Know Your Enemies

The right-wing commentariat, including those who oh so earnestly denounce hate-filled liberals for allowing personal animus to cloud their political judgment, has latched on to Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. They have not yet examined the authors' credibility with as fine a lens as they did for Richard Clarke, Joe Wilson, Paul O'Neill, et.al. Let us be generous and assume the sole reason for this is that the book has not yet been released. We'll wait for you to get through it.

John O'Neill, as you may know, is an honest-to-god career professional Kerry-hater, given his first job in the business and trained by none other than Richard Nixon and Charles Colson. Both men, of course, sport fine reputations for honesty, integrity, and fair play to this day. He is also partner in the law firm Clements, O'Neill, Pierce, Wilson & Fulkerson. Margaret Wilson was GWB's 1998-2000 general counsel, and was then appointed by Bush to be deputy general counsel of the Commerce Department. Another partner at the firm, Tex Lazar, ran for lieutenant governor of Texas on the ticket with Bush in 1994. See Conason, Digby and the disinfopedia for more.

In the meantime, Media Matters took a look at the co-author, Dr. Jerome Corsi. Corsi has a PhD in political science from Harvard, a lofty credential that carries with it an assumption of a certain level of sophistication in political discourse. At least I assumed it. However, he also is a regular over at the FreeRepublic.com loonybin forums and the one thing about the internet: it's forever. Here are some samples of Corsi's rapier wit and political insight.

Isn't the Democratic Party the official SODOMIZER PROTECTION ASSOCIATION of AMERICA -- oh, I forgot, it was just an accident that Clintoon's first act in office was to promote "gays in the military." RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters -- it all goes together.

Anybody ask why HELLary couldn't keep BJ Bill satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?

Let's see exactly why it isn't the case that Islam is a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion? Where's the proof to the contrary?

Mullah Ali'Gore-ah is very proud of his new Bin Laden beard and he hopes others in the Democratic Party will follow his lead. Hell-ary is disappointed she cannot grow a beard, but her press secretary reminds us she can still enroll in flight school.

Nice, objective, sane source you've got there. Not. Like I said, we'll give you the time to read the book. After that you can even spend some time bashing Michael Moore as a hate-filled partisan, just for fun. Then come back and tell me how much credibility you place in these guys.