Is the footage in the Kerry NY commercials real? (vanity)

The Hill ^ | 2/28/2004 | dilbert56

[Dilbert56]

(First post - please forgive any screw-ups)

New York is now being tortured by Kerry and Edwards commercials. Kerry's, of course, shows him in Vietnam. A couple of days ago this article came out in "The Hill" about how he returned to the scene of one battle and recreated the episode with a movie camera.

Could the footage in the commercial be from that? Inquiring minds want to know.

[Dilbert56]

Shouldn't the media be asking this?

[ScaniaBoy]

If the article in the Hill is correct there is another question that ought to be asked:

Around the time where Mr Kerry seems permanently locked, in any presidential election the question was asked if this man can be entrusted with having his finger on the button.

Apart from his politics, is Mr Kerry sane enough??

ScaniaBoy

[Condor51]

Kerry in Vietnam

[FairOpinion]

Good post!

In general, unless the source is on the list of places we are supposed to excerpt (see this: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1073425/posts ), you can post the entire article in the space provided, when you make your post.

BTW -- Here is the link to the Boston Globe article they are referring to:

http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/

It's part 2 of the series.

[FairOpinion]

John Kerry: Stuck in a Vietnam-era time warp

Why does Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) talk incessantly about Vietnam?

Obviously, it has given him a great political advantage in past campaigns, and he hopes it will do the same in his race for the White House.

But there might be another reason. Perhaps more than any other presidential candidate in recent memory, Kerry seems to be living in another time, playing a movie of Vietnam over and over in his mind.

In fact, he is often playing an actual movie of Vietnam over and over on his television.

Consider this scene from a remarkable profile of Kerry published in the Boston Globe in October 1996, when Kerry was in a tough re-election battle.

Kerry told reporter Charles Sennott the oft-repeated story of the February 1969 firefight in which Kerry attacked the Viet Cong who ambushed his Swift boat.

Kerry won the Silver Star, as well as a Purple Heart, for his efforts.

But the story wasn’t about the firefight itself. It was also Kerry’s reaction to it.

The future senator was so “focused on his future ambitions,” Sennott reported, that he bought a Super-8 movie camera, returned to the scene, and re-enacted the skirmish on film.

It was that film, transferred to videotape, that Kerry played for Sennott.

“I’ll show you where they shot from. See? That’s the hole covered up with reeds,” Kerry said as he ran the tape in slow motion.

Kerry told Sennott that his decision to re-enact the fight on film was no big deal — “just something I did, no great meaning to it.” But it’s clear that the old movie is a huge deal.

“Through hours of watching the films in the den of his newly renovated Beacon Hill mansion, it becomes apparent that these are memories and footage he returns to often,” Sennott wrote.

“Kerry jumps repeatedly from the couch to adjust the Sony large-screen TV in his home entertainment center, making sure the picture is clear, the color correct. He fast forwards, rewinds and freeze-frames the footage. His running commentary — vivid, sometimes touching, sometimes self-serving — never misses a beat.”

In John Kerry’s home entertainment center, it’s always 1969. It’s sometimes that way in his campaign, too.

Is Kerry’s the only campaign to play Jimi Hendrix — specifically, “Fire” from the 1967 album “Are You Experienced?” — at rallies?

Other candidates — like John Edwards, with his theme song, John Mellencamp’s “Small Town” — aren’t exactly cutting-edge, but they have chosen somewhat newer stuff.

And what about the music on Kerry’s bus? Before the Iowa caucuses, Washington Post reporter Ceci Connelly described the candidate hanging out on the bus with Peter Yarrow, his old antiwar friend from Peter, Paul, and Mary.

“Pedro, sing us a song,” Kerry ordered one day. Yarrow picked up a guitar and began to play and sing — and later waxed nostalgic about the antiwar rallies he attended way back when with Kerry and Sen. Eugene McCarthy.

Earlier, Connelly wrote, when Yarrow sang “Puff the Magic Dragon” at an event in a private home in Ames, Iowa, “Kerry lifted his fingers to his mouth for a quick toke on an imaginary joint. You can almost see his thick mane of silver hair returning to the shaggy brown do of those days.”

