Kerry's Speech

Kerry gave his speech last night (transcript here.) I'd say his presentation was ok, not great, but serviceable. As to the ideas expressed, I was disappointed. I heard lots of things that would be nice to have, but no real concrete ways to achieve them. Oh, and John Kerry served in Vietnam. The whole 'patriotism' issue is strange to me. As far as I know, no one of any importance has attacked the patriotism of John Kerry or the democrats. People have attacked their polies and their decisions, which the democrats have claimed was an attack on patriotism but no one has actually made the charge they are claiming was made against them and are now spending a lot of time defending against. In debate this tactic is called a straw man. Of course Iran and North Korea were not mentioned at all in his speech. He did talk about gaining allies in the war on terror, but other than the idea that these countries hate Bush and therefore won't work with us and will love Kerry and therefore will work with us when he is President, there was no concrete methods of how to achieve this goal. Is John Kerry aware of the Oil-for-Food scandal? That many politicians, in many countries who opposed the war appear to have been bribed by Saddam Hussein? Is John Kerry aware that the French and Chinese, who have oil interests in Sudan, are opposing any strong actions by the United Nations to stop the Genocide in Darfur? Based on his speech, if he does know about these things he doesn't consider them important.