"While the press has been in a frenzy to possess George W. Bush's dental records from the period of his Air National Guard days, the very interesting years in Kerry's life following his return from Vietnam have been allowed to remain obscure. There is plenty of interest in these years, and many questions for Kerry to answer. Take the Alcatraz incident, for example. If another "occupation" occurred on his watch as president, what would John Kerry do? Did he approve of Nixon's actions in June 1971? Etc., etc., etc. But don't hold your breath waiting for a Judy Woodruff or similar softball pitcher to ask Kerry any uncomfortable questions. Too many of the television heavies (Chris Matthews, Rather) don't want the anti-war days brought up for a whole bunch of reasons. The biggest reason: Most of the big names in the media of today threw in with the anti-war crowd of the late '60s and early '70s – either as participant or reporter – and the devastation that followed in the wake of the American withdrawal from southeast Asia is an inconvenient obstacle to the illusions of the media as to their own morality. Don't expect Uncle Walter, for example, to ever speculate on his contribution to the chain of events that led to the collapse of South Vietnam and the savaging of Cambodia. This unwillingness to confront the consequences of individual action underlies most of the collective American attitude toward the anti-war movement. When America cut and ran in Vietnam, a very predictable holocaust followed – a real holocaust, not a rhetorical one. Did the anti-war movement hope for such a thing? Of course not. But ought Fonda, Hayden, the SDS, the marchers in the Mobilization Against the War, the VVAW – and its superstar witness, John Kerry – and hundreds of thousand of others in "the movement" to have seen it coming? Of course they should have. And they ought to have admitted error and professed grief long ago, but they haven't. Well, a very, very few have. Joan Baez has at least confronted the agony of the region that America abandoned. John Kerry never has. Before he becomes president or even gets close, he needs to sit down with a serious journalist – not an enabler like so many in D.C. with ties to the anti-war left of that era – and address his actions from the years that media seems to have forgot."
FReegards...MUD