Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

Eric, You start with a quote that is thirty-four years old, and expect us to believe that it represents all of Kerry’s interests today. You also chide him for taking a position that was not altogether unpopular after Watergate and Vietnam.

The Redbaiting is largely applied by you without a terrible amount of real proof that Kerry himself is Red. You talk about internationalism with a very technical definition, you hint with the Lenin quote, and you basically extemporize on how the could be nothing but the truth about him, yet, in the end, you don’t provide much in the way of evidence or quotes to substantively connect Kerry to a truly Marxist/Leninist perspective.

The term internationalist, like the world liberal, can have different meanings in different settings. Liberal can simply mean free. Many free market conservatives in Europe call themselves liberal, since one sense of the term is something done freely, even excessively. Even conservatives sometimes use the term liberal democracy to describe systems of our kind, systems where people are allowed to freely, even excessively practice their freedoms.

I have no doubt, that in some textbook, internationalist means what you say. However, the term, through generalized use has also come to mean simply multilateral, willing to negotiate mutually favorable agreements with foreign countries, rather that impose one power over and over in a unilateral way.

Kennedy was right, though. This president pretty much says what he has to for purpose of political expedience. He presents qualified, guesstimate oriented intelligence as hard evidence. He denies the strong role of WMDs and Terrorism as essential motives for going to war. He claims he’s fulfilling the UN resolutions, when he himself circumvented that body to go to war. He only advocates a Homeland Security Agency when Joe Lieberman puts one up and threatens to trump the Bush administration on the lead in the War on terror. He said in his campaign that tax cuts were necessary because of the excess of the money going to the government. Now he says we need them, despite the huge deficits we’re running, to stimulate the economy.

John Kerry may not have kept every view of his the same over his lifetime’s worth of service in the legislature, but at least he’s capable of some admissions of being wrong. He said in an interview concerning his past antipathy towards big spending initiatives for the military that he was mistaken, and his record shows him following through on his public change of heart.

Bush cannot even admit that his tax cuts are driving up the deficit, even as Paul O’Neill’s book quotes the vice president as saying that they can run up such debts, because Reagan proved nobody cared about that.

For my money, I am much more comfortable with a politician who can change his mind, than one who ignores or disregards things to avoid doing so.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at April 14, 2004 09:20 AM

Kerry has a long history of opposing things and supporting things, then opposing them again, so how do we know what side of any issue he might land on? One thing that seems to fixate politicians is the polls and elections. Why just in September of 2002 Kennedy said this of the President, “Let me say it plainly: I not only concede, but I am convinced that President Bush believes genuinely in the course he urges upon us.”

Hm, somewhere in there you switched from Kerry to Kennedy. Did you think we wouldn’t notice?

Anyway, that Kennedy quote seems pretty benign to me. It’s actually a very friendly and kind thing to say about Bush, painting the president as an earnest well-meaning man. It implies that Kennedy thinks that Bush, too, was deceived just like the rest of us. Personally, I don’t know which is worse: a President who is being lied to by the pipeline leading to his desk, or a President who lies to the American people. Sounds to me like Kennedy was giving Bush the benefit of the doubt there.

Almost forgotten in that famous speech were Kerry’s controversial assertions that Vietnam veterans had “personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads…

This is a lie that has become so much repeated that it is usually reported as truth even in reputable papers like the Boston Globe. I know you were merely quoting the article, but I still need to correct this statement. Kerry never made these assertions. He said that he was recently at a meeting with a group of angry veterans who said these things. It was the opening statement in a long and thoughtful speech about how the war was tearing our country apart.

If you insist on dragging decades-old statements from our presidential candidates and using them out of context to affect the percepction of the candidate today, then I challenge you to find any intelligent quotes from George Bush about foreign policy from the 1970’s, or the 80’s and 90’s for that matter.

Here, I’ll help: Here are a couple of GWB quotes from before his candidacy that might shed a little light on his foreign policy priorities and convictions:

“I’m saying to myself, ‘What do I want to do?’ I think I don’t want to be an infantry guy as a private in Vietnam. What I do decide to want to do is learn to fly.”
- Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, 1989

“I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes.”
- Dallas Morning News, Feb. 25, 1990

“I don’t want to play like I was somebody out there marching when I wasn’t. It was either Canada or the service. … Somebody said the Guard was looking for pilots. All I know is, there weren’t that many people trying to be pilots.”
- Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Nov. 29, 1998

Kerry and his comrades

Da! Vote for Kerryski and the Demokrats!

Dude, Red baiting?!? Have we sunken so low? And you think the Democrats are witch hunting?

And what was your point in including that final quote from the Dick Cavett show? Were you trying to portray Kerry as some kind of self-confessed war criminal? Were you trying to show a flip flop from the previous statement about cutting off heads (if so, you’ve failed insofar as the first quote was actually a misrepresentation of what Kerry really said in his testimony)?

Or were you trying to discredit “democrats [who] are busy looking for a scapegoat for 9/11”? If so, that’s pretty disingenuous, too: I mean, Kerry and lots of other Democrats (note the capital D) think Bush is a terrible President, and that he was a terrible President both before and after 9/11. If we try to make our case that there are pre-9/11 examples of how he’s a terrible President, it doesn’t mean we’re trying to scapegoat him for 9/11.

-Cf

Posted by: Christopher Fahey at April 14, 2004 10:33 AM

Yes, these quotes are thirty years old. But it is a fact that he said them and it shows the history of the man. He said them as a public figure. It may show insight into how he has evolved from that time. Has he changed his mind since then? Probably. One would expect that your views would change after thirty years. There’s nothing wrong with that.

What I think is more relevant now is that he has made recent statements denying that he ever said these things. That’s a horse of a different color. The quote from his book has him saying that he could never agree with members of the anti-war movement who dismiss veterans as war criminals. Yet he clearly asserted that as a fact when it suited him, when it was politically beneficial to him.

Kerry never made these assertions. He said that he was recently at a meeting with a group of angry veterans who said these things.

Um, the quote is from his speech. Whether he qualifies the statement by relaying what he heard is irrelevant and certainly doesn’t negate the fact that he said it. Saying it, is asserting it. Why did he say it if he didn’t mean it, or believe it? Does he just say things for effect? Or does he just “say whatever it takes to prevail?”

