I was planning to sell anti-bush T-shirts with slogans on them.  Alas, shipping costs proved prohibitive.  So, I fired one of the saying I thought up off to the Democrats just over a month ago.  This is what I sent them:  “It was a mistake to outsource the job of encircling Bin Laden at Tora Bora to the Northern Alliance.  The world’s most powerful army would have done a better job.”  Since then, the Democrats http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_18/comm unity_01.html" title="http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_18/comm unity_01.html" target="_blank"http://www.thepanamanews.com/... and Kerry http://slate.com/id/2107141/" title="http://slate.com/id/2107141/" target="_blank"http://slate.com/id/2107141/ have mentioned outsourcing Tora Bora a few times.  I am not saying they got the idea from me.  The idea is a simple one and I am sure more than a few people have had the same thought.  However, I am tickled pink at the thought none the less.  The phrase Kerry used on September 11 was this “Instead of using U.S. forces to capture Osama bin Laden… the President outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, who let bin Laden slip away. That was the wrong choice.”  http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/sp c_2004_0924.html" title="http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/sp c_2004_0924.html" target="_blank"http://www.johnkerry.com/pres...  

Either way, I kicking myself for not finding I way to make the T-shirt thing work. 

In his most recent article for Slate, Hitchens says that things have gotten so bad for the Democrats that some unnamed Democrats are not only entertaining paranoid fantasies about the Republicans harboring Bin Laden somewhere only to trot him out at the right time, but they are actually hopping, at least “subliminally”, for bad news from Iraq. http://slate.com/id/2107193/" title="http://slate.com/id/2107193/" target="_blank"http://slate.com/id/2107193/      

Now, I am sure many people realize that if their boss was to drop dead it would be open the door to a big promotion.  However, realizing this and hoping their boss drops dead are two different things. 

Besides, one could easily accuse the Republicans of having been guilty of same kind of “subliminal” thinking.  For example, it must have dawned on the boys of the Pentagon and Dick Cheney that if Bin Laden were to be caught at, say, Tora Bora, the case war with Iraq would be harder to make.  Maybe this explains why they decided to outsource the task of capturing Bin Laden to the Northern Alliance.     

All kidding aside, one news organization has claimed that the Bushies were guilty of much more than just a thought crime.  According to NBC the administration put the politics of war ahead of the national security. NBC alleges that a few months before the war, the administration had good idea that Zarqawi was in Northern Iraq in a region of Kurdistan controlled by Ansar al Islam. However, rather than striking at Zarqawi the administration decided to postpone an attack until after the war began. The reason being they feared that if the attack was successful, their case tying Al Qaeda to Iraq would be fatally undermined and with that potentially the case for war.  http://slate.com/id/2100549" title="http://slate.com/id/2100549" target="_blank"http://slate.com/id/2100549       

From the Weekly Standard http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articl es/000/000/004/686yfvgm.asp?pg=2" title="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articl es/000/000/004/686yfvgm.asp?pg=2" target="_blank"http://www.weeklystandard.com... "European governments are steadily beginning to realize that Kerry will ask the Europeans for all kinds of things they will be unwilling or unable to provide. The Democrat has staked his candidacy on getting more international support in Iraq and Afghanistan. He will find it hard to take "Non" for an answer from Paris. That may make for an uncomfortable series of discussions between President Kerry, President Jacques Chirac, and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Given the level of expectations on both sides, Old Europe might think it would be better off dealing with another four years of President Bush, who at least will expect nothing and get nothing from them.

There's another reason the French and the Germans might be quietly rooting for a Bush victory.

The unpopularity of President Bush, and Chirac's and Schröder's aggressive stand against him, is the only thing that gives the French and German leaders any sort of credibility in the eyes of their own people. Both head otherwise unpopular governments pursuing largely failed economic policies at home. In particular, anti-Bush sentiment keeps alive the French dream of uniting Europe in opposition to the United States--Chirac's famous counterweight to the superpower.

They need Bush.

In any case, the French governing elite would surely miss having someone to scorn in Washington. It feeds their innate self-belief and superiority complex. A senior French diplomat was recently overheard bemoaning to a fawning audience of like-minded souls the rising level of anti-French sentiment in America.

