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No Secret Ballot for Military Personnel?
belmolis writes "According to this editorial in today's New York Times, US military personnel for whom regular absentee ballot procedures are inconvenient are being provided with a questionable alternative, the Electronic Transmission Service, run by a private contractor, Omega Technologies. According to the NYT, the secrecy of ballots could be breached when they are faxed or emailed from the field, when they are in the hands of Omega Technologies, or when they are in the hands of local officials. The NYT was unable to obtain any information on security procedures from the company or from the Pentagon. A manual describing the system can be downloaded here [pdf document]. Like Diebold, Omega is far from non-partisan. Omega President and CEO Patricia Williams has donated $6,600 in this election cycle to the National Republican Congressional Committee and is a member of its Business Advisory Council."
the problem is not only that secrecy can be breached, but that it will be breached. After all you have to waive your right to a secret ballot.
As if this wasn't bad enough already (though you might make an argument that it is justifiable in some extreme situations), the company that handles the ballots is far from non-partisan and there is no way to independently verify that the ballots are handled the way they should be handled.
Finally, as an outside observer, I just don't get it that after the distater of the last presidential election in Florida, that also involved problems with absentee ballots from military personal, btw., things like these are still possible in the US. I get the feeling, that either the US can't get its act together (though I think that is very unlikely), or those in charge don't want to get their act together.
US government so far didn't give any sign it would prosecute people based on their vote. The real problems, in the order importance are lack of choice (Republican vs Democratic, what if I disagree with both on different issues?), people not voting and only then mistakes in vote count.
Human rights violations with 9/11 as an excuse raise a vague concern that someday a "pro-terrorist" vote will become an issue. But as of today, anyone who is affraid of being punished for voting Democratic or Republican probably should be isolated from society because of mental instability.
Especially in the military it seems to me that anonymity is critical to the practice of democracy.
The NYT editorial board sez: Omega Technologies is not an acceptable choice to run the program. Its chief executive, Patricia Williams, has donated $6,600 in this election cycle to the National Republican Congressional Committee, and serves on the committee's Business Advisory Council.
.. not the people.
Is it really so terrible to give money to a political campaign? At least one member of the family which owns the New York Times (Dr. Judith P. Sulzberger) donated $2000 to the John Kerry campaign, $5000 to 'Victory Campaign 2004', and $20000 to the Democrat National Committee.
Does this mean I can no longer trust the New York Times to treat facts with a modicum of fairness? Is it inappropriate for me to get factual information about political campaigns from them?
The NYT editors should quit their whining. Almost every person in the US has some political preferences, whether he or she has given money to a campaign or not. Having a strong political preference does not automatically make a person untrustworthy.
They should stick to criticizing the process here
*Ballots could be compromised by the electioneers at your local library/fire station/place of baloting* that's why you should have multiple eyes(from different parties and independent) on the box before counting, most vote systems have. also, in normal voting there's no risk that the vote getting compromised would leave it so that your identity can be tied to what you voted.
why don't they just arrange beforehand voting soon enough that the votes can be transferred normally, or is this just "hey lets cut the costs and BUY this service instead of doing what were supposed to"?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I'm betting they're not to happy about the fact the Bush Administration has cut their pay, used the same National Guard that they hid in during the Vietnam War as a backdoor draft, and is distorting Kerry's record in this whole "flak jackets" argument (do you have any idea how many military systems George W. Bush voted against - oh, wait a minute, that's right, he never held legislative office, so he can't be criticized for all the bullshit bills with some good contents he voted against over the years).
well of course there is going to be democrats voting but to suggest the big bad evil Republicans are going to dis enfranchise a section they are going to win by a landslide anyway just doesn't add up.
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
Everytime a story like this is posted I'm scared by the way people react.
Obviously without even bothering to read the article people tell us that everyone who is concerned about these kinds of things should take of their tin foil heads.
They tell us that 6 000$ isn't much, as if this was the point.
And they immediately start the old Democrats vs. Republicans game. For every instance of republican foul play I will post at least one instance of the democrats doing something wrong. As if it did matter who deprived voter of their basic rights.
Now take into account that this story is not the only reason to be concerned (Diebold anyone?) and what has hapend in Florida during the last Presidential election and it should be clear to anyone that there is reason to be concerned.