That’s my main point with this. Kerry seems to be someone who will take whatever position he thinks will benefit him the most at the time. The inexplicable thing is that he has such a short memory of what position he had previously taken. The thing that changes is not just his mind but the political circumstance in which he changes his mind. It’s calculated but seemingly shortsighted.

To find the general definition of internationalist, just type in internationalist or internationalism in google and evaluate the sites which come up in the first few pages of results. Three out of ten on the first page of results are actually fully communist websites. With the exception of one they are all far left in content. I don’t feel it necessary to ‘redbait’ as such, but so much of the left’s arguments seem to be woven with streams of thought and terminology that either leans on that ideology or is derived from it in some way.

Internationalism in its most vanilla definition merely means:

Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation between nations for the benefit of all. Partisans of this movement, such as supporters of the World Federalist Movement, claim that nations should cooperate because their long-term mutual interests are of greater value than their own individual short-term needs. -Wikipedia

Of course even this definition references an interesting leftist organization, the World Federalist Movement. I believe that this is closer to Kerry’s statement of thirty years ago. They prefer a federal world government which essentially makes all nations states in that union. The UN is a center piece of their vision.

World Federalists support the creation of democratic global structures accountable to the citizens of the world. World federalism calls for the division of international authority among separate agencies, a separation of powers among judicial, executive and parliamentary bodies. -wmf.org

I am merely bringing out facts for everyone to consider. I actually started at Kerry’s website, reading his new vision for National Security. In looking for more info about Kerry’s position on National Security I come across all these historical quotes. They seem relevant especially in light of the fact that he is using the same term from thirty years ago to describe his position now.

Should we just ignore it?

…the term, through generalized use has also come to mean simply multilateral, willing to negotiate mutually favorable agreements with foreign countries, rather than impose one power over and over in a unilateral way.

This veers into semantics but that’s the work of debate in a democratic society. I want to know what Kerry means by internationalism, then and now. How does he define multilateral? Is it merely a diplomatic term meant to woo international allies? Or is it a little bit of the World Federalist Movements internationalism? It’s a little disconcerting when you can’t be sure where Kerry will stand on any one issue once you realize that if it suits him he’ll change his position. It goes to trust.

As an American I want to know what his internationalism means. How much of our sovereignty will he be willing to relinquish? How much of our soldiers blood will be spilled to enhance the political standing of the UN? Because as we all know US troops are the ones who would do the heavy lifting in any ‘enforcement’. The question of whether that enforcement would only happen where there aren’t any oil-for-food programs is relevant as well.

…we affirm our determination to exercise our rights and responsibilities as citizens of the whole world in order to achieve the high purposes of the United Nations.

…For this is the essence of world federalism: to seek to invest legal and political authority in world institutions to deal with problems which can only be treated adequately at the global level, while affirming the sovereignty of the nation-state in matters which are essentially internal. Our objective is a world order in which the legitimate rights of nations to self-determination are balanced by and consistent with the collective rights of the global community to protect and advance the common good of humanity.

Going back to Kerry’s stated position, I actually like the paragraph he has on his website. Here’s the quote:

“Americans deserve a principled diplomacy…backed by undoubted military might…based on enlightened self-interest, not the zero-sum logic of power politics…a diplomacy that commits America to lead the world toward liberty and prosperity. A bold progressive internationalism that focuses not just on the immediate and imminent, but insidious dangers that can mount over the next years and decade, dangers that span the spectrum from the denial of democracy, to destructive weapons, endemic poverty and epidemic disease. These are not just issues of international order, but vital issues of our own national security.” -John Kerry

But again, is it calculation? It sounds an awful lot like the Bush Doctrine to me. Even hints of, “not just immediate and imminent…” Isn’t that what he is criticizing in the rush to war in Iraq? That it wasn’t imminent? He doesn’t really explain or expand on what progressive internationalism is either. These two terms are more synonymous with far left ideology than what he actually says in context here, that it makes one wonder what he’s leaving out.

Posted by: Eric Simonson at April 14, 2004 01:16 PM

> The quote from his book has him saying that he
> could never agree with members of the anti-war
> movement who dismiss veterans as war criminals.
> Yet he clearly asserted that as a fact when it
> suited him, when it was politically beneficial
> to him.

Where did he say that veterans should be dismissed as war criminals? Where has he ever said anything but words of deep compassion and respect for veterans? Where?

In discussing war crimes, he made a rhetorical point: technically, according to a strict reading of the precedents at Nuremburg, “just obeying orders” is no excuse for the commission of atrocities. That said, he, I, and you all know that the rank and file Nazi soldier, even in the SS, avoided prosecution for war crimes. He was not suggesting that American veterans who participated in “free fire” zones were war criminals who should be prosecuted - in fact, the Dick Cavett show quote both addresses and then refutes that charge in the very same paragraph! His message is consistent: We had orders to committ what amounted to war crimes. We should not be prosecuted for it, however, but the government should most certainly change its policies.

Was he implying that the senior officers who conceived and ordered tactics like “free fire” zones might be prosecutsable for war crimes? You bet he was. Do you not agree?

> Um, the quote is from his speech. Whether he
> qualifies the statement by relaying what he
> heard is irrelevant

I think we have a difference of opinion on the basic concepts of reading comprehension here.

Let’s do an exercise. Here’s an example:

CHRIS: Eric said that he thinks that Kerry seems to take whatever position he thinks will benefit him.

Now, let me pose a question:

Does Chris think that Kerry seems to take whatever position he thinks will benefit him?

Answer: No, Eric is the one who thinks that. Chris was describing what Eric said.

Now let’s look at the full context of that scurrilously-edited Kerry quote:

I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit - the emotions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

He is not saying that he saw these things at all. He is reporting what these other 150 soldiers reported to him. These paragraphs aren’t even in the least bit ambiguous (they are only ambiguous when they are cropped using a cheap third-rate hack journalism trick of omitting important phrases).

He used the phrase “they told stories” for crying out loud. What other clues do you need?

> Isn’t that what he is criticizing in the rush
> to war in Iraq? That it wasn’t imminent?

