"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." -- John Kerry, in what he later claimed was a botched joke.

"There is, Hugh, I agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media. One that begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it's very dangerous. That's different from the media doing its job of challenging the exercise of power without fear or favor." -- Liberal ABC reporter, Terry Moran

"Do our government's poorly paid contract killers deserve our 'support' for blindly following orders?" -- Ted Rall

"If a young fella has an option of having a decent career or joining the army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq." -- Charles Rangel

These quotes? They're not unique expressions of the left's contempt for our troops that are putting themselves in harm's way. If you don't believe that, look at anti-war protests where they carry signs that say things like, "Long Live Iraqi Resistance" and "We support our troops when they shoot their officers." Look at popular liberal forums like the Democratic Underground, where libs refer to our troops as "Cannon fodder and killers doing what they're told to do," and say that they're "deeply ashamed of them." Look at the liberal groups like Not in Our Name where they run a "Stop The Military Recruiters Campaign" or UC Santa Cruz, where left wing thugs brag about "booting military recruiters off campus." You can even look to the liberal Mecca of San Francisco, where the The Board of Education voted to end the JROTC program and in a direct slap at the military, "refused to allow the retired USS Iowa, a historic World War II battleship, to be docked in the Port of San Francisco."

There is an extreme, pervasive dislike of the military amongst the majority of liberals in this country. It influences everything from the mainstream media's obsessive focus on Abu Ghraib, which was covered so extensively in part because they hoped to tar the average soldier by association to the left's wish to surrender in Iraq -- which is driven partly by their desire to humiliate the troops in the field and render their sacrifices meaningless.

Today, liberals may be politically savvy enough not to spit on troops returning home as they did during Vietnam, but the loathing and contempt for our troops present in that gesture are still there, behind the libs implausibly claiming to "support the troops, but not the mission" through gritted teeth.