Blogs for Bush%3A Kerry%2FMoveOn.Org 2004

B4B:

Scotsman.com News - Health - Prozac seeping into water supplies

Medicating the Masses:

Prozac in the water supply.

Grim%27s Hall

Swifties, II:

Something came to me while I was responding to Eric in the comments below. It's important enough that I thought I'd post it to the big board. He had pointed out that Sovay begins one post by saying that the matter is over her head. I replied:

Well, it's over almost everyone's head. Almost no one [that really should read, "relatively few"... there are some of us who do have, but a minority of Americans] has the background in military science to evaluate these claims, and thereby to recognize the trouble with some of Kerry's statements. The class of people who don't understand why his statements are probably false includes not just Sovay, but most American citizens, and very nearly all American journalists (NYTimes, call your office).

Bloggers who are trying to evaluate these claims tend to forget that. It's not just that these people are carrying water for Kerry--although many of the journalists seem to be--or that they just want to believe that Kerry is clean, and the SBVs are making "outrageous" claims. They don't have the faintest idea how to evaluate the claims themselves, so they fall back on what they do know -- which is why the NYTimes piece focuses on friendships and connections between certain SVBs and Republicans, or tracking the financing of the SBVFT. That's all they know how to do.

Because there is almost literally NO military expertise in journalism today, the whole field of investigative reporting is closed to them. The single most productive field for inquiry is unavailable, because even if they dug up the information, they wouldn't know what to make of it.

I think this says a lot about the reasons why we aren't getting more traction with this story in the mainstream press. They honestly lack the background to evaluate the claims. All they can do is what they usually do: look for conflicts of interest, and pretend that human cynicism explains everything.

BLACKFIVE%3A This Is Not My Bear...

Bear Stories:

Grim's Hall always has time for bear stories. Today's is from BlackFive: "Bear Guzzles 36 Beers, Passes Out At Campground."

Patterico%27s Pontifications%3A %3Ci%3ENew York Times%3C%2Fi%3E Hit Piece on the Swift Vets Finally Comes Out

Swifties:

Well, the New York Times has now weighed in. Hat tip Sovay, who noticed the piece and finds it completely convincing, so much so that she titles her piece "Swift Boat Liars."

Patterico wasn't quite so pleased with it:

...The piece makes one telling point. It provides quotes praising Kerry from three of the Vets who currently condemn him -- A Roy F. Hoffmann, Adrian L. Lonsdale, and George Elliott. I think this is fair commentary -- the only fair commentary in the piece. If three Vets praised Kerry in previous years, that's a fair point. They should explain why they are saying something different now.

That makes three of over 250 veterans who are in the group.

What is both amazing and utterly predictable is that the "Christmas in Cambodia" story is saved for the very end. This is the one accusation made by the Vets where the facts are clear -- and the facts show that Kerry was not truthful, as even the Kerry campaign has had to admit. How does the New York Times characterize the "Christmas in Cambodia" story?

Take a deep breath. It says that the story is "the one allegation in the book that Mr. Kerry's campaign has not been able to put to rest." Not "the allegation that has forced Mr. Kerry's campaign to explain that Mr. Kerry has not been telling the truth." Just the one allegation that they haven't yet "put to rest...."

Simply unbelievable. Nothing about the magic hat. Nothing about his gun-running missions. Nothing about the memories being "seared -- seared" into Kerry's head.

The longer this goes on, the more troubling I find it. There are, as the gentleman points out, 250 sailors represented by SBVFT. They are speaking out against just one sailor, John Kerry. Kerry's defenders say they want to make sure that Kerry's service is not slandered, which is a fine and noble goal. They ought to take care not to slander 250 men in their rush to defend their own, one, man.

Some of these questions -- I put all the Bronze Star issues into this category -- can probably be resolved by recognizing that people's memories of combat are often vastly different, one to another, as with any high-stress event. Some of them may simply be mistakes or misunderstandings. I expect Kerry to be exonerated on many of these charges, including the Bronze Star, which is enough to say that I think he was for at least that one moment a real war hero.

But some of these charges aren't going to be resolved without shame coming hard on someone's head. It's going to be Kerry's, or it's going to be 250 other fighting men.

