlling Kuwait.
Finally, what he did after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, where I guess at that point terrorism was still just a nuisance. He must have thought that because that’s why he proposed seriously reducing our intelligence budget, when you would think someone who was really sensitive to the problem of terrorism would have done just the opposite. I think that rather than being some aberrational comment, it is the core of the John Kerry philosophy: that terrorism is no different than domestic law enforcement problems, and that the best we’re ever going to be able to do is reduce it, so why not follow the more European approach of compromising with it the way Europeans did in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s?
This is so totally different than what I think was the major advance that President Bush made – significant advance that he made in the Bush Doctrine on September 20, 2001, when he said we’re going to face up to terrorism and we’re going to do everything we can to defeat it, completely. There’s no reason why we have to tolerate global terrorism, just like there’s no reason to tolerate organized crime.
So I think this is a seminal issue, this is one that explains or ties together a lot of things that we’ve talked about. Even this notion that the Kerry campaign was so upset that the Vice President and others were saying that he doesn’t understand the threat of terrorism; that he thinks it’s just a law enforcement action. It turns out the Vice President was right. He does and maybe this is a difference, maybe this is an honest difference that we really should debate straight out. He thinks that the threat is not as great as at least the President does, and I do, and the Vice President does.
SMOKING GUN
JOHN PODERETZ - NY POST
October 12, 2004 -- CONSERVATIVES are up in arms about the memo written by the chief politics producer at ABC News, which leaked out on Friday. They shouldn't be. Mark Halperin's memo is very useful: It reveals as no other document ever has the existence of a deeply ingrained double standard in the way political news is reported in the United States.
Simply put, Republicans and conservatives are subject to exacting scrutiny of their actions, while Democrats and liberals are treated with far greater leniency.
You can see this in the memo, when Halperin informs his colleagues, "The current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done." He also says the Bushies are making "stepped up, renewed efforts to win the election by destroying Sen. Kerry at least partly through distortions."
Let's stipulate that some of the Bush attacks on Kerry feature distortions. For example, the president's claim that Kerry is proposing a government-run health-care system is a bit of trickery. Kerry proposes no such thing — though his plans are so unbelievably costly that it's more than fair to argue they would inexorably lead to government rationing of health care. But the president doesn't really argue it. He states it as fact, and if we lived in a universe in which everybody played fair all the time, he wouldn't do that.
But we don't live in that universe. We live in a universe where politicians of both sides make ellisions in their arguments — Sen. Kerry no less than President Bush. On matters ranging from tax policy to the No Child Left Behind Act, Kerry is guilty of precisely the same sorts of distortions.
But to Halperin and his colleagues in the mainstream media, the Republican distortions seem far worse because — well, because they just don't hold the Democrats with whom they agree to the same standard as they do the Republicans with whom they disagree.
Now, Kerry partisans and others will claim that the health-care distortion is nothing compared to the supposed slanders about his war record heaped on the Massachusetts senator by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Indeed, I suspect that the Swift Boat attacks are the true source (whether consciously or unconsciously I can't say) of Halperin's assertion about the fundamentally distorting nature of the Bush campaign.
But the Swift Boat attacks weren't launched by the Bush campaign, and Halperin knows it. They were launched by an independent group, one of the 527s that has arisen in the wake of the last campaign-finance law.
Oh ho, say the Kerry skeptics. Don't be naive. Surely you know that the Bush campaign is behind the Swift Boat Veterans.
But here's the thing. It would be patently, blatantly illegal for the Bush campaign to be coordinating with the Swift Boat Veterans. Halperin knows this.
He also knows that it would be illegal for the Kerry campaign to be coordinating with left-liberal 527s, which have raised more than $150 million to defeat President Bush — as opposed to the paltry $158,000 raised by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth so far (Edit - they have raised $13 million to date).
However vilified John Kerry may feel by the Swift Boat guys, that too is as nothing to Bush-as-Hitler trope that seems to be the central ideological conceit of the anti-Bush 527s and their key organizer, George Soros.
The point here is that Republican attacks on Democrats offend the ear of mainstream-media veterans like Mark Halperin in a way that Democratic attacks on Republicans don't. And by writing his ill-advised but revelatory memo, Halperin has shown how implicit bias can become explicit newsgathering policy.
