Christmas In Cambodia: Kerry's Intellectual Laziness On Parade

One more thing about the Swiftvets and John Kerry that certainly indicates that Kerry habitually either exaggerated or lied about his service in Viet Nam appears in the letter posted below. John Kerry has repeatedly insisted that he spent Christmas Eve 1968 in Cambodia, which would have been an illegal act as we were not at war with Cambodia at that time. Kerry said his disillusion with the US government and the war began on this night, as he spent his night in Cambodia listening to President Richard Nixon claim that no American troops were there. Here's the relevant section of John O'Neill's letter:

If there is a consistent[1] repeated story by John Kerry about his Vietnam experience, it is his story about how he and his boat spent Christmas Eve and Christmas of 1968 illegally present in Cambodia and, listening to President Nixon's contrary assurances, developed "a deep mistrust of U.S. government pronouncements." See Exhibit 24, Kranish book, p. 84. The point of his story was that his government and his commanders were lying about Kerry's presence in Cambodia on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. During a critical debate on the floor of the United States Senate on March 27, 1986, Senator John Kerry said:

Mr. President, I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the President of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia.

I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me ....

Exhibit 25, Congressional Record - Senate of March 27, 1986, page 3594.

By way of further example, Kerry wrote an article for the Boston Herald on October 14, 1979:

"I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real."

See Exhibit 26.

The Christmas in Cambodia story of John Kerry was repeated as recently as July 7, 2004 by Michael Kranish, a principal biographer of Kerry from The Boston Globe. On the Hannity & Colmes television show, Kranish indicated that Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia was a critical turning point in Kerry's life.

The story is a total preposterous fabrication by Kerry. Exhibit 8 is an affidavit by the Commander of the Swift boats in Vietnam, Admiral Roy Hoffmann, stating that Kerry's claim to be in Cambodia for Christmas Eve and Christmas of 1968 is a total lie. If necessary, similar affidavits are available from the entire chain of command. In reality, Kerry was at Sa Dec -- easily locatable on any map more than fifty miles from Cambodia. Kerry himself inadvertently admits that he was in Sa Dec for Christmas Eve and Christmas and not in Cambodia, as he had stated for so many years on the Senate Floor, in the newspapers, and elsewhere. Exhibit 27, Tour, pp. 213-219. Sa Dec is hardly "close" to the Cambodian border. In reality, far from being ordered secretly to Cambodia, Kerry spent a pleasant night at Sa Dec with "visions of sugar plums" dancing in his head. Exhibit 27, p. 219. At Sa Dec where the Swift boat patrol area ended, there were many miles of other boats (PBR's) leading to the Cambodian border. There were also gunboats on the border to prevent any crossing. If Kerry tried to get through, he would have been arrested. Obviously, Kerry has hardly been honest about his service in Vietnam.

Here's a fun fact for those who think that Kerry told the truth and the Swiftvets are just dishonorable (and highly decorated) veterans trying to grab some attention to themselves -- Nixon wasn't President in 1968. Sure, he'd been elected in November, but he didn't take office until 1969, and it would be highly unlikely that Nixon would have been pontificating about military deployments over which he had no control. Nixon hadn't even been in government for eight years.

For over 30 years, Kerry has told that story, apparently far too intellectually lazy or simply stupid to cross-reference an encyclopedia in order to identify the occupant of the White House in 1968. And Democrats call George Bush stupid?

The Swifties Fire Back

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have hired their own lawyers in response to the Kerry/Edwards campaign's threat of ruinous lawsuits for anyone who allows the independent 527 to purchase ad time at their media outlet. For some reason, the Democrats seem to have a problem with the actual practice of free speech, even after having their party chairman, Terry McAuliffe, call George Bush a deserter and John Kerry question the quality of his National Guard service. When the shoe moves to the other foot, suddenly the Democrats switch from "Bring It On" to "We'll Sue You Into Silence," quite a difference in tone.

Does America need a President this pusillanimous? At least now we understand the reason Kerry selected John Edwards as his vice-president. I suppose that we can expect trial attorneys to attack anyone who dares criticize John Kerry during a Kerry administration, only those trial attorneys will work for the legal offices of the FBI and US Attorneys General.

At any rate, the Swifties intend to stand their ground, showing a bit more character than anyone at the Kerry/Edwards campaign. I've been forwarded a copy of their legal team's response to Kerry's extortionate threats that they have sent to media outlets in which they've made their ad buys. I'm posting the letter below, placing most of it in the extended entry. I think it aptly demonstrates the specificity of the recollections of more than 200 men who have nothing to gain and everything to lose by coming forward -- except for setting the record straight.

They've made a convert out of me.

UPDATE, 8/8: Big thanks to Instapundit and Power Line for their links this morning. Not so incidentally, it was Rocket Man who pointed out to me the Nixon inconsistency of Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia fantasy.

UPDATE II: Also, welcome to readers from Lucianne and The Corner!

Dear Station Manager:

The purpose of this letter is to present some of the factual support for the advertisement "Any Questions?" produced and used by Swift Boat Veterans For Truth ("Swiftvets"), an organization properly registered under Internal Revenue Code § 527, and which has filed all required reports. Swiftvets is an organization led by Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, USN (retired), Commander of all Swift boats in Vietnam during the period of John Kerry's four-month abbreviated tour in Swift boats between late November 1968 and mid-March 1969. A list of the 254 members may be found on www.swiftvets.com. A large majority of those who served with John Kerry in Swift boats in Vietnam and whose location is known have joined the organization. Thus, for example, sixteen of the twenty-three surviving officers who served in Coastal Division 11 with Kerry (the place where Kerry spent most of his time) have joined the organization, together with most of Kerry's Vietnam commanders and 254 sailors from Coastal Squadron One, ranging from Vice-Admirals to Seamen.

The purpose of Swiftvets is to present the truth about John Kerry's post-Vietnam charges of war crimes and John Kerry's own Vietnam record. Swiftvets is uniquely positioned to do so since it includes most of the locatable sailors and officers who served with John Kerry in Vietnam.

John Kerry has made his Vietnam record the central focus of his presidential candidacy, depicting purported Vietnam events in nearly $100 million in advertising. Copies of ads such as "Lifetime" and "No Man Left Behind" may be found on Kerry's website. Kerry's authorized campaign biography, Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, by Douglas Brinkley (New York: HarperCollins, 2004) ("Tour"), centers on his short Vietnam tour and contains Kerry's account of these events. Additional accounts by Kerry of his Vietnam experience may be found on his website.

The Advertisement

A true and correct transcript of the advertisement entitled "Any Questions?" is attached as Exhibit 1. Affidavits are attached (as Exhibits 2 through 14) from each participant in the advertisement, except from John Edwards, the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, whose often-repeated invitation to learn about John Kerry by speaking to the men who served with him begins the advertisement. The filmed comment of Senator Edwards has been made so many times as to be general knowledge.

As described in the attached affidavits, Al French (Exhibit 2), Bob Elder (Exhibit 3), Jack Chenoweth (Exhibit 7), Larry Thurlow (Exhibit 10), and Bob Hildreth (Exhibit 14) were all officers in charge of Swift boats in Vietnam in Coastal Division 11 with John Kerry. Coastal Division 11 was a small naval unit with about one hundred sailors and fifteen or sixteen boats which operated in groups of two to six boats. Each of these boat officers operated directly with John Kerry on numerous occasions. Van Odell (Exhibit 6) is a retired Navy enlisted man who also served in Coastal Division 11 on the Chenoweth boat, a few yards from John Kerry during Kerry's March 13, 1969 Bronze Star action.

Captain George Elliott, USN (retired), (Exhibit 4) was John Kerry's direct commander in Coastal Division 11, while Captain Adrian Lonsdale, USCG (retired), (Exhibit 9) was Kerry's administrative commander. Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, USN (retired), (Exhibit 8) commanded all Swift boats (including Kerry's) in Vietnam. Each of these commanders interacted on numerous occasions with Kerry and, for example, are discussed for many pages in Kerry's own authorized book, Tour.

Dr. Louis Letson (Exhibit 5) was the doctor in Cam Rahn Bay who treated Kerry's first Purple Heart "wound," while Commander Grant Hibbard (Exhibit 11) was John Kerry's commander at Coastal Division 14 where Kerry claimed to have suffered the wound. Finally, Joe Ponder (Exhibit 13) and Shelton White (Exhibit 12) are veterans of Coastal Division 11 who were badly wounded near the Song Bo De River where Kerry served most of his short tour.

The Kerry campaign has utilized a revolving group of eight veterans from Coastal Division 11 (none of whom served with Kerry as much as two months). In stark contrast to this small stable of supporters, the veterans on "Any Questions?" have intimate knowledge of John Kerry or (in the case of Ponder and White) of the falsehood and injury of his false war crimes charges. Although many more of the over 250 signers of the Swiftvets' letter served directly with John Kerry, it would be hard to locate people with more detailed and first-hand knowledge of John Kerry's short Vietnam stay than those in the advertisement. They are well-suited to respond with first-hand knowledge to Edward's invitation. Their sworn affidavits are attached (in order of appearance in the advertisement) as Exhibits 2 through 14.

Kerry's obtaining of three Purple Hearts permitted him to leave Vietnam some 243 days short of the normal one-year tour. See Exhibit 20, Thrice Wounded Reassignment. Whether or not he fraudulently obtained these awards (the Purple Heart being among the most sacred of all awards) is critical to his true Vietnam story.

A. March 13, 1969: "No Man Left Behind" Incident

Attached as Exhibit 15 is Kerry's account of "no man left behind" where, in Tour of Duty, Kerry repeats his now-familiar story of returning, wounded by an underwater mine, to recover a Special Forces soldier, Jim Rassman, in a hail of fire pulling Rassman from the water with his bleeding arm. Tour, at 313-17. The story of Kerry's return to save Rassman, under fire and wounded from the mine, has been told in many millions of dollars of Kerry advertising. See Kerry website; see also, e.g., Kerry's full-page advertisement in The New York Times, which is attached as Exhibit 16.

Kerry's after-action report for that day is featured on his website. See Exhibit 17. KJW identifies the report as Kerry's. Likewise, Kerry reported his shrapnel wounds to the Navy in an injury report:

"LTJG Kerry suffered shrapnel wounds in his left buttocks and contusions on his right forearm when a mine detonated close aboard PCF-94."

Exhibit 18. Exhibit 17 likewise identifies Kerry's "injuries" as contusion right forearm (minor) (i.e., a small bruise) and a shrapnel wound left buttocks.

The regulations for the Purple Heart are attached as Exhibit 19 and, of course, exclude accidental injury and self-inflicted wounds (except non-negligent wounds in the heat of battle). Although Kerry's "minor" bruise could never entitle him to a Purple Heart, Kerry's reported shrapnel wound to his "buttocks" (although minor according to the treating physician) from an enemy mine would have entitled him to such an award (had he not been lying about its origin). Receiving the third Purple Heart, within three days Kerry had requested reassignment from Vietnam on the basis of three Purple Hearts -- some 243 days early. See Exhibit 20.

(i) The Purple Heart Lie

Kerry's third Purple Heart was his ticket home. It also was much of the basis of his Bronze Star, repeating "his bleeding arm" and shrapnel wound from the mine story. The problem is that his operating report was a total lie since Kerry's shrapnel wound "in the buttocks" came not from a mine at all as he falsely reported, but at his own hand. Larry Thurlow, an officer on shore with Kerry that day, recounts that Kerry's shrapnel wound came not from any mine, but from a self-inflicted wound when Kerry (with no enemy to be seen) threw a concussion grenade into a rice pile and stayed too close. See Exhibit 10, ¶ 3. This "brown rice" incident with rice/shrapnel lodged in Kerry from his own grenade is also recounted by James Rassman, a Kerry supporter and "the no man left behind" on page 105 of John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography By The Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best, by Michael Kranish, Brian C. Mooney, and Nina J. Easton (New York: Public Affairs, 2004) (the "Kranish book"). See Exhibit 21.

Most surprisingly, John Kerry himself (while falsely reporting to the Navy and public that he suffered a shrapnel wound from a mine explosion so as to get a third Purple Heart and go home) reflected in his own journal that his buttocks' wound came, not from any mine but, rather, from a grenade tossed into a rice cache by himself or friendly troops (in the absence of any enemy fire). "I got a piece of small grenade in my ass from one of the rice bin explosions." Exhibit 15, Tour, at 313; see also Exhibit 15, Tour, at 317. "Kerry . . . also had the bits of shrapnel and rice extracted from his backside." See also the sworn statement of participants that there was no hostile fire (Exhibits 6, 7, and 10). It also should be noted that the rice extracted from Kerry's backside could hardly be the result of an underwater mine, as Kerry claimed in his operating report.

The conclusion is inescapable: that Kerry lied by reporting to the Navy that he had been wounded by shrapnel in his backside from an enemy mine when in reality he negligently wounded himself and then lied about the wound in order to secure a third Purple Heart and a quick trip home.