'They've stopped eating French fries in the Capitol. Some restaurants in New York no longer sell French wine,' he said. Then, the sarcastic coup de grâce: 'I've even heard that George Bush has stopped reading Proust.'"

George Bush is the least popular politican in the world hands down.  The Proust bit had me laughing.  In Canada2 more than a few progressives will be pulling for Bush.  With Bush in office Conservative republican want to be Stephen Harper does not stand a chance. 

The fact that the US gets most of oil from sources outside the Middle East is neither here nor there when it comes price.  The US is dependent on oil and much of the world's oil production is centered in the Middle East.  If oil does not flow freely from that area, the price of oil will skyrocket.  If supply dips and demand stays the same, prices will go up.  What is more, Saudi Arabia is unique in so far as it has the ability to increase production so as to stem the tide of rising oil prices.  This is particularly important for the US interests.  Not only do US companies have a sweet heart deal whereby they receive oil at 50 cents below market value from the Saudis (I presume there are limits as to how much they can buy), but the US government is uniquely positioned to influence such Saudi increases in production.  As a result, US oil companies are, through the ties to Washington, better able to speculate on world oil markets than other oil companies.  

Now, more than a few think there is potential for a revolution in Saudi Arabia. Given this, it was argued that developing Iraq's oil potential would be extremely important.  Iraq's oil reserves supposedly rival those of Saudi Arabia and just as important are easily tapped.  (This would not could not happen and would not be allowed to happen with Saddam still in power.) What went unsaid was that a US presence in Iraq would help forestall such a thing from happening.  Indeed, not only would US be strategically placed right next store, but by removing their troops out of Saudi Arabia one of the major sources of instability was gone. Wolfowitz mentioned the importance of the latter in an interview.  

Jay Currie http://www.reviewing.blogspot.com/" title="http://www.reviewing.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"http://www.reviewing.blogspot...  “Koby, there was rather a lot to gain by Canada supporting the invasion of Iraq, not the least of which was a seat at the table deciding how best to a) invade, b) handle the occupation. The argument that we should not have gone because Quebec was against the invasion essentially concedes to Quebec a veto over Canada's foreign policy. Remember, in WWII Quebec also opposed Canadian involvement.

As for terrorist targetting I think the case is not proven. The Madrid cell was in place long before GWII. The Bali attack seems to have been as much an anti-Western as anti-Australian outrage.” 

Quebec was not too happy about WW1 either. Anyway, given the strength of the separatists, such feeling have to be taken into consideration.  (Notice I said "consideration" not dicate.) As for, “Asymmetrical Federalism” and the welcoming that twit Jean Lapierre into the party, well, let us just say it is horse of different colour and leave it at that. 

The most recent bombing in Indonesia seems to be related to the war, but the Bali bombing no. As for the Madrid, it is quite clear that it stemmed from Spain’s involvement in Iraq. In the preceding months there was a lot of “chatter” as how to best affect the election and several well thought out Jihadists papers dealing with that same subject were posted on the internet. These papers together with various internet forums have proved essential in allowing Jihadists to maintain some kind of coherent strategy. Even then, the diffuse nature of Islamic terror today means that such planning could break down if a particular group hits the wrong target. This seems to have been the case in Spain; a second train attack was later foiled. A group claiming responsibility for the failed bombing said it was just a warning. There seems to be two schools of thought on the issue. One was that the group was trying to put a positive spin on a failed attempt and other that the a group not responsible for the attempted bombing was trying to salvage the pre Madrid thinking sketched out in various documents. At any rate it is quite clear that some Jihadists fully understood that if Spain was attacked after it had promised to pull troops out of Iraq that Europe would be driven closer to the US. Whether Bin Laden was on board with such thinking from the outset is not entirely clear (probably), but what was clear is that the letter he released threatening Spain with further attacks if they did not follow through was entire consistent with such thinking. And for that matter, the style in which the letter was done up was obviously aimed at a western audience.

