Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

Does anyone have more context for Dole's "He was right"? It is not clear to me, even after reading the Slate commentary three times and watching the clip several times, how one can conclude that Dole meant "McCain was right to tell Bush he should be ashamed". Perhaps Dole only meant "McCain was right to want to keep these tactics out of the race." This is different from "He should be ashamed". But I can't tell from this clip what Dole intended. Perhaps someone should ask him.

BBB

"Perhaps someone should ask him."

But who? It's not like he said it directly to Wolf Fucken Blitzer on CNN or anything.

When will the mfers show it? Affraid of Libby's revenge?

When will the mfers show it? Affraid of Libby's revenge?

What's with Bob Dole? Where is he coming from? What's he trying to prove? Does he envy Kerry? But why would he envy Kerry? Is he afraid of Bush? But there's no good reason to be afraid of Bush. Dole, at this stage of the game, has almost nothing in common with either of those guys....I'd like to admire him for his courage and native wit, but he makes it almost impossible.

On listening to that clip again, it still seems absolutely unambiguous to me (as it does to Chris Suellentrop) that Dole is saying McCain "was right" in accusing Bush of using surrogates to smear McCain's record. In the clip, Blitzer says that somebody (it's not clear, in the clip, just who) "has been suggesting" similarities between what Bush did to McCain and what's now happening to Kerry, and then Blitzer plays the clip of McCain furiously denouncing Bush for this (which has been cut out of the clip of Dole on Slate's site). Immediately afer the clip with McCain's denunciation of Bush finishes, Dole -- looking unhappy and rueful -- says, "He was right."

Moreover, if the astonishing column on Dole by Noel Koch in the Washington Post ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34024-2004Aug25.html ) is right, Dole IS very unhapy about what Bush is now forcing him to do. Anyway, that's what Koch says -- who claims to be a very long-time friend of Dole, and who unquestionably worked 3 years as Nixon's special assistant and 5 years as Reagan's assistant defense secretary and director of the Pentagon's Office of Special Planning, which I think establishes pretty firm GOP credentials for him. According to Koch, Dole is still angry that Nixon and Charles Colson used him as an unfair hatchet man against Democrats back in the early 1970s -- but now:

" 'They want me to head Veterans,' Bob Dole said. 'They' meant the Bush White House. His tone said there were things he would rather do.

"I asked him whether he was going to do it -- take on the campaign role of going after the veterans' vote. 'Probably have to,' he said, although he added that he knew the Bush campaign would want him to attack John Kerry, and he didn't intend to do that. He didn't have anything against Kerry, he said...

"No one is better placed than Dole to know how arbitrary are the fortunes of war. It is not surprising to hear John Kerry's wounds belittled by men who have avoided all risk of being wounded. Someday perhaps we will be able to plumb the neuroses of those who avoided Vietnam and have ever after had difficulty living with the choice. But it is surprising to hear Bob Dole doing it. Kerry not hospitalized for his wounds? Bob Dole was not hospitalized for his first Purple Heart either...

"I spent a year in Vietnam and came home without a scratch. My brother served two tours in Vietnam, earned three Purple Hearts (and was hospitalized, and does draw disability -- weird yardsticks used to measure John Kerry's alleged shortfall), and yet spent far less time than I did in-country. Indeed, his first 'tour' lasted about 15 minutes, ending on the beach near Danang in the midst of the U.S. Marines' first amphibious assault in Vietnam.

"Time in-country, how often a man was wounded, how much blood he shed when he was wounded -- it is hurtful that those who served in Vietnam are being split in so vile a fashion, and that the wounds of that war are reopened at the instigation of people who avoided serving at all. It is hurtful that a man of Bob Dole's stature should lend himself to the effort to dishonor a fellow American veteran in the service of politics at its cheapest.

"There was a time when he would have refused. I know. I was there."

My own reaction on reading Koch's column was "Holy cow." Delong's reaction, when I E-mailed it to him two days ago, was "Jesus H. Christ." Both seem to me entirely accurate appraisals.