(ii) The Bronze Star Lie

As recounted in the attached affidavits of three on-scene participants (and verified by many others present) Kerry's operating report, Bronze Star story, and subsequent "no man left behind" story are a total hoax on the Navy and the nation. As recounted in the affidavits of Van Odell (Exhibit 6), Jack Chenoweth (Exhibit 7), and Larry Thurlow (Exhibit 10) (and verified by every other officer present and many others), a mine went off under PCF 3 -- some yards from Kerry's boat. The force of the explosion disabled PCF 3 and knocked several sailors, dazed, into the water. All boats, except one, closed to rescue the sailors and defend the disabled boat. That boat -- Kerry's boat -- fled the scene. After a short period, it was evident to all on the scene that there was no additional hostile fire. Thurlow began the daring rescue of disabled PCF 3, while Chenoweth began to pluck dazed survivors of PCF 3 from the water. Midway through the process, after it was apparent that there was no hostile fire, Kerry finally returned, picking up Rassman who was only a few yards from Chenoweth's boat which was also going to pick Rassman up. Each of the affiants (and many other Swiftees on the scene that day) are certain that Kerry has wholly lied about the incident. Consider this: How could the disabled PCF abandon the scene of the mine? Why did Kerry have to "return" to the scene?

Kerry's account of this action, which was used to secure the Bronze Star and a third Purple Heart, is an extraordinary example of fraud. Kerry describes "boats rcd heavy A/W and S/A from both banks. Fire continued for about 5000 meters." Exhibit 17. In other words, the boats went through a double gauntlet at about 50 yards distance that was 3.2 miles long (comparable to Seminary Ridge at Gettysburg on two sides), and yet none of the other boats within feet of Kerry's boat heard a shot or suffered an injury after the PCF 3 mine explosion, except for John Kerry's buttocks rice wound of earlier origin.

Clearly, Van Odell is right when he says, "John Kerry lied to get his Bronze Star . . . I know. I was there. I saw what happened." As Jack Chenoweth swore, "his account of what happened and what actually happened are the difference between night and day." Most poignantly, Larry Thurlow, whose brave actions saved the PCF 3 boat that day after Kerry fled, has the right to say, "When the chips were down, you could not count on John Kerry."

B. December 2, 1968 Purple Heart

On February 28, 1969, John Kerry received his first Purple Heart for an incident three months earlier, on or about December 2, 1968. Kerry's account of the incident is contained in Tour of Duty, pages 147 and 148 (Exhibit 23). Kerry claims to have been with two crewmen, Zaldonis and Runyon. See Exhibit 23. Neither Kerry, Zaldonis, nor Runyon claim to have seen any hostile fire. See Exhibit 24 (Kranish book, pp. 72-73). A Purple Heart cannot be given for a self-inflicted wound under the attached regulations.

Unmentioned in Kerry's Tour Of Duty version are the actual surrounding facts. Kerry, Lieutenant William Schachte, USN, and an enlisted man were on the whaler. Seeing movement from an unknown source, the sailors opened fire on the movement. There was no hostile fire. When Kerry's rifle jammed, he picked up an M-79 grenade launcher and fired a grenade at a nearby object. This sprayed the boat with shrapnel from Kerry's own grenade, a tiny piece of which embedded in Kerry's arm.

Kerry managed to keep the tiny fragment embedded until he saw Dr. Louis Letson. Dr. Letson's affidavit is attached as Exhibit 5. When Letson inquired why Kerry was there, Kerry said that he had been wounded by hostile fire. The accompanying crewmen indicated that Kerry was the new "JFK" and that he had actually wounded himself with an M-79. Letson removed the tiny fragment with tweezers and placed a band aid over the tiny scratch. The tiny fragment removed by Letson appeared to be an M-79 fragment, as described by the personnel accompanying Kerry.

The next morning Kerry showed up at Division Commander Grant Hibbard's office. Hibbard had already spoken to Schachte and conducted an investigation. Hibbard's affidavit is attached as Exhibit 11. Hibbard's investigation revealed that Kerry's "rose thorn" scratch had been self-inflicted in the absence of hostile fire. Hibbard, therefore, booted Kerry out of his office and denied the Purple Heart.

Some three months later, cf. Exhibit 22, after all personnel actually familiar with the events of December 2, 1969 had left Vietnam, Kerry somehow managed to obtain a Purple Heart for the December 2, 1968 event from an officer with no connection to Coastal Division 14 or knowledge of the December 2, 1968 event or of Commander Hibbard's prior turn down of the Purple Heart request. All normal documentation supporting a Purple Heart is missing. There is absolutely no casualty report (i.e., spot report) or hostile fire report or after-action report in the Navy's files to support this "Purple Heart" because there was no casualty, hostile fire, or action on which to report. The sole document relied upon by Kerry is a record showing the band aid and tweezers treatment by Dr. Letson recorded by deceased corpsman, Jess Carreon.

There are no witnesses who claim to have seen hostile fire -- necessary for a Purple Heart (even a rose thorn Purple Heart) -- that day. At least three witnesses, Dr. Letson (who spoke to the participants and removed the M-79 fragment), Lt. Bill Schachte (on the boat), and Cmdr. Grant Hibbard (whose investigation revealed Kerry's application for a Purple Heart to be fraudulent), are able to testify directly or based upon contemporaneous investigation that Kerry's first Purple Heart was a fraud. Thus, Lewis Letson's statement that "I know John Kerry is lying about a first Purple Heart" is conclusively established by the evidence. Like the third Purple Heart, Kerry's first Purple Heart was essential to his quick trip home.

C. Christmas In Cambodia

If there is a consistent[1] repeated story by John Kerry about his Vietnam experience, it is his story about how he and his boat spent Christmas Eve and Christmas of 1968 illegally present in Cambodia and, listening to President Nixon's contrary assurances, developed "a deep mistrust of U.S. government pronouncements." See Exhibit 24, Kranish book, p. 84. The point of his story was that his government and his commanders were lying about Kerry's presence in Cambodia on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. During a critical debate on the floor of the United States Senate on March 27, 1986, Senator John Kerry said:

Mr. President, I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the President of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia.

I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me . . . .

Exhibit 25, Congressional Record - Senate of March 27, 1986, page 3594.

By way of further example, Kerry wrote an article for the Boston Herald on October 14, 1979:

"I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real."

See Exhibit 26.

The Christmas in Cambodia story of John Kerry was repeated as recently as July 7, 2004 by Michael Kranish, a principal biographer of Kerry from The Boston Globe. On the Hannity & Colmes television show, Kranish indicated that Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia was a critical turning point in Kerry's life.

The story is a total preposterous fabrication by Kerry. Exhibit 8 is an affidavit by the Commander of the Swift boats in Vietnam, Admiral Roy Hoffmann, stating that Kerry's claim to be in Cambodia for Christmas Eve and Christmas of 1968 is a total lie. If necessary, similar affidavits are available from the entire chain of command. In reality, Kerry was at Sa Dec -- easily locatable on any map more than fifty miles from Cambodia. Kerry himself inadvertently admits that he was in Sa Dec for Christmas Eve and Christmas and not in Cambodia, as he had stated for so many years on the Senate Floor, in the newspapers, and elsewhere. Exhibit 27, Tour, pp. 213-219. Sa Dec is hardly "close" to the Cambodian border. In reality, far from being ordered secretly to Cambodia, Kerry spent a pleasant night at Sa Dec with "visions of sugar plums" dancing in his head. Exhibit 27, p. 219. At Sa Dec where the Swift boat patrol area ended, there were many miles of other boats (PBR's) leading to the Cambodian border. There were also gunboats on the border to prevent any crossing. If Kerry tried to get through, he would have been arrested. Obviously, Kerry has hardly been honest about his service in Vietnam.

D. War Crimes

Returning to the United States, Kerry made speeches charging that U.S. forces in Vietnam were "like the army of Genghis Khan," that "crimes were committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of all levels of command," and that our officers in Coastal Division were like Lieutenant Calley. Kerry met on least two occasions with the North Vietnamese in Paris and is, in fact, honored as a hero in the war museum in Ho Chi Minh City. See pictures on WinterSoldier.com and SwiftVets.com. Joe Ponder is a widely quoted disabled vet from Coastal Division 11 who saw no war crimes but knows that Kerry dishonored our unit. Exhibit 13. Shelton White, a badly wounded Coastal Division 11 veteran, likewise saw no war crimes and remembers Kerry's betrayal. Exhibit 12.

Conclusion

As set forth at length, there is not only a reasonable factual basis for the statements in the ad; they are virtually conclusively established by the documentation.

Thank you for your kind consideration. Please do not hesitate to call me if you have any questions.
Very truly yours,

Original signed by John E. O'Neill

The Mistake Continues

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have finally unveiled their campaign against John Kerry this week, first in a 30-second televised ad, and now in a new book that's vaulted to #1 on the Amazon hit parade, according to Matt Drudge. Where the TV spot talks in general terms about Kerry's record in Viet Nam (with the effective use of highly-decorated vets who were there), the book takes specific aim at Kerry's narrative:

George Bates, an officer in Coastal Division 11, participated in numerous operations with Kerry. In UNFIT FOR COMMAND, Bates recalls a particular patrol with Kerry on the Song Bo De River. He is still "haunted" by the incident:

With Kerry in the lead, the boats approached a small hamlet with three or four grass huts. Pigs and chickens were milling around peacefully. As the boats drew closer, the villagers fled. There were no political symbols or flags in evidence in the tiny village. It was obvious to Bates that existing policies, decency, and good sense required the boats to simply move on.

Instead, Kerry beached his boat directly in the small settlement. Upon his command, the numerous small animals were slaughtered by heavy-caliber machine guns. Acting more like a pirate than a naval officer, Kerry disembarked and ran around with a Zippo lighter, burning up the entire hamlet.

Kerry did more than just slaughter pigs and burn down village huts, both crimes under the UCMJ, as another anecdote makes clear:

O'Neill continues: "Kerry's boat moved slightly downstream and was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade. . . .A young Viet Cong in a loincloth popped out of a hole, clutching a grenade launcher, which may or may not have been loaded. . . Tom Belodeau, a forward gunner, shot the Viet Cong with an M-60 machine gun in the leg as he fled. . . . Kerry and Medeiros (who had many troops in their boat) took off, perhaps with others, and followed the young Viet Cong and shot him in the back, behind a lean to."

O'Neill concludes "Whether Kerry's dispatching of a fleeing, wounded, armed or unarmed teenage enemy was in accordance with the customs of war, it is very clear that many Vietnam veterans and most Swiftees do not consider this action to be the stuff of which medals of any kind are awarded; nor would it even be a good story if told in the cold details of reality. There is no indication that Kerry ever reported that the Viet Cong was wounded and fleeing when dispatched. Likewise, the citation simply ignores the presence of the soldiers and advisors who actually 'captured the enemy weapons' and routed the Viet Cong. . . . [and] that Kerry attacked a 'numerically superior force in the face of intense fire' is simply false. There was little or no fire after Kerry followed the plan. . . . The lone, wounded, fleeing young Viet Cong in a loincloth was hardly a force superior to the heavily armed Swift Boat and its crew and the soldiers carried aboard."

Unfit For Command contains highly incendiary material, the type of information that can burn both target and thrower. I don't know how much of this is true -- I suspect at least some of it, and I think what we'll get is two sets of veterans duking it out over the specific charges over the next month or so, until the Republican convention rolls around and drowns the argument out.

I odn't have a problem with the Swifties making their case; they have a right to speak out, and having served in combat, have more privilege to do so than I or others can. They obviously feel very passionately about Kerry, especially given his public renunciation of them in front of the Senate in 1971, which they blame in part for their post-service treatment. Kerry's campaign called it the worst dirty trick in presidential politics, although all that shows is the Democrats' poor understanding of history. It's certainly no worse than implying that George Bush somehow endorsed the dragging lynching of James Byrd, and in this case the Swifties are focused on Kerry's actual actions, not some weird line drawn between a presidential candidate and the crimes of mouthbreathing bigots.

My issue with this campaign is that it will not be effective, and in fact will be counterproductive. I agree with people that Kerry brought this on himself. The only thing Kerry has highlighted in his campaign is his four months of in-country service on the swift boat. If that's all that Kerry will ever talk about, then I agree that he has made the quality of that service fair game for debate. It's hardly a dirty trick for the Republicans to question Kerry's performance during those four monthe after Democrats called George Bush a deserter and contrasted his service in the TANG with Kerry's in Viet Nam.

Nevertheless, as an issue, it's a loser -- and worse, it will damage Bush more than Kerry.

First, the Swifties make the mistake of thinking that Kerry's service is admired on the left. It's not. It's only used in order to answer George Bush's leadership after 9/11, because it's the only thing Kerry has that approaches executive experience. Most of Kerry's supporters will not be shocked to hear that he burned down villages, shot small animals, and killed a young VC who was running away from him (and my reaction to that is "So what?"). Most of Kerry's support thinks that most Viet Nam veterans did much the same thing. Why? Because Kerry told them they did, 33 years ago. In all truth, the Left will receive this new information with a huge yawn.

Well, one might argue, this will increase support for Bush among swing voters. Possibly, but unlikely. Swing voters have routinely discounted both Kerry's Viet Nam experience and the TANG questions about Bush, preferring to focus on more current events. Kerry's final night at the convention found him surrounded by veterans, with numerous references to his service, and a big flag to which he constantly referred. And what happened? His numbers dropped.

All this campaign does is generate sympathy for Kerry among all but the most partisan observers. Fence-sitting veterans who have lived through the fog of combat may well remember some incidents of their own when they acted inappropriately or just not to their own expectations and might be inclined to feel sorry for Kerry, having all of this dragged up almost four decades after it happened. Those who have not served in combat or at all, like myself, will only be reminded that Kerry did. Others will feel the natural sympathy that goes out to someone who is under attack, especially if the attack is overwhelming. In short, the Swifties may well do what Kerry himself obviously cannot: touch a chord of empathy among a significant chunk of the electorate.