Backing the US war in Iraq would have cost us a lot more economically and politically. Ever consider how security costs and insurance costs for Canadian companies based abroad will come to stack up to American and British firms based abroad in the upcoming years? Anyway, were was I? Besides, overlapping interests trump political grudges every time. Not many historians would argue that Person “pissing” on Johnson’s rug had any noticeable economic or political consequences for Canada and an insignificant backbencher with a big mouth (i.e., Parrish) is not nearly as significant as a Prime Minister giving an anti war speech at a US university.  (In 1967 then Prime Minister Lester Person gave a speech critical of US policy in Vietnam at an American university, whose name escapes me.  Anyway, on that same trip Person visited Johnson at Camp David.  Johnson was none to pleased and a one point grabbed Person by the lapels and warned him not to "piss on my rug".  This is not the only indignity Person suffers at the hands of the Johnson administration.  While visiting Canada, Person was stooped in the middle of the night by one of Johnson’s body guards.  The body guard asked him who he was and what business did he have being in the hallway.  Person replied in his typical dead pan way: I am the Prime Minister; I live here and I am on my way to the washroom.  Trudeau and Nixon were on even worse terms.  Nixon was heard on tape calling Trudeau an “asshole” and “pompous egg head”.  When asked to comment, Trudeau said “I have been called worse things by better people.”  After his retirement Trudeau delighted in telling the following story:  According to Trudeau, Nixon desperately wanted the US to be the first Western nation to recognize Communist China.  When, Trudeau beat him to the punch, Nixon allegedly phoned Trudeau and called him an “asshole”.  Trudeau said he just laughed.)  Those on the right that take the issue seriously should stop hyperventilating and those that do not should stop fearmongering.

Jay Currie: "Canadians are considered to be excellent peace keepers and there are significant sections of Iraq in which peacekeeping would be a good idea."

Why on earth do you want to send a token Canadian force to Iraq to get shredded? Iraq is not Bosnia. It is not even like Kabul. The point at which Canadian peacekeepers would be able to make even a small difference is long since past. Peacekeepers are best equipped to keep two identifiable warring parties apart and are useful in helping MAINTAIN law and order. Law and order has long since broken down in Iraq, the two war parties in Iraq are the coalition and unreliable Iraq force and the insurgents and one of the parities not identifiable. There is good reason why the Poles and the British are scaling back, viz., they are ill-equipped Militarily and politically to fight a growing insurgency.

Mr. Blix argued, as France did, that the Security Council “owned” the resolution 1441 as a collective.

As I said (see previous post), I think Blix is wrong. 1441 stated that if Iraq did not comply with all relevant resolutions, then there would be serious consequences. As 688 was one of the relevant resolutions and America was able to determine when they were in violation of that, it follows from this that America would be able to determine that Iraq was in violation of 1441. Blix may think that “ownership” of the resolutions should rest with the entire Security Council, but as the old saying goes, and ought is not an is.

Needless to say, a second resolution was not needed to put a legal stamp on the war.  However, the US decided to pursue one anyway because Blair thought he needed it for political reasons.  This was a huge mistake and typical of the Bushies gross diplomatic bungling in the lead up to the war.  As Niall Ferguson put it, "by pitching for a second resolution ..., the Bush administration handed the French government a big, baguette like stick with which to beat the United States over the head."  Unbeknownst to Ferguson, the French had singled to the US and Britain that they were not going to continue the debate over the "ownership" of 1441 and were let the US and Britain go on its merry conquering way, but for political reasons the two pursued one anyway.  As a result France was not able to back down and had no choice to beat the US over the head as it were.    

Now, just for the record, let me say this. I hope people’s opinion of the war does not rest on whether they think it was legal.

The word “terrorist” has a long and storied history and its use is highly contested to say the least.  Its origins date back to the Terror in France and originally applied to state actors, but since it was applied to Russian anarchists in the last 19^th century, it has been used to refer to exclusively to non-state actors who illegally use violence or the threat of violence to further certain political ends.  That said, as the old saying goes one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist; in other words, the rightness of a particular cause has been used as a reason not to apply the term to particular groups.         

    & nbsp; 

Building on definitions, such as the FBIs, Chomsky and others have applied the term to both state actors and non-state actors.  Their efforts to change the meaning of the term have met with limited success and only serve to further confuse people.  While it is common enough to see various US and Israeli actions described in some quarters as meeting this or that definition, Iraq’s Anfal campaign, for example, is never so described.  Moreover, while Stalin, Saddam and Hitler did bang up job of terrorizing huge numbers of people, it just seems plain odd to say they are the most prominent terrorists of the 20th century. 