Partly true. Specifically, the Iraq threat wasn’t imminent enough to justify a hastily-planned invasion with little to no international political or military support. Kerry’s critique revolves around the poor planning, and the apparent deceptions used to justify the imminent need. He seems to agree that a threat doesn’t need to be imminent to warrant aggressive action, but he disagrees that Iraq was such a threat. He, like many Americans, feels deceived by the administration’s shoddy evidence.

He was willing to support the war if the evidence was, in the President’s good judgement, sound. But he now beleives that the president made the choice with little or no regard for the quality of the evidence.

There is a line somewhere between growing threats and imminent threats: Russia and China are enormous threats to us, but they are not imminent threats - we should be prepared to fight them in a war, but we probably shouldn’t attack them. The people of Morocco seem to hate our guts, but the government there is not an imminent threat either. Similarly, Saddam’s Iraq, although hateful of the US and possibly was armed with illegal weapons of mass destruction, was not an imminent threat of the kind necessitating immediate nearly-unilateral action.

By the way, can you refer me to a clear articulation of what the heck a “Bush Doctrine” is? I mean, that’s a pretty high-falutin’ phrase for what appears to me to be a haphazard variation of the old “shoot first, ask questions later” philosophy. That’s hardly a “Doctrine”.

It seems to me that the “Bush Doctrine” is simply defined by “whatever Bush chooses to do (or is forced to do by unforeseen circumstances) at any given time”. One day it’s attacking nations which harbor terrorists, the next it’s attacking nations that have unlawful WMDs, the next it’s liberation of people yearning to be free, the next it’s quelling civil wars in lawless states. Is there any core virtues or principles that define a “Bush Doctrine”?

-Cf

Posted by: Christopher Fahey at April 14, 2004 03:26 PM

As I recall, Bush was drinking with his buddies, getting DUI’s and doing coke in Houston during the seventies.

I don’t think he was leading any ground swells of political activity. In fact people were having a real hard time finding him at all.

Perhaps Kerry said some things 35 years ago he regrets.

At least he has a political record before the mid-nineties.

Prior to his governership in Texas, Bush could’ve said “Baseball has been berry, berry good to me,” when Dad’s business buddies handed him a partnership in the Rangers to groom him for public speaking and a political career.

Posted by: greg at April 14, 2004 04:11 PM

By the way, Ralph Nader was a consumer advocate in the sixties who basically helped to create something called “car safety” that we take for granted today.

Prior to him, Detroit could pretty much sell any box with 4 wheels on it, regardless of whether it was a death trap or not. Today, they at least have to consider safety in their designs.

Posted by: greg at April 14, 2004 04:24 PM

He used the phrase “they told stories” for crying out loud. What other clues do you need?

He is asserting that soldiers committed war crimes even if he says it based on the testimony of other witnesses. Otherwise, just what is it that he is asserting?

Does he bring it up just to relate the minutes of the Veterans meeting? No, he is arguing that the war is wrong. Why is the war wrong? Soldiers are committing atrocities. You are trying to hard to explain this away.

I know what he said. Any careful reader would come to the obvious conclusion that he is asserting that soldiers committed war crimes. Or else why bring it up at all?

He was willing to support the war if the evidence was, in the President’s good judgment, sound. But he now believes that the president made the choice with little or no regard for the quality of the evidence.

So if there was WMD then it would have been imminent? Kerry wouldn’t be opposing the war if we had found WMD? Think about that carefully.

There is a line somewhere between growing threats and imminent threats: Russia and China are enormous threats to us, but they are not imminent threats - we should be prepared to fight them in a war, but we probably shouldn’t attack them.

How about if the China invaded Taiwan? Refused to abide by terms of a ceasefire after a war to remove them from Taiwan. Because of our multilateral committment not to overthrow the Chinese government we stand by as the Chinese people rise up against their dictatorship and are crushed. The Chinese try to assassinate a US President. They break all UN resolutions to disarm or allow inspectors to inspect. They fund terrorist attacks against Japan. Harbor ‘retired’ terrorists who advise and run said attacks against Japan. Then throw in a massive terrorist attack that kills several thousand people in Los Angeles by a terrorist organization based in Asia, who are incidentally all Chinese? (Not national, but by birth/region.) Does it seem a little more plausible then?

The Bush doctrine is spelled out in the National Security Strategy.

It sounds a lot like Kerry’s paragraph about Progressive Internationalism in fact.

To defeat this threat we must make use of every tool in our arsenal—military power, better homeland defenses, law enforcement, intelligence, and vigorous efforts to cut off terrorist financing. The war against terrorists of global reach is a global enterprise of uncertain duration. America will help nations that need our assistance in combating terror. And America will hold to account nations that are compromised by terror, including those who harbor terrorists— because the allies of terror are the enemies of civilization. The United States and countries cooperating with us must not allow the terrorists to develop new home bases. Together, we will seek to deny them sanctuary at every turn.

The gravest danger our Nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology. Our enemies have openly declared that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction, and evidence indicates that they are doing so with determination. The United States will not allow these efforts to succeed. We will build defenses against ballistic missiles and other means of delivery. We will cooperate with other nations to deny, contain, and curtail our enemies’ efforts to acquire dangerous technologies. And, as a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed. We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. So we must be prepared to defeat our enemies’ plans, using the best intelligence and proceeding with deliberation. History will judge harshly those who saw this coming danger but failed to act. In the new world we have entered, the only path to peace and security is the path of action.

You might take note of the next to last sentence about history judging harshly those who fail to act, interesting to note in light of the 9/11 commission.

Posted by: Eric Simonson at April 14, 2004 06:22 PM

Eric, the war in Vietnam was wrong because we were simply continuing the imperialism of the French.
We assasinated the elected Head of State in South Vietnam. We corrupted their entire political system. We interfered in Laos and Cambodian regimes that led to the rise of Pol Pot. Our President privately admitted they did not have a stragtegy to win. We won every battle and killed thousands for a corrupt regime that no one supported except us a few of our supplicants. We lost the War because it was immoral and served no purpose except to save the prestige of America.

