The Journalistic Pursuit Of Truth

The "politics of personal destruction" is shifting into high gear. The Swift Boat veterans who appeared in the anti-Kerry ad and in the forth-coming book Unfit For Command were branded "liars" and "sleazy" characters by an angry Al Hunt on Saturday evening's edition of Capitol Gang.

Hunt specifically called John O'Neill, the author of Unfit For Command, a liar but offered no support for the allegation. It's hard to say how he could support it, actually, since he hasn't seen the book yet, but then evidence doesn't matter in the world of post-modern liberalism. All that's necessary for a man to be a liar in our current cultural environment is for him to say something you don't like or that you wish weren't true.

Hunt claimed that since Kerry's accusers didn't actually serve on Kerry's vessel they're not qualified to say whether Kerry actually did the things he is credited for doing. This is like saying that because some kid in your high school was a year behind you, you can't really know anything about him.

Hunt followed this bizarre claim with one even weirder. Veins almost popping in his neck, he vigorously insisted that John McCain has more authority on the matter than anyone at the table, and John Mccain has called these men "dishonest and dishonorable". Never mind that these men knew Kerry and served with him whereas McCain never did until both men were in the Senate together. As long as truth is whatever you want it to be this sort of logic will make perfect sense to you, I suppose.

Some critics have argued that these Viet Nam veterans are reprehensible because they're making an issue out of something that happened thirty-five years ago and should not be relevant today.

There are several things to be said about this objection, however. First, those who make it were themselves mute while Terry McAuliffe and other Democrats were raking through George Bush's National Guard service. I don't recall any liberal reporters, least of all Al Hunt, telling the Democrats to stop acting like political dumpster divers. According to the Democrats and the pundits the people should know whether Bush did what he claimed to do when he was in the National Guard. It was okay to call him a draft dodger and a deserter because, heck, for all any of them knew maybe he was. But it's not okay to subject John Kerry to the same kind of scrutiny. That's sleazy politics.

Second, the allegations against Bush were made by high representatives of the Democrat party. McAuliffe is the party chairman. The Republicans have nothing to do with the ad or the book, at least not that we know. These have been produced by men who are private citizens, and if they're telling the truth what they're doing is far more noble than what Michael Moore did in Fahrenheit 9/11.

Third, John Kerry and the Democrats are the ones responsible for making his war time service an issue. In his acceptance speech he spent more time talking about his four month tour of duty in Viet Nam than he did his nineteen years in the Senate. John Edwards says "if you want to know what kind of man John Kerry is, ask the men who served with him," but when we take Edwards up on his suggestion the men who served with him are slandered and vilified by the liberals because they refuse to follow the script.

Al Hunt and his Democrat allies allege that these men, upwards of two hundred of them, are simply lying or are the manipulated pawns of rich backers who are putting up the money for these ads. It is somehow sordid for rich Republicans to finance ads critical of Kerry, but when George Soros says he would spend his entire fortune to defeat George Bush the liberals revel in the prospect.

They snickered at the obvious mendacity of rich film- maker Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and rejoiced that so many people were going to see it, but when it's their guy being subject to charges which, for all they know, may be true they're outraged at such "dishonest and dishonorable" tactics.

On Capitol Gang Margaret Carlson shrugged off the claims of these war veterans, many of them decorated heroes themselves, by making the astonishing assertion that they will all soon be discredited. This is journalism? Without having read their allegations, without having seen their evidence she knows that Kerry is innocent and these men are simply fabricating this whole thing? Where is journalistic objectivity? Where's the noble journalistic pursuit of the truth wherever it may be found? In the world of the contemporary liberal, evidently, there's no need to look at evidence when you already know the truth.

Viewpoint is looking forward to the Sunday morning talk shows. They should be feisty.

Keyes is In!

No Left Turns tells us that Alan Keyes has decided to run against Barack Obama for the Illinois senate seat:

Alan Keyes has accepted the GOP nomination to run for the Senate in Illinois and Barack Obama has already agreed to a series of Lincoln/Douglas style debates. Whatever the outcome of this race, you can't miss these debates!

Indeed!

Loose Lips Sink Ships

A lot of people have wondered why our intelligence agencies announce the captures of various terrorists. It would seem that the wiser course would be to keep their Islamist comrades in the dark while we extract as much information from the captured individuals as possible. As soon as the terrorists read in the papers that someone who knows about them has been caught they are certain to change their methods, procedures, plans, addresses, and anything else they can in order to avoid capture.

Yet there is the hope that our intelligence personnel know what they're doing. We trust that their decisions, policies, and methods are well-thought out so we give them the benefit of the doubt. That benefit, however, is going to be much harder to concede after this MSNBC account of the leak of the name of the Pakistani who was the source of information for all the terrorist arrests in Europe that have occured in the last couple of days. Some excerpts:

A Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters on Friday that Khan, who was arrested in Lahore secretly last month, had been actively cooperating with intelligence agents to help catch al-Qaida operatives when his name appeared in U.S. newspapers. Monday evening, after Khan's name appeared, Pakistani officials moved him to a secret location.

"After his capture [in July], he admitted being an al-Qaida member and agreed to send e-mails to his contacts," a Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters. "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."

The Times published a story Monday saying U.S. officials had disclosed that a man arrested in Pakistan was the source of the bulk of information leading to the security alerts. The Times identified him as Khan, although it did not say how it had learned his name.

U.S. officials subsequently confirmed the name to other news organizations Monday morning. None of the reports mentioned that Khan was working under cover at the time, helping to catch al-Qaida suspects.

Intelligence and security experts said they were surprised that Washington would reveal information that could expose the name of a source during an ongoing law enforcement operation.

