By now everybody has heard about the attack ads run against Senator John Kerry by the so-call Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Of course, this assault on Kerry was not entirely unexpected. Mr. Bush has a history of resorting to some of the dirtiest campaign tactics in all of politics, thanks largely to his good friend Karl Rove. These Swift Boat Veterans ads appear to be part of a strategy very similar to what Rove pulled against Senator John McCain in the 2000 Republican Primaries. The idea is to get a lot of Republican groups that are not officially linked to the Bush campaign to keep making accusations, however baseless, against their opponent. Since any lie repeated often enough will eventually be believed, the candidate becomes associated with these false claims and rumors, and as a result he is forced to spend all of his time on the defensive. It is a low and utterly repulsive way to run a presidential campaign, but as we all saw in 2000, it works.

The following is one of my renowned “mega-posts” from an IshCon thread.

Cultures are like individuals in some ways. In some ways, cultures are constantly changing. This is not quite the same culture right now as it was when I began typing this sentence. Things are constantly in flux; in that sense, we’re all changing the culture every moment of every day, and to suggest otherwise would be to claim that we are the only things in the universe that have no impact on anyone or anything else whatsoever.

Earlier this week the Sunday Herald reported that children as young as 10 years old are being held by the U.S. military in prisons such as the infamous Abu Ghraib facility. “It’s not certain exactly how many children are being held by coalition forces in Iraq, but a Sunday Herald investigation suggests there are up to 107,” the report states. “Their names are not known, nor is where they are being kept, how long they will be held or what has happened to them during their detention.”

Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.