New Philosophy Blog

A former student has a new blog for those who are interested in philosophy. You can access it here. It looks good and he has some interesting posts up. Caution: It's not for the philosophically unserious.

What's He Hiding?

Why, if Senator Kerry is telling the truth about his Vietnam service and has nothing to hide from the voters, will he not permit the reprinting of his book The New Soldier which is so hard to obtain that the single copy available on Amazon is selling for almost $2500? Why will he not sign a form to release his medical records which would help to settle the questions surrounding the awarding of his Purple Hearts? And why will he not permit release of the journal used by Douglas Brinkley in writing his book on Kerry, titled Tour of Duty?

The Democrats demanded that George Bush release his records from his National Guard service and he promptly complied. John Kerry told Tim Russert on Face the Nation that he had indeed released all of his records, but it turned out that he had released only a few pages of a much more copious account.

What other presidential candidate in the history of our nation has ever written a book whose contents he has subsequently done whatever he could to prevent people from seeing? If Kerry wants to repudiate the book now, fine. He should let us see it and then tell us why he no longer holds the positions and sentiments found in it.

What sense does it make to tout one's military service as the central qualification for serving one's country as president and then, when that record is called into question, refuse to make available the very records and journals which would silence the critics?

His refusal to allow the voters to see these documents is inexplicable unless he really is trying to hide something.

Demagoguing Stem Cell Research

The stem cell debate has been demogogued by the Democrats since before their convention, but John Leo puts his finger on exactly what is wrong with the way the left is addressing this issue. Leo writes:

John Kerry has repeatedly spoken of President Bush's "ban" on stem cell research. Kerry knows very well it isn't a "ban" or that Bush isn't "shutting down" research. But "ban" is a powerfully emotional word. It has more impact on swing voters than "allowing private research, but not using taxpayer money for work on stem cell lines derived after Aug. 9, 2001."

The fact is that stem cell research is swimming in readily available funds. With luck, the elite press corps will discover this some time in October, and maybe even ask Kerry about it. The federal government is providing $24.8 million in research funds, which is $24.8 million more than President Clinton offered. Money is pouring in from state governments, universities and pharmaceutical companies. If Kerry thinks this financial gusher still amounts to a ban, maybe he could get the Heinz Foundation or George Soros to pitch in.

Kerry spins the stem cell issue by saying, "Here in America, we don't sacrifice science for ideology." This is a line he has been using for weeks. It delivers two messages, both false: (1) there is no legitimate moral issue here (though plenty of bioethicists and plenty of Kerry supporters think there is); and therefore (2) this is a one-sided issue, pitting enlightened people against backward ideological types.

The lobby for embryonic stem cell funding is deeply dishonest. It involves a "ban" that isn't a ban, a claim of cures "right on our fingertips" (John Kerry) that falsely implies an early cure for Alzheimer's, and a discounting of promising stem cell research that doesn't involve the creation and destruction of embryos (cells from adult bone marrow, teeth and umbilical cords). Kerry and the Democrats have a case to make. They just don't want to make it honestly.

Why is it that the left seems unable to debate this issue or almost any other without distorting the facts? It's as if they believe that unless they twist the truth or mask it altogether they'd be unable to persuade anyone to vote for them. Well, maybe they're onto something.

Leo's column makes several other points about this debate which are very much worth reading.

Does Offshoring Create U.S.Jobs?

No Left Turns links us to an article that discusses a study commissioned in California on the economic impact of exporting jobs offshore. The counter-intuitive conclusions are that offshoring not only is good for the economy but it also creates more jobs than it costs. An excerpt:

How can offshoring preserve jobs? Consider the case of a company that's increasingly beset by foreign competition and can no longer turn a profit. Its choice might be to close down - taking all its jobs with it - or farm out some of its tasks to overseas workers, thus preserving the remaining positions.

"By sacrificing a small proportion of the jobs offered by the company, the other jobs remain," the paper said.

That's not all. The researchers also suggest that offshoring can even create new American jobs.

Companies looking to invest money in expansion base their decision on the projected rate of return. If, by offshoring some jobs those companies can earn a higher return, they are more likely to go ahead with the investment, which then will create more jobs at home.

That's not just economic theory. The numbers in the real world support this view. Between 1991 and 2001, wrote Haveman and Shatz, U.S. firms that expanded their employment abroad also increased their domestic employment by 5.5 million workers. Their share of overall U.S. employment also increased during this period.

This is interesting, but whether it's true or not I have no way to judge. Read the whole article and decide for yourself.

The Political Neutron Star

Senator Kerry's campaign may be beginning to deflate. A week ago Kerry was ahead in almost all the polls. Some of his leads were within the margin of error, but nevertheless, he was ahead. Now the situation is reversed. Bush seems to be moving out in almost every poll, and, with the Republican convention looming and more Swiftvet ads on the way, the likelihood is that his lead will continue to expand.

The latest national polls show the following:

NBC News/Wall St. Journal: Bush - 47; Kerry - 45; Nader - 3

Gallup: Bush - 50; Kerry - 47

Fox News: Kerry - 45; Bush - 44

LA Times: Bush - 49; Kerry - 46

The really bad news for Kerry is in the polling data from the battleground states. Kerry was ahead in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida coming out of the convention. He's now behind (though within the margin of error)in each of these states according to the LA Times' polls.

