America: It started with a remark by Michael Moore at a New Hampshire campaign rally for retired general Wesley Clark. The outspoken documentary-maker called George Bush a "deserter" from the National Guard.
At the next Democratic debate, moderator Peter Jennings took issue with Clark for tolerating "a reckless charge not supported by the facts." That prompted several columnists to recall that while Bush was not a "deserter" he did go AWOL - absent without leave - for a year when a member of the Air National Guard in 1972-1973.
Molly Irvins, author of two critical biographies of Bush, maintains that as a "son of privilege" he got a safe haven in Texas Guard units at the height of the Vietnam War through the intervention of Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes, and that he didn't report for duty part of the time. This was further documented by the Boston Globe during the 2000 presidential election.
The issue was not, however, taken up by the Gore campaign because, it seems, the former vice-president had himself once wrongly claimed to have been "under fire" in Vietnam. This time it is different. The Democrats are sending out strong signals that the gloves are off on the issue of character.
Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe took every opportunity to appear on television this week to say that while Bush didn't show up at the National Guard, thousands of Americans serving in today's National Guard in Iraq do not have that option. The Bush campaign has accused Democrats of recklessly trying to impugn the character of the commander-in-chief.
They are somewhat restrained in their counter-offensive, however, by the fact that the likely Democratic candidate, Senator John Kerry, is a three-purple heart war hero. This gives the Democrats more freedom to try to discredit the "Mission Accomplished" act of a flight-suited George Bush landing on an aircraft carrier in May and to prevent the President from seizing the high ground on national security.
Then there is the bitter memory of what happened to Democratic Senator Max Cleland in the elections of 2002. Cleland, a Vietnam War veteran who lost an arm and both legs at Khe Sahn, had his patriotism challenged in an ad aired by his opponent, Saxby Chambliss. It featured a picture of Osama bin Laden and accused Cleland of voting 11 times "against the President's Homeland Security efforts".
Cleland, who supported the Department of Homeland Security before the President did, but opposed amendments diminishing union protection for civil servants, did not fight back and lost his seat. This character assassination by Chambliss, who evaded the Vietnam call-up, hasn't been forgotten or forgiven.
At campaign stops with John Kerry, Cleland is now accusing the President of sham patriotism, saying the nation should not have a President "who didn't even complete his tour stateside in the Guard". Another reason the Democrats are getting down and personal on this issue is that they also remember the fate of 1988 nominee Michael Dukakis, who sank like a stone after failing to respond to attacks on his character by the Bush Snr campaign. This time, "when they go after our party nominee we're going to punch harder," McAuliffe said.
The issue of military service does not decide campaigns. Bill Clinton dodged the draft, but defeated two second World War vets, George Bush Snr and Bob Dole. However, in this election it raises further doubts about the President's credibility after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.
While Colin Powell defends the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, his son, Michael Powell, has no difficulty identifying a weapon of mass distraction in America in the form of Janet Jackson's right breast. Powell, head of the Federal Communications Commission (featured here last week for going after Bono for his use of the f-word on television) is obsessing about the baring of the singer's bejeweled breast for five seconds on CBS, during a half-time musical performance at Sunday's Super Bowl in Houston.
He's not the only one. The episode of "wardrobe malfunction" became the most searched-after event ever on the Internet, according to the Lycos 50, which monitors the website's search engine.
Prompted by outraged parents, and upright bodies like the Family Research Council and the Southern Baptist Convention, Powell launched an immediate inquiry into what he called this "classless, crass and deplorable stunt", and got abject apologies from CBS and Ms Jackson, who lost her role as a presenter for the Grammys.
The FCC did not seem to find anything objectionable in the advertisements on CBS during the Super Bowl for which firms paid $2.3 million per 30 seconds. There were three separate slots for erectile dysfunction featuring Viagra, and Levitra and Cialis, the latter of which asked an estimated 90 million viewers, including every school-going football fan in the country, "If a relaxing moment turns into the right moment, will you be ready?" Another ad showed a dog lunging for the crotch of a man to force him to give up his Bud Lite to its owner. In a fast food promotion, an elderly man stabs his wife with a cane as they fight for a potato chip.
CBS did, however, ban one ad as totally unacceptable. It was from the online political forum MoveOn.org and it showed children doing adult jobs, with the rhetorical question, "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion deficit?" Clearly this was a "classless, crass and deplorable stunt" that offended against CBS's mission to "maintain broadcast standards".
Al-Qaeda joins forces with an IRA splinter group. A sleeper cell attacks office towers and the New York subway. A Republican Congressman called Sean Cross works with the FBI to head off a more devastating attack - a dirty bomb in Lower Manhattan. That's the plot of a new book coming out in New York next week.
The author is Republican Congressman Peter King (aka Sean Cross?), a member of the International Relations Committee, friend of Gerry Adams, and author of two books with IRA themes, Terrible Beauty and Deliver Us From Evil.