We claimed it was to save democracy in S.E. Asia. Through corruption? Kill ’ em to save ‘em thinking. Atrocities did occur. They will occur in any protracted war in which there is no way to win. They were a symptom of the immoral leadership Johnson fostered. We weren’t the Nazi’s in WWII, but neither were our hands clean.

Don’t fool yourself. We will not defend Taiwan. The One China policy has made that clear.

The imminent threat, gathering threat argument is as specious as Bill Clinton’s meaning of “is” .
argument.

The argument you make about acting is a valid argument and one that Bush should have made more of a center piece of his Invasion of Iraq. His inability to build a true or regional coalition though suggests a weak policy and weak leadership. Only time will tell us the outcome.

Posted by: Greg at April 15, 2004 05:30 PM

I apologize for misinterpreting your point about the John Kerry quote from his 1970 testimony. He is often vilified in the press these days for suggesting that he in fact claimed to have personally observed them - i.e., that he was not delivering hearsay evidence.

That said, do you doubt the accuracy of the stories that were recounted to him by his fellow veterans? I, for one, do not.

Maybe I am the victim of liberal propaganda, but even former Senator Bob Kerrey himself has admitted to participating in such crimes. Thousands of veterans have told these stories. Should we just dismiss them all?

> So if there was WMD then it would have been
> imminent? Kerry wouldn’t be opposing the war
> if we had found WMD? Think about that carefully.

Over and over I’ve said that even if there were quantities of WMDs like the ones that were claimed to have been in Iraq, then I still think that the threat would not have been imminent. There would have to have been more than what we heard about: for example, a functioning or nearly-functional nuclear program, or a organized effort to deliver WMDs to terrorists. Neither of these cases were made very well before the war, and since the war they have only gotten flimsier and flimsier. I have never thought that Iraq was an imminent threat except for the brief period of time when I allowed myself to believe that perhaps the President was courageously hiding sensitive information from the world, information that he knew justified the invasion but that he couldn’t tell us (or the Congress) without revealing sensitive security sources. I was willing to beleive that Bush *knew* that after the invasion he would expose the Iraq nuclear programs to the world, vindicating the United States from the accusations of imperialism. I think Kerry thought the same thing. We were duped.

Anyway, comparing China to Iraq as you have is bizzare. China actually is a threat to the US, right now, at least in terms of their physical ability. They are capable of hurting us rather severely almost any time they want. Iraq is not and was not.

> we stand by as the Chinese people rise up
> against their dictatorship and are crushed.

Well, that already happened. Remember Tiannanmen?

> Then throw in a massive terrorist attack that
> kills several thousand people in Los Angeles
> by a terrorist organization based in Asia,
> who are incidentally all Chinese? (Not
> national, but by birth/region.)

Good lord, we’re back to the “It’s appropriate to attack Iraq because the 9/11 terrorists were Arabs.”

Would all the people who think that all Arabs are the same and should be wiped from the earth please raise their hands and just admit it?

-Cf

Posted by: Christopher Fahey at April 15, 2004 07:26 PM

Eric, the war in Vietnam was wrong because we were simply continuing the imperialism of the French.

We assassinated the elected Head of State in South Vietnam. We corrupted their entire political system. We interfered in Laos and Cambodian regimes that led to the rise of Pol Pot. Our President privately admitted they did not have a strategy to win. We won every battle and killed thousands for a corrupt regime that no one supported except us a few of our supplicants. We lost the War because it was immoral and served no purpose except to save the prestige of America.

Greg, you are right to impugn the imperialism of the French. I would hasten to add that the disfunctionalism of North Africa has a lot to do with the imperialism of the French as well. But to try to blame the United States for yet another communist genocide defies description. Especially when what we were trying to prevent was precisely the further spread of such regimes. And it was not so much our involvement in French Indochina that allowed the Khmer Rouge to take over and slaughter millions, but our pulling out.

Noam Chomsky: “Perhaps someday they [Nixon and Kissinger] will acknowledge their “honest errors” in their memoirs, speaking of the burdens of world leadership and the tragic irony of history. Their victims, the peasants of Indochina, will write no memoirs and will be forgotten. They will join the countless millions of earlier victims of tyrants and oppressors.”

To the contrary, if Nixon blamed himself for anything, it was for having left Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge partly because of Watergate. -ess.uwe.ac.uk

This is appropriate debate I think, because the left is looking at Iraq through the lens of anti-war history. From Edward M. Kennedy’s, “This is Bush’s Vietnam,” to the sound bite I heard on the radio this evening of Kerry at a college rally. Where he references Vietnam and says he needs the young people to rise up like ‘we’ did during Vietnam to ‘change the country around’.

In this context his statements of thirty years ago take on fresh meaning. The rhetoric of the anti-war movement and the ‘New Left’ is a legacy for the Democrats to reconcile. Kerry’s candidacy, the war in Iraq, and Democrats decision to ‘Vietnam-ize’ Iraq may hurt them.

One thing is for sure, Kerry is not doing anything to moderate the tax and spend liberal image. Not with the new entitlements he is promising. Imagine, this is just for the college folks. Will they forget his promise when he can’t deliver?

“I came mostly for Guster, but also for Kerry, sure,” said LaPlant, 20.

Sophomore Tom Estabrook, 19, said he had never been to a political rally before, but he left convinced that Kerry was his man.

“I’d definitely work in the community for two years if it meant free tuition,” Estabrook said of Kerry’s proposal. -SeaCoastOnline.com

How many groups will he have to promise such blatant socialism to to get elected?

That said, do you doubt the accuracy of the stories that were recounted to him by his fellow veterans? I, for one, do not.

Chris, I was born in 1970. I know only what I have read, and that’s admittedly not at the level of in depth research. My opinion from what I have read is that there were crimes committed by individual soldiers. I discount the hyperbole about how everyone was raping and pillaging. I think that problems like that can be partly attributed to the draft. Partly due to the fact that one to two percent of the population is criminal in society. The armed forces are made up of society and there are bound to be some criminals in every organization somewhere.

Our military is and has been the most dedicated, disciplined, educated, and even humanitarian fighting force in the history of the earth. No other nation has ever had soldiers like our soldiers.

If democrats allow their party to slide all the way into ‘Chomsky-land’ they will have doomed their party. Then I’d expect the Green party to replace them outright or eventually take over the party apparatus.

