Another of Kerry's "Band of Brothers" has accuracy problems. Here from April 29 2004 on Fox:

Painful memories of three North Vietnamese ambushes became a matter of joyous pride for Fred Short as he was reunited with the Navy patrol boat commander who he said saved the whole crew by charging into the teeth of the enemy attack.

It had been 34 years to the day since Short of North Little Rock last saw that lieutenant: current Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry (search).

Their warm embrace Monday in front of a gathering of more than 150 Democrats was the climax of Kerry's campaign swing through the home state of former President Clinton.

.....

Short recalled the third of three ambushes on their group of boats on March 4, 1969, when his twin 50-caliber machine guns couldn't tilt low enough to shoot a Viet Cong soldier lying in a ditch, aiming a rocket launcher at their boat.

"We were in a small canal and normally we would have tried to exit, but Mr. Kerry ordered us to charge," Short said. "While I shot high, he and Tommy Bellodeau charged under me, right at the guy, and we routed them. That's why Mr. Kerry won the Silver Star."

Short said the crew avoided any casualties, even though 800 of 900 American troops caught in that zone died that day. He said it was a few weeks later, April 28, 1969, that he finished his tour and last saluted Kerry.

First, I have no idea what Short is talking about by saying "800 of 900 American troops...died that day". That is, of course, utter nonsense.

Second, just a quibble. He got the day of the Silver Star engagement wrong, though that is quite understandable this many years later.

Third, and not understandable at all, Short thinks that he saluted Kerry when he finished his tour on April 28th 1969. However, as reported on Kerry's own election site, Kerry was long gone by that time, already transfered back to the states in "early April". He reported for duty in New York on April 11th.

Very interesting post at Captain's Quarters blog regarding one of Kerry's "Band of Brothers", David Alston. There are many questions about whether he was in fact a "crewmate" of Kerry's like he and Kerry claim (though there is no doubt that he "served" with Kerry, just as many of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth did).

While it may turn out that Alston did make up part of Kerry's crew at some point, there is no question that Alston lied about the only specific detail he offers about Kerry's reactions in battle. In his DNC speech he says (emphasis added):

But Lieutenant Kerry was known for taking the fight straight to the enemy. I can still see him now, standing in the doorway of the pilothouse, firing his M-16, shouting orders through the smoke and chaos.

Once, he even directed the helmsman to beach the boat, right into the teeth of an ambush, and pursued our attackers on foot, into the jungle.

The only problem is that Alston wasn't there when Kerry pulled this stunt. This is describing the action for which Kerry was awarded the Silver Star. The reason that Alston wasn't there isn't clear, he may have still been recuperating from his January 29th injury as speculated in the CQ post, but it is clear that he was not on the boat. As noted by none other than David Brinkley, "In addition to Kerry's Silver Star PCF-94's performance on February 28 also earned Bronze Stars for Tommy Belodeau and Mike Medeiros and Navy Commendation Medals with Combat V Devices for Del Sandusky, Fred Short, and Gene Thorson." Swift boats had a crew of 6 (as Alston noted)- the officer and 5 enlisted men. How many people were given medals? Six - and Alson isn't one of them. Here you see all six crewmen after the award ceremony:



Alston is, obviously, not there. If he was wounded on January 29th, and still not back on the boat by Feb 28th, when was he Kerry's crewman? Kerry was gone by the middle of March.

Even if Alston was miraculously back on Kerry's boat just after this action, the most - the MOST - time he could have served under Kerry was a mere 13 days. Does his DNC speech sound like he's describing 13 days?

Update: Another instance of Alston lying about being on Kerry's boat that day, and in a much less circumspect manner:

"Alston recalled: "I know when John Kerry told Del to beach that damn boat,
this was a brand-new ball game. We wasn't running. We took it to Charlie."

Update 2: The report of Alston's injury had been put on the web here, on page 6. My shortened version:

"29 Jan 69 As forward gunner aboard PCF 94... Alston received shrapnel wounds in his head, when PCF came under intense hostile rocket and A/W fire. Condition good, prognosis good. ... Mother not officially notified.... Serviceman treated by corpsman and medevaced to 29th Evac Hospital"

Update 3: The Kerry campaign has admitted that Alston was NOT on the boat on Feb 28th 1969:

Whatever the exact dates, Hurley confirmed that Alston was not on board PCF-94 on February 28, 1969, the day Kerry earned a Silver Star for an engagement in which he beached his Swift Boat and chased down and killed a Viet Cong guerilla armed with a rocket launcher.

