Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

"..is it Ferguson who doesn't understand what war--especially guerrilla war--is, is it conservatives who don't understand what war is, or is it both?"

I don't think anyone who hasn't been in it can even come close to understanding it, and even those who HAVE been in it probably don't understand it either.

I think Bill Clinton had it right when he was on TDS the other week. They will keep doing this kind of thing as long as it keeps working.

Looks like it isn't working this time. They seem genuinely shocked that their storyline isn't cruising through the media totally unchallenged. In the 2000 or 2002 elections they would have.

So what will they do next? Sneakier slanders? Or clean up their act and run on the issues?

Every Republican to whom I have made this point has replied, "Kerry is running on his record; Bush isn't."

Leaving aside the obvious psychological denial mechanisms at work here, there are two points.

1) They got this line from somewhere. Rush? Fox? Anyhow, if we were to discuss some other topic one would expect a variety of responses. This is surprisingly uniform.

2) Republicans give themselves a free pass on national defense. The temerity of this guy, Kerry, invading their turf.

This is only the beginning. Kerry will up the ante very slowly. The McCain V Bush video

http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/oldtricks.php

clearly shows that spitting on Vietnam veterans is a traditional Bush tactic. The McCain/Bush video puts Bush in a very very bad light. Bush has opened a whole line of attack for a debate champion (Kerry) to exploit. You can bet that Kerry has had his cell phone humming about the best way to counterattack. I hope this is really ugly.

My hope is that when Kerry walks into the WH, he will not give up the fight to expose the Bush corruption. Kerry was THE force behind BCCI. If Kerry keeps going, he could demolish the Bush dynasty and force the GOP to contemplate a new strategy for ripping off our country.

Demosthenes, one thing you might remind your GOP friends of is that they didn't delay the Lincoln from landing for a day and set up the ship so that the coast couldn't be seen and do the "mission accomplished" moment in beautiful late afternoon light - so they could shelve it.

The centerpiece of the Bush campaign was supposed to be our brave National Guard pilot (Patrick Sullivan will tell you at ennervating length how heroic that TNG service as a pilot was) flying in to declare "mission accomplished."

The reason that Bush doesn't run on his record is that, almost unprecedented in modern politics, the man did nothing until he was 40, and even then he was a failure until scooped up to be the front man for the Texas Rangers partnerhsip. If he had any actual record of accomplishment in his life to run on, you bet they'd run on it. He doesn't, so he tried to manufacture a moment. And now they have to run away from that - there will be no "mission accomplished" ads from the bush team this campaign cycle....

Somebody needs to tell Ferguson that the 4 months were JFK's SECOND tour of duty.

"Some Republicans, when they drink enough beer, really do wonder whether civilian control of the military is such a great idea."

So much for democracy;
Maybe we should develop a 'watch list.'
And isn't that why we developed 'preventive detention' anyway?
How about a few camps, somewhere in the midwest, with no internet providers: just for Republicans.
Can we really accept the risk of letting them roam free?

Do these idiots even understand the meaning of their own words?

Professor DeLong: I don't like the new comment format, it discourages me to ready, and it was already more of a duty sometimes than a pleasure... and as I have written on several occasion, I do think that your comment section is a major plus to your blog.

Anyway, what you said 150%...

The answer to your question is that, as you know, 99%99 of humankind are cowards... (otherwise even Hitler, sorry to mention this other historical idiot) would just be a footnote in history.

Is. G. Bush stupid? My final answer is negative: being illiterate doesn't mean one is stupid... it's not even necessarily a problem... unless you are the leader of the most important country of the planet...

P.S. apologies for my own bad formatting... Professor DeLong: a spell checket would be such a pleasure to us mortals... Is it available yet?

P.P.S."US warplane attacks Najaf rebels: A US warplane attacks suspected rebel positions in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf as peace talks stall".
What a transfer of power (TM)!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3587718.stm

Shall we talk about the real challenges facing the country or what?

The Republican Swift Boat Smear might be a vote loser for *Bush*....but would be a brilliant piece of political tactics if suddenly the Republicans pull a September Surprise and come out of New York with, for example, McCain as their standard bearer....

