JOHN KERRY now closes his presidential campaign exactly as he opened his political life: Attacking the United States military.
Thirty-three years ago, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he indicted the soldiers of Vietnam as war criminals, the heirs of Genghis Khan.
This week he embraced an already discredited account of missing munitions to attack the reputation of the 3rd Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne. Make no mistake, that is exactly what Kerry is doing when he asserts that deadly weapons went unsecured and unreported as these two divisions rushed to liberate Baghdad. And not just these divisions, but every officer and soldier who had a hand in drawing up the war plan. If the negligence that Kerry charges the military with was real, additional troops would not have made a difference. The initial search would still have been conducted by the 3rd I.D. and the site pronounced clear. The 101st would still have spent 24 hours in the munitions complex before moving on. Kerry cannot avoid owning the latest of many slanders he has launched at the military as a means of wounding the president.
That the story was floated by a Bush foe in the U.N. bureaucracy at the IAEA did not discourage Kerry. Nor did the evident pretzel logic of condemning the war while bemoaning the huge danger of Saddam's arsenal. The facts on the myth of the missing munitions are available at The Belmont Club and Instapundit, but facts did not matter to Kerry at all, nor the reputations of the soldiers he charged with allowing massive amounts of deadly munitions to go missing.
Here is more from Hugh's website.
"Sir, eight out of ten soldiers support the president. Why is it so hard for the civilians to get it?"
I was greeting members of the audience and signing books after a speech to a GOTV rally in Colorado Springs, and the soldier in front of me looked 18, but told me he'd been in for 11 years. His name was Rashid
"A majority do, and the rest are figuring it out," I replied. Earlier, a veteran of the Iraq campaign, during the Q. and A. had stated he'd been assigned a brief bit of duty at a different munitions dump. "This was 10 miles by 10 miles," said. "We patrolled by helicopter. Occasionally a pick-up truck would dart in and out, but there was no looting, and there was no way to guard such places except by the air."
Tommy Franks' amazement at the charges coming from John Kerry and company about his, his planning team, and the execution of the plan by the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines he commanded is beginning to boil over. (HT to K-Lo at The Corner.) Kerry is trying to argue that all blame for all mistakes lies on George W. Bush, and that he's not slagging the troops. But that's not how the troops are hearing it. A call to the program yesterday from the proud mom of a member of the 3rd I.D. was a voice of outrage and anger directed at Kerry. "He [Kerry] has no idea how he sounds," she fumed. "My son is a brave and competent hero." Kerry thinks he's a bumbler. But how surprising is that. He also thinks the men and women he served with in Vietnam were war criminals.
