Nothing to offer but lies, fear

Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry, D-Mass., has recently accused the president of having a “secret plan to call up more National Guard and Reserve troops immediately after the election.”

However, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Chris Rodney refuted his assertions, explaining, “There is no force increase that is expected.” The Army is simply rotating into Iraq the same number of soldiers that will be leaving over the next six months. Additionally, the National Guard and Reserve units expected to be mobilized for said rotation have already been notified.

President Bush’s campaign spokesman said, “Kerry’s conspiracy theory … [was] completely irresponsible.” I say it was a purposeful distortion of the truth, but not out of character for Kerry.

This writer believes that the aforementioned is a plan to scare people into thinking they will be drafted, then marched off to fight and die if Bush wins a second term. It is yet another scurrilous Kerry campaign tactic.

In an Associated Press story carried by FOX News, in Columbia, S.C., “The State Democrat Party effort to sign up new voters mixed images of a military draft notice with a voter resignation form calling on people to make a choice between the two.” The unambiguous message being: A vote for Bush is a vote to be drafted.

Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat National Committee chairman, told a social-studies class at Portsmouth High School, “If the war in Iraq continues, the draft could be reinstated.” But the real truth is Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., are responsible for the proposed reinstating of conscription, i.e., the draft.

The two Democrats are the exclusive authors of both bills – S89 and HR163 – which were introduced in January 2003, and referred to their appropriate armed-services committees. It should be noted that neither bill has a scintilla of support and it is all but guaranteed neither will ever see light of day.

James Jay Carafano – a 25-year veteran of the armed forces and a senior research fellow in defense and homeland security at the Heritage Foundation – told me: ” Any official is horrified at the very suggestion” of a draft. In his article “Draft Reinstatement is a Bad Idea,” he wrote that “Nearly every expert who studies the issue [i.e., draft vs. volunteer Army] concludes that all-volunteer-or professional militaries perform more efficiently, more bravely and with less corruption and breakdowns than conscripts.”

During the interview, he noted:

Conscription defies America’s own traditions – a draft military is problematic, because the men and women have short service tours, then leave. They come with no [military] skills and the cost of retraining new draftees every two years further impacts a military that has suffered a decade of inadequate funding.

But that notwithstanding, both Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, D-N.C., are ratcheting up the rhetoric of suggestive lies and scurrilous innuendo in an effort to scare the voters.

The reasons for these tactics are easily discerned. Polls now show the wheels are coming off his campaign. It is imploding. President Bush is ahead not only in key battleground states, but he continues to gain momentum despite the relentless distortions, Rathergate and the best lies and flip-flops Kerry and his minions have to offer.

So when all else fails, resort to scare tactics. The threat of a draft, it is presumed, will resonate with the MTV college crowd being brainwashed by insurgent professors teaching their own jaundiced political positions. It will also resonate among young blacks who have been inculcated from birth to believe Republicans are evil white men out to suppress them.

But equally as important, if not more so, is the idea of scaring women – specifically, mothers and grandmothers into the Kerry camp. Sixty-six percent of the undecideds are women, according to Democrat Pollster Celinda Lake. The latest Newsweek poll shows men favor Bush 49 percent to 43 percent, as do women. A Time Magazine poll also showed the president leading. A New York Times-CBS News poll recently conducted shows Bush leading among women 48 percent to 43 percent. The Washington Post reports similar findings. It should be noted that these polls were not taken by Bush surrogates – just the opposite.

So Kerry resorts to the familiar and well-worn pages of the liberal Democrat playbook under the chapter: “How to make people afraid and incite hatred by the Satanic use of lies, half-truths, fear mongering and race-baiting.”

As I have said of Charles Rangel, so I now say of Kerry: He is akin to a nulliparous woman in that he has watched the “dumbest man in America and the least qualified to be president since Martin Sheen” make historical decisions, while he can only look at the vacuous content of his own record.