CE Volume 3

[Proud]

PunkChick said:

She's from a town called Liberal! Ha!

*applause*

[Meursault]

What would you imagine Ed Murrow's critcisms of American TV if he was alive today?

[rockysigman]

So...um...Alan Keyes is a huge hypocrite, eh?

I've never really had a huge problem with the guy. As far as Republicans go, he bothers me less than most, and I usually find him entertaining in the very least, and valuable at most for bringing in some ideas that don't typically get discussed in major party politics.

But seriously, I don't remember anyone being more vocal than Alan Keyes about how wrong it was for Hillary Clinton to move to New York just to run for the Senate in 2000. I don't even necessarily think he was wrong about this (not sure he was right either--depends on the situation I suppose), but for someone to make such a big deal about her doing it and then to do it himself seems really obviously hypocritical. I don't think I'd have much of a problem with someone else doing it--I understand that Illinois Republicans are in a tough position at this point to find someone recognizable enough to put up a fight this late in the race, especially since someone who seems to excite people as much as Barack Obama--but c'mon, this was the #1 most vocal Republican calling Hillary a carpetbagger four years ago. I'm really quite shocked he's actually doing it.

[RocDoc]

The General Has His Say

By Lyric Wallwork Winik
Published: August 1, 2004

If Tommy Franks had been a better student, he might have stayed in the hot, dry confines of Midland, Tex. Instead, the young man who was failing college in 1965 and nursing a hangover when he enlisted at the local Army recruiting office rose to become the general who would lead our nation into war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In person, Franks, 59, is charming and charismatic. He is a big man who seems even bigger when he moves about a room, radiating an ease and confidence that most politicians can only envy. And he has been at the top. If you want to understand the war on terror—both its successes and its failures—you need to know Tommy Franks.

I met General Franks—with his wife, Cathy, at his side—on a steamy July day in Norfolk, Va., where they had stopped to attend the promotion of their son-in-law to lieutenant colonel in the Army. The two have one daughter, Jacqy, 33, and have moved 23 times in 35 years of marriage. Since retiring from the military in July 2003, Franks has continued this constant motion. He has given 100 speeches in the last year, half for charity, half for pay (his fees top out at $100,000), and he shuttles between a house in Tampa, Fla., and a ranch in Oklahoma. Franks also has just written a book, American Soldier, which will be published this week (see below).

Franks did only eight media briefings during the main Afghan and Iraqi campaigns. But no one should underestimate his power and influence. His war plans all but eviscerated the military’s cherished “Powell doctrine,” articulated by now Secretary of State Colin Powell, which called for the use of overwhelming force against the enemy. Franks instead went into Iraq with just one Coalition soldier for every 2.5 Iraqi troops. Unhappy with how the heads of the Marine Corps, Air Force, Army and Navy “nitpicked” his plans for the Afghan war, Franks says he made clear to his civilian bosses at the Pentagon that the other generals’ presence at his daily satellite briefings was “not helpful” and that he wanted to be “left the hell alone to run the Iraq War.” He largely got his wish.

“To get information, we have to marry
the devil or at least employ him.”

Franks also conducted his own bouts of diplomacy, meeting with the strongmen, sheiks and monarchs who rule the oil-rich nations of the Middle East. In a controversial move, he bypassed Israel, America’s long-standing ally in the region. “For years,” he explains, “I had told my Arab friends that I had ‘no Israeli visa’ in my passport. This was an unofficial way of letting them know that I understood their side of the story.”

In January 2003, two months before the Iraq War, Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak both told Franks that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. According to Franks, Mubarak told him point-blank: “Saddam has WMD—biologicals, actually—and he will use them on your troops.” Within an hour, he relayed that message to Washington.

So it’s no surprise that Franks has some blistering opinions about our intelligence process, the outcome of the war, the hunt for WMD and what he calls “the Washington blame game.”

Why is Osama bin Laden still at large? Franks says that, unlike Saddam, who was hated in Iraq, tens of thousands of Arab families would happily take Osama in as their hero. We’ll get him eventually, Franks asserts, “even though we don’t have enough sources on the ground.”

Indeed, the man who embraced high-tech warfare thinks we invested too much money in electronic spy surveillance and not enough in spies themselves. “We can’t send a Princeton-educated New York lawyer to infiltrate al-Qaeda,” Franks says. “To get information, we have to marry the devil or at least employ him. You have to deal.”