"If it's true that the Americans have unintentionally revealed the identity of another nation's intelligence agent, who appears to be working in the good of all of us, that is not only a fundamental intelligence flaw. It's also a monumental foreign relations blunder," security expert Paul Beaver, a former publisher of Jane's Defense Weekly, told Reuters.

The key word here is "unintentionally". It may be that the name was released deliberately to sow confusion or deception. Nevertheless, if whoever revealed the identity of this man did it recklessly, he/she should be fired. Naming Khan may have unnecessarily alerted dozens of terrorists who might survive to murder in the future. If so, whoever made the decision to expose Khan's arrest will be partly responsible for the deaths of the victims.

Christmas in Cambodia

Jim Geraghty who writes KerrySpot at National Review Online cites what Hugh Hewitt believes is perhaps the most devastating revelations in the forthcoming book on Kerry's Viet Nam service titled Unfit For Command. Kerry appears to have deliberately lied on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1986 when he said that he was ordered into Cambodia on Christmas Eve of 1968 (Hewitt's permalinks are down so once at his site you'll have to scroll to the piece on Kerry's Christmas Eve in Cambodia).

Geraghty quotes from Unfit for Command:

Kerry also described, for example, for the Boston Herald his vivid memories of his Christmas Eve spent in Cambodia: "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 being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real."

Problem One: Nixon hadn't taken office yet.

Problem Two: "During Christmas 1968, he was more than fifty miles away from Cambodia. Kerry was never ordered into Cambodia by anyone and would have been court-martialed had he gone there. During Christmas 1968, Kerry was stationed at Coastal Division 13 in Cat Lo. Coastal Division 13's patrol areas extended to Sa Dec, about fifty-five miles from the Cambodian border...

All the living commanders in Kerry's chain of command-Joe Streuhli (Commander of CosDiv 13), George Elliott (Commander of CosDiv 11), Adrian Lonsdale (Captain, USCG and Commander, Coastal Surveillance Center at An Thoi), Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann (Commander, Coastal Surveillance Force Vietnam, CTF 115), and Rear Admiral Art Price (Commander of River Patrol Force, CTF 116)-deny that Kerry was ever ordered to Cambodia...

At least three of the five crewmen on Kerry's PCF 44 boat-Bill Zaldonis, Steven Hatch, and Steve Gardner-deny that they or their boat were ever in Cambodia. The remaining two crewmen declined to be interviewed for this book.

The Cambodia incursion story is not included in Tour of Duty [the book on Kerry's war years by Douglas Brinkley]. Instead, Kerry replaces the story with a report about a mortar attack that occurred on Christmas Eve 1968 "near the Cambodia border" in a town called Sa Dec, some fifty-five miles from the Cambodian border.

Somehow, Kerry's secret illegal mission to Cambodia, which he recounted on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1986, is now a firefight at Sa Dec and a Christmas day spent back at the base writing entries in his journal.

Unless O'Neill and Corsi have made some major error in their reporting, this is pretty stunning. Either Kerry is a pathological liar, or every man in his chain of command is.

Hewitt fills in some details of Kerry's recollections and adds that:

[I]f he lied about being sent to Cambodia, Kerry's narrative is in trouble. It will remain true that he saved a man's life, but that day's undeiable courage does not validate or protect Kerry's record then or since. A powerful demonstration of obvious falsehood on a key claim is a major blow to Kerry.

Which is why the focus ought to be on the Cambodia story, over and over again. Did Kerry make that claim? Did he do so in the Senate as part of a political argument about Nicaragua? If so, what's that tell us about his willingness to invent personal history to serve his political ambition?

Viewpoint wonders how long it will take the major media to start reporting on these revelations. By sitting on them they are doing a serious disservice to the American people who have a right to know the truth about the men they are being asked to elect as president. One thing we can be sure of, if new questions about George Bush's integrity had emerged they would be splashed across every headline and news broadcast all weekend and every day until November 2nd.

Unfit For Command has the potential to dampen a lot of enthusiasm for Kerry, an enthusiasm which, like Lake Okachobee, is miles wide and only inches deep to begin with. The danger to the Democrats is not just that undecideds will be persuaded to move toward Bush by the indictments of Kerry's character that the book contains, but that the millions who are moderately disposed toward Kerry and who are not driven by any particular animus toward Bush will simply stay home on election day.

The Wretched of the Earth

In the Sudan the holocaust continues while Khartoum plays dumb.

Sudanese Interior Minister Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein says: "It is true that the situation is out of control, but we will make an effort."

"Making an effort" is not good enough. These guys have had years to "make an effort" and have done nothing to stop the militias that are murdering, terrorizing, and dispossessing millions of people in their country. Indeed, the evidence is that they have abetted it. The effort they need to make is to pack their bags and get out.

Kofi Annan announced that the Sudanese government has about three weeks left to show the U.N. Security Council that it is serious about disarming the Janjaweed [the Sudanese militia] or face possible sanctions.

That must be a real rib-tickler in Khartoum. U.N. sanctions do not have a very reassuring record of concentrating tyrannical minds on the necessity of caring for their people. Meanwhile, in three weeks hundreds more children will starve to death.

On Thursday, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters in Khartoum: "Our policy is that anything that the AU wants we will cooperate (with). Before that we need to sit down, study it carefully and reach agreement on how we are going to implement it."

Yes, of course. Examine the problem carefully, anything to prolong the genocide and to evade having to do anything to stop it. What's needed in the Sudan is for someone to say that the games are over in Khartoum and to send in several thousand well-equipped troops to wipe out the Janjaweed, restore the people of Dharfur to their homes and farms, and to bring them relief from their suffering.

These wretched people can't count on U.N. sanctions. How would sanctions help them anyway? Sanctions invariably hurt rather than help the poor and dispossessed. The U.N. is as useless as a space heater in hell and the African Union is worse.

