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certain though is that the confident, articulate, hyper-serious, passionate 26 year old, who testified in 1971 has been replaced by an equally serious 59 year old man whose speaking ability, spontaneity and passion, has been strangled by a perfectionist concern with presentation and the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.