Franks singles out Richard Clarke —the former National Security Council official responsible for counterterrorism, who has criticized the Administration’s anti-terror policies —as being enamored of surveillance technology like the unmanned Predator drone. In a bit of score-settling, Franks says: “I never received a single page of actionable intelligence from Richard Clarke.”

Humble Beginnings

In his new book, Franks describes growing up almost poor in Oklahoma and then Texas. His dad was a talented mechanic with few business skills, and his mom sold homemade cakes. Both loved their only child. Neither would tell Tommy that he was adopted until high school, even though he had found his original birth certificate in a family bible when he was 7.

In high school, Franks was a year ahead of the future Laura Bush. She was popular; he made less of an impression. The yearbook got his name wrong in a team picture. Things changed in the military. His shooting skills drew attention. He went to officer candidate school and entered Vietnam as a second lieutenant in 1967. Stationed on the front lines, he was wounded multiple times. He came home with a chest of decorations, married his sweetheart, Cathy, and planned to get out of the military. Then the Army offered to pay for school. He re-enlisted and stayed in.

Knowing what he knows now, Franks says, he would have handled the approach and reconnaissance around key Iraqi towns differently.

In 2000, President Clinton nominated Franks for a fourth star and the command of CENTCOM—which, from its Tampa headquarters, oversees the greater Middle East. After 9/11, Franks wrote a war plan for Afghanistan in 10 days. It relied on air power, Special Forces troops and Afghan militias. Not everyone in the military liked it, just as they didn’t like his plans for Iraq. Franks was accused of trying to please Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush, rather than holding out for what was best for the forces on the ground.

What Went Wrong

Franks now bristles at these suggestions. He maintains that, in Iraq, “having a smaller force gave the U.S. an element of surprise.” He believes that the quick rush to Baghdad saved Iraq’s oil wells from destruction, prevented total sabotage of its water supply and thwarted deadly missile attacks on U.S. forces. The only people who were surprised by Baghdad’s quick fall on April 9, 2003, he says, were the “cable news folks, like al-Jazeera and CNN.”

Franks says his biggest surprise of the campaign was the failure to find WMD—“the reason we went to war.” Every sign, he insists, from Arab leaders to intelligence estimates, had indicated that Saddam had them. “The only time a dead certainty applies is in a dream world,” he says.

While the campaign was formidable, the turbulent aftermath is likely to make Franks’ legacy more mixed. Things in Iraq went “as I had expected, not as I had hoped,” says Franks, who retired two months after formal hostilities ended. The U.S. let Americans and the world think “the post-war phase would be over as quickly as the hostilities,” he explains, “while the Iraqis expected to go from the dark ages to the prosperous middle class overnight.”

Franks clearly is disappointed in the Iraqis, who, in his view, initially chose looting and insurgency over “pulling themselves together to reform their country.” And he faults the international community, which never committed “serious numbers of peacekeepers or funds” to help Iraq after Saddam. During the planning, Franks and his team expected that 150,000 international troops would join U.S. forces in the post-war phase. They never materialized.

Could the current guerrilla war have been prevented, as critics contend? Franks says he isn’t sure. Knowing what he knows now, he would still attack with the same size force. But, he adds, he would handle the “approach and reconnaissance around key towns differently.” Yet he doubts that either would have changed the final result, although other strategists surely will disagree. Flooding the country with cash to quickly employ “angry young Iraqis” might have helped too, he adds.

What Lies Ahead

Franks believes that five years is a realistic timeline for the U.S. to be involved in Iraq, noting that the country has to dig itself out of a “30-year hole.” He says, “It takes time to solve problems when you’re talking about 25 to 26 million people.”

Looking back, Franks believes that the world is “far safer” without Saddam Hussein. And he is distressed by what he calls “the U.S.’s flogging of itself.” Says Franks: “America is not responsible for terrorism against America. Terrorists are responsible.”

Meanwhile, Franks hopes that we continue to fight terrorists outside the U.S.: “If you want your grandchildren to grow up in an open society, we’d better deal with the problem as far away from here as possible, even though that’s not easy or easily affordable.” He adds: “The blessings of this country are not by accident.”

[Dr. Drum]

You guys oughta love this one.

My Canada includes the White House

By Larry Krotz
The Globe and Mail
Tuesday, August 10, 2004

On Nov. 2, in the election to decide the world's most important office, I won't get to vote. Nor, you might say, should I be able to cast a ballot in the American presidential election, since I'm a Canadian.

