In The Footsteps of McGovern

John Kerry would be the first presidential candidate to visit a war zone since the failed bid of Sen. George S. McGovern, if the presumptive Democratic nominee decides to visit Iraq on a fact-finding trip.

And who just said "Maybe he could hire out of work baathists to protect him from American GI's?" C'mon, who said that? Cause it was just wrong. Who would dare say such a thing?

Hmmm... guess it was me.

A trip by Mr. Kerry also would break his pledge last March that he would stop criticizing U.S. efforts to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein once the shooting started.

When did you stop criticizing America Senator?

"I remember being one of those guys and reading news reports from home," the Vietnam veteran said. "If America is at war, I won't speak a word without measuring how it'll sound to the guys doing the fighting when they're listening to their radios in the desert."

That's the height of hypocrisy, Hanoi John.

While in Vietnam, Mr. McGovern — who won only Mr. Kerry's home state of Massachusetts in the 1972 election he lost overwhelmingly to President Nixon — met in Saigon with Nguyen Van Thieu, who was elected the nation's president in 1967 and won re-election in a rigged contest in 1971.

How dare they sneak that "Kerry's a Massachusetts liberal" lie into a news report! A steath bomb if ever there was one. No wonder Kerry calls the right wing dominated media "...the most crooked, you know, lying group of people I've ever seen." Or wait, no, that just the generic "Republican critics".

Of course, if Glenn Reynolds is right, Kerry won't go. That possibility is explored in this paragraph:

Mr. Kerry, a four-term senator from Massachusetts, said this week that he is considering a trip to Iraq, although he left open the possibility that he might ask a group of congressional colleagues to conduct a fact-finding mission for him.

"I'd like to see what the latest assessment is of people that I trust, of people whose experience and knowledge is significant, and have the ability to make some judgments about where we are today," Mr. Kerry told reporters in Mississippi. "I think that would be very valuable in the formulation of policy and in my ability to get important updates."

The idea of sending congressional underlings to do his bidding may appeal to the Senator, but the whole thing gives RNC Chair Ed Gillespie an opening to land a wicked right hook that he just can't resist:

"Senator Kerry says he either needs to go himself or send a delegation to learn more about the situation in Iraq so he can form his policy positions, and yet for the past six months, he's been criticizing the president's policy. Now we know his criticism is uninformed," Mr. Gillespie said.

Touché, as they say in France.

In a related story (related through the "visiting foriegn lands to demoralize American troops" link):

Sen. John Kerry should not try to distance himself from Jane Fonda, who "was neither wrong nor unconscionable in what she said and did in North Vietnam," says Tom Hayden, one of Miss Fonda's ex-husbands.

<...>

Mr. Hayden, who led the radical Students for a Democratic Society in its most militant protests of the '60s, cites a 2001 "Meet the Press" appearance where Mr. Kerry said that he had committed "atrocities" during his five-month combat tour in Vietnam. Mr. Kerry specifically took "responsibility for shooting in free-fire zones, search-and-destroy missions, and burning villages," Mr. Hayden notes in the latest issue of the Nation.

"The attempted smearing of Kerry through the Fonda 'connection' is a Republican attempt to suppress an honest reopening of our unfinished exploration of the Vietnam era," writes Mr. Hayden, who was a California state legislator for 18 years.

A "2001 "Meet the Press" appearance where Mr. Kerry said that he had committed "atrocities""?

Update: Is this the audio?