Conventional wisdom is that this could never happen. But thinking out of the box for a moment, if you *were* going to depose Bush as the head of your ticket, then suddenly this smear, with it's connections to Bush, seems to me to be a brilliant piece of setup. It tears down Kerry's positives, which benefits *any* GOP presidential candidate; the backlash gets directed to *Bush*, which, if you're replacing him, his successor as presidential candidate would be free of said taint; it forces Kerry to burn resources attacking Bush, which are all wasted if Bush turns out not to be the candidate.

The assumption on the liberal side is that the GOP could or would never abandon Bush/Cheney. Yet liberals also acknowledge that the GOP would be able to dramatically reshape the race --and potentially significantly improve their chances of winning it-- by doing just that. It has always occured to me to be a substantially dangerous assumption assuming that your opponents can't or won't do what is necessary to win just out of loyalty or pride...

Will recommend "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" to you all....plus ca change...plus ce la meme chose

Beware of a cornered animal...

The smear is working.
Iraq will take ten years and 500 billion dollars to fix,lets talk about Kerry and 'Nam.

The economy is looking dodgy, lets talk about Kerry and 'Nam.

Life expectancy in the US is going down, lets talk about Kerry and 'Nam.

The only thing related to my computer made in the US is the cooling fan, lets talk about Kerry and 'Nam. (My first computer down to the software was 100% US made.)

The European Union has the worlds biggest economy, lets talk about Kerry and 'Nam.

Lithuania now has the social support network capable supporting a team able to beat the US at basketball, lets talk about Kerry and 'Nam.

What will the US's sustainable competitive advantage in the 21st Century, lets talk about Kerry and 'Nam.

George was missing in Alabama because he was on secret mission with Elvis for CIA to contact aliens out in the Nevada desert, lets talk about Kerry and 'Nam.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2751622

"The Bush campaign said late Saturday that it dismissed an adviser on veterans issues after learning that he is part of an independent group that has been running anti-Kerry ads."

Sorry, it should have been George was on a mission with Elvis to contact Alien Space Bats (not merely aliens).

Eunoia23 hits the bullseye. Bushco have made Kerry the issue. MoveOn.org should show some "independence"from Kerry by resuming the ad showing Bush's "failure to appear." For awhile, I considered the possibility that "nice and dignified" might be effective for Kerry, but the polls are beginning to move toward Bush. Kick, bite, and gouge is their preferred form of wrestling.

Bush is a coward, he does not even make these attacks in person even though it is abundantly clear that this is the work of his surrogates.

I think that the Kerry people may have played this exactly right. If they had come out against the Swift Liars for Bush too early that would have been claimed as legitimizing the attack. Bush would have trun off to his bunker to hide and the press would never have reported that his personal fingerprints are all over this.

As it is the story is going to continue to run but the new twist is going to be linking the attacks to the Bush campaign. We already have the Bush campaign flier and the Bush campaign director illegally up to their neck in this alleged 527.

I think that this story is going to continue to run all next week and possibly the week after right up into the GOP Convention. But the story is going to be Bush's hand in what will be an acknolwedged pack of lies.

What we need now is for MoveOn to make an ad that links the two issues, show the flier, the director link to the smear, the guys who were there who deny it, then point out that Bush has repeatedly lied about his own war record.

Of course, the problem you all have is that the Swift vets issues with Kerry are neither a smear nor orchestrated by the Republicans.

Nearly all Vietnam vets have real issues with Kerry's words and deeds AFTER his return from Vietnam. This has been playing out since 1971. What's new is that the Swifties have undertaken a detailed analysis of Kerry in combat and have published a book, Unfit for Command.

If you'd like your guy to win in November, you're going to have to refute the facts, not try smear the accusers.

And, given Kerry's Christmas fable and his magic hat, it is unlikely that Kerry will even make himself available for a news conference between now and election day.