Not so fast: Opening the White House ballot to anybody who lives in the spreading shadow of U.S. empire (which would be at least half the world) ought to become the political-reform cause of the 21st century.

This isn't just a matter of how I might feel about another four years of George W. Bush; the idea first came when Bill Clinton occupied the White House. Even though I was not an American, I could no more avoid the Clintons than fly to the moon. The multiplying powers of the media made sure we who dwelt outside U.S. borders were as intimate with Hillary, Bill, Chelsea and, yes, Monica, as anybody residing in the 50 states.

The White House was the lightning rod, not just of politics -- the global economy, diplomacy, war and peace -- but of popular culture. In comparison to the attention we directed toward Washington, our own Prime Minister enjoyed about as much status as the governor of Ohio.

Which raises the point: The appeal of democracy is the power to accept or reject, on every level. You must be able to influence whatever it is you're going to have to put up with. Wasn't my time and attention (though admittedly not my dollars) being taxed without proper representation?

With the presidency of George W. Bush, everything has become more urgent. In November of 2000, when the strange election that brought the current administration to power took place, I was in Russia. Night after night, on the television in my St. Petersburg hotel room, the drama of the hanging chads played itself out. Not one person I encountered, Russian or foreign, lacked an opinion about who should win; little did we realize how, just 10 months later, it would be critical to all of us.

As this administration has polarized not only America but the world, the decision about who occupies the White House has become one of life and death.

The Oval Office is a Global Office. No president since Herbert Hoover has been able to function on a predominantly domestic agenda. Things, like the rest of the world, get in the way.

So what about that rest of the world? The Bush presidency has driven home the ease with which the superpower can make its own rules. The exceptionalism under which it has approached not only military actions but such matters as the Kyoto Protocol, International Criminal Court and various arms-control conventions, has disabused us of illusions the world was naturally multilateral. Even that much-used term "coalition" is really just a piece of the rhetoric.

Terminology aside, what can't be denied is the huge investment we all have in how America is run and, in particular, how it operates in the world. As a citizen of that world, I want some right (and rite) of participation.

In vassal states of empires past, certain rights always accrued. The biblical Saint Paul got great mileage out of being a Roman citizen, even though he lived in Greece and Asia Minor. Voting, of course, was not one of those rights, but then most people inside the empires didn't vote either. That had to wait until the 18th century, with the French and American revolutions, to gain place as a cherished measure of citizenship. The ideas of representative government followed quickly, pushing relentlessly forward until women, as well as men, held the right to vote. Now it is the universal standard by which all citizenship is measured and participation offered.

I can imagine who else might want in on this. The Mexicans, perhaps. No doubt the Israelis and Palestinians. The Iraqis and Afghans for sure, at least this time round. We don't want to vote for the president of France, but we'd like a say in the one contest that counts.

I predict that, over time, it will make ever more compelling sense. Many observers, including Benjamin Barber, have pointed out the possibly terminal problems of the traditional nation-state, along with the accompanying difficulties for democracy. In the age of both globalization and single-superpower supremacy, that system seems in need of serious adjustments. This, perhaps, could be one of them.

Larry Krotz is a Toronto-based writer.

[Proud]

"Looking back, Franks believes that the world is “far safer” without Saddam Hussein."

i always find that amusing, when people feel safer because saddam hussein's out of power. i sure as hell don't feel any safer, and i doubt he was a true threat to the u.s. the plot's been around since before 9/11, and that is to make the middle east more like us. is that the right thing to do? simply, it's your call.

started reading that second article... figured it was just some random bitter guy, so stopped reading.

[chrisfan]

RockySigman said:

So...um...Alan Keyes is a huge hypocrite, eh?

I've never really had a huge problem with the guy. As far as Republicans go, he bothers me less than most, and I usually find him entertaining in the very least, and valuable at most for bringing in some ideas that don't typically get discussed in major party politics.

But seriously, I don't remember anyone being more vocal than Alan Keyes about how wrong it was for Hillary Clinton to move to New York just to run for the Senate in 2000. I don't even necessarily think he was wrong about this (not sure he was right either--depends on the situation I suppose), but for someone to make such a big deal about her doing it and then to do it himself seems really obviously hypocritical. I don't think I'd have much of a problem with someone else doing it--I understand that Illinois Republicans are in a tough position at this point to find someone recognizable enough to put up a fight this late in the race, especially since someone who seems to excite people as much as Barack Obama--but c'mon, this was the #1 most vocal Republican calling Hillary a carpetbagger four years ago. I'm really quite shocked he's actually doing it.