The Christmas In Cambodia story has already been admitted to be false. Navy SEALs have written to say that no swift boats were used for Cambodian insertions; the Navy's entire chain of command for the region has said so. All of Kerry's boat companions have written to say that they don't recall ever being in Cambodia. MACV-SOG had its own boat service, which used PTF "Nasty" boats rather than SWIFT boats, and therefore had no need of taking on an inexperienced LTjg to do what they had experienced operators to do, or using a SWIFT boat for a mission that a PTF could do better. The CIA likewise had its own budget for these matters.

This leaves two remaining possibilities consistent with Kerry telling the truth:

1) He was performing missions that were illegal in the real sense, having not been approved by anyone in the chain of command. This is not entirely implausible; our SEAL noted that they sometimes did things without asking because they didn't trust the chain of command. If they thought young Kerry was a sucker, some operators might have convinced him to do something that would have gotten him into a lot of trouble if it had been discovered. It's much more likely they would have used one of their own for this mission (again, per the SEALs), but it is not completely impossible that someone decided to con the LTjg into doing it for them. Problem for Kerry: his boatmates still don't remember this mission.

2) All 250 sailors are lying, including Kerry's entire chain of command; his boatmates who do support him are also lying about the Cambodian incursions.

And none of that touches the geography issues, which are still unexplained. There is not yet enough information to evaluate these claims, except to say that Kerry's story to date is not consistent with the facts of how the rivers run. Attempts to find another river nearby that does comply with Kerry's story are underway, and that's fine. It may be that this is going to prove to be another area in which it is only the vagaries of memory that are in dispute.

The Cambodia story remains a serious problem, however. Defenders of Kerry should take care not to slander 250 servicemen to protect the principle of not slandering servicemen. Until there are answers, we can't say for certain which group is telling the falsehood: the one career politician, or the 250 men from all walks of life.

Blogs for Bush%3A It Was Actually John Kerry Before It Was Bob Kerrey

B4B:

Grim's Hall has joined the Blogs for Bush, as some of you may have noticed. I have recently explained what I think is a sufficient cause to vote against Kerry in the upcoming election, regardless of all other factors. Grim's Hall, while recognizing Bush's flaws, will nevertheless fight for him as the best man on the field.

We have a fair number of liberal readers here, however, although most of them don't comment much in the comments section. (You know who you are.) I don't wish to drive them off, as many are friends and some are family. I will therefore be gathering "Blogs for Bush" material under the heading B4B, and those of you who are already rock-solid certain to vote for Kerry or Nader can skip the entries. Those of you who are almost certain are encouraged to keep an open mind, although I doubt these articles will convince you, as they appear to be preaching to the choir.

This week, B4B has three articles they'd like mentioned:

It Was Actually John Kerry Before It Was Bob Kerrey

Does Kerry Really Condemn MoveOn?

51% of Democrats Blame America for 9/11

I must admit to a certain disdain for the politics: on the first question, I object to kicking a man while he's down (Ed: and it's hard to get lower down than Kerry, these days... Quiet, you!); on the second, I'm not sure why it matters; but on the third, I can see the point. There are a certain number of Democrats, myself included, who are voting for Bush this year largely because they don't wish to support the party of blaming America, and especially wish to avoid voting into power candidates who blame America. The policies that result from that position are bad ones, as they leave our foreign policy timid, our military constrained, and our enemies therefore bolder and freer -- to say nothing of leaving them alive, which I already consider a major concession, to be offered only in exchange for great service.

Sharp Knife

Sharp Knife:

Thanks to Noel, who provided me with some ammo in a debate earlier today (re: antisemitism), and then came up with this Steyn quote, appropriate to the redeployment of our 70,000 troops:

This will undoubtedly be welcome news to the likes of Goran Persson, the Swedish prime minister, who famously declared that the purpose of the European Union is that "it's one of the few institutions we can develop as a balance to US world domination". It must surely be awfully embarrassing to be the first superpower in history to be permanently garrisoned by your principal rival superpower.

I laughed for quite a while after reading that.

Mudville Gazette

Greyhawk:

The Mudville Gazette has been particularly active lately.

