Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has had one heck of a week. Just as he gets caught up on all his reading and is beginning to think about a blog post, his cable modem starts being all funky. When it is fixed, the remains of Tropical Storm Bonnie bring massive thunderstorms to the Villainschloss; and your Maximum Leader decides not to turn on the Ubercomputer. Now it is Friday and your Maximum Leader prepares to leave the Villainschloss for a week at the beach. Crazy…

But before he leaves he wanted to make some very broad comments on the Kerry/Bush debate that has gone on in this space. Alas, most of the debate, your Maximum Leader has found is at its core without much substance.

Why? Because neither man has given us much substance to work with. Bush has basically said that h has done a good job and deserves your vote. Kerry has said that he was in Vietnam and deserves your vote. What that leaves us with is the work of the various 527 organizations (like Moveon.org and Swiftboatvets).

NB: Your Maximum Leader hates 527 organizations. Of all political stripes. He believes they remove accountability from politics. They can take as much money from whomever they please. Say what they please. And all with little accountability to anyone. Your Maximum Leader believes that they are the awful offshoot of the absolutely excreable Campaign Finance Reform law. Here is an idea for campaign finance reform. Candidates and parties can take as much money from any source as they want, but they have to disclose the full amount of the gift and the giver within 48 hours of receipt. That way anyone can see who is beholden to whom. Anyway…

Your Maximum Leader has read a lot about the Swiftboat Vets and Kerry recently and has found himself wondering, “Why should this matter?” It matters because all Kerry has offered up to us is his Vietnam record. He starts campaign rallies by saying “John Kerry reporting for duty.” And then he salutes. Kerry always brings some Vet buddies with him. Kerry has made his navy record part of the campaign, as such it is open for attack and question by all sides. Your Maximum Leader can’t remember a man who has ever put his service to his country in the forefront of his campaign for president as much as John Kerry has. Not Kennedy, not Nixon, not Carter, not George Herbert Walker Bush, not Bob Dole. It is as if 4 months of meritorious service as a navy Lieutenant over 40 years ago makes him the best man to be president.

Your Maximum Leader frankly doesn’t care to rehash every little thing that every happened to or around John Kerry in Vietnam. But there is precious little else to work with.

He isn’t talking about his Senate record. Why is that do you think? Well in short it is because to have a senate record is to have to explain 20 years worth of votes that are contradictory, confusing, and byzantine to the average voter. This is a problem for any senator of any political stripe. The way you get business done in the senate is to trade votes on different issues. This is why Richard Nixon might well have been the last (former) US Senator to be elected president for a long time.

Oh, and Kerry hasn’t done much to distinguish himself in the Senate anyway. Here is a very interesting website that breaks down Kerry votes by subject and how his votes rated against the positions of various liberal and conservative groups. There is not much here that inspires confidence in your Maximum Leader.

In viewing Kerry’s record, it is fun to know that on Veterans Issues deemed important by the American Legion, Kerry voted the way they wanted 0 percent of the time. (Edwards voted with the American Legion 50% of the time, and John McCain 50% of the time. Your Maximum Leader is including John McCain in these comparisons to provide some balance to the analysis - since McCain seems to be every Democrat’s favourite Republican.)

Kerry also voted with the Sierra Club 100% of the time. (Edwards 80% of the time, McCain 40% of the time.)

Kerry voted with the National Education Association 100% of the time. (Edwards 83%, McCain 45%)

Kerry voted with the Brady Campaign (aka: Handgun Control inc) 100% of the time. (Edwards 77%, McCain 14%)

Kerry voted with the American Bar Association 100% of the time. (Edwards 100%, McCain 67%)

Your Maximum Leader could go on, but he will not. You can do the research yourself.

As for the ongoing Kerry/Bush debate…

It is interesting that the (Democratic) party line is being modified. It isn’t so much as “Bush lied” as “Bush mislead” now. Interesting change. What is interesting about it is that now people of all stripes are coming out and saying that the intelligence used to justify war wasn’t good and everyone should have been more skeptical. 
Great. We’ll all be more skeptical now. But at the time everything seemed to make lots of sense. Practically every news source in America thought it did. Kerry thought it did. Why else would he have voted to authorize the president to send troops? Intelligence is a sometimes faulty thing and should always be viewed with skepticism.

Then the argument moves to did the intelligence make any difference? Bush wanted a war, and damnit he got one. It is all fine and good to say that he wanted a war with Iraq regardless of what the intelligence said. (By the way, Your Maximum Leader believes that he probably did want to end Saddam’s Iraq before the 9/11 attacks.)

But lets take a moment to look at the senario as it unfolded. Let us say for the sake of argument that Bush was already inclinded to want to get rid of the Hussein regime. Then 9/11 happens. You are now dealing with a completely different world situation than you were before. Bush starts to get intelligence saying that Hussein has WMD that he hasn’t destroyed and is making contacts with Al Queda. US intel seems to be corroborated by UK and Russian sources. What do you do?

You have two options. 1) Go to the UN and try to get the international community to help you get the WMDs. Or 2) you decide that you have to get them yourself.

If you go with choice 1 what can you expect? It will take lots of time. It has already taken over a decade, and it will likely take at least a few years more. Going with choice 1 also leaves Saddam Hussein in power. He is inclinded to have WMD, and will likely try to make more once you find the ones he has. Saddam may even give up his weapons now in exchange for the UN getting off his back. Then he can make more.

If you go with choice 2 what do you expect? Lots of trouble with the international community. Lots of trouble in Iraq.

What is the advantage of choice 2? By taking action immediately, you mitigate the chances that Hussein will give/sell WMD to terrorists who would use them in the US. And you eliminate the person who is likely to continue to be a security risk to your country.

Neither choice is fun. But being president isn’t about having fun. Your Maximum Leader will posit that if Bush hadn’t invaded, and Hussein had given just a little of some biological/chemical agent to a terror group and the group had used it anywhere in the world against the US or US interests - Bush wouldn’t be re-elected because he wouldn’t have been able to run again. He would be so vilified by people of all political stripes for having had information showing that Iraq was in contact with terror organizations and was a threat and not acting his career would be, effectively, ended.

In retrospect this doesn’t look quite as horrible as it is being portrayed. And frankly, your Maximum Leader believes that he has just done a better job explaining Bush’s actions than anyone in the Bush Administration has. (Sadly.)

But what of Kerry? He says he will bring our other “allies” (the ones who don’t like us - those “allies” in case you’ve forgotten) into Iraq. How will he do this? Well according to Newsweek (for one) he is going to trade help in Iraq for softening of the US position in Middle East Peace and North Korea. Hummm… Lets see. You help us in Iraq and we’ll support Assir Arafat against Israel and give North Korea whatever they want to “give up” (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, “Say no more.”) their nuclear weapons. Hey! What a fricking great idea that is!

Overall Kerry says that he doesn’t differ much from Bush in foreign policy goals. He just wants to use different tactics. He wants to sell our foreign policy better and try and find us more friends. Great. What happens when the friends he wants to bring on board are pacifists and would rather give away their security for the promise of peace than fight for it? Alas, that seems to be the situation in which one finds Frace, Germany, Beligum, the Netherlands, and Spain. What do you do then Johnny? Do you go it alone? Do you tough it out and hope that nothing happens during your watch? It sure sounds that way.

Well, alas my minions, your Maximum Leader must now turn off the computer and start packing to go to the beach. No blogging from your Maximum Leader for about a week. In the meanwhile, he leaves his ministers to blog on.

Carry on.