I have said all along that the Swifties should focus their fire on Kerry's post-Viet Nam activities, which lend themselves to much scrutiny. His speech to the Senate, condemning all veterans as war criminals and accusing the US of prosecuting a war of annihilation, would make a great start. Getting more of the story behind the Phoenix Project, in which his organization debated the assassinations of eight US senators, would make much more sense, since at the time, Kerry was launching his political career. It's where the Swifties really have their beef with him anyway; he may not have been loved in Viet Nam, but he didn't give them much reason to hate him until he returned.

Do the Swifties have the right to question Kerry's performance in combat? Sure. That doesn't mean they're right to do so, and more importantly, it doesn't mean they'll get the results they desire. Be prepared for the backfire.

UPDATE, 8/7 AND BUMP: I've been more swayed by the debate on this thread than I thought I would be. If you get a chance to listen to a replay of our Northern Alliance Radio Network, you'll hear me launch a counterattack on a caller at the end of the first half-hour. I believe we'll have the show replayed starting Monday at 9 am at this streaming link.

Keep the debate humming -- this has been fascinating, and actually well argued on both sides.

Northern Alliance Streaming Again Today .... Only Better!

Our Northern Alliance Radio Network will be streaming again to the world this afternoon, noon to 3 PM CT, at this link (requires Microsoft IE). Last week's issues have been resolved -- we hope -- and we're back in the studio again for today's show. Be sure to tune us in at the link and let us know what you think!

Bush To Kerry: Make Up Your Mind On Terror Fight

George Bush struck all the right notes in his campaign appearance yesterday in New Hampshire, a state in which he and John Kerry remain deadlocked. In addressing the crowd about removing Saddam Hussein from power, Bush challenged Kerry to make up his mind about the fight against terrorism instead of trying to have it both ways:

President Bush challenged Democratic rival John Kerry on Friday to give a yes-or-no answer about whether he would have supported the invasion of Iraq "knowing what we know now" about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.

"I have given my answer," Bush told a cheering crowd. "We did the right thing and the world is better off for it." ...

Bush also said Kerry's criticism of his Iraq policies merely shows the Democrat doesn't understand who America is up against.

"My opponent said something the other day I strongly disagree with - he said that going to war with a terrorist is actually improving their recruiting efforts," Bush said, referring to a remark Kerry made Monday. "Now, that's upside-down logic," Bush said. "It shows a misunderstanding of the enemy."

Anti-American forces were training in the 1990s, Bush said. "They don't need an excuse for their hatred, and it is wrong to blame America for the anger and evil of the killers. We don't create terrorists by fighting back. We defeat the terrorists by fighting back," he said.

Expect Bush to hammer Kerry on the quality of executive leadership in the coming months. Yesterday, when asked if Kerry would have invaded Iraq had Saddam refused to disarm -- as if that were a new question in 2003! -- Kerry had this to say:

"You bet we might have," Kerry said...

You bet we might have? Way to project strength and decisiveness, Senator Kerry! Hey, Saddam had only been refusing to verifiably disarm for a mere twelve years, so what's the rush? Just because we suddenly found ourselves in a war and had this mad idiot refusing to obey terms of the Gulf War cease-fire and supporting terrorists, that's no reason to take action -- not without giving him a couple of more years to comply, and tie down our armed forces in the region while we watch him pass along whatever technology he has to our enemies. After a couple of more years, Kerry might have actually done something about it. I assume his qualification would be the ever-important UN agreement to use force, if Kerry felt like asking.

This theme is a winner. Bush should ride this all the way to November.

The Democrats' Idea Of "Religious Outreach": Shut Up About God

The director of the Democratic Party's two-week-old effort at "religious outreach" resigned yesterday in an effort to quell mounting criticism at her selection after filing an amicus brief supporting the removal of the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance:

The director of religious outreach for the Democratic Party says she resigned this week because of criticism over her support for removing the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.

The Democratic National Committee is seeking a replacement for the Rev. Brenda Bartella Peterson, who resigned Wednesday after serving less than two weeks in the newly created position. DNC spokesman Jano Cabrera said the party had nothing more to add to her resignation statement. ...

On Wednesday, Peterson resigned and cited "recent negative publicity" from the amicus brief in the pledge case that she and 31 other members of the clergy signed.

Tone-deafness abounds at the DNC. Did they think that Rev. Peterson represented mainstream Christian thinking? Perhaps trapped in their echo chamber, they actually did. However, religious Christians, both conservative and liberal, remain concerned about efforts to drive their religion from the public square. While some may not place a large emphasis on the Pledge issue -- I think it's really rather minor -- having someone who actively worked to have it struck down by judicial decree confirms the worst fears about Democratic activism against public religious expression. Selecting a clergyperson who thinks that Christians will be happy to disavow God reveals a complete lack of understanding about Christians, their concerns, and their viewpoint.

It's a measure of how far left the Democrats have gone over the last election cycle. The radicals are truly in charge -- which may explain why they keep insisting that John Kerry, despite his outlier Senate record, is a centrist. That could only be true of a group that observes politics from the International ANSWER/Deaniac perspective.

Beheading Video A Hoax From Wannabe Frisco Pol

The AP reports on a piece of human effluvia that produced a video of himself being beheaded in order to deliberately hoax the world into thinking that Islamofascists has brutally murdered another hostage. Why? To protest Islamofascism? No. To protest the war? No.

Surely it couldn't be just to get himself some world attention? BINGO! And guess where he lives:

The American, Benjamin Vanderford, reached by The Associated Press in San Francisco, said he videotaped the staged beheading at his friend's house using fake blood.

Vanderford, 22, said he began distributing the video on the Internet months ago in hopes of drawing attention to his one-time campaign for city supervisor. When his political aspirations waned, he thought the video would serve as social commentary.

"It was part of a stunt, but no one noticed it up until now," Vanderford said. "I did this for a couple of reasons. One is to attract attention. But two is to just make a statement on these type of videos and how easily they can be faked."

Vanderford strikes me as something of a sociopath -- someone who thinks that no one else except himself really exists and that the highest calling in life is to manipulate as many people as possible. How much time was wasted by intelligence services trying to run this down that could have been spent elsewhere? Did we put off checking on good information just to run this hoax to ground? I can only imagine what the families of real Islamofascist beheadings must be feeling when they hear this story, something Vanderford doesn't even address in his casual, shirtless explanation to the AP.

I'm surprised that the people of San Francisco didn't elect this guy, who must have lost only because stranger candidates were on the ballot or a rare bout of lucidity struck Bay Area residents on Election Day. Even at that, Vanderford will likely be hailed as a performance artist by a subset of lunatics that exist in the Frisco area, or a hero of the First Amendment. Perhaps he'll be invited to International ANSWER rallies to appear with Michael Berg. God help us, in that region, Benjamin Vanderford may actually get elected to something now, an example of a new breed of bleeding-heart leftist: the heartless variety.

Hope he enjoys his notoriety. It's all he's got.

UPDATE: Reuters continues with some background on Candidate Vanderford, aka MeMeMeMeMeMe:

Vanderford's Web site identifies him as a 22-year-old independent candidate for district supervisor in San Francisco. He is also a musician and video-game programer.

His political manifesto on the Web site addresses local issues such as tenants' rights, the homeless and government transparency, with no mention of Iraq.

A musician and a video-game programmer who ran for public office and produces fake snuff films to get attention. Doesn't that just complete the picture of young American self-indulgence?

UPDATE II: Reuters updates its story with a quote from Mama Vanderford:

"It's a hoax," Theresa Vanderford, mother of Ben Vanderford 22, said from her San Francisco area home. "He's very computer savvy and stuff."

Yeah. He's also a soulless jerk ... and stuff.

Bush Approval Numbers Trending Upwards: Rasmussen

Rasmussen reports in its daily tracking poll that George Bush's approval numbers have risen to their highest point since before the Democratic convention, showing a remarkable resiliency and the ineffectiveness of the rehashed attacks on display at Fleet Center last week:

Fifty-three percent (53%) of American voters say they approve of the way George W. Bush is performing his role as President. Another 46% disapprove.

The past three days represent the President's highest ratings since the Democratic National Convention began. In fact, today's reading is the highest in over a month. Bush has reached the 53% Approval level just three times since mid-May.

Among those who work in the private sector, 58% give the President their Approval. Just 49% of government employees do the same. Among those who are retired, Bush earns a 51% Approval rating.

As one might expect, Bush's approval rating dropped for a period of time after the close of the convention -- by a point, and only for three days. After that, Bush has rebounded to his best numbers since late winter, and even when it dropped, it never went below 50%.

While the head-to-head numbers have not changed -- Kerry remains ahead but inside the margin of error -- one other question should give the Kerry campaign some nightmares, considering Kerry's emphasis today on NPR on getting out of Iraq as quickly as possible. A majority of those polled feel that stabilizing Iraq as a free and democratic country is more important than bringing American troops home, 51%-39%. That twelve-point gap will loom large as the Democrats continue to advocate a cut-and-run strategy.

The Secret Plan Improved Over The Past Week

John Kerry must have made major improvements in the past week in his secret plan to end the war. This morning, he told NPR that the Kerry/Edwards plan would "significantly reduce" American forces in Iraq within one year, rather than the four years he claimed as late as last weekend:

On Iraq, Kerry lays out his plan to ease U.S. military involvement by increasing international involvement and appointing a high commissioner to act as a liaison with Iraq.

"I believe that within a year from now we can significantly reduce American forces in Iraq," Kerry tells Inskeep.

Edwards adds that Kerry's proposal to create a "fresh start" has the capacity "to convert this from an American occupation to an international presence helping the Iraqis provide for their own security."

The NPR report does not report if Kerry provided any additional details on this plan, nor does it explain how he improved it 75% over the past few days. However, it does explain how Kerry envisions this plan and its implementation. Unfortunately for Kerry, it appears to be exactly what Bush has already done!

1. Increase international involvement -- well, Bush got the UNSC to unanimously endorse the occupation and the interim government. He has 31 nations involved in Iraq now. He's working with Muslim nations to provide security to the ever-courageous UN mission that bugged out a year ago, and possibly with Russia. If Kerry thinks he can get significant troop contributions from France and Germany -- in election years -- he's out of his mind.

2. Appoint a "high commissioner" to work with Iraq -- That was Paul Bremer. Now we have an ambassador to the sovereign government to Iraq. I doubt that Iraq perceives itself to need an American "high commissioner" to tell them what to do.

3. Convert security forces from American to Iraqi -- No kidding. It's exactly what we have already been doing, and to that end involving NATO in training the new Iraqi security forces.

So, kids, that's apparently the "secret" plan -- do everything that George Bush did, except with better hair. Kerry underscored the irony of his vacuousity by finishing with this trite campaign slogan:

"This president rushed to war without a plan to win the peace," Kerry says of his rival for the White House.

If so, it's interesting that with much more time and the benefit of hindsight, the only difference that Kerry has suggested in his "secret" plan is to change the last name of the guy running it. Once again, Kerry makes his empty-suit status clear.

No Honor Amongst Terrorists

Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan's friends and colleagues at al-Qaeda headquarters will be irate when they read that Khan decided to assist infidels in a sting operation after he was captured, leading to the string of AQ arrests worldwide:

A high alert for U.S. financial institutions against a possible al Qaeda attack was also prompted by information gathered from the Pakistani computer engineer, according to intelligence and government sources.

"After his capture he admitted being an al Qaeda member and agreed to send e-mails to his contacts," the source said.

"He sent encoded e-mails and received encoded replies. He's a great hacker and even the U.S. agents said he was a computer whiz," he added.

So much for honor amongst thieves! Computer hackers may be a different breed anyway, and AQ leadership may well decide to avoid using them in the future after getting burned in such a trite fashion. It throws another dimension of anxiety into those terrorist cells that use the Internet to communicate, even in code.

As I stated earlier, it may be difficult, if not impossible, for AQ to estimate the damage done to their communication infrastructure and to determine which codes and methods remain secure. This means that cells in the field will lose regular contact with their handlers, including strategizing, operational commands, and especially money. Khan's capture and apparent turn could be the most significant victory in the larger war this year, and making Khan into a tool for the West will do tremendous damage to AQ's reputation in the Middle East.

A very satisfying report, without a doubt.

Upping The Ante

After the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth ad and book came out this week, the Kerry campaign (as well as the ever-helpful John McCain) demanded that the Bush/Cheney campaign "denounce" the hundreds of veterans who spoke their minds in "Unfit For Command". Instead, the Bush campaign has upped the ante, and the Kerry campaign can't afford to meet the bid:

The White House yesterday distanced itself from a political ad that questions John Kerry's Vietnam service and called on the Democratic presidential nominee to join President Bush in demanding an "immediate cessation" of all advertisements by outside groups.

"We have not and will not question Senator Kerry's service in Vietnam," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One. "The president is calling for an immediate cessation to all the unregulated soft money activity."

