It looks like the “debunked” Swift Boat Veterans may not have been as thoroughly debunked as I’d heard. The official Navy documents that they’d found themselves at odds with were written by… John Kerry. Interesting how he’d get a medal based on the after-action report that he wrote himself and that several other people say happened differently, huh?

Still, as I’ve said before, I have less interest in what happened THEN (with Kerry in Vietnam or Bush in the National Guard) than what’s going on NOW, but I think it’s an interesting point.
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After four relatively scandal free years (for the presidency, anyway… the governor here at home hasn’t been so lucky), it’s amazing how often I roll my eyes at the news these last couple of months. The much-blogged “Rathergate” and the AP’s apparent re-editing of a number of news stories that were originally unbelievably biased to the standard “laughable bias” level were bad enough, but now we have a break in at the Washington State Election headquarters for Bush.

Honestly, I believe Kirstin Brost when she says “Democrats had nothing to do with the break-in.” At least, I believe that there’s probably no tie to the campaign itself, though I wouldn’t doubt that whoever did it is registered as a Democrat.
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So, Kerry has a plan for Iraq, does he? Let’s look at that, shall we? (From JohnKerry.com)

1. Internationalize, because others must share the burden;
2. Train Iraqis, because they must be responsible for their own security;
3. Move forward with reconstruction because that’s an important way to stop the spread of terror; and
4. Help Iraqis achieve a viable government, because it is up to them to run their own country.

1.) Internationalize, because others must share the burden.

Kerry’s website says:
“After insulting allies and shredding alliances, this President does not have the trust and confidence to bring others to our side in Iraq. But we must rebuild and lead strong alliances so that others will share the burden with us in Iraq and elsewhere.”

“The coerced and the bribed” apparently not enough of an alliance for Kerry, so who is it that he wants us to invite to help us out? China? He’s told us, in last night’s debate that he wants to deal with Korea without China’s help. I wager that won’t get much support in Iraq. France? Germany? Not gonna happen. They’ve told us it’s not going to happen. How is Kerry going to get them to join us? He hasn’t told us. Maybe he’s afraid Bush will steal his ideas, or something. I’ll take a guess or two, though. Bribery? Coercion? I thought he didn’t want an alliance of the “coerced and the bribed.”

Bush, despite the cries of the left, has an international alliance in Iraq. Are we contributing more than anyone else? Yes, but this isn’t the first time that’s been true.

2.) Train Iraqis, because they must be responsible for their own security;
3.) Move forward with reconstruction because that’s an important way to stop the spread of terror; and

I’m lumping these together because Kerry’s stance on both positions on these statements is exactly the same: “President Bush is already doing these things, and already laid out the groundwork I’m planning to use, but it didn’t work. I’ll do it better.”

He doesn’t address any of the reasons why Bush’s takes on these things didn’t work. The record tells us that Bush’s training and reconstruction plans aren’t going as well as they’d hoped. They admit that and say that things are on track now. Kerry, despite the fact that his “plan” sounds a lot like Bush’s doesn’t address how his plans are different. Why did Bush fail? Why won’t Kerry fail? Did Bush and co. waste the money they were given buying equipment that wasn’t needed? Did they train men who then deserted on them? Why didn’t Bush’s plan work, and how are you going to address those failures? Kerry doesn’t tell us that, he just restates that he’s going to do… um… exactly what Bush says he’s going to do. RIGHT AFTER HE TELLS US BUSH’S PLANS DON’T WORK.

4.) Help Iraqis achieve a viable government, because it is up to them to run their own country.

If I were an Iraqi citizen, here’s what I’d see in Kerry. This is a man who says he wants to help us build a viable government, but when the leader of our provisional government comes to his country, he belittles him. Obviously, our current leader isn’t good enough to be considered Kerry’s equal. Will our future leader?

As an American citizen, though, I’m just wondering what Kerry’s going to do different. Bush has, after all, stated his own determination that there will be elections in Iraq. Let’s go to Kerry’s website again.

“Because Iraqis have no experience holding free and fair elections, the President agreed six months ago that the U.N. must play a central role. Yet today, just four months before Iraqis are supposed to go to the polls, the U.N. Secretary General and administration officials themselves say the elections are in grave doubt because the security situation is so bad. Not a single country has offered troops to protect the U.N. elections mission, and the U.N. has less than 25 percent of the staff it needs in Iraq to get the job done.”

President Bush says that the U.N.’s help would be welcome in setting up Iraq’s elections. The U.N. Secretary General says that they’d need a lot more security. “Not a single country has offered troops…” What about the U. S.? What about “the coerced and the bribed”? I assume Kerry means that not a single nation has made troops available explicitly for that mission. Obviously, our troops are available, though they admittedly have other objectives as well. If other countries aren’t sending troops to help shore up security for the elections (security that the U.N. says are needed), then what does that tell us? That no one thinks highly enough of the Iraqis to try to help them? The U.N. has less than 25% of the staff it needs. So… what do they need? The U.S. to give them more people? For some other nations to step up?

