so what if it's a shitstorm?

John Kerry needs to overcome his natural cautiousness, Philip James writes in the Guardian today, and he's right - he's too slow to get stuck in to Bush, too nervous that he'll be made to look unpatriotic. But things aren't going well enough, and he needs to stick his neck out. The fall out might not be pretty, but it would be better than missing the opportunity altogether, as Gore did last time around.

Had Kerry stuck the boot in over the troops disobeying orders last weekend, James writes,

"...it would have been a shitstorm, but one in which Kerry would have ultimately prevailed by forcing the focus onto the judgment of a president who led the world's mightiest army into a war with no apparent end, without genuine allied support and without the basic tools to complete the task."

We need him to find something that sticks. It's no good playing safe.