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The Democrats recently announced the theme for the day that Sen. Barack Obama's running mate will speak at the Democratic National Convention in Denver -- "national security and honoring veterans." This may well provide a hint about who the vice-presidential selection will be, as it seems unlikely that such a theme would be used to frame a nominee who, like Sen. Obama, has no military experience.

Before speculating about the most likely candidate, let's take a few moments to review ways in which the Democratic Party has gone about "honoring" the US military in the past.

In November of 2000, during the statewide vote recount in Florida, Al Gore and the Democrats sent lawyers to every voting district in the state, armed with detailed instructions on how to disqualify military absentee ballots. Peggy Noonan reported that "...Democrats on the ground, and their operators from the Democratic National Committee and the state organization and the Gore campaign, deliberately and systematically scrutinized for challenge every military absentee ballot, and knocked out as many as they could on whatever technicality they could find or even invent."

Early in 2004, evidence emerged that a small group of Army prison guards had humiliated and abused captive insurgents at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The abuses were discovered by the Army itself, and those responsible were duly tried, convicted and sentenced. Nevertheless, leftists eager to discredit the US military seized upon these trivial events as though they constituted the most important story of the war. Sen. Edward Kennedy rose in the Senate to charge that "Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management -- US management." By June, the New York Times had featured Abu Ghraib stories on its front page more than 50 times, including a string of 28 days in a row. The purpose was evident -- to undermine support for the military and its mission by persuading the public that American troops were brutal abusers.

Leftist filmmaker Michael Moore was a welcome guest at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, where he sat in former President Jimmy Carter's box seat. Yet Moore had openly embraced those who ambushed and killed US troops, saying that "the Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'the enemy.' They are the revolution, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win." Ohio Democratic Representative Marcy Kaptur echoed this view, suggesting that "...Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kinds of atypical revolutionaries that helped to cast off the British crown." This is a particularly novel way to support our troops -- by comparing their enemies to the patriots who fought for American independence.

In 2005, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin compared the treatment of terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo, Cuba to the crimes committed "by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings." In fact, no prisoners had died at Guantanamo, whereas some fifteen to thirty million Soviets expired in the gulags, six million Jews were killed in Nazi concentration camps, and two million Cambodians were murdered by Pol Pot's communist Khmer Rouge. A Pentagon spokesman noted that all members of Congress were welcome to inspect the Guantanamo facilities -- something Sen. Durbin had never done. Public outrage eventually prompted Durbin to offer a qualified apology "...if anything I said cast a negative light on our fine men and women in the military."

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