Posted on 04/25/2004 8:40:41 PM PDT by nwrep
More than seven months before Kerry delivered the April 1971 Senate testimony that would turn him into an overnight media sensation, he was a little-known Vietnam veteran who rose to speak at a rally in Valley Forge, Pa. Among the fellow speakers was Fonda. Fonda spoke early in the rally, while Kerry was among the last to speak. Foreshadowing his Senate testimony, Kerry said: It ''is not patriotism to ask Americans to die for a mistake.'' (Seven months later, he testified a bit more eloquently: ''How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?'') Kerry's words deeply impressed Fonda. ''I remember thinking, 'Wow, this is a real leader, a Lincolnesque kind of leader,' '' Fonda recalled in a 2004 interview.
For days, Nixon had been discussing Kerry with his top aides, including Charles Colson and Henry Kissinger. But Nixon used some of his most revealing words in conversations with his secretary, Rose Mary Woods. Woods fumed about Kerry and his fellow protesters. ''They don't care what happens,'' she told Nixon, ''and they, and then if, if, if everything goes Communist, and then if, eventually it's gonna react and ruin this country ..... [Of] course they're tired of the war. Everyone's tired of war. No one could be more tired of it than you. No one!''
Nixon responded: ''[Of] course the real, one of the real problems, this goddamn press is so [unintelligible] unfair. They, they don't give our Republicans who are out tryin' to answer these people, and they put 'em on. Apparently the guy that's really good, the only good one of the damn veterans group, only good from a PR standpoint, is Kerry ..... [the] news [is] all Kerry.''
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
The last man who died for his mistake died on the "Killing Fields."
Kerry's legacy is the slaughter on the "Killing Fields."
Clinton's legacy is 9/11.
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