POST SCRIPTS

has been used to describe someone who changes positions like he changes his clothes...for political expediency. It describes someone who, lacking solid grounding is willing to change his mind just to be popular or win votes. Your
suggestion that flip-flopping would be a sound course of action in the war is stupid, no matter how clever it might sound in your resentful little ears.

"I say this to President Bush as someone who learned the hard way how embracing the world's complexity can be twisted into a crude political shorthand. Barbed words can make for great politics. But with U.S. troops in Iraq in the middle of an escalating civil war, this is no time for politics. Refusing to change course for fear of the political
fallout is not only dangerous -- it is immoral."

What do you suppose is Kerry's "hard learned" lesson of "embracing the world's complexity"? What is he referring to when he talks about twisting it (or having it twisted by others?) "into a crude political shorthand"? He isn't very clear, not clear at all, so I think we'll all have to be content to wonder. (And they thing GW is inarticulate!) He then begins to lecture the President, "...with troops in Iraq...no time for politics'. Excuse me Senator, but it hasn't stopped you, or most of those in your party, from playing politics. In fact that is all you have done from the beginning. The moral issue is irrelevant since your perceptions of the President's motivations are yours and yours alone.

"I'd rather explain a change of position any day than look a parent in the eye and tell them that their son or daughter had to die so that a broken policy could live."

Yes, Senator, you would, and that is exactly why I wouldn't want you to lead the country. You haven't the courage of your convictions and that makes you a major candidate for flip-flopper-in chief but that's about all. Your words suggest that you would not defend my children at all if it meant that you had to perform some uncomfortable task as president. They suggest you'd rather make up some story after the fact to explain why America wasn't able to prevent a terrorist attack than make hard decisions to defend and protect this nation.

(Kerry then goes on to describe his version of the Vietnam War...no need to rehash his personal little fables here.)

"We cannot afford to waste time being told that admitting mistakes, not the mistakes themselves, will provide our enemies with an intolerable propaganda victory. We've already lost years being told that we have no choice but to stay the course of a failed policy."

All of your criticisms and those of your party have been met with a challenge to provide an alternative plan. You consistently ignored the opportunity. The brave men and women who have tirelessly fought this war deserve more from a Senator of the United States; they deserve a plan that works and makes victory the goal. You and yours, Senator Kerry, have had one plan and only one plan...cut and run, or the more colorful...redeploy...both of which are flip-flop speak for "lose". The obvious outcome of your well articulated plan, sir, projected throughout the world by the media, has been to provide that "propaganda victory" to our enemies that you deny. Perhaps it's time for you to be held accountable for the slow progress in this war. Better yet, perhaps it's time for you to flip-flop and offer something useful, workable and supportive of victory.

"This isn't a time for stubbornness, nor is it a time for halfway solutions -- or warmed-over "new" solutions that our own experience tells us will only make the problem worse."

Boy are you right about that...and I wish you would just stop it. The old solution you helped facilitate in the Vietnam War doesn't need to be warmed-over and repeated. Your "stubbornness" about that needs a radical adjustment. The "halfway solution" of "redeployment" is equally dumb and "will only make the problem worse". Gee, Senator,
may I suggest skiing in Vail...it's a more suitable, and less costly, venue for flip-flopping.