Posted on 02/22/2004 1:35:58 PM PST by KQQL
VIETNAM has been the defining issue for John Kerry. His status as a decorated war hero has helped to propel him to the front of the pack of Democrat candidates seeking to evict George W.Bush from the White House. Conservative critics believe he has been given a free ride for too long on his war record, however, and are planning a fightback.
Support for their case is expected to come from a book to be published next month by reporters from The Boston Globe in Kerry's home state of Massachusetts. The book, JF Kerry, the Complete Biography, will question the extent of his injuries in Vietnam and whether he was entitled to an early release from the war.
Vietnam, The Washington Post opined at the weekend, "is a double-edged issue" for the 60-year-old Democratic frontrunner. Kerry has not authorised the release of his war records - a strange omission, say his political foes, given the ferocity with which his supporters have demanded to see every last document of Bush's military service in the Texas Air National Guard.
"Vietnam is such a crucial part of his background and his campaign, you would think he would want people to see them," said Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, a conservative journal. "There is going to be pressure on him to release them."
Kerry, who is surrounded on the stump by the "band of brothers" who fought with him in the Mekong Delta, became a fierce public critic of the Vietnam War after he left the navy.
A faked photograph of Kerry sharing a microphone with Jane Fonda was a warning of how his opposition to the conflict would be used against him. There also has been much criticism of the way he threw away another man's medals rather than his own during a 1971 protest demonstration.
Kerry's conduct during the war, however, was until now thought to be sacrosanct. Unlike many of his generation, he volunteered for service in Vietnam. He went on to perform heroically as the skipper of a Swift boat patrolling Vietcong-infested waters, and won a Bronze Star and a Silver Star for bravery.
Kerry served only four months of a year-long tour of duty after he received three Purple Hearts for being wounded in action. The injuries were not serious; by his own account, one shrapnel wound laid him off for two days and the other two did not interrupt his duties.
Five of his friends died in action and his medals show that, at the very least, he had several brushes with death. The future senator then invoked what he insists was a "three and you're out" rule enabling a soldier with three Purple Hearts to be sent home.
He requested a transfer and was given a plum job as an admiral's aide in Brooklyn. He returned to the US a bitter opponent of the war and was released from the army early.
In response to an inquiry from The Sunday Times, Kerry's campaign staff gave the newspaper a copy of naval regulations stating that "all naval personnel" who are "wounded three times, regardless of the nature of the wound or the treatment required for each wound" may be reassigned.
A spokesman for the US Navy said, however, that such redeployment was not automatic: "It would depend a lot on the nature of the injuries."
Ted Sampley, who runs Vietnam Vets Against John Kerry, said if a soldier could be sent home for minor wounds, "there would have been a lot of people claiming scratches, getting their Purple Hearts and getting out of there".
Sampley believes that the well-connected Kerry - photographed with president John F.Kennedy as a young man - simply received favourable treatment. "How many other people were able to get out of Vietnam early and be reassigned to a cushy post?" he said.
President Bush did not spend a week nor did he babble. The media were the ones spending a week on his ANG records and insisting they weren't enough. One soundbite had Kerry saying he told "his surrogates" to leave it alone but then he continues to bring it up. This week he gave it more attention by whining that he is a victim of a Republican smear job. He even denies his own words before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971.
If anyone has been babbling, it has been Kerry...and you.
you can't be so naive to think that Kerry didn't expect his military record to be an issue...this is more Kerry strategery...
Here's what he's hiding...NOTHING
He wants the Right to toot thier horn for a few weeks and then make fools out of themselves when he releases what is likley a rather booring document.
And with every challenge, you give him another oppourtunity to trumpet his VietNam service and 3 Purple hearts...which all sounds pretty good to your average American
Meanwhile you wasted a day not attacking is voting record.
My understanding of that story was that Boorda had earned his medals. That Col. David Hackworth pressed a campaign of falsely accusing him of not earning them and that the embarrassment of that accusation was too much, for someone who valued honor so much, driving him to suicide.
I've had that story verified before by other FReepers.
Sounds like a tough job to me - especially in a foreign land... Ya know, there are tons of guys in Iraq right now doing these less than glorious jobs...That's why we are winning the war. Your target may have been Kerry - but you have dealt a slap in the face to every soldier.
In that case, I have slapped my own face because I have served in the armed forces in non-combat jobs (by pure luck that the balloon happened to go up in some other geographical region at the time) in foreign lands including a one year tour of duty, that I volunteered for, in Guantanamo at the height of the Cold War at the time period of the Grenada invasion.
Unlike John F. Kerry, however, I do not go out of my way to taunt other servicemembers to say, "Hey, I was across the Fenceline from the Cuban Army and you were in the National Guard. I'm a hero and your are the moral equivalent of a draft dodger!"
Kerry is playing that game.
Why are you making excuses for him?
What I did at Guantanamo for a year, being OIC of Fleet Sick Call, was not a "tough job". Volunteering to be OIC of a swift boat racing up and down water skiing in the South China Sea was not a "tough job".
Those sailors and Marines that came to my Sick Call at Guantanamo with ulcers from stress because their job was minefield maintenance, that Marine that died before my eyes in my E.R. at Guantanamo after having both his legs blown off by a Bouncing Betty in a minefield maintenance accident..........those guys were the ones with "tough jobs".
I didn't have a "tough job" at Guantanamo, although a civilian might believe so. They did.
TS
OK, let's see them.
OK, let's see them.
375 posted on 02/23/2004 1:25:26 AM PST by backhoe
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BobS,
We all are waiting................
Don't get your hopes up.
The mods will probably move it to Chat.
Kerry defends Islam
My understanding of that story was that Boorda had earned his medals.
The controversy concerned Boorda's affixing a combat "V" on two of his medals indicating that it was earned in combat. Having received such an award myself, the citation for the medal indicates explicitly that the "V" is authorized. Boorda was not authorized to wear it. When a reporter from Newsweek discovered that, it led to a series of events that led to Boorda's suicide.
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