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Yet another update: Atrios links to Nick Confessore at Tapped, who takes this same theme and goes further with it. I'd be remiss not to point it out. Confessore also notes that a caller took Pruden to task, although Wes managed to weasel his way out (this was after I left for work).

And, not that I expect it to be published, but I went ahead and fired off an email regarding this to the editor--who is Wes Pruden...

Don't mean to beat a dead horse here, but I just finished reading this article in Counterpunch, that, just by coincidence, links to a speech John Kerry gave in 1971 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I went ahead and read it, and came across the following quote:

"They [Veterans at a meeting Kerry attended in Detroit] told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."

OK. So, why cite this here? Because it seemed awfully familiar. So, I held my nose, put on my foul weather gear, and again visited the Washington Times website. Sure enough, Wes Pruden managed to show why he ISN'T a true journalist:

"They ... raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power," he told a Senate committee in 1971 when he was just home from the war, and "cut off limbs, [blew] up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."

Notice the difference? And, just to further reduce his credibility, Pruden repeated the lie on C-Span this morning. Of course, I'm aware that ellipses are often used to twist and distort the truth, but here's an example that still reeks of whatever smell it is that seems to infect the Times. Bad Attitudes was dead-on accurate: Kerry is well on the way to a state of perma-fuck--and let me thank Lead Balloons for inventing this term--it describes the state of the media vis-a-vis a Democratic candidate perfectly.

Funny thing is, I don't even like John Kerry all that much. He waffled a lot back in the 80's on the war issue in Central America, and, as I've noted below, seems to talk a lot without saying much. But there's a strong potential that he'll be the last A.B.B. in the race, and I'm pretty sure anyone interested in preventing four more years of BushRove will have to be extra vigilent in paying attention to idiots like Wes Pruden, who seem to think no tactic is too low to stoop to when pushing Dubya.

Could we tack on an extra five years and $1,000 fine if they're caught pushing Dubya in a school zone?