In one quick shot, the Democrats have their hypocrisy exposed. No one denounced MoveOn when they hosted advertisements comparing Bush to Hitler, and let's not forget that it was the DNC chairman himself that appeared in the media denouncing Bush as a "deserter" -- and no one from the Kerry campaign complained about that at all. Both men were honorably discharged from the service, and Bush didn't base his entire PR on his few years in the Air National Guard over thirty years ago. Now that an unaffiliated group has decided to answer Kerry's campaigning on his four-month war record, they start shrilly squealing about dirty tricks.

What happened to "BRING ... IT ... ON"?

Now Bush has escalated the stakes even higher, challenging the Democrats to disavow all third-party advertising and cutting off its support. The Kerry campaign has strategized for their efforts to step up, especially this month, as it has decided not to spend much of the federal funding that Kerry received at the end of the convention in order to match Bush in the fall. Simply put, Kerry cannot afford to disavow and discourage independent political activities.

The effect of Bush's calling the bluff shows in the "nuanced" response from the Kerry campaign:

"We're glad to have a discussion about campaign finance reform. But it's disingenuous for the Bush campaign to hide behind this partisan group that's trying to tear down John Kerry's distinguished military service record," Kerry spokesman Chad Clanton said. "It's a reminder of why this White House has lost credibility."

Of course, as I said earlier, this response is a complete dodge, considering the glee with which the Kerry campaign and the Democrats discussed the supposedly damning Bush military record, until documentation and witnesses came forward to back Bush's service record and his honorable discharge. The Kerry campaign now gets to reap what they have sown, and if it happens that reaping season for the Kerry comes later than they'd like (or sooner), that's hardly the fault of the Bush campaign. Blame Terry McAuliffe for making thirty-year-old service activity a favorite campaign issue. And if they want the Republicans to attack anti-Kerry 527s, then let's hear Kerry denounce MoveOn first.

We'll hold our breath as much as we possibly can while laughing our butts off.

Naval Intelligence On The Market?

The BBC reports this morning that an al-Qaeda suspect arrested by the British last year but released until this week carried detailed plans of US Navy battle group formations, allowing him to advise other terrorists how to evade American pickets at sea:

Lawyers trying to extradite a British man to the US on terrorism charges have told a court he was found in possession of US naval intelligence. ...

Details of US battleship formations in the Gulf had also been found during an earlier arrest, the court heard. British police had arrested Mr Ahmad, but released him without charge, in December 2003.

Bow Street Magistrates' Court was told documents containing details of battleship formations and vulnerabilities were found near him during that arrest.

Not only could that information aid AQ operations avoid detection by the American Navy, but also could have helped develop plans to attack the ships themselves. Many people forget that our Navy is the primary projection of our global military power. When we need to go somewhere to attack our enemies or defend our allies, the Navy takes the men and materiel where they need to be. AQ terrorists understand this, which is why the attack on the USS Cole was so significant, and why the failure to immediately respond was such a blunder, as the 9/11 Commission mentioned. (As an aside, the response needed to be significant and immediate. Three or four months later would have been far too late and probably would have missed targets of any real value.)

How did AQ wind up with classified US information on battle group formations? It's a question that will need to be answered by the DoD. One dangerous trend this year has been the reckless disregard of security procedures, first at the Los Alamos laboratories, where some of our most sensitive weapons and system design work takes place, and then at the National Archives, where an uncredentialed former NSA was allowed continued access to crypto-classified information even after being suspected of breaching security procedures to remove the reports.

We seem to have forgotten that we are at war, and that loose lips sink ships. In World War II, that phrase was meant to be taken literally. As the attack on the USS Cole proves and this latest revelation also demonstrates, it's just as literally true today as back then.

Moqtada al-Sadr, The John Kerry Of Iraq

Radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr executed a flip-flop on his part-time insurgency again, this time within 24 hours, which has to be a record of some sort. The New York Times reports that less than a day after initiating armed insurrection -- again -- and getting the worst of the battle -- again -- Sadr appealed for a truce with Iraqi and American security forces ... again:

The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr called for a national uprising against American and allied troops Thursday morning, then backed off near midnight after a day of fighting between his guerrillas and American and Iraqi forces. ...

One American marine and several insurgents were killed in Najaf, where marines fought alongside Iraqi policemen and National Guard troops. At least a dozen more soldiers and dozens of insurgents were wounded in both Baghdad and Najaf, though exact casualty counts were unavailable late Thursday night.

Near midnight, Mr. Sadr offered a tentative cease-fire, saying his guerrillas would stop fighting if American soldiers did the same, according to a spokesman for the group. The offer would renew a two-month-old truce between Mr. Sadr and the American military, a truce that had appeared on the verge of crumbling earlier Thursday.

Sadr seems determined to either make himself the greatest figure of indecision since Hamlet or patterns himself after a certain American politician who cannot make up his mind what he wants. As late as a week ago, Sadr appeared to invest himself in the new Iraqi political structure that has coalesced in Baghdad and the Allawi interim government, condemning a wave of terrorist attacks against Christian churches. This week he's back to being an insurgent, up until his nose gets bloodied, and then he wants to return to a political role.

Unfortunately, Sadr's time has passed. Iraqis may have considered him a brave if hotheaded figure of resistance to foreign occupation in the spring, but now that the interim government is in place, all that most Iraqis want is a return to normalcy. Sadr and his minions interfere with that process every time Sadr's hormones fly out of control and he starts attacking Iraqi police stations, as he did over the past week to re-ignite his Mahdi uprising. Those Iraqis who support armed struggle to the death against foreign troops now line up behind Zarqawi and his Islamofascist ideology, where even Sadr doesn't go, and the vast majority of Shi'ites in Iraq have made clear through their indifference to Sadr that they far prefer Ali al-Sistani's moderate leadership.

Sadr himself may sense that his time may be growing short and that his radicalism will win him few converts in a democratic and pluralistic Iraq. Unfortunately, Sadr shows absolutely no ability to think strategically, and even tactically he makes a better cleric than a general. All the Mahdi army will do under his leadership is die in highly disproportionate numbers while Sadr dithers in the mosque.

Economy Inspiring Higher Consumer Confidence

In another significant development for the upcoming presidential campaign, the AP-Ipsos consumer-confidence survey returned its highest numbers of the year as more Americans trust that the economy has really rebounded and will continue its upward trajectory:

Consumer confidence surged during the past month to its highest level since the beginning of the year, with Americans feeling better about their own finances and more optimistic about the future despite renewed terror threats and rising oil prices. Consumer confidence has been rising for the past four months as the economy has been on a solid path to recovery.

The AP-Ipsos consumer confidence index climbed to 104.8 in August, up from 92.0 in July, led by consumers' perceptions of their own finances and optimism about the future.

It's yet another sign that the Kerry/Edwards campaign of class warfare and economic pessimism has failed to capture the imagination of the electorate, which is experiencing what Kerry tells them isn't there -- a true economic recovery. New-home sales are bursting, jobs have been added to the economy at a tremendous clip this year, and people are beginning to notice it. If Kerry remains on message, he runs the risk of being perceived as disconnected from reality, and if he starts changing his tune, it will be viewed as yet another flip-flop.

Two more months of this and continued Kerry/Edwards stump stumbles, and Hugh Hewitt's 40-state landslide might just become a reality.

UPDATE: And then, a cold dash of water:

The 32,000 net jobs added in July represented the smallest gain in hiring since December and followed a revised gain of just 78,000 in June, even less than previously reported. May's payrolls also were revised down to show a gain of 208,000.

The unemployment rate is calculated based on a survey of households - a sort of poll - in which people are asked to state whether they have jobs or are looking for work. The seasonally adjusted civilian unemployment rate thus is the percentage of the labor force represented by those who are either listed as officially unemployed or searching for work. With a contraction in the size of the labor force, that dropped the unemployment rate by a minuscule 0.1 percentage point from June to July.

Analysts were expecting the economy to add anywhere from 215,000 to 247,000 jobs in July. They were predicting the jobless rate to hold steady at 5.6 percent.

No doubt, this hurts Bush, despite the higher consumer confidence numbers. People may rush to point out that the household survey showed an addition of over six hundred thousand jobs in July, but the BLS statistic is, for better or worse, the one used as the barometer.

UN: Terrorism Overrated

CQ reader and blogger Athena pointed out a report from Reuters which demomstrates the futility of relying on the United Nations as a genuine partner in the struggle against Islamofascist terrorism. A UN investigator has submitted a report claiming that terror fears are exaggerated in order to erode human rights:

A United Nations investigator has called on governments to stop whipping up exaggerated fears of terrorism among their populations, in an apparent reference to the United States and Britain.

And in implicit criticism of Russia and China, Greek Lawyer Kalliopi K. Koufa said in a report that the world community should be more alert to a growing trend to label as terrorists groups seeking to exercise the right of self-determination.

Fear of terrorism "out of proportion to its actual risk and generated by states themselves or other actors" can be exploited to make people accept "counter-terrorism measures that unduly curtail human rights and humanitarian law," the report declared on Thursday.

I notice that the UN found the fears of terrorism so exaggerated that it bugged the hell out of Baghdad at the first bombing and have yet to return. However, apparently they feel no hesitancy to tell the rest of the world, and especially the US and the UK, that terrorism is overrated and what we think of as terrorists are really just freedom fighters using unconventional means ... such as beheadings, car bombs, and attempts to use chemical weapons, as in Jordan.

Why does the US "exaggerate" fears of terrorism, besides those gaping holes in the ground that used to be the World Trade Center and a field in Pennsylvania? In order to curtail human rights, according to the UN. The same UN that put Libya on its Human Rights committee and Syria on its counterterrorism committee. The same UN that stuffed billions of dollars into the pockets of possibly the worst human-rights violator in the world while supposedly "containing" him with sanctions. The same UN that refuses to stand up to the ongoing human-rights abuses in North Korea, Syria, and Iran.

Now we have a presidential candidate who wants to go back to the UN and "rejoin the community of nations", who promises us that he can make the UN a true partner in the war on terror. Unfortunately, John Kerry doesn't realize that they've called off the war because of pusillanimity. They don't even recognize terrorism any more -- they've adopted the Reuters approach of ultimate moral relativism, where the US oppresses its citizens and the Arab kleptocracies are victims, and people who blow up civilians in pizza parlors and behead anyone they can grab are just looking for a little self-determination.

If that's the UN position, then we should make clear that we no longer consider the organization to be effective and that we're looking for alternatives to Turtle Bay. Any presidential candidate who proposes to hold up necessary measures for our nation's security, even for a day, just to jawbone with this vast collection of ostriches and terror-enablers should be laughed out of the election. Three thousand of our fellow citizens would testify to the folly of the UN, if only they were here to be heard.

Gray Lady Undone By Itself, Howard Dean

Today's editorial from the New York Times sets new lows for intellectual bankruptcy and is made largely irrelevant by Howard Dean going off his meds last night. The Times castigates the Bush administration for botching security alerts in a self-contradictory morass of insinuation and innuendo. It starts out by acknowledging the warnings this week were justified by the data at hand, but quickly goes downhill from there:

The administration was obviously right to warn the country that Al Qaeda had apparently studied financial institutions in three cities with the idea of a possible attack. But the delivery of the message was confusing. The color-coded threat chart doesn't serve the purpose for which it was invented, and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is hopeless as a public spokesman on this issue. The Bush administration needs to come up with a method of communication that informs the public in a calm, clear way. Perhaps most important, people need to be made totally confident that this critical matter is not being tangled up in the presidential campaign.

This call to keep presidential politics out of the issue of terror alerts lasts all of four paragraphs, in which the Times manages to sneak in a whopper straight from the left's political playbook for this presidential campaign -- but in a mealy-mouthed, dishonest way that attempts to play both sides in the most patronizing way possible:

There is nothing more important for Mr. Bush to do every day until Nov. 2 than to make it clear that he would never hype a terror alert to help his re-election chances. It is a challenge complicated by the fact that he is running on his record against terrorism and is using images of 9/11 and the threat of more attacks to promote his candidacy. The president's credibility on national security issues was gravely wounded by the way he misled Americans, intentionally or not, about the reasons for invading Iraq - including the suggestion that the war was part of the campaign against Al Qaeda.

"Misled Americans, intentionally or not"? How does one accidentally mislead people? The action of misleading people necessarily involves intent -- otherwise, someone is just mistaken. The Times just can't divorce itself from the language of the rabid Bush-haters currently controlling the left and the Democratic Party, the ones who only cheered the vitriolic rhetoric coming from Al Sharpton and John Kerry.

Some of the past terror alerts have seemed aimless and happened when the Bush administration would have benefited from a change in the political conversation.

That certainly hasn't been the case this week, when John Kerry not only didn't get the bounce everyone predicted from his fourth "introduction" to the American electorate, he bounced from embarrassment to embarrassment, starting with the Osama Trial Tour idea to Milli Vanilli Chili and irritating Marines in fast-food joints. Just the fallout from the Nixonian "secret plan to end the war" would have convinced any political operative to keep things pin-drop quiet in order to get the maximum effect out of Kerry's continuing stumbles.

Americans are stone-cold serious when it comes to potential terror attacks - there is no need to worry about making them pay attention.

Apparently, not all of them, as this editorial aptly demonstrates. And if that's not enough for you, Howard Dean has no trouble taking all the subtlety off of the Times' effort. Despite getting slapped down on Tuesday by a nervous John Kerry, Dean reverted back to moonbat form in continuing to claim that the Administration issued the alerts for no other reason than the election:

Former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean asserted again Wednesday that "ample evidence" exists that President Bush was playing politics when he approved raising the terror alert level Sunday -- a contention Bush administration and campaign officials deny.

