August 31
An update of the August 28 entry, about the Saudi man who immigration officers threw in solitary for a week: I heard from one of his coworkers who have put up a site about his situation, so go here for more information.
Unsurprisingly, the Republican convention is full of things that, well, aren't quite so. John McCain took a shot at Michael Moore. At least they're admitting his movie has a huge impact. Maybe McCain gets on commission on ticket sales, because that must have helped. One thing Rudy Guiliani said indicates historical amnesia. He talked about terrorists being coddled in the past, specifically blaming Europe for doing this during the 80's. Hey Rudy, remember what else happened during the 80's? Your boy Reagan sold guns to Iran, which backed terrorists, to get them to influence hostage takers in Lebanon to release an American, which they would do and promptly seize another one, and then Reagan used the money to supply the Contras in Nicaragua. What were the Contras? That's right, terrorists. So I wonder where anyone got the idea terrorism is OK?
Speaking of historical amnesia, Arnold Schwarzenegger said America stood behind the man who stood in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square, and likewise with Nelson Mandela in his struggle for South Africa's freedom. Maybe he just didn't pay attention to American politics back then. The U.S. raised nary a peep of protest at the massacre at Tiananmen. Who was president then? Oh right, the Bush who got elected. Meanwhile, as the world put the screws on South Africa to free Mandela and end Apartheid, the American government was about South Africa's only friend. The president at the time called Mandela a terrorist and communist sympathizer. Who was president then? Reagan, the champion of freedom who stood behind any dictator who was anti-communist. So who was it that pressured South Africa and denounced China? Those freedom hating liberals. Hey, maybe Arnold was at the wrong convention.
Laura Bush gave praise to her husband's accomplishments including, unfortunately, the prescription drug program. I say "unfortunately" because people might remember that Bush lied to Congress about the cost, and the actuary who figured out was threatened with firing if he responded to the usual Congressional inquiries. Fortunately, some congressmen looked into why they weren't getting answers. A couple more neat things Bush did with that law: refused to allow any way to pay for an expensive new benefit, and prohibited Medicare from negotiating over prices -- yes, prohibited rather than requiring, at the behest of the drug industry. So GOP, might be best not to mention that one again.
August 30
So far the demonstrations in New York have been huge, but peaceful. Good work folks, keep it up. An observer might wonder what good marching through the streets and chanting "no more years" will do, since Bush or any of his supporters are unlikely to change their minds. Mostly, the intention is to tell those of a mind similar to the demonstrators that they're not the only ones who think as they do. When your opinions make you a minority among those you have common contact with, especially if they're not terribly open to opposing views, you might wonder if something is wrong with you or if you're the only one with doubts. The idea of a protest is not only to tell someone in power that a citizen disagrees, but to give encouragement to others who disagree.
As I write, the Republican convention is on CNN. Andrew Card is telling Larry King what he said to Bush on 911, and justifying staying in with the class as intended to avoid disturbing the children. What, they wouldn't hear the news and get scared inevitably? The way Bush and his supporters spin his seven minutes of utter indecision is amazing. To anyone who isn't a hopeless GOP partisan, it is obvious that when a president learns the country is under attack, he needs to find out what's happening and be present in case decisions need to be made, not stay at a school when he is a potential terrorist target. If Bush didn't outright choke, then he showed horrendous judgement, which is possible. He didn't read or he ignored the PDB saying Al Qaida planned to attack with airplanes, a big lapse of judgement either way. He stonewalled the 911 commission every step of the way, another bad decision if for no other reason than it cast suspicion on everything he did. If he didn't lie about Iraq, he bought intelligence that made no sense (and don't say no one could tell at the time -- some evidence was debunked even before the war, and the case was certainly unproven) which shows horrible judgement wither way. The acting president is consistent, I'll give him that.
Some delegates are wearing purple hearts with band-aids to mock John Kerry. Apparently the lie is just too fun to stop repeating, no matter disproven it is. Dole is on the air and said they shouldn't do that, ignoring that he passed on that lie on national television. He should get down on the floor and personally tell them to stop, and someone appearing with him should call him on it. At elast there's an opening for the Kerry campaign. They should get pictures of the delegates and make sure undecided voters see that.