Jim Elve from blogs Canada “The U.S.'s pre-emptive war against Iraq was in clear violation of the UN Charter, to which they are a signatory. Article 2(4) and Article 51 prohibit one nation from attacking another except in self-defense or with the authority of the U.N. Last week, Kofi Annan stated that the invasion was illegal - in FBI parlance: ‘the unlawful use of force’.”

Legally speaking the so called second Gulf War was just a continuation of the last war and so was legal.  What was signed in 1991 was a cease fire agreement and what was at issue all along was whether two permanent members of the Security Council had the power to decide whether the cease fire was broken and so continue hostilities.  France, Russia and China said no.  The US and Britain said yes.  The problem for the former was that the latter had years of precedent to cite.  The US and Britain had since the implementation of the no fly zones, which were derived from a US and British interpretation of 688, frequently decided when Iraq was in violation of a sub section of the seize fire agreement.  

BBC reports that some Nadar supporters and Kerry supporters have come to something of a compromise.  Nadar supporters in swing states are pairing up with Democrats in solidly red states and promising to support the other person’s candidate.  For example, a Nadar support in Florida will promise to vote for Kerry if a Kerry supporter in Texas will vote for Nadar.  I like it.     

Andrew Sullivan: "I have to say that the risible statement given by CBS News last night finally did it for me. Who do these people think they are? They have failed to find a single expert who will back the authenticity of the memos; their own experts say they warned CBS not to go with the story; Killian's secretary thinks they're fakes ... and yet Rather and Heyward say they stand by their story and will continue to investigate the provenance and dubiousness of the forgeries! This beggars belief. How do I put this to Rather: it doesn't matter if the underlying story is true. All that matters is that CBS's evidence is fake. Get it? End of story. For what it's worth: I believe Bush got into the Guard because of his dad's connections. I believe he probably didn't perform his duties adequately in his final two years. When I first read the CBS story, I thought the docs were "devastating." I'm not backing this president for re-election. But all that is completely beside the frigging point. Journalists are supposed to provide accurate evidence for their claims. CBS didn't. And its response to the critics is to stonewall and try and change the subject. The correct response - the one they'd teach you in kindergarten journalism class - is immediately to check the authenticity of the documents as best you can, and if the doubts persist, to apologize immediately and yank the story. Can you imagine what CBS News would do if a government official found to be peddling fake documents refused to acknowledge it? And kept repeating his story nonetheless? They'd be all over it. But, you see, they are above politicians. They are above criticism. And they are stratospheres above bloggers who caught them red-handed." 

Amen

I was wondering one someone in the media was going to discuss the possability, which I raised a few posts back, of the Bushies being behind the forgies.

Dowd NY TIMES: "Here's how bad off the Democrats are: They're cowering behind closed doors, whispering that if it should ever turn out that Republicans are behind this, it would be so exquisitely Machiavellian, so beyond what Democrats are capable of, they should just fold and concede the election now - before the Republicans have to go to the trouble of stealing it again.

There's no evidence - it's just a preposterous, paranoid fantasy at this point. But it speaks to the jitters of the Democrats that they're consumed with speculation about whether Karl Rove, the master of dirty tricks and surrogate sleaze, could have set up CBS in a diabolical pre-emptive strike to undermine damaging revelations about Bush 43's privileged status and vanishing act in the National Guard, and his odd refusal to take his required physical when ordered.

In this vast left-wing conspiracy theory, Mr. Rove takes real evidence on W.'s shirking and transfers it to documents doomed to be exposed as phony (thereby undermining the real goods), then funnels it through third parties to Dan Rather, Bush 41's nemesis on Iran-contra. A perfect bank shot.

The secretary for W.'s squadron commander in the Texas Guard told The Times that the information in the disputed memos is correct - it's just the memos that seem fake.

"It looks like someone may have read the originals and put that together,'' said a lucid 86-year-old Marian Carr Knox, who was flown up to New York yesterday by beleaguered CBS News executives.

She told Mr. Rather that her boss, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, wrote a "cover-your-back file,'' a "personal journal'' to keep a record about the politically connected Bush in his charge. She said the contents of that mirrored the CBS documents, but she said those documents were not on the right forms and contained Army terms rather than Air National Guard argot. She confirmed that young Bush had disobeyed a direct order from Colonel Killian to take a physical.  .... 