Even Kerry’s latest sound bite, the speech in Ohio on Tuesday in which he described President Bush as a “walking contradiction,” was apparently a reference to the old days.

In this case, it was Kris Kristofferson’s “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33 “ from 1970, with its line, “He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.”

This man is living in a time warp. No wonder Kerry sees any conflict — Gulf War I, Afghanistan, Gulf War II — as a potential Vietnam. In Kerry’s world, Vietnam is running on a continuous loop on that big-screen TV — with Jimi, Kris and Peter, Paul and Mary singing in the background.

Some people become stuck in the time period in which they had their most intense experiences.

Others, perhaps with more mental or emotional flexibility, move on. Kerry seems to be the former.

At 60 years old, Kerry seems to be obsessed with the past in ways that the 57-year-old George W. Bush isn’t.

And Kerry seems far older than, say, the 71-year-old Donald Rumsfeld — a man who is always moving ahead, not inclined to lecture about the way things were 30 or 40 years ago.

Kerry’s penchant for looking back would not a good trait in a president who will have to deal with a distinctly 21st century, post-Sept. 11 world.

America faces threats that were unheard of in Kerry’s formative years. While those threats build, Kerry is turning on Hendrix, toking on an imaginary joint and telling you about Vietnam.

And just imagine the inauguration. The new president delivers his speech, waves to the crowd, and cries ...”Pedro, sing us a song!”

[happydogdesign]

According to this recent Byron York article, that film footage may have been a reenactment:

"Kerry told reporter Charles Sennott the oft-repeated story of the February 1969 firefight in which Kerry attacked the Viet Cong who ambushed his Swift boat.

Kerry won the Silver Star, as well as a Purple Heart, for his efforts.

But the story wasn’t about the firefight itself. It was also Kerry’s reaction to it.

The future senator was so “focused on his future ambitions,” Sennott reported, that he bought a Super-8 movie camera, returned to the scene, and re-enacted the skirmish on film.

It was that film, transferred to videotape, that Kerry played for Sennott."

A few Nam vets I know find the commercial hilarious, and wondered why he was dressed up like a grunt and waltzing through the jungle, mugging for the camera with a goofy grin, and carying an M-16 like a purse..

[monocle]

Why does Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) talk incessantly about Vietnam?

Because Vietnam was and is Kerry's sole accomplishment in his sixty years on this planet.

[jackbill]

I don't think that the article that you linked is the correct one. Your link takes you to the June 2003 series.

The story about him returning to the scene was published by the Boston Globe in October,1996, during the Senate campaign. It was written by Charles Sennott. I haven't seen a link to it but Byron York described Kerry's creepy actions at:

http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200402270811.asp

[Starve The Beast]

Why does Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) talk incessantly about Vietnam?

To distract people from his voting record, which is entirely anti-American.

[NonValueAdded]

How soon after the actual incident did Kerry shoot the movie? He didn't stay in-country very long. Is it possible that Kerry worked out his exit strategy soon after the horror of his Swift boat safe-haven assignment turning into the real war? Was John Kerry on a trophy hunt? Once he bagged his limit of "one dead gook" did he have the presence of mind to shoot his commercial? How jazzed up was Kerry over his kill?

[jackbill]

This is what Sennott wrote in his 1996 piece:

. . . .lengthy profile by Charles Sennott in the 10/6/96 Boston Globe. After describing a dangerous raid in the Mekong Delta, Sennott got to the heart of the matter:

SENNOTT: And Kerry just happens to have captured it all on film.

"I'll show you where they shot from. See? That's the hole covered up with reeds," says Kerry, showing the films on a recent evening, his hand tightening on the remote control as he clicks the images down to slow motion.

"This is just something that I improvised. The point was not to just take an ambush, but to go directly at them," adds Kerry, pointing to where he brought the boat ashore, and explaining how he returned later with a Super 8 millimeter hand-held movie camera to record highlights of the mission. "That's me right there. One of my crew was filming all this."