What world does Brad DeLong live on? John Kerry’s campaign has already admitted that he lied about spending Christmas 1968 in Cambodia. This is already official---and not something supposedly invented by Karl Rove. On top of that, the Kerry campaign is advocating censorship. It wants the Swift Boat books removed from the stores. Kerry’s people have also tried to intimidate radio stations from carrying the Swifties ads. What would be the reaction of the major media if the Bush’s campaign even thought of doing this?

I just found this John Leo piece on John Kerry's Cambodia lie:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/040830/opinion/30john.htm

Brad DeLong will simply have to face the facts.

Has Rove been off his game? Is his game being interfered with? I take the White House at its word when it says that it isn't involved in the Swift-boat ads--not in their fabrication, anyway, because all those little mistakes (like Anthony Cordier) would have been caught in the vetting process if Rove had been paying the kind of attention he's famous for. And here's another thing: given the way that Rove's been fashioning the upcoming convention--as a pitch to the alienated center--it's just insane to let Colin Powell stay out of the line-up. If Rove can't bring in Powell, then something is tying his hands--and it isn't Sy Hersh's book, and it isn't the war in Iraq.

(more)

I persist in thinking that it has to the Plame affair (Powell's great weapon against Cheney and Rove). This affair may continue forever, finally, and leave no meaningful trace in the public record, but it's been messing up the Republican's internal machinery for more than a year now. It's like a pair of cement boots dragging the White House to the bottom of the Potomac, and no one's saying a word.

(more)

Washington's bureaucratic wars of today are different from those of twenty and thirty years ago. Back then, people from all quarters leaked everything in order to sink the White House. Today, all the contending parties (within and around the White House) need most of all to keep themselves under cover. Cheney and his friends have to keep silent, and Fitzgerald seems to have cornered them for stonewalling. Reporters, for their own good reasons, have refused to finger their sources. But what about Cheney's other enemies, the ones with other complaints? Why aren't they playing the leaking game--as they did in the run-up to the war? The CIA and FBI, for example, have lots of keen arrows in their quivers. Perhaps they've decided that Fitzgerald is doing just fine, and that further leaks would only complicate the game. And while he may never indict the folks who outed Plame, and may fail as well to indict the folks who've been stonewalling (they're one and the same, of course), his lines of pursuit must be drawing lots of blood. Call it "internal bleeding".

(more)

If Rove is among Fitzgerald's primary targets, then the man has excellent reasons indeed to be off his game. It helps that he has no back-up to give him assistance--he's a sorcerer without an apprentice, so far as I can tell--and so we can expect to see many more blunders along the way (the sudden flight to Athens--shades of De Gaulle in 1968!--would be one of these).

Are we off the mark here? If so, it's the best we can do in a climate of paranoid silence. That silence, at last, is the key--not the story it keeps under wraps.

Rove as really screwed up. See today's Chicago Tribune, www.chicagotribune.com Editor Richard Rood who was witness to the incident rosulting in Kerry's Bronze Star has come forward to testify that the Swift Boats are lying. Now is the time for Kerry to go beyond asking Bush to pull the SBV adds. Give Bush three days max to comply Then it is time to "Turn the Boat Arround", beach the boat and take the fight to the enemy.

Sue for Libel, force the "Unfit for Command" publisher to pull the book. Expose Rove as masterminding the whole charade with Bush's blessing. Break the back of the Republican Right-Wing slime machine. It is not enough for Kerry to win the election and have to continue to face Crazied Right-Wing attacks that will weaken his adminstration. Kerry just can't let Sean Hannity on FNC question whether he committed war atrocities. The crediblity of today's Republican Party must be broken. No Quarter!!!

Kerry must take advantage of the ground swell of citizens outraged over the Whitewater witch hunt/Florida/911 Coverup/No WMDs in Iraq etc.
We must force the FCC/Congress to reestablish the Fairness doctrine as one of the first acts of the Kerry Administration

“Editor Richard Rood who was witness to the incident resulting in Kerry's Bronze Star has come forward to testify that the Swift Boats are lying.”

Excuse me, but the Kerry campaign has already admitted that their candidate lied about being in Cambodia during Christmas time 1968. This is a fact which you cannot ignore.