CrimLaw

From Southern Appeal:

A new, and successful, tactic in criminal law: "The Damn Yankee Defense."

Froggy Ruminations%3A SEALs %26 Swift boats

A SEAL Speaks:

Now here is someone who will know the answer to Hugh's question: were swift boats used for insertion operations? This fellow is a former SEAL, and the son of a SEAL to boot. He says no; the SF used swift boats, but not the SEALs; and swifties were definitely not for cross-border insertions.

I've met a couple of SEALs in my time. Very impressive lads. Not so much their physical prowess, although that is extremely high; still, I've met their equals from other services (although not their betters). What is really impressive to me is the combination of that physical prowess with the technical expertise. The SEALs I've known have always been highly technical: in addition to SCUBA gear, and being trained paratroopers, they were also competent with at least one other piece of machinery that would normally be an operational specialty on its own. One of the guys I knew was an electronic weapons officer for a Naval fighter; the other trained dolphins and knew how to use several kinds of underwater equipment.

SF are impressive too, don't get me wrong. Their language skills are something I've always aspired to myself, although I've lacked both the training and the chance to travel as widely. Everyone's heard of how physically difficult the Q-course is, but the real trick is the DLAB (Defense Language Aptitude Battery). I took it once and scored an 82, but you have to have scored at least an 85 to pass. It's an artificial language test, very tricky but a lot of fun. I did very well on the written portion, but my hearing isn't great and the listening portion wrecked my score. Alas, misspent youth, gunfire without adequate hearing protection, etc.

Anyway, you can go and read what this hero and son of a hero has to say. His father was there; he asked him too.

The New York Times > Magazine > Questions for Ray C. Fair: Bush Landslide (in Theory)!

I Love Game Theory:

Not just because it is a fantastic model for understanding the world, but also because it creates exchanges like this:

Are you a Republican?

I can't credibly answer that question. Using game theory in economics, you are not going to believe me when I tell you my political affiliation because I know that you know that I could be behaving strategically. If I tell you I am a Kerry supporter, how do you know that I am not lying or behaving strategically to try to put more weight on the predictions and help the Republicans?

I don't want to do game theory. I just want to know if you are a Kerry supporter.

Backing away from game theory, which is kind of cute, I am a Kerry supporter.

I believe you entirely, although I'm a little surprised, because your predictions implicitly lend support to Bush.

I am not attempting to be an advocate for one party or another. I am attempting to be a social scientist trying to explain voting behavior.

Leaving aside my irritation at the term "social science," I have to say that I love it. Hat tip: Southern Appeal.

Byron York on John Kerry, David Alston & Vietnam on National Review Online

Retrenchment:

Kerry's campaign explains that Captain Ed is wrong to say that he hadn't served with Alston. However, the retrenched explanation once again creates new inconsistencies with the established storyline: once again, you have to shift all the dates Kerry has used in the past to account for the new story. It really is time to sign that Form 180, and just let people see the records.

UPDATE:

Hugh Hewitt is apparently spending a lot of time and energy on research into these allegations. I'm familiar with the SOG, but it was before my time. I'm afraid I have nothing to add on the question of whether or not they used swift boats.

BOROWITZ report.com

Olympic Jitters:

"Olympic security officials in Athens, Greece conceded today that they had failed to notice a giant wooden horse that had been wheeled to within meters of the Olympic stadium sometime late last week."

USATODAY.com - Reservists say war makes them lose jobs

The "War To See Soldiers Treated Decently"

A report from the frontlines of this war, oddly enough being waged by the Labor Department. There's good news and bad news. Complaints are up, but not as much as expected; most of the time employers are obeying the law. However, there are some "grey areas" in which our soldiers are not being treated as well as we'd like, particularly for law enforcment officers who are also Reservists:

The county required that they exhaust their leave before receiving a county salary supplement that bridged the gap between military and civilian pay. This meant some employees had to count some of their time in a war zone as vacation days or forfeit the extra pay.

"Our members were not able to decompress," said Percy Alston, president of the Fraternal Order of Police lodge representing the county's police officers. His members have challenged the policy through labor grievance procedures and expect an arbitrator will decide the matter.