But Bruce, I don't understand how he's being forced to do anything. He could say no. Is it something to do with showing himself to be a real Republican? This is what I imagine to be McCain's motive. Perhaps this explains why the moderate Republicans simply don't carry any weight?

It's very depressing, because I do want to think that there is this sort of person who is decent, essentially honest, who could be either Republican or Democrat because of their views on economics or big government or even abortion. But this sort of stuff suggests that lots of decent, honorable people have lost sight of the fact that your political position really does not define your moral character. The "good" party can do anything and apparently can make its stalwarts do anything, without it being detrimental to party or personal character. Very unsettling.

Well, of course technically speaking the GOP can't "force" Dole to do this -- but it can force him to do so if he wants to maximize the chances of his party's election, which is of course the way a huge number of politicians are compelled to do their particular party's dirty work. (One advantage of switching over to an instant-runoff election system -- besides the fact that it would allow political centrists to get their fair share of representation, which would be enormously higher than the share of it which they now have -- is that it would soften party polarization in this country enough to make this sort of dirty compulsion harder, on both sides.)

Bruce Moomaw, there's something I'm missing here. Dole has nothing to prove; he's done all he can for his party--serving as its presidential candidate--and now he's trashing someone he doesn't have to trash, in the service of someone he doesn't have to serve. What's the point of it all? Dole has to know that this sort of character assassination just degrades the people (and the party) doing it. He's destroying himself before our very eyes, and I can't imagine why he'd do this--unless, perhaps, he's fallen in love with Karl Rove.

Bruce Moomaw:

From your quote of Noel Koch:

"It is not surprising to hear John Kerry's wounds belittled by men who have avoided all risk of being wounded," and later, "it is hurtful that those who served in Vietnam are being split in so vile a fashion, and that the wounds of that war are reopened at the instigation of people who avoided serving at all."

I have to wonder who Koch is talking about. In the first place, the Swift Boat Vets for Truth is by definition composed of people who put themselves in harm's way. Our beloved President flew F-102s in the Guard; under no stretch of the imagination is this avoiding "all risk of being wounded." I've lost friends in much safer fighters than the F-102. And I've seen the numbers for the F-102 -- I used to design fighters -- and it was a hugely unsafe aircraft. Besides, he can't be talking about Bush -- the President has gone out of his way to praise Kerry's service. And of course, the point of the column is that Koch wants to separate Dole's criticism of Kerry from that of those "who avoided all risk of being wounded." Are these code words for "Karl Rove" or "Dick Cheney"? Koch is unclear, and that waffling absolutely kills the point of this article. Because, despite Koch's pleading, the fact is that BOTH vets and non-vets think Kerry was a scurrilous fantasist. And I think the effort to drive a wedge between vets and non-vets on this point is well, "hurtful".

I still don't see what special inflection or secret code in that video clip enables you to put your special spin on Dole's offhand comment. You are (almost literally) putting words in his mouth. To quote someone, "You should be ashamed."

You write, "Blitzer says that somebody (it's not clear, in the clip, just who) 'has been suggesting' similarities between what Bush did to McCain and what's now happening to Kerry, and then Blitzer plays the clip of McCain furiously denouncing Bush for this (which has been cut out of the clip of Dole on Slate's site)."

Rich Lowry has some comments on this curious spin in this week's NRO: see

http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200408271409.asp

This pretty much accords with what I recall of the South Carolina primary -- McCain was whining about mean politics that no one could ever substantiate, while the talking heads sat fat, dumb, happy, and absolutely clueless about why McCain was unpopular with conservatives.

BBB

(1) Bush (as Delong points out a few items below) told a series of Texas newspapers in the late 1980s and early 1990s that he seriously considered fleeing to Canada or "shooting my ear out with a shotgun" to avoid the Vietnam war, but decided instead "to better myself by learning to fly airplanes." That is, he regarded jet flying as a form of job training. Combine this with the fact that the particular Guard unit he joined (nicknamed "Air Canada", according to several veteran Texas politicoes) was crammed with the sons of other high-ranking Texas politicians and VIPs (including the sons of Bentsen, Connally and Tower) and was generally regarded in the state as having been set up precisely as a draft shelter.

