Idea: Independent Review of Democratic Candidates for 2008.

[Mike L]

I know it's hard to find anyone independent, but I'd hate to get caught in another "Kerry" in 2008. I only vaguely remembered his Vietnam War Senate testimony from 1971 during the primary season. I didn't know he had only spent 4 months in Vietnam and had used a little known Navy 3 purple heart rule to get out of combat. Objectively, it also looks like he volunteered for swift boat duty before a decision was made to use the swift boats for dangerous river patrols.

I think most people in the Iowa caususes picked Kerry based on his Vietnam military record, which turned out to be a negative overall. Based on what they knew about Kerry at the time, their pick seemed reasonable since we were involved in the Iraq War and the WOT. We were all looking for the best candidate to beat Chimp.

How do we make sure this doesn't happen again? Unfortunately, the Dem candidates don't battle it out in the primaries so that we can see their dirty laundry. Is there any way to set up an independent review board to air all the negatives of the candidates, or must we blindly pick again in 2008? Who would we trust to chair this board? I nominate Keith Olbermann.

[GimmeDANEger]

1. You're at the wrong site

http://www.swiftvets.com/

Don't worry, the names are pretty similar.

[Mike L]

2. Look, I defended Kerry from the Swift Liar attacks. Kerry did fight and

earn his medals. That's a hell of a lot more than AWOL did. However, he was selling Iowans more than he could deliver and we didn't know the whole story. Hopefully, we can be objective about it now. I don't want it to happen again. The biggest negative for Kerry about Vietnam was his Senate testimony in 1971. I doubt that many Iowans even knew about that.