Of all the major powers in the Sixties, according to Chomsky, America was the most reprehensible. Its principles of liberal democracy were a sham. Its democracy was a “four-year dictatorship” and its economic commitment to free markets was merely a disguise for corporate power. Its foreign policy was positively evil. “By any objective standard,” he wrote at the time, “the United States has become the most aggressive power in the world, the greatest threat to peace, to national self-determination, and to international cooperation.” -NewCriterion

The analogy has nothing to do with China except as a way of looking at the facts in a different light. What is pan-arabism? What is it’s connection to Iraq and Palestine? What is the Ummah? What is the Khilifah? (Take a look at Main Objective #6.) Are you aware that to a certain extent Arabs consider themselves a ‘nation’. Why were all the highjackers from Saudi Arabia? Why are they all Muslim? Why is Al Qaeda made up of mostly of gentle souls from every country in the Middle East?

It’s not all just a coincidence. It also doesn’t mean that all Arabs or all Muslims are evil and need to be killed. Far from it. I am talking about a neighborhood, a culture with strong self identification that has begun to affirm and uphold terrorism as a legitimate form of warfare. Maybe it is? It’s an effective form of warfare in terms of psychological effect.

At that level there is validity in seeking to defeat those who are war with us.

The 64 dollar question then is, who is at war with us?

Posted by: Eric Simonson at April 16, 2004 12:49 AM

> The 64 dollar question then is, who is at
> war with us?

You seem to know the answer, why don’t you just tell us?

Why do you not vehemently advocate attacking the specific governments/people you consider to be already at war with us?

I have the feeling that you are hiding an extremely radical agenda with regards to world affairs, Eric. I also have the feeling that you and many other Americans beleive that Bush’s team secretly shares that agenda as well, like some kind of “wink wink” deal between the Administration and its supporters that says “we might say that we’ll pursue some kind of nuanced, diplomatic plan X, but we both know we really intend to pursue a bolder, more militarily aggressive plan Y.”

This might explain why so many administration supporters have a hard time understanding how the Congressional resolution authorizing military action in Iraq wasn’t an out and out declaration of war: If you begin with the assumption (as I think you and many other Americans did) that Bush had NO intention of NOT invading Iraq even if Saddam let a million inspectors have full access to Iraq, then obviously any ceding of authority to the President is naturally an approval for war.

So, I repeat: Who are we at war with, Eric? And why are we just sitting on our asses instead of attacking them?

-Cf

Posted by: Christopher Fahey at April 16, 2004 09:25 AM

> My opinion from what I have read is that
> there were crimes committed by individual
> soldiers. I discount the hyperbole about how
> everyone was raping and pillaging. I think
> that problems like that can be partly
> attributed to the draft.

John Kerry is being condemned left and right for saying exactly what you have just said.

> If democrats allow their party to slide all
> the way into ‘Chomsky-land’ they will have
> doomed their party.

If you keep quoting Chomsky, a radical fringe left-wing figure who has never so much as had the ear of a serious Democratic presidential candidate, then I will start quoting Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed, radical right wing zealots who can very likely get President Bush on the phone any minute they want to. Do you really want to go there?

-Cf

Posted by: Christopher Fahey at April 16, 2004 09:35 AM

I forgot to add:

John Kerry is being condemned left and right for saying exactly what you have just said, except that he also blamed those at levels above that of the infantryman. Blaming the “draft” (even putting the racist overtones of that aside) absolves the leadership of the armed forces at almost every level, from squad commanders all the way to the generals running the show, when we know that policies like “free fire zones” were approved all the way to the Pentagon. Napalm wasn’t brought to Vietnam by drafted street criminals.

I, too, am too young to have experienced the Vietnam era. But I can only praise a man like Kerry for having the courage to say what he said at a time when the administration, in desperation, was resorting to approving extreme militaty tactics that Americans were never permitted to do before - and, for that matter, the administration was actively and regularly lying about the number of American dead.

Your condemnation of Kerry is like condemning Martin Luther King for claiming that all white people were lynching black people every day. Did that sound ridiculous? Of course it did. And so does your allusion that Kerry was suggesting that “everyone was raping and pillaging”.

-Cf

Posted by: Christopher Fahey at April 16, 2004 09:45 AM

Quick responses…

I have the feeling that you are hiding an extremely radical agenda with regards to world affairs, Eric.

From your perspective perhaps I do.

I care about how people live throughout the world. I honestly want the best for everyone. I think that much of the problems in the world stem from tyranny, the basic failure to treat every human being as a sovereign individual. But just like we need police to protect us from those people who would ‘tyranize’ domestically, we need a military force to protect us from those people who would ‘tyranize’ internationally.

Someone breaking into my home at night, with my three daughters asleep in their beds, will meet with the same punative judgement with which I judge Al Qaeda, the Islamic Brotherhood, the Baathists, and every terrorist nation, group or individual.

I do believe in the radical agenda of promising to live up to the phrase, No better friend, no worse enemy,” Teddy Roosevelt’s policy of, “Walk softly and carry a big stick,” as well as JFK’s, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.”

I am not a pacifist. I am also not a jingoist, imperialist, rascist, homophobic, sexist, bigot. I prefer peace, as every rational decent person does, and many times peace is acheived only after the defeat of your enemies. Enemies defined as those who are interested in your death or destruction. I suppose that is radical by the standards and thinking exeplified by the UN.

For instance, it struck me yesterday that for the last fifty or so years there has been a ‘peace process’ going on between the Israelis and the Palestinians. There is no peace process. It’s a war! War is sometimes inevitable. It takes two to tango, but it only takes one to start a fight.

Who are we at war with, Eric? And why are we just sitting on our asses instead of attacking them?

We are in the process of attacking them. Syria and Iran have their fighters and are funding opposition in Iraq right now. Our troops are hunting down Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan. 90-95% of the Al Qaeda leadership has been killed or captured. Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.

Look, these terrorist organizations have tacit support in many governments in the middle east. Most do nothing or close to nothing to arrest them or keep them in prison. The Al Qaeda second in command was part of the group that assasinated Anwar Sadat, and Egypt let him go. Now he’s hiding from US forces in the Afghan/Pakistan mountains with Osama Bin Laden. On top of that we give billions of dollars to countries like Egypt, where the government run and censored press, daily calls the Umited States evil enemies of god worthy of more attacks like 9/11.