The moment the outcome of an election is decided not by the people voting but by judges who decide if counting the votes one side wants to count or counting the votes the other side wants to count something is wrong and needs fixing. Seeing what is happening lately in the US this situation seems far from solved, on the contrary seems to get worse.
What will happen to a country whose citizens don't seem to be concerned if their most basic right is undermined?
"Ballots could be compromised by the electioneers at your local library/fire station/place of baloting-- that was never the real check."
But it's still been an important one. I, for one, am volunteering to be a precinct observor in my city, ensuring that neither side gets any unfair advantage.
When you've got the whole process happening behind closed doors, this type of observing is not an option.
Interesting. You aren't in the service now, but you seem to think you know what the guys on the ground think about Bush sending them to their deaths.
I had expected to see a decline in the number of deaths since the beginning of the "Iraqi" government on June 28, 2004. However, my analysis shows that deaths per day has actually increased from 1.83 deaths per day (during the pre-Iraq Occupation phase) to 2.02 deaths per day in the post-Iraqi government phase (the invasion phase had 4.12 deaths per day).
Another way to view this data is to examine linear regression lines of deaths per day. When I first plotted this data in April 2004, the regression including the invasion phase trended downward, with expected deaths per day reaching zero sometime in 2006. The regression line excluding the invasion phase trended upward, with expected deaths steadily climbing over time.
As of August 27, 2004, both regression lines now trend upward, with no end in sight. Moreover, the predicted death per days since April closely fit the actual deaths per day. I have watched how stories of US military deaths were almost always covered by yahoo.com, up until the Iraqi government installation.At that time, reporting of US deaths has fallen off almost completely, despite an actual increase in deaths per day.
No wonder Mr. Bush's popularity stopped sliding so fast.
US Military Dead during Iraqi War.
3 September 2004. Total 1,013 US Dead -- 81 British, Iraqi and others, not included.
As regards voting -- yes, I think it is quite reasonable to be suspicious about a combination of (a) an exploitable voting system and (b) clearly partisian links from an operator. And that goes for the right *or* the left -- if the Demms could get away with ballot box fraud, you bet your ass that they'd do it in a second as well. But at the moment, the concern happens to be companies with ties to the Republicans.
May we never see th
Those percentages are an artifact of the sample - people from New York City who summer in Florida. Do you know what the votes were like in New York City in the 2000 presidential election? 1,633,525 for the Democrats, 375,792 for the Republicans (I'm counting the party votes, not the individual votes - see the official report here, specifically here - because we don't know how the New York Daily News would have categorized votes for "conservative" and "liberal" in their study - it's interesting that those numbers show a much closer split, 25,130 Conservative [Bush] versus 29,386 Liberal [Gore]) out of a total of 2,283,261, for total percentages of 71.5 percent Democrat, 16.5 percent Republican (if you include the Liberal numbers with the Democrat, you get 72.8%, and if you include the Conservative numbers with the Republican, 17.6%). For a sample size of 46,000 out of 2.3 million, those numbers are pretty similar.
Note, too, that it gives the percentages of people that are registered in both states - 46,000
Of the 46,000 registered in both states, 68 percent are Democrats, 12 percent are Republicans and 16 percent didn't align themselves with a party, the newspaper reported on Sunday.
- but not of people it thinks VOTED in both states - 1,000 at worst:
But the newspaper found that between 400 and 1,000 registered voters voted twice in at least one election, a federal offense punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
That 1,000 is not a good sample of the 48,000, because their motivations are different. The difference between those two numbers is the difference beween neglect and deliberate fraud. The 48,000 are simply registered in two states - since registrations usually aren't "closed" - you usually don't call the town you're moving out of and ask them to take you off the voter rolls - they could very well be people who registered to vote in Florida, and voted in Florida, when they got down there, and registered to vote in New York, and voted in New York - in a different election - when they got up there. You can't apply the "neglect" numbers to make an argument about which party is more likely to commit intentional voter fraud.