(2) When Koch refers to this being done "at the instigation of men who never fought in the war at all", he is of course referring to Bush -- and to Cheney, who didn't even take the risk of jet flying. At this point the SBVT have been linked right up the wazoo with former Bush and Texas GOP campaign operatives -- including the two Texas billionnaires who set up the carefully anonymous false front to question McCain's environmental credentials in the 2000 NY primary.

(3) Bush has not "gone out of his way to praise Kerry's war service" -- he has made some vague, fuzzy comments to that effect while simultaneously flatly and repeatedly refusing to say that he regards the SBVT ads as false (despite McCain's pleas that he do so). That is, he's having it both ways -- as one would expect.

(4) As I and others have noted in a whole series of recent threads below, virtually all of the most prominent SBVTs themselves -- including O'Neill, Thurlow, Chenoweth, Hoffman, Lonsdale and Elliott -- have now been exposed beyond any doubt whatsoever as "scurrilous fantasists" themselves. In every case this has been done not just by contrary testimony by other vets who were also at the scene of Kerry's actions, but by flat-out provable falsehoods and self-contradictions in their own testimony. I'm willing to spend a dozen paragraphs or so repeating the evidence, but only if you're too lazy to look up my summations of it in the threads below. It isn't just suggestive; at this point it's absolutely conclusive.

(3) If Dole didn't mean that McCain "was right" immediately after that clip was played, who the hell did he mean? Bush never made any kind of verbal reply at all to McCain's charges during that debate with McCain; he simply smiled embarrassedly. We also have Koch's declaration of what Dole really thinks -- and we have the separate fact that Dole, when Tom Brokaw remarked cloyingly on Reagan's "wartime service" during his funeral, couldn't resist pointing out acridly that Reagan served out all of WW II on a movie lot.

(4) There was, I assure you, plenty of "substantiation" of anti-McCain dirty tricks during that primary -- including the charming little rumor whispered around that McCain and his wife had adopted a "black child", and the rumor spread around by two Vietnam vets that McCain was really a Communist Vietnamese double agent.

In short, Mr. Beard, it's clear that you're grabbbing frantically for anything you can get as a Bush exoneration -- and are totally unconvincing at it. (I wish I could believe that your phrase about "our beloved president" is sarcastic; he certainly isn't particularly beloved in the polls.)

Postscript: Lowry's own accuracy level in that column matches his usual one -- that is, abysmal:

(1) I've already remarked on the other anti-McCain dirty tricks in the SC primary -- as have legions of reporters.

(2) Exactly how does Lowry know for sure that it's "flatly untrue" that Bush is linked to the SBVT campaign? Via Ouija board? To repeat, SBVT has now been linked with a whole web of Bush and Texas GOP campaign operatives -- including Bush's own 1994 running mate for Lt. Governor, and several of Karl Rove's close political allies. It is, of course, still possible to believe that Bush himself might conceivably not know about these connections. It is also possible to believe in the Easter Bunny.

(3) Lowry's column does absolutely nothing to even try to counter the other four points I made above.

Second postscript: the anti-McCain dirty tricks in SC -- some of which I'd forgotten about -- are nicely summarized by Dick Meyer at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/08/25/opinion/meyer/main638571.shtml
:

"In 2000, McCain had George W. on the ropes and South Carolina was the do-or-die state. Flyers appeared from thin air alleging that McCain had a black child (he and his wife had adopted a Bangladeshi daughter from an orphanage there). Other fliers said McCain was the fag candidate.' Rumors swirled that McCain’s time in a North Vietnamese prison camp had left him unstable and downright crazy - again, hitting at the opponent's greatest strength. Other rumors were that his wife was a drug addict. Nice stuff, and none of it had Bush’s inky fingerprints on it.

"At an event with Bush, a vet from some fringe group accused McCain of abandoning veterans. That really set McCain off and he demanded an apology from Bush. Bush simply said that he believed McCain 'served our country nobly.' That’s what he says about Kerry now. Above the fray, clean hands, patrician.

"Soon after that, a mysterious group dumped $2 million into ads in more liberal New York attacking McCain’s environmental record and boosting Bush's. Eventually, it turned out the ads were bankrolled by a big Bush donor named Sam Wyly. No Bush fingerprints there either."

