John Kerry is Proud of His Shameful Vietnam Killings

A story (mentioned on The Picket Line) that the CIA was planning to release a report just in time for the Republican Convention, speculating on just how bad Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction arsenal might have become had he been allowed to remain in power for another four years, has been denied by Charles Duelfer, the head of the CIA’s weapon search team in Iraq, who will be delivering its final report.


Christopher Hitchens seems to have completely lost the plot over Iraq, but I can’t help but check in and see what he has to say from time to time. Today it’s this: “John Kerry actually claims to have shot a fleeing Viet Cong soldier from the riverbank, something that I personally would have kept very quiet about. He used to claim that he was a witness to, and almost a participant in, much worse than that. So what if he has been telling the absolute truth all along? In what sense, in other words, does his participation in a shameful war qualify him to be president of the United States?… ¶ The Democrats have made a rod for their own backs in uncritically applauding their candidate’s ramrod-and-salute posture. They have also implicitly subverted one of the most important principles of the republic, which is civilian control over military decisions. And more than that, they have done something eye-rubbingly unprincipled, doing what Reagan and Kissinger could not do: rehabilitating the notion of the Vietnam horror as ‘a noble cause.’ ”


And now for some more stories…