Since the percentages almost exactly reflect their sample, the study tells us nothing about Democratic versus Republican voter fraud. Indeed, the newspaper study (from an historically conservative newspaper), at least as it is characterized by the Reuters article, looks as though it deliberately limited its sample to New York City in order to come out with a result that would embarrass the Democratic Party. Now you'll probably say "well, they chose New York City because it's a New York paper and that's what their readership would care about." Ahh, but you see, the Reuters article cited the percentages, but didn't contextualize them by citing the overall voter percentages of their sample - a classic tactic of those who want to lie with statistics. So either the Reuters article is representing what the New York Daily News reported, or they left out the context, and thereby distorted what the New York Daily News reported.
Note that this took me 6 minutes to work out, using Google and your posting. I'm sure that the New York Daily News author, or the author of the Reuters article, could have done the same thing. I wish I knew whether they did or not.
Now go and read a book.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Well, I guess they need to do it to combat the systematic infiltration of our nation's educational systems by Democratic pot-smoking radicals, who as we all know are trying to corrupt our youths into sharing their absurd moral relativism and casual attitude toward sex. So in the end it'll be a battle between the military and the nation's stoned and post-coital youth. (I think the Republicans might win that one.)
Go ahead and mod me flamebait, because I am. (Well, I tried to be a little funny too. I don't believe a word of my second paragraph, but you know it's a popular conspiracy theory among some Republicans.) But it boggles the mind that anyone could possibly be so insanely paranoid as to buy Superjhemp's last paragraph, and at least 3 people are. Well, maybe I should give the mods the benefit of the doubt; I was totally on board with him until his concluding "theory." But still!
anonymity is critical to the practice of democracy.
Then don't vote using Absentee Balot. After all, they have to see how you voted and you have to sign the sheet in order to vote. In fact, why not just outlaw absentee voting altogether? Why not just make it impossible for anyone that is outside their district on election day to vote? Like a good large chunk of college students that go to school out of state or more than 30 min from where they live and people that are overseas (military, ambassadors etc).
No matter how you do absentee voting, you give up a lttle anonymity. And if you didn't have to sign the sheets, you'd have a lot of voter fraud. "Lets see, 300 absentee voters, 300,000 absentee votes. I wonder which are the fake ones."
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Nothing terribly fishy if there's a motor-voter law in effect. Anyone with a driver's license would be registered to vote.
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
So .. um .. people can't support a political party and still do their job without prejudice? I'd like to believe that at least some of us have a shred of decency. I'm curious that if intead this company's CEO had donated money to the Green Party would it have made front page news? Probably if perhaps the tinfoil hat has a hole in it ....
Whether the democrats like it or not the majority of military is behind their Command-In-Chief and will in all likelyhood vote for him again. I can also tell you first hand, that if your knowledge of the events in Afghanistan and Iraq is from the news media then you are basically ignorant of reality. The vast majority of the Iraqs' and Afghanistans' citizens are very glad the US stepped in and helped. The US Men and Woman that are over there are doing good work and they know it even if most of the clueless dolts in the US don't. Someday the true events will be revealed and you guy's will be amazed at how totally clueless you were.
That's more or less how it works in Canada. By doing the counting at each individual polling place, the individual bits of paper really only matter once, and matter only in a context where their numbers are manageable. Once the numbers at a particular polling place are agreed upon by everyone who bothered to stay, then the election is merely all about insuring that those numbers are all correct all the way up the line. Heck, at that point I could even see using the Internet as a cheap and convenient means of transmitting those numbers to the state election organizing body, so long as they also get written down on paper with autographs and kept secure somewhere at the county level.
But how is your system not still an anonymous vote? Does the ballot have your name or some other piece of information traceable to you on it? Does someone watch you place the "X"? Does someone look at your completed ballot before you stuff it in the box? If the answers to all of those questions are "no," then there is no reason at all to be troubled. If the answers to any of those questions are "yes," then I'd have to wonder why that sort of thing is necessary, except for the obvious reason.
Let me rephrase that... newspapers are a fundamental part of the political process, so of course they have an editorial line. But with regard to facts, they are also subject to a public fact-checking process, so any newspaper or other news source which constantly distorts the facts will quickly become known as such and lose credibility.
Omega Technologies are not subject to public fact-checking, so they should not be used.
Back in 2000 we had an election where the winner got less votes than the looser[1], yet there were no riots! I have to say that I don't see much difference.