The films have the grainy quality of home movies. In their blend of the posed and the unexpected, they reveal something indelible about the man who shot them - the tall, thin, handsome Naval officer seen striding through the reeds in flak jacket and helmet, holding aloft the captured B-40 rocket. The young man so unconscious of risk in the heat of battle, yet so focused on his future ambitions that he would reenact the moment for film. It is as if he had cast himself in the sequel to the experience of his hero, John F. Kennedy, on the PT-109.

[Kakaze]

No one, dwells on stories like this if they are real.

True heros & guys who just witnessed the horrors as they slogged through the muck hardly ever bring up those days of their lives.

The fact that kerry can't quit living this leads me to believe he can't get over either the guilt of attrocities he committed or that the whole story is a concoction from day one.

Tell that hero lie often enough kerry maybe even you yourself will start believing it.

[pabianice]

Certainly. Every Navy JG has his own camera crew with him on patrol...

[FairOpinion]

He surely was on a "trophy hunt".

From that Boston Globe article (see my post 4):

"Five days later Kerry's boat was on patrol when a supporting helicopter ran out of ammunition. Instead of retreating, Kerry turned his boat directly toward hidden snipers, then beached the boat, and ordered an assault party onshore. This was not standard procedure. The swift boat crews weren't trained to fight on the muddy landscape; their shoes were closer to deck wear than combat boots."

Another incident:

"On Feb. 28, 1969, Kerry's boat received word that a swift boat was being ambushed. As Kerry raced to the scene, his boat became another target, as a Viet Cong B-40 rocket blast shattered a window. Kerry could have ordered his crew to hit the enemy and run. But the skipper had a more aggressive reaction in mind. Beach the boat, Kerry ordered, and the craft's bow was quickly rammed upon the shoreline. Out of the bush appeared a teenager in a loin cloth, clutching a grenade launcher.

Instead, the guerrilla got up and started running. "We've got to get him, make sure he doesn't get behind the hut, and then we're in trouble," Kerry recalled.

So Kerry shot and killed the guerrilla.

When Kerry returned to his base, his commanding officer, George Elliott, raised an issue with Kerry: the fine line between whether the action merited a medal or a court-martial.

"When [Kerry] came back from the well-publicized action where he beached his boat in middle of ambush and chased a VC around a hootch and ended his life, when [Kerry] came back and I heard his debrief, I said, `John, I don't know whether you should be court-martialed or given a medal, court-martialed for leaving your ship, your post,"' Elliott recalled in an interview.

"Asked why he had raised the issue of a court-martial, Elliott said he did so "half tongue-in-cheek, because there was never any question I wanted him to realize I didn't want him to leave his boat unattended. That was in context of big-ship Navy -- my background. A C.O. [commanding officer] never leaves his ship in battle or anything else."

[FairOpinion]

WHY IS KERRY REFUSING TO RELEASE HIS SERVICE RECORDS????

WHY?

WHY?

[chachacha]

True heros & guys who just witnessed the horrors as they slogged through the muck hardly ever bring up those days of their lives.

Absolutely true from all who have been their and done that.

This man was an opportunist then and now. After all, Four Months and home already. He most likey shot himself in the foot.

[CyberAnt]

"why does Kerry talk incessently about Vietnam"

I have a theory about that .. Kerry's trauma over Vietnam is very similar to the democrats trauma over the 2000 election .. in which the dems continue to harp on that election as not being fair (because they didn't win).

Hmmmm? Not winning! Much too difficult for dems to handle.

[monkeywrench]

Wow! I just noticed the resemblance to al gore in that picture of kerry.

[raybbr]

bttt

[Dilbert56]

I just sent the article and my question to Fox News - we'll see if they care. Here's the e-mail:

John Kerry is running ads in New York in advance of Super Tuesday. Surprisingly, it features footage of him in Vietnam (who knew?).

Earlier this week National Review Online posted a story about how he returned to the scene of one battle with a movie camera and reenacted his movements. http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200402270811.asp

Is there any way to find out if the footage in the Kerry commercials is authentic or his made-for-TV version? Could "Campaign Carl" Cameron ask the Kerry camp about this? I'm sure this simple "yes/no" question won't take more than five minutes for Senator Kerry to avoid answering.

Thanks,