To which I'll add only that Sam Wyly and his brother have now been exposed by the NY Times as also being among the biggest bankrollers of SBVT.

Third postscript: Some of Mr. Beard's comments at http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1090843655.shtml reveal him to be -- er -- a little credulous where accusations against Democrats are concerned:

"Just as Clinton was a rapist long before he stained the Oval Office, Kerry was a traitor long before he was a Senator (and hypothetically, President)...

"I certainly do not call everyone who joined the VVAW a traitor. Kerry, however, was a leader. He testified — possibly untruthfully — to the Senate and declared that he and thousands of other GIs were guilty of warcrimes. He repeated the propaganda of the North Vietnamese Communists. The entire 'Winter Soldier' campaign has been debunked as a sham, and he was one of the principal pushers of those lies. What was his intent? Did he want to see American forces defeated? He won't say. He has the right to remain silent. Anything he says can and will be used against him...."

Well, first, I listened to Juanita Broaddrick's accusations against Clinton on "60 Minutes". Curiously, she could remember every detail of his supposed rape -- except that, despite repeated questioning, she just couldn't quite remember the day, month, or season of the year in which it occurred. Right...

(2) Regarding Kerry As Traitor, let me quote Peter Beinart in the New Republic yesterday ( http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040906&s=trb090604 ):

"Calling Kerry unpatriotic is a useful way of delegitimizing his allegations without disproving them. Some of the organizers of the Winter Soldier Investigation have been discredited, but most of the testimonies themselves have not. Miami University Professor Jeffrey Kimball, one of the most respected Vietnam historians, says, 'On the whole, the Winter Soldier Investigations established that some Americans committed atrocities in Vietnam. Claims that their testimony has been discredited are unwarranted.' Another prominent historian of the war, Wayne State University's Mel Small, says, 'Most of the evidence of atrocities presented by the [Winter Soldier] vets remains unchallenged to this day.'

On the question of atrocities more broadly, Kerry's claims also find widespread academic support. The University of Kentucky's George Herring, author of 'America's Longest War', says, 'The atrocities that took place are pretty much those described by Kerry in 1971.' In a recent interview with The Boston Globe, Stanley Karnow, author of 'Vietnam: A History', also said Kerry got it right. Even Robert McNamara himself has stated that 'there were atrocities, without any question. ... I don't think enough attention was paid to it by the chain of command.'

Conservatives have taken special umbrage at Kerry's statement, in a 1971 'Meet the Press' interview, that he 'committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers.' What they generally ignore is that Kerry was referring to the fact that he 'took part in shootings in free-fire zones' --zones where the U.S. military designated any Vietnamese who did not evacuate as combatants. And Kerry was right: The free-fire zones violated the fourth Geneva Convention, which outlaws indiscriminate attacks against areas in which civilians are present."

To which I will add:

(1) The second SBVT ad -- as pointed out by CNN -- very carefully clips out part of Kerry's Senate testimony to make it appear that he was saying both that a huge share of US troops engaged in "rapes, cutting off ears", etc., and that he had seen them do so himself. He didn't -- he said that 150 veterans had turned up at the Winter Soldier meeting and testified that they themselves had committed such crimes and that they felt guilty about it afterward, which was precisely why they decided to attend the Winter Soldier meeting:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/20/kerry.swiftboat/index.html
http://www.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/JohnKerryTestimony.html

(2) There is very considerable independent evidence that an alarmingly large number of US troops DID engage in such war crimes, frequently on orders from their superior officers to try and "pacify" regions with a high concentration of pro-VC civilians. Consider, for instance the Toledo Blade's Pulitzer-winning article last year (on which they are continuing to follow up):

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=SRTIGERFORCE

...and the very detailed piece in the Apr. 17, 1995 New Republic by the decidedly non-extreme-left Charles Lane:

http://www.tnr.com/politics/cnote/lane041795.html

(3) To the astonishment of just bout everyone, Tommy Franks told Sean Hannity twice during a recent interview -- reluctantly but firmly -- that he thought Kerry was probably correct in saying that there were large number of US war crimes in Vietnam:

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh080504.shtml

(4) Karnow's Vietnam history got a rave review in the American Spectator -- from a Vietnamese emigrant.