August 29
On the last Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher encouraged protestors at the Republican convention to get more rambunctious. He seemed to be a bit nostalgic for the 1968 Democratic convention. I don't know how much of a disturbance he really wants them to cause, but one thing is certain: if the protests get violent, the election is over and Bush wins. I say that fully aware that 1968 was judged by the commission that studied it to be a police riot. That didn't stop the protestors from getting blamed. If New York looks at all like Chicago 1968 or even like the WTO meeting in Seattle, even if the problem is police getting violent with peaceful protestors, the protestors will be blamed, and Kerry and the Democrats will be blamed. It will be a repeat of the Sen. Paul Wellstone memorial in 2002, when the public got irate at a couple of the speeches that turned partisan, blamed all Democrats, and judging by the polls, every undecided vote went to Norm Coleman, giving him victory over Walter Mondale in the race to replace Wellstone. I can't strongly enough urge that every demonstrator keep it peaceful. Numbers may have an impact, but arrests will only hurt. If anyone urges anyting remotely violent -- smashing windows, throwing vegetables at police, tussling with Bush supporters, let alone anything worse -- that person is either nuts, a fool, or an agent provocateur. That's a fancy term for someone, like a cop or FBI agent, who infiltrates an group and urges actions that will actually be destructive of the groups goals. There have, since protests of the Iraq war first began been several instances of peace groups being infiltrated. If someone suggests throwing a rock, check for a badge. Suggest instead seven minutes of silence.
There has been a bit of progress in trying to prevent Florida's state government to steal another election. A judge in Florida ruled that the rule barring manual recounts of touch-screen machines is illegal. That's right, taking precautions against someone pointing out that it's fairly simple to hook up a computer to a printer and making it possible to verify a vote on paper, Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood did her best Katherine Harris impression and banned the recount. At least in 2000 they waited until it looked like the governor's brother might lose before they started stopping recounts. This time they not only bought a bunch of unreliable machines, but banned the means to check up on them. Think the concerns about voting machines is overblown or even conspiracy theory? Fine, don't believe anyone's projections of what might happen. Study up on the problems these machines have had in prior elections, and unless you believe someone sprinkled fairy dust to fix them all for 2004, you'll become quite concerned yourself. If you want to have faith in the computer professionals building these machines, then you may want to know that some of the people trying hardest to raise the alarm about these things are computer professionals, and you may include me among the people who work with computers and think the reliability of the election results is in danger. Frighteningly, a hole has been found in Diebold's central tabulators. Diebold makes these machines, won't build printing capability, has a record of problems, and is run by one of Bush's big fundraisers. Worried yet? You should be. This should be one of the big issues of the election, but it looks like it will mostly come to public notice after the vote count is screwed up.
August 28
Here's another specific instance for the next time a Bush supporter makes the unsupported claim that no one can provide a specific instance of civil liberties being violated (another link is in the entry from August 22). A Saudi man, Majid al-Massari, was held in solitary confinement and incommunicado for a week after immigration officials decided a 2003 misdemeanor could be reclassified as a felony under stricter immigration laws. Yes, after the fact, a crime was reclassified from misdemeanor to felony only because the person in question is an immigrant. Specifically, he's an asylum seeker whose application, which is supposed to be processed in 180 days, took 2,394 days before being rejected. Now, with such treatment, he must at least be a terrorism suspect, right? Wrong. He's the son of a prominent Saudi dissident in exile in Britain. The Saudis call him a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer, something like that, which sounds plausible since Saudi Arabia produces terrorists by the bucketful. It's also the case that dictatorships often accuse dissidents of being terrorists, making no distinction between real terrorists and someone who voices disagreement with government policy. Even if the father is a terrorist, throwing the son in solitary without access to family or lawyers is the act of a dictatorship, and it happened right here in the U.S. If the father is just a dissident, this is being done to intimidate the father into keeping quiet, and the Bush administration is doing the Saudi's dirty work. Maybe Bandar Bush just made a polite request over dinner one evening (the link is to Michael Moore's site, where he quotes a Newsweek article, which is on their archives for a fee).
