KERRY DIPS A LITTLE TOE INTO THE REALITY OF OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY AMERICA, AND THEN RUNS BACK TO BLANKET LIKE A LITTLE GIRL

I was driving home, feelin' good after running into my old Wire Train pal Kevin, when some really boring crap came on KCRW. Knowing the local Air America affiliate runs anti-Dean loudmouth/ego-maniac Ed Schultz I was a little reluctant to change the channel but the boring KCRW program just got worse and worse so I switched to AM. One of "Big Ed's" listeners was referring to an earlier interview he had done with NY Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer (who is also head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and, like me, an alumnus of James Madison High School in Brooklyn). Schultz posed the right question to Schumer, one we should all be asking our Democratic elected leaders to face: "Knowing what you know now, would you still have supported Bush's proposal to go to war in Iraq." Schumer hemmed and hawed and played footsie almost as badly as the other New York Senator. Schultz' callers were as pissed off as I am with this waffling. Before I got home one progressive gentleman said he was done holding his nose at the ballot box and he would not vote for Democrats supporting Bush's illegal wars and occupations.

So when I got home I was pleasantly surprised, for 30 seconds, to read a headline that seemed to say that Kerry was complaining of Bush having mislead "the public into going to war." Alas, that was about as far as the once-- many decades ago-- courageous Kerry was willing to go. He them suggested Bush should bring home 20,000 troops (out of the 160,000 + only-God-(and-Rumsfeld)-know-how-many mercenaries) before the end of the year. What a loser! He's so lost touch with the world outside the Beltway that he thinks leading is moderating Bush's catastrophic policies. He couched his timid proposal as an alternative to the full-scale withdrawal advocated by some Democrats. Screw that. We don't need an alternative to some Democrats; we need an alternative to BushCo's proven record of utter failure. AMERICANS DO NOT SUPPORT THIS WAR. WE WANT IT OVER. WHY CAN'T PEOPLE LIKE SCHUMER AND CLINTON AND KERRY UNDERSTAND THAT?



Maybe I was a little harsh on Kerry. I just read his full statement and I like that he-- though neither Clinton nor Schumer-- is willing to say his vote to support Bush's war was wrong. Here's what he said:

"The country and the Congress were misled into war. I regret that we were not given the truth; as I said more than a year ago, knowing what we know now, I would not have gone to war in Iraq. And knowing now the full measure of the Bush Administration's duplicity and incompetence, I doubt there are many members of Congress who would give them the authority they abused so badly. I know I would not. The truth is, if the Bush Administration had come to the United States Senate and acknowledged there was no "slam dunk case" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, acknowledged that Iraq was not connected to 9/11, there never would have even been a vote to authorize the use of force -- just as there's no vote today to invade North Korea, Iran, Cuba, or a host of regimes we rightfully despise."