"In the last two days since I made this charge, they've been covering their you-know-what's and trying to come up with additional information," Dean said on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360."

Two senior U.S. government sources told CNN Wednesday that intelligence evidence found in Pakistan shows that suspected al Qaeda operatives there "contacted" an individual or individuals in the United States in the past few months.

His evidence is that the Bush administration has plenty of evidence for the alert? No wonder Dean is the darling of the MoveOn crowd. Even Democrats campaigning for Kerry took Dean to task in stronger terms than ever before:

Since then, a number of prominent Democrats, including presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, distanced themselves from those remarks.

Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut went so far as to say "nobody in their right mind" would believe that Bush would "scare people for political reasons."

Dean threatens to expose the Democrats as hopelessly out of touch with the reality of terrorism and at the same time undermine their efforts to paint the Bush administration as unresponsive to the threat. Now when they release information about terror threats, Dean accuses them of being too rash. Dean represents the passion of the Democrats, and the voters have a clear choice: either vote for the party that takes terrorism seriously, or the one who likes to use it as a two-handed paddle for campaign rhetoric.

Al-Qaeda Takes Body Blows, Shifting Direction?

Pakistan's capture of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan continues to roll up both terrorists and their operational plans, as the AP reports this morning. Using the data recovered from Khan and Ahmed Ghailani, the UK has arrested a number of suspected Islamofascists based in part on surveillance data of Heathrow airport and other recovered data:

Pakistan gave British authorities images of London's Heathrow Airport and other sites that were found on the computers of two arrested al-Qaida fugitives, intelligence officials said Thursday. ... Several news reports in Britain said that one of the suspects arrested in a sweep against militants late Tuesday, variously identified as Abu Eisa al-Hindi or Abu Musa al-Hindi, was believed to be a senior member of al-Qaida, and had been plotting an attack on Heathrow.

Britain's Metropolitan Police refused to say whether al-Hindi was among those arrested, and Pakistani officials contacted by The Associated Press had no information about the link.

Maps, photographs and other details of possible targets in the United States and Britain were found on computers belonging to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani — a Tanzanian indicted for his role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa — and a Pakistani computer expert identified as Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, said two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The British reports said al-Hindi, using the code name Bilal, had been in contact with Khan.

Nor is that the only news from Pakistan on the Khan/Ghailani arrest. Their security forces acknowledge holding three significant AQ operatives, one with a US bounty of "several million dollars" on his head, but are not ready to release his name publicly. The Pakistanis also revealed that the South African nationality of several detainees was no mere coincidence, and that maps and surveillance of Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Pretoria were discovered with the suspects. It looks like AQ had decided to attack South Africa as well, a significant decision given the peripheral nature of Mandela's government to the West and to fighting Islamofascists.

Why attack South Africa? It's hardly a Western colony any more, and while it's true that it isn't an Islamic state, it would seem to be a diversion from AQ's mission against the West. It could be that enhanced American and British security has convinced them to take their attacks elsewhere, or at least to attack Anglo-American assets overseas rather than try anything domestically. But the risks don't necessarily decrease when targeting secondary or tertiary locations while the payoffs obviously do, which tells me that AQ may have some problems with operational capabilities in the US or UK now. Their South Africa planning obviously exposed key portions of their infrastructure, as the final part of the article hints. The AP somewhat cryptically holds off the best part of the story for last, and leaves it to the readers' imagination:

South African newspapers quoted unidentified police sources there as saying that key landmarks in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Pretoria were among the likely targets, though those reports were strongly denied by South African officials.

The South African suspects were identified as Feroz Ibrahim and Zubair Ismail.

"They had some terror plans for South Africa," Hussain said. They are believed to have arrived in Pakistan on a flight from the United Arab Emirates just days before their arrest [emph mine -- CE].

Coincidence? I don't think so. Somehow the Pakistanis (or someone else) managed to get inside the Khan network and waited for an operation to prepare its launch to strike. As Mitch Berg said on our Northern Alliance Radio show last Saturday, no war has ever been won on the defensive, and it looks like not only are we on the offensive, but that the enemy may more vulnerable now than ever.

The Face Of Evil?

While so many of us are focused on elections and Islamofascist terrorists, many of our younger citizens await the next cinematic installment of the wildly popular fiction series that focuses on a battle between good and evil. Harry Potter and The Goblet Of Fire has been filming all summer without any indication who would portray the corporeal evil that haunts Harry and his friends, Lord Voldemort. At one point, practically every British actor who hadn't yet appeared in the series was rumored to have been cast in the role, including -- laughably -- Rowan Atkinson, better known as Mr. Bean.

Now Warner Bros. has finally announced who will fill the robe of the character so evil that witches and wizards avoid speaking his name, a man whose very face inspires fear and dread.

Ralph Fiennes?

He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has been named. Ralph Fiennes, who played memorable evil guys in "Red Dragon" and "Schindler's List," has signed on to portray the wicked warlock Voldemort in the next "Harry Potter" movie, Warner Bros. announced Wednesday.

Don't get me wrong; Fiennes is a terrific actor and plays villains well when asked. However, despite his powerful performance in Schindler's List, it's hard to see how anyone associated Fiennes with the snake-like face of evil that Rowling described in Goblet of Fire. The girls will be swooning over the wrong guy!

As a huge Harry Potter fan, thanks to my daughter-in-law, I'm looking forward to seeing Fiennes join the crew for the next film and the ones to follow. Sometimes make-believe battles against evil make for an excellent respite from those we face in real life. If you haven't yet caught Potter Fever, give the books a try.

Experts To Congress: Not So Fast On 9/11 Recommendations

With John Kerry constantly harping on the theme that George Bush hasn't yet implemented all of the recommendations in the weeks-old 9/11 Commission report, and with Bush himself promising to use executive orders to push them through quickly, one gets the impression of a broad consensus that these results are beyond question. However, at a public hearing before the House Intelligence Committee, several former national-security officers advised Congress to go slow and rethink the commission's conclusions:

Former government officials told Congress on Wednesday not to rush to adopt all of the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission. They expressed reservations about a key recommendation — creating a national director of intelligence — and questioned whether focusing on issues related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks might worsen other problems that became apparent after the war in Iraq.

The people urging caution aren't just Congressional staffers and low-level functionaries looking to protect some turf. They cut across political boundaries and represent years of experience in the field. In fact, I wonder why they weren't asked to give testimony or even be asked to sit on the commission itself:

Former Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre said the commission examined only problems surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks, notably intelligence agencies’ failure to connect clues that might have led to discovery of the plot. ...

Hamre and William E. Odom, a former director of the National Security Agency, expressed doubts about the national intelligence director position. Hamre said he feared that it would be poorly implemented, and Odom said the commission’s proposals could “cause far more problems than they will solve." ...

Odom said the most important change would be one not in the commission’s report: removing counterintelligence responsibilities from the FBI. “As long as the FBI has counterintelligence, you will have poor counterintelligence. No agency with arrest authority will ever share intelligence,” Odom said.

Doesn't that last point appear to be a gaping hole in the commission's findings? I don't recall if they even evaluated the FBI's performance in counterintelligence, but the subject should have received some review.

I believe that Congress needs to approach the report and its recommendations with caution, implementing the most obviously beneficial items with all haste but giving debate and thought to the rest. As Odom hints, the problem of jurisdictions and duplications of effort were hardly even acknowledged in the commission's final recommended structure for intelligence work. They kept all the same agencies and stuck two more layers of bureaucracy on top of them. What is needed is to streamline intelligence at the source, not funnel it at the top, and the commission took the wrong approach.

A lot more work, debate, and thought needs to go into this overhaul, as it is more important that it be done correctly rather than quickly. Politicians looking to score points on the campaign trail should look elsewhere, and allow grown-ups to do the necessary review to ensure that the final product protects America, and not the reputations of a few Washington insiders.

Kerry Promises More News Conferences If President

John Kerry took steps yesterday to shore up weakening support in akey constituency -- the media -- by promising more news conferences if elected to the White House:

Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said Tuesday he would hold news conferences at least once a month if elected in November.

"I don't have anything to hide," he declared. ...

President Bush, the man Kerry hopes to unseat in November, has held 12 formal news conferences since taking office, though he routinely has short question-and-answer sessions at White House photo opportunities.

Of course, it's easy for Kerry to hold press conferences, given the broad range of responses he routinely gives on any issue. One could ask the Senator why he hasn't held many press conferences during his campaign, given this new commitment. After all, the media up to the convention had been his best friend, even if he kept shooting himself in the foot when given the opportunity.

However, after the post-convention disaster of the Milli Vanilli Chili and the Nixonian "secret plan" to end the war in Iraq -- which, by the way, was over last year -- the press finally turned on Kerry, especially the AP's Ron Fournier. Instead of simply explaining himself or moving on to new substantive topics, Kerry invented a new issue: news conferences. (Can we expect to see a Press Misery Index, complete with charts, demonstrating the high level of journalistic unhappiness compared with the Clinton Administration?)

People may be unhappy with the communication effort made by the Bush Administration, but that dissatisfaction has little to do with press conferences. Outside of J-school, most people now see these media events as nothing more than an artful dance, where media darlings get to preen in front of cameras and ask a series of non-sequiturs to a person or people determined not to answer much. It's theater, and it's absurd, and if there is one thing of which we need less, it's pointless performance art by talking heads playing "gotcha" games. "Did you ever make a mistake, Mr. President?" Stupid word games by foolish and pointless people do not create any useful information for the public at large.

In fact, press conferences have become journalism's United Nations: a place where the world gathers to see nothing accomplished but the venting of rhetoric, while the real work gets done in bilateral or smaller multilateral venues.

Recent Captures Related To British Heathrow Alert In 2003?

An alert reader who wishes to remain anonymous sends over this tip regarding British security alerts in February 2003 at Heathrow. As reported in the London Guardian, British security went on high alert that month as the Islamic festival of Eid came to a close:

Heathrow was last night being patrolled by 1,500 anti-terrorist police and troops after intelligence warnings identified it as a likely target for an imminent attack by al-Qaida-linked militants armed with anti-aircraft missiles.

The move was sanctioned late on Monday after high level meetings at Scotland Yard headed by Assistant Commissioner David Veness, who requested immediate army back-up and support from Heathrow's neighbouring forces, Surrey and Thames Valley.

The prime minister was told of the threat and rubber stamped the deployment of 450 soldiers from the Ist Battalion the Grenadier Guards and the Household Cavalry.

Those warnings turned up nothing significant, and eventually Tony Blair faced the same kind of criticism that George Bush has received for the alerts this week in New York and DC. The matter was dropped after a few days and has been mostly unremembered -- including by me -- until this reader noticed the link in the AFP report I quoted earlier today:

Khan had not only been creating websites and secret email codes for Al-Qaeda operatives to communicate with each other, he had also actively plotted terror attacks, the official said on condition of anonymity.

"He was involved in planning for attacks at Heathrow airport London some time ago and was wanted by the US government," the official said, but was unable to say exactly when the Heathrow attack was planned.

Not only does this show that tossing around accusations of politics can rebound uncomfortably on those who make such charges, but also that it may well degrade our ability to deter such attacks by making governments reluctant to take the necessary defensive steps. At least now, we see that the Heathrow alert was not something made up in order to bolster Blair's domestic standing but, in fact, was the obvious and ultimately successful defense of a critical piece of Britain's infrastructure, not to mention thousands of its citizens.

Those who overtly accuse people of playing politics without any evidence (Howard Dean) or covertly undermine confidence in those alerts (Kerry/Edwards campaign staff) detract from our ability to defeat terrorism. That's something to consider when deciding who to put into positions of responsibility in November.

Timing Of Alert Rather Obvious -- But Not How You Think

The AP's Ron Fournier analyzes reaction to the orange alerts issued this week by the Department of Homeland Security and deconstructs the politics rather adeptly. However, Fournier and many others missed a key issue in the debate over using the so-called "old" material for a fresh alert:

The politics of terrorism has Democrats tied in knots. Each time President Bush raises fears of a possible attack, the political debate shifts from his most troublesome issue to one of his strongest (the war on terrorism) while Democrats fight their impulse to question the president's motives. ...

Campaign officials said Kerry would like to believe that Bush is acting in the nation's interest. Even if he didn't give Bush the benefit of the doubt, there are enormous political risks to Kerry questioning the president's motives, the officials said, because a subsequent terrorist strike would make him look politically craven and shortsighted. Criticizing the commander in chief for putting the nation on alert also wouldn't help Kerry persuade voters that he's tough enough for the job, the officials said on condition of anonymity.

The Democratic strategy is to use the terrorism warnings to raise the ante. Instead of questioning why alert levels have been increased, Kerry and his surrogates have tried to fuel doubts about what Bush has done — or failed to do — to make the country safer since Sept. 11, 2001.

If Kerry strategists are correct, the tactic both undercuts Bush's political strong suit and burnishes the Democrat's credentials as commander in chief.

It's a good analysis, as far as it goes, and I tend to think that alerts such as that experienced this week don't help Bush at all. It may have the salutary effect of reminding people that we are still at war, but as the Kerry campaign obviously thinks, that sword cuts both ways. No matter the cause, people resent intrusions on their daily routine, and a constant undercurrent of threats may well push people to vote for change, just as an emotional reaction. The only real disadvantage for Kerry is supporters like Howard Dean, who come out and make wild accusations that make the opposition look completely irresponsible.