Over here bosses are concerned about the bottom line too. However there have been instances in history where someone (normally not the boss, but some criminal who wanted his friend to be sherif) did care who was elected and was willing to use force. There have also be cases in third world countries where someone has cared enough to force people to vote their way.
Note that the vulnerabilities were are talking about are theoretical. They can happen so we want them eliminated as best we can. So far as we know these companies are not committing fraud. They could however, and we want them to have that opportunity.
[1]By a process set out 200+ years ago the popular vote is enough to win, the idea being to protect those smaller states who will have smaller populations but still have valid concerns. There is a lot of debate about if this is a good idea.
First, the technical aspects of this.. the voter secrecy parts, should be taken seriously.
Secondly.. it's kind of funny to hear complaints about them not being "non partisan".
Just about every American I know feels strongly about one party or the other, and given how US politics work, that makes sense.
Are we trying to say that those who are making voting systems and services should not be entitled to political opinion?
Of course not...
What they SHOULD have to do is keep their services as transparent and watertight as possible, open to external scrutiny, so nobody can scream "election fraud"
The people who oppose him don't generally join the Volunteer Force, though there are some exceptions.
Kerry is the subject of scorn in the USAF, in which I've served for 23+ years.
We don't need to weed out Democrats, because the only Dems who enlst are forced to do so by economic circumstance and are so uneducated or indifferent as to be politically ineffective. The rest of you despise the military, which is fine by me. You can't change what you refuse to participate in.
In other news, the sun rose in the East.
If Bush wanted to serve, he would have. Period.
Neither Soros nor Springstein are offering "election insurance" to Bush.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
You might not have anyone to be afraid of, but not everyone can say the same. Prior to the institution of the secret ballot, it was not uncommon for employers to coerce their employees to vote in a particular way.
Linear regression calls the election for Kerry.
Actually, the data is too unstable to suggest that linear regression could adequately predict Kerry will win. As we keep hearing, it's too close to call. But anyone believing there is an impending Bush landslide has been watching too many Fair & Balanced (TM) infomercials masquerading as Fox News.
Politically, Kerry is a strong finisher, but it's really all going to hang on the fickle mood of the American voter on 2NOV04. There will be an October Surprise (probably several) that will skew it one way or another. I do think Kerry/Edwards will have a major advantage over Bush/Cheney in the debates. Kerry and Edwards are both articulate, and the last four years have provided a lot of substantial issues to discuss. They'll do a lot better in a fact based debate instead of the emotionally charged name calling we've seen the last few months.
Most voters are already confirmed one way or another. It's the small group of undecided voters in a few undecided states that are going to decide this.
Either that, or the US Supreme Court.
:^(
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
If the vast majority WILL vote Republican it is even MORE imperative the minority be protected. Which is what the article is about. A person who is a member of any minority often feels pressure to conform. As the grandparent implied - the pressure is strong to vote Republican if your vote is public and the majority around you - the people you require to be your friends if you want to survive are angry at your political beliefs.
Isn't this the very reason votes are private?
The only study quoted i.e. the "Duke Study" "Over the past quarter century, elite military officers have largely abandoned political neutrality and have become partisan Republicans," the study announced, noting that 64 percent of those surveyed identified themselves that way." All other numbers quoted in the article are opinions of people in the military that probably is more favorable to their own stereotype.
64% is a far cry from 80%, also please not this study was done before Iraq, stop-loss orders, soldiers not being paid on time, being on duty for longer tours than usual, veterans benefits being cut aswell as hazard pay and reserves/national guard being used like regular troops.
I'd imagine that this development may sway some voters.
"Nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!"
No partisan interest here. It's been going on a long time: 24 wars since WW2. Creating fear so rich people can profit.
However, you seem to say that the 3 movies and 35 recently published books in this article are all wrong, even though they written by all kinds of people, Republicans, Democrats, generals, former government leaders, a Pulitzer Prize winner, political commentators, editorial writers, environmental organizations, and members of the public: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
Name ONE statement that is in error. I'll investigate (again), and if you are correct, I will change it.
