Target Centermass

Category: Politics

  • Republicans Showing No Amour for France

    I was torn between using the headline of this article or substituting my own, which would’ve been “French Press Begs for GOP Reach-Around.”

    More than a year after falling out with the United States over the Iraq war, France is still a prime target for the rage of Republicans, who are not showing much amour for the longtime US ally.

    Democrat John Kerry may be enemy number one but France is a close number two at the chest-thumping Republican national convention, where the word Paris is code for weakness, indecision and international cooperation.

    “Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations,” Senator Zell Miller said in a thundering address to the party faithful on Wednesday.

    “Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide,” he said, drawing cheers from the crowd.

    As usual, the Frenchies don’t get it. The Republicans know who the enemies are — radical Islamic terrorists. Kerry is a political opponent and France is an obstacle, a target of deserved ridicule doing all it can to hamstring our efforts while doing nothing to ensure its own long-term security. Unless you count headscarves on kids.

    France helped lead opposition to the Iraq war on the UN Security Council, which set off an orgy of French-bashing nationwide last year.

    Bottles of champagne were emptied into sewers, French cheeses went unsold on store shelves and angry US politicians called to rename America’s favourite snack “Freedom Fries.”

    After it emerged during the presidential campaign that Kerry spoke the language, he reportedly stopped giving interviews with foreign media in French, for fear of giving the Bush camp more ammunition.

    The connection between anti-French anger and Kerry’s policy statements — which sometimes don’t sound much different than what comes out of the French government — has been an easy one for critics to make.

    This all makes me chuckle.

    The article then wraps up with this:

    …Italy is now one of the staunchest US allies on the war on terror, robbing Republicans of at least one European nation to target with scorn and abuse.

    But they shouldn’t worry: they’ll always have Paris.

    That’s just it — anybody can have Paris. Took about a month using WWII-era technology.

  • Can’t Believe I’m Plugging MSNBC

    On the first night of the RNC convention, I caught snippets of their After Hours show with Ron Reagan and Joe Scarborough and quickly dismissed it because of Ron. I’ve caught more of it the last two nights and have been impressed by the balance and the often interesting contributions from their mixed panel. Check them out after Bush’s speech. By the way, I think Scarborough’s star is on the rise.

  • Missed the RNC Tonight …

    because of a late, lengthy dinner with my girlfriend and some of her visiting family. I’ll read the speeches later and may post something, but I wanted to blog a little flip-flop that I came across earlier.

    “When it comes to Iraq, it’s not that I would have done one thing differently, I would have done everything differently.”

    After hearing this earlier in a clip from Kerry’s speech at the American Legion national convention (screw the tradition of laying low during the opposition’s convention — that doesn’t apply to Kerry, just like the concept of not stabbing your fellow soldiers in the back while they’re still in the field to further your personal ambitions), I wandered over to the Kerry campaign site to see exactly what he’s claimed he would do differently.

    Unfortunately, my search was quickly derailed as I sat puzzling over this, the very beginning of his Iraq page:

    More than a year ago, President Bush stood on an aircraft carrier under a banner that proclaimed “mission accomplished.” But today we know that the mission is not accomplished, hostilities have not ended and our men and women in uniform stand almost alone with the target squarely on their backs.

    Our military performed brilliantly in the war’s first mission: ending the regime of Saddam Hussein.

    Mission accomplished?!! No, mission not accomplished!!! Well, a mission was accomplished, brilliantly even, but, well … crap. I don’t know. How can the Kerry campaign, in back-to-back sentences, manage to muddle what has been a major talking point of the shrill left?

    Kerry’s handlers have been inept. Kerry’s strategists have been inept. Kerry’s web writers are now inept. Kerry’s Secret Service agents have been inept on the slopes. Or are they all inept because of the empty suit they must support?

    Note: I needed to enter an email address to access Kerry’s site. Apparently, lookingforinfotopost@myblog.com worked just fine.

  • Swiftboat Vets Offer a Deal to Kerry

    … and there’s no way he can accept it.

