by JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, April 30, 2003 3:47 P.M. EDT

Goodnight Saigon
When John Kerry went to Vietnam and fought for his country, he gave up his right to make quips and to participate in the debate.

The foregoing statement not only is untrue, it makes no sense. Yet for some reason Sen. Kerry feels compelled to deny it. Here's what the Associated Press quotes the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam, as saying: "When I fought in Vietnam and fought for my country, I didn't give up my right to make quips and to participate in the debate."

OK, Sen. Kerry, we get the point already: You served in Vietnam. Whaddya want, a medal?

Oh wait, sorry, we forgot, Kerry did get a medal--more than one of them, in fact. As a 1996 Boston Globe profile notes, this occasioned one of the odder events in his public career. In 1971 he was a leader of a group called Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which gathered in Washington in April of that year:

As a dramatic conclusion to the five-day protest, they were going to "return" their medals, tossing them over the [Capitol] fence. Kerry was tortured by this decision, both because he was proud of his medals and because he knew that discarding them was the kind of act that could damage a political career.

"He was ambivalent about it. It was very hard for him," said David Thorne, who stood by his side through the protest. "John never took his eye off the ball, and that was the political career. He worried about how it would look." . . .

Newspaper accounts described Kerry throwing his own medals, and in a speech immediately afterward to the veterans, Kerry said: "This admninistration [sic] forced us to return our medals. . . . These leaders denied us the integrity those symbols supposedly gave our lives."

But as it later turned out, the medals Kerry threw were not his own. Since that fact was revealed by the Wall Street Journal in 1984, it has dogged Kerry. . . . In his recent interview with the Globe, Kerry added a new twist. . . . While he did not throw his own medals (they remain tucked away in a desk at his home in Boston), Kerry said he did throw the ribbons on his uniform that symbolized the medals he had earned. Asked why he didn't bring his own medals to throw since it was planned weeks in advance, Kerry said it was because he "didn't have time to go home (to New York) and get them."

Kerry's reference to "quips," incidentally, has to do with his long-forgotten remark that "we need a regime change in the United States." Nearly a month after making the remark, the AP reports, Kerry is explaining that it was just a "quip." During a campaign stop in Alabama, the senator explained: ''It was not about the president, and it was not about the war. It was about the election." Glad he cleared that up.

Does She Mean the War in Syria?
"New! California visit; Carol opposes Bush's rush to war"--from Carol Moseley Braun's campaign Web site

The Critics Rave
Los Angeles's KNBC-TV reports on a Howard "Rubber Underneath" Dean campaign appearance in the Big Orange. "This new generation does get it," Dean told a Hollywood crowd. "Today there are 60 million people on the Internet. Corporations own all the media, but fair and balanced news really does exist on the Internet, with all those bright young people."

Hey, thanks, Governor--we didn't even know you read our column!

Dead Letter Office
A few months ago Saddam Hussein bestrode the world, exercising absolute and brutal power over a nation of 24 million and commanding the full attention of America, its allies and its former friends. Today it appears Saddam has been reduced to writing demented letters to the editor. Agence France-Presse excerpts a letter published in the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi and attributed to the erstwhile Iraqi dictator:

As Hulagu entered Baghdad, so the criminal Bush entered, with great bitterness. They conquered you, you who reject occupation and shame, you who keep Arabism and Islam in your hearts and minds, only through betrayal.

It is not a victory as long as your resistance lasts.

Henceforth, what we said has become a reality. We will not live in peace and security for as long as the Zionist entity sullies our Arab territory. This is why there is no division in the unity of the Arab struggle.

Boy, this guy sounds almost as crazy as Helen Thomas.

Who's Distracted?
Pakistani authorities have nabbed six al Qaeda members, including Whalid ba Attash, a former Osama bin Laden bodyguard who is said to have been the "mastermind" of the 2000 USS Cole bombing, CNN reports. "They also believe Attash met with two of the September 11 suicide hijackers and served as an intermediary between some of the hijackers and September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed."

The Pakistanis say Attash's capture averted a "major terrorist attack." At the site of the arrest they found 330 pounds of "high explosives" and a "large quantity" of guns and ammo.

More progress against al Qaeda came in Baghdad, where, Fox News reports, "an associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been captured in the Baghdad area." The unnamed associate is described as "a midlevel terrorist operative." Zarqawi, who is believed to have been the "mastermind"--have you noticed these guys are all "masterminds"?--of an assassination of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan last year, has spent time in Iraq but is still at large.