There are still some 65 days until the election and a lot can yet happen. The debates may be decisive. Even so, it appears that Bush has the "Mo", at least for now.

What can the Democrats do to get it back? The most effective way, assuming there's no drastic change in either the economy or Iraq is to try to attach Bush to some scandal or in some other way tarnish his image with the voters. They've been doing this for almost a year, of course, with uncertain results, but liberals tend to believe that if slime isn't sticking it's because you're not throwing it hard enough. No doubt the Democrats will get increasingly more personal in their attack ads and in the media. The liberals on television and in the print media will become increasingly more unrestrained, strident, and partisan. Whether it will work or not is anyone's guess.

The danger for the Democrats is that, like a collapsing star, the implosion will accelerate with time, and a point will ultimately be reached where it becomes impossible to reverse it. A dying star will sometimes compress into a super dense residue spinning wildly in space. These remnants of once brilliant stars are reduced to superdense masses called neutron stars which emit no light, just toxic emanations like gamma rays.

So it may turn out to be with the once brilliant promise of the Senator from Massachusetts. Perhaps ultimately all that will remain of the Kerry campaign will be a solid residue of bitter, hate-driven supporters, spewing a dark, toxic hatefulness, spinning lifelessly in a political void.

Check out RealClear Politics for more specifics on the latest polls.

Democrat Fear and Smear

Captain's Quarters has this bit of information on the Democrats' strategy for answering the Swiftvets' allegations:

The New York Daily News reports that "a group of Democratic loyalists" plan to target one of the less public figures from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth by using humiliation to intimidate him into silence:

Sen. John Kerry called a member of the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth over the weekend to try to reason with him over the group's attacks on his record. But fellow Democrats aren't hesitating to try far more aggressive tactics.

A group of Democratic loyalists is compiling incriminating dossiers on the members of the veteran group - and they sent us a preview of what might be in store for Swift Boat activist James Zumwalt, son of illustrious Adm. Elmo Zumwalt - and it isn't pretty.

Zumwalt "attempted to kill himself with an overdose of prescription drugs," after the murder of his ex-wife's fiance, John Kowalczyk, according to the dossier, which is footnoted to news sources, and was "convicted of reckless driving after chasing Kowalczyk at a high speed on the highway."

What relevance something like this has to the allegations about Kerry's military service, one can only wonder. To the character assassins in the Democratic party perhaps it doesn't need to have any relevance to be useful. Captain Ed goes on to write:

Well, well, well. Perhaps Max Cleland can stop off on his way to Crawford, TX and put a stop to the "fear and smear" tactics being used by the Democrats. This certainly convinces me that John Kerry has nothing to hide. Riiiiiiiight...

On the other hand, at least the Democrats have agreed in principle that medical records should be released as a basis for public debate in this presidential cycle. Bush released his, now Zumwalt's are out in the open -- so where are Kerry's? They must contain some pretty damaging information if the Democrats are willing to violate HIPAA laws in order to keep them secret.

Sign the 180, Senator. Be a man, take responsibility for having started this entire mess with the Democratic smear campaign back in February and April against President Bush, and sign the 180. If you can't do that, how can we trust you to ever act responsibly? (via Kerry Spot and CQ reader Jim L.)

Viewpoint admires Captain Ed's wish to see Kerry and the Democrats actually resort to evidence and debate to settle the controversy, but that requires that the facts be on your side. When they're not, when you can't out-argue your opponent, why then, you just destroy him. That's the liberal way.

The Da Vinci Code

I received an e-mail today from a former student, now at college, who tells me about having recently read and enjoyed Dan Brown's hugely popular novels The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. My correspondent, in addition to being a very bright, outstanding young woman, is Hindu, which may be relevant to some of what she says about the book. Part of her e-mail follows:

The da Vinci code, I felt, was less direct [than Angels and Demons] about pointing out the importance of the Church. It also emphasized how the Church had suppressed opposition, often violently. I know a lot of people have read this as Church-bashing, especially the part about how the stories in the Bible are at best, incomplete, or often completely inaccurate and fabricated. However, to me, this shouldn't even dent the face of true religion. Religion is about faith, it's about believing what may or may not be true. If you had factual data to support everything, then miracles would cease to exist and you would be a believer in science. Plus, the fact that the Catholic Church has suppressed opponents can hardly be denied. But for that matter, so have most of the other successful churches. While I don't necessarily agree with this violence or prejudice of others based on their choice of God, the Catholic Church can hardly be solely condemned for this action. Also, Brown repeatedly alludes to the power of faith and the purpose it serves to unite people and reassure them.

All in all, I think both books are good. The da Vinci code is definitely better written. Yes, the point can be made that if the information about Jesus having married and had a child were true, then the verses of the Bible would be shaken. But the way I understand the Bible (admittedly, not as a Christian), most of the stories are metaphors, told to teach the believer something. For example, it is widely known that Jesus's birthday was not December twenty-fifth but in the spring. And while informed religious people may be aware of this, that does not stop them from celebrating Christmas. . .nor should it. As I said before, you can't make Kierkegaard's leap of faith in earnest if you have hard scientific data to fall back upon.