Positively my final postscript (unless Mr. Beard forces me to exhume all the evidence which, at this point, makes it not just highly probable but absolutely certain that virtually all the leading SBVTers are willing to lie through their teeth to try to smear Kerry's battle record):

Let me recount all the dialogue in that "Slate" clip of Dole's interview by Wolf Blitzer:

BLITZER: ...suggesting there's a pattern in going after John Kery's Vietnam war record similar to what Republicans did to John McCain in the South Carolina primary in 2000. At that time, John McCain was in a neck-and-neck battle with the President for the Republican Presidential nomination. I want you to listen to what he said to the President in that debate...

DOLE: I saw it.

BLITZER: ...on February 15, 2000.

[Clip of McCain's attack on Bush follows]

DOLE [believing that the camera and mike are off, and looking unhappy and rueful]: He was right.
___________________________

Now -- to repeat -- how the hell can this comment of Dole's be interpreted as anything but him saying that McCain "was right" in attacking Bush for smear tactics? Again, I'm absolutely forced to the conclusion that Mr. Beard is working actively, and frantically, at being obtuse.

Bruce Moomaw, do you get the impression that your arguments, carefully stated and supported as they are, have just been spammed?

Maybe.

I strongly doubt Beard did it, though -- he seems, if seriously befuddled in his reasoning, much too sincere and honest to use dirty tricks.

Well, whoever did it, Brad has now removed it, thank God.

Readers (including Mr. Beard) may be interested in the latest New Republic piece by National Security Archive historian John Prados on Vietnam war crimes (in which he notes Rich Lowry's passing statement in that National Review column that the Winter Soldiers have been "discredited"):
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=prados083004

Two additional notes on this:

(1) David Hackworth, when the Abu Ghraib affair first broke, said in his column that he had personally threatened to shoot an intelligence officer in order to keep him from using electricity on a VC suspect in a way which Benjamin Franklin would not have approved of.

(2) Robert Ballard -- the oceanographer who discovered the Titanic -- says at the start of his autobiography that he had planned in 1965 to go into the Navy, until a Navy friend of his came home and told him that suspects were routinely being thrown out of US helicopters during interrogations.

8663 really nicely done. i hope all works well in timefree credit report

2231 http://www.briana-banks-dot.com for Briana Banks movies. or if you would rather diecast here.

6116 http://online-poker.order.gb.com heres is the place to play online poker for real dough.

1820 http://www.texas-hold-em-w.com online card room for texas hold em for your pleasure.

may b camera blik rarelly.i dont know

visit European online pharmacy for genuine medications , competitive pricing, quick shipping and protection of your privacy.
http://www.eu-internet-pharmacy.com

7158 http://www.roulette-w.com click here to play roulette online.

1468 http://www.online-poker-big.com check out this online poker site!

I like getting emails from people I know, makes me feel better every morning.

Awesome sentiment! I totally agree with you!

While I realise I maybe be out of the topic, I just found an incredible lyric site featuring hundreds of thousands of lyrics.
If you wanna bring back some happy memories you should stop by to lyric lovers.

487 http://www.casino-games-i.com click fro casino games online.

8766 http://www.play-poker-i.com

4825 http://www.caribbean-poker-web.com very fun

mortgage leads

3167 Very well said in the first place! http://www.online-poker-net.com

1220 How can this all be as nice? Check out my site http://www.pai-gow-keno.com

566 http://www.texas-hold-em-i.com play texas hold em online here.