Those who suspect Mr. Rove note that when he was Bill Clements's campaign strategist in a 1986 governor's race in Texas, he was accused of bugging his own office to distract from a debate, according to James Moore and Wayne Slater, authors of "Bush's Brain.'' They said it turned the election because after that, the Democrat could not get any attention." 

The majority of people in the States do not believe in evolution and a large number of people hold views similar to Stockwell Day’s position.   Does this make views such as his respectable?  Of course not.  Day’s view is intellectual junk and such views are rightly mocked.  However, for purposes of rallying the base, Karl Rove and company have helped create a social-cultural environment were such beliefs are allowed to flourish.  Others, such as O’Reily and Coulter, have in the own way rallied their own base, but more for monetary reasons than political ones.  They are the new Don Cherrys of politics and are for similar reasons hard to grabble with. Indeed, much of their popularity rests with the own irrationality; in an Alice and Wonderland kind of way, appeals to reason is a sign of weakness; bluster must be met with bluster.   

Such tactics have helped propel the Michael Moore’s to the top of the liberal pecking order.  One need only read the reviews of 911 to figure out why.  http://www.secularislam.org/articles/khawaja20.htm" title="http://www.secularislam.org/articles/khawaja20.htm" target="_blank"http://www.secularislam.org/a...   Moore is admittedly good at taking a constructed media image and blowing it to pieces by revealing how it is constructed.  However, Moore’s arguments in 911 are meandering conspiratorial nonsense.  Strangely this and the movies popularity make the movie all the more likable.  It is great fun to see the bully’s face rubbed in shit.  Some even let themselves vicariously live out the moment, saying underneath their breath “how does that make you feel?”   . 

Slate’s Tim Noah “I can say with confidence that I never would have relied on the documents that 60 Minutes relied on, based on how they were described in its broadcast, had they landed in my lap. But before you pat me on the back and say "well done," you should know that I did make the error of racing to comment on the documents before actually reading the 60 Minutes transcript. (I missed the broadcast itself.) The fact that the White House had sent the documents to me and to thousands of other reporters seemed to eliminate any possibility that they were fakes. (It turned out the White House was just passing along docs that it had received from ... 60 Minutes.) The only statement I can make in my defense is that the White House didn't seem to doubt their authenticity, either.” 

Noah seems to think that the reason the White House did not question the documents authenticity was that they were already framing a guilty man.  In other words, they had no reason to doubt their authenticity.  This strikes me as very unlikely.  The Bushies have never been one to let the truth stand in the way of anything and they certainly would not send out copies to thousands of reporters if they knew they thought they were legit.  It seems to me that the White House did know that they were cheap forgeries and so gladly “sent the documents to me and to thousands of other reporters.”  This leaves one of two possibilities open: either the Republicans got lucky or they are the source of the documents.  

I find the whole Vietnam thing very annoying.  Kerry did not so much enlist as preemptively enlist.  He has said a number of times that it was inevitable that he was going to be drafted and by enlisting he gained some flexibility.  He never supported the war, even when he enlisted.  He did not volunteer for the swift boats because they were dangerous.  At the time he signed up for them, it was a relatively safe assignment.  As it turned out, once swift boat members began going up river they had a very high rate of causalities. This may account for his getting 3 purple hearts, that and the fact he is bit clumsy.  Leaving aside the accusations of men whose credibility the Washington Post and others have torn to sheds, he took advantage of a technicality and left.  Smart man.  Despite being a reluctant warrior, he served honorably, winning a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.  True to his convictions, once he got out of the war, he became an anti-war advocate.

It is thus utterly bizarre that he is now cast as having “defended America as a young man”.  He did no such thing; and in 1971 Kerry would have said straight out that N.Vietnam posed no danger to the US.  Thankfully, in the interviews I have not until recently seen him play up the notion that he defended America as a young man; indeed, he has on a number of occasions undercut that message.  These pronouncements are reserved primarily for speeches.  All of this does not show that Kerry is extraordinarily dishonest as it shows that he is probably too honest.  He forgets to stay on message.  However, it shows more than anything else that his campaign team is a bunch of amateurs getting their ears boxed in by Karl Rove.