In addition, I'd be interested to know who was consulted regarding Kerry's Bronze Star. Obviously Rassmann was, and I'd guess Kerry was as well. I've just noted one problem with Rassmann's account (Kerry's arm wound). There is another inconsistency as well, which may be more important.

In a CNN interview, Larry Thurlow contends that Kerry initially left the scene of the mine explosion, only to come back later when it was clear that there was no more danger:

WOODRUFF: You're basically saying he fled when there
was...(CROSSTALK)

THURLOW: I am saying he fled the area on the explosion under the 3-boat
(ph).

Rassmann pretty much calls Thurlow a liar, and states in part:

JIM RASSMANN, KERRY SUPPORTER: Well, first, I was not part of John Kerry's
command. I was a Special Forces officer who happened to be on his boat at that
time.

Mr. Thurlow's recollection of what occurred is not accurate. We had the
boat hit the mine to our left. And John immediately had his driver, Del Sandusky
(ph), turn to the left and head towards it.

And it was at that time that our gunner on the bow got his gun knocked out and he started screaming for another weapon. I ran another weapon up to me, and we hit something or something hit us. There was an explosion, and I was blown off the boat to the right.

WOODRUFF: And you ended up in the water how? RASSMANN: I was blown into the water, and I had boats coming up behind me. So, I went to the bottom of the river.

However, if you look at Kerry's Bronze Star citation, what it states is that:

"When Lieutenant (jg) Kerry discovered he had a man overboard, he returned
upriver to assist"

So this seems to back up Thurlow, and not Rassmann. Kerry left the scene, and then had to come back to pick up Rassmann. To be fair, the rest of the citation is much more consistent with Rassman's version. However, this brings me back to my original question. How much was this looked into at the time. Was the citation made up soley of Rassmann's and Kerry's recollections, or were other people involved also questioned?

Q and O is looking at Factcheck.org's account of the SVFT vs Kerry and finding it lacking in a number of respects. I thought that I would note another fact that they seem to have overlooked.

There were two seperate incidences, which seems to be agreed on by both sides. The wound in the buttocks seems to be clearly not eligible for the award, despite all of Factcheck's strivings. Q and O does an admirable job demonstrating this.

Given that this wound does not merit a Purple Heart, it does bring up questions about why it was mentioned at all. Especially as it was phrased in an exceedingly misleading manner, though it is possible to read it as Factcheck does if you wish to give Kerry the benefit of every scrap of doubt . It is much more natural to read it as incorrectly attributing both wounds to being recieved in the same incident.

This leaves the arm wound as possibly meriting such an award. Kerry says he "smashed" his arm when he was thrown "violently" into a bulkhead. Rassmann states that it was "bleeding". It even states that his arm was bleeding in his related Bronze Star citation, of which I understand Rassmann was the originator. However, as Factcheck points out, that is inconsistent with the description of the wound as a "contusion". In addition, there is another document which Factcheck seems to have missed. It is actually on John Kerry's website. The relevent portion is on the bottom of page 3. This offers additional information about the arm wound. Not only does it confirm that Kerry only suffered a contusion to his arm, but it states that the contusion was "minor". So Kerry apparently received a Purple Heart for a "minor" bruise on his arm.

To add to the latest Kerry bruhaha (and this one might actually make it past the media gatekeepers), I found the following relating to his supposed Christmas mission to Cambodia:

Sen. John Kerry made his first forays into Cambodia during the Vietnam War
as a Navy lieutenant on clandestine missions to deliver weapons to anticommunist
forces. When he returned last week, the mission was official, but dicey
nonetheless. At the request of the United Nations, Kerry is trying to broker a
compromise on how to try leaders of the former Khmer Rouge regime, whose late
1970s reign of terror claimed the lives of some 1.7 million Cambodians.

And here is another from the Boston Globe:

To top it off, Kerry said, he had gone several miles inside Cambodia, which
theoretically was off limits, prompting Kerry to send a sarcastic message to his
superiors that he was writing from the Navy's "most inland" unit.