What follows is the relevant portion of my reply to her:

I was interested in your take on Dan Brown's books. I also enjoyed The Da Vinci Code, it was a real page turner, and I liked the way the author built suspense. I take a somewhat more critical position than you, though, on his use of history. Almost none of his account of Christianity and the Church is true. This would be okay in a novel, I guess, but in the preface of the book he gives the reader the impression that everything he says about the Church and about Jesus is historical fact, and it's not.

For instance, there's absolutely no evidence that Jesus had a conjugal relationship with Mary Magdalene. Brown's claim that millions of women were burned in the Inquisition is completely ahistorical. His assertion that Christians didn't accept the deity of Christ until the fourth century is simply not the case. Anyway, none of this would matter too much, I guess, except there is a very subtle danger in this for the Christian.

If, as Brown claims, Jesus and Mary M. absconded to France and lived out their lives there then that completely collapses the entire edifice of the Christian Faith. Christianity is built on the doctrine of the Resurrection of Christ. If Jesus didn't really return physically from the dead then there's no point in being a Christian, and if Brown is right then there was no Resurrection. Brown's Christ was a man like every other who eventually died in France.

The Christian Christ, however, was the incarnation of God and lives and acts today. If he wasn't divine then he was either a nut or a charlatan. He couldn't have been just a good moral teacher like Ghandi if he wasn't in some sense God. He told people that if they give their lives for him they'd be rewarded in heaven. He claimed to be able to forgive sins and to grant eternal life. He claimed to be the Son of God. If he wasn't divine then he was indeed crazy or he was the biggest religious fraud in history.

Brown doesn't make this conclusion explicit, but it's certainly implicit in his claim that Jesus was just a man. In other words, Brown is trying to convince his millions of readers that Christianity is essentially false and has value only as a kind of service club or moral system, but like St. Paul says, "If Christ hasn't risen from the dead then the faith of Christians is in vain." The threat to the Christian faith is the more insidious because Brown tells such a captivating story.

In any event, there've been a ton of books published in the last six months debunking Brown's interpretation of history. If you're interested, and have the time, you can check out some reviews here.

Chutzpah

Let's get this straight. John Kerry admits to committing war crimes in which people died. He burned villages, killed animals, and either himself shot at, or ordered crew mates to shoot at, civilians.

Now Kerry is demanding that Secretary Rumsfeld resign his office because soldiers at Abu Ghraib subjected prisoners to sexually degrading behavior.

Perhaps the Senator will explain the logic behind demanding that the secretary should resign because, unbeknownst to him, some perverts mistreated a few prisoners, while Kerry himself should be elected president even though he admits to having participated in war crimes.

It's doubtful that he'd ever actually be forced to explain this astonishing example of chutzpah, of course, since the major media wouldn't dream of actually asking him for an explanation. The Senator and his media supporters almost daily afford us deeper insights into the meaning of the word hypocrisy.

Historical Coincidences

Viewpoint received this e-mail which we post here for you to mull over. The coincidences certainly are interesting. Maybe Nietzsche was right and history is eternally recurring:

The following are Presidents elected in a year with a zero at the end:

1840: William Henry Harrison (died in office)

1860: Abraham Lincoln (assassinated)

1880: James A. Garfield (assassinated)

1900: William McKinley (assassinated)

1920: Warren G. Harding (died in office)

1940: Franklin D. Roosevelt (died in office)

1960: John F.. Kennedy (assassinated)

1980: Ronald Reagan (survived assassination attempt)

2000: George W. Bush ?

And to think that we had two guys fighting it out in the courts to be the one elected in 2000. You might also be interested in this.

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.

John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.

John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.

Both wives lost a child while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.

Both Presidents were shot in the head.

Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.

Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.

Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.

Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.

Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.

Both assassins were known by their three names.

Both names are composed of fifteen letters.

Lincoln was shot at the theater named "Ford."

Kennedy was shot in a car called "Lincoln" made by "Ford."

Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland.

A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn Monroe.

Lincoln was shot in a theater and the assassin ran to a warehouse.

Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and the assassin ran to a theater.

Don't share this with anyone who's fond of conspiracy theories. It'd be like catnip to them.

New Strategy For Ducking the Issue

Viewpoint thinks it has detected a new strategy being adopted by the Kerry team in responding to the Swiftvets. Ironically, the strategy seems to be the same one employed by the Nixon administration in trying to bring the Vietnam war to a somewhat honorable conclusion. It's simply to declare victory and go home. The Kerry defenders on the talk shows are increasingly resorting to this tactic by proclaiming that the Swiftvets have now been thoroughly discredited and disgraced, their charges have been shown to be a pack of lies, and it's now time to move on to other issues. No real evidence is offered to substantiate this astonishing pronouncement, it's just asserted, as if claiming something is the case is sufficient to make it so. Look for the strategy to be employed more and more frequently as the evidence continues to mount that Kerry's Vietnam stories are bogus, and as Kerry himself continues to stonewall requests to have his records be released to the public.

Keep abreast of the controversy at Captains' Quarters, Power Line, and Hugh Hewitt.