Perhaps the French and Germans are available for a humanitarian mission. They should have plenty of cash on hand for such an undertaking after having profited handsomely from their deals with Saddam at the expense of the Iraqi people. Maybe someone should give Chirac and Schroeder a call on behalf of the suffering Sudanese.

Why Do So Many Home School?

An article here points out that 1.1 million kids are home-schooled by parents who feel that public schools are just not safe or morally healthy environments for their kids:

The estimated figure of students taught at home has grown 29 percent since 1999, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Education Department. In surveys, parents offered two main reasons for choosing home schooling: 31 percent cited concerns about the environment of regular schools, and 30 percent wanted the flexibility to teach religious or moral lessons. Third, at 16 percent, was dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools.

How many more parents are disillusioned with their child's school but lack the resources to take them out? How many children would be home schooled if parents had the time, energy, and expertise to do it. How many children in our public schools would be in private schools if parents could afford the tuition? I suspect the number is substantial and that confidence in public schools is low and declining. Our schools are in trouble and the first person to come along with an affordable way of privatizing education is going to find a receptive public. Why is this?

The problems began to incubate in the sixties, but they emerged in the seventies when legislation and court decisions made it increasingly more difficult to maintain effective discipline in the halls and classrooms. At the same time, schools became more than just educational institutions, today they are full-service day care, offering all manner of social services, therapeutic programs, extra-curricular activities, etc. These burgeoning programs have become the tail that wags the dog in public schools almost everywhere. Many private schools feel that in order to compete with their tax-subsidized neighbors they have to add to their own menu of offerings.

Add to this the fact that many schools are not run by educators but rather by managers. They may have advanced degrees in education, but many of them are in administration because they really didn't love what they were doing in the classroom. Thus to them what happens in the classroom is secondary to everything else the school does. They would not admit this, of course, but it's clear where most administrators' priorities lie to anyone who has worked in the education field for any length of time. All one needs do is to observe how easy it is for students to be excused from class in order to engage in other activities.

There is much that needs to be done if public education is going to be rescued from irrelevance and obsolescence. One thing that must change before anything else will be of any effect is that schools need to be granted the authority to discipline their students, to permanently expel them when expulsion is appropriate without having to employ phalanxes of lawyers to justify the measure, and to use that authority once they have it.

A second step needs to be that people put in positions of leadership in schools need to be themselves men and women who love learning, leaders who will subordinate everything else that takes place in the school day to classroom excellence. School administrators all pay lip service to learning, they all say that the education their students receive is their highest concern, but in too many of our schools, class is simply where students go when they have no other claim on their time.

Many of the problems public schools face are problems they can do nothing about. Viewpoint, for example, has discussed the correlation between the quality of families in a community and the quality of schools in that community (See here, for instance).

Nevertheless, there are things that educators and legislators can do to make them better, and it is an indictment of our schools that so many parents are willing to go to such lengths to find an alternative. Public school educators can no longer afford to shrug these people off as malcontents and cranks. Public schools need to do better, but they won't as long as they keep telling themselves and us that the problems they face can all be fixed by giving them more money.

The Ad

They're accusing him of having betrayed his country, of lying to the American people about the circumstances of the war, of being unfit to serve as president of the United States. Sound familiar? These are the same claims made by hysterics like Al Gore and Howard Dean about George Bush, but this time the claims are being made by calm, apolitical men who have no partisan or ideological ax to grind. This time the claims are made by men who are actually familiar with the service of the man they criticize. In a thirty second television ad they can offer no evidence to support their allegations, but presumably that will be presented in the book due out next week titled Unfit for Command by John O'Neill. The book, if these men are indeed telling the truth, should flesh out the indictment presented in the advertisement.

Meanwhile, it is extraordinarily hypocritical of the left to call this ad "dirty politics", "gutter politics", and to say that it is "as low as you can go". John Kerry has made his service in Viet Nam a major qualification for serving as president, and the Democrats spent weeks seeking to make George Bush's service in the Air National Guard a proof of his fecklessness and unworthiness to hold the presidency. The Democrats want voters to believe that Kerry is a hero and that George Bush evaded war-time service. Now contrary testimony is emerging and the Democrats are acting like this is some sort of dirty trick.

They complain that the ad is funded by some rich guy in Texas, but many of the most virulent anti-Bush ads and websites out there are funded by George Soros and other wealthy donors.

John McCain calls the ad dishonest and dishonorable, but how does he know it's either? It's only dishonorable if it's dishonest. Does Senator McCain know that the men in the ad are lying? If these men are indeed telling the truth then the American people should know it. If it's true that Kerry didn't deserve his Purple Hearts, if it's true that he was awarded a Silver Star for actions in violation of the military code of conduct and Geneva conventions, if it's true that he accepted praise for actions unworthy of praise, then the American people should know that. If it's true that he lied under oath in his Senate testimony in 1971 then the American people should also know that.

Viewpoint takes the position that a lot of men do things, especially in war, which they regret later in life and that it is better to just put all those demons behind us. Senator Kerry and his party, however, thought they could capitalize on deeds that may turn out to be something the Senator should have been content to bury in the past. Senator Kerry and the Democrats, not the Republicans, made the decision to shine the spotlight on his military record, to contrast it with Bush's, and to urge us to vote for him on the basis of it. They cannot now complain if Americans insist on having the record clarified.

Kerry's Viet Nam Exploits

John Kerry and his allies at the Democratic National Convention have made his war exploits the centerpiece of his campaign, contrasting his meritorious service in combat with George Bush's service in the National Guard. However, a book is coming out next week which will cast serious doubts on the claims of heroism and gallantry that suffused the convention speeches. The book is co-authored by John O'Neill who took over Kerry's command after Kerry was sent home from Viet Nam and is called Unfit For Command.

Matt Drudge has some excerpts:

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.