Now a couple things that I ask those on my side of the political spectrum to stop doing:
Lay off Ralph Nader. Stop trying to keep him off ballots. Honestly, doesn't anybody who might vote for him already know he's running? They'll write him in if they want to. Someone who doesn't like the choice of Bush and Kerry has other minor candidates to vote for. Trying to keep him off ballots is a waste of resources and will reinforce the notion that there's no difference between the parties (though if you believe there's no difference, look at the paragraph above and tell me Kerry would have done that). Nader claimed recently that the stories about him accepting Republican help aren't true, and if he's right then Democrats will look like liars if they keep saying he is. Moreover, there are polls that indicated that he while he pulled more votes from Gore than Bush, he did take Republican votes, and there are disgruntled conservatives who find his positions on corporate welfare and loss of sovereignty appealing. Nader's poll number so far suggest he's taking few Democratic votes, and probably doing what he did in 2000, sucking up all the small party protest votes.
The other thing is stop talking about Porter Goss saying he isn't qualified for the CIA. When you read what he said or see the interview, it becomes apparent he's saying he doesn't have the technical and linguistic skills the CIA wants now, computers and Arabic. I linked to the interview on Michael Moore's site, but I've heard it repeated elsewhere, which is why I bring it up. Instead, let's raise legitimate points, like pointing out that one of Goss's qualifications is that he chaired the House Intelligence Committee, but this was the time when the intelligence on Iraq was being examined, and when 911 happened. Why didn't he discover that the neocons' sources were lying?
Speaking of lies, Kaite O'Beirne did it again on Capital Gang, saying several times that Kerry hasn't released all his records. He has. At least her co-panelist, Al Hunt, called her on it, though with several panelists shouting he couldn't be heard well. Quite a change from how they gentilely let each other get by with spin and half-truths.
August 26
Perhaps it isn't seemly to toot my own horn by linking to something of my own, nonetheless, one of my plays is quite relevant to the subject of this day's entry. Paula Zahn tonight interviewed a couple of the soldiers caught up in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. It's usually called "abuse", but when victims sometimes died from it, I think we can call it "torture". Allowing that they may have done more than they admitted too, and apparently have been accused by other soldiers of doing more than they admitted to tonight, they did admit to seeing what was going on. One said he was indifferent and didn't report it. The other says he reported it to the other, but didn't do more than that. I can't judge their veracity just from the interview. I will say they seemed humbled and penitent. Even if they were covering up worse, they did seem to know they did something terribly wrong. They certainly didn't seem like thugs, but doesn't it take a thug to do things like that? Certainly regular people couldn't do that, right?
Wrong. In extraordinarily awful situations, like happens in wartime, ordinary people can do terrible things. That's something I discovered as I researched and wrote my play Nuremberg, about the Nazi war crimes trials. You might figure war criminals are these monsters devoid of conscience. Instead, they let something in their circumstances override their consciences. The Nazis feared the wrath of those above, ending up in prison themselves if they spoke up, or losing their careers, or just picking up the prejudice and fear that seemed normal as they focused on getting by day to day. These soldiers, fairly low in the chain of command, and if we take their words at face value, have had it ingrained in them to obey orders, to narrowly focus on their own area of responsibility and not interfere with other soldiers' subordinates or detainees. Naked prisoners, whether Iraqis or Jews, and the abusiveness seen everyday start to seem normal. Speaking up in such circumstances, even at the risk of angering superiors and alienating peers, while undoubtedly the right thing to do, can seem impossibly hard. I wonder if in such extraordinary circumstances, few of us are extraordinary enough to do something about it. Some extraordinary people do show up of course. There were Germans who resisted the Nazis, and some American soldiers, at the risk of being deemed traitors by other soldiers, have revealed the story of Abu Ghraib.
