MORE Bush service records service, W disobeyed direct orders

[mburbank]

I will absolutely agree this is a distraction from the much more potent issues at hand.

I don't think it's irrelevant, though, and once Swift Boat Vets did their thing, as John Mccain found out for years ago and Max Cleland much more recently, you better fire back full force.

I think the most telling boiling down of this mini issue is:

There are questions about wether John Kerry deserved all the medals he won while voluntarily serving in Vietnam.

and

There are questions about wether W. actually fullfiled his service to the national Guard at the same time.


The ONLY reason I can think of for the Bush administration actually inviting this comparison is real fear about the lectorate actually looking at anything else.

Don't think any other admittedly far more pressing issues will be handled any more seriously. Today W. said that John Kerry will have no choice but to hike taxes by billions of dollars to pay for things he's proposing, so he has a secret tax plan he's not going to tell you about. Maybe, but it ignores the possability Kerry could pay for his programs the same way W has payed for his tax cuts and the war. Put it on your grandkids credit card.

I mean, it's not as if the government gets to do things for free. Somebody at some time is going to have to pay for it. Is W. going to argue he's been fiscally conservative?

In the mean time, Kerry has had every oppurtunity to really go for the throat on W's current record and the state of the war in Iraq, but he's held back at every opportunity, because A.) As far as the war goes, while he might never have waged it the way W has he knows if he becomes president he's not going to be able to wage it very differently and B.) I believe he's made a clinical judgement that this election comes down to swing voters and oissed off moderate republicans.

So they might as well argue about Vietnam. At least as of this moment, neither side sees any advantage in substantive argument period.