It isn't false in the least to point out that Jesse Ventura suffers from a delusional fixation with himself as a military leader. He was never a military leader, even though he technically was in charge of the state National Guard. But that role is not a military role, it is a civilian one, in the same way that the president of the US is a civilian leader of the US military.

Because he has this powerful self-identification with his military roles, he has, like many military veterans, never been able to leave behind his military days, despite the fact that he has been out of the military for decades.

This is like a national flashback to Vietnam syndrome we are currently enduring. I doubt the Democratic party ever gave any of this any thought when they annointed Kerry. But it is what the Democratic Party and the Kerry campaign has wrought--a ripping open of the Vietnam war wounds, and that is all that is playing itself out now. We are reliving 1968 in many ways here, from the party conventions to the veterans tearing themselves apart in public over what they did as soldiers. Because now, the soldiers know they have been duped into committing the same sorts of war crimes as their Vietnam brethren committed.

Iraq was no more a threat to the US than Vietnam was. Many people bought into the romantic warrior mythology because in our Greco-Roman-Anglo American culture that has always been the most powerful, most seductive mythology for young men coming of age.

Then, they go and commit acts that are criminal in any civilian sense, come home to find out that they weren't fighting for a just or noble cause, or for anyone's freedom, or ridding the world of evil, or any of that other bullshit they were told via the mythologizing of the media and the politicians who sent them to war.

And I would bet on the Republican machine in this skirmish. I'm putting my money on the Republicans chewing these poor, hapless vets up and spitting them out in no time. Is it right? Hell no. But that is the political system we've voted into place with our complacency as US citizens.

In a democracy, you don't just get the government you deserve, you get the government you vote for, sometimes. Well, okay not in 2000, but...

Welcome to the Banana Republic of the United States.