"Christmas in Campodia" sounds like a sort of quirky musical comedy, maybe a followup to that weird movie about the transvestite. People who think that "Christmas in Cambodia" is a killer political issue are loony.

Brad, Norman Rogers is like cockroaches or Adrian Spidel. If you see one now, you'll see a hundred next week.

To this day, many Christians celebrate the Christmas holidays through the Feast of the "Epiphany," falling on January 6, and marking the moment at which the Three Kings reached the Manger with their gold, frankincense and myrrh. The family of a cousin of mine used to open their Christmas presents at that time..... And as to the exact boundaries of "Cambodia," and the movement of the swift boats in their vicinity, I haven't seen this resolved. All leads are welcome!

“And as to the exact boundaries of "Cambodia," and the movement of the swift boats in their vicinity, I haven't seen this resolved. All leads are welcome!”

Baloney. There is no dispute. The Kerry campaign has already conceded this point. John Kerry lied about being in Cambodia during that time period.

I know they conceded "Christmas", but have they also conceded "Cambodia"? It's been my impression that swift-boats were crossing borders in their missions of "search and destroy".

It's difficult to recall a political issue with this much primal violence and hatred in the background. The visceral undertone of the ad is a vengeful crowd of warriors surrounding a lone individual (and Kerry was holding the conch). As a matter of demographics, this is intensely polarizing. The Republican base have self-righteous rage while Democrats are shaking their fists at the dishonesty. Perhaps Rove has calculated that it will swing some undecided, but it looks more like a move to nail down the true believers before some adverse news like an indictment in the Plame case. If they're convinced that Kerry is the spawn of Satan, they're immunized against anything Fitzgerald comes up with.

Kerry should start saying that he can understand why his honest critics are angry at him. They may think that when he criticized the feckless war in Viet Nam and its dreadful leaders, that he was saying that the sacrifices of so many decent men were worthless. And that he is sorry if they draw that inference. But that does not justify impugning his friends and fellow veterans. The tactic of dividing people is the hallmark of Bush and Rove, and that Kerry wants to reach all people trapped by that war, not just the former enemy, but his fellow veterans as well.

If that's the case, Roger Bigod--and it sounds right to me--then Rove isn't just saddled with personal problems, he has a political problem he wasn't prepared to deal with--the erosion of his base. He can't afford to spend one cent defending his base, so of course he has to support the "swift-boat" slander, which comes "free of charge". This poses a problem of timing: Rove will have to go positive after the convention, but the swift-boat fun is so toxic that no one's going to watch his pricey ads about the good news. And he gains nothing by plotting analogies between Viet Nam and Iraq: just as we were beaten in Iraq by the Vietnamese, so we're being beaten in Iraq by the Iraqis. I think we'll be out of there in the next 18 to 24 months at the latest.

I think Eunoia23 summed it up with her "Lets Talk about Kerry and 'Nam". Republicans seem to be a stuck with being able to handle only one or two issues in choosing a candidate. The truth of the issue is irrelevent. They watch FOX and CNN, listen to Matthews, Limbaugh, O'Reiley, ad nausum and think they've developed in their own mind a clear view of what's going on in the world. I don't waste my time arguing with them. They are hopelessly programmed. I discuss issues and solutions with those capable of understanding and making change. Those die hard, blind sighted republicans, who choose to support a corrupt ruler like Bush, instead of trying to protect and preserve what's left of our democracy, are unfit to even talk to. They are tomorrow's "Brown Shirts". If Herr Bush usurps another four years (or forever), you'll see how vicious these traitors to democracy really are.

Professor DeLong: Are you aware that your new "Comments" format allows no paragraphing or italicizing? Everything is run together into one long paragraph no matter how one writes it originally.

“I know they conceded "Christmas", but have they also conceded "Cambodia"? It's been my impression that swift-boats were crossing borders in their missions of "search and destroy"”

Fair question. We know that John Kerry lied about “Christmas.” This is no longer disputed. There is also no direct evidence whatsoever that he ever piloted a boat into Cambodia. Moreover, this is highly unlikely. Why? It is my understanding that a swift boat is so noisy---that it would be similar to trying to be discrete while driving an automobile with a busted muffler!