    The following letter was delivered to the Kerry Campaign today by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

    Swift Boat Veterans for Truth
    P.O. Box 26184
    Alexandria, Virginia 22313

    August 31, 2004

    Senator John Kerry
    901 15th Street NW
    Washington, DC 20005

    Dear Senator Kerry:

    As you prepare for your address before the American Legion in Nashville, Tennessee, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth encourages you to use this opportunity to clarify your actions in Vietnam and your statements about your fellow Veterans and shipmates when you returned home. Since you have made your four-month tour in Vietnam the centerpiece of your campaign, we respectfully insist that you be truthful. The public is owed a full and honest accounting of your actions. Veterans are owed an apology from you and an acknowledgement that there was no basis in fact for the accusations you made against them.

    We urge you to:

    1. Apologize for your conduct once you returned from Vietnam. Your exaggerated testimony before the US Senate; the blanket indictment of your fellow veterans; throwing away medals and ribbons; all of these actions dishonored America and the armed forces. Your rhetoric and actions were not only wrong, they aided the enemy and brought great pain to POW’s, veterans and their families.

    2. Clarify the conflicting accounts involving the Bay Hap River incident of March 13, 1969 (Bronze Star and 3rd Purple Heart). You have now described three different versions of this incident. In the first version of this incident presented during the Democrat National Convention, you stated: “No man left behind,” suggesting to the American people that you alone stayed on the river to rescue Mr. Rassmann. Later, when forced to acknowledge conflicting eyewitness testimony from fellow swift boat veterans, you said that your boat left the scene to return moments later to retrieve Jim Rassmann from the water. Yet, in another version of the same incident discovered in the Congressional Record, you reported that your boat struck a mine and Rassmann fell off the boat. Mr. Kerry, please explain to your fellow veterans and the American people which version is the truth.

    3. Affirm that the injuries for which you received your purple hearts never required any medical treatment beyond perhaps a bandage and that, in all instances, these injuries were self-inflicted and came from your own weapon. Further, that if any of these purple hearts were falsely awarded, that you would not have been eligible to leave Vietnam after serving only four months.

    4. Acknowledge what your own biographer is now saying, that the Christmas in Cambodia claim is “obviously wrong,” that you were never in Cambodia over Christmas or any other time during your brief, four-month tour in Vietnam and that your statements before the United States Senate in 1986 were false.

    If you undertake these steps we will be satisfied that the American public has been sufficiently apprised as to these aspects of your career, and we will discontinue the media advertisements you have sought so fervently to silence.

    Please know that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are eager to close our own personal chapters on Vietnam and instead focus on the war we’re currently fighting — the ongoing war on terrorism. In the absence of full public disclosure and a public apology, we will continue efforts to carry our message to an ever-expanding base of grassroots supporters.

    Senator Kerry, we want to get Vietnam behind us. But, we can only do so if the truth is told.

    We respectfully await your reply.

    Sincerely,

    Swift Boat Veterans for Truth

    EDIT: I’ve been checking through my blogroll and I have yet to see a mention of this, even from The InstaMeister. Wow, thank you TexAgs. Of course, I’m sure I’m overlooking somebody.

  • Does Bush Hold All the Aces?

    Mark Steyn from the London Sunday Telegraph seems to think so.

    At the beginning of the year, Thomas Lifson, who was at Harvard Business School with George W Bush, made an interesting observation about the President. He notes that young George “was a very avid and skillful poker player” when he was a Business Administration student and that “one of the secrets of a successful poker player is to encourage your opponent to bet a lot of chips on a losing hand. This is a pattern of behavior one sees repeatedly in George W Bush’s political career”.

    Indeed one does. In the months following Mr Lifson’s observation, the President sat back, as John Kerry’s consultants, the Iowa caucus voters, the Democratic Party at large, and the media convinced themselves that the one card that trumps Bush’s leadership in the war on terror was Kerry’s four months in Vietnam, and bet everything on it. They have just lost that hand.

    Kerry is in seclusion, unable to expose himself to any but the most sycophantic interviewers, and getting whumped by hundreds upon hundreds of fellow Swift boat veterans, plus former POWs, plus retired admirals, over every aspect of his brief stay in the Mekong Delta.