Bates has never forgotten Kerry's actions.

John O'Neill, co-author of Unfit For Command, believes that "Kerry's Star would never have been awarded had his actions been reviewed through normal channels. In his case, he was awarded the medal two days after the incident with no review. The medal was arranged to boost the morale of Coastal Division 11, but it was based on false and incomplete information provided by Kerry himself."

According to Kerry's Silver Star citation, Kerry was in command of a three-boat mission on the Dong Cung River. As the boats approached the target area, they came under intense enemy fire. Kerry ordered his boat to attack and all boats opened fire. He then beached directly in front of the enemy ambushers. In the battle that followed, the crews captured enemy weapons. His boat then moved further up the river to suppress more enemy fire. A rocket exploded near Kerry's boat, and he ordered to charge the enemy. Kerry beached his boat 10 feet from the rocket position and led a landing party ashore to pursue the enemy.

Kerry' citation reads: "The extraordinary daring and personal courage of Lt. Kerry in attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire were responsible for the highly successful mission."

Here's what O'Neill and the Swiftees say: "According to Kerry's crewman Michael Madeiros, Kerry had an agreement with him to turn the boat in and onto the beach if fired upon. Each of the three boats involved in the operation was involved in the agreement." O'Neill writes that one crewman even recalls a discussion of probable medals.

Doug Reese, a pro Kerry Army veteran, recounted what happened that day to O'Neill, "Far from being alone, the boats were loaded with many soldiers commanded by Reese and two other advisors. When fired at, Reese's boat--not Kerry's--was the first to beach in the ambush zone. Then Reese and other troops and advisors (not Kerry) disembarked, killing a number of Viet Cong and capturing a number of weapons. None of the participants from Reese's boat received Silver Stars.

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."

"Admiral Roy Hoffmann, who sent a Bravo Zulu (meaning "good work"), to Kerry upon learning of the incident, was very surprised to discover in 2004 what had actually occurred. Hoffmann had been told that Kerry had spontaneously beached next to the bunker and almost single-handedly routed a bunkered force in Viet Cong. He was shocked to find out that Kerry had beached his boat second in a preplanned operation, and that he had killed a single, wounded teenage foe as he fled."

"Commander Geoge Elliott, who wrote up the initial draft of Kerry's Silver Star citation, confirms that neither he, nor anyone else in the Silver Star process that he knows, realized before 1996 that Kerry was facing a single, wounded young Viet Cong fleeing in a loincloth. While Commander Elliott and many other Swiftees believe that Kerry committed no crime in killing the fleeing, wounded enemy (with a loaded or empty launcher), others feel differently. Commander Elliott indicates that a Silver Star recommendation would not have been made by him had he been aware of the actual facts."

Look for the Democrats to do everything they can to discredit this book. If past experience is any guide, they'll attack its timing, its source of funding, and they'll even seek to destroy the reputations of the men who are quoted in it, but it'll be interesting to see if they actually challenge what the book claims to be the facts.

It will also be interesting to see whether the Bush-haters in the media even care about the facts.

Keyes For U.S. Senate

This article reveals that Alan Keyes is mulling over an invitation from Illinois Republicans to run for the Senate in their state against Barack Obama. It would seem to be a difficult slog against a popular opponent for a man who has never even lived in the state, but Viewpoint hopes that Keyes accepts the challenge.

A campaign between Keyes and Obama would be fascinating for several reasons, not the least of which is that it would afford Keyes a forum for getting his conservative message out to an African-American audience that doesn't often hear such themes from able black advocates.

In addition, it would be interesting to see a campaign between two powerful, charismatic proponents of conservatism and liberalism, and especially one in which the race issue has been effectively neutralized.

As for the fact that Keyes has never lived in Illinois, state law apparently allows a candidate to be eligible as long as he is a resident on election day, and, besides, not having lived in the state didn't prevent New York voters from electing Hillary Clinton.

Go for it Alan!

The Terror Web

Lawrence Wright at The New Yorker has written an absolutely riveting piece on Islamic terror titled The Terror Web. Wright explains how the internet is being used by the jihadis to facilitate their operations and also discusses at length the Madrid train bombings and how the perpetrators were apprehended. The Terror Web is chilling but important reading. Some excerpts:

Muslim immigration is transforming all of Europe. Nearly twenty million people in the European Union identify themselves as Muslim. This population is disproportionately young, male, and unemployed. The societies these men have left are typically poor, religious, conservative, and dictatorial; the ones they enter are rich, secular, liberal, and free. For many, the exchange is invigorating, but for others Europe becomes a prison of alienation. A Muslim's experience of immigration can be explained in part by how he views his adopted homeland. Islamic thought broadly divides civilization into dar al-Islam, the land of the believers, and dar al-Kufr, the land of impiety. France, for instance, is a secular country, largely Catholic, but it is now home to five million Muslims. Should it therefore be considered part of the Islamic world? This question is central to the debate about whether Muslims in Europe can integrate into their new communities or must stand apart from them. If France can be considered part of dar al-Islam, then Muslims can form alliances and participate in politics, they should have the right to institute Islamic law, and they can send their children to French schools. If it is a part of dar al-Kufr, then strict Muslims must not only keep their distance; they must fight against their adopted country.

Later, Kepel and I discussed the reason that Europe was under attack. "The future of Islam is in Europe," he said. "It has a huge Muslim population. Either we train our Muslims to become modern global citizens, who live in a democratic, pluralistic society, or, on the contrary, the Islamists win, and take over those Muslim European constituencies. Then we're in serious trouble."

