Focus on now

In the Sunday Chicago Tribune, an editor there who has maintained silence for 35 years on his Vietnam war experience has gone public with his account of events as a swift boat commander---the only one still alive who was actually there for one of the actions Kerry's critics are lying about. He supports Kerry's account completely.
The story can be found at the Chi Trib site, an almost as detailed story at the NY Times, but since both are "subscription" a more accessible link is this one:
Reuters %7C Latest Financial News %2F Full News Coverage

Why are the actual Vietnam vets involved doing this? Several who previously supported Kerry were severely criticized for their actions in Vietnam by historian/author Douglas Brinkley in his biography of John Kerry. Combine that with resentment over Kerry's testimony when he returned, now taken utterly out of context in the new swift boat ads, when he reported having heard at the Winter Soldier hearings in 1970 or so, Vietnam soldiers detailing how they had committed various atrocities or witnessed them.

In Maxine Hong Kingston's latest book, THE FIFTH BOOK OF PEACE, she tells of her work with a group of Vietnam vets. They learned meditation. Eventually they met and embraced Vietnamese who literally had been their enemies---officers and soldiers on the other side. But their openness to new ways of dealing with their experiences, to nonviolence and dialogue, and especially their forgiveness of their enemies, did not extend to Americans who had protested the Vietnam war. They hated them. They were the unforgivable enemy, more than 30 years later.

As early as a first draft physical in Chicago in 1968, we met Vietnam veterans who trashed the war in no uncertain terms. By the early 70s, soldiers in uniform greeted as a brother a contemporary with long hair, because "you guys were right." The political danger John Kerry represented to Nixon in the 1970s was precisely as a well-spoken leader of what was becoming the most dynamic force in the anti-war movement: Vietnam veterans. Nixon's men found their own Vietnam vet mouthpiece, and today he has resumed his career as one of the ringleaders of the anti-Kerry vets.

But there were lots of veterans who felt personally attacked by any criticism or even reporting on the conduct of the Vietnam war. The Vietnam vets in Kingston's book needed more than meditation. They needed some shadow work, some guidance in understanding their projections. Most veterans of that war and most wars have been shamefully abandoned by their government. Many didn't get the medical care they needed, let alone psychological care that would expose that government's cynical use of them.

Now they are being exploited by wealthy friends of Bush, and encouraged in their delusions and lies.

We hope that the belated but now overwhelming exposing of these lies will mean this matter gets a rest. But we aren't all that hopeful it will happen on its own. We suggest that Kerry make an aggressive move to reframe the debate---not on the Vietnam war, but on the war in Iraq. The one the American people are now paying for, the one Americans are now dying for, in increasing rates.

Though the press has moved away from evaluating it, the situation in Iraq is stark. The military situation is worse. The political situation is dire. Billions of dollars have gone to Halliburton and other Bush crony corporations for reconstruction they haven't done, and the Iraqi people are suffering and angry.

More and more is coming out about Iraq and war on terror prison abuses, and the abuses of the Patriot Act that have, among other internal acts of subtle terrorism, placed thousands of Americans unjustifiably on no-fly and watch lists, including at least one black congressman and none other than Senator Ted Kennedy. Even these powerful members of the U.S. government can't get their names taken off these lists.

The only virtue of this press attention on Vietnam controversy is that press is going to be listening to what Kerry says. If he comes out with a full bore attack on Bush policy in Iraq, it will be heard. It is the issue that resonated throughout the primaries, an issue that independent voters are troubed by, and now is the time to return our focus to it. No president can do anything about Vietnam. This president chosen in 2004 must do something about Iraq.

Can't Find It At Amazon? Orwell's 2004

Wasn't it just a few entries ago we quoted the GOPer propaganda expert saying the real power of negative ads is in defining a story for the "free media", including the phony news outlets? The so-called Swift Boat Vets ads have become the textbook example in just two weeks, as a half million dollar ad buy in a handful of states has become the best known 15 seconds of the campaign, thanks to it being run over and over by rabid right talk shows and journalistically challenged cable news outlets.

For the story of the ad, why the people who appear in it are lying, and who financed it---not just GOPer fat cats, but those with direct ties to the Bushes and especially GW's secretary of cynicism, department of lies, distortions and dirty tricks: Karl Rove--here's a link to the New York Times story of 8/20.

The New York Times %3E Washington %3E Campaign 2004 %3E Friendly Fire%3A The Birth of an Anti-Kerry Ad

For a sickening chronicle of the media's compliance, you can go through the recent archives of
the Daily Howler.