Even though "I was just obeying orders," known as the "Nuremberg defense," isn't accepted as a defense for war crimes, there's no question that the main culpability lies above the level of enlisted man. The top Nazi leaders couldn't even say they were obeying orders. They were giving them. How about our government and armed forces? The general in charge of Abu Ghraib has had the decency to resign. There are reports that the torture started after the general in charge of Guantanamo visited to reorganize the place, so this appears to go at least up to the level of general, at least in terms of permitting the torture. Did Rumsfeld or even Bush himself authorize torture? There's no evidence that they knew, let alone ordered it, but the adminstration did make up all new rules for detainees at Guantanamo, hold suspects in secret detention without charge or even notification of families, and got caught with the infamous memo saying the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners are obsolete, and they certainly made that case to justify breaches of both domestic and international law. It hasn't helped the perception they have something to hide when they refuse to sign the international war crimes treaty. That doesn't show Bush or anyone at the top of the administration is responsible in a criminal sense, but when they said the rules no longer applied, and that detainees had no rights but what they chose to give them, they created the conditions in which the mistreatment of prisoners seemed acceptable. They have a moral responsibility for what happened. If there is evidence that they knew about it and didn't take action, even if they didn't expressly order it, they ought at least to resign. If they authorized it, and remember there's no evidence of that, then their refusal to join the war crimes court is the only thing that will stop them being indicted. There's also the interesting legal question of the decision to refuse to sign the war crimes treaty being made by people who would be brought before it. It seems like burglars getting a veto on trespassing laws.
Three of the defendants from Nuremberg:
GUST You would never have spoken this way when the führer was alive.
FREITAG To you I would have.
MESSNER No you wouldn't have. Hitler scared you, like he scared all of us. I even hesitated to call him "Hitler" instead of "the führer". That fear is the reason we obeyed insane orders. We have to make the allies understand that after living a long time under a madman, the smell of fear is stronger than even the smell of corpses.
To paraphrase Messner, perhaps what happened at Abu Ghraib was the pressure of peers and superiors was stronger the even the pity for terrified prisoners.
August 25
Former Senator Max Cleland showed up at Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX, to deliver a letter from nine Senate Democrats who are veterans are various wars. They are trying to ask him to denounce smears on his opponents service record. I say "trying" because Cleland couldn't find someone to deliver the letter to. I presume he got the right ranch, given that it sits by itself, so one might think Bush just didn't happen to be home at the moment, except it's not likely the place would just be abandoned. Perhaps they forgot all the advance notice Cleland was coming, or missed the press camped outside. Perhaps they thought some guy in a wheelchair was delivering a summons. Probably they didn't want to participate in a political publicity stunt. They would have been smarter to just take the letter though, because instead, picture a triple amputee combat vet rolling around trying find someone to take the letter. Bush appointed a local supporter, who showed up with his VFW hat and offered to take the letter, but nobody actually from the administration, so Cleland refused to give it to him. It wasn't just any letter, but one from nine current senators delivered by a former senator. Presumably protocol, or courtesy or something would require a president to read it, not avoid delivery. Instead, I have a feeling the video of Cleland rolling around in search a hiding Bush will be all over the TV news, and coming to a commercial near you.
After a story about stupidity mixed with venality, here's one about dishonesty. 60 Minutes rebroadcast a story tonight about Texas schools faking their dropout statistics. It's not a new story, but I hadn't heard the details before. The schools in Houston, city of Enron, used Enron accounting methods to make a slight improvement in their dropout numbers, from roughly 50% to roughly zero. The just relabeled them as transfers or intending to go for a GED, so they didn't have to count. One school actually claimed zero dropouts. They also faked improvement in test scores by finding ingenious ways to stop students taking the test if they expected to do poorly, like one girl who was left back in 9th grade three times despite passing every class, and was them bumped to 11th grade, skipping 10th, and guess which grade takes the test? This sort of stuff happened all over Texas but was worst in Houston. Presidential candidate Bush used the "improvement" in Texas schools to make his case that he could improve the nation's schools, and indeed Texas methods have been foisted on the whole country. Did he at least punish the Houston superintendent? Depends on whether you consider making him the U.S. Secretary of Education a punishment. That's right, Rod Paige, the current Secretary of Education, is the same crook who did the Ken Lay impression. If either house of Congress was in Democratic hands, there would have been an investigation by now with Paige probably forced to resign. But Congressional Republicans, who investigated every rumor when Clinton was in office, don't like looking into their own.