It's been kind of funny watching him try to backpedal on this one over the past couple of days, and trying to claim some distinctions between what he's doing and what Hillary did. Too bad he can't just be honest and say "Obama is going to be a great Senator for Illinois, and I appreciate the opportunity over the next couple of months to advance my ideas"?

[Thorngrub]

I personally feel less safe (sort of) with Sadam Hussein removed from power by our extreme intervention.

Or rather, I should say, if I felt any threatened by "terrorism" at large before September 11, 2001 -- I can only say that I feel more threatened (if anything) now that it is nearly 3 years later.

But in the end: I simply do not feel threatened by "terrorism" any more than I would feel threatened by, say, getting struck with a lightning bolt, or some such chance calamity (neither today nor before 9/11).

I really don't feel anything has changed, much.

---------->Insert Big Fat Shrug Here<--------------

[shin]

The Keyes thing makes sense to me from a GOP standpoint. They know they can't beat Obama, certainly not after the Ryan/Ditka embarrassments, so might as well take the wind out of his sails as much as possible. Too bad Keyes looks like literally the biggest hypocrite of all time.

The theory is that since Keyes is such a strong orator, he can match Obama on that merit, if not on issues. However, Obama's a more formidable opponent than I think Keyes is expecting. Observe:

Democrat Barack Obama said Monday he will engage in fewer than the six debates he previously agreed to in the U.S. Senate race -- prompting newly minted GOP rival Alan Keyes to accuse Obama of running scared and cowering "in timidity" at the prospect of facing him.

"That suggests doesn't it -- if right now they're scaling back -- a certain lack of confidence that there's any substance there," Keyes said of Obama.

Obama insisted he had no fear of facing the former radio and television personality from Maryland, but said he would not abide by the deal he reached with Republican Jack Ryan before the Wilmette investment banker dropped out of the race in June.

"That was a special for in-state residents," Obama quipped.

Yikes. What a zinger.

On another note, this Porter Goss fellow seems like a real partisan asshole. Here's what he has to say about the Plame situation, of which people are being indicted as we speak:

"Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation."

Meet the new boss, spooks. Enjoy.

[RocDoc]

So THE thing to seize on in the General Franks' article is whether 'your little corner of the world is safer w/o Sodom Hussein', eh?

How about MUCH of the rest of the world sticking their heads in the sand and letting terrorists think that they're simply acceptably dialogue-ing their 'hurts', of their maltreatment by wicked Western society, by killing innocents? Spain, anyone? The Philippines' ransom 'payment'? These threats and attacks are developing a VASTLY more articulate language, ain't they?
Tho detente, they're not.

Re the Franks piece, why not:

In January 2003, two months before the Iraq War, Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak both told Franks that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. According to Franks, Mubarak told him point-blank: “Saddam has WMD—biologicals, actually—and he will use them on your troops.” Within an hour, he relayed that message to Washington.

Nor:

The U.S. let Americans and the world think “the post-war phase would be over as quickly as the hostilities,” he explains, “while the Iraqis expected to go from the dark ages to the prosperous middle class overnight.”

....nice convenient misunderstanding of scale, so when the 'recovery' goes an absolutely miraculous 5 years, rather than the FAR more realistic 15-20 years anywhere ELSE....so they'll STILL speak of the American 'failure' and our 'inhumanity' to provide adequate living conditions...X-Boxes...

Cos they wanted it NOW...not tomorrow....NOW!

[RocDoc]

Vietnam vets question Kerry's fitness for commander in chief

Dennis Byrne, a Chicago-area writer and public affairs consultant
Published August 9, 2004

Whatever reason John Kerry volunteered to go to war--whether he was whacked out on patriotism or from his cravings for the presidency--the fact that he put his life on the line cannot be denied. Even if he was willing to get killed because he was consumed by an irrational desire to be president, it shouldn't matter. Anyone who gets shot at in the service of our country deserves the nation's gratitude. Period.

So, the increasingly contentious debate over Kerry's Vietnam War record could have ended there.

But Kerry decided otherwise.

