Coulter disappoints

I have to admit I was expecting a gleeful torrent of Schadenfreude, something I could really dig my teeth into. Usually if there is a chance to skewer the mainstream media, Ann jumps at it. Instead Ann Coulter's latest column is pretty formulaic, as many of her columns have been lately.

I mean she flat out says that Dan Rather knew the documents were forgeries and put them on the air anyway, which I guess is kind of crazy. And she harps on the "fact" that the swift boat vets, you know those guys who've been on every news station for months, aren't getting any news coverage.

She then refights Vietnam.

It's often said that we never lost a battle in Vietnam, but that the war was lost at home by a seditious media demoralizing the American people. Ironically, the leader of that effort was Rather's predecessor at CBS News, Walter Cronkite, president of the Ho Chi Minh Admiration Society.

This argument is right up there with "the Civil War had nothing to do with Slavery" in my book. It's distorting the historical record to achieve some momentary political advantage, a fact even Ann seems to acknowledge with her qualifier "It's often said . . ."

The truth is we didn't know what we wanted in Vietnam. We knew that we didn't want it to become a communist country, but we didn't know how to arrange that. This lack of focus led to a confused campaign on every level, and, eventually, to our first lost war. And ever since them, some have wanted to "blame the messenger" for pointing out things weren't going well. If only all Americans had blindly accepted what President's Johnson and Nixon told them, we would have won.

That's putting a lot of faith in the power of belief.