But David Thomson, you're not proposing that Kerry's own particular swift-boat was too noisy to cross (all of them presumably were), and you have as well the "impression that swift-boats were crossing borders". Perhaps we could put it more flexibly: some noisy swift-boats were crossing borders, and Kerry perhaps was manning one of these. At the time, I recall, respect for borders was the hot issue--not the season of the year. Nor were the border-crossings being officially acknowledged or recognized. If, then, there's no contemporary paper-trail for checking on dates, it would be easy enough to say yes, one engaged in illegal border-crossings--and also get the dates wrong.

The lie you seek should be cleaner and crisper than that. I look forward to hearing about it whenever you find it.

alabama, what the kerry campaign has noted is that conceivably kerry had it wrong about when he was in cambodia, not that he had it wrong. Meanwhile, the swifties position is that no one could possibly have been in cambodia because they would have been court-martialled, which is absolutely untrue as any acquaintaince with the history of the war reveals.

Regardless, we know where george bush was: in a bar.

“If, then, there's no contemporary paper-trail for checking on dates..”

Wow, are you hinting that John Kerry should release his records? That might indeed help. You conveniently overlook the fact that John Kerry has already been caught in a major lie. Therefore, I am no longer obligated to disprove his possible adventures in Cambodia. He is the one who must prove his whereabouts. We do not need to cut slack for a proven liar. Aren’t you enraged that the major media has essentially hidden Kerry’s Christmas lie from the American people? Lastly, isn’t it peculiar that Brad DeLong has so far ignored this lie?

“alabama, what the kerry campaign has noted is that conceivably kerry had it wrong about when he was in cambodia, not that he had it wrong”

Sorry, but this excuse won’t pass the laugh test. John Kerry repeatedly has stated that he spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia. He even did so in front of the U.S. Congress! It was, in his own words: "I have that memory which is seared – seared – in me."

It happens that I served in Nam 1968-70, and heard people mention that we were conducting operations in Cambodia. This obviously made sense in the northern part of the country, since the Ho Chi Minh Trail paralled the border. I have no problem with the plausibility of operations that far south, though. If so, a Swift boat would probably have been the best mode of transportation in that terrain, despite any noise. The alternative would have been choppers, and you may have noticed there are no stealth choppers. Kerry wasn't mentioning it later to suggest heroism, because it was no more dangerous than the rest of the Delta. There was a controversy about a large operation in the Parrot's Beak area, in 1971 or 1972, and there were issues about Nixon's truthfulness in stating the size and extent of our involvement, the degree of authorization, its effect on Cambodian politics, etc. You'd have to review the context to know what Kerry was saying. If Nixon was still denying involvement, Kerry was saying that we'd been staging incursions since 1968 because he was there around Christmastime. As an informal remark in a speech in the Senate, there's nothing wrong with that statement. There was no reason for him to make up facts, either to make himself look good or Nixon look bad. I have no problem with a President lying for a national security purpose, and recon operations on the Trail were reasonable. But the big incursion as we were drawing down didn't look sensible.

It's always fascinating to see how the right-wing mind works, and David is giving us a great example this morning. Are you denying that there were plenty of crossings into Cambodia? Are you denying that david brinkley, who examined kerry's records and journals and so on, is sure that kerry was in cambodia? And could you tell us just what records you think Kerry hasn't released? I keep wondering, since i can go to the campaign web site and scroll through loads and loads of records....

in all seriousness, what exactly is your point? Because if you're interested in lies, i've got a list of lies by George Bush (including claiming that he flew all the way through his national guard service, and his claim that he was in the Air Force, if we want to examine lies from back then) that might divert you for a moment.

