Hillary Clinton's latest recruit posted by Richard Seymour

I try not to follow these things in too much detail. The primaries are already pretty much dead. McCain is the GOP candidate, without doubt. I notice that some of Obama's supporters are not only moist in every crevice, but actually anticipating victory. His recent wave of victories in some surprising states has added to that, but Hillary is still in the lead in polls and she's probably going to take Texas. There isn't much of a difference of principle either way, and I'm not going to get worked up about choosing between the two. However, I do despise this Clinton couple. Bill in particular has shown what a nasty scumbag he always was - Hitchens was right to notice how adept he was with the race card. (Pity Hitchens is now a ranting fucking Islamophobe, as it sort of takes the force out of his argument).

And I'm particularly intrigued that the Clintons have chosen to highlight the support of the former Senator, Bob Kerrey. Kerrey, who first nominated Clinton in December, is one of those Democrats who can find a democratic or humanitarian rationale for any atrocity, and he remains a fervent apologist for the Iraq war. He was also, of course, the man who first dropped those Muslim-baiting comments on Obama. However, what is staggering about Kerrey is that he is an actual, real-life, open and shut war criminal. I don't mean in the usual sense that he has voted for wars of aggression, or even just that he is a decorated Vietnam Vet, although this does have some bearing on his Bronze Star.

There's a rather lengthy, and disgustingly apologetic story about Kerry's Vietnam exploits in the New York Times, which meditates a great deal on his suffering and conscience. He led a crew in Thanh Phong who, as part of US military policy, deemed a peasant house to be fair game, went inside and killed everyone inside with knives. They murdered an elderly man, a woman and children under twelve, not soldiers. While Kerrey maintains that he stayed outside and let the others go in there and stab up the family, one of his colleagues says he entered and helped murder the old man. Kerrey explains: "Standard operating procedure was to dispose of the people we made contact with ... Kill the people we made contact with or we have to abort the mission". So, the Clinton campaign's message is that it is soft on genocidal war crimes and soft on the causes of genocidal war crimes.

Labels: barack obama, bob kerrey, genocide, hillary clinton, john mccain, primaries, war criminal