The Devil's Chaplain

The current issue of First Things has an excellent piece by Stephen Barr titled The Devil's Chaplain Confounded. The chaplain in this instance is Richard Dawkins an English biologist and notorious despiser of Christianity who has compiled an anthology of his essay and titled it after a thought expressed in a letter of Charles Darwin's in which he exclaims to a friend, "What a book a Devil's Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horridly cruel works of nature."

As Barr says of Dawkins, "For him, the great foundational truth is that the universe and the life it has spawned are without any ultimate purpose: the revelation given to the Devil's Chaplain is one of cosmic futility."

He points out that Dawkins says that we must accept Darwinism as true science but must rebel against its moral implications: "[A]t the same time as I support Darwinism as a scientist, I am a passionate anti-Darwinian when it comes to politics and how we should conduct our human affairs."

This is the sign of a mind at war with itself. If, as Dawkins says, we are merely biological machines then the whole concept of morality is reduced to nothing more than a set of feelings that genetic mutation and natural selection have instilled in us. We may rebel against those feelings, but why should we? What do we base our rejection of those feelings upon? Do we recognize that there is some higher moral order to which we are bound that renders our evolutionary moral heritage suspect? If so, where does that higher order come from? What is it based upon?

A materialist like Dawkins has no satisfactory answer to these questions. He can give no reason why a man should not live as a complete egoist acting for the benefit of others only to the extent that such actions also benefit him. The atheistic materialist who grounds morality in the survival of the species has absolutely no warrant for so doing. Why should an individual care what happens to the species? Why would it be "wrong" if someone did not care about the species? What do words like right and wrong refer to anyway? Where does an atheist get the idea that we should respect others and treat them well?

Dawkins argues against genetic determinism, but as Barr points out, "given his materialism, it is hard to see the point of this. Whether or not genes decide anything, atoms decide everything. Whether or not there is genetic determinism, there is physical determinism. One does not liberate anybody by throwing open the gates of a prison and leaving the inmates locked in their cells. It is of little importance what influence genes or the environment have, or what role is played by individual choices, if in the final analysis everything is just matter anyway, including the genes, the environment, and the individuals who choose. To a materialist, we are just congeries of atoms; and atoms must go whithersoever they are driven by the laws of physics and blind chance."

Moreover, given the determinism that is entailed by a materialist view of the world, it's hard to see what meaning morality could possess. In order for there to be a right act or wrong act there has to be the possibility of choosing. Otherwise, there are just things the environment compels people to do and there is no moral value in doing them any more than there is in a computer which runs the program it has been fed.

Dawkins is famous, or infamous, for his vitriolic screeds against religion. Without religion, says Dawkins, we would not have wars of religion or religious persecution. Barr's answer to this commonly heard complaint highlights the superficiality of Dawkins' thinking:

"True," Barr replies, "And without sex, fathers, families, material possessions, and governments, we would not have sex crimes, abusive fathers, dysfunctional families, greed for material possessions, and oppressive governments. Every natural and necessary thing can be perverted, even reason. Religion has led to hateful ideas, but has any Christian writer ever published ideas as hateful as the social Darwinism of H. G. Wells? Religion has led to persecutions, but none even nearly as massive as those produced by militant irreligion. More people were killed by the "scientific atheism" of communism on an average day than the Spanish Inquisition killed in an average decade. And largely responsible for this fact was a teaching of contempt for religion of exactly the kind that Dawkins propagates."

There is much more of value in Barr's response to Dawkins' book, and Viewpoint encourages the reader who is familiar with Dawkins, or those who think like him, to read it in its entirety. It is one of the great frauds modernity has foisted upon the culture, the notion that we can throw away God and still hold on to all that makes life meaningful and livable. Perhaps it's possible for an individual to do this, but only at the expense of, like Dawkins, denying in one's heart what one affirms in one's head. Either that, or not think about the consequences of denying God at all.

This is a dispiriting alternative. If one wishes to embrace atheism and avoid moral nihilism one either has to be schizophrenic or willfully ignorant.

Defending America In Vietnam

In the previous post I suggested that John Kerry is prevaricating when he repeats the claim that he fought to defend this country as a young man.

After posting that I stumbled upon this from his 1971 congressional testimony:

"In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America.... I want to relate to you the feeling that many of the men who have returned to this country express because we are probably angriest about all that we were told about Vietnam and about the mystical war against communism."

"We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from."

It's hard to believe he thought then that he was fighting to defend America. If he believes it now the American people are entitled to know what changed his mind and when he changed it.

The Questions Never End

There's a good editorial on the hole Sen. kerry has dug for himself in today's Wall Street Journal. Some excerpts:

A good rule in politics is that anyone who picks a fight ought to be prepared to finish it. But having first questioned Mr. Bush's war service, and then made Vietnam the core of his own campaign for President, Mr. Kerry now cries No mas! because other Vietnam vets are assailing his behavior before and after that war. And, by the way, Mr. Bush is supposedly honor bound to repudiate them.

What did Mr. Kerry expect, anyway? That claiming to be a hero himself while accusing other veterans of "war crimes" - as he did back in 1971 and has refused to take back ever since - would somehow go unanswered? That when he raised the subject of one of America's most contentious modern events, no one would meet him at the barricades? Mr. Kerry brought the whole thing up; why is it Mr. Bush's obligation now to shut it down?