David Thomson, I get the impression you were born in 1960 or thereafter, because you seem to be making your points at second-hand. When I say that incursions were the issue at that time, and not their dates, I'm referring to something quite specifically strange--the official denial of any such incursions by Nixon, Kissinger, and everyone else down the line. For this very reason, record-keeping at the time had to be highly selective, and it's my surmise, indeed, that there would have been little mention of any incursions in any contemporary swift-boat log--they'd be off the books. If so, how could we take Kerry's "records," or anyone else's, to prove or disprove the incursions? It might be better to pose the question differently: can anyone positively prove that Kerry did not man a swift-boat during the time those incursions occurred? If you can prove that, you'll have a lie with real "legs," as the reporters like to put it.

“Are you denying that david brinkley, who examined kerry's records and journals and so on, is sure that kerry was in cambodia?”

David Brinkley now clearly states that John Kerry did not spend Christmas 1968 in Cambodia. That is all we need to know. Kerry was adamant about the experience being seared into his memory. This can only be reasonably interpreted as an outright lie.

“If you can prove that, you'll have a lie with real "legs," as the reporters like to put it.”

Excuse me, but it already is established that John Kerry lied about his whereabouts Christmas 1968. End of story. This is no longer under dispute. You are simply ignoring facts.

“i've got a list of lies by George Bush (including claiming that he flew all the way through his national guard service, and his claim that he was in the Air Force, if we want to examine lies from back then) that might divert you for a moment.”

Nope, you have absolutely no hard evidence to support your allegations. You are merely repeating slanderous allegations. However, I have the undisputed facts on my side regarding John Kerry’s lie. The game is up: Kerry is a liar. He did not merely misspeak. A journalist did not ask him a question when Kerry was without sleep for two days, or anything like that. No, John Kerry, with full premeditation, told the United States Congress that he spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia. He claimed the event was “seared” into his memory.

“If Nixon was still denying involvement, Kerry was saying that we'd been staging incursions since 1968 because he was there around Christmastime. As an informal remark in a speech in the Senate, there's nothing wrong with that statement.”

“Around Christmas?” Nope, John Kerry unhesitatingly claimed to have spent Christmas Day 1968 itself in Cambodia. And he did not make “an informal remark in a speech in the Senate.” John Kerry was fully prepared and had plenty of time to double check his testimony.

I thought "Christmas in Cambodia" was a song by the Dead Kennedys...

David Thomson, it seems that you've developed a low tolerance for studying the composition of "lies". For instance, you show no enthusiasm at all for pondering questions concerning the swift-boat incursions. You show even less enthusiasm for pondering questions posed by calendars: when, for example, someone in this part of the country says that "he'll deal with that problem come Christmas," he may mean anything from Thanksgiving to Valentine's Day, and it would surprise him very much to hear that he's lying when he says this.... But there's something more serious about your answer, for it turns out that you too, and by your very own standards, also "lie"--as when you say that you have "undisputed facts" (in the plural) "on your side regarding John Kerry's lie". So far, you've produced just one--the setting of a particular event on a particular Christmas day. If the confusion of a singular with the plural meets your standards of "truth-telling", then I have to admit that I'd find it rather unsettling to work with you on a research project.

You sure it's "testimony"? My impression iwas that it was a speech, and the issue was a claim that we weren't conducting operations in Cambodia. He said he'd be there on an operation. For emphasis he said he'd been shot at, and to and he threw in Christmas. There are several reasons it cold be inaccurate without its being a deliberate lie, and they all seem more likely, since he had no motive to lie.

Ah. The black dog has a white hair on its tail. Therefore it is not Truly black. And therefore it is not a truly black dog.
Dave, really? --you think there's a contest between the credibility of these 2 candidates' military records? So AP is biased in its suit of the Pentagon for not disclosing Bush's military records?
But I digress, along with most it appears.
It's clear that some (Eunois23, bakho et al) have this one pegged: this is a diversion.

Roger Bigod, given the way that David Thomson's mind works, he'll probably take your particular instance of rhetorical looseness as proof-positive that Kerry's a born liar. Because he has to demonize Kerry (I think his father told him to do this). And since he's clearly rather young, and probably raised by a clan of terrifying Puritans, there's no room for play in his thinking: he's truly afraid of being wrong, so much so that he ends up committing the very mistakes he likes to call "lies". And therefore, Roger, whatever else you may do, please don't engage this person as your lawyer, your doctor or your confessor.