Scenes From the Liberation
You have to click through to this one to appreciate it. It's a Reuters photo of a sculpture in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Upon the pedestal once stood a statue of dictator turned crank-mail writer Saddam Hussein. In its place is the "Statue of Cleaning," a work made from Iraqi army boots by Iraqi artist Zerak Mera.

We Report, You Decide

"Still desperate for war news, they tune to CNN, BBC, and what appears to be a local favorite, Fox. They like it, people here say, because it has been the most supportive of the war."--Christian Science Monitor, reporting from Kirkuk, April 29

"Iraqis will eventually want their parties and leaders legitimized by the Arab world and media. They won't want to be seen as U.S. stooges. They don't watch Fox News here."--Thomas Friedman, New York Times, April 30

You Don't Say
"End of War Lacks Punch of Its Beginning"--headline, Associated Press, April 30

The Road Less Traveled
"We reject terrorism from any party and in all forms," declared Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian prime minister, after his confirmation by the unelected Palestinian Parliament. Abbas is also known as Abu Mazen, and it tells you something about the political culture of the Palestinian Arabs that their "moderate" prime minister has a nom de guerre.

Even more revealing, no sooner had Abbas vowed to stop terror than terrorists struck Tel Aviv. Shortly after midnight, a suicide bomber--a British citizen, according to Ha'aretz--blew himself up at the entrance to Mike's Place, a pub near the U.S. Embassy, which, according to a correspondent of National Review's Kathryn Lopez, is owned by two Israeli-American brothers and "caters almost exclusively to American expats" and tourists. The bomber murdered three. Reuters describes the scene:

Footage showed medics treating several young Israelis, their shirts stripped off, on the sidewalk outside the pub.

The pub's entrance was ripped apart by the blast, which twisted the metal supports of its front windows and splattered the threshold with blood. The bar's sign "Mike's Place--Blues by the Beach," remained intact.

"We saw several young men, burned up, coming out of the pub," a witness told Israel Radio.

The New York Times adds this:

Barry Gilbert, 50, was playing keyboards when he saw a bright flash. "I thought one of the spotlights had blown," he said. "Then I felt a hot blast, and there was a lot of screaming." He rushed outside and saw the wounded and dead. "A beautiful girl, one of the waitresses, I think she lost an arm," he said.

She may have lost her life. The Mike's Place Web site has a photo gallery "in memory of Dominique (Caroline) Hess."

The Jerusalem Post reports that Palestinian terror groups are clamoring to confess to the triple-murder, with Hamas as well as Yasser Arafat's Tanzim and al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades all issuing statements claiming "responsibility."

Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

Is Abbas serious about putting a stop to Palestinian terrorism? If so, is he able to do so? No on both counts, according to Israeli military intelligence. "According to what we know now, Abu Mazen plans to speak with the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders, and not clash with them," a "senior military source" tells Ha'aretz.

Undaunted by the latest attack, the U.S. released the promised "road map" for Middle East peace this afternoon. "Though the road map marks Washington's biggest push to revive peacemaking since Israel reoccupied most of the West Bank last summer, many analysts say it will be hard to overcome the sharp differences and deep distrust between the two sides," Reuters reports.

Mideast peace is a goal well worth pursuing, but the lesson of the late Clinton administration is that trying to rush things risks making them far worse. Maybe President Bush ought to follow Robert Frost's advice and take the road less traveled. That's the road that goes through Damascus, Tehran, Riyadh . . .

Interplanetary Terrorism
"Bomb Mars Historic Day for Palestinians"--headline, Associated Press, April 30

Weasel Watch
"France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg . . . said Tuesday they were setting up their own European military operations center next year," the New York Times' Paris edition reports from Brussels. No one is taking the weasel pact very seriously:

The project was immediately dismissed by Colin Powell, U.S. secretary of state, who called it "some sort of plan to develop some sort of headquarters." He said the four would have done better spending more money on guns, manpower and equipment.

The paper characterizes the meeting as "a rump summit spurned by the rest of the membership of the European Union and NATO." Among the spurners were the Dutch, whose foreign minister rejected the idea of going Dutch: "Belgium and France will not guarantee our security," says Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. "Germany will not guarantee the security of the Netherlands. I cannot imagine a world order built against the United States."