The irony here is that a main reason Mr. Kerry has focused so much on Vietnam is to avoid debating Iraq and the rest of his long record in the Senate. He wants Americans to believe that a four-month wartime biography is credential enough to be commander-in-chief. But a candidate who runs on biography can't merely pick the months of his life that he likes - any more than a candidate who makes Vietnam the heart of his campaign can confine the resulting debate to his personal home video.

It's worth reading the entire piece.

While we're on the subject, has anyone else noticed the irony that Democrats only a year ago were outraged that Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man tainted by genetic association to a Nazi, his father, was running for governor of California? Now it's a year later and a man who has admitted to actually having committed war crimes is running for president and the Democrats are trying to move heaven and earth to get him elected. Doesn't anything embarrass these people?

Another thing. If we hear John Kerry say one more time that he fought to defend this country as a young man we'll have to go on blood pressure medication. Whatever John Kerry did in Vietnam he wasn't fighting to defend this country, at least not in the eyes of the anti-war left of which he became a prominent member. The chief anti-war argument was that the war was immoral precisely because there was no national interest at stake in Vietnam, much less defense of the homeland. The argument that our young men were fighting and dying to defend America was greeted with scorn and derision by anti-war folks. Someone needs to ask Sen. Kerry exactly when and why he changed his mind on the nature of that conflict.

How Low Will They Go

If this story at PowerLine is true it is a specimen of a most disgusting species of political campaigning:

One important story that has flown under the major-media radar is the peddling by Democrats of the claim that the Bush administration has a secret plan to re-institute the military draft. That rumor is being spread to try to scare young voters into supporting John Kerry.

The Democrats' draft-rumor effort has now gone mainstream; the South Carolina Democratic Party has sent out a mailing that claims young voters are faced with induction if they don't vote for John Kerry:

The first page of the mailing shows a draft notice with orders to report to a military induction center. The next shows a helicopter with troops in the foreground beneath a headline that says "Officials in Washington are calling for more troops in Iraq." Below, the mailing asks "Which form would you rather fill out?"

It is hard to think of a more despicable campaign tactic. It hardly needs to be said that neither the Bush administration nor any other foreseeable administration has the slightest desire to re-institute the draft. The thought sends shudders down the spines of professional military men; America's all-volunteer army is without a doubt the best military force ever assembled. No one I know of supports the draft, except for Fritz Hollings, the Democratic Senator from--ironically enough--South Carolina. He introduced a bill to that effect. Not only did the Hollings proposal go nowhere; he couldn't even find a co-sponsor.

Democrats sometimes get upset when we say that they prey on ignorance. But this contemptible tactic is a perfect example of what we mean.

This is an unbelievably dirty tactic, and this is not a "disaffiliated" 527 group putting this out. This isn't Michael Moore doing this. This is the South Carolina Democrat Party. Where's the outrage among the Democrats who are so vexed about the Swift Boat vets' ads which, it's turning out, are being confirmed by Kerry himself?

Not only has his campaign had to backtrack from his Christmas in Cambodia story, but also his own journal now shows that his first purple heart was accidentally self-inflicted. Nine days after incurring the "injury" he logged in his journal that he and his crew had yet to be fired upon, i.e. they had yet to see combat.

According to Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters Kerry's credibility has been dealt a devastating blow by Joshua Muravchik in today's Washington Post. The article is a must-read for anyone following the controversy. Captain's Quarters quotes from it:

Now a new official statement from the campaign undercuts Brinkley. It offers a minimal (thus harder to impeach) claim: that Kerry "on one occasion crossed into Cambodia," on an unspecified date. But at least two of the shipmates who are supporting Kerry's campaign (and one who is not) deny their boat ever crossed the border, and their testimony on this score is corroborated by Kerry's own journal, kept while on duty. One passage reproduced in Brinkley's book says: "The banks of the [Rach Giang Thanh River] whistled by as we churned out mile after mile at full speed. On my left were occasional open fields that allowed us a clear view into Cambodia. At some points, the border was only fifty yards away and it then would meander out to several hundred or even as much as a thousand yards away, always making one wonder what lay on the other side." His curiosity was never satisfied, because this entry was from Kerry's final mission [emph mine - CE].

Captain Ed goes on to say:

If [Kerry] had spent time in Cambodia, he would have known exactly what lay on the other side of the banks, if indeed he ever even got that close to Cambodia in the first place. And the revelation that his later journals were actually written after his return to the States for an abortive book proposal makes this even more odd, since he had already begun his anti-war activities -- and an illegal Cambodian excursion would not only add to his radical street cred, but it would have made a book deal more likely.

This Washington Post opinion piece marks a signal from the mainstream media that they have turned the corner on this issue, thanks in no small part, I'm sure, to Kerry's decision to go nuclear against the Swiftvets. Expect coverage in the news sections to follow and the Kerry collapse to continue in the days ahead.