I'm generally opposed to public-sector unions, but somebody needs to fight for these guys. It's to nobody's benefit to bring a soldier back from a war zone, and then stick him out policing our streets with no time to readjust to the United States. Saving a few bucks on his salary is going to seem like a false economy the first time something bad happens that could have been avoided with a proper readjustment.

GeorgeWBush.com :: The Official Re-election Site for President George W. Bush

Intel:

The Bush-Cheney team has put out a new ad called Intel. It shows that they are finally recognizing that this is an area in which Kerry is terribly vunerable.

One can understand why the Bush administration would be cautious in citing intelligence issues as a reason to vote for them. "Intelligence failure" has been an all-too-common phrase in the last few years, and while the Bush administration is not to blame for the worst failings of the intelligence services, they have exacerbated the problem in certain key respects. The Bush administration can't be blamed for the fact that the CIA got nearly all our Iraqi agents killed in a coup attempt in the late 1990s; they can't be blamed for the fact that the CIA/DIA didn't keep up ties in Afghanistan after the fall of the Soviet Union. We saw in the released President's Daily Briefing the fruits of that -- the information was based on old UBL speeches, 'media reports,' and the like. This was what the CIA could come up with: open source intelligence that you or I could dig up in Nexis.

The fact is that the services had blinders on by 2001, and rebuilding HUMINT networks in particular takes a lot of time. It takes time on both ends: in the sharp end, it's hard to recruit and keep secret your agents; and on our side, it really takes decades to build up the sort of deep and intimate understanding of a foreign culture and its personalities that drives the best HUMINT.

So, these are problems that couldn't be fixed overnight. They stemmed from bad decisions made many years earlier, but which echo with particular resonance in the intelligence community.

On the other hand, Bush didn't help matters much. To his credit, he started doing what Clinton had not, which was taking very regular meetings with the DCI. He took his briefings seriously, and -- as we know from Kessler's book, The CIA At War -- came into office with advice from Bush Sr. to keep the agency close.

In spite of that, the President seems to have fallen prey to serious intelligence failures. Some of these were pre-9/11, when the whole Federal apparatus fell down on the job. State approved visas in plain violation of its regulations; the CIA didn't deal with foreign warnings about some of the terrorists; the FBI didn't deal with CIA warnings. Bush could not be expected to fix these sorts of massive systemic problems in a few months, but the greater problem is that he doesn't seem to have noticed them. "Why don't we have anything on this bin Laden that isn't several years old and from the press?" should have been a natural question.

The Iraq war intelligence has been thoroughly explored, and there is no reason to go over it again here. As all investigations have discovered, the intel was widely believed worldwide, and there were good reasons for believing some of it. Still, there are honest questions about why we haven't seen more of a shakeup in the services. "We were waiting on the 9/11 Commission recommendations" doesn't cut it with me, especially since key recommendations are bad (e.g., the 'intel Czar').

So, for all these reasons, one can see why Bush might be careful about mentioning intelligence as a reason to vote for him. Even for those matters in which there was little he could do, the President bears some responsibility for answering to things that happen on his watch.

However, it is plainly true that Kerry is worse. Indeed, it's one of the only things we can really know about Kerry for certain.

I've been having this discussion with a young liberal I know from Del's Freespeech.com. Here are the relevant bits:

I mention Stansfield Turner in the clip. Will asked me to look into how 9/11 changed his views, if it did. I should have mentioned this earlier, but I have looked up Stansfield Turner's writings since 9/11. The University of Maryland has a selection, if you're inclined to see for yourself.

I'm afraid that I have to report little if any change from the retired Admiral. Now, Turner is a nice fellow -- he broke our intel services not out of malice, but because he felt that HUMINT is by its nature unethical, and he wanted a fully ethical CIA. So he focused on signals intelligence -- SIGINT -- and gutted the HUMINT-based clandestine service, as well as firing lots of our best officers.

His recent papers discuss HUMINT, but invariably include lots of what I would call "warnings" about it: 'it often fails,' 'it isn't moral,' and the like. He also plays up SIGINT in his current writings, saying it's underestimated as a source of intelligence.