Blaming the “draft” (even putting the racist overtones of that aside) absolves the leadership of the armed forces at almost every level, from squad commanders all the way to the generals running the show, when we know that policies like “free fire zones” were approved all the way to the Pentagon. Napalm wasn’t brought to Vietnam by drafted street criminals.

There’s some validity to opposition to the Vietnam war. But the anti-war movement went beyond mere policy diagreement. It was a movement highjacked and led by radical left groups. That is a historical fact. People were advocating the overthrow of the government, assasination of Senators, and in many cases a revolution in the name of ‘social justice’. I can understand your desire to distance yourself from it. But the protest movement of that era is inextricable tied to that cause.

Kerry’s comments were not made in a vacuum. He was leading a group that advocated assasination of pro-war senators! His speech was made as a spokesman and leader of that same group. His comments were part of the accusations of Chomsky and others.

During the Vietnam War, when the government drafted foot soldiers, the problem wasn’t getting African-Americans into ground combat. It was just the opposite. Early in the war, blacks were killed and injured at rates significantly higher than whites, leading to allegations that the draft was unfair and minorities and poor whites were paying a heavy price. By war’s end, after civil rights leaders had protested the elevated casualty rates, black combat deaths had fallen to 12%, roughly in line with the African-American population in the USA.

…But a close examination of Pentagon statistics suggests that at least some of the conventional wisdom about who is most at risk during wartime is misleading. For example, although blacks account for 26% of Army troops, they make up a much smaller percentage of those in front-line combat units, the most likely to be killed or injured in a conventional war. -patrick.af.mil

Posted by: Eric Simonson at April 16, 2004 03:25 PM

Eric,

It seems to me that you will settle for nothing less than a full scale war between the United States and half the countries in the world. I’m really at a loss of ways to argue with you at this point. I hope we can avoid that outcome, even if it means we occasionally allow countries and peoples that hate us to continue to exist.

-Cf

Posted by: Christopher Fahey at April 16, 2004 05:26 PM

Who said anything about war against half the world? It comes down to taking decisive action to make our intentions clear. If we limit the war on terror to that of a criminal investigation, intent on only arresting the individuals involved in singular terrorist acts we are sending the message that there is basically no price to be paid for targeting civilians.

No one is talking about invading any other countries.

Iraq was unfinished business that 9/11 put front and center. It had to be done one way or another. One might argue, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree, that a concerted effort to undermine and topple Saddam without our direct military action might have been effected. The after effects would be gauranteed to be as messy if not more.

The fact that we starved and bombed Iraq all through Clinton’s administration doesn’t bother you? Our planes were shot at, sometimes daily, in the no fly zones. Invasion and liberation is actually the more humane of the two options because the people who suffered under our sanctions was not the Baathists. They found a way to get around the sanctions, ie the Oil-for-Food program. The Iraqi people suffered twofold, first with Saddam, second under our sanctions.

Another thing we need to do is start putting conditions and or redirecting our aid to Muslim coutries. It must be known how much money they are being given and from whom. Egypt recieves two billion dollars a year from US taxpayers. Do you think the average egyptian knows this? The average American doesn’t know it. If we are going to give this money away we should damn well be getting something out of it. On top of it all we give it directly to dictatorial governments to administer. Who then turn around and call us crusaders, oppressors, killers, etc.

Step one is to stop funding in that case.

Posted by: Eric Simonson at April 17, 2004 02:10 AM

Eric, from what I’ve heard, he got out of that group as soon as it started going in that radical direction, and then founded his own.

His reputation, to some of his colleagues dismay was of a moderate voice amidst some of the more strident people.

The facts do not support any portrayal of Kerry as a radical.

As for Iraq, the facts fail to support on some of your key points. First, those in the know are aware that the NeoCons already have plans brought up for Iraq’s neighbors. Second, innocent Iraqis still suffer and die, but now those deaths are explicitly linked to our presence. This war is ravaging the cities, whether it is a good war or not. And the citizens are much more in the way than when we were merely bombing radar stations.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at April 17, 2004 10:40 AM

Eric, there is this vision of Democrats you keep trying to convince yourself of, this vision of Noam Chomsky worshipping wimps, tiptoeing through the tulips and fornicating their way across America from their mecca of Berkeley and San Fransisco, each and everyone of us a commie hippie through and through.

Sorry to disappoint. It seems strange to me that I keep on telling you that I’m a bit of a hawk, and I keep on advocating military solutions to certain problems, and all you can seem to see me as is some bell-bottomed, tie-die shirt wearing glazed-eyed hippy swaying to nonexisting music with my fingers up in a “V”.

I keep on telling you that I resent Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility, and yet somehow I remain in your eyes the spendthrift.

I keep on telling you that we should remain in Iraq as long as it takes to ensure the stability of what we leave behind, but you continue to charge that people like me are trying to sabotage the war on terror, and the fight in Iraq, simply because don’t worship the image of your Caesar, George Bush, because I believe the proper conduct of the office is the higher priority than the idolization of the president.

I do not believe loyalty to this country stems from blind obedience to its elected leaders. For that, you vilify people people like me.

But the threat we face does not discriminate. Neither my side of this debate, or yours has it all right, and because of that, it is absurd to believe that loyalty to any one party, or one methodology will get us out of this mess. We must adhere to the facts as our basis for action, and we admit when our policies become dysfunctional, not bash the other side simply for calling us on our mistake. We have to leave our egos and our presuppositions about our fellow Americans aside, and tackle the real problems facing us.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at April 17, 2004 11:09 AM

Stephen, Watch it BuB? I was wearing beads, bell bottoms, had long hair, and took a trip to Belle Isle, Detorit in the late 60’s dancing to music in my mind while putting a flower in the national guard’s rifle (he smiled). I was only 18 or 19 at the time.

I am 54 now, a whole lot more educated, experienced, and knowedgeably now than then, yet, I still have long hair, wear beads, and occasionally dance to music in my mind. I was right to help put an end to the killing in Viet Nam. Had millions upon millions not come over to our far out flower power peace position, the Memorial Wall would be a whole lot longer than it is now.