Have They Looked in Paris?
"Brits Seek Missing WIMPs of Universe"--headline, CNN.com, April 30

Say What?
"Left-of-Bush Brain Curry Man"--headline, Outlook India, May 5 issue

Here Comes the Sun
At the annual Space Congress in Cape Canaveral, Fla., NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe touted nuclear power as a means of propulsion for future interstellar space vehicles, the Associated Press reports:

NASA's past efforts to use nuclear power in space has met opposition from environmentalists. In 1997, hundreds of people protested the launching of the Cassini interplanetary robot craft, which was powered by plutonium.

If you think plutonium-powered robot craft are scary, get a load of this: There's an enormous thermonuclear generator located smack dab in the center of the solar system. It's called the sun. That's right, the sun is a weapon of mass destruction. We better send some U.N. inspectors there but quick.

Zero-Tolerance Watch
Ten-year-old Keith Post, a fifth-grader at Pyles Elementary School in Stanton, Calif., happened upon a two-inch knife in the school cafeteria. He turned it in to his teacher but was suspended for five days--later reduced to one--because he didn't act quickly enough. "Keith said he waited two hours before turning it in because he was scared and thought his teacher might believe the knife belonged to him," the Los Angeles Times reports.

Principal Rick Johnson justified the punishment, saying: "Kids understand what it means to do something immediately." Maybe Keith should seek redress from the U.N. Security Council. After all, Resolution 1441, which demanded that Saddam Hussein's regime comply "immediately" with all previous resolutions, passed on Nov. 8, yet four months later the French and Russians were complaining Saddam hadn't had enough time. Doubtless the Security Council would look askance on Principal Johnson's arrogant unilateralism.

Take One Down, Pass It Around
Iraq isn't the only place that's seen its treasures looted of late. The New York Post reports that "Port Authority cops took down 11 men who swiped over 400,000 mini-bottles of alcohol--worth $1.5 million!--while working at LaGuardia Airport." The crooks stole the stuff by the caseload and sold the hot hooch to area retailers. Cops said "they hadn't faced criminal masterminds"--that word again!--"like this since the Lufthansa cocktail peanut heist in '78."

Sauce for the Goose
Remember "affirmative action bake sales"? As we noted in February, various campus conservative groups held such events, offering confections at lower prices to minorities and women, in an effort to illustrate the absurdity of racial preferences and to antagonize the humorless left. In the latter goal, at least, they succeeded magnificently.

But now some funny feminists--seriously!--are doing the same thing. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports gals at Webster University are selling what they call "sex cookies" with prices that vary depending on the sex and race of the buyer. White men pay $1, but white women pay only 76 cents, pursuant to the apocryphal statistic than women earn only 76% of what men do. Women who are neither black nor white get the best bargain: only 54 cents. The paper describes one encounter between cookie salesladies Sarah McCabe and Dajuan Raab and a fellow student:

Sophomore Gabriel Dalay, 24, peruses the table.

"Everything's a dollar for white men," Raab tells him.

"What about the poor white boy?" Dalay asks.

"Even as a poor white man, you will make more than a poor white woman," McCabe says.

For the most part, Dalay is cool with the idea of the sliding-scale bake sale.

"But just because someone is white doesn't necessarily mean they have more money or can get a higher-paying job," he says. "Me for one, I have a lot of tattoos, so I'll probably have trouble finding a high-paying job. But most of the time, that's the case, I guess."

Us for one, we think Dalay would have an easier time getting a high-paying job if he was to talk English more better.

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Edward Schulze, Charlie Gaylord, Mark Schulze, Robert Sherman, Hovig Heghinian, Lewis Chilton, Bruce Oakley, Jennifer Ray, Pat Mizell, Joe Deltoro, Raghu Desikan, Scott Payne, Mara Gold, Eduardo Gaspar, S.E. Brenner, Elliot Ganz, Michael Siegel, Paul Cooper, Barak Moore, Michael Segal, Brian Kalt, Chad Carlson, Robert LeChevalier, Howard Weiser, Dan Friedman, Damian Bennett, Judie Amsel, Ruhama Shattan, Carl Sherer, Yehuda Hilewitz, Aaron Spetner, Joel Goldberg, Gadi Niram, C.E. Dobkin, Monty Krieger, Joshua Brook, Don Mishell, Jerome Marcus, Doug Levene, Dan Calabrese, Jose Guardia, William Schultz, Joe Littrell and Anthony Brunsvold. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

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