August 24
I listened to Kerry's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 that I directed readers to yesterday. It was followed by listener calls, including a bunch of Vietnam vets with interesting reactions. My reaction was Wow. Kerry can be an eloquent speaker. I was voting for him anyway before this, but I was really voting for Anybody But Bush. I feel better about him now. I disagreed with his vote for the war and his reasoning for saying he would still vote yes, but I feel reassured he would be far more reluctant to go to war than his opponent. He has a respect for what we ask of those we send into combat, and when he ponders sending soldiers to combat, I don't doubt he'll be asking himself if they too will come home angry, demanding to know why their buddies died for a mistake.
This isn't to say mine is the only possible reaction. Someone who feels the war in Vietnam wasn't a mistake won't react as I did. The war being a mistake was at the core of his testimony, and he expressed the anger of other veterans who felt the same. I can see that someone angry about the protests at home might have the gut reaction that a decorated veteran who joined the protests has committed an act of betrayal. Nobody wants to believe American soldiers are capable of the things Kerry said had occurred, and many would react strongly at the suggestion. The reaction to such charges in the war in Iraq was strong too, quieted only by photographic proof. In Kerry's case, he passed on what other veterans claimed they did.
Which gets to my other reaction. Having heard the testimony for myself, it is clear Kerry was speaking as an angry veteran on behalf of other veterans who were put through a terrible experience and then struggled at home. The Swift Boat Veterans for Deceptive Editing, to earn that name, have made a commercial with clips of Kerry's testimony not merely taken out of context, but in at least one case the clip starts in mid-sentence to change the meaning. They left out his statement about veterans having a very high unemployment rate, and of course anything else that might weaken the preferred image of Kerry as some venal man who turned on the other veterans. The central point of his testimony was summed up by will probably be the quote he's best known for, “How can you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
Following up on what I wrote about Bush politicizing the Olympics (anyone ever heard of a real president doing this?), it appears the Iraqi athletes don't like it either:
Soccer players denounced Bush's ads and deaths of civilians.
Former Coalition Provisional Authority officials denounced the story as untrue --- without reading it of course.
Bush also got no endorsement from an Iraqi track athlete.
August 23
Tomorrow, Minnesota Public Radio will broadcast Kerry's Senate testimony from 1971. I don't know what he said, so I'm taking a chance that what he says won't be good for my side. Can't call me dishonest.
Another radio broadcast that might be interesting: this documentary on radical Islam in Britain (scroll down to "British Jihad") is a good reminder of the real enemy in the "war on terrorism". It's not called "Saddam". One bit I wish Bush and Co. would hear comes near the end, when one Islamist who consented to be interviewed says outright that Bush has been a gift to the radicals. He says Bush's declaration that you're with us or against us echos the message of the radical preachers and helps recruiting. He also says part of Osama Bin Laden's appeal is that one man caused so much reaction. He could have said overreaction, since Bush went beyond a necessary war in Afghanistan, and attacked Iraq, infringed civil liberties, and caused sharp divisions at home and abroad. So to those who credit Bush with making progress in the "war on terror," consider why he's popular with radical Muslims too.
August 22
I don't know if I've mentioned the Dole's more than a few times in my life, but here they are in the blog twice in three days, and unfortunately both for saying something deceptive. Bob Dole has weighed in on the controversy over Kerry's war record. He called Kerry's wounds superficial and undeserving of purple hearts. Dole was in the Senate at the time, but apparently found time away from his duties to go to Vietnam and watch Kerry getting stitched up, and then not say anything until today. He joined criticism of Kerry for getting out of Vietnam after three wounds, something Republicans like to harp on, even though that was Navy policy at the time. It's amazing they accuse someone who volunteered for two tours of duty, the second in combat, of jumping out on a technicality. At least Dole was honest enough to say he has a beef with Kerry over his testimony in 1971, though I fail to see how any degree of disagreement justifies joining in a smear. I hope Dole was just ignorant of the facts when he joined the Republican chorus calling upon Kerry to release his service record, and implying he must have something to hide because he won't release it. The truth is he released them last Winter. They've been on his web site all this time. Go look. Then the next time the question is asked by someone who has already heard the answer, you'll know they're lying.
