the fog of war
two weeks before election day the biggest messages emanating from the bush-cheney campaign are to describe kerry as a massachusetts liberal and to whine about what was a relatively minor comment on mary cheney's sexual orientation but is now persistent front page news. this is fairly incoherent behavior from a ruthless and discliplined republican team more commonly on message than most political machines. are they out of ammunition? why did they change messages from kerry the flip-flopper? where is the bush-cheney october surprise? mary cheney is not an issue that deserves so much coverage. what am i missing that makes this appear to be a target of opportunity for the republicans? from my scan of the news the biggest issues of the week are:

• a military unit refusing to go into harm's way in iraq (the beginning of the breakdown in the chain of command, the fatal flaw that most characterised the conspicuous public failure of the american military in vietnam)
• new admissions that torture was widely used at gitmo
• a general consensus among world leaders that the world is more dangerous now than it was before america assaulted iraq, complete with a sound bite from u.n. secretary general kofi annon
• persistent questions about the impact of voter registration on the election
• alleged unpreparedness for recounts should they be needed (colorado and florida lead the pack for evidence of brittle polling systems)
• allegations of republican dirty tricks destroying voter registrations among democrats

when i look at our situation i see the bush-cheney neocon debacle destroying our professional military and sowing chaos across the planet in a catastrophic failure to lead. the pentagon's recent stop-loss orders expose the disastrous impact of the bush-cheney policies on the american all-volunteer force, which is obviously no longer all-volunteer. national guard enlistments are failing to meet force target levels for the first time, ever. team america under bush-cheney behaves like a thug on a looting spree. "you're either with us or you're against us." they act like their headlong rush in the wrong direction is leadership, but when the only superpower behaves like an armed and dangerous blundering fool, the world runs for cover. we have completely fulfilled the powell "pottery barn" doctrine:  "you break it, you own it.".

meanwhile, on the home front, there are concerns about the ability of the american balloting system to manage a clean polling process on tuesday november 2nd. legal strategies are in place to drive this election back to the supreme court like in 2000. i remember in one marathon i was so exhausted that i stopped thinking coherently somewhere after the 25th mile, which in retrospect i likened to the fog of war. like the end of a marathon, this presidential campaign has entered the fog of war stage, and the bush-cheney campaign has just changed messages. are they that desperate? is this a diversion? or is it an early indication of their coming defeat? we'll know soon enough.
posted by Will Ross at 10:34