10 Reasons Why Kerry Will Win By a Landslide
by Anthony Watson (c) 2004
October 09, 2004

Most polls, even post Bush’s poor debate performance, are showing the race too close to call or a slight edge for Bush. Well listen up folks, there is no way in a free and open election that Bush can beat Kerry. Tell me I am crazy, everyone else does, but no matter. Americans are a unique and fabulous breed, terrible in our wrath, wonderful in our compassion, stunning in our accomplishments and our failures. Above all we love our freedom and our liberty. It is the individual freedom we have enjoyed that allowed us to be the nation that the world envies.

10. We must be free. In our hearts we know it, but in our minds we deny it.
    We rationalize so many reasons why the government is responsible for our safety and that of our children, but we know in our hearts that we cannot trust the government bureaucracy. Remember my countrymen that the only plane that was stopped on September 11th was by “we the people”. The government and military failed completely to protect us. The antics of the TSA cannot instill great confidence in us. The inability of several members of Congress to get their names off the no-fly list is either incredible incompetence or politically motivated. We are supposed to believe that Ted Kennedy is being pulled out for additional searches because his name sounds phonetically like the terrorist Al Kannadi? I just don’t think the American people are that gullible.
     

9. Bush is an appointed President. Americans don’t like that. Gerald Ford learned that. Americans want their Presidents to win the popular vote. Rutherford B. Hayes learned that. Clinton got more votes than either of his opponents the first time, but it was not more than 50% of the populace, because Perot polled so well. Clinton made the best of his opportunity though and managed to garner 50%+ the second time around in good fashion. It put the fear of God into the Republicans, which may have fueled their fever to attempt to impeach him for the crime? of having sex. Those were good times then, weren’t they? After all the economy was so good and the world so peaceful, we had plenty of time to poke fun and tear down our President.
    

8. Medicare - This “reform” turned out to be industry written legislation, primarily the insurance and drug industries. The alleged discounts are on drugs already discounted for in Medigap plans. Medigap plans were created to make up for the woefully huge gap between what Medicare pays and what things actually cost, so they do at least finally give the discounts to the very poorest, but otherwise the average senior gets little. Perhaps they may qualify for the $50.00 a month subsidy the government is supposed to provide for prescription drugs, but so far the anecdotal evidence shows that despite administration claims, most do not qualify. The kicker is that the drug companies locked in the so called discounts with the government by stating that the USA cannot negotiate for the same lower prices other countries are able to extract. Signing away rights to future negotiations on price is as un-American as it gets!
    

7. Bin Laden still at large - After invading Afghanistan and overthrowing the standing government, Bin Laden is still free. How can this be? We cannot go into a country and kill so many innocents and not come out with our man. The administration’s story at the time was that we were tracking Bin Laden’s cell phone and he simply handed it to a man on a camel going the other direction. Is it really that easy to shake America’s revenge? Of course, we did “outsource” his capture to the Northern Alliance, so what did we expect?
   

6. Guantanamo - The handling of Afghan POWs was puzzling to some Americans. It appears we are going to war with the Taliban, the leadership of Afghanistan, but then we claim that the prisoners we are capturing on the battlefield are not prisoners of war. We ship these captured men to Cuba. There Guantanamo becomes a “no human rights” zone outside the reach of American or international law and these “enemy combatants” are incarcerated there. After prompting from the Red Cross, this administration reveals why these people are not being called POWs. The reason appears to be because we are not going to allow them Geneva Convention rights. America not giving Geneva Convention rights! America was always about a basic decency that never fell below a certain humane standard even during war. When it was learned there were boys as young as 14 and 15 imprisoned there, we began to worry. Later when the administration finally gets around to sending some incarcerated British citizens home and the Brits detain them only briefly at Heathrow and then frees them, some eyebrows were raised. Imprisoned at Gitmo for 2 years and then released, no explanation, no charges, no sorry, nothing and now simply let go. This was underplayed at the time, but it still makes one wonder what is happening to these enemy combatants. The administration has also designated American citizens as enemy combatants, and denied them their rights to due process. Again the people can only see this as very un-American. 
    