Intelligence officials are now trying to determine who is the next target, and are sifting through "chatter" in search of a genuine threat. "We see people getting on the Internet and then they get on their phones and talk about it," a senior F.B.I. official told me. "We are now responding to the threat to the U.S. elections." The idea of attacking before Election Day, the official said, "was born out of Madrid." Earlier this year, an international task force dubbed Operation Crevice arrested members of a bomb-making ring in London. During the investigation, officials overheard statements that there were jihadis in Mexico awaiting entry into the U.S. That coincided with vague warnings from European imams about attacks before the elections. As a result of this intelligence, surveillance of border traffic from Mexico has been increased.

Read the whole article. It's worth the time.

Kerry's Record

John Kerry suggested in his Convention speech that he would keep the American military strong, well-equipped and well-manned. "We will add 40,000 active duty troops," he assured us, "not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended, and under pressure....To all who serve in our armed forces today, I say, help is on the way." In light of his record in the Senate, however, these promises are simply laughable, and Kerry himself looks foolish to anyone who has had a glimpse of what he has done when he's been given the opportunity to do something for our military besides make empty rhetorical gestures.

One of the most egregious bits of hypocrisy in a convention that was larded with it was Kerry's outrage that military families were forced to hold bake sales to buy body armor for their soldiers because of President Bush's implied failure to equip the troops properly for the invasion of Iraq. This claim was all the more reprehensible because funding for body armor and other equipment was contained in the $87 billion appropriations bill that Kerry so famously voted against. Also in that bill was funding for hazardous duty pay for soldiers and $1.3 billion to provide for medical care for military families. Kerry voted against all of it.

In fact, for Kerry to actually do what he suggests, now that he wants to be elected president, he will have to reverse completely the utter disdain toward the military and our intelligence services that he consistently demonstrated during his nineteen year tenure in the senate. The following information about Kerry's voting record on military issues is taken from the book Reckless Disregard by Lt. Col. Robert Patterson:

During the 1980s: Senator Kerry called for cuts to the military totaling $50 billion and voted against the Peacekeeper missile, the B-1 and B-2 bombers, the F-15, F-14A, F-14D and the AV-8B fighter aircraft, the Aegis air defense cruiser, and the Trident missile.

In 1990: He voted against the B-1 and B-2 bombers, the F-14, F-15, F-16, the Patriot missile, the Aegis Air Defense cruiser, the Trident submarine missile, the M1 Abrams tank, the Bradley fighting vehicle, and the Tomahawk cruise missile.

In 1991: He voted to cut $3 billion from the defense budget.

In 1992: He voted to cut $6 billion from defense.

In 1993: He voted to cut defense by $8.8 billion. He also voted to downsize the Army light infantry, Air Force tactical fighter squadrons, and the number of Navy submarines.

In 1994: Kerry proposed cutting $43 billion from the defense budget.

In 1995: He voted against the Marine AV-B8 Harrier and the AH-64 Apache helicopter. He also tried to cut the Air Force F-22 Raptor.

In 1996: He proposed a reduction of $6.5 billion in the defense budget. He also voted against funding an anti-ballistic missile defense system, denying that there was any ballistic missile threat against the U.S. Two years later North Korea had the Tae po Dong missile which is capable of reaching the west coast. China also has ballistic missiles capable of striking our mainland, largely as a result of technology transfers from the Clinton administration.

Throughout these years he voted twelve times against military pay increases (George Bush has raised military pay by 21%)

In 1994, 1995, and 1997 Kerry voted to cut several billion dollars from our intelligence gathering agencies, and yet after 9/11 he told Face the Nation "...at the moment, the single most important weapon for the United States of America is intelligence. It's the single most important weapon in this particular war." Nevertheless, he served eight years on the Senate Intelligence Committee and never cast a single vote to increase human intelligence capability or to reform the intelligence community or to provide greater funding for their efforts. This record is especially deplorable in light of his charge that President Bush has not moved fast enough in the wake of 9/11 to shake up the Intelligence establishment and to make us more secure against our enemies. What has Senator Kerry himself been doing in the last eight years other than emasculating the very agencies which might have prevented the Islamist attack?

When Senator Kerry talks about a strong America it must be borne in mind that whatever kind of strength he's talking about it's not the kind that he wants us to think it is.

Redefining Politics

The Democrat left has gradually over the last few years revised the lexicon employed in our political debates and Viewpoint, as a public service, wishes to announce the following updates in no particular order:

Lie: Anything that turns out not to be true or might not be true, or which has not yet been proven to be true. Note that it is only a lie when a Republican, especially the president, says something which satisfies these criteria. When a Democrat does it, it's interpretive spin or personal narrative, or if, say, a meteorologist is wrong about a weather forecast that would be an honest mistake resulting from inadequate data.

Censorship: Any instance of someone expressing any manner of disagreement with what a liberal says. E.g. If people refuse to buy Dixie Chick CDs, that's censorship. If, on the other hand, a conservative speaker gets shouted down on a college campus that's a sign of a healthy exercise of first amendment rights.

Leadership: Securing permission from the French, no matter how much groveling it may take to get it, to defend ourselves from those who are determined to kill us.

Political Mainstream: Any current of opinion found on the left of the ideological spectrum. More specifically, any idea held by Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, or John Kerry.

Extremist: Anyone who opposes the mainstream idea that we should be able to kill unborn children for any reason whatsoever, or who rejects the mainstream view that the 2nd amendment is obsolete, or who is so far out of the mainstream as to believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman, or who flouts the mainstream by holding any traditional religious conviction.

Unilateral: Any action taken either by oneself or with any number of partners but which does not include France.

Hero: Anyone who applies for a Purple Heart after suffering a self-inflicted wound requiring a band-aid. Alternatively, anyone who is awarded a Silver Star for conduct which is in violation of the Geneva conventions and the United States' Military code.

Perhaps readers can think of some additional revisions. We'll post updates as they are available.

