When is a scandal not a scandal?

Of course I'm aware of what Peter, my co-blogger, calls a "scandal". Some Republicans are making quite a fuss because John Kerry got a date wrong, but later corrected the error. Some scandal! How many of us remember dates of things that happened 35 years ago? Or even five years ago?

According to his biographer, the one person besides Kerry with access to his wartime journals, "Kerry went into Cambodian waters three or four times in January and February 1969 on clandestine missions. He had a run dropping off US Navy Seals, Green Berets and CIA guys... He was a ferry master, a drop-off guy, but it was dangerous as hell. Kerry carries a hat he was given by one CIA operative. In a part of his journals which I didn't use he writes about discussions with CIA guys he was dropping off." (http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/13/wus13.xml).

What I call a scandal is the way the anti-Kerry forces have used his temporary date-confusion to cast doubt on his main point: that Americans (Kerry included) were sent to Cambodia, despite our government's stated policy. As Stephen Hayes wrote (Washington Times, Letters, 8/12/04), "I served as Officer-in-Charge of a Swift Boat (PCF-71) in Vietnam and my tour overlapped with that of John Kerry... my crew and I also went into Cambodia (without orders)... while I don't recall who was where on Christmas 35 years ago, it is certainly plausible to me that Mr. Kerry and his crew could have been across the border that night."

Or how about the president's claims that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction", that Iraq was an imminent threat to the U.S., that Iraq was behind the Al-Qaeda terrorism? No damage resulted from Kerry's date error, but almost a thousand Americans (so far) have died, with thousands more wounded, not counting the many innocent Iraqis who died, as a result of Bush's mistaken claims. Or how about the promise that American forces would be welcomed as liberators? Just read today's papers to see how false that one was. Or how about the claim (made amidst much military hoopla on an aircraft carrier) that the war was over, when more soldiers died afterward than before? Or how about the billion dollars in contract money given to Dick Cheney's company that the company refuses to account for? Or how about the lack of any realistic plan for dealing with Iraq after our victory, with our plans based on an Iraqi "leader" who has now been discredited and dumped? To me, these are SCANDALS that make a misremembered date look like a speck on a flea's wing, if that.

But the greatest scandal of all, I believe, is that Kerry, who as a young man answered his country's call, is being called "unfit for command" because he wasn't wounded enough, wasn't heroic enough, didn't serve long enough, and got a date wrong. I note with irony that while Kerry was getting hit by shrapnel (no matter of what size) in Vietnam, George W. Bush reportedly didn't bother to show up for some of his National Guard meetings.

I hope this helps to clarify the issues raised by Peter. As for the Washington Post, he and I agree that it is well-known to be a Democratic paper and have a Democratic bias in its reporting. What is not so well-known is that the Post also has a strong anti-Israel bias - much worse than any other paper I have seen, including the New York Times. And that, after all, is what this web site is all about, isn't it?