Sometimes, the mask slips

I wish I had a dime for every time I have heard some liberal say that "I support the troops but hate the war."

I know it is a lie, and every now and again evidence emerges about how great a lie it is.

This week in San Francisco, the city Board of Supervisors voted against receiving the retired battleship, USS Iowa, for permanent berthing in San Francisco Bay. Members of the board cited opposition to the war in Iraq and opposition to United States policy regarding homosexuals in the military.

Maybe the city supervisors never studied the history of the Iowa. Maybe they thought that Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Leyte Gulf, and Okinawa were all battles fought in Iraq. Maybe they got the impression that the pilots on all those kamikazes launched at the Iowa and other ships late in WWII were actually Moslem insurgents.

I'm surprised that nobody brought up the 1989 turret explosion on the Iowa, which killed 47 crewmen and was first blamed on a jilted homosexual sailor. Later, the incident was filed under "cause unknown" after numerous howls of protest by activists. My bet is that the Board of Supervisors knew too little of the Iowa's history even to remember that incident, so it never would have occurred to them that the ship might be a fitting device in San Francisco to raise consciousness regarding gays in the military.

Not that the use of the ship in that way wouldn't really tick me off, as well.

Bottom line: the liberal leaders in San Francisco are willing to insult the men who have served on that venerable old battleship for six decades just so they can launch an insult in President Bush's direction. They might hate the president and the war, but they also hate the military-- both past and present.

And they hate their country.