That said, my hackles are raised every time someone spits out verbatim what the Republicans are trying to say about Kerry’s war record.  What they say is false and repeating verbatim what any political party says strikes me as intellectual laziness.  Politicians do not so much as lie as deliberately miss lead and lie by omission.  That is the nature of the business, especially now that sound bites have become so important.  My hat goes off to Karl Rove.  Under his stewardship, the Republicans have perfected the art and taken it to a level never thought imaginable.  His motto: lie big or go home.      

What particularly annoys me is that while Kerry was allegedly not manly enough to stay in Vietnam and get shot at, Bush was on a two decades long bender.  Besides, being a drunk, Bush is probably guilty of insider trading and is arguably the most ignorant president the US has ever had.   

As to Kerry’s voting record, I will leave it up to the Slate’s Fred Kaplan to explain. 

“The main falsehood, we have gone over before (click here for the details), but it keeps getting repeated, so here we go again: It is the claim that John Kerry, during his 20 years in the Senate, voted to kill the M-1 tank, the Apache helicopter; the F-14, F-16, and F-18 jet fighters; and just about every other weapon system that has kept our nation free and strong.

Here, one more time, is the truth of the matter: Kerry did not vote to kill these weapons, in part because none of these weapons ever came up for a vote, either on the Senate floor or in any of Kerry's committees.

This myth took hold last February in a press release put out by the RNC. Those who bothered to look up the fine-print footnotes discovered that they referred to votes on two defense appropriations bills, one in 1990, the other in 1995. Kerry voted against both bills, as did 15 other senators, including five Republicans. The RNC took those bills, cherry-picked some of the weapons systems contained therein, and implied that Kerry voted against those weapons. By the same logic, they could have claimed that Kerry voted to disband the entire U.S. armed forces; but that would have raised suspicions and thus compelled more reporters to read the document more closely.

What makes this dishonesty not merely a lie, but a damned lie, is that back when Kerry cast these votes, Dick Cheney—who was the secretary of defense for George W. Bush's father—was truly slashing the military budget. Here was Secretary Cheney, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 31, 1992:

Overall, since I've been Secretary, we will have taken the five-year defense program down by well over $300 billion. That's the peace dividend. … And now we're adding to that another $50 billion … of so-called peace dividend.

Cheney then lit into the Democratic-controlled Congress for not cutting weapons systems enough:

Congress has let me cancel a few programs. But you've squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don't fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements. … You've directed me to buy more M1s, F14s, and F16s—all great systems … but we have enough of them.

I'm not accusing Cheney of being a girly man on defense. As he notes, the Cold War had just ended; deficits were spiraling; the nation could afford to cut back. But some pro-Kerry equivalent of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Zell Miller could make that charge with as much validity as they—and Cheney—make it against Kerry.

In other words, it's not just that Cheney and those around him are lying; it's not even just that they know they're lying; it's that they know—or at least Cheney knows—that the same lie could be said about him. That's what makes it a damned lie.” 

http://slate.com/id/2106119" title="http://slate.com/id/2106119" target="_blank"http://slate.com/id/2106119

By comparison, Michael Moore looks like a diligent scholar dedicated only to uncovering the truth.  

Slate nailed it. 

"More than 1,000 of America's sons and daughters have now given their lives on behalf of their country, on behalf of freedom, in the war on terror," Kerry said. The war on terror? Oops. The mistake was part of the natural reversion to the mean of the Kerry candidacy. After the successful day and a half of campaigning that followed his conversation with President Clinton, the usual Kerry—the New Old Kerry—was back. Kerry took no questions after making his mystifying "war on terror" comment. Crowley called out, "Senator, you've been saying that it's 'wrong war, wrong place, wrong time.' What does that mean about these deaths?" but Kerry, in a typical maneuver, just walked away. It's been more than five weeks since Kerry last took questions at a press conference, or an "avail," as it's called.