I've been following the Berger (and Wilson) fiasco with considerable interest, naturally.  I agree with most commentators that his actions are almost inexplicable.  This has led some people to decide that the most likely reason is stupidity and/or incompetence.  This certainly has significant attraction for me.  What's that aphorism, something along the lines of "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity"?  My first default when something like this occurs is that the person involved just had a brain fart.  However, I can't agree in this case.

It seems the most notable person to espouse this theory (other than Bill Clinton, I suppose) is Virginia Postrel.  She gives odd credence to a report put out by the NYT.  The problem I have with the whole idea that this was simple stupidity is threefold:

1.  Berger has been out of government for several years, so the idea that he was still so used to handling top secret documents that he was just careless with them is simply not plausible.

2.  Even accepting the doubtful proposition that the NYT story is right about Berger simply putting the notes in his pockets, rather than putting them down his pants and even in his socks as reported by other news outlets, he has admitted that he had a briefcase with him.  If you "knowingly" take such notes with you, and you have a briefcase with you, why would you put them in your pockets rather than in your briefcase?  Using Occam's Razor myself, I can only reason that he intentionally put them on his person to avoid the theft from being discovered should his briefcase be searched.  In other words, he knowingly violated the law.

3.  I'm not sure if Ms. Postrel was the one who mentioned the case of Mr. Deutch, the former CIA director, to bolster the idea that people who handle sensitive documents on a daily basis become careless with them.  If she didn't, someone else has.  However, to my mind this actually hurts the Berger as bumbler theory.  The fact is that Mr. Deutch required one of Bill Clinton's infamous pardons to escape a possible criminal conviction.  He also had his top secret clearance revoked.  I'm sure that Berger is well aware of his former associate's humiliation.

4.  I know I said 'three-fold', but I just remembered another reason to be doubtful.  It is also being reported that this didn't just happen the one time.  Having documents which Berger was handling disappear not just once, but twice or more, doesn't suggest innocent "mistakes" either.

Back from hiatus with another disagreement with Den Beste.  Somehow he brings the blogger out of me.  I generally agree with his post about gay marriage and the debate between Sullivan and Lowry, but there is one critical area that I think his arguement falls down.  He writes:
 

"[Sullivan's] analogy to the apartheid laws doesn't survive close scrutiny. Take, for instance, the laws about miscegenation to which he referred, which forbade interracial marriages. Under those laws, Bob Blonde-and-Blue could legally marry Suzie Snow-White, but Clyde Coal-Black could not legally marry Suzie Snow-White. In objective terms, therefore, the law was discriminatory.

But that is not the case for the law Rich supports. Under that law, Gary Gay-and-Proud would be forbidden to marry Quincy Queer. Harry Hetero would also be forbidden to marry Quincy Queer. However, both Gary and Harry would be permitted to marry Flora Feminine. Objectively, the law treats Gary and Harry equally.

It is true that Gary doesn't have any interest in marrying Flora, and Harry isn't even slightly interested in Quincy. It is true that subjectively the law is unequal, because it forbids Gary from marrying the man he loves, while permitting Harry to marry the woman he loves.

But that's exactly the Anatole France argument: the law forbids both the wealthy and paupers from sleeping under bridges. That law, too, is objectively equal because it applies identically to all. It is irrelevant that only paupers wish to sleep under bridges, and that the law only thwarts paupers."

 

The problem here is that the law does NOT treat Gary and Flora equally.  Flora can marry Harry or Quincy, but Gary cannot marry either of them.

 

Let's go further and add another hypothetical character, Linda Lesbian.  Gary can marry Linda, whle Flora cannot. 

 

I have to strongly disagree with Ben Beste in his assertion that this is unlike the "seperate but equal" standard of years past.  Only people of a Race A could drink from fountain A, while only those of Race B could drink from fountian B.  Likewise, Flora can only marry males while Gary can only marry females. 

 

Objectively, I don't see any difference between the two.

Eugene Volokh is wondering why some people say "Jewish people" instead of "Jew", and believe that just saying "Jew" is somehow rude. He doesn't understand it.

I think that I might. When I was writing my last post in response to something he wrote, I actually found myself vaguely uneasy about using the term. I stopped and actually thought about it for a few seconds, and then went ahead and used it. I just didn't see any reason not to. The question lingered at the fringes of my thoughts for a couple of days, and the answer (and I believe it is the right one) finally came to me.