Two problems brought up here (I don’t necessarily believe they’re insurmountable, as I don’t put a lot of stock in the pessimistic outlook of those who have a vested interest in seeing Bush fail, but KERRY brought them up, so he should address them, right? These are the problems, and this is how I’ll fix them): Not enough security in Iraq to hold elections, and not enough U.N. staff. What will Kerry do? Let’s see.

• Recruit troops from our friends and allies for a U.N. protection force, and train Iraqis to manage and guard the polling places that need to be opened so that U.S forces do not have to bear that burden alone.
• Disburse immediately critical funds for election preparations.
• Convene a regional conference with Iraq’s neighbors in order to secure a pledge of respect for Iraq’s borders and non-interference in Iraq’s internal affairs.
• Help Iraq is establish a constitutional process for negotiating long-term power sharing arrangements between Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites.
• Invest in long-term capacity-building and training for political parties and civil society groups.
• Prioritize training for the legal and judicial sectors.

Two issues. The first point is the only one that addrsses these issues (and the rest are “more of what Bush is doing, only better, because… um… I have better hair?” Really, why doesn’t Kerry tell us how his plans are different? Not just highlight where Bush’s plans have gone wrong, then restate the same plans Bush has! Orson Scott Card has an explanation.)

Let’s look at that first point. “Recruit troops from our friends and allies for a U.N. protection force, and train Iraqis to manage and guard the polling places that need to be opened so that U.S forces do not have to bear that burden alone.”

Goes back to the very first part of his plan, doesn’t it? Which allies is he going to recruit troops from? Why are they going to send troops for Kerry and not Bush (remember, both France and Germany, the two big “no-show” allies, have already told us they’re not coming)? What about Poland? England? Australia? Must be nice for them to know that they’re not shouldering any burden at all. Probably makes their troops feel all warm and cuddly inside.

Kerry’s right, in that I’d love for us to have a real plan to get what we’re doing done. His “plan” is no more a plan than what we already have, though. We have goals we’re working toward, and I don’t believe for a second that either candidate is blindly stumbling about hoping that we reach our goals. Kerry’s flaws are showing big time here, because this is more of the same kind of stuff he’s been doing for the entire election. “Bush doesn’t have a plan, I have a plan.” He’s relying on the fact that we hear this and it despairs us. We read his four points, and we ignore the fact that these are goals, with very basic strategies, that are the same things that Bush has said in the past, and that are so obvious that it’s blinding. “We’ll set up elections. To do this, we’ll… spend money, and defend polling places.” Yeah. That’s good that he told us that, because I thought we were going to set up elections by putting monkeys on typewriters until they typed the names of the winning candidates.

Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t know that I need to see a plan, unless it’s so off-the-wall that there’s no possible way I could think of it. If I could think of it, then it’s probably so obvious that it goes without saying, or it’s so detailed that there’s no real reason for me to know.
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When it comes to person-to-person communication, I am, very often, a moron. I like things to be straightforward. I don’t pick up on subtle clues. (Okay, that’s not true. I pick up on subtle clues and dismiss them. I figure that, either I’m misinterpreting, or it’s really not that important. If it were, you’d come right out and say it, after all.)

Maybe that’s part of the reason I like Bush in this election. The occasional misfirings of vocabulary notwithstanding, he says what he means and means what he says.

I was accused of “oversimplifying” Kerry’s comments when he said: “I didn’t say I would bring troops out in six months. I said, if we do the things that I’ve set out and we are successful, we could begin to draw the troops down in six months.” Apparently, it’s oversimplified if we boil that down to “I didn’t say six months, I said…six months.”

Yes, there’s a qualifier in there that says, essentially, “If everything goes as I plan,” but Kerry knows there’s no possible plan that could get us out in six months. His plans will not work as he expects them to, because NO plan survives first contact with the enemy (who said that, by the way?). Why would he mention six months at all? To get it in our heads. To get the anti-war people thinking that Bush has no timeline for getting us out, and Kerry does. Either that, or he’s really planning to pull us out immediately, which is just as bad.

I get “nuanced.” I do. I think it’s an absurd political thing, because if you have something to say, you could JUST SAY IT, but I get the idea. This isn’t nuanced, it’s directly contradicting yourself, and the only reason for it is the hope that “six months” sticks in the minds of the viewers (much like he wants “the plan” to stick in our minds) so that we’ll associate a vote for Kerry as a vote to “win quick and get out.” If I thought a vote for Kerry would do that, I’d do it. Actually, that would mean I thought it was possible, and I’d probably vote for Badnarik in hopes that he’d somehow stumble across a win on his way out. Six months is an unealistic timeline, though, and not even Kerry thinks it can be done (that’s why he weaseled around it).