7161 http://www.e-texas-hold-em.com

texas hold em

5557 http://www.rapid-debt-consolidation.com

consolidate debt

1493 You only get one set of teeth. Take care of them with a good
dental plan. Dental
insurance is
money well spent. I sleep better since I signed up for my new dental insurance
plan.
Get yours at: http://dental-insurance-plan.freeservers.com/
http://www.online-sports-betting-source.com

online sports betting
Sports Betting Odds
Sports Betting Line
Football Sports Betting
NCAA Sports Betting
NFL Football Betting Line
American Football Betting
Online American Football Betting
Online Football Betting Lines
Online Sports Book
NFL Football Odds
NCAA Football Odds
Las Vegas Football Odds
2004 Super Bowl Odds
Sports Book Betting
Las Vegas Sports Book
Sports Book Odds
Internet Sports Gambling
Sports Betting Information
College Football Betting Odds
College Betting Line
NFL Point Spread
NCAA Point Spread
Super Bowl Point Spread
Vegas Point Spread
Legal Sports Betting
Online Betting Odds
Online Sports Book Betting
Online Sports Betting Site
home based business
home based business
opportunity

4541 online casino games

1064 You know anti wrinkle cream
can work Did you know online degree gets you jobs? online degrees

The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others. The rest is extension of this sense, or else metaphor.

2151 http://www.i--cialis.net
Offering Cialis with overnight delivery. Also, If your looking for generic cialis this is a good site to visit.

6181 jobs online part time jobs work online work online from home work at home work from home online jobs work at home jobs work at home business jobs
Full time jobs dental plan dental
insurance
dental insurance
plan
discount dental
plans
cheap dental
plans
individual dental
plans

Teen lesbian nude teen models, naked teen girls hot teens. Teens in thongs teen naked, teen video teens nude. Teen thongs teen sex stories, russian teen teen xxx. Teen sex free teen galleries, black teens hot teens. Teen sluts teens sex, teen lesbian teen bedding. Teen panties teen boys, free naked teens nudist teen. Teen sex stories teen naturist, teen movies nudist teens.

Nude teen models teens in thongs, free naked teens naked teen girls. Teen naked teen video, teen tits teen sex. Wet teens teen bikini, teens fucking topless teens. Teens fucking teen sex stories, nude teen models sex teen. Lesbian teens teens in thongs, teen pussy teen pussy. Teen webcams teen nudist, young teen teens naked. Teens nude free teen porn, teen babes teen webcam.

Teen lesbian nude teen models, naked teen girls hot teens. Teens in thongs teen naked, teen video teens nude. Teen thongs teen sex stories, russian teen teen xxx. Teen sex free teen galleries, black teens hot teens. Teen sluts teens sex, teen lesbian teen bedding. Teen panties teen boys, free naked teens nudist teen. Teen sex stories teen naturist, teen movies nudist teens.

Nude teen models teens in thongs, free naked teens naked teen girls. Teen naked teen video, teen tits teen sex. Wet teens teen bikini, teens fucking topless teens. Teens fucking teen sex stories, nude teen models sex teen. Lesbian teens teens in thongs, teen pussy teen pussy. Teen webcams teen nudist, young teen teens naked. Teens nude free teen porn, teen babes teen webcam.

2294 Kona Coffee Starbucks Coffee Jamaica Blue Mountain
Coffee
coffee maker gourmet coffee green mountain coffee kenya coffee organic coffee specialty coffee folgers coffee coffee brewers costa rica coffee Tullys Coffee Millstone Coffee coffee grinder http://www.coffee-delivered.com

Few persons care to study logic, because everybody conceives himself to be proficient enough in the art of reasoning already. But I observe that this satisfaction is limited to one own ratiocination, and does not extend to that of other men.

3600
directv
direct tv directv satellite direct tv satellite directv dvr direct tv dvr direct tv tivo directv tivo directway
direcway
directway internet directway satellite direcway internet direcway internet free hbo free cinemax free dvd player satellite radio http://www.satellitetvboutique.com

directv
direct tv
directv satellite direct tv satellite directv dvr direct tv dvr direct tv tivo directv tivo directway
direcway
directway internet directway satellite direcway internet direcway internet free hbo free cinemax free dvd player satellite radio http://satellite-tv.cjb.net

Great site !
Really enjoyed the posts!

Hi! You did a nice job on creating
this website!
Good stuff! Keep it up! See you!:-)
Keep up this great resource.

Fantastic website you have here.
It was exactly what I was looking for!!

7109 http://www.top-texas-hold-em.com

texas hold em