Kerry on Iraq

TruthOut.Org is touting an article by Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times on Senator Kerry's recent remarks to that paper about his plans for Iraq. His intentions are, essentially, to persuade more foreign countries to help shoulder the load:

Within a first term as president, Sen. John F. Kerry thinks he could attract enough international help in Iraq to make it a "reasonable" goal to replace most U.S. troops stationed there with foreign forces, he told The Times in an interview.

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for Bush's reelection campaign, said Kerry's promises to increase foreign participation ignored the contributions being made by "more than 30 nations [that] stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States, engaged in helping the Iraqis build a secure democratic future."

Sensing, perhaps, that the Times was expecting a little more contrast with the White House's goals for Iraq, especially after the sharp battles fought in the Democrat primaries over just this issue, Kerry went on to explain how he would accomplish this.

Kerry said he would offer several tangible inducements to encourage European and Arab nations to do more to help secure and rebuild Iraq. Among those steps would be the appointment of a U.N. high commissioner to give the international community a greater say in the development of a permanent Iraqi government, granting other countries greater access to reconstruction contracts and the convening of an international conference "that brings leaders together for an immediate raising of the stakes of diplomacy."

Setting aside the incoherence of the last sentence, we might ask why the Senator thinks the U.N. should have any say at all in how Iraq is rebuilt? If the U.N. had had its way, Saddam would still be cutting out Iraqi tongues and filling huge trenches with bullet-riddled bodies. Iraq is now a sovereign nation. It doesn't need the U.N. telling it what to do. The only countries who should profit from the rebuilding process, aside from those to whom Iraq deigns to award contracts, are those who stood with us in OIF and who are standing with us now. The American taxpayer is footing much of the bill for this "rebuilding" and for Kerry to think that we should subsidize French industry after their attempt to sabotage the liberation of Iraq in the Security Council is looney.

Kerry said he believed other nations had failed to respond as much as they should to Iraq's needs, and that he would challenge them with a "message of responsibility." He also said he could exert such pressure more effectively than Bush by combining it with efforts to build more international cooperation on other issues.

"A message of responsibility"?! That'll stir European consciences. "More international cooperation on other issues"? Like what, the Kyoto Treaty? Tariffs? Is Kerry telling us that he'll be able to get the cooperation of other countries in Iraq by capitulating to their demands on everything else?

Indeed, how much of our sovereignty is Senator Kerry willing to cede to the United Nations? This is not an idle question. In 1971 he stated that he was an internationalist and would like to see our troops disbursed around the world "only at the direction of the United Nations." In 1971 he was eager to turn over de facto control of our military to the likes of Kofi Annan. It might be instructive for one of the journalists on his campaign bus to ask him where he stands on that issue today.

"I've done this for a long time," Kerry said. "I have negotiated personally with leaders of other countries.... And I believe I come to this table with greater experience and a greater sense of direction than George Bush."

This is pure flummery. Kerry has been a senator for nineteen years and has done nothing to distinguish himself. Now he expects us to believe that he will suddenly be a forceful, influential leader in the international arena when he was little more than a "back-bencher" for three terms in the senate.

"I know what it means to convene a meeting of chiefs of agencies and chiefs of police and set expectations and demand a plan for the protection of nuclear and chemical plants and implement it," he said. "It hasn't happened" under Bush.

Many people, of course, know what it means to convene meetings and demand plans. The only reason for saying such a vacuous thing as this is to try to sound like a tough guy and make Bush seem weak. Nor does the senator know what Bush has demanded of his subordinates in the years since 9/11. Kerry's statement is just simply fatuous, and this nullity comes from a man who prides himself on being smarter than everyone else.

Kerry also said his administration would be more open than Bush's. He pledged to hold monthly news conferences. (Bush's have been sporadic.) And although the Bush administration has fought in court to avoid disclosing records of meetings held by Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, Kerry said that as president, he would open some of the meetings his officials would conduct with outside groups....Kerry said he is committed to unprecedented transparency.

If Kerry wanted to demonstrate his commitment to openness he could start by releasing his medical records from Vietnam. Kerry has made his military service a major, if not the chief, reason why Americans should vote for him. His service, therefore, is relevant to this campaign and should be thoroughly examined, including his medical records. As long as he refuses to let us see what's in those he shouldn't talk to us about unprecedented transparency and openness.

Deja Vu

Kerry Spot at National Review Online has a good analysis of why President Bush seems to be unable to close ground with Senator Kerry in the polls. For some reason, one hopes it's not ineptitude, the Bush team has been very lackadaisical about getting his record out before the public. A reader of Kerry Spot looks at the Bush ads and makes a strong case that unless things change this month, Bush could be in real trouble. It's worth quoting almost the entire piece:

The ABC News poll lists six major issues that the voters cite as influencing their votes (as well as a few other issues). It's constructive to compare the leading issues with the TV ads run by the Bush campaign this year. (By my count, Bush has run about 22 ads total, according to his website).

1. The economy. Cited as the most important issue by 25 percent of voters. These voters break 60-33 Kerry. Number of ads run by the Bush campaign touting the Bush record: 1 out of 22. Although a few Bush ads mention the tax cuts and speak vaguely of economic growth, only one ad pushes the job creation record and the Bush boom ("Pessimism", which didn't run unit 4 June 2004!).

2. Iraq. Cited as most important issue by 23 percent of voters. These voters break 72-26 Kerry. They think we made a mistake in going into Iraq, and that the casualties mean the war isn't worth it. Number of Bush ads defending the decision to go to war in Iraq: 0 (as in zero). Bush's best ad of the whole campaign slams Kerry for voting against funding our troops - but that doesn't address the concerns of the Iraq issue voters.

3. Terrorism. Cited as most important issue by 20 percent of the voters. These voters break Bush 83-15. Number of ads run by Bush: 3-6 (depending upon how you count them).