And if you're wondering why any of this matters, the reason is that the big issue in this campaign is lying. Lies got Bush into office, got his tax cuts passed, got his prescription plan passed, covered up his screw ups on 911, and got us into the war in Iraq. Lying is the common denominator of the various issues. It matters very much whether the man in the White House lies and surrounds himself with liars. So, in the swift boat controversy, either Kerry is lying about his medals, or the Republicans are lying about his medals. Do you really want someone who would lie like that in office? Then find out who is telling the truth. Consider that kerry has his crew and the paper record backing him, while the stories of those smearing him have been found to be those of people who changed their stories, contradict witnesses with a better view, and in the case of Swift Boat Vets for Deception leader John O'Neill, are the accounts of people who weren't even there.
Back on the subject of asking questions which have been answered but pretending they haven't been, a common refrain on the Patriot Act is that no one has documented a case of an abuse. Personally I don't think an abuse of civil liberties needs to come from that act specifically to be a problem, but the question stands, have there been any violations of civil liberties by the Bush administration? Here's a link to answer that question.
August 21
It was disappointing to see a poll yesterday that indicates the Swift Boat Vets for Smears ad has worked, and rather well. A poll of veterans showed a strong movement from Kerry to Bush since those ads ran. Maybe that's why Bush won't disavow the content. The disappointing aspect isn't that a negative ad worked, or even that the ad is fraudulent. The disappointing part is the ad worked despite being shown to be fraudulent in many news stories. Even the Bush campaign won't say it's true, they just say they don't question Kerry's record.
What explains this? I'd like to hear from someone who switched from Kerry to Bush over this so I'm not left guessing. You won't be ridiculed. I just want to know what you're thinking. Until that happens, I have some guesses:
- It's generally considered that TV commercials are far more important for a campaign than anything else, maybe more than everything else. That's why there are so many TV commercials, which is why campaigns are so expensive. Most people get information from commercials instead of news. That explains why the efforts of newspapers etc. to check out ad claims have less effect than the ads, and why those who make misleading ads don't fear consequences. I really thought the swift boat ad would backfire, and I still hope it will, but it looks like I was wrong.
- Many Vietnam era vets are still pissed about the protests, and by becoming a protest leader, Kerry is seen as betraying the other veterans. There is anger about his testimony before the Senate in 1971, which is why a clip of that is in the second ad. Most won't know that when they see Kerry accusing other vets of cutting off ears and heads, the clip started right after he said, I'm not sure of the exact wording of this quote, "Many vets have told me that they personally...". That would be like someone pointing out that that quote is inexact without mentioning that I said I'm not sure it's exact. It's that lying that makes me so angry about this group.
- The Iraq war has divided the country more sharply than anything since the war in Vietnam, and the divisions are basically for the same reasons. I would imagine this makes their own war quite fresh for Vietnam vets. This might explain how two men in the ad appeared with Kerry and publicly lauded him during his 1996 campaign, but now say things utterly the opposite of what they said then. I hope my guess is right, because otherwise they're just lying now, and unless they're getting paid I can't see why they would do that. And I've no knowledge they're getting paid to lie, before anyone accuses me of rumormongering. OK, I take that back about John O'Neill, one of the Swift Boat Vets for Getting Your Political Opponents leaders. He commanded Kerry's boat after Kerry left so he saw none of it, then he was hired by Nixon to go after Kerry. Apparently he's still on the job.