We'll see. Viewpoint suspects the campaign will grow much uglier if it appears that Kerry is about to start sinking. It may be that Fahrenheit 9/11, the Gore and Dean speeches, and all the sleaze from MoveOn.org and the South Carolinians will look like good-natured jocularity compared to what the Dems will do if the bow of the campaign boat tilts too far upward.

The Battle For Najaf

It's difficult to find news coming out of Najaf and Fallujah. The major media seem uninterested in ferreting out anything which requires their reporters to leave their hotels in Baghdad's Green Zone and get out into the field. Consequently, unless one does a little digging all he'll hear about are car bombings and it seems like that's all that's happening in Iraq. We do hear vague, general reports about battles raging in Najaf and Fallujah, but nothing about what is actually happening there and what the Iraqi people think of it all.

Thus, when a report like this one from former Marine veteran W.Thomas Smith comes along it gives us a rare glimpse into the circumstances surrounding the current military operations in Najaf. Here are some excerpts from Smith's report which can be found in its entirety on National Review Online:

The past 24 hours have seen U.S. warplanes and helicopter gunships pounding Mahdi positions. Fighting continues on the ground in various sectors of the city, and the consensus among U.S. military personnel is that the insurgency is weakening. The latter is due in large measure to an increase in solid intelligence, a more formidable Iraqi national military force, and positive developing relationships between U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians. Not good for al Sadr.

"Two nights ago on a patrol from midnight to 3 A.M., we actually saw Iraqis sitting out on rugs watching and listening to the Coalition aircraft doing their work in the cemetery," 1st Lt. Jeremy T. Sellars - a platoon commander with Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment - told National Review Online on Saturday. "Despite the obvious level of destruction they were inflicting, I watched Iraqis cheer every time the aircraft fired."

In the rural communities just beyond Najaf, the farming families are comforted by the presence of Americans. "The farmers are some of the most supportive of our patrols," said Sellars. "In these areas you can see women who respond to waves, babies and small children being held up to see the Americans. So in the sense of the local populace, I would say they look forward to the end of this conflict, but they understand why it is happening so close to their homes."

First Lt. John B. Johnston of the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Division has experienced similar interaction with Iraqi civilians. In a Saturday conversation with NRO, he recalled a recent patrol in which his platoon was followed by droves of children. "There were about a hundred of them," he said. "They were chanting 'USA' and shouting great things about President Bush. These kids are the future of Iraq, and they clearly want us there."

He added, the "friendliness" witnessed by Americans in Iraq is rarely understood back home. "There is a lot editorial license being taken in terms of the media choosing what to report. I feel like a lot of the positive things we've been doing have been glossed over for more dramatic actions elsewhere. Car bombs are a lot more fun to report than our painting schools or whatever. But the positives definitely outweigh the negatives. If you want compare the bad days to the good days, I'd have to say 90 percent to the good."

Though some would argue otherwise, time - and the fact that positive news stories will eventually see ink - is in many ways on the side of the Americans in Iraq and the new Iraqi interim government. Not so for al Sadr.

"It appears to me that in April and May we killed the best and brightest [of the Mahdi army]," 1st Lt. Brian Suits of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division in Najaf, said during a radio interview with talk-radio host Kirby Wilbur on Seattle's KVI radio, last Thursday. "What al Sadr is doing now is sending in the guys who are left behind to make a statement. He's running out of guys. The guys he has are frankly running out of motivation. They are ill-prepared and ill-trained. They are beginning to question their authority. I think they're saying 'wait a minute, you told us that God was going to guide our bullets, but we haven't killed one American soldier in our area and we are dying left and right here.'"

Asked if Iraqi national military forces and police are measuring up to their U.S. and British allies on the battlefield, Suits said, "I've been in combat with these guys over the last couple of days, and I was as wary as anyone else. I saw their performance in the first Gulf War, but they have since coalesced into an effective force. I'm not lying. I'm not propagandizing. I'm not delivering a message someone else said. I have confidence in them being on my left or my right. They will go forward. They will close with the enemy. They will fix him. And they will kill him. They do not retreat. They do not cower. They support each other. They drag their wounded out of the line of fire. And I have confidence that these guys will be able to defend their country because they are doing it now."

As the Iraqi forces continue to improve and as the Iraqi people continue to taste the benefits of freedom the situation there will continue to improve. Iran and Syria will continue to try their best to destabilize it because they know that as long as we're tied up in Iraq we won't turn our attention toward them. This is a two-edged strategy, however, since the more apparent it becomes that Iran and Syria are thwarting the aspirations of the Iraqi people the more the Iraqis will resent both the insurgents and their neighbors and the more likely they will be to welcome American military action against them from our bases within Iraq.

Islamic Justice

Yesterday Viewpoint posted the story of a young Iranian girl sentenced to death by an Iranian court for some sexual offense. As disgusting as that story is, this one may equal it. AllahPundit features this out of Tehran:

TEHRAN, Aug 19 (AFP) - Iran's judiciary ordered a man to be released after he killed his unfaithful wife in the courtroom, because the woman's immediate forebears are not alive to claim retaliation, press reports said Thursday. According to the newspaper Shargh, the man, identified as Mahmoud, had filed a complaint against his wife and her lover when he had found out that she was cheating on him.