So conservatives owe Mark Halperin a debt of gratitude — for proving to all fair-minded people that we right-wingers have been hollering "foul" about media bias all these years with ample reason.
After all, how many other memos like this have been written over the decades that we haven't seen? Dozens? Hundreds?
Ask Kerry one question: What would Zarqawi be doing if he weren't in Iraq
Dennis Prager
October 12, 2004
The most frequently offered argument of Sen. John Kerry and other anti-war Democrats to support their charge that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake is that Iraq has become a den of terrorists.
This claim is true. But it completely undermines the Democrats' charge that invading Iraq was a mistake.
They say this: There are far more terrorists in Iraq since the invasion, and, therefore, the invasion was a mistake.
Yet, in order to believe that the greater number of terrorists in Iraq means the invasion was a mistake, you have to believe one or both of the following -- that were it not for the invasion, the terrorists who are in Iraq would have been engaged in some peaceful work in some other country, or that they are newly minted terrorists who were perhaps selling shoes prior to the war in Iraq.
Neither scenario makes sense.
Take the leading terrorist -- the Jordanian butcher of human beings, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Everyone acknowledges he was a terrorist before the war in Iraq. In the 1990s, he spent seven years in a Jordanian prison for plotting to overthrow the government and establish an Islamic state. He then went to Germany, where he set up a terrorist cell.
So here's the question that apparently goes unasked of all the Democrats who are sure it is President Bush who lacks intelligence: What would Zarqawi be doing now if he were not slaughtering people in Iraq?
Selling used cars in Amman?
Playing cello in the Berlin Philharmonic?
The president has said from the beginning that a major reason for invading Iraq was to bring the war to the terrorists, and that if we don't fight them on their soil, we will have to fight them on ours. Therefore, unless one posits that Zarqawi and other Arab sadists would be doing nice things elsewhere, their presence in Iraq seems to vindicate the president entirely -- that they would be busy in the West if they were not kept busy defending their very lives in Iraq.
It is sad that this obvious point is not constantly repeated when Democrats make what they believe is some unassailable point about the influx of terrorists into Iraq.
Which raises a variation on this theme: Why are so many Arab and other Muslim terrorists in Iraq? The point that Iraq has become a terrorist haven is made so often by critics of the war in Iraq that these critics must think it is a
self-evident argument against the war.
But this point is as weak as the first. The fact that many terrorists have flocked to Iraq argues what, exactly?
No one ever quite says. Because the only argument against the war suggested by this fact is that all the terrorists flocking into Iraq are new recruits -- Arabs and Iranians who left their accounting firms to blow up themselves and Iraqi children because America invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein.
There is no evidence offered to prove that contention, however. And it defies common sense. As Charles Krauthammer pointed out after we invaded Afghanistan, unlike before the invasion, there were no more Osama T-shirts being sold in Pakistan; people love winners, and Osama was finally losing. Recruits to Muslim terror are made by Muslims who preach evil in God's name and by terrorist victories, not by America fighting back.
Just as in the first case, the claim is true, but it undermines the charge.
The claim that there are more, indeed many, terrorists in Iraq now is true. But the terrorists are there because they know that if America prevails in establishing a relatively free country where there once stood an America-hating terrorist-supporting Arab regime, they are ultimately doomed. Liberals love to find out the root causes of sociopathological behaviors. Well, one root cause of Islamic terror is the hermetically sealed Arab-Muslim world. Open that up to even some freedom, and the cesspool that produces the terrorist monsters begins to dry up.
That is why so many terrorists have moved to Iraq. They agree with President Bush -- the war on terror is taking place in Iraq.
"CNS News is a notorious right wing organization owned by L. Brent Bozell who is a right wing demagogue who is bought and paid by Republicans and who frequently smears Democrats
CBS News is a notorious Left Wing organization that regularly smears Republicans.
Which News outlet got caught trying to pass off forged
documents in a zealous attempt to bring down a sitting
President?
And which of the two are you denigrating?
'nuff said
Ö¿Ö
Command Post - CNS News Publishes Iraqi WMD Documents Online
Back on October 4, 2004, Cybercast News reported:
“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.”