One can't object to his tone, or even to his motives. It all sounds very nice, and I don't doubt that he really believes it. But, at the last, he's wrong -- and he's wrong in a very deadly way for the United States of America. I must report that my investigation has left me more certain than ever that he can't be trusted to run American intelligence, and that the Kerry campaign, depending on his advice, can't be trusted with it either.

Will asked me for more information about SIGINT and why it wasn't an answer:

SIGINT means "signals intelligence." It is the intelligence that can be gained, for example, from monitoring cell phone conversations, internet transmissions, and the like. It's not that I'm against it -- it has its place -- but it's not the solution Adm. Turner would like to believe.

There are some civil liberties concerns, to start with. You can imagine how much it would please the average European to discover that his phone calls are being monitored by CIA or NSA (as it is sometimes rumored that they are).

Also, the "signal to noise ratio" is a difficulty. Briefly, how do you know which phones to listen in on? Well, you don't, unless you've got a tip from the HUMINT field. If you're relying on SIGINT primarily, you end up listening to a whole lot of people's conversations about their shopping lists. At some point, you have to hire extra analysts to analyze all this "noise." It's expensive, and the chance of catching the one piece of "signal" is small no matter how much you spend on it.

Turner likes SIGINT because he thinks it's relatively moral. Nobody gets hurt if the government listens in on private conversations (right, Vikingas?). HUMINT, on the other hand, involves lies and spying. It involves, frequently, breaking the law. It's immoral and it means dirty tricks.

However, finally, it's the only thing that really works. As I suggested above, even SIGINT works a lot better if you've got tips from HUMINT to focus your SIGINT efforts. The same is true for all the other forms of intelligence too (e.g., OSINT -- "open source intelligence" -- is more effective if you know what to be watching for. It suffers from a similar 'signal/noise ratio' problem).

Finally, you've got to be willing to get down and dirty as a regular, day to day sort of thing. Intelligence doesn't work any other way. That's unhappy, I agree, but it is the truth. If you want to know what killers are doing, you have to win their trust and get them to tell you. You can't do that except with dirty tricks, and a lot of stuff we'd really rather not do.

But the alternative, the only alternative, is not knowing what they are doing....

I realize you probably made your mind up a while ago, and a man must vote his conscience. Still, for what it's worth, I couldn't vote for Kerry and his team. I honestly think it would put the republic in danger. I don't doubt their good intentions -- as I said, Stansfield Turner is a kindhearted fellow who only wants to be completely moral in our dealings with the world. It's hard to fault that.

At the last, though, I must fault it. I think we all must. I see no alternative, in spite of the failures and the failings, but to vote to re-elect Bush. I won't hold it against you however you vote -- a man must vote his conscience. But this is how I see it, for what it is worth.

Will finally asked if, aside from Turner's position as a senior advisor to the Kerry team, I thought there was reason to believe that the Carter approach would take hold in a Kerry administration:

There are reasons to think that the Carter team will be more important in a Kerry administration than they were in the Clinton administration. Clinton kept their members at arm's length, allowing Carter to serve as a member of a delegation to Haiti during his administration, but not otherwise putting him front and center. Neither Carter nor his fellows played any important role at the 1992 convention.

Kerry, on the other hand, gave Carter a prominent speaking role at the convention. Kerry, unlike Clinton, gave Stansfield Turner a seat on his senior policy staff. Turner's role during the Clinton administration was a professorship at U. Maryland, not a policy role.

There are two reasons this is important. The first is that there is a power struggle in the Democratic party, between the DNC (Democratic National Committee) faction which the Clintons represented, and the faction composed of those to the left of the DNC. In the two-party system, it's usually the centrist faction that enjoys greater success with the electorate. The preference for Carter's wing of the party over Clinton's is not to be ignored.

The other, and more important, reason is that the government is currently talking loudly about establishing an 'Intel Czar.' In the 1980s, the main reason we were able to respond to the Soviets in Afghanistan and elsewhere was that intel was bifurcated. The CIA was wrecked -- Mr. Turner had seen to that, as we've discussed. However, the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) duplicated a lot of the CIA's functions from the military side. They started the program in Afghanistan, which the CIA took over later.