When she appeared in court in Shahr Ray city in Tehran province in 2003 he lost control and stabbed her to death. But a court sentenced him Wednesday only to pay compensatory "blood money" to the "parents of the blood", who are in fact himself and their three children, because the parents of the murdered woman, Fatemeh, 29, are dead, Iran's newspaper said.

It should not be assumed, however, that the disciples of the Prophet and the devotees of Islam have no sense of justice. The dead woman's lover is to receive several lashes for having allowed himself to be seduced by the unfortunate lady and thus contributing to her offense.

In Favor Of the War Before He Was Against It

KerryOnIraq.com has a 12 minute video collage of statements by Senator Kerry that trace his various positions on Iraq and the need to depose Saddam Hussein. It really is quite devastating although some of the statements seem to be clipped so as to possibly cut off context that might make the statement less damning. Even so, the overall effect of the video is to show a clear pattern of waffling and position switches that are quite disconcerting.

If you go to the site click on "Watch Now" to view the tape.

Tough Call

President Bush probably did the politically wise thing when he repeated his opposition to all 527 ads on both sides and called for them to stop. He, or his surrogates, can now point out that Sen. Kerry has never lifted a finger to stop MoveOn.org or Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 or any of the other dissimulations that have been perpetrated against him by the left and about which, it needs to be pointed out, he never once complained in public. Indeed, Bush even said at one point that we're free in this country to say what we want even, he implied, if it's unfair and hurtful.

Now Kerry's being stung by ads calling his integrity into question, and he's whining that the President should condemn them. Rather than come out and face the charges squarely he's trying to stop them by both legal intimidation and by getting the other guy's "mommy" to tell them to stop picking on him. Apparently he's very opposed to 527 ads when they're directed against him, but he's much more sensitive to the virtues of political free speech when "unaffiliated" Bush-haters run ads and movies which slime his opponent.

Anyway, I wish the President hadn't said what he said. As a matter of principle he shouldn't have done anything to undercut the witness of these men who, contra Sen. McCain, have behaved exceptionally honorably throughout the last two weeks. As combat veterans themselves, they have the right to defend their honor and the historical record against what they believe to be serious calumnies and distortions.

Unless the President actually knows they're lying, something which is highly unlikely, he really has no business suggesting that they should stop defending their reputations and the historical facts. This is not really about George Bush. It's a fight between John Kerry and the men who served with him, and it's a noble fight because it's about truth and honor. The President should stay out of it.

They Can't Be Serious

The North Korean chapter of the disciples of St. Francis of Asissi located in Pyonyang have weighed in on American presidential politics:

SEOUL (AFP) - North Korea (news - web sites) described US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) as an "imbecile" and a "tyrant" who was worse than Adolf Hitler, and ruled out holding new talks on nuclear weapons with the United States.

In an unusually strong attack, a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said comments by Bush calling North Korea a tyrant during campaigning last week in Wisconin were "malignant slanders and calumnies".

"He is a political imbecile bereft of even elementary morality as a human being and a bad guy," said the spokesman, quoted by the official KCNA news agency.

The spokesman blamed Bush for starting wars in Iraq (news - web sites) and elsewhere, and said the United States was trying to topple the legitimate government of North Korea.

"Bush's assumption of office turned a peaceful world into a pandemonium unprecedented in history as it is plagued with a vicious circle of terrorism and war," said the statement.

The spokesman went on to describe Bush as "a tyrant that puts Hitler into the shade" as well as "an idiot, an ignorant, a tyrant and a man-killer."

He said that following Bush's comments, it would be "impossible" to hold working-level discussions to prepare for a new round of multilateral talks on the nuclear issue. The talks bring together the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.

"This made it quite impossible for the DPRK (North Korea) to go to the talks and deprived it of any elementary justification to sit at the negotiating table with the US," he said.

Well. Sounds like the gentle souls that rule North Korea have taken time out of their busy schedule crushing their people under their Stalinist boots to read Howard Dean and Al Gore speeches from last Fall.

If one of the cruelest, most oppressive, most morally retrograde regimes on earth dislikes Bush so much he must be doing something right.

Word has it that Sen. Kerry, having called for Pres. Bush to denounce the Swift Boat vets' ads, is even now busily preparing a vigorous denunciation of this scurrilous attack on his political opponent.

Neighbor John

This is making the rounds on the internet. I don't know if there really is a B.T. Nicholson or if he really is John Edwards' neighbor, but the factual stuff he relates about Edwards from the middle of the piece on should be easy enough to corroborate for anyone who's interested. It would certainly be interesting to have an enterprising journalist look Nicholson up and interview him on the record.

Subject: Meet my neighbor

Written by: B. T. Nicholson, a neighbor of John Edwards

I'd like to introduce you to my neighbor. I'm from Raleigh, North Carolina, and for several years I've lived around the corner from Vice Presidential Candidate John Edwards. My neighbor John has been in the news a good deal lately, but it's hard to tell about the man himself from the coverage. Maybe I can help you get to know him better.

