With Friends Like These

Matt Drudge links us to a memo from Michael Moore who tries to buck up the Democratic troops' sagging morale with a message that must make the Kerry camp cringe. Here are some salient excerpts:

Yes, they caught Kerry asleep on the Swift Boat thing. Yes, they found the frequency in Dan Rather and ran with it. Suddenly it's like, "THE END IS NEAR! THE SKY IS FALLING!" No, it is not. If I hear one more person tell me how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can't win ... Dammit, of COURSE he's a lousy candidate - he's a Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic, they even lose the elections they win!

Yes, OF COURSE any of us would have run a better, smarter, kick-ass campaign. Of course we would have smacked each and every one of those phony swifty boaty bastards down. But WE are not running for president - Kerry is. So quit complaining and work with what we have.

The Bush people need you to believe that it is over. They need you to slump back into your easy chair and feel that sick pain in your gut as you contemplate another four years of George W. Bush. They need you to wish we had a candidate who didn't windsurf and who was just as smart as we were when WE knew Bush was lying about WMD and Saddam planning 9/11.

The country is almost back in our hands. Not another negative word until Nov. 3rd! Then you can bitch all you want about how you wish Kerry was still that long-haired kid who once had the courage to stand up for something.

This last is an especially interesting admission. What the Democrats should be voting for, according to Moore, is a candidate whose defining moment came when he slandered his fellow veterans with false, unsubstantiated testimony, who committed an act of treason by giving aid and comfort to the enemy, who admitted to committing war crimes, and who consorted with the enemy in Paris while still an officer in the armed forces. This is the Democrat ideal? The guards at Abu Ghraib are going to prison for doing far less than what Kerry did when he was their age and this and this a man Americans should elect as President?

Moore's message is essentially this: Kerry is terrible but Bush is worse, and it's still possible to beat him. Why is Bush worse? Because Iraq is going badly. How would Kerry make it better? He'd pull our troops out and insert Kofi Annan, Jacques Chirac, and the Germans, the very people whose corrupt abuse of sanctions and the oil-for-food program propped Saddam up and made him a threat to his people and to his neighbors. The duplicity and greed of the French, Germans, and Russians and the U.N. was what ultimately made Operation Iraqi Freedom necessary in the first place and Kerry wants to give them access to Iraqi oil wealth. The blood of American troops and Iraqi civilians is on their hands and Kerry wants to reward them with contracts. Moore's message is every bit as inspiring as Kerry's plan is dumb.