What almost no analysis has addressed, however, is the context of the alerts with regards to the capture of Naeem Noor Khan, the computer expert and al-Qaeda planner whose data provided the basis for the alert. Khan was captured on July 12 but his arrest was only recently acknowledged. Khan held surveillance for a number of financial targets in the New York area, apparently quite detailed, going back as far as three years ago. What we now know about AQ operations tells us that multi-year planning and careful building of teams is their hallmark, and their plans take at least that long to fully mature.

Now, with Khan's capture announced to the world and the collapse of his communications infrastructure to the field teams involved in any of his plans, one likely result will be that individual cells will act on their last orders and launch attacks in the near future. Their ability to coordinate will likely be severely disrupted, as terrorists cells probably have no direct contact with each other, so that attacks occur randomly and not strategically, as on 9/11.

Otherwise, these cells will be left orphaned in the US, and the danger of leaving (crossing the border) will be almost as great as entering. Without Khan's communication network, the cells will have no other way to communicate back to AQ masters or each other, and the lunatics will be forced to disband quietly and assimilate into the American society they hate with such passion. Their money will quickly dry up and with it their ability to do anything on a large scale.

Faced with these two choices, which one do you suppose the AQ cells in the US that Khan controlled will select? Assimilation and surrender, or following the last plan given to them? And given that the Pakistanis have sundered their communications and with it access to new financing, when do you suppose that decision will be made?

Get the picture? If you do, you're smarter than the Democrats, some Republicans, and almost all of the media.

Not Just A Computer Nerd

Senior security officials told AFP that the al-Qaeda computer expert captured three weeks ago played a much more important role for AQ than simply technical support, and that the data captured along with him revealed much of AQ's communications infrastructure:

Naeem Noor Khan, 25, alias Abu Talha, arrested in the eastern city of Lahore on July 12, "is in the top hierarchy of Al-Qaeda's external operations wing," a security official closely associated with the latest Al-Qaeda swoop told AFP Wednesday.

Khan had not only been creating websites and secret email codes for Al-Qaeda operatives to communicate with each other, he had also actively plotted terror attacks, the official said on condition of anonymity.

"He was involved in planning for attacks at Heathrow airport London some time ago and was wanted by the US government," the official said, but was unable to say exactly when the Heathrow attack was planned.

Capturing Khan may well turn out to be the biggest turn in the war since the fall of the Taliban, as the hard data seized along with Khan has already begun unraveling large parts of the AQ network and shown their strategies for future attacks. The orange alerts announced earlier this week in New York and DC originated in the information Khan carried with him, surveillance data from three years ago which showed that AQ intended on hitting America in its pocketbook again. The data went back three years, but some files had been modified just a few months ago.

Khan's extensive communications data also led to the outing of a "senior" AQ agent in Britain, who has since been arrested. His computers contained detailed information about e-mail addresses and codes which will allow counterterrorism experts to tap into AQ communications, which may force the Islamofascists to abandon Khan's carefully constructed network. Obviously the former case is preferable to the latter, but either way their command and control functions have been seriously damaged, and possibly with it their ability to efficiently finance their cells in the field.

The capture of Khan is not merely just a case of arresting a teen hacker, but perhaps more along the lines of the British capturing the Enigma machine from a Nazi submarine in World War II. It's interesting -- and revealing -- that the press has mostly missed what potentially may be the most significant recent victory in the war.

Kerry Campaign Message Getting Out: "Shove It!"

Jennifer Harper at the Washington Times takes a look at how the themes sounded by the Democrats at their nominating convention have resonated with the American public. So far, Harper finds that the Democrats have been mostly unsuccessful in creating any buzz from their slogans, with one notable exception (via Drudge):

Teresa Heinz Kerry's "shove it" phrase to a Pittsburgh editor was the most cited Kerry campaign message in the press last week — mentioned 381 times in American publications, according to Factiva, a Dow Jones/Reuters company that tracks daily press mentions. ...

Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign mottos did not resonate with the press, according to Factiva. "One America" got 57 mentions, "Hope is on the way," 50 mentions and "America can do better" just 21 by week's end.

So much for the entire convention! The only lasting impression was made by the candidate's wife, in an attack on a journalist who, despite whatever you think of his employer, was correct when challenging Heinz Kerry. She did rail against "anti-American traits in her husband's opposition, and rather than explain herself and how that kind of accusation builds civility -- which was the entire point of her speech -- she chose to attack McNickle instead. In fact, many people have chosen to attack McNickle for asking what should have been an easily-anticipated follow-up question.

The overriding image of the Kerry campaign out of this convention has been his wife telling a reporter to "shove it" for asking a completely reasonable question, and of her husband telling reporters essentially the same thing when asked to explain his secret plan for winning the war or the deals with foreign leaders that comprise such a critical part of it. "Shove it" may be the epitaph of the Kerry/Edwards campaign, a perfect synopsis of the Democratic approach to the Deaniacs at its disaffected base and the swing voters who want more explanation of how Kerry plans to do anything differently on the war.

How do you think that message will resonate in November?

The AP Practices Real Journalism On Kerry

In a sign that John Kerry may lose his last bastion of defense -- a sympathetic mass media -- the AP rips Kerry in an analysis of his "secret plan" to increase foreign troops and reduce American presence in Iraq. Ron Fournier writes that Kerry's plan is not only reminiscent of Nixon, but that it's ultimately irrelevant:

John Kerry (news - web sites) says he can "put a deal together" as president to drastically reduce U.S. troop strength in Iraq (news - web sites), a pledge reminiscent of Richard Nixon's secret plan to end the Vietnam War and Dwight D. Eisenhower's promise to stop fighting in Korea.

Like those Republican presidential candidates, the Democrat's blueprint for peace lacks detail and has critics squawking. ... But when asked for hard evidence that his victory would produce a troops-reducing deal for America, neither Kerry nor his fellow senators cite anything other than their vague perceptions and utmost hopes.

Fournier then shows how Foreign-Leader Syndrome (FLS) has escaped the Kerry campaign quarantine and has infected other Democratic partisan hacks like Carl Levin. Yesterday, Kerry invoked Levin and Joe Biden as two people who could verify his assertion that his mere presence would convince countries to act on our behalf despite all evidence that it would be contrary to their own interests (in their perception). Speaking on behalf of his party's faltering standardbearer, Levin gave a half-hearted attempt to agree:

"I'm not going to tell you which foreign leaders, because I'd be breaking the confidence of foreign leaders that I've met," said Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Last spring, Kerry said foreign leaders preferred him to Bush, though he also refused to identify any.

Levin wavered on the question of whether any foreign leader promised to get more involved in Iraq if Kerry wins. "It seems to be that's the basic implication," he said at first.

But has any leader made a commitment?

No, he replied.

So Carl Levin wants us to trust him and John Kerry that foreign leaders prefer him over George Bush and that they'd start shipping troops by the thousands to Iraq and anywhere else we need just as soon as we elect him. However, none of them have actually said they'd do this ... it's just that Levin and Kerry can feel the vibe, man. Even Joe Biden seems a bit out of the vibe loop:

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., a top Kerry adviser, thinks Kerry could sway allies better than the president, said spokesman Norm Kurz. But that's only hypothetical — "I don't think there's a guarantee," he said.

In other words, it's complete drizzly horse patooties, a point Fournier hammers home in a venue where Kerry would expect more sympathetic treatment. Not only does Fournier expose the spreading FLS in the Democratic Party, but then also destroys Kerry's assertion that his four-year plan will significantly reduce American troop presence in Iraq. Fournier quotes an Iraq expert and former aide to John McCain -- Kerry's first choice for VP -- giving out the common sense so absent from the Kerry campaign and his apologists:

Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Kerry's plan assumes too much.

"Nobody is going to bail us out of our responsibilities in this conflict," said Cordesman, former adviser to Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz. "It is not a matter of who is the president at this point. There simply won't be any international support for a country like France or Germany to do it."

Furthermore, he said the insurgency is either going to be contained in the next year or the American public will demand an end to the occupation. Either way, there will be a significant reduction in U.S. troops within four years.

Thus, Kerry's plan "borders on being irrelevant," Cordesman said.

Fournier reveals Kerry to be nothing more than an empty suit on Iraq, pronouncing secret plans to deliver nothing different than what George Bush already has done, and insinuating that heads of state around the world will abandon negotiating with the US if Kerry is not elected. Not only is that ridiculous on its face -- the US is the most dynamic economic market in the world, for one thing -- but it speaks to a hint of narcissism and megalomania that hearkens back to Nixon, along with Kerry's secret plan. Most damaging of all, Fournier's shot across the bow of the Kerry campaign may signal that some of the mainstream media has had enough of the empty-suit campaign and may start taking their Kerry coverage seriously -- and that will be very, very bad news for the Kerry/Edwards ticket.

Pakistan Rolling Up AQ Network?

Pakistan has suddenly hit a hot streak in capturing al-Qaeda suspects, arresting two more to bring their total to four over the past month. Either their intelligence has improved or someone's singing:

In the latest arrests, one of the men was apprehended at a bus stop in the Hafizabad town in Punjab province but the officials were unsure of his nationality.

"He first said he was from Yemen but later changed his statement to say he was Egyptian," one of the officials who asked not to be named told Reuters. "We are still checking his nationality. He does not have a passport."

In another swoop, authorities arrested a foreign al Qaeda suspect along with two Pakistanis who were traveling to the eastern city of Lahore, also in Punjab, from the nearby town of Sheikupura Monday night.

The key capture, the one that made headlines last week, was Pakistan's arrest of Ahmed Ghailani and computer expert Muhammed Naeem Nour Khan. Ghailani made the big headlines as one of the leading suspects in the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. However, I wonder if the real prize was Khan, or more intriguingly, any equipment or data captured with Khan. The Pakistanis seem to be on a roll after a long, quiet period, and American intelligence on AQ activities appears a lot more specific than before. That would indicate that either the Pakistanis have infiltrated AQ to an unprecedented depth or that they're getting some pretty good intel from their captives. Hard drives and computer codes can keep secrets only so long.

In either case, AQ command must be worrying over the same issues and looking desperately for a mole. That would keep them occupied for a while, and we can continue to dismantle their operations while they chase their tails. In case anyone wonders, keeping the enemy on the defensive definitely demonstrates progress, and is a huge improvement over our pre-9/11 efforts against Islamofascist terror.

NoKo Suspends Talks Due To Sudden Population Drop

North Korea suspended its participation in inter-Korean negotiations across a broad front of issues due to the defections of several hundred Northerners to the South, enraging the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il, and his communist government. Despite its pleas to North Korea to rejoin talks, Seoul refuses to budge on its position of granting refuge to North Korean refugees abroad:

North Korea has boycotted scheduled cabinet-level talks with South Korea, angry over the defection of hundreds of North Koreans to the South last week. Pyongyang described the mass defection as an act of "kidnapping and terrorism committed by South Korean authorities in broad daylight." ...

The two Koreas have been at odds over the defection and Seoul's earlier refusal to let pro-unification activists visit Pyongyang for the 10th anniversary of the death of the North's founding leader, Kim Il-Sung on July 8.

North Korea also scrapped maritime and military talks with South Korea in retaliation.

It sounds like Kim Jong-Il just threw a major temper tantrum, but this problem has been brewing for the past few years and has a potentially humiliating scope. Since most of North Korea's defenses are arrayed at the partition border, refugees fleeing Kim's worker's paradise have a better chance risking flight into the border countries which remain (nominally) communist, such as China and Viet Nam. According to AFP, as many as 300,000 Northerners may be hiding out in China and hundreds more in other Southeast Asian countries. Seoul's willingness to keep its doors open to these refugees holds open the likelihood of an unprecedented mass migration from the last Stalinist outpost that would unequivocally demonstrate the collapse of the Kim regime's credibility, even among sympathetic Koreans.

Of course, Kim has to practice a little projection and blame the mass defections on kidnappings and terrorism, although the statement from Pyongyang does not explain how or why Viet Nam would participate in a mas kidnapping on behalf of Seoul. (The communist leaders in Hanoi must be scratching their heads over that one.) He cannot admit to his abject failure to feed his people, as that would just prove that the system of government imposed by his father and he for decades is nothing more than a tinpot tyrrany, and all the talk about worker's paradises were nothing more than rationalizations to enrich themselves and their cronies while their fellow countrymen starved to death.

It also would put yet another nail in the coffin for the curious and deadly political system of communism, which has killed millions over the past century through starvation and outright murder. Despite being the only system of government that routinely built walls around its states to keep its population inside rather than invaders outside, it still attracts a surprising amount of sympathy from fools and left-wing idealogues such as can be found at International ANSWER, a Stalinist apologist group that provided the driving force behind the antiwar protests this past year. At some point in the future, historians (freed from the current ideological shackles found in academia nowadays) will wonder in horror that such a social experiment was allowed to continue for so long with such horrendous results. They will ask why, and all we can do is point to those apologists for people like Stalin, Brezhnev, Castro, Pol Pot, and a host of others who enslaved their own people and watched them die. We will say, "These people told us that there was no such thing as truth and objective reality, and that all things were relative," while the mostly-unmarked graves of millions mock our empty words.