The reason is that there isn't a derogatory term in wide use for Jews. "Kike" just isn't used much at all. I think the first, and possibly only, time I've ever heard it was in the movie 'Porkies'. And what else is there? Contrast that with other groups who can be called "nigger", "coon", "spic", "fag", etc., etc., etc. There are probably other unpalatable terms for Jews (Hebe? I may have heard that somewhere.), but likewise none are widespread. If you hear someone who is anti-Semetic talk, it seems that they will almost always say Jews, as in, "The greedy Jews are running the country, etc." From my admittedly limited experience, they just generally don't use another term. And if that's the term that bigots use, then ordinary people will unconciously assume that it is a "bad word", and try to find an alternative.

PS I did think of the words "Zionist" and/or "Israeli" as derogatory terms, but they aren't really the same.

Steven den Beste has a post on the left's seeming amnesia of the circumstances surrounding the demise of the USSR. I have to comment on this, because this encompasses two unusual occurrances in one: I (more or less) disagree with SDB, and I am going to defend the lefties. While I do believe that SDB's criticism is correct in regards to some, I don't believe that it is fair to the majority of them.

He doesn't seem to have thought of another, more logical explanation: they have run up against the indisputable fact that their belief in the USSR's capabilities during the 70's and 80's was FAR off the mark. They have looked at what the facts REALLY were ... and are basing their (current) statements on those. That they are purposefully ignoring how wrong they were in the past is perhaps dishonest, but it's also very human.

An intellectually honest lefty would put it something like this: "Well, we were obviously wrong about the USSR. However, now that the true state of affairs has emerged, it is clear that the Soviets were on their last legs, and so all we needed to do was sit tight and they would have collapsed under their own weight eventually anyway. While trying to keep up with Reagan's arms build-up may have hastened this collapse to some extent, it would have happened regardless."

The thing is, I don't disagree with that analysis. However, I believe that without Reagan, the USSR would have lumbered on for quite a bit longer than it did, perhaps to this very day.

Let's also not forget that the collapse as it DID occur was absolutely amazing in that it was almost without violence. Who knows how badly the end of the USSR COULD have been without Reagan? The fact that he FORCED them to try to compete with us, and essentially rubbed their noses in the fact that they couldn't do so played a huge part in how meekly the Soviets marched off into the dustbin of history. They weren't left with any illusions. There simply weren't any significant factions who still believed that they could win ANY scenario. Reagan's build-up forced this knowledge on them.

PS And of course, all the tanks, airplanes, etc. were a big disincentive to some last ditch attempt at winning by a "hot" war.

It's been awhile, sorry. I've just never been able to get into the habit of signing on and writing something everyday. There have been many things that I have felt like writing about over the last month, but I just never got around to it.

The AP reports on a, frankly, laughable new 'report' from the "International Institute of Strategic Studies". The IISS reportedly is "considered the most important security think tank outside the United States". Scary.

Before I unload on the report, let me note with disgusted resignation the disconnect between the estimates given and the title of the AP piece. The ISS pegs the current number of al Qaida at 18,000. The arrived at that figure by estimating an original number of at least 20,000, and subtracting an estimated 2000 being killed or captured over the last 2-3 years of the War on Terror. So they are saying that al Qaida has been cut by at least 10%. So what does the AP title the piece? Why 'Report: al-Qaida Ranks Swelling Worldwide' of course. Only a journalist could categorize a 10% reduction as a "swelling".

More later....

Don Luskin is continuing to fact check Krugman. He just nailed him on a non-correction correction regarding some claims he made regarding the world's oil supply.

Even if he had made the noted correction in an appropriate manner, it still would have been woefully lacking. Why? Because it doesn't address the fundemental dishonesty of Krugman's original statement. He chose his formulation, "no major oil field have been found", with care to support his contention of dwindling oil supplies. However, even if those new fields in Kazikstan didn't exist, he would still not have a leg to stand on. In typical Krugman fashion, instead of changing his position (or just finding something else to write about) he instead finds a way to try to twist the facts to support his Bush bash de jure.

Why talk about discoveries of "major oil fields" at all? Who cares? Why not talk about the relevant figure (and thus the usual measure used when discussing the issue) of proven oil reserves, or estimates of total recoverable oil? Could it be because if he used this data he wouldn't have had a column left? Instead of falling, oil reserves increase just about every year, and have done so for the last 100+ years. As one of Luskin's readers earlier noted, Saudi Arabia alone has recently revised it's estimate of recoverable petroleum from 261 billion to 1.2 TRILLION! (Though I have to say that a significant degree of caution is in order regarding the 1.2 trillion figure.)