There is one hope yet. According to Tom Oliphant and Michael Dukakis in interviews they did on The Al Franken Show, Kerry's opponents in Massachusetts have sometimes taken to attacking his war record, and it's always backfired. Kerry has also shown he's willing to fight back and won't take the falsehoods of the Bush campaign silently. Then again, maybe the best hope is those of us who, in everyday life, encounter those who believe the lies, and tell them the truth. That's why I have this blog. What those of us who follow the news closely hear often can be brand new to those who don't. Witness the shock of many who see Fahrenheit 911. While checking the link above, I saw this link from Franken's blog to the Chicago Tribune. One of their editors commanded one of the three swift boats present when Kerry won his bronze star. Kerry commanded one, and the other commander died a few weeks later. He says the Kerry is being smeared.
August 20
Sen. Elizabeth Dole, once considered a prospect to be the first female president, has turned herself into a standardized Republican spinmaster. She was on CNN's American Morning this morning. Asked a straight question about whether Bush should disavow the Swift Boat Vets for Fakery ad, she dodged the question. First she answered, "Well, the president has said that he would like to see all the 527s, so-called third-party ads, off the air." That's accurate, but not what she was asked. Without elaborating or allowing another question, she jumped into the talking point of the day, repeating the charge that Kerry hasn't explained his vote against the $87 billion appropriated for Iraq. That's a lie of course, because that vote has been explained many times (if you haven't heard it explained, see the entry from August 8). Maybe the military families in her home state haven't all heard it, which the GOP must be hoping is the case because they keep repeating the debunked charge. Maybe lying is just her job when she's playing spinmaster again.
Again? Yes, I saw her twice in one day. The second time was in an archived bit on The Daily Show about talking points (I don't know what date it ran, or the dates of the clips, but it must have been last month because the spinners were commented on Kerry's choice of Edwards). First, they showed a clip of a CNN reporter showing a 20 page Republican memo including the current talking points. Then they showed a string of Republicans on TV interview programs saying the same thing, almost word for word. One of these was Sen. Dole.
Why do the Republicans make her run around doing this stuff? That's what they have Norm Coleman for.
Speaking the infamous ad, the New York Times has this story exposing the background of Swift Boat Vets for Distortion and this graphic showing the connections between the Bush family and the Swift Vets for Half-Truths, as well as well as a chart showing why my side of the political spectrum keeps saying the vets in the commercial are not to be believed.
August 19
I sometimes wonder if smear campaigns, besides trying to convince voters the smear is true, or least put the truth in doubt, have the secondary purpose of luring the opposition into a counter-smear (oh yeah? Well, your guy is worse) and put voters into a "pox on both your houses" mood. If so, MoveOn.org fell into the trap. I say that as someone who has supported MoveOn in the past and I expect to in the future. They've put out some of the best political ads of seen, but they screwed up on the ad about Bush's service record.
This ad is in response to the infamous Swift Boat Vets for "Truth" ad smearing Kerry. How to pick it apart seemed obvious. Show one of the men in the ad saying "I was there" with a subtitle saying where he actually was, and repeat a few times. Instead there's merely an unsubstantiated label "false advertising" across a TV showing the offending ad. The rest of the ad repeats allegations about Bush's service record but, and here's the problem, it presents the allegations as facts. The allegations have never been debunked, but never proven either. The AWOL charge is based on the lack of records and the utter absence of anyone who remembers Bush. It hasn't helped that Bush stonewalled the release of what few records have been found. It's also suspicious how Bush got into a "champagne unit", meaning National Guard units that weren't going to Vietnam (few guard units did then). There was a long waiting list to get in, but rich men's sons sometimes got to jump the line, as Bush did, which certainly leads to the conclusion Bush Sr.'s influence got him in. However, there's no hard evidence of this. There's similar suspicion about how he got out early, but again, no proof of special treatment. There's also no evidence that he got in on his own and got out for good reasons, which is part of why this won't go away (the other parts being Bush's decision to invade Iraq, and the attacks on Kerry's record). MoveOn might have gotten away with raising these allegations as unanswered questions, which is really what they are.
Kerry not only disavowed the MoveOn ad, but is running his own ad. He might not have had to use his limited funds this way without the MoveOn ad giving the impression both sides are equally likely to be true, so the cause was actually hurt by this.