So, Crowley asked Cutter if she could explain what Kerry meant. Short answer: No. Long answer: Cutter said Kerry was referring to something Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday about the increase in terrorists in Iraq after the war. "There were not terrorists in Iraq before we went," Cutter explained (incorrectly), but there are now. Kerry was just "repeating what Rumsfeld said," Cutter continued. So, Crowley asked, Iraq is now part of the war on terror? "No. That's not what I'm saying," Cutter said. "Should he have clarified it, said it differently? Maybe. But the point remains the same. There was no terrorism before we went to war. There is now terrorism there." But Democratic orthodoxy is that the war on terror and the war in Iraq are distinct, Crowley said. Cutter replied, "And he agrees with that." Crowley: "Had he stayed for questions, we could have clarified that."

Kerry should have said, hey, I misspoke, I was trying to express my sympathy for all the Americans who have lost their lives in the broader war on terror, not just the 1,000-plus who have died in the war in Iraq. But instead the campaign has concocted this preposterously complicated explanation, saying yes he meant to say it, but no, he thinks Iraq is not part of the war on terror. What?" 

http://slate.com/id/2106453/" title="http://slate.com/id/2106453/" target="_blank"http://slate.com/id/2106453/ 

From what I have read of Kerry, he was probably solidly against going into Iraq. Temperamentally, Kerry is much like Colin Powell, extremely wary of committing the nation to military action. He is also not unlike his dad a liberal internationalist with realist sympathies; Like any good realist he is profoundly skeptical of political grand versions, but utterly lacking Kissinger’s Machiavellian ruthlessness.

There is simply no way Kerry would have undertaken a similar adventure had he been President. No way.

That said, he would have forsaw the bad consequences for the US’s Iraq policy of congress not authorizing the use of force and so voted yes.

However, during the primaries he stradled the fence by adopting Clark’s position and has stuck to that position since. As I have said, his public position was just pure spin.

Now, some people, mostly Republicans, seem to think that the spin originates with Kerry; I profoundly disagree. Democrats everywhere asked themselves what kind of background would the perfect candidate (i.e., a Democratic version of the mythical Republican tough on terrorism president) have and decided that Kerry, on paper at least, came closest to matching this ideal. John Kerry has also tried to conform to that ideal. The problem is the so called ideal candidate was never what inspired them, hatred of Bush did, and John Kerry’s inclinations do not not match his resume. To make matters worse, Democrats are micro managing Kerry to death and in so doing are making an already stiff candidate look even stiffer.

They did this with Gore as well. In the lead up to the debates the Democrats had Gore read out different answers to same question to a focus group. Whatever answers the focus group liked best they went with. More recently such focus group nonsense helped shape the entire Democratic convention, which by the way the pundits loved at the time because they hit on all the “right” points, but which left out the single element that ties the Democrats together, viz., hatred of Bush.

The whole Vietnam strikes me as, well, bizarre, but then again the Vietnam War was over by the time I was born and I am also not American.  I am simply not moved by what Kerry is purported to have done in Vietnam and I have never understood why a purple heart being a badge of honor.  The other side scored a hit.  This is not something to celebrate.  Sorry, I just felt like being cheeky.  The Silver Star is something to be proud of though.  Anyway, where was I?

The Bushies attempt to smear Kerry, on the other hand, is simply without foundation and is a prime example of the intellectual dishonesty that so characterizes the Bush administration.  Having their heroes’ entire story shot to pieces on the front page of the Washington Post was still not enough to shut rabble up.  And when their heroes reached deep down and seemingly pulled a Cambodian rabbit out of a hat, the rabble could hardly contain their glee.  Too bad, it was just more trickery.  As Fred Kaplan demonstrates the right has made rabbit stew out of the Cambodian story.  http://slate.com/id/2105529" title="http://slate.com/id/2105529" target="_blank"http://slate.com/id/2105529   

The whole episode is maddening when one compares Bush’s “lost years” to Kerry’s past.  To put it bluntly, Bush was a drunk, probably met the technical definition of a deserter, and is probably guilty of insider trading.  

The charge of Kerry being a flip flopper (i.e., someone incapable of committing himself to something) is equally ill founded and largely a creation of the Bushies. 

 What seems certain though is that the confident, articulate, hyper-serious, passionate 26 year old, who testified in 1971 has been replaced by an equally serious 59 year old man whose speaking ability, spontaneity and passion, has been strangled by a perfectionist concern with presentation and the concern of his handlers that he be what the focus groups tell him he should be.  Did any body see him on the Daly show?  Talk about anal.  Seeing him there convinced me that it least one story was true.  He really did dive down, rescue the hamster and earnestly give it mouth to mouth, with the hope of having it breath again.             

