Beer barrel alert!

...And Kerry's Malicious Mentor

Meanwhile, another Boston America- basher, Ted Kennedy, seems to be bucking for a job on al-Jazeera television.

John Forbes Kerry's mentor went so far over the top on the Abu Ghraib affair this week that you've got to wonder whether his brains have - finally - fallen out:

"On March 19, 2004, President Bush asked, 'Who would prefer that Saddam's torture chambers still be open?' Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management - U.S. management."

Unfortunately, because such slanderous nonsense was uttered by a senator with the magic "Kennedy" name, it's impossible to ignore - even if it comes straight from Michael Moore's playbook.

If Ted Kennedy cannot tell the difference between the abuses at Abu Ghraib, disturbing as they are, and the systematic, decades-long litany of torture and torment inflicted on thousands of Iraqis by Saddam Hussein's henchmen, then he has no business sitting in the United States Senate.

The contemptible rumpot has no business sitting there in the first place. But where else can he get a "waitress sandwich"? Too bad Ted didn't save any snaps of that or his hijinks with now deceased staffers. He could have fit right in with the Abu Ghraib crowd.

But even more disturbing is that such hate-America rubbish comes from someone who occupies a senior place of influence with the Democratic Party's candidate for president, John Kerry.

Indeed, Kennedy's contemptuous libel is just as much a smear of America's troops as was Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony, in which he depicted the U.S. military as little more than a collection of child-murderers and war criminals.

What did Kerry have to say about his colleague's slander?

"I don't agree with the framing of that," Kerry said on Don Imus' radio show. "He's my friend, and I respect him enormously, but I don't agree with the framing of that."

Hardly a profile in courage now, is it?

And then Kerry added this: "But I know what he's saying - and so do you."

Yes, we know what Ted Kennedy is saying - but we're a lot less certain about where John Kerry stands.

In fact, it seems like Kerry is trying to play both sides of this issue and bolster his appeal to the Democrats' nutcase-left wing.

John Kerry is the nutcase left wing. But I like the ventriloquism act - ole Ted breaks wind and Lurch's lips move.