I invoked Den Beste’s famous “7 day rule” and held off on this one over at Winds of Change.NET. Meanwhile, CNS News has been making them available to “credentialed news organizations and counter-terrorism experts”. Interestingly, Rathergate has made many of them interested but gun shy.
Now CNS has taken the logical next step and made the documents available to the public - and hence the blogosphere.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200410\NAT20041011a.html
We welcome any thoughts from readers with expertise in Arabic, Iraq, document authentication, et. al. Please leave a comment, or get in touch with Robi Sen (“robi@”, here at windsofchange.net) who has been following this story and is coordinating our investigative efforts. If you have pointers to other reports re: these documents, contact Robi and Cc: “joe@…” so I can add them.
THE ABC OUTRAGE
NY POST EDITORIAL
October 10, 2004 -- Mainstream media bias against Republican presidental candidates is a fact of American political life.
Rarely, though, has this been so evident as this year; the establishment media seems to have become a wing of John Kerry's campaign.
One unusually candid member of the liberal media mafia admitted as much during the Democratic convention.
Evan Thomas, assistant managing editor of Newsweek, offered this confession on media bias on the PBS program "Inside Washington."
"The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. And I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards — I'm talking about the establishment media, not Fox — as being young and dynamic and optimistic, and there's going to be this glow about them, collective glow."
Whereupon his magazine published a — how best to put this — glowing cover story dubbing the Democratic duo "The Sunshine Boys."
This was hardly an isolated incident — though we'll get to Dan Rather and his hatchet work in a bit.
First, consider the latest smoking gun to emerge in the media war on George Bush: The internal memo written by ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin that popped up right before Friday night's Bush-Kerry debate.
Halperin, described by the network as "responsible for the planning and editorial content of all political news on the network," issued new orders.
Both sides distort the truth, he said, adding in effect that Kerry's lies don't matter — but that George W. Bush's most certainly do.
"Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win." In contrast, he wrote, "the current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done" — a point he said was echoed by reporters from such paragons of objectivity as the above-mentioned Newsweek and The New York Times.
Then came the instructions:
"We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable when the facts don't warrant that.
"It's up to Kerry to defend himself, of course. But as one of the few news organizations with the skill and strength to help voters evaluate what the candidates are saying to serve the public in- terest, now is the time for all of us to step up and do that right."
That is, voters need skillful, strong "help" evaluating information because they are too stupid, too ignorant or too benighted to figure out the "right" way to vote all by themselves.
They need Mark Halperin and his crew of correct-thinkers to explain things to them.
Such arrogance borders on the incomprehensible — and it is unforgivable at this stage of one of the most important presidential elections in American history.
An ABC News flack said Friday night that "we're not interested in taking sides" — which hardly addresses the issues raised by the Halperin memo.
So here's hoping that network handles its crisis with more honesty, more honor, than CBS mustered in the Dan Rather Memogate fiasco last month.
Rather and an activist CBS producer harboring a five-year obsession with George W. Bush's military record decided to prove that the president had lied about his service — and to do it as close to Election Day as possible.
There was one big problem with this project: An utter lack of evidence.
So they swallowed whole "incriminating" documents that were convincingly discredited by by any number of neutral observers within three hours!
And still it took two weeks for Rather to admit that he — top dog at the once-upon-a-time Tiffany network — had been duped. Almost to the end, he snarlingly insisted that anyone who questioned CBS News was motivated right-wing politics.
Meanwhile, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne and Time magazine were fretting that the Memogate controversy was "shifting the debate away from Bush's questionable record" — and mainstream media mavens were derisively dismissing credible questions about John Kerry's own military record as political "smears."
Again, this phenomenom is not new — though rarely has it be practiced so openly, so arrogantly.
What to do about it?
The fact that Rather still presides over the "CBS Evening News" is an amazement; it speaks, in fact, to the cowardice and moral rot that informs the mainstream media.
Will Halperin be put on the shelf?
For what? For putting in writing the instructions that usually are transmitted in winks and nods?
Don't bet on it.
But don't believe a word any of them say, either.
"Can you explain why the Nixon white house did not use all these "evidence" against Kerry when the memories of the event were clear and succinct"....