Berner never fails to irk me.  http://www.thetyee.ca/Entertainment/current/ AgainstTarantino.htm" title="http://www.thetyee.ca/Entertainment/current/ AgainstTarantino.htm" target="_blank"http://www.thetyee.ca/Enterta...    He is a man without depth.  In order to make a point he never goes beyond the platitudes, received wisdom, and patent falsehoods received as gospel by 50 something white middle class males.  He does not openly belittle nuance, a la George Bush, but it does not sit well with him.

In stereotypical fashion Berner can not resist the temptation to tar his opponents with some sort of totalitarian brush.  Whether it is painting anti-globalization crowd as a bunch of Maoists or in this case comparing the polymorphous perverse QT with of all people Leni Riefenstahl, Berner is not able to grasp that the rightwing cold war critique of Leftists being in bed with totalitarianism is, well, quaint – akin to a child keeping his security blanket well after other kids have given up theirs.  Did it ever dawn on him and his peers that Marx is dead and that Chomsky the grandfather of the New Left, is, if nothing else, an anarchist.         

“I always thought Kubrick was a hypocrite, because his party line was, I’m not making a movie about violence, I’m making a movie against violence. And it’s just, like, Get the fuck off. I know and you know your dick was hard the entire time you were shooting those first twenty minutes, you couldn’t keep it in your pants the entire time you were editing it and scoring it. You did it for those first twenty minutes. And if you don’t say you did, you’re a fucking lair.”  Berner takes the above as proof that QT’s musings are as superficial and as shallow as his films and that the man like his films lack any sort of moral center.  It never occurs to him that QT is spot on with what he says here.  In the wake of Clockwork Orange, there were a few rapes in which the attacker broke out into song.  “I am singing in the rain.”  So, naturally Kubrick was probably a little sensitive about the subject and maybe even convinced himself over the years that he had really made a movie “against violence”.  However, the decision to draw up a scene in which someone is raped to the sounds of I am singing in the rain was a true master stroke; it might have even made a man hard; it was so clever. What the viewer sees before him is so very at odds with what is associated with the song.  Kubrick, of course, did not promote violence – what film maker intentionally does? -- but he made what is a very base and very cruel act seem almost artful and QT thought Kubrick should have owned up to this Frankenstein.    

“Tarantino’s movies are never about anything so much as they are about movies and the history of movies. Now you could say the same thing about Steven Spielberg. But at some point, Mr. Spielberg went beyond his own technical proficiencies and began making movies with content. You know, story, characters, all that silly, old-fashioned stuff.”   Ok let us be frank, as story teller Spielberg is at best average.  What makes Spielberg a great film maker is his “own technical proficiencies” and this goes for his earlier films as well as his later films.  Take Saving Private Ryan.  What makes Saving Private Ryan so memorable is not the story, but the movie’s opening half hour. 

Saving Private Ryan is also memorable in Tarantino type way by intentionally breaking down accumulated Hollywood wisdom as to how certain scenes should play out.  Take the scene where American soldier accidentally brings done a damaged wall of a house and in the process reveals a number of concealed German soldiers. Shown to be but a few feet away from each other, the stand off between the two equally matched sides is made all the more intense by Spielberg switching from a close up of the Germans to a close of Americans. However, rather than having one side throw done their arms to avoid an unnecessary slaughter, as is usual movie protocol, Spielberg has a second group of Americans massacre the Germans before the eyes of the first group.    

Saving Private Ryan also introduced a whole whack of scenes which have found their way into other films.  The landing craft scene is reproduced in the Volga crossing in Enemy at the Gate; the scene were soldiers are shot under water found its way into Pearl Harbour and Solider picking up half bodies, or limbs found its way into Black Hawk Down.  After Saving Private Ryan the way war movies were shot changed for ever and I might add for the better.       

As for Tarantino’s movies being devoid of content, what sort of anti-intellectual fossilized totalitarian mindset would dictate that movies all be narrative and liner and QT’s brand of bringing subconscious movie structures in consciousness worthless.