4. Taxes. (ABC doesn't note the percent listing this as most important). These voters gave Bush a 6+ lead in trust before the convention, Kerry a 6+ lead after the convention. Number of ads run by Bush: 6. The Bush team pounded Kerry on his gas tax and other tax hikes.

5. Education. (Percentage not listed). Kerry has a 13 point lead in trust on this issue. Bush ads: 0. Incredible - what is the point of hiking education spending by 50+ percent and then not citing that as a major reason for re-election?

6. Health care. (Percentage not listed). Kerry has a 19 point lead in trust on this issue. Bush ads: 0. Okay, the Medicare drug plan has problems - but isn't it evidence that Bush cares about health care?

Conclusion: Pluralities of Americans don't believe Bush's record deserves re-election. Part of the problem is that the Bush air war is not investing TV ads in defending his record. Of the six major issues, Bush ads have only addressed taxes and terrorism with any force. People don't think his record on the economy deserves re-election - but only one Bush ad pushes the Bush boom. People think Iraq isn't worth it - but only one Bush ad defends our war. People don't trust Bush on education - but Bush's 50 percent increase in education funding has never been set before the voters. Elections with an incumbent are largely referendums on the incumbent's record. If Bush's record hasn't convinced people to re-elect him, it might be because his campaign hasn't told them about his record.

This is interesting. Scary, but interesting. The scary thing is that the Republicans have run three consecutive lackluster campaigns. The elder Bush, an incumbent president with eight years as vice-president to one of the most popular presidents of the 20th century, and a successful and fairly popular war to his credit, lost in 1992 to a relatively unknown southern governor with some serious personal baggage.

In 1996, the Republicans were unable to nominate a candidate that could exploit the weaknesses of the incumbent and they got trounced. It seemed as if the only reason Bob Dole was running was because it was his turn. Both campaigns, 1992 and 1996, seemed listless and full of squandered opportunities.

In 2000 the Republicans should have won handily against a man tarnished by his association with Bill Clinton and unable to assure the voters of his own mental stability. Florida should not have been close, given that it had a natural Republican constituency and that its Republican governor was also the brother of the Republican candidate. Yet, George W. Bush came within a millimeter of losing the state.

Viewpoint doesn't wish to appear to be a Nervous Nellie, but this is not a record that inspires a great deal of confidence. So one reads a piece like the one above and hopes that someone at the helm of this campaign knows what they're doing and why they're doing it.

The Good News From Iraq

Senator Kerry assures us that President Bush has either no plan or a lousy plan for post-war Iraq and that he, if he were president, would handle things differently. He never tells us what he would do, exactly, but if he were as smart as he wants us to believe he is, he would do in Iraq precisely what the United States is doing right now. The media focusses on the car bombs and the killings, but these are a relatively small, though certainly tragic, part of the picture of what is happening in Iraq. In fact, when one reads an account like Chrenkoff's 7th installment of Good News from Iraq one feels a deep sense of pride in our soldiers, our leaders, and our people for what they're accomplishing in this troubled land.

I don't understand how anyone can read Chrenkoff's reports and not feel that we have undertaken something profoundly good. I don't know how anyone can think that the Iraqi people are not better off today than they were two years ago. Bush's critics have to deliberately ignore the evidence in order to deprecate the progress that has been made in Iraq. What we've done and are doing in that land is an historic achievement and one that makes all of the carping we hear from Kerry and the Democrats seem so small and whiny.

Perhaps among the most telling anecdotes in Chrenkoff's report is this:

"Two months ago, independent Iraqi pollster Sadoun Dulame asked 3,075 Iraqis from all over the country which US candidate they preferred. Most Iraqis scorned the question, but about 15 percent responded passionately - almost all Bush backers.

"When we asked this 15 percent why they cared, they said, 'Because the American election will affect conditions in Iraq,' ' says Mr. Dulame, director of the Iraqi Center for Research and Strategic Studies. 'They prefer that Bush stay. Because if Bush leaves, maybe the Democrats will adopt a new policy, and not pay so much attention to Iraq.'

"In a perfect reversal of US demographics, the Bush lovers tended to be more educated and clustered in cosmopolitan areas. Call them Red Iraqis. 'Most of them were intellectuals,' says Dulame. 'US intellectuals, maybe most of them adopt Democratic values. But in Iraq, that's the reality'."

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

John Kerry said today that if George Bush was serious about reforming our Intelligence operations and responding to the 9/11 Commission recomendations he'd summon Congress back from their vacations and force them to adopt the needed reforms. Perhaps, but if Bush did follow Kerry's recommendation it's highly unlikely that the good senator himself, or his running mate, would show up. Their level of concern for the safety and well-being of our country can be descried from the fact that on approximately 442 recorded votes taken in the senate since May of 2003 Senator Kerry has bestirred himself to vote on only 65 of them. Senator Edwards' voting record is similarly dismal. I wonder if this duo had a clear conscience as they deposited their paychecks.

Then there's this bit of liberal hypocrisy from Ben Affleck courtesy of Joe Carter at The Evangelical Outpost:

At a breakfast with Democratic delegates in Florida, the actor Ben Affleck told the crowd that Bush tax cuts had provided him with $1 million last year that he didn't need. When a reporter from the New York Times asked him if he ever considered sending the $1 million back to Washington, the actor said "No,"

"I'm not Jesus Christ of the tax code. I can't completely martyr myself." For the moment, let's set aside the idiotically blasphemous way in which he frames the issue and focus on the idiotic hypocrisy of his statement.

In essence, Affleck is saying that he wants the government to forcibly take from him what he isn't willing to give. While I don't expect intellectual consistency from anyone who collects a paycheck by pretending to be someone else, I'm curious how far he would take this idea. Would he, for example, support the idea of a military draft?

