Conversation with a liberal

There's a guy at my school who I know somewhat--we have mutual friends, and he cuts my hair occasionally. Unbeknownst to me, he's a big-time liberal Democrat and a Kerry supporter. I found this out when he responded to an editorial I submitted to the school paper. He was incorrect, but we haven't discussed it. Unrelated to our exchange, I sent him a link to an article by Oliver North--an open letter to John Kerry. He responded:

Ok, I have 2 main riffs with this...

1 Kerry, unlike Bush or Cheney has served in the military. Period.
2 Vietnam and Iraq are similar in that they are both wars that should have never happened. And unlike Bush and Cheney, Kerry has realized this. He realized Vietnam was a mistake and when he came back he urged Washington to withdraw our troops. He is doing the same with Iraq. The war was a mistake because there were no WMD’s. Now it is time to withdraw.

Now, I couldn't simply let this hogwash go unanswered. So I sent the following back:

Ok, I have 4 main riffs with this...

1 Military service (or lack thereof) is not the absolute qualifier for president. You can't simply dismiss any criticisms of Kerry's military record (or events related to it) simply because he served and Bush/Cheney didn't. That's ridiculous.

2 I am not extremely educated about whether Vietnam was right/wrong, so I can't comment. But I do know that yes, Iraq should have happened. Everybody against the war acts like the threat of WMDs was the sole reason for going to war. It was not--it just happened to get the most media coverage. There were plenty of other reasons to topple Saddam's brutal regine: countless U.N. resolutions over more than a decade, Saddam also had definite ties to al Qaeda, he had billions of dollars available to him to either be a direct threat himself or to fund others to be, he had tortured and killed his own people, he was a source of instability in an already tense Middle East (he invaded a neighboring country), he paid the families of suicide bombers. The latest report indicated that, although he didn't physically have WMDs, Saddam was capable of starting production of biological weaons within one month. And these are just off the top of my head.

3 Kerry's actions after he returned from the war were not those of an honorable man who genuinely realized the war was a mistake. He deliberately undermined his fellow soldiers, resulting in worse torture for POWs. He either lied about the war crimes or he is a war criminal himself. Either option is not exactly positive for Kerry.

4 Even if the war was only about WMDs, and even if there was absolutely no threat, and even in John Kerry is right, withdrawing is the worst possible thing we could do. Even Kerry says he'll stay and finish the job in Iraq (although he might say the opposite tomorrow).

Still waiting for a response......