    The Senator put his money on the wrong war. After a couple of entertaining weeks of the aggrieved Swiftees driving down his poll numbers in battleground states, it seems a shame to interrupt the implosion of the Kerry campaign for the Republican convention. But I’m sure the seared Senator is grateful for the intermission, and for the rest of us the next week affords a rare opportunity in this election campaign to catch up with the issues of the current millennium before the inept Kerry resumes bogging us down in his personal Vietnam quagmire again.

    While Steyn gives credit to the Swifties, he does not fall in lockstep with the Kerry campaign about their reasons.

    My sense is that the Swiftvets have changed the dynamics of the race. With the candidate’s retro braggadocio on ice for the foreseeable future, the Kerry campaign late on Friday revived that old favourite, the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, releasing a flow chart full of multi-coloured arrows showing that Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is a “close friend” of Merrie Spaeth, a public relations consultant to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Yawn.

    The fact is, even if Kerry was a Republican, these Swift boat guys would be hounding him. In a culture where “ABB” is now media shorthand for “Anyone But Bush”, you would think the press would recognise these fellows for what they are: the ABK constituency.

    Steyn then moves on to two key pillars of the Kerry (or more accurately anti-Bush) campaign — hatred and lies.

    Meanwhile, “Bush hatred” – another losing hand the Democrats put too many chips on – has peaked, and any saggy nudists or trust-fund anarchists who succeed in pulling off some camera-worthy stunt in Manhattan this week will only be boosting the President.

    “BUSH LIED!!!!!!” is likewise a bust, given generally non-damaging official reports on 9/11, Abu Ghraib, etc, and that it’s Kerry who’s having to modify his claims on an almost daily basis, whether over his secret Christmas mission to Cambodia (false) and the question of whether his first Purple Heart was improperly awarded for a self-inflicted wound (true). As for Iraq, ever since the transfer of sovereignty that’s all but off the radar.

    So unlike the touchy Kerry – threatening lawsuits, calling for bans and smearing his fellow vets as “Republican liars” – just by staying cool the President has let his many detractors exhaust the political capital of their obsessions.

    Steyn wraps up with a zinger for his London colleagues.

    So the most likely outcome this November is an increased Republican majority in the House, a couple of extra Senate seats, and a second term for Bush. I might be wrong. Anything is possible. But the reluctance of the British press to admit the possibility that Bush isn’t a loser suggests that they too have over-invested in John Kerry’s very weak hand.

    I don’t have the same confidence possessed by this opinion peice. While Steyn may be up to date with the facts, I don’t agree that the American public so surely is. Months of “Bush lied” followed by a few seconds of “Never mind.” Silence on the air and in newsprint about findings and facts behind the Swifties’ claims followed by attacks on their motives and support. I agree that Bush is holding aces, but even as he plays them, the mainstream media will still be focusing on the nuanced manner in which Kerry laid down his pair of threes.

  • Kerry Chooses Raising Taxes Over Funding War

    In his latest spinning of his vote against the $87 billion in funding for the troops and the Iraqi campaign, John Kerry said today that his nay vote was really against Bush’s tax cuts.

    President Bush says you can not negotiate with terrorists; they must be brought to justice. The president again criticized Senator Kerry for opposing an $87 billion supplemental appropriation for the U.S. military last year, saying American troops sent into battle must have the best equipment.

    Senator Kerry says he voted against that money because he wanted it to come from the president’s record tax cuts instead of adding to the federal deficit.

    This is stupid on so many levels. Does this mean that he actually voted for the tax cuts before he voted against them? A presidential candidate should never say he played politics while trying to withhold support from the troops and the war effort. This statement just begs to be publicized to the voters and those in uniform.

  • Christmas in Cambodia?

    A tip of the CVC to Captain’s Quarters for his repeated nailing of an apparent Kerry lie about his Viet Nam service here and here and here.

