Just saw another Kerry spokes person on the news demanding President Bush to "silence" the Swift Boat Vets. Does anyone besides me find this call for President of the United States to silence the free speech of anyone, espcially a vet, a little scary? What happened to "I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it?"

Now, my job is to teach strategy, not get partisan in my analysis, but with legal challenges, letters threatening televisions stations, and advertisements calling for the President to act against the Vets, the Kerry people are expressing a desire to stiffle speech. Their motto is clearly, "Because I don't agree with what you say, I will fight everyway I can to prevent you from saying it."

Sun Tzu equates knowledge with speech and hearing. In Sun Tzu's strategy, preventing communication is the exact equivelent of encouraging ignorance. Generally, we want opponents to be ignorant, but what does it say when you want to keep the voters ignorant.

In the interest of full disclosure, I said before the Democratic Convention that if the Democrats nominated Kerry, they would be putting themselves in a strategically unwinnable position. Just reading his own accounts of his military service, I said he was seriously flawed as a candidate. Many people don't like Bush, but when the Democrats rushed to pick another very unlikable candidate, they refused to take advantage of the opening the Republicans gave them.