What Was That All About?

That's what I'm still saying to myself, after all this time, regarding Kerry's SF-180. Some folks think we're making too big a deal out of this - not so. The man obviously wants to be considered seriously for 2008, but if (a big if) he's so vain and pompous that he would withhold his military records just because his grades were terrible, God knows he didn't need to be in the Oval Office. RCP and PoliPundit think there must be more to it than that, and PoliPundit points to the admittedly mysterious recent comments that 'he had to clarify', 'get together', what have you...what's to clarify? Is PoliPundit right? Are we still missing info, specifically a hundred pages of material?

Then there's John O'Neill of Swift Boat Fame, who comments at Blogs for Bush:

We called for Kerry to execute a form which would permit anyone to examine his full and unexpulgated military records at the Navy Department and the National Personnel Records Center. Instead he executed a form permitting his hometown paper to obtain the records currently at the Navy Department. The Navy Department previously indicated its records did not include various materials. This is hardly what we called for.

Reading the above, one can certainly be forgiven for thinking 'Mr. Nuance' has struck again.

Then there are those who think he really is so arrogant that he held out for the grades, so to speak, including Mickey Kaus (who has e-mailed the Boston Globe about those missing 100 pages PoliPundit speaks of) and James Taranto. This is typical Kerry: he can't even sign a form without causing confusion. As many have noted today, it's not necessarily a sign of intelligence to be unintelligible.