The DIA and CIA would both fall under the new Intel Czar, if it is in fact created. (For the record, I oppose the notion. The 9/11 Commission is just wrong on this point. The bifurcation is beneficial, as it gives us two separate views on what goes on worldwide; too much centralization will cause an increase in "stovepiping," and therefore worse intel failures).

If that Czar is Stansfield Turner -- already on Kerry's senior staff -- or someone operating on Turner's theories, we'll see a breakage of American intel at all levels. There won't be a DIA to save us this time; the DIA will be broken too.

That's the gamble, and the odds are in favor of Kerry approving just such a breakage. I can't take that chance.

I don't recommend that gamble to anyone. The Bush ad mentions several reasons to be concerned about Kerry and intel, but there are more serious reasons too. We can't afford a Kerry administration. The risks are too great.

BLACKFIVE

Steyn on Cambodia:

Via "the Paratrooper of Love," BlackFive, we have a piece from Mark Steyn:

But this question isn't about geographical degrees of latitude so much as psychological ones. Here's the real reason Lt. Kerry wasn't spending Dec. 24, 1968, on a secret mission in Cambodia: On the previous day, Dec. 23, the U.S. government finally secured the release, after a five-month diplomatic stand-off, of 11 Americans whose U.S. Army utility landing craft had made a navigational error and strayed into Cambodian waters. Prince Sihanouk had rejected U.S. apologies and threatened to try the men under Cambodian law. It's unlikely, 24 hours after their release, anyone in Washington was thinking, ''Hey, we need to send that hotshot Kerry in there.''

So what are we to make of Sen. Kerry's self-seared 30-year-old false memory of Christmas in Cambodia with its vast accumulation of precise details? Of being shot at by the Khmer Rouge (unlikely in 1968) and of South Vietnamese troops drunkenly celebrating Christmas (as only devout Buddhists know how)?

It's not about dates and places. For Kerry, his Yuletide mission was an epiphany: the moment when he realized his government was lying to the people about what was going on. This is the turning point, the moment that set the young Kerry on the path from brave young war volunteer to fierce anti-war activist.

And it turns out it's total bunk....

Captain's Quarters

More on Cambodia & Vietnam:

Captain's Quarters has, as most of you will have seen, newly disproven another of Kerry's claims about his service in Vietnam. This is starting to become alarming. As I said in the comments to the last post on this topic, I'm willing to insist on a strict standard of evidence for all of these charges -- but that applies to Kerry, too. When he makes claims that can be proven false, he deserves what he gets.

People's Daily Online -- Typhoon Rananim sweeps Zhengjiang

Charley Shmarley:

Glad I'm not in HangZhou today. This is our old neighborhood, from when we lived in China. Looks like so far, 115 dead, about 2,000 injured, and 42,000 houses destroyed. Whee.

Mudville Gazette

"Big Boom"

The Mudville Gazette has an interview with a (strongly pro-Bush) Air Force F-16 pilot who has been supporting operations in Najaf. Greyhawk has a question:

The terrorists and other anti-coalition elements "really are not winning," our pilot correspondent says. "Not even a little."

Anyone need that translated?

Hurr. Kitty

Hurricane Kitty:

Sovay, whose site I've been reading faithfully lately, carries on the tradition of some lefty blogger whose name escapes me of "Friday Catblogging." It happens that one of her cats used to live with me, before I found a suck... er, a kind hearted Sovay to take her in.

As she reminds me today, this cat, Arganti, appeared to me in the wreck following Hurricane Floyd. The wife and I were down Savannah way at the time, living on the inauspiciously named "Waters Avenue" (little did we know that meant 11-inch flash floods in our living room during the storm season). I was out 'walking one morning for pleasure,' when I saw a little white kitten stalking through the storm damage. As soon as she saw me, her tail shot up into a point, and she started running in my direction. She followed me all the way home -- I never touched her or offered her food or even encouragement -- and right through the door into my house. I named her and sent her to Maryland to live with Sovay, who flew down to pick her up.

So yeah, she's been through fire and high water. Tough cat, that one.