But to defend MoveOn against a frequent slur, they never ran an ad comparing Bush to Hitler. What they did do is run a contest where anyone could submit an ad, and members could rate the ads, with the winner being shown on TV. I was one of those who rated some. One submission compared Bush to Hitler. They screwed up in not screening it out before complaints were raised, but they did remove it after it was brought to their attention. It got poor ratings from members too. By that point however, the ad was on Bush's campaign site, or maybe it was the GOP site, I don't recall. I do recall that there were a bunch of ads superior to what campaigns produce themselves. The winner was entitled "Child's Play," and showed children working at unglamorous jobs like running cash registers and picking up garbage. The point was the children would have to pay for debts the Bush adminstration is running up. I gave that one high marks. Since then, despite knowing the truth, the GOP keeps repeating the lie about MoveOn running the ad.
August 18
First, a neat quote: Reporting on a rally of Minnesota Veterans for Kerry held at the Minnesota State Capitol today, the Star Tribune said:
The biggest cheer of the rally greeted Andrew Borene, an Edina resident who served as an intelligence officer with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq last year."My Marines are being dramatically failed by this administration," he said, charging that the war is being directed by "an effete corps of chickenhawk neoconservatives."
In his recent public appearances, and in a recent campaign ad, the acting president held up as proof of the efficacy of his efforts to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan the presence of teams representing those countries at the Athens Olympics. Besides politicizing the Olympics, which is a cheap tactic itself but not surprising from a campaign started by politicizing 911, it overlooks a little something.
The war in Congo, formerly known as Zaire, has been mostly forgotten since 911, but at it's peak it involved armies and militias from nine countries. The dead are estimated at around 3,000,000. The number of dead and number of countries make it the biggest war since World War II. This country has received scant attention from the U.S., yet it too managed to send an Olympic team. So please Mr. Bush, don't take credit for some Iraqis and Afghans getting to the games.
August 17
Kathleen Parker is the subject again today (see the entry from August 6), specifically for this column attacking Kerry's war record. She passes on allegations from Swift Boat Veterans For "Truth" (quotations mine) and says, "To follow the 'he said/he said' bouncing ball of Kerry's military career, one needs patience and a strong dose of Dramamine," as if the two sides to the story were equally likely to be true and therefore no one can tell who's lying. Never mind that Kerry's story is backed by the official record and ten members of his crew, while the other side's story has proven to be a collection of distortions. John McCain has denounced it and called on the acting president to do likewise. He declined, saying he hadn't seen it (I'm sure it's hard to find 30 seconds to watch the most controversial commercial of the campaign he's involved in). What I don't get is why conservatives keep bringing up Kerry's story at least as much as the Kerry campaign. So what if they could cast legitimate suspicion that Kerry earned only three or four medals, or as in Parker's column, show he was five miles from Cambodia instead of on the border? He still volunteered for combat duty when his rich daddy could have bought his way out. They can't help but cause a comparison to their own candidate, who did let his daddy buy his way out, even though he supposedly did support the war --- he just wanted other people to go. Kerry ended up opposing it, which is really what these smears are all about.
The funniest thing Parker said was, "Like many Americans, I'm reluctant to second-guess anyone's wartime performance." But not so reluctant as to not write a whole column doing so.
August 16
This morning I saw the acting president delivering a speech to the VFW. Is he lying, or really not living in the same world as the rest of us? He gave as a justification for the war in Iraq (does it never occur to him that when a war needs to be constantly explained, something is wrong?) the attempts by Saddam to deceive the arms inspectors. No, he didn't mean back in the 90's. He meant right before he invaded. Surely one of his researchers could dig back less than two years and find that the inspectors said the Iraqis were cooperating, they weren't finding anything, and the American intelligence was garbage. The adminstration tried to explain the absence of weapons by saying the inspectors had been compromised. We now know which was the case. We also know that if the inspectors had just had more time, like the whole world wanted them to have, they would have found nothing. But Bush doesn't mention that.
See the archives for earlier entries.