Who imagines that there is today any point in talking about conservatives? If there were enough of them to have an effect, the entire history of the past generation would have been different beyond recognition, and none of the questions that we ask today (peripheral though they are) would arise.

David Thomson said:

"David Brinkley now clearly states that John Kerry did not spend Christmas 1968 in Cambodia."

The man's name is Douglas Brinkley. Why are you lying about Douglas Brinkley's name? Doesn't this prove that you're a compulsive liar and that nothing you say can be trusted?

Or might it be the case that there are such things as "mistakes"?

(And I do see that you weren't the first one to make this mistake in this thread. But I don't care, because you're the one who thinks all mistakes are lies, not me.)

Mercy, DonBoy, Mercy! The lad was only repeating (but not, alas!, merely citing) an error committed by none other than the nefarious Howard at 12:11 PM. So we must apportion the punishment appropriately : ten lashes of the finest (that's one-half of the merited twenty) before the foremost at high noon.

None, however, for Howard, who already knows he's a sinner, and knows that he'll never get it right, especially if he never makes a mistake.

foremast, not foremost. What fun to get it wrong!

alabama, i'm not sure if you're harassing me or merely having good sport, but speaking nefariously, yes, i screwed up on brinkley's first name!

David thomson, on the other hand, doesn't seem to know what bush's own campaign biography said, which is where the Air Force and flying all the way through his reserve duty comes from.

David Thomson, i gave a couple minutes to google, and here's a reference to the bush 2000 campaign biography (which i can't find itself):

"Five months after the Globe first reported those discrepancies, Bush's biography on his presidential campaign Web site remains unchanged, stating that he served as a pilot in the Texas Guard from 1968 to 1973."

http://web.archive.org/web/20010107212300/http://www.boston.com/news/politics/campaign2000/news/Questions_remain_on_Bush_s_service_as_Guard_pilot+.shtml

I'll have to devote more than a couple of minutes to find the reference to Bush claiming to have been in the Air Force, but i'll keep checking when i have a chance.

Howard, I was having fun putting myself in your shoes....and thanks for the loan of your shoes!.... It's been a festive thread. The hapless Thomson, meanwhile, has wandered off to a later thread, where he proves himself to be a man of fixed convictions......

thanx, alabama, you're welcome to the shoes anytime. and yes, david is now trying to tell us that the dems should have nominated joe lieberman....

I do find it interesting that Kerry hasn't signed the 180 form to allow release of all his military records. I find it equally interesting that Bush hasn't signed his. Let a hundred fungi bloom together! Let a hundred forms of scandal contend!

Bruce, what kind of information lurks in those records? Your physicals? Some mental status exams? Cross-talk from a pissed-off superior officer? Do we know the answer to these questions? Better yet, does the serviceman know the answers? It may be the case that they're either kept secret from everyone or else kept secret from no one (as in a felony case, perhaps). They may talk about your sex life, your drinking life, your drugging life....what's the word on these things?

1) Regarding Robert Dole's implication that Kerry may have gotten his Purple Hearts through deliberate fraud because they were just for "superficial wounds", Josh Marshall has unearthed Dole's 1988 description of how HE got his first Purple Heart ( http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/003309.php ):

"As we approached the enemy, there was a brief exchange of gunfire. I took a grenade in hand, pulled the pin, and tossed it in the direction of the farmhouse. It wasn't a very good pitch... In the darkness, the grenade must have struck a tree and bounced off. It exploded nearby, sending a sliver of metal into my leg--the sort of injury the Army patched up with Mercurochrome and a Purple Heart."

In short, Dole, I'm afraid, is up to his old tricks -- as when, during his 1976 debate with Walter Mondale, he flatly stated that FDR had deliberately and unnecessarily gotten us into war with Japan (an accusation which George Will called "despicable", and which seems by itself to have clipped just enough off Gerald Ford's vote to cost him that election).