I like Ben. I really do. In fact, I think he's an intelligent guy and (semi)talented actor. But he shares a failing common to the wealthy members of his adopted political party. If you're a Democrat and you disagree with the tax cuts why not give the money back to the government? If you don't believe that you should keep the money why not send it to the IRS? All it would require is a stamp, an envelope, and the courage to live up to your convictions. Which of these items are the Democrats lacking?

It really is amazing how many Democrats complain about not paying enough in taxes but who won't voluntarily return their tax refunds to the government. These people are making themselves harder and harder to take seriously.

Intelligence <i>Success</i>

There's a fascinating story in the New York Times about the source of the information on the new terror threat to American financial centers. Some excerpts:

The unannounced capture of a figure from Al Qaeda in Pakistan several weeks ago led the Central Intelligence Agency to the rich lode of information that prompted the terror alert on Sunday, according to senior American officials.

One senior American intelligence official said the information was more detailed and precise than any he had seen during his 24-year career in intelligence work. A second senior American official said it had provided a new window into the methods, content and distribution of Qaeda communications.

"This, for us, is a potential treasure trove," said a third senior American official, an intelligence expert, at a briefing for reporters on Sunday afternoon.

The documentary evidence, whose contents were reported urgently to Washington on Friday afternoon, immediately elevated the significance of other intelligence information gathered in recent weeks that had already been regarded as highly troubling, senior American intelligence officials said.

The American officials said the new evidence had been obtained only after the capture of the Qaeda figure. Among other things, they said, it demonstrated that Qaeda plotters had begun casing the buildings in New York, Newark and Washington even before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Among the questions the plotters sought to answer, senior American intelligence officials said, were how best to gain access to the targeted buildings; how many people might be at the sites at different hours and on different days of the week; whether a hijacked oil tanker truck could serve as an effective weapon; and how large an explosive device might be required to bring the buildings down.

One of the things Americans need to keep firmly in mind is that this war has, in the minds of the jihadis, been going on for seven centuries. They're not going to surrender, nor are they going to stop attacking us any time soon. We need to unburden ourselves of our traditional notion of fighting a war for a distinct period of time and then enjoying peace for a generation thereafter. This war will not end until either Western civilization is destroyed or the Islamists are rendered impotent. Even if we critically degrade their ability to strike us, there will only be a temporary cessation of hostilities until they can regain enough strength to attack us again.

The Islamists are fanatics obsessed with killing Christians and Jews. There is no remedy for this. It's not a matter of reasoning with them or negotiating with them. It's not a matter of restoring land or improving economic conditions. It's not a matter of leaving them alone. They believe it is Allah's will that they kill all infidels. The only way to stop them, unfortunately, is to kill them first.

IRS, RIP

Matt Drudge has a bombshell. Evidently part of George Bush's plans during his second term is to eliminate the IRS and replace it with a national sales tax. According to Drudge:

A domestic centerpiece of the Bush/GOP agenda for a second Bush term is getting rid of the Internal Revenue Service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The Speaker of the House will push for replacing the nation's current tax system with a national sales tax or a value added tax, Hill sources tell DRUDGE.

I don't know how a sales tax could possibly compensate for the loss of income tax revenue, but I'm sure Hastert isn't just talking off the top of his head. They must have thought this through. Well, at least one hopes they have. It'll be interesting to see how the Kerryites respond.

No Extremists on the Left

The Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a liberal advocacy group, assigns a Liberal Quotient (LQ) to all voting members of congress. Senator Kerry has a lifetime ADA rating of 92% which makes him the most liberal pol in the current senate and third all-time among members of congress. Edwards is fourth among current congressmen and senators with an 88% LQ. Their combined averages make the Kerry/Edwards ticket the left-most pair of nominees for the American presidency in the history of the ADA.

The Washington Times writes:

From the premier liberal rating organization, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), Mr. Edwards received an average annual (1999-2002) rating of 85 percent before falling to a career-low 65 percent last year. But that score was misleading because ADA penalizes legislators for missing any of its 20 annual key votes. In fact, on the 13 ADA votes for which the itinerant Mr. Edwards was present last year, he supported ADA 100 percent of the time. (On the 17 ADA key votes cast by Mr. Kerry last year, he also supported ADA's position 100 percent of the time. Thus, between the two of them, they were 30-for-30 on ADA votes.) With Mr. Edwards' lifetime ADA rating at 81 percent and Mr. Kerry's at 92 percent, the 2004 Democratic ticket boasts higher lifetime ADA ratings than the avowedly liberal 1984 Democratic ticket of Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro.

If the Republican nominees in any election were as far to the right as Kerry/Edwards are to the left wouldn't we be hearing the word "extremist" used about every five seconds to describe them and their positions on the issues? Wouldn't candidates whose voting records were the most conservative in history be pilloried by the major media for being way "out of the mainstream"?

There's still time for the media to whisper a mention of the extremism of the current candidates, of course, but from the current silence on the matter one might be forgiven for thinking that extremists only reside on the right of the ideological divide and that the mainstream in this country runs from left of center all the way left to the far horizon. The reigning attitude among the media worthies is that, to paraphrase Barry Goldwater, extremism in pusuit of a left-wing agenda is no vice.

Let's count how many times between now and November we hear the E-word applied to the current Democrat tandem by Rather, Jennings, and Brokaw, the NYT, LAT, and the WaPo. Viewpoint's guess is that it'll be a round number.

Dead or Alive

There's a report, as yet unconfirmed, that the terrorist al Zarqawi, the man responsible for many of the kidnappings and beheadings of American hostages, has been captured near the Iraqi/Syrian border. A number of Iraqi bloggers are carrying the report, but no major media have said anything about it yet as far as I know. They could be waiting for independent confirmation or the report may be groundless. We should know soon enough.