Ranting to /dev/null

I've not said this before

In the past, I've harbored significant distaste for those who describe their opponants on the political spectrum as liars. I have, to my knowledge, not engaged in this kind of behavior before. I continue to dislike this kind of hackery. I'm just trying not to assign to malice what can easily be accounted for with stupidity. I don't think that Bush lied to get is into Iraq, but I do think the arguments he made are, in hindsight, pretty stupid. He wasn't malicious, just dumb. I try to offer this same kind of perspective to those who oppose the President where I can.

But damn. Kerry's campaign right now uses two shots so cheap that I can't call them anything but lies. First, the draft issue. The only major congressional move to reinstitute the draft was proposed by Democrats and defeated by overwhelming margins in both House and Senate. Yet Kerry insists that Bush is going to reinstitute the draft. Nevermind the fact that it is Kerry, not Bush, with a plan to mandate national service as a requisite for graduation from high school. I'm not sure I can call this anything but a lie.

Second: this damnable explosives mess. I posted about this already today. Kerry is taking his campaign ads straight out of the morning's New York Times. See? I mean, come on. Those explosives have been missing since before we took control of Iraq, and this is known to the mainstream media via NBC. Any mention of this? Any mention of the other 248,000 tons of nastiness that we've kept control of? Any sensitivity to the idea that Kerry has criticized Bush for attacking Iraq when there wasn't any danger and then pointing the finger at Bush for not protecting us from danger? This one I don't think I have to call a lie, but it sure looks like it from where I'm sitting. Then again, Kerry and his party have shown significant capacity for doublethink, so I don't know why this should be an exception.