The honor guard of his Vietnam buddies at the Democratic National Convention, his repeated and tiresome self-praise about his combat record, the TV ads and the parade of medals--they all put Kerry's war and anti-war records into play. In pushing his war record as a reason for electing him president, Kerry himself has decided to touch a third rail, and is getting the jolt he deserves.

Namely, a blunt TV ad featuring Vietnam veterans who knew him in combat, but whom Kerry did not trot out at the convention. They say he lied about his injuries, the "atrocities" he says he saw, his "valor," his medals and that he bugged out on his shipmates at the first opportunity. Sponsored by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, it tells voters in battleground states that Kerry's war record proves that he is not qualified to be commander in chief.

Kerry cites that record as evidence that he has the courage, strength, trustworthiness, loyalty and military savvy to be commander in chief. The ad and the group's Web site (www.swiftvets.com) directly attacks those assertions, describing Kerry as dishonest, reckless, unreliable, indecisive and prone to jeopardizing his crew.

To be fair, only one of his former crewmembers, Steven Gardner, has gone public against Kerry. Gardner, who did two tours in Vietnam (compared to Kerry's four months), said, "I served alongside and behind him, five feet away from him in a gun tub, and watched as he made indecisive moves with our boat, put our boats in jeopardy, put our crews in jeopardy. ... If a man like that can't handle the six-man crew boat, how can you expect him to be our commander in chief?"

Kerry's campaign says to ignore these Vietnam vets, because none, but one, actually rode with him in his boats. But anyone who has served in the military knows that fellow swift boat skippers are well qualified to judge him.

Consider: Kerry's campaign repeatedly uses a photo of him and 19 fellow swift boat skippers in campaign ads. But they don't say what these comrades in arms think of Kerry.

A survey by the swift boat veterans group found out that 12, with another four not shown, believe Kerry is unfit to serve as commander in chief. Four others are neutral and two have died. That leaves only one of a jury of Kerry's 23 peers who supports his candidacy, according to the group.

The view of Kerry from some officers up the chain of command above him is no better--they're convinced that he is unqualified. Cmdr. Adrian Lonsdale said, "[Kerry] lacks the capacity to lead." Lt. Cmdr. Louis Letson: "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury." Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, his direct superior, was particularly unimpressed when Kerry "informed me of a wound--he showed me a scratch on his arm and a piece of shrapnel in his hand that appeared to be from one of our own [weapons]."

These officers and men have every right to go public with their views. Despite the hissing from the Kerry political apparatus that the group is a bunch of GOP-connected liars, and condemnation of the ad from former POW Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), this is but another side of a story that Kerry himself brought up. They have as much of a right to be heard as voters have the right to hear, so they can judge who is lying. Especially since they believe he lied not just about his record, but theirs.

As the group's Web site says: "For more than 30 years, most Vietnam veterans kept silent as we were maligned as misfits, addicts and baby killers. Now that a key creator of that poisonous image is seeking the presidency, we have resolved to end our silence."

----------

E-mail: [e-mail]


Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

[melon1]

Senator Kerry: You Can't Have It Both Ways
David Limbaugh
Monday, August 9, 2004
I have a few more questions about John Kerry's foreign policy and national security "vision," as laid out (or not) in his convention speech and elsewhere.


You say, Mr. Kerry, that President Bush burned bridges with our allies in going to war against Iraq precipitously. How exactly did he burn those bridges? It surely wasn't that he failed to consult - tirelessly - with those nations, because he did.

Story Continues Below



He asked France, Germany and Russia to join the coalition. They refused. He asked them again and again, and they refused. At that point, what should Mr. Bush, as commander in chief, have done?

Should he have shared all of our intelligence with them to try to persuade them of Saddam's WMD programs? I'm sure he did, but it wouldn't have mattered, because they already believed it anyway. As you know, Mr. Kerry, these nations were all quite convinced, independent of what we told them, that Saddam was actively engaged in acquiring WMD. But they were unmoved.

What else, then, should we have done to try to convince them to join us? You've said, quite cryptically, that as president you would have multiple bargaining chips at your disposal to use in negotiations with foreign countries. Are we to assume that you would use these chips as leverage to pressure recalcitrant nations into joining our coalition against their will? How would you fulfill your promise to enhance our relations with these nations while bullying them into war? Is that what you mean by your commitment to conduct a more "sensitive" war on terror?

Or, in order to stay on the good side of "Old Europe," would you yield, alter your course and decline to strike Iraq? If so, would you then be breaking your pledge not to confer a veto power on other nations over our national security interests?