That's easy. At the time John O'Neill was not working with the Swift Boat Vets. He was actively opposing John Kerry's slanderous anti-war activities. He knew John Kerry was calumnious & self-serving, using his anti-war activities to jump start his political career (in ultra-liberal MA with no worries about Tricky Dick). John O'Neill wanted to correct the record because Kerry had horrifically smeared every Vietnam Vet who served honorably. Kerry's lies placed our POW's at greater risk & that infuriated O'Neill. And O'Neill felt that Kerry & Fonda were two of the main people to turn America against the war.
Back then, it was solely about returning stolen honor & nothing else for O'Neill. For Nixon, it was about the havoc Kerry was causing across America regarding his anti-war activities.
And for the record, when O'Neill & Nixon met, O'Neill took everyone there by surprise when he told them he & his family were Democrats & he had voted for Hubert Humphrey.
Kerry's gaming the system & other service related lies would not become apparent until O'Neill & the Swift Boat Vets for Truth would get together last year (perhaps early this year). O'Neill got them together to once again oppose Kerry for his anti-war activities because they all felt that America needed to know the truth about what Kerry did to smear them. They felt he was "unfit" to be CIC of our armed forces mainly due to Kerry's anti-war activities. And of course, the liberal MSM had never properly informed America about any of this.
It wasn't until they starting sharing personal experiences & reviewing records that they started to see a clear pattern emerge. The reason was that each person only had a small piece of relevant info that, when put together, made it clear Kerry had gamed the system. And it took a thorough reading of Kerry's books, journals & Biographies along with the Swifties sworn testimony & what few records Kerry released (yes he lied about releasing "all" of his records too) to clearly establish many of Kerry's lies & deceptions about his service time. Kerry's own contemporaneous journals & quotes sealed his own fate.
The Swifties simply had no idea back in 1971 about Kerry's gaming the system regarding medals, etc.
O'Neill also had no idea about "Christmas in Cambodia" back in 1971 because John Kerry had yet to invent that lie. Amazingly, the one story John Kerry could have used to really turn America against the war, was also allegedly a seminal event that Kerry claimed it him turned against the war (per his own testimony, biographies, etc.). Kerry didn't mention "Christmas in Cambodia" in 1971, when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It wasn't part of any of his many anti-war speeches at the time. It was used at least 50 times in public by Kerry, but well after the fact. The earliest I can document Kerry talking about Cambodia was a 1979 interview with the Boston Globe.
Go Figure. Kerry testified about war crimes committed "on a day to day basis with the full awareness of all levels of command". He pressed home how the Gov't was creating "monsters", "murdering" 200,000 Vietnamese every year & misleading America about the Vietnam War. Yet, he somehow forgot to mention the single event that turned him against the war - being ordered by Nixon (before he was President) to make an illegal trip ferrying guns & special forces on his infamous "Christmas in Cambodia" trip, where he engaged the Khmer Rouge (more than a year before they ever entered Cambodia) & received friendly fire from drunk Buddhists celebrating "Christmas" no less.
....Consider the history. In 1973, Kerry was a leader of
the anti-war movement. That same year, the American Left
went nuts when the Nixon administration admitted it had
secretly invaded Cambodia in 1969 and 1970 to roust out
Communist fighters.
It's hard to overstate just how big an issue this was in
1973. Cambodia was officially a neutral country, and it
was the contention of the anti-war movement that any
movement across Cambodia's borders constituted a violation
of international law.
If Kerry is to be believed, then this leader of the anti-
war movement remained silent in 1973 when he could have
spoken out about how he was ordered to violate Cambodian
neutrality as early as 1968. Which is why Kerry is not to
be believed on this matter..... NEW YORK POST
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=20445033
So you can blame Kerry for not having yet inventing his biggest lies back in 1971 when Nixon & John O'Neill wanted to go after this horrific liar for his anti-war activities. Unfortunately, John Kerry waited until they became politically expedient before he invented them. And give Kerry credit for doing a good job of gaming the system so well that it took a thorough investigation of his whole record to expose them some 30 years after the fact.
John O'Neill on Nixon
http://viewfromaheight.blogspot.com/2004/09/john-oneill-on-nixon.html
Kerry's Congressional Record - "Christmas in Cambodia", "seared, seared" in my memory....
http://instapundit.com/images/kerrycambfull.jpg