5. Abu Ghraib – Many an American overlooked the Gitmo prisoners, but the photos from Abu Ghraib could not be ignored. These were pictures of horrors that looked a lot like war crimes to most people. Condoned from the highest levels of the administration. Those that state that these are the actions of a few overzealous soldiers have no answer as to why the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, wrote a memo in the months after 9/11 stating that the WTC attack changed the dynamic such that the Geneva Convention no longer applied. Military training is strict in its adherence to duty and honor. Orders are to be obeyed and not questioned. The basic goodness of the average American came through in Baghdad, though. Some soldiers finally came forward against orders, because they could no longer participate in torture and sexual exploitation that were obvious violations of the Geneva Convention…and common decency. America may never live down the photos that came from this Iraqi prison. The Muslim world will have a hard time forgiving us this nightmare.
    

4. Iraq – The administration’s preemptive, unilateral war in Iraq, seemed to make sense to most of America. However, more and more of the facts have come out, and blaming this debacle on poor intelligence becomes an obvious whitewash. The ludicrousness of a Saddam/Osama link was stupid on the its face, given the many quotes from Bin Laden claiming Saddam was a “false Muslim” and “an infidel”. Much of the administration’s case was based on false documents. The claims that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger were based upon documents that were obvious forgeries and the UN inspectors came forward in February of 2003 pointing to the fact the documents were signed by a man that was not in power at the time. Still the administration used them to support its case for war. The incredible failure of the media to report this and vet the claims of the administration is an indictment of corporate concentration in the media, but that is another story. Unfortunately, much of the shaky claims about how Iraqis would welcome us with flowers in the street went completely unchallenged. The Iraqi émigré, Chalabi, who helped the administration sell this fantasy, now turns out to be an Iranian intelligence agent. It appears that the Iranians were feeding the Bush administration whatever they needed to get the Americans to take out their mortal enemy, the Iraqis, and help Iran gain a Shiite client state next door. To allow America and its military to become the tools of another country, especially Iran is incredibly embarrassing, not to mention impeachable stupidity. 
    

3. Iran, North Korea and Sudan – Countries that could truly use some military presence or pressure to make the world a safer place cannot be addressed by our military. Our military is pinned down in a foolhardy military adventure that is destroying our reputation as the “good guys”. Imagine the good we could be doing in the Sudan. We could end the genocide, but we have no spare troops. Duped by the Iranians into the occupation of Iraq, we do not have the capacity to react forcefully. The Iranians are now free to pursue their nuclear program safe in the knowledge that America cannot free up enough troops to do anything about it. Ditto in North Korea.
   

2. Bush is now rejected by many retired military commanders. - These retired military men are not lightweights either. Two former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John Shalikashvili and Adm. William J. Crowe are endorsing Kerry. Additionally, Tony McPeak a retired Air Force General who is also a former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is also endorsing Kerry. Lest we forget that a Republican General named Wesley Clark switched parties to oppose Bush. The list goes on and on. Military leaders loath to get involved in politics. They labor in the service of their nations for decades not 4 or 8 years. They well know the consequences for backing the wrong man. Clearly, the current Commander-in-Chief is a failure in the eyes of many in the military given this type of opposition to his re-election.
    

1. Jobs - Jobs seem to be hemorrhaging from our borders. More jobs lost in his four-year presidency than any president since Herbert Hoover. Maybe who is in the White House does not really matter to the average man in the street, but whether he can get a job, DOES matter! To listen to Bush, we should cut him some slack because there have been so many crises during his tenure. Still how did FDR manage to create more jobs than Bush, surely his obstacles were at least as great. Lyndon Baines Johnson succeeded in creating more jobs while prosecuting another ill-advised war. Even that favorite Republican whipping boy Jimmy Carter managed to create more jobs than this current president. Are you better off or even safer four years after Bush was appointed President?

So ignore the polls. They are clearly wrong. There is no way the American people will send Bush back for four more years. We have all seen what the last four years have been like and it has not been pretty. The American people will prove to the world that democracy works and we will throw the bums out. Only by booting Bush and his cronies out of Washington can we hope to regain any credibility in the global community. Kerry is going to win this election by a much larger margin than any polls are predicting. This is my fearless prediction for the first Tuesday in November. Put down your money on Kerry my friends. I did. Remember you heard it here first.