I was going to add some narrative to the photo below, mostly about what an elitist horse's a$$ John Kerry is, and how, in fact, he's frankly a traitor despite his bleating about being a patriot. His "service" was coldly calculated to launch him into politics and he even somehow wrangled an "early out" from the Navy so he could participate in a political campaign. That would be before he showed up in Congress sporting long hair and a Navy uniform so that he could call every man and woman in the US military "war criminals".

I was also going to go into how much of the Democratic leadership has picked up his torch of trashing the troops. I think it was Charlie Rangel who claimed that US troops come from "the lowest echelons of society". He should have had one of his staffers research that one first. A bit of research would have revealed that as a demographic, military personnel are actually better educated and score higher on tests than the population as a whole. And of course, Dick Durbin compared them to Pol Pot, Nazis and Soviets, betraying his profound ignorance of history. Then Teddy "I drowned a girl in a drunk driving accident, went to bed (while she died in the car) and reported it the next day and still got away with it because I'm a Kennedy" Kennedy claimed the torture chambers in Iraq are still open, just under new management. I won't even address Murtha's comments, because he's obviously simply a senile old man. It'll happen to me, too, someday, but I won't have the towering ego to insist on staying in Congress despite the onset of dementia. Something Robert "Sheets" Byrd should keep in mind, too.

Anyway, the photo below gets more interesting. The troops in the photo are from the Minnesota National Guard's elements of the 34th Infantry Division. As you may recall, during the last presidential election Kerry sought to trash Bush's National Guard service by equating it with draft dodging--no doubt inspired by Republican attacks on Clinton, a true draft dodger. Never mind that Bush flew one of the most infamously dangerous fighters and was in line to be deployed to Vietnam until the Air Force determined that the F-105 just wasn't suited to that conflict. What remains is that Kerry equated National Guard service with draft dodging.

So these guys are, according to Kerry, stupid draft dodgers. I guess he only rubs elbows with "smart" draft dodgers.