Dole also repeated that Kerry should apologize for supposedly saying that there were very large numbers of war criminals among US troops in Vietnam -- which (for the trillionth time) he did not say -- and called on Kerry to sign the "180" form authorizing release of all his war records. Well, to repeat what I said above: Kerry should indeed do so. So should Bush -- who has also refused thus far to sign the 180 form to release all HIS wartime records. Let a hundred fungi bloom together! Let a hundred forms of scandal contend!

But if that happens, it will once again remind people that (to quote Andrew Ferguson), while Kerry may have exaggerated his own record somewhat, he at least bothered to show up for the war -- and didn't not only dodge the draft, but refuse even to fulfill all of his alternative service requirements.

(2) Regarding Van Odell's continuing statements that there was "no enemy fire" during Kerry's Bronze Star incident, and that the basis for Larry Thurlow's own Bronze Star must therefore also have been Kerry's supposedly lying account, we have last night's Washington Post ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21239-2004Aug21.html ):

"Even if Kerry did write the March 13 after-action report, it seems unlikely that he would have been the source of the information about 'enemy bullets' flying around Thurlow. The official witness to those events, according to Thurlow's medal recommendation form, was his own leading petty officer, Robert Lambert, who himself won a Bronze Star for 'courage under fire' in going to Thurlow's rescue after he fell into the river. Lambert, who lives in California, declined to comment."

There's been a lot of that going around lately.

(3) For the first time, we have an account which raises the possibility in my own mind that Kerry perhaps might NOT have been deliberately lying in his "Christmas in Cambodia" story.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5771731/ :
" 'I don’t think anyone knows for sure whether or not they were in Cambodia that night, but they were near Cambodia on Christmas Eve,' John Hurley, who heads a pro-Kerry veterans group, said on 'Fox News Sunday.' 'He was five miles into Cambodia on a different occasion.' "

Finally: Kerry has gotten a lot of heat for harping endlessly on his military service -- but I think he's justified in doing so, for what should be an obvious reason: over the last three decades, the GOP has gotten tremendous political mileage out of implying that Democrats are more opposed to high-level military spending and getting into wars simply because they are stupid, cowardly doves who shrink hysterically away from getting involved in ANY war, necessary or otherwise. George McGovern -- who had a genuinely impressive and brave WW II record -- never bothered to mention that fact, and paid enormously for it at the polls. Well, Kerry has decided that he WILL make it clear to the public that -- regardless of whether his reasoning in opposing the Vietnam and Iraq Wars is correct or not -- it at least isn't due to personal cowardice or excessive softness on his part.

David Thompson. He was gone for awhile. I'd worked my way through the stages of grieving, all the way to "acceptance", and then I found that the sonofabitch was still alive. Fuck.

My condolences to his family.

If anyone wants to take on the insanity that is David Thompson, please do so over at Drezner's blog, where I believe he is a frequent commenter.

uh oh... they let Bob Dole's dark side out. That is a bad sign. They must be feeling desperate.

I heard some one say that negative campaigning is really a very primitive limbic system psychodrama type thing. One candidate starts beating the $!!#@!!?$$! (excuse me, I meant "tar") out of somebody. It doesn't make any difference whether it is true or not. The idea is that this impresses people who are afraid and would feel safer, in some very primitive way, with a tough guy who slaps people around in power, and they will vote for the abuser. So Kerry has to fight back, just to show he is tough too.

Seems to me things are generally going Kerry's way, though, re general truthfulness. In the last several days, two witnesses have come forward to back his story. One of the Veterans for truth has recanted his signature to the group's main statement. Nothing remotely official backs Kerry's critics, and they can only suggest that somehow, someway, Kerry secretly wrote or manipulated, or paranormally directed the composition of two, or three, or who knows how many, official citations, all designed to plump up his career. Uh.. yeah.. OK... sure he did. Two (count 'em) two links to Bush campaign revealed -though whether they indicate something more may be doubtful. The Christmas in Cambodia lie is not much of a lie at all from what I have read. There is a good chance it is probably approximately true.