Say Anything Blog

Just in case you missed it, earlier this week Massachusetts Democrat Senator John Kerry announced that he is now ready to run an effective campaign for the Presidency.

John Kerry said Monday there might be a next time for his presidential aspirations, and if there is, the 63-year-old U.S. senator from Massachusetts says he’ll be ready for the political torpedoes that helped sink his 2004 White House bid.

Kerry, whose service as a U.S. Navy Swift boat skipper during the Vietnam War came under attack in his race against President Bush, said he has compiled a dossier on his war record critics that he wishes he had as the Democratic presidential nominee.

``We have put together a documented portfolio that frankly puts their lies in such a total light of absurdity and indecency, that should they ever rear their ugly heads again, we have every single ‘t’ crossed and ‘i’ dotted, and I welcome that in a sense, It’s a shame we weren’t able to produce all that at the time.’’

Kerry said he regrets his slowness to counter accusations from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which faulted Kerry’s war record and his subsequent anti-war activism.

Slowness??? Its now four years later.

Ah, well. Better late than never. It would almost be worth the ponderous tedium of a Kerry candidacy just to see what is… and what is NOT… in that dossier he’s trumpeting. No doubt, his original, less-than-honorable discharge from the US Navy is not included. Yeah, right!

``I think the bigger problem was the campaign should have spent more money putting the truth out there,’’ Kerry said. ``I think there was an assumption that is… was out there, it was sufficiently out there.’’

And just who was it that swore up and down that the truth was already “out there”, Senator? Who was it that swore that David Alston actually HAD been under his command? That there was nothing at all peculiar about a “V” for valor attachment to a Silver Star? That he had indeed piloted his Swift Boat into Cambodia? That the Navy never much cared that he met with representatives of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong while he was in Paris and still a commissioned officer?

While Kerry is sitting out the 2008 presidential election, he’s instead focusing on his own his race next year for a sixth term as U.S. senator, he expects he’d be dogged by the same war record critics in a subsequent race for the White House.

``I have no doubt at all that some of the people involved on the other side don’t care about the truth, think nothing about distorting it, will not hesitate to say and do whatever they think is necessary to win,’’ Kerry said. ``But I think we are now much more prepared and savvy about those kind of things, and certainly in my own involvement, I will make certain that people don’t get away with that.’’

Drivel and bluster… again. If he had been better prepared to have his war hero fantasy challenged before he entered the race four years ago, he wouldn’t be in this embarrassing situation four years later.

Even in this modest admission of his own ineptitude, Kerry can’t resist the temptation to lie. This isn’t about 2012 or any subsequent run for the White House. Hillary stumbled badly in the recent Dem debate, and now looks vulnerable. Kerry is simply announcing himself as an alternative candidate by suggesting that his Vietnam war record “problem” has been taken care of.

It hasn’t. And Kerry’s hopes of ever becoming president floated off into the jungle mists of Cambodia long, long ago. Along with the magic hat.

Go home, Senator. That war is finished. And so are you.