    The effect of the collapse of Kerry’s Cambodian Christmas should be devastating. It shows that Kerry repeatedly lied about the nature of his service in Viet Nam, destroying his credibility and bolstering that of the Swiftvets. It also casts a lot of doubt on Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony regarding widespread atrocities committed by American soldiers and Marines in the war and the complicity of US leadership. In fact, such blatantly false assertions and testimony undermine the confidence any reasonable person would have in Kerry’s entire character.

    Go and read Captain’s Quarters. Daily. At least.

  • International Team to Monitor Presidential Election

    Okay, I’ve been away all day so I’m probably late on any news I post. Will that stop me? Not gonna happen.

    It seems that the U.S. has asked for international observers for November’s presidential elections.

    The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was invited to monitor the election by the State Department. The observers will come from the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.

    It will be the first time such a team has been present for a U.S. presidential election.

    I heard about this on the radio and immediately knew I was going to post my opposition to this move. Ahh, but there’s one little tidbit that did not make the radio broadcast.

    “The U.S. is obliged to invite us, as all OSCE countries should,” spokeswoman Urdur Gunnarsdottir said. “It’s not legally binding, but it’s a political commitment. They signed a document 10 years ago to ask OSCE to observe elections.”

    ….

    OSCE, the world’s largest regional security organization, will send a preliminary mission to Washington in September to assess the size, scope, logistics and cost of the mission, Gunnarsdottir said.

    The organization, which counts among its missions conflict prevention and postconflict rehabilitation, will then determine how many observers are required and where in the United States they will be sent.

    “OSCE-participating [nations] agreed in 1990 to observe elections in one another’s countries. The OSCE routinely monitors elections within its 55-state membership, including Europe, Eurasia, Canada and the United States,” a State Department spokesman said.

    The spokesman said the United States does not have any details on the size and composition of the observers or what countries will provide them.

    OSCE, based in Vienna, Austria, has sent more than 10,000 personnel to monitor more than 150 elections and referenda in more than 30 countries during the past decade, Gunnarsdottir said.

    In November 2002, OSCE sent 10 observers on a weeklong mission to monitor the U.S. midterm elections. OSCE also sent observers to monitor the California gubernatorial recall election last year.

    So, it seems that their presence is not exactly unprecedented and, to some degree, demanded by our international agreements. I still disagree, but now I also disagree with our membership in an organization I admittedly had not heard of until today.

    The sad thing is that, for most of the members of this organization, I would wager that anything they know about free elections they learned from us. Also, for many of them, the main reasons they have free elections now is the valor of Americans in WWI and WWII and the courage and strength of Ronald Reagan.

  • Kerry Raps Bush on Initial 9/11 Inaction

    So, Kerry’s now wanting to politicize 9/11.

    “Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whisper in my ear that America is under attack, I would have told those kids very nicely and politely that the president of the United States has something that he needs to attend to,” Kerry said.

    A tip of the CVC to elgato at The Swanky Conservatve for his take on Kerry’s claims.

    Kerry’s just puffing his chest like a preening rooster. Mr. Tough Guy, indeed.

    Go read and get swanky.

  • Kerry Claims Bush Policies Encourage Terrorism

    Sorry, but I’m utterly aghast at this stupidity.

    John Kerry is now claiming that, by taking the fight to the terrorists sans the approval of Saddam’s French and German bankrollers, the policies of President Bush are feeding terrorism.

    Kerry repeated his argument that the Bush administration is encouraging the recruitment of terrorists. He said Bush hasn’t reached out to other countries and the Muslim community.

    “The policies of this administration, I believe and others believe very deeply, have resulted in an increase of animosity and anger focused on the United States of America,” Kerry told reporters after a campaign meeting with first responders. “The people who are training terror are using our actions as a means of recruitment.”

    Bush said, “It is a ridiculous notion to assert that, because the more the United States is on the offense, more people want to hurt us.”

    One simple response is all that is needed for this tripe: were the current Bush policies in place while the 9/11 attack was planned? No, we were operating at the time under the Clintonian policy of tit-for-tat. That is, tit means “you hit us” and tat equals “we chuck a cruise missile somewhere.”