Pack journalism, first exposed as such in Timothy Crouse's 1972 book, THE BOYS ON THE BUS, is weakness enough in the information media upon which a free society depends. So is the usual domination by owners rich enough to own the presses. But then the Fairness Doctrine was thrown out, meaning that rabid right radio could spread lies with no redress. Then TV news became a profit center, and then 24 hour operations on cable, with the emphasis on pretty faces and fast talking provocateurs. Spill all that over a population kept stupid by a combination of social pressure, bad schools, slogan culture and a 25 hr work day, and you've got the makings of Orwell Updated from 1984 to 2004. Big Adolf would be green with envy.

News from Pews

The Pews Foundation poll, that is. Here's a nugget:

"With foreign policy and defense issues at the forefront of the presidential campaign this year, swing voters' views on a range of these issues take on added importance. On eight of the 11 foreign policy issues in the poll on which there are significant partisan gaps, opinions of swing voters are closer to those of Kerry supporters than to those of Bush voters. "

Here's the link to the relevant page:

Part Five%3A Opinion About the Bush Administration%27s Stewardship%3A Foreign Policy Attitudes Now Driven by 9%2F11 and Iraq

Two priceless headlines on google news

Translation Error Cited in Sting Case
(a terrorist suspect may go free)

and just below it:

Rumsfeld Favors Slower Reform of U.S. Intelligence

We can't go any slower, dude.

What wrong with these guys?


We know why the Bushies "can't understand" Kerry's position on Iraq, but what's wrong with Chris "if I couldn't think in clichés I couldn't think" Mathews of Hardball? He's going after the Bushies for distorting a Kerry statement made on his precious show, while at the same time pretending he can't get a straight answer from Kerry---concluding that Kerry isn't a flip-flopper, he's wishy-washy. And a GOPer guest who professes to be or have been a journalist "can't understand" Kerry's position on his vote to authorize the President to use force as a last resort in Iraq, even though a campaign aide to Howard Dean explained it quite clearly while he was sitting there.

Kerry's position is that he voted to give the President the backing needed to get Saddam to take weapons inspections seriously---which was working, by the way, right up to the minute that Bush decided the fact that the inspectors weren't finding weapons meant Saddam really had them, and started bombing. If inspections were blocked, then the authorization of force would focus allies on the question of what to do to compel Saddam to cooperate with inspectors.
Kerry also expected of a President of either party that he would go to war only as a last resort, and only with thorough plans for the aftermath, etc.

Why is that so difficult to understand? No, he didn't vote For the War. He voted to give the President what he said he needed to rid Iraq of WMDs. He didn't say, let's invade Iraq, no matter what those cheese eating surrender monkeys want! He didn't vote to bomb, or invade, or to torture, and he's certainly not now crowing that it doesn't matter if the purpose of the war was a sham, it was a good thing anyway.

So why doesn't Kerry just say that he regrets his vote now---that essentially he shouldn't have trusted Bush's competence or veracity? It would be politically advantageous to do so. It seems pretty obvious from his answer the other day---that no, he thinks his vote was right because a President ought to have had that authority---that the reason he isn't repudiating his vote to give the president authorization to use force, is he wants that kind of flexibility for himself if he is President, though he makes clear he would use it in a far different way. If he says now that the president should be denied such authority, it would be used against him if he asked for it while president. It's the big stick that allows the president to speak softly, to use diplomacy in the real world.

It's no secret to our readers that we opposed giving Bush that authorization, that we suspected he would misuse it, that he and his ideologically rigid and simplistically zealous advisors were bent on war no matter what, that they had no plan and no clue about the aftermath, or the effect of invasion on the region. We more or less predicted it all, so how hard could it have been? Still, while we believe that Congress should have voted against authorizing force, we are pretty damn sure Bush would have gone to war anyway (which is to say, if he hadn't had the votes to begin with, he never would have taken the matter to Congress. He would have found or created the pretext to act on his own authority.) And we are not so taken with force authorizations as a policy for the future. We would like to see the United States institute a Department of Peace.

Our position on these matters differs from Kerry's, but we understand his position, and find it honorable. We can live with it, and we do mean that in several senses.

Now...what's up with John McCain? How can he call for the Bushies to condemn the attack on Kerry's Vietnam leadership and heroism, and when they don't, he campaigns with Bush in Florida anyway? Now he's questioning the Bush plan to take troops out of South Korea and Europe, but he's still the main speaker at the GOP convention?

Supporting a candidate who doesn't agree with all of your policy positions is understandable. But one whose integrity you've questioned? Who you have called to account, and who ignores you? We're beginning to wonder about John McCain.