I was not unpatriotic then and I am not unpatriotic now. I enlisted in 72 reversing my own deferment and became a combat medic, and then a psyciatric technician. I did not go to Viet Nam, thankfully, but, my heart went out to our dying and maimed troops after visiting with a few in the late ’60s, and I wanted to help them. Not Nixon, not political hawks in government, I wanted to save some of our soldiers lives. That did not happen but it was not for the lack of will on my part.

I believe the U.S. has the highest of all obligations to insure that when we choose to spend our soldier’s lives, that the country must be unified behind the decision, their deaths be honored by a cause of defense of their families and fellow Americans, and that the leaders have adequately planned and supplied the resources to go in, do our job, and get out as quickly as possible.

President Bush and his hawks have not done their job and have failed not only our troops but our nation in the manner with which they chose to perpetuate this war in Iraq. The country was unified based on false information to invade Iraq. Those WMD reasons for invading have proven false. The U.S. is no longer unified, and the nation never bought into spending our troops lives to bring a better government, society, and resources to Iraqi’s than we have here at home.

We opened the door for them to rule themselves. Our job is done. If the U.N. or NATO believes the world and region would be safer and better off if security and establishment of government from an outside nation(s) is necessary, let them decide to take over. The threat to the U.S. from Iraq, to the extent there ever was one, is gone. It is time to limit or eliminate the needless killing and maiming of American soldiers.

And don’t even think of arguing that I am aiding the enemy, Bush himself is aiding the enemy by that logic according to former Sen. Thompson (R) who said those who call for the U.N. or NATO to take over is aiding the enemy’s hope of our cutting and running. Bush has announced he is working for greater U.N. and NATO participation in what appears to be a desperate attempt to get the U.S. out of Iraq as far as possible before the elections. So, if I aiding the enemy, then so is Bush.

Peace, Love, and compassion for our troops -
your daytrippin’ freak…

Posted by: David R. Remer at April 17, 2004 12:03 PM

…those in the know are aware that the NeoCons already have plans brought up for Iraq’s neighbors.

The Pentagon draws up plans for invading every country in every terrain on earth, and probably space too. The fact that plans exist means nothing. Those plans existed during the Clinton Adminsitration too.

Second, innocent Iraqis still suffer and die, but now those deaths are explicitly linked to our presence.

They die how? At our hands? Are we killing them now as Saddam was killing them then?

I keep on telling you that we should remain in Iraq as long as it takes to ensure the stability of what we leave behind…

Well, I guess I just don’t notice the parts where you say this. Because in comparison to the arguments about why we shouldn’t be there and how wrong Bush was to put us in there, such statements are footnotes.

Neither my side of this debate, or yours has it all right, and because of that, it is absurd to believe that loyalty to any one party, or one methodology will get us out of this mess.

Sophistry. If neither side is right, you are basically arguing that my side of the debate is more wrong than yours. Has Bush suspended all FBI investigations on terror? Is the use of either military or criminal investigation, or diplomatic action preclude each other? Are they mutually exclusive? You’re right that no one methodology is sufficient.

We must adhere to the facts as our basis for action, and we admit when our policies become dysfunctional, not bash the other side simply for calling us on our mistake. We have to leave our egos and our presuppositions about our fellow Americans aside, and tackle the real problems facing us.

Or calling the other side incompetent, failures, dysfunctional, misguided, or unfit. I would suggest that it is not Republican egos or presuppositons which need checking here.

…and I wanted to help them. Not Nixon, not political hawks in government,

It was Nixon’s war after all. As I recall it was a two to one democratic war, which Nixon ended.

Our job is done. If the U.N. or NATO believes the world and region would be safer and better off if security and establishment of government from an outside nation(s) is necessary, let them decide to take over. The threat to the U.S. from Iraq, to the extent there ever was one, is gone. It is time to limit or eliminate the needless killing and maiming of American soldiers.

No one thought Afghanistan posed any serious threat to the US either, before 9/11. So we left them to their own devices. Funny how peace and love and self interest seem to contradict on another now and then.

My view of foreign policy is that we must reverse the action, reaction, inaction cycle that has put us in the position we are in now. Kennedy rightly thought that putting US troops was important to stop the USSR from spreading it’s imperial communist empire throughout Southeast Asia.

Of course the communist threat was as nonexistant to some as the terrorist threat is today. That is the Chomsky-ite influence. I am not saying Chomsky is even believed or followed by many on the left, he’s just such an iconic representation of the philosophy of the anti-war movement. I might have just as well quoted Che Guvera, or Fidel Castro for all it matters.

Where will the bulk of UN forces come from to ‘keep peace’ in Iraq?

Posted by: Eric Simonson at April 17, 2004 05:16 PM

The bottom line is, we cannot afford NOT to put an internationalist president in office, one who is willing to broker peace where possible and focus on defense of our nation in a way that this and the previous two administrations had not.

It seems some here want a future where we retain our status as the biggest, baddest, SOB on the world block. Hitler tried that and turned the world against him and his spread of influence. The future rests with coalitions, Asian, European, and Western, and each region now has the capability for Mutually Assured Destruction.

So, there is no room in the future for rogue nations bearing the WMD including the U.S. We work with the rest of the world or we go rogue. Bush is learning this lesson but the cost for his education has just been too bloody high.

Yes, it is time for an internationalist as President, and where 4 months ago I did not see how that could be possible, today, it is not only possible but on the way to becoming probable. For that I am very relieved and hopeful.

Posted by: David R. Remer at April 17, 2004 06:27 PM

David,

The fact is that Bush tried to go the UN ‘multilateral’ route and was rebuffed for a number of reasons. Corruption and complicity with the UN and France being one of them. Bush didn’t just go to war all of the sudden, like Clinton did in Kosovo. He waited and waded through ten months of wavering and obfuscation by actors who could care less about WMD or our self interest. They were lining their pockets at the expense of the Iraqi people, David. Rogue nations do that.

I don’t consider compromising with evil as being ‘one who is willing to broker peace’.