In 2002, after consuming ~ 1.5 billion barrels of domestic oil, US proven reserves INCREASED from 22,446 million barrels to 22,677 million barrels. While we "only" discovered 300 million barrels of oil in new fields, expanding existing fields added over a billion barrels. This is the typical reason reserves increase, not from "major new fields", but from new discoveries of oil in existing fields, and more efficient methods of extracting it.

Finally, all those who claim the Mad Max world of no fuel is on it's way have always conveniently ignored the non-conventional sources of oil that are excluded from reserve estimates because of the (currently) prohibitive costs of extraction. If prices rose sufficiently due to supposed scarcity of current oil reserves, the Venezuelan Orozco belt of "heavy oil" estimated at roughly 1.2 trillion barrels would be much more attractive. The estimated 2 trillion barrels of oil - in the US alone - locked up in shale deposits would also become profitable to mine.

Eugene Volokh has some typically insightful comments regarding a student at UNLV who is being accused of anti-Semitism:

It seems to me perfectly proper to condemn ethnic groups -- Jews or not -- for being too focused on their ethnicity, and even for discriminating (albeit in perfectly legal ways) in their social and romantic decisions. Of course, if Chomintra condemns only Jews for that but thinks that it's just fine when other groups do that, that seems an anti-Semitic double standard; and if his point was that "you're a sad, pathetic, weak organism" if being Jewish "determine[s] how you shape your life," but you're just fine if being Irish or Hispanic shapes your life, that too suggests hostility to Jews. But absent such evidence, this seems to be a slam against perceived excessive focus on one's ethnic identity, not an expression of hatred or hostility to Jews as such. In fact, Chomintra equally condemns (though rather less politely than I would have preferred) people who think that Jews are "anything less or anything more than anyone else" (emphasis mine) -- more consistent with "people shouldn't care about ethnic identity" than "Jews are evil."

One can of course disagree with Chomintra on the merits, and conclude that it's right for people to be focused on their ethnic identity (or in the case of some but not all Jews who focus a great deal on their Jewishness, on their religious identity).

However, he didn't discuss one possibility that jumped out at me: that the comments in question arose out of being dumped by his (previous) girlfriend - who is Jewish. In addition, it seems that the reason that he was dumped (or at least the reason that he believes he was dumped) was that he was not Jewish.

Some of the quotes that lead me to this belief:

The comments ... were published by Chomintra ... about a former girlfriend.

He also criticized a Jewish student for "not wanting Jews to associate or date non-Jews," and for "blindly celebrating being Jewish." . . .

It seems to me that this is the likely sequence of events:

1. He was dating a Jewish girl.
2. She broke up with him.
3. He believed (rightly or wrongly) that this was due to his not being Jewish.
4. He also believed that a friend of hers had talked her into the break-up, also on the grounds of his not being Jewish.
5. Rather understandably angry and upset, he lashed out on his "web log".
6. After calming down, he deleted the angry tirade.

If this is what really happened, then this would indicate a couple of things.

1. Make it unlikely (though not impossible) that he is truly anti-Semitic. Dating a Jew would strongly suggest that you do not hate them.
2. If anything, he is the victim of discrimination. Again, this would make his evident anger more understandable.

Have you ever wondered why that stupid Nigerian scam has kept going on for so long? It was so obviously a scam that it's impossible that anyone would ever buy into it, right? At least anyone with any intelligence and/or money. Maybe not:

A former Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researcher and Harvard University professor is scheduled to be arraigned today in Roxbury District Court on charges of bilking coworkers, students, and friends out of $600,000 they invested in a bogus Internet research company he claimed to have started in China to fight SARS, Boston police said.

.....

When he was arrested, Xu told police he was investing the money in a Nigerian business venture in which he expected a $50 million return.

"I tried to tell him he had been scammed," said Detective Steve Blair, speaking at a press conference last night at Boston police headquarters. "His plan all along was this Nigerian investment."

Incredible. I wonder how many more Nigerian conmen will be encouraged to continue the scam, and for how many more years by this score.