Most people don't know that the situation in Iraq began in the 50's, when hidden elements of the U.S. government overthrew a democratically elected president of Iran (Mossadegh) because he wanted to reduce the profits of U.S. and British oil companies doing business in Iran. The U.S. government supported a very weak man, the Shah of Iran, who became very violent toward his own citizens. Eventually, people in Iran overthrew the Shah. The U.S. government's actions de-stabilized the country and encouraged the violence that came after. The U.S. government supported Iraq against Iran, supplying weapons to Saddam Hussein at a very high profit for the rich owners of U.S. weapons companies. The Bush family has long owned part of a company that owns weapons companies. Cheney was head of Halliburton, a company that profits when there is war, especially since Halliburton was able to arrange a secret, no competitive bid contract.
What do you say about that? Is the university that hosts the documents all wrong?
Obviously, there is too much material for any one article. Should I not discuss the corruption of today because there was corruption in the past?
Okay, so Patricia Williams President and CEO of Omega Technologies is a republican supporter. Are you saying that this makes her a criminal willing to commit voter fraud? I think this is a huge leap. First she would have to decide that democracy is ridiculous and the people should not pick their leader, that the leader should be chosen for the people. Secondly, she would have to decide to risk going to jail and having her business destroyed to disenfranchise soldiers that are dying for this country. Thirdly, she would have to somehow do this without any of the people who work for Omega Technologies blowing the whistle. I don't know Patricia Williams. Do you have any proof she is willing to commit the criminal acts that are being assumed she will commit?
You missed the point. She's operating under conflict of interest. The money and her position with the Republicans is only supporting evidence.
--
Bush's education improvements were fraud
But not enough flight hours to qualify for combat duty.
You've got an inflated idea of who the "wealth builders" and "creators" are. Big clue: the guys who are building & creating _aren't_ the guys at the top. Those guys just cause money to be shifted around and provide a figurehead for the organization, but in terms of actually providing goods or services to consumers, they aren't that important (except that if they cause money to be shifted to the _wrong_ places, they can destroy a company).
Unfortunately, most people in those positions seem to have such an inflated ego, they come to believe that _they_ are doing all the real work in the company, and _they_ are the most important person in the company, and the company wouldn't be able to do anything productive without them, so _they_ should be compensated several thousand times more than anyone else, even though they're not doing any more work than anyone else. And when some political demagogue comes along and strokes their ego for them, they'll hand out the cash in wads, just to preserve their I'm-so-important reality.
NOTE: My complaints are only targeted toward large organizations, where the highly hierarchical command structure separates "management" from the workers, and necessitates a large bureaucracy in-between. Most of the _real_ productivity in our society gets performed by individuals & small businesses, where the organization is so small, that to be successful the people "in charge" _have_ to get their hands dirty & who therefore have a much more accurate idea of their own self-worth to the organization.
Where Iraq falls into in a strategic sense rather than a tactical sense may be a good question for the medal debate.
If you talk with the some of the guys who may have done the war college or some of the more intelligent ring knockers they may bring up the strategic implications of the show of force on the region (in theory what was probably the attempt, not how well everything has been executed to date). People often use Libya as an example which the counter to that is that they were going that way anyways, but the desired effect was there.
The point is we can't invade every country that harbors terrorists but we can show them that they can be invaded and deposed. That the majority of the Iraqi regime has been eliminated would be the fear we would want to put in the minds of ruling parties in order to get them to think twice about supporting and maybe clamp down on terrorist activities in their country. Strategically if all we had done was invade Afghanistan it may not have had that effect on rulers in the middle-east region.
Anyways, some aspects of the Iraq war likely do have something to do with a strategic initiative for deterring state support of terrorism. The "war on terrorism" is actually more of an attempt at making fewer places hospitable to them and reducing their means of acquiring resources to carry out attacks.
Interesting. But our justifications for the Iraq invasion were links to al Qaeda and WMDs. I'm not defending Hussein's regime, mind you...I'm saying our reasoning for the invasion was flawed. Without significant change (i.e., massive beef-up in size) to our military, we can't invade every country with a group of terrorists in it. Our main beef (due to 9/11) was al Qaeda, which we seem to have forgotten about in the rush to Baghdad. We've still not run down ObL, and according to all the intel/terror alerts al Qaeda is still out there making threats against us and planning attacks (or at least keeping the Dept. of Homeland Security busy flipping the lights of the color coded alert system).
