From Vietnam Veterans against John Kerry
Posted on 01/30/2004 8:59:15 AM PST by jmstein7
The Character Issue: It Didn’t Hurt Clinton, But It Will Hurt Kerry
By Jonathan M. Stein
Bill Clinton and John Kerry have something in common: they are both liars. Bill Clinton’s lies were extrinsic to his ability to perform in office – i.e. he lied about receiving oral sex from an intern. John Kerry’s lies, distortions, and betrayals, on the other hand, go directly to his fitness, or lack thereof, to sit in the Oval Office. For that reason, American’s will not give Kerry the same “pass” that they gave Clinton on the character issue.
Public opinion polls indicate that President Bush’s strongest suit is his good character. In a recent Los Angeles Times survey, respondents stated that, regardless of his policies, they support the president because he “stands up for what he believes in,” they “know where he is coming from,” and, essentially, they “just like him.” Therefore, it follows a priori that a democrat who hopes to challenge Bush cannot merely run on policy differences – an effective candidate must be of equal or greater character. John Kerry is not that candidate.
The war on terror will unquestionably be a major theme in the 2004 Presidential Campaign. As in the days of the Cold War, the American public wants a leader who can ensure their continuing safety and protect their way of life from external malefactors. This is a critical area where John Kerry suffers from a severe credibility gap fostered by a long history of inconsistencies. Back in 1991, The New Republic caught John Kerry trying to play both sides of the Gulf War issue. Two letters were sent to Kerry’s office – one in opposition to the war, and one in favor of the war. Kerry’s response to the first letter read:
"Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition ... to the early use of military force by the US against Iraq. I share your concerns. On January 11, I voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work and against a resolution giving the president the immediate authority to go to war."
However, Kerry’s response to the second letter read:
"Thank you very much for contacting me to express your support for the actions of President Bush in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis and the policy goals he has established with our military deployment in the Persian Gulf."
The article was aptly titled "Same Senator, Same Constituent.”
Clearly, Kerry hopes to counterbalance his perceived dithering on critical defense issues with his service in Vietnam. To mute criticisms of his ability to lead the nation in the war on terror, Kerry constantly, and ostentatiously, touts himself as a Vietnam “War Hero.” His claims are nothing short of outrageous. At best, Kerry is a mere deserter; at worst, John Kerry is a war criminal.
John Kerry, commanding Swift Boat 44 in Vietnam, recklessly slaughtered innocent women, children, and the elderly in cold blood. These facts are undisputed – facts that John Kerry himself said he’ll “never forget.” In 1971, John Kerry went before Congress and betrayed his fellow servicemen. Kerry testified that American soldiers in Vietnam committed atrocities similar to the atrocities that he admits to having committed – and he called his comrades war criminals. Thus, by Kerry’s own definition, John Kerry himself is not a war hero – he is a war criminal.
Kerry did not complete his tour of duty in Vietnam. Instead, in an appeal to Commodore Charles F. Horne, Kerry abused a loophole in the rules to secure an early discharge – Kerry suffered three minor, superficial wounds. American’s will not trust Kerry to stay the course in Iraq when they learn that he himself opted to cut and run.
Finally, as Senator in 1993, John Kerry betrayed and defamed the families of fellow servicemen who were MIA. Despite strong evidence to the contrary, which Kerry was able to suppress as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA, the Committee’s final report concluded that “there is no proof that U.S. POWs survived.” Kerry then turned viciously on the MIA/POW families and activists, slandering them as “professional malcontents, conspiracy mongers, con artists, and dime-store Rambos.” As a result, relations with Vietnam were normalized, and Colliers International, a firm in Senator Kerry’s Massachusetts, secured a contract with Vietnam worth billions.
John Kerry cannot be trusted, and he must never sit in the Oval Office.
