Off Message?

The City Pages prominently runs an interview with Andrew Borene, former Marine intelligence officer and a leader of "Veterans for Kerry".

I'm not one to quibble with the experiences of someone who was in Iraq. However, I'd have to question whether it's a great surprise that someone who went to Breck School and MacAlester College - both of which are factories that crank out young liberals - would end up a Kerry supporter, with or without a hitch in the Marine Corps.

Indeed, almost as an afterthought the article notes:

I guess I used to be what they call "Republican in name only." Kind of a Ramstad Republican, you know--socially liberal and fiscally conservative.

As if that's not relevant.

But I thought this contradiction was interesting: Borene - who was a junior lieutenant on the intelligence staff of the First Marine Division - decries the fact that occupation of Iraq is being handled as a regular military mission...:

This sideshow in Iraq where we send 150,000 teenagers without enough equipment to manage the occupation...

...after which Borene opines...:

How do you get them? You use special forces, you use intelligence operations, you find a couple of them and drop some black helicopters and guys in black pajamas, and you whack them. And that's the kind of operation we need to launch. This sideshow in Iraq where we send 150,000 teenagers without enough equipment to manage the occupation, and without the kind of international support we needed for that battle on the Iraqi front, it really detracted from our ability globally to stop the spread of terror.

So let me get this straight:

• The Administration has dealt with the campaign in Afghanistan from the beginning, as today, as a special forces operation, exactly as Borene describes,

  but...

• Bush is wrong for having taken the regular military elements of CENTCOM - the big, heavy units with their tanks and self-propelled artillery and huge supply chains - to Iraq, rather than Afghanistan, where...
• According to even Borene, they're not needed?

Am I the only one who notices this?

Posted by Mitch at October 18, 2004 04:40 AM | TrackBack