You've also said that you have a great deal of experience - some 20 years - dealing and negotiating with foreign countries and foreign leaders. Since the Constitution vests the executive power in the president, can you tell us which leaders you negotiated with and pursuant to what authority?

What possible bargaining chips could you have played as a lone congressman in dealing with any foreign leader? Surely you weren't conspiring with them against a sitting president. So please tell us specifically what you're talking about.

Do you stand by your party's equivocal platform plank that reasonable people may disagree on whether we should have gone to war against Iraq? Is that based on what we know now or what we thought we knew prior to going to war?

If you do stand by this platform copout that either position is reasonable, how can you condemn President Bush for going to war? And how do you square this ambiguous position with your statement that the United States should never go to war because we want to, but only because we have to? Surely that was your barely veiled code language to your base that we didn't "have" to go to war against Iraq and therefore shouldn't have.

If it is only reasonable and prudent for America to go to war when we have to, then how can reasonable people disagree about whether we should have attacked Iraq, since we didn't "have" to? Either we "had" to attack - in which case reasonable people, by definition, couldn't have opposed the war - or we didn't have to, in which case it was unreasonable (according to you) for us to attack. For once, Senator, please slide off that fence.

And if your sole face-saving claim for your absurdly inconsistent positions on Iraq is that President Bush lied about WMD intelligence, how do you account for the CIA’s and the 9/11 Commission's conclusion that he didn't lie? But if you insist on maintaining this fraud, please tell us what specific intelligence the president lied about or exaggerated. Surely not that Saddam tried to purchase uranium from Niger? ... Then what?

Are you saying the president didn't believe Saddam had WMD stockpiles, or better yet, somehow knew that he didn't? But how could he have possibly believed, much less known, that Saddam didn't have WMD when our intelligence agencies and those of all other relevant nations said he did? (I'll try not to mention again that you had access to the same intelligence as the president.)

Oh, and did you vote for the Iraq war resolution because President Bush conned you about WMD or because you thought he would only attack as a last resort? You've said both, but you can't have it both ways. If you believed he had them, you shouldn't have been in the "wait-and-see" camp.


COPYRIGHT 2004 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

[shin]

shin said:

Speaking of me being "extreme", here's an informative link just in case you see the new SBVfT ad and begin to believe anything related to it. You know, a little FYI.

mediamatters.org/items/200408050007

This is for RocDoc, who missed it the first time. Just trying to help out here.

[RocDoc]

Durn that Chicago Tribune!

THEY apparently don't subscribe to mediamatters either! At least not as of today...

Or their opinion of that outlet isn't very high for some reason....whatever.

~

Oh. I did see it the first time through, clicked it up and then never read it....while still not having any background on these 'Swift boats' anyway....

~

Any truth to the 'facts' that Kerry actively pursued getting his, what, 3 Purple Hearts, 4 Purple Hearts, whatever the # that was required then to get yourself sent back stateside, chop chop?

Never a day hospitalized/M.A.S.H.'d, whatever...yet the requisite Hearts...and out.

A banker patient of mine, a staunch Repub naturally, told me that one yesterday...the truth, right?

He's the one who told me of Byrne's Trib article in today's paper as well...

Actually, there was a Krauthammer piece too...shit, I need to read that....

[shin]

Well now that Bill O'Rielly has equated MMFA with the Klan, it's no wonder the Tribune might be hesitant to use information from them. Much safer to believe people like the lovely Jerome Corsi, PhD...


I haven't heard a word about someone "actively" trying to get injured by flying shrapnel, let alone Kerry. Considering that a few feet in a different direction and he could have been killed on multiple occasions by said shrapnel, I have a hard time imagining someone doing that on purpose.

I mean, think about it: it's one thing to fudge an injury one time just so you can get the political fruit of having a Purple Heart to your name. But if the object was to get political ammunition for future campaigns (an honest possibility considering he was groomed at such a young age), then you'd think one would be enough. This man made the decision TWICE to return to battle when he could have been killed with that much more bad luck. It just doesn't register. Being injured once should get that thought into your head: "is a future political career worth getting killed?" I think it's safe to say he wasn't in a position to even have to think that because that wasn't why he was there. Occom's Razor(?) and what not.

Without knowing more information, I'm going to say that I believe your banker friend is parroting disingenuous talking points meant to smear Kerry. Whether this is unwilling or willing on his part, you'd have to ask him.