Blood On Their Hands: Exposing Pro-abortion Catholic Politicians
Kerry [Catholic} says he'll filibuster Supreme Court nominees who do not support abortion rights
PETITION TO EX-COMMUNICATE PRO-ABORTION CATHOLIC ELECTED OFFICIALS
Kerry says he alone hasn't 'played games' on abortion
AS KERRY EMERGES, SO DOES CONCERN THAT AS PRESIDENT HE MAY BE DENIED COMMUNION
I may be wrong .. but I did read that she had a nervous breakdown from being ignored by John. They eventually divorced and she has since remarried.
From Vietnam Veterans against John Kerry
After the 666 tatoo removal, Botox injections in the forehead, injections of his butt fat into his jowls, some of the Clintoon Hair dye, and a gallon of Get the Red Out of Yo Eyes, we have the new Lurch:
Again and again, the question was asked: Did Kerry commit atrocities or see them committed by others? Kerry stuck to his script.
"I personally didn't see personal atrocities in the sense I saw somebody cut a head off or something like that," Kerry said. "However, I did take part in free-fire zones, I did take part in harassment and interdiction fire, I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were burned to the ground. And all of these acts, I find out later on, are contrary to the Hague and Geneva conventions and to the laws of warfare. So in that sense, anybody who took part in those, if you carry out the application of the Nuremberg Principles, is in fact guilty. But we are not trying to find war criminals. That is not our purpose. It never has been."
O'Neill for years has declined to talk about the experience, partly because he says he became disillusioned with politics and government after the fall of Saigon in 1975.
But in a telephone interview from Texas, where he is a trial attorney, O'Neill made it clear he still harbors resentment at the way Kerry accused veterans of atrocities.
"The primary reason I got involved was I thought the charges of war crimes were irresponsible and wrong," O'Neill said. "I thought they did a real disservice to all the people that were there. I thought they were immoral."
The bitterness remains. Asked whether he agrees with the view of some observers that Kerry was forever altered by the war, O'Neill responded: "The war didn't change [Kerry]. I think he was a guy driven tremendously by ambition. I think he was that way before he went and is that way today."
Almost forgotten in that famous speech were Kerry's controversial assertions that Vietnam veterans had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephone to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."
To some veterans, including some of those who served alongside Kerry, this was too much. They thought they had served honorably, and they had seen Kerry as a gung-ho skipper who led the charge and didn't voice such opposition on the battlefield.
"I would go up a river with that man anytime. He was a great American fighting man," said Michael Bernique, a highly decorated veteran who served as a swift boat skipper alongside Kerry. But Bernique remains upset with Kerry's assertion that atrocities were committed, an assertion that Kerry has not backed away from. "I think there was a point in time when John was making it up fast and quick. I think he was saying whatever he needed to say."
BUT EVEN MORE INTERESTING TO ME, is this from the same article:
Kerry gained national attention in April 1971, when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then chaired by Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-AR), who led opposition in the Congress against U.S. participation in the war. During the course of his testimony, Kerry stated that the United States had a definite obligation to make extensive economic reparations to the people of Vietnam.
Kerry's testimony, it should be noted, occurred while some of his fellow Vietnam veterans were known by the world to be enduring terrible suffering as prisoners of war in North Vietnamese prisons. Kerry was a supporter of the "People's Peace Treaty," a supposed "people's" declaration to end the war, reportedly drawn up in communist East Germany. It included nine points, all of which were taken from Viet Cong peace proposals at the Paris peace talks as conditions for ending the war.
One of the provisions stated: "The Vietnamese pledge that as soon as the U.S. government publicly sets a date for total withdrawal [from Vietnam], they will enter discussion to secure the release of all American prisoners, including pilots captured while bombing North Vietnam." In other words, Kerry and his VVAW advocated the communist line to withdraw all U.S. troops from Vietnam first and then negotiate with Hanoi over the release of prisoners. Had the nine points of the "People's Peace Treaty" favored by Kerry been accepted by American negotiators, the United States would have totally lost all leverage to get the communists to release any POWs captured during the war years.
I just had to include a photo.
In Lowell, Mass., the veteran and onetime antiwar activist, watches as President Nixon announces a Vietnam cease-fire in January 1973.
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