Ben Franklin called Harvard students of his day "great blockheads". Obviously, at least one of the Harvard professors of today fits that bill.

Via Pejmanesque:

The Guardian reports:

[S]cientists ... are confident that people will soon be able to replace lost teeth by growing new ones.
Instead of false teeth, a small ball of cells capable of growing into a new tooth will be implanted where the missing one used to be.

The procedure needs only a local anaesthetic and the new tooth should be fully formed within a few months of the cells being implanted.

On The Corner, Peter Robinson made the following rather alarming claim:

It's one matter to be vaguely aware that the Chinese economy is expanding. It's another to come across a statistic such as this: With just over fifth of the world's population, China last year consumed 55 percent of the world's total output of concrete.

Luckily, the actual figure (and circumstances) seem to be quite different. In this article in the Chicago Tribune it states that "by one account" China consumed 40% of the world's concrete in 2003. By the way it was written it leads me to believe that this estimate was the largest found. Still a huge amount, but considerably less than 55%.

In addition to the uncertainty as to how much concrete China is actually consuming, the article also goes on to consider the possibility that all this concrete may be due to a "bubble" economy, in which unneeded buildings are being thrown up with abandon, only to sit empty and abandoned:

Government officials estimate 1 million construction workers are on the job in Beijing, spread across thousands of projects. Condominiums, office blocks, luxury hotels, shopping malls: All are going up in the frenzied rush of a giddy economic boom, fueling fears that this is the most indulgent, overly optimistic speculative fever since the U.S. dot-com debacle or the great real estate crash of Japan.


Beijing already has one new ghost town, a redeveloped street of shopping malls that stands empty and unwanted just south of Tiananmen Square.

And to bolster the possibility that this is at least partially the result of a huge property bubble that could collapse like a dotcom stock:

China ordered its banks to restrict real estate industry lending that totaled US$222 billion at the end of April in a move to reduce loan risk, avoid fraud and cool an overheated property market.

The People's Bank of China, in a statement on its Web site, said banks will be prohibited from making loans to developers for land purchases and from lending more than 70 percent of the value of property projects.

It also said loans for luxury villas and expensive apartments, which are in oversupply, will be curtailed.

The order is part of a government crackdown on property-related lending after former Premier Zhu Rongji warned last October that an expanding property bubble threatens the nation's economy and financial industry.

The post on Real Clear Politics that first alerted me to the Kerry Cayman Islands tax scheme (I need to come up with something shorter and catchier. Caymangate? Ugh.) mentioned Kerry's "Benedict Arnold" theme and it's possible relevance. If you look at what Kerry and his campaign have said, it is clear that Kerry is, by his own definition, a "Benedict Arnold", or a traitor to America.

He first started with a rather broad standard, and a mini-scandal arose about the fact that by Kerry's statement many of his close supporters could be considered "Benedict Arnolds" (let me hasten to add that as far as I'm aware, they are all legitimate businesses with legitimate oversea operations). The definition was therefore 'clarified' to be more restrictive. As reported by MSNBC:

When asked for the definition of a "Benedict Arnold" company or CEO, Stephanie Cutter, Kerry's spokeswoman, said: "Companies that take advantage of tax loopholes to set up bank accounts or move jobs abroad simply to avoid taxes."

So, to reiterate - Kerry and his campaign have stated that those who "take advantage of tax loopholes to set up bank accounts ... abroad simply to avoid taxes" are "Benedict Arnolds", or traitors.

Now let's consider what he told the Boston Globe just last year. When asked about why he got into his Cayman Island fiasco, he told them:

Kerry said he wanted to protect some of the money at tax time, and, on advice of some of his fund-raisers, jumped into the commodities investment.

"I thought it was a way to try to minimize tax consequences," he said.

So Kerry set up business(es) and (presumably) bank accounts overseas simply in an effort to avoid taxes. A traitor, by his own definition.

It sort of gives the phrase "the politics of personal destruction" a whole new meaning, doesn't it? While he has been fatuously accusing Bush, Cheney and a "right wing smear campaign" of questioning his patriotism, the only person who has truly questioned Kerry's patriotism is Kerry himself.