Bush Adopts The Expanded Bureaucracy Approach

George Bush announced today that he will implement the key recommendation from the 9/11 Commission, creating a new national intelligence "czar" and layering two levels of management onto existing intelligence agencies. However, Bush plans to avoid having the new position placed in the White House in order to maintain more independence for the new organization:

President Bush said Monday he is asking Congress to create the position of a national intelligence director, to serve as the president's principal intelligence adviser. ... The national director of intelligence will report to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Bush said.

The president also revealed plans to create a national counter-terrorism center. "This new center will ... become our government's knowledge bank for known and suspected terrorists," Bush said.

The reporting structure reverses that recommended by the 9/11 Commission if CNN has its information correct, which I suspect they do not. The commission's org structure for the new intelligence bureaucracy had the CIA director reporting to a deputy NID, who reported to the NID, who then becomes, as CNN says, the President's principal intelligence advisor. It seems odd to have the NID report to the DCI but then put the NID between the two.

In any case, the new structure maintains the existing alphabet soup of agencies that now exist, only funneling them through two levels of national oversight before intelligence flows to the President from a single source. In an election year, Bush probably could not afford to deviate far from the commission's recommendations, but I still think that this is a counterproductive move. It only opens up the White House (regardless of occupant) to charges of echo-chamber intelligence on any issue. I give Bush points for pushing the NID out of the White House to minimize it, but it still creates only a single point of reference for the President.

It's true that the new organization should allow for more information sharing and a more comprehensive look at the disparate threads of information that intelligence necessarily provides, although reforming and consoiolidating the agencies themselves would have done the same thing, and probably more effectively than sticking two more layers of management on top. The point is to move reform forward, and we're doing that pretty quickly, given the time frame from the delivery of the commission's report. It will be equally important to allow for flexibility to ensure that the structure can be changed as problems arise, rather than command slavish devotion to the recommendations as if they were handed down from Mt. Sinai.

Commissar Live-Blogs From Alert Center

My good friend, the Commissar at the Politburo Diktat, will live-blog all day today from the Citigroup building, one of the threat targets identified this weekend by the Department of Homeland Security. Keep checking back all day today on the status of security. In fact, keep checking back at PD as a regular habit -- it's a great blog, one of the best satirical sites as well as featuring straightforward insightful commentary.

UPDATE: The AP reports on security measures being taken on the ground and notes that workers in the area are "defiant" to Islamofascists:

Financial institutions identified as targets of a terrorist plot in three cities opened for business Monday under stepped-up security and defiant words from people who said they won't be cowed by the extraordinary intelligence pointing to a potential attack.

Police sealed off some streets in New York, put international-finance employees in Washington through extra security checks, and added barricades and a heavy armed presence in Newark, N.J., in response to a heightened terrorism alert aimed specifically at titans of the financial sector.

We can't just shut down our financial networks whenever these lunatics make threats, and it's great to see Americans such as the Commissar and those quoted in this article making that point.

Caption Contest Winners!

What a great weekend! CQ readers entered what I think was a record number of captions for the weekend contest, and Pat at Dr. Sanity had quite a job trying to pick the few, the proud, and the very clean winners. Even John Kerry had to plumb the depths of CQ in order to get through all the entries:

Pat's winners are as follows:

Captain's Award (Man On A Mission?) - Mike G:

"I am John Kerry, reporting for duty!"

You Have The Conn #1 (The Populist Award) - Jim S:

Okay, I'm ready to meet with the common folk now.

You Have The Conn #2 (Politics Begins At Conception) - Rightwingduck:

This sperm has a one in million chance of becoming a human being.

You Have The Conn #3 (Nuance And Courage Twin Award) - Charles Austin:

(both are by charles austin, so I counted them as one)

I was for these pictures before I was against them.

Senator Kerry emerges from his well-disclosed location.

Report To Sick Bay (Best Recycled Klingon Joke) - JBlake:

Presidential hopeful John Kerry stopped by Cape Canaveral on the way to the Democrat convention this week. After enjoying the thrilling new NASA Colonoscopy ride, he exclaimed, "I love space exploration. And when I am president, I will fully fund NASA. My new tax plan will fly right past the moon straight to Uranus."

Thanks to everyone who entered, and congratulations to the winners! Remember, here at CQ, everyone's a winner -- just some of us have higher winning percentages than others. Comments on this post will remain open, as usual, in order for the winners to gloat, the others to disparage Pat's intellect and/or my parentage, and for any other entries submitted just for the sheer enjoyment of amazing your friends and confounding your enemies.

As I mentioned this weekend, your donations continue to flow into the tipjars set up to help me defray the costs of attending the Republican National Convention, and they are much appreciated. You raised about $150 this past weekend, pushing the total to about one-third of the travel expenses for the trip. I'm extremely grateful, and I hope to give everyone their money's worth when I'm at Madison Square Garden for the show. The tipjars will remain on the left sidebar until the convention.

Send me a photograph or an e-mail with a link to a great picture you think should be the subject of our next Caption Contest, and let me know if you'd like to be the guest judge! I'll have another picture for Friday -- so be sure to come back then for the next contest.

Sistani: All Iraqis Must Collaborate Against Islamofascist Terrorists

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani again emphasized his moderating influence on Iraq by strongly condemning the wave of Islamofascist bombings targeting Christian churches in Iraq this weekend, killing eleven in five coordinated attacks. Sistani urged all Iraqis to "collaborate" with the interim Iraqi government in order to end the terror, and he was not only Muslim cleric to do so:

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani said in a statement that Sunday's assaults on Christian churches "targeted Iraq's unity, stability and independence." ... The more senior al-Sistani said: "We condemn and reproach these hideous crimes and deem necessary the collaboration of everyone — the government and the people — in putting an end to aggression on Iraqis," said the cleric, who is based in the southern city of Najaf.

"We assert the importance of respecting the rights of Christian civilians and other religious minorities and reaffirm their right to live in their home country Iraq in security and peace."

Sistani leads the vast majority of Iraqi Shi'a who comprise the majority of Iraq's population, especially in the South. Sistani was joined yesterday by another, more radical cleric, who appears to have embraced politics rather than terrorism - Moqtada al-Sadr:

"This is a cowardly act and targets all Iraqis," Abdul Hadi al-Daraji, spokesman for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, told Al-Jazeera television.

Obviously, the terrorists still have plenty of resources for their atacks, but their political cover has increasingly disappeared. With even the radical clerics calling for the terror to stop, the position of ex-Saddamites and foreign terrorists will find it harder to hide out from the new Iraqi government, especially as their own security forces stabilize. Iraqis are tired of war, and especially tired of foreign lunatics blowing up Iraqis, and all the terrorists have managed to accomplish is to unite the disparate strains of Iraqis into a cohesive front to oppose them.

Working with Sistani early on and taking his advice to negotiate with Sadr appears to have been a brilliant move at this point. All factions except the bombers now look to be focused on upcoming elections instead of leftover ordinance in order to further their policy aims. In other words, Iraq keeps drawing closer to a representative government with social support for its success -- which looks like progress to me.

The Kerry Secret Cut-And-Run Plan

John Kerry has a plan to increase foreign participation in Iraq and retreat forthwith, but he's not going to share it with anyone until he's elected, the Washington Post reports. Kerry did announce that he will pull the vast majority of American troops out of Iraq before the end of his first term in office:

John F. Kerry pledged Sunday he would substantially reduce U.S. troop strength in Iraq by the end of his first term in office but declined to offer any details of what he said is his plan to attract significantly more allied military and financial support there.

In interviews on television talk shows, the Democratic presidential nominee said that he saw no reason to send more troops to Iraq and that he would seek allied support to draw down U.S. forces there. "I will have significant, enormous reduction in the level of troops," he said on ABC's "This Week."

Kerry accused President Bush of misleading the country before the war in Iraq, burning bridges with U.S. allies and having no plan to win peace. But when questioned about saying Thursday in his acceptance speech, "I know what we have to do in Iraq," he would not tip his hand.

A secret plan to end the war? Where have we heard this before? Journalists on the talk shows had no trouble recalling, even though it happened 36 years ago. The Kerry campaign cannot be happy about this comparison, and it showed in Kerry's response:

Reminded that he sounded like Richard M. Nixon, who campaigned in 1968 by saying he had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam, Kerry responded: "I don't care what it sounds like. The fact is that I'm not going to negotiate in public today without the presidency, without the power."

Kerry previously has discussed his desire to reduce U.S. forces in Iraq but declined to attach any timetable to that goal. He spoke more extensively about Iraq after his acceptance speech, suggesting he has an exit strategy.

John Kerry -- the new Nixon! He won't tell you anything about how he plans to convince the French and Germans to put troops they don't have into Iraq in numbers great enough to have us go home and leave them holding the bag. If that sounds like a stupid deal for the French and Germans to accept -- even Republicans wouldn't demand that of them -- Kerry wants you to know that his superior brain power will convince them to do it. Why? Because he has a secret plan, and you don't get to see it unless you elect him President.

It's really too bad he's not already an officeholder, a person with some official standing in the US government, or he could already be working on America's behalf. Darn it! If he wasn't an outsider in Washington, we could already have harnessed his superior intellect to solve this Gordian knot.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Take a look around, and bookmark and/or blogroll CQ if you enjoy your visit. In case you haven't heard, I'll be one of the credentialed bloggers at the Republican convention, so be sure to check back on updates...

UPDATE II: Rusty at My Pet Jawa says that the Kerry campaign has no respect for intellectual property -- they've infringed on his copyright ...

The Slow-Burn Civil War

Palestinian forces fired on Fatah reformers in the West Bank yesterday, injuring no one but sending the message that any challenge to Yasser Arafat's grip on power would result in a bloody civil war. Meanwhile, Arafat's Palestinian critics grew more bold in calling for an end to corruption:

Gunmen claiming allegiance to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat fired warning shots outside a meeting hall in the West Bank city of Nablus where members of his Fatah movement gathered Sunday to discuss internal reforms, witnesses said.

No one was injured when about 15 masked members of the Al Awda Brigade fired their weapons to express displeasure over what they said was a move against the Palestinian leader. About 60 Fatah activists from rural areas outside Nablus were meeting to discuss the recent political turmoil in the Palestinian Authority and draft a protest statement to Arafat, said one of the activists, Ghassan Douglas, in a telephone interview.

He said the armed men, who act as a private militia for Arafat, believed that the activists were plotting against him. "The purpose of the meeting was misunderstood," Douglas said.

When the boss needs a private security force to protect him from his personal armed wing of the movement, civil tensions have reached their peak. Fatah is, after all, Arafat's own creation and his power base within the PLO. The Los Angeles Times' report makes it clear that Arafat's power hangs by a thread, or these days, a threat. It's also clear that the threat has less power than before as Arafat's critics feel increasingly emboldened to cast the Palestinian Authority in the harshest terms:

Meanwhile, Mohammed Dahlan, a former Palestinian security chief who has become Arafat's biggest political rival in the Gaza Strip, was quoted in a Kuwaiti newspaper as saying that Arafat was "sitting on the bodies of Palestinians and on the ruins."

Dahlan said that "tens of thousands of Palestinians" would protest in the streets unless "real reforms" were put into place by Aug. 10, according to an Israeli news account of his comments to the Al Watan newspaper.

Official corruption was sapping Palestinian aspirations, he said. "The concept which has thus far run the Palestinian cause has become useless."

The intifada, having failed, now turns inward on Arafat. The passions he stirred up and the hopes he raised need a new outlet, since the Israelis have increasingly made their defenses more effective against the suicide bombings that the Palestinian power brokers encouraged. Those who have lost sons to the madness of suicide attacks have little left -- no sons, no house, and no house in Tel Aviv overlooking the Mediterranean. The bill will come due soon for Arafat, and he knows it, and another call to intifada will not save him this time.

Meanwhile, Europeans Vote Kerry

John Kerry may not have received a post-convention bounce from American voters, but the news isn't all bad for the Democratic nominee. Today he received his first newspaper endorsement; unfortunately, the newspaper is the European and far-left Observer:

Kerry insists he will be a different President. Under him the US would achieve its foreign policy ambitions through leadership of the international alliance system, accepting the compromises that that implies. Kerry would restore the treaty system covering the spread and testing of nuclear and chemical weapon systems, that Bush has jettisoned. He would cooperate in relieving Third World debt; he would be sympathetic to the Kyoto accords. He would not prevent sex education and the use of condoms in the campaign to fight Aids. He would back science and stem cell research. He would encourage alternative energy technologies.

The Observer pushed the envelope when it comes to political bias. Instead of acknowledging that American politics might be more complex than a London tabloid understands, the editor goes for the crassest possible explanation of Americans they can possibly create in order to justify their Kerry preference:

The US has hardened into two virulently opposed ideological and cultural camps that are almost equal in numbers. On the two seaboards, around the Great Lakes, in the north east and some cities of the south, the Democrats have their base: mildly progressive, multilateralist, tolerant and fair-minded. In the south, the Rocky Mountains and the plains lie the Republican base: religious fundamentalists, fervent believers in America's unilateralist destiny and culturally conservative. This is 50:50 America.

In other words, the Democrats are all sweetness and light while the Republicans are religious nutbars and, by implication, intolerant and oppressive. Even partisans here in the US would have trouble swallowing that blanket stereotyping, hardly any indication of the fair-mindedness that the Observer supposedly admires about the American left. (One wonders how Michael Moore fits into that mold, anway.) As if this description wasn't dim-witted enough, the Observer finishes by inflating their sense of self-importance regarding American politics:

In a bitter fight in a divided America, reassurance that Kerry has the support of the rest of the world could be a decisive factor in key swing states. We must offer that signal.