It seems some here want a future where we retain our status as the biggest, baddest, SOB on the world block. Hitler tried that and turned the world against him and his spread of influence. The future rests with coalitions, Asian, European, and Western, and each region now has the capability for Mutually Assured Destruction.

Are we trying to do what Hitler did? Is that why they don’t like Bush?

Posted by: Eric Simonson at April 18, 2004 02:40 AM

Sorry, David, if I offended you. I just felt inclined at that point to start throwing his worst stereotypes back his way. If that hit close to home, I’m sorry, I was just laying out the prototypical hippy, and telling him I didn’t fit the bill.

My Liberal upbringing is kind of complicated. I’m part yankee liberal, part southern liberal. Add to that the influences of growing up during the Reagan era, and you have one strange liberal on your hands, One who declared himself a Bush Republican as a kid, who was so mortified by the continual attacks on Clinton that he became a Clinton Democrat, and who, because of Bush’s radicalized agenda, has landed pretty much in the category of mainstream liberal.

I am a Catholic by choice, a skeptic by inclination, a storyteller by trade, and a student in my heart.

I have a tendency to immerse myself in subjects and somewhat obsessively research them. Right now, it’s the Bush administration and terrorism. Later it could be something else entirely. Right now, I’m looking to find out all I can about the Bush administration, and what I’m finding deeply disturbs and worries me.

That’s why I write here, because I believe Bush puts this country in more danger than he takes us out of.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at April 18, 2004 10:22 AM

The Pentagon draws up plans for invading every country in every terrain on earth, and probably space too. The fact that plans exist means nothing. Those plans existed during the Clinton Adminsitration too.

I think you’re arguing past me here. I was talking about Neo-Cons. I was talking about those high up in the administration. I know the Pentagon probably has all kinds of war plans. But that wasn’t what I was talking about.

Yes, Innocent Iraqis still die. We started this war, we knocked out the government and we came in insufficient numbers to keep the peace afterwards. And of course, because we are in charge, and we are one of the two sides tearing apart their neighbor hoods, a great deal of sentiment is turning against us.

Well, I guess I just don’t notice the parts where you say this. Because in comparison to the arguments about why we shouldn’t be there and how wrong Bush was to put us in there, such statements are footnotes.

I’ve advocated drafting people to put them into service in Iraq. I am serious about maintaining our committment there. I believe that when America commits a mistake of this kind, withdrawal without reconstruction is criminal.

Sophistry. If neither side is right, you are basically arguing that my side of the debate is more wrong than yours.

That’s not sophistry. That’s actually a realistic way of looking at things, at least more realistic than the absolute wrong/right arguments that people use.

Or calling the other side incompetent, failures, dysfunctional, misguided, or unfit. I would suggest that it is not Republican egos or presuppositons which need checking here.

Just because I don’t see the good in presuppositions doesn’t mean I’ve thrown out any right to question the oppostion when the facts support such questioning. The last few words are crucial: When the facts support such questioning. Our democracy works on such questioning.

In fact, you should be doing it, to your own people. I’ll do it for mine. Other Republican publications are willing to do it for their candidates. Why not you? What do you expect out of Bush? What has he fallen short on? What would you like him to do?

If we don’t make it clear to our candidates what we expect of them, who can blame them for ignoring our interests?

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at April 18, 2004 11:04 AM

Senator John Kerry on Sunday distanced himself from contentious statements he made three decades ago after returning from the Vietnam War, saying his long-ago use of the word “atrocities” to describe his and others’ actions was inappropriate and “a little bit excessive.”

…The near-apology came after the host, Tim Russert, played videotape of Mr. Kerry, in 1971, acknowledging that he had participated in shooting in free-fire zones, burning villages and search-and-destroy missions. All those actions were “contrary to the laws of warfare” and the Geneva Conventions, he said then. Republicans have seized on those comments, and accusations about war crimes the young Mr. Kerry made in testimony before a Senate committee, to try to undercut his war credentials.

“The words were honest,” Mr. Kerry said Sunday, “but on the other hand, they were a little bit over the top.” -NYTimes

But were they true Sen. Kerry?

Posted by: Eric Simonson at April 19, 2004 01:16 AM

Eric, he said they were true, as have a number of vets from that war. What is the big deal? We know from the Mi Lai massacre and court martial of scapegoat Lt. Calley that it was true.

Hell, it is still true today in Iraq. Our troops have killed hundreds of non-combatives in Fallujah in the attempt to get comabatives. We casually call this ‘collateral damage’ today, but, it still amounts to killing innocent women, children, and old people in order to prosecute one’s invasive, aggressive agenda.

The real issue for Americans is, will Kerry do everything in his power to reduce and limit American casualties in Iraq without abandoning the committment the American people made to the Iraqi people by invading their nation? The answer to that question is clearly yes. Too bad the current President has been so retarded on this effort, many dead may now still be alive.

Posted by: David R. Remer at April 19, 2004 10:11 AM

If his statement is true, he is a war criminal. If his statement is false, he is a liar.

Is Kerry trustworthy enough to be in the Oval Office? If he has a demonstratable history of moral ambiguity, of taking both sides of an issue, of saying and doing whatever seems exepedient at the time, can we afford to have such a man in the White House?

Posted by: Eric Simonson at April 20, 2004 02:50 AM

Eric,

It’s been demonstrated time and again that Bush is a liar. It’s been demonstrated time and again that Bush has flip-flopped on issues. Are you saying that neither candidate is qualified for the Oval Office?

Posted by: LawnBoy at April 20, 2004 08:20 AM

Lawnboy,

When did Bush lie? He has been consistent from day one. That’s what the American people like about him. They can trust him. He’s a straight shooter.

Just because the liar tag stuck so well to the last President doesn’t mean it will work against this one.

Posted by: Eric Simonson at April 21, 2004 03:11 AM

Eric,

You’re joking, right? This has been discussed to death around here, but I’ll bring the old stories back up if you really insist.

The bigger point is that Bush is human. He lies. Kerry lies. Gores lies. Dole lies. I lie. You lie. No one is perfect, so claiming that a specific possible lie by Kerry (If his statement is false, he is a liar. ignores many other possibilities) invalidates him for office is disingenuous.

Posted by: LawnBoy at April 21, 2004 11:15 AM