But we've been concentrating on Iraq, which, by all the post-invasion data, had nothing to do with 9-11/al Qaeda and no longer had the much-debated WMD's.
"Peace through superior firepower."
How about instead of invading a relatively harmless (if unpleasant) mid-east dictatorship to prove our resolve to act, how about we invade a dictatorship that actually poses a real threat? We'd get rid of some nasty sonovabitches, and we'd prove our resolve.
WWD4D?
... no, he was not right.
There's a significant difference between allowing communists (self-admitted, reported, suspected, or just disliked by others) in sensitive positions and allowing known spies in sensitive positions. The best option is to have no clue about someone's political views, to avoid fallacious thinking. That's why employers are required to disregard religion, ethnic background, political view, etc. when hiring -- none of it matters. What does matter is the integrity of the individual, which can only be judged on a per-case basis.
The secret ballot helps preserve this distinction, but we must be ever vigilant against this sort of profiling. A communist is not a traitor, and neither is a republican. A more effective spy would pose as a moderate, and might even be a moderate -- who said money can't buy allegiance, regardless of political conviction?
I'm a disabled vet and I can't figure out the same thing.
I mean, I think it's fairly clear that Bush used huge political influence to avoid Vietnam. The former Texas Lt. Gov. from the 70s has recently publicly stated that he pulled strings to get Bush and other sons of the elite into the Nat'l Guard.
Bush obviously didn't want to go to Vietnam (I can't blame him), since he checked the box saying he didn't want to go overseas.
It's also clear that Bush was a deserter. After his father sent him away from Texas for being a drunk he went missing from the Nat'l Guard for a year. You mean to tell me that some of the supposedly hundreds of people that served with him are not stepping forward to claim the thousands of dollars in rewards for saying they served with Bush?! That's insane.
Then there's the military records. I remember how fat my 201 file was and how the military loved to keep paperwork. There's no way those records are "lost" -- I think it's far more likely that Bush cronies cleaned house on his records.
I also think it's fairly likely that Kerry worked an angle to get 3 purple hearts and to get out of Vietnam. Hell, I would not have wanted to go to Vietnam. But then again, when an explosion went off and Kerry got a butt-ful of rice, dirt, and some shrapnel, do we honestly think he was knew about that explosion or was calculating how it would impact on him? When he was grazed with a bullet, do we really think he was volunteering to be shot "just a little" so he could get the hell out of Vietnam and go back home?
Hell no. He got lucky. He got lucky repeatedly, saw an angle to get out, and got the hell out. I can't say as I blame him -- he did his time and played by the rules.
But that's a helluva lot more than you can say about Bush's "service"[sic]. The fact that this deserter organizes campaigns to criticize Kerry or McCain says a lot about his lack of character.
Nobody ever said all Arabs hate the US - except the rightwing Christian military guy that got in hot water for declaring the Muslims were agents of Satan. Oh, and most of the rightwing so-called pundits and the neocons. You don't remember, "They hate us for our freedom?"
What they hate is George Bush and his policies.
As for the Demos wanting us all terrified, that is undoubtedly true - they're politicians after all.
However, it is DOUBLY TRUE for the Republicans who started this shit.
It was a REPUBLICAN administration who ALLOWED (and possibly orchestrated) the 9/11 attack on this country and then squandered ALL of the goodwill from the rest of the world that followed it.
Kerry may be no better than Bush, but I doubt he could be worse. I could be wrong about that last, however.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
As for Bush, he's certainly responsible for far more members of the American military dying in an unnecessary war that was waged based on a pack of lies. He not only ditched military service himself, but for almost a year after starting the Iraq war he refused to visit the families of soldiers who died in his war. He's been slashing benefits to Veterans, and he even took money that several US veterans had won in a lawsuit against Saddam Hussein for stuff that happened during Desert Storm -- the money should have been paid to the vets and their families, and Bush instead diverted it to the Iraqi "reconstruction." Bush has been slapping the face of American troops and veterans over and over again. It is disgraceful and insulting to those who risk their lives to serve their country. His attempt to paint Kerry as a wimp is a further slap in the face to everyone who has ever served in the military.