Even several years ago, before he was elevated to the national stage, my neighbor John didn't socialize much with other neighbors. He didn't gather with other neighbors at the Fourth of July and he didn't come out to the sledding hills to watch the kids play after a snow. My neighbor John preferred to jog through the neighborhood by himself. There's no sidewalk on Alleghany Drive, John's Street in Raleigh, and if you drove past him as he was jogging on the road and didn't slow down enough for his taste he'd flip you the bird.

Even after he became a U.S. Senator, he'd still come home to Raleigh every once in a while, would still jog through the neighborhood, and would still flip the occasional bird to passing cars. He last showed me his middle finger about four years ago.

Since then, my neighbor John is rarely in town. When he is home, though, we in the neighborhood all know it. My neighbor John invited reporters from TV, radio, and print news organizations to come to his house in January 2003 for the announcement of his Presidential bid. He didn't want any news vans parked on his property -- in fact, he made sure all the cameras and reporters waited in the street at the bottom of his driveway. That way everyone could get good footage of him strolling down the driveway to make his announcement, young children in tow. The news vans drove into the yards of John's neighbors and parked there. I heard two families ended up re-sodding their damaged yards, and John never apologized to anyone, much less offered any compensation. The family across the street from my neighbor John has since put up posts at their property line to try to keep that sort of thing from happening again.

The appearance was good for my neighbor John. Nobody else seems to matter to him. Since then, when my neighbor comes home (as he did July 10, to be interviewed with John Kerry for "60 Minutes"), Raleigh police officers block off the street. Those of us who live near him end up coming and going to and from our homes on a circuitous route, on a bad, unsurfaced road. Forsyth Street has been closed to through traffic, except when my neighbor is in town, because the road has been ripped up for installation of new gas and sewer lines. My neighbor's street is a public, city-maintained street, and it is the best way to get to homes just north of his. If my neighbor is around, though, apparently none of the rest of us can use the street at all.

It's good for my neighbor John. Nobody else seems to matter to him.

My neighbor John has been a very successful trial lawyer, but his practice of law sometimes seems more like extortion. A friend of mine is a doctor in Raleigh. He recently spoke with another doctor, an anesthesiologist, who was named in a suit filed by my neighbor John. Apparently a surgeon at a local hospital had made a mistake, and my neighbor John represented the injured patient. Not only did my neighbor John sue the doctor who made the mistake, but also sued the hospital and a string of others, including the anesthesiologist. There was no problem with the anesthesia -- the anesthesiologist had done absolutely nothing wrong. His attorney said so in a meeting with my neighbor John. John's neighborly response was that he couldn't care less if the doctor had done nothing wrong. That wasn't the point. The point was that clients come to my neighbor John because of his record of success and his reputation for thoroughness. Every defendant in a suit he files pays, regardless of whether they are actually guilty or not. My neighbor John demanded a settlement of $250,000, and said his firm was willing to spend $2 million to get it. The doctor's insurance company promptly paid the $250,000.

The rate of growth in North Carolina's medical malpractice insurance rates is among the highest in the nation. The total cost of health care rises with those rates. My neighbor John's slimy extortion is part of the reason.

Forget about right or wrong, guilt or innocence. My neighbor John did what was best for himself. Nobody else seemed to matter.

My neighbor John may be a trial lawyer, but in front of juries he also claims to be something of a psychic. You see, my neighbor John specializes in cases involving the death or serious injury of children. He claims to receive messages from dead or brain-damaged children, and the messages are much clearer and more specific than those received by the famous"psychic" who nearly shares my neighbor's name.

When a child has been killed or is otherwise unable to speak for him or herself, my neighbor John says he has the ability to "channel" that child. He tells juries he feels the child inside him, and that he has messages from that child, which he relays to jury members. He tells juries about the car-accident death of his own son, Wade, and speculates that he may have received the ability to "feel" the souls of dead or injured children because of the close relationship he still feels with his son.

It sounds hokey and more than a little creepy, but it seems to play well with juries, and results in very high jury awards. These awards have made my neighbor extremely wealthy. He's so wealthy that he created a corporation of which he is the only member, and pays himself most of his earnings as corporate dividends, not as salary or wages. Medicare taxes are not levied on dividend income, so my neighbor has avoided paying $600,000 into the Medicare system since 1995 by setting up this tax shelter. But he says others aren't paying their fair share of Medicare taxes.

It's good for my neighbor John, and nobody else seems to matter.

My neighbor made a lot of promises on his way to the Senate. He promised strong support for our military, but then voted against body armor, combat pay, and better health care for our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. He promised to support traditional North Carolina values, but then voted to the left of Ted Kennedy on partial-birth abortion, taxes, property rights, and a host of other issues. We in North Carolina feel betrayed. My neighbor John figuratively gave his constituents the middle finger while he ingratiated himself to Tom Daschle and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership.

My neighbor announced many months ago that he would not seek reelection, because he knows he's unpopular in North Carolina and would lose by a huge margin. According to a poll released this week, when the Kerry/Edwards ticket was announced, support for Kerry in North Carolina went down, not up.

We North Carolinians know John Edwards. We've been betrayed by him, and we do not support him.

But as he broke his promises to us, he gained favor with the Democratic Party leadership. Now he's a political star. I guess turning his back on the people he claims to represent has worked out well for my neighbor, John Edwards. Nobody else seems to matter.

B.T. Nicholson