Yet more related to the Kerry tax avoidance scheme. As reported in the Guardian, a statement which, if the press does it's job, should come back to bite him in the rear end:

Kerry has promised to lead an 'international coalition' against tax havens, claiming that $5 trillion of US assets have been moved offshore, beyond the legitimate reach of America's tax authorities. He says he will 'provide middle-class payroll tax relief to get money in the pockets of workers who will spend it, not more tax giveaways for those at the top to stimulate the economy in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda'.

The Senator's interest in banking secrecy and tax havens goes back a long way. In Washington, he is better known as a 'prosecutor' than a legislator, having personally authored fewer than a dozen bills since his election in 1984.

Incredible. Yes, the Senator's interest in bank secrecy and tax havens (and the Cayman Islands) does go back a long way, doesn't it?

Instapundit has an item about Joe Wilson's book, and the additional details about his tea sipping junket to Niger. While I don't believe that Wilson has given this information out in public, the general details have been out for quite awhile. For example in this post from July 2003:

So, according to three different officials who had access to Wilson's debriefings, he DID uncover evidence regarding Saddam seeking to purchase uranium. This evidence SUPPORTED Bush's statement. Yet, somehow, the only truly relevant information that Wilson uncovered missed being included in his article. I wonder how that happened.

To make matters even worse, when Wilson was informed that his lie of ommission had been uncovered and exposed, what was his response? In an interview by Time:

Wilson dismissed the suggestion, included in CIA Director George Tenet's own mea culpa last week, that this validates what the President claimed in this State of the Union address: "That then translates into an Iraqi effort to import a significant quantity of uranium as the President alleged? These guys really need to get serious."

Of course, no Administration source has made the claim that his report was the only basis for the claim. In fact, they readily acknowledge that his report in and of itself was 'weak' and 'inconclusive'. What they DO say, a charge that is completely supported (in stark contrast to, say, Wilson's), is that his investigation in fact buttressed the claim Bush made in the SOTU, and did nothing to dimish it.

What IS new is not only the identity of who was possibly looking to buy uranium, but his position. Up until now I had understood it to be a businessman. That is how he was described by George Tenet. To now learn that it was an Iraqi minister that was the contact is astonishing.

That the minister in question later became famous as "Bagdad Bob" is irrelevant. He was doing Saddam's bidding when he was lying to CNN & Co., and he was doing Saddam's bidding in Niger.

Where is Wilson's Mea Culpa? Never forthcoming, of course. The man has no shame.

BTW, is anyone else unsurprised that he released his book, imaginatively titled "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies That Led to War and Exposed My Wife's CIA Identity", before the investigation into the matter of his wife's "outing" has concluded?

From my limited knowledge of him, Joe Wilson has never been one to wait for facts (or, for that matter, to bother with inconveniently contrary ones) before spouting off. These are just the latest examples.

The way the promisory note was written up would explain not only why Kerry lost so much money by early termination, and give a much better estimate of his actual loss.

This puts the lie (again) to his statements to the effect that there were no "real" transactions for him to report to the Senate. This also (again) puts the lie to his statements that this was a total loss for his "initial" investment.

Again, it's been awhile since my Finance days, so some of my terminology will probably not be very precise and may sound strange to someone more conversant in the field. With that said, the promisory note was written in something like the format of a zero coupon bond. The amount given as the "Principal" was not the amount loaned to Kerry, but the amount due at maturity - it was the amount loaned PLUS two years interest.

This explains why Kerry lost his shirt by early termination - the provision governing this option in the contract states that:

"The borrower shall have the right to prepay at any time before maturity the principal of this note" (emphasis added)

So Kerry was on the hook for two years of interest no matter when he repaid the loan. From this if you assume that Kerry was truthful (shaky assumption, on this topic at least) about when he terminated the agreement, he paid 24 months interest on a loan of roughly 4 months duration. Four months of interest on 200,000 at 9% is about $6000. This would make Kerry's loss roughly $32,500.

Bonus questions:

1. Why take out a loan with, essentially, that same amount of cash as collateral? Why not just use your cash? (It's not like Kerry was trying to build his credit).
2. Given that Kerry says that he didn't declare his loss, I would say that it is highly likely that he didn't declare the interest expense of $6000 either (remember that this transaction was done via the shell of Gin Vest (or Ginvest) so as a business expense both were I would imagine deductible. He could have reduced his loss by around 10,000 in the form of tax savings if he had taken these deductions. Was there more reason to hide this than is indicated by what information is currently available?
2.