I'd love to see the Kerry campaign trot that signal out on the campaign trail. "Europeans For Kerry" -- talk about a losing strategy! It shows the ineptitude of the Observer to suggest it, which also puts their endorsement of Kerry in its proper light.

St. Paul Democrat Endorses Bush For President

While I was driving home from work on Friday, local radio buzzed about St. Paul mayor Randy Kelly and his silence so far on the presidential race. Kelly, a DFL member (Democrat-Farmer-Labor, the state Democratic party), had hinted that he might remain neutral, declining to endorse John Kerry, a stance which worried Democrats in this traditionally liberal capitol city. Kelly announced today that he will not remain neutral, and Democrats will be sorry they pressed the issue:

St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly broke Democratic Party ranks on Sunday to announce his support for President Bush's re-election.

"George Bush and I do not agree on a lot of issues," Kelly said in a statement. "But in turbulent times, what the American people need more than anything is continuity of government, even with some imperfect policies."

Kelly, who said he's remaining a Democrat, said the economy is going in the right direction. "There's no reason to believe a change of course will produce better or quicker results," he said.

And the mayor said the United States will bring the troops home from Iraq a lot sooner if "we don't try to bring in a whole new leadership team to run the show. We must stay the course."

KARE-11 news, our local NBC affiliate, gives the reaction of state and party officials to this bombshell. Both Governor Tim Pawlenty and Senator Norm Coleman heaped praise on the mayor for his courage and his bipartisanship, while the St. Paul DFL released a statement explicitly accusing Kelly of selling out to the "far right". Coleman, like Kelly a DFL mayor of St. Paul before switching to the Republicans and running for Senator, had this to say to his successor:

"Mayor Kelly recognizes that jobs are being created and that tax cuts have stimulated that job growth. He has done the same for St. Paul," said Coleman, Kelly's predecessor as mayor of Minnesota's capital city.

Perhaps the DFL leadership should have just kept their mouth shut instead of publicly pressuring Kelly to get off the fence. Kelly only stated the obvious -- that with an improving economy and an improving Iraq, it makes little sense to change horses, especially given the opacity of the Kerry campaign's policies. In the end, Kerry never gave Kelly a reason to vote for him, and Kelly merely had the audacity to say so publicly. The DFL knows that Minnesota will be a close race for Kerry, and having one of their leading members endorsing Bush will lead other DFL moderates to the same conclusion.

Kelly, by the way, plans on remaining in the DFL and running for re-election next year. I'd say that he will have an easy time of it after his display of independence this year -- if the DFL doesn't exact some retribution for his insistence that Emperor Kerry has no clothes. (Hat tip: Gerry from Daly Thoughts)

UPDATE: The Star-Tribune only reprints the same AP wire report that KARE-11 has, although they cut out the responses from local officials. However, their Politics page has an ironic juxtaposition of headlines:

St. Paul DFL Mayor Supports Bush Re-Election

and

DFLers Get To Work To Win State For Kerry

Well ... most of them, maybe ...

Gallup: Kerry Lost Ground During Convention

Gallup announced the results of its USA Today/CNN poll taken after the Democratic national convention. Instead of polling "adults", as Newsweek did, Gallup focused on likely voters, a much more reliable indicator of voter behavior. Their polling shows that Kerry went from a marginal tie -- one point up -- to four points down over the convention, which puts him behind at the edge of the margin of error:

In the survey, taken Friday and Saturday, the Democratic ticket of Kerry and John Edwards trailed the Republican ticket of Bush and Dick Cheney 50% to 46% among likely voters, with independent candidate Ralph Nader at 2%.

Before the convention, the two were essentially tied, with Kerry at 47%, Bush at 46%.

The change in support was within the poll's margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points in the sample of 763 likely voters. But it was nonetheless a stunning result, the first time in the Gallup Poll since the 1972 Democratic convention that a candidate seemed to lose ground at his convention.

USA Today pins the blame on Kerry's decline on a highly polarized electorate, but the real problem was the candidate and the convention itself. Despite efforts to tone down the anti-Bush rhetoric, every speaker talked about policies not in their own terms but as opposed to George Bush. Al Sharpton went on a tirade against Bush. By the time Kerry stepped to the microphone and launched his speech, it paled in comparison to Sharpton's efforts and was self-contradictory. Again, Kerry defined his entire approach in terms of George Bush, implying that Bush had sold out to the Saudis and in the very next breath, implored Bush to "stay positive".

Why did Kerry's numbers drop after the convention? Because Kerry is his own worst enemy, and every time he speaks to the nation as a whole, his support erodes. The only points during the entire campaign when Kerry made inroads against Bush has been when Kerry was off the campaign trail. Kerry made his prime-time pitch to America, and America yawned.

In this context, having his campaign advertising "go dark" might not just provide a financial lifeline but a strategic lifeline as well. Democrats should consider having Kerry stop campaigning altogether, as so far -- despite his third "reintroduction" to American voter -- he has proven to be his highest obstacle to success.

Captain's Caption Contest #21: The Right Stiff Edition!

It's Friday, so it must be time for another edition of the Captain's Caption Contests! This week's theme is Politicians In Space, and here we have the official Democratic nominee for the presidency being surprised by having a photograph taken on a campaign event. Too bad his friends John Glenn, Bill Nelson, and Bob Graham couldn't have told him what cameras do. Those Democratic Republican rascals!

Guest judging this week will be Pat from Dr. Santy, a fine blog and a loyal reader. As always, leave your comments on the comments page, and as always, put your best caption entries in the comments section -- NO e-mail, please! (E-mailed entries will be specially marked by CQ Archives security personnel and shoved down Sandy Berger's pants.) The contest will remain open until 8 pm Sunday, August 1st, at which point the comments will be closed and Pat will pick the winners.

In the meantime, if you enjoy the contests and the blog, consider dropping in a donation for Captain's Quarters trip to New York as a credentialed blogger at the Republican National Convention. Just click on one of the buttons below and donate whatever you can to the cause -- all donations are cheerfully and gratefully accepted!

Let the games begin!

BUMP 7/31: Don't forget our first live stream today at noon! And keep the entries coming ....

BUMP 8/1: Just a few hours left -- and thank you for those who have hit my Amazon and PayPal tipjars this weekend! We have about 30% of the travel costs covered now, thanks to our terrific readers! ...

COMMENTS CLOSED: To the judges!

Milli Vanilli Chili - The Wendy's Dodge

Those of us who covered John Kerry's stumble with the Marines at Wendy's on Friday missed a more significant story, one which highlights the phoniness behind the Kerry/Edwards "men of the people" act. Alert CQ reader James O'Toole sends this Midhudson News report today that the Wendy's visit was a mere photo op, while a decidedly more upscale meal waited for them on the bus:

While Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, and their families were having a “lite” lunch at Wendy’s in the Town of Newburgh Friday, drumming up local support right after the national convention in Boston, their real lunches were waiting on their bus.

A member of the Kerry advance team called Nikola’s Restaurant at the Newburgh Yacht Club the night before and ordered 19 five-star lunches to go that would be picked up at noon Friday. Management at the restaurant, which is operated by CIA graduate chef Michael Dederick, was told the meals would be for the Kerry and Edwards families and actor Ben Affleck who was with them on the tour.

The gourmet meals to go included shrimp vindallo, grilled diver sea scallops, prosciutto, wrapped stuffed chicken, and steak salad. The meals came to about $200.

Small wonder Teresa Heinz-Kerry had no idea what Wendy's chili was (Reader Sarah W refers to it as "Milli Vanilli Chili" -- the line of the day!). Let's face it, a bowl of chili and a side of fries doesn't really stack up to Shrimp Vandallo and grilled diver sea scallops. The elbow-rubbing with the hoi polloi only goes so far, after all. They don't need to get lost in the roles.

I have nothing against Shrimp Vandallo or scallops, or even spending $200 on a lunch from time to time. But making a big show of eating at Wendy's because it's an Edwards family tradition, making it a photo op for the campaign, all the while knowing you have a $200 lunch waiting for you ... that demonstrates a level of artifice that is not only shameful, but dreadfully clumsy. If nothing else, it shows that Kerry can't even fake populism effectively.

For those of you who donated to the Kerry/Edwards campaign, nineteen lunches at $200 each comes up to almost $4,000, or almost the maximum allowed for two donors to the campaign. The Kerry/Edwards campaign wants to thank those two for their assistance and encourages you to donate to the DNC as soon as possible. Terry McAuliffe wants to eat at Chez Louis for dinner tomorrow, and he needs to know that help is on the way.

UPDATE: A couple of items for the update. One, I liked Sarah's line so much I changed the title. Also, someone questioned my understanding on the math, saying that the story indicated that the meals -- plural -- came to $200, implying that was the total bill. However, that would put each meal at somewhere around $11, which seems awfully cheap even for the steak salad on that menu. For Shrimp Vandallo and grilled diver sea scallops, it's not likely.

Did The Minutemen Bomb Churches?

Car bombs in Baghdad exploded outside two churches, one Catholic and one Armenian, causing dozens of injuries and pointing towards a widening of targets in Iraq by Islamofascist terrorists:

Two car bombs exploded just minutes apart outside two nearby churches in central Baghdad during Sunday evening services, injuring at least 20 people, witnesses said. The attacks appeared to be the first targeting churches during the 15-month violent insurgency.

U.S. military officials said at least one and possible both of the blasts appeared to have been booby-trapped cars in the city's Karada neighborhood.

More news will be forthcoming; as I'm posting this, it's been announced that two people have died in the attacks. However, the deliberate targeting of churches announces a new low for the Islamofascists, and perhaps a true revelation of their aims. These are not freedom fighters -- these are people determined to wipe out all non-Muslims, or at least those who refuse to live as dhimmis at the mercy of Muslim masters.

One purveyor of the freedom-fighter myth received the adulation of the Democrats this past week, hailed as a hero by its delegates and feted by its leadership. Michael Moore even received an invitation to sit with ex-President Jimmy Carter. Here's what Moore has to say about the Iraqi "insurgents":

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win. Get it, Mr. Bush?

I don't recall Americans bombing or torching churches in the Revolutionary War (nor, for that matter, the British, despite the desperately inaccurate movie The Patriot by Mel Gibson). I don't recall the Minutemen beheading civilian hostages in order to force the Hessians out of the colonies. I don't recall George Washington and John Hancock leading a theocratic movement that called for conversion or death to all infidels. I don't recall even the Nicaraguan contras doing anything remotely similar to this, and yet John Kerry fought against supporting their cause to liberate Nicaragua from communism.

Do the Democrats embrace this version of history as much as they've embraced the man who made this ludicrous comparison? John Kerry and Terry McAuliffe need to answer this question. If they lift Moore up as an example of what their campaign means for America, then they need to explain Moore's positions explicitly to the American people in order for us to understand how they approach the world.

Which Of These Things Doesn't Belong?

Ann Gerhart provides Washington Post readers with an analysis of a term tossed around the Fleet Center in Boston with wild abandon last week, and in the ultimate paragraph, acidly notes one person who avoided it:

Today's phrase:

ROCK STAR

Definition: A label affixed, often with wild abandon, on any Democrat capable of raising the pulse of delegates assembled inside Boston's FleetCenter. Especially popular with the punditocracy, which used it more than 200 times last week.

Examples: David Gergen on CNN says Bill Clinton is a rock star. Jake Tapper on ABC and Rudy Giuliani, talking to reporters, both tag Michael Moore with it. Hannah Storm on CBS manages to declare Bill Clinton and Illinois Senate candidate Barack Obama rock stars in the same paragraph. Says Greta Van Susteren on Fox News: "I hate to overuse the term" -- oh, go ahead -- "but 'rock star' is the term everyone keeps using with both the Clintons." When Sean Hannity on the same network gushes to Jerry Springer that he is a "rock star" on the convention floor, Springer answers, "That shows you the pathetic state of affairs, I'm a rock star."

Fortunately for me, I watched the convention on C-SPAN, so I managed to avoid the silly commentary by the talking heads on Alphabet Row. I'm honestly perplexed by the usage of "rock star" as a compliment, given that most true rock stars tend to be narcissistic and intellectually shallow, and worse, as Gerhart points out. However, in the case of political pundits, they tend to use the term more in description of audience response rather than any intrinsic quality of the person. It's the reason that they felt comfortable applying the label rather liberally at the convention.

Gerhart waits until the final sentence of her analysis to point out where punidts drew the line:

During the Democratic convention, not a single commentator seems to have referred to John Kerry as a rock star, even though he is, to the best of our knowledge, the only one who can play the guitar.

No one referred to Bob Graham as a rock star, either, although that's hardly comforting to Kerry. Howard Dean had been the rock star of the primaries until he ran into a buzzsaw wielded by Al Sharpton and Dick Gephardt in Iowa, and no one has since assumed the mantle. It's clear that Kerry still has not captured the imagination of the Democrats, nor (curiously) of the punditocracy which normally hoists the Democratic nominee on its shoulders. The underlying cause may be Kerry's rhetorical Grahamism and his policy drifts, which leave the liberal commentators either distrustful of his direction or simply uninspired.

No one will be calling George Bush a rock star at the RNC, either -- but no one expects Bush to embrace such a small label anyway.