Yeah,
the tiny percent who still support Kerry are the ones in the know.
Posted on 08/05/2004 4:08:05 AM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
Don't look now, but the Kerry campaign is about to start attacking a group of Vietnam War veterans. After making Kerry's service as a swift-boat captain a cornerstone of the Democratic National Convention last week, the campaign's new goal will be to discredit some of Kerry's fellow soldiers as (shudder) politically motivated.
Specifically, the trouble comes in the form of a band of veterans who served with Kerry during his glory tour in Vietnam and who will publish a book of their own memories of the young skipper called "Unfit for Command" in coming weeks.
As a chronicle and anticipated exposé of the young soldier's actual leadership in the jungles, the book will cast a decidedly less-flattering light on the candidate as soldier. Among the charges are that Kerry exaggerated his injuries and was inept at capturing the respect of his men, who saw him as overweening and ambitious.
With the military nuzzling of the Boston convention receding into the past, the Kerry campaign will come at his former comrades with hell's fury. The soldiers — by one count the vast majority of Kerry's boatmates — will soon be cast as a bunch of demented old men, out to make a quick buck in the service of partisanship.
For a preview of the talking points, Democrats might be directed to the recent writings of New York Observer columnist Joe Conason in the online diary, Salon. Over the past few months, he has written three pieces on the nefarious connections of the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, remarking, among other things, that the group, classified as a 527 organization, has connections with well-known Republican operatives in Texas.
He calls the Swift Boat Veterans "conservative Republicans embittered over Kerry's later antiwar activism" and describes the group's founder, retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, as having "gained notoriety in Vietnam as a strutting, cigar-chewing Navy captain... whose obsession with body counts and 'scorekeeping' may have provoked the February 1969 massacre of Vietnamese civilians at Thanh Phong."
Of course, we wouldn't dare to imagine a political bone in the bodies of those swift-boat veterans who have hugged up to Kerry. But picking apart the service of any veteran is always an ugly business: In war, some men will naturally be more impressive than others and that fact of temperament shouldn't denigrate the service by others. If Kerry wasn't the best and the bravest in the service, it should be no disparagement to his participation.
But veterans, broadly speaking, have long been considered a natural constituency of Republicans. And in none of this do we wish to discourage the Democrats from their conversion. It did the heart good to see the party, formerly inclined to bumper-sticker sentiment that looked forward to the day when the military had to "hold a bake sale to buy a bomber," now awash in admirals and generals and other manly men.
The problem isn't a hawkish Democratic Party but a historically dishonest one. As one swift boat commander put it to The Boston Globe, though Kerry was a "great American fighting man," when he returned home, he was equally ambitious to make his mark in the antiwar movement. "I think he was saying whatever he needed to say," the veteran, Michael Bernique, explained.
It's an unhappy impression of unrivaled opportunism that continues to define Kerry now as it did then, and which strikes many voters as the most legitimate and adhesive charge against his qualification to be commander in chief.
The designers and producers of last week's Democratic National Convention in Boston are likely a bit down in the mouth this week following Kerry's post-convention non-bounce. All the klieg lights, hors d'oeuvres and cumulative weight of the biggest hippos in the party added up to a big zilch in the polls. We can speculate why, but there's no doubt the rich mother lode of GOP ads accusing him of being a congenital flip-flopper (a critique pioneered long ago by Kerry's Democratic opponents) has acted as a drag on his ratings.
The fundamental problem with Kerry's campaign is that it presumes the worst thing possible about American elections: that the voters are too dumb to see through the holograms. An alien watching the convention might have reasonably assumed that the Democrats had nominated a 28-year-old for the presidency, so absent was any mention of the candidate's other career in the U.S. Senate.
If Kerry wants the leadership campaign to be about his time in Vietnam, he and his emissaries should be careful about impugning the motives of his veteran detractors. As one of them said, "We didn't lose the war on the ground in Vietnam, we lost it at home, and at home John Kerry was the field general."
Connections?? Hell, some of them probably ARE well-known Republican operatives in Texas. So effing what?
"the group, classified as a 527 organization, has connections with well-known Republican operatives in Texas."
Welcome to talking point number 1.
Kerry was in country something like 12 weeks. About the same as a semester.
Semper Fi' to all of my Marine Corps "band of brothers" that have served and are now serving. I joined the Marine Corps in 1971 the same year that this traitor went before Congress and trashed all of our boys still fighting in Vietnam. I distinctly remember how I felt about this guying betraying his own country along with Jane Fonda and the Marxist Ramsey Clark. His picture even hangs in the North Vietnam Communist hall of fame. These types of people will never admit who they are, how they really feel about their own country or what they would do to keep this country safe (turn it over to UN) because if they did, you sure as hell wouldn't vote for them. John Kerry is a traitor and a Marxist at heart. He is a disgrace to this great nation and god help this country if we are foolish enought to elect him as our Commander in Chief. The Swift Boat Vet Commerical is awesome and I just donated to keep it on the air. We need to do ALL that we can to make sure that the helm of this great ship "America"is not turned over to a Marxist like John Kerry. God bless America!
Semper Fi'
Buffett Fan
South Florida
Yeah,
the tiny percent who still support Kerry are the ones in the know.
Excellent article, but NAVY people are SAILORS! SOLDIERS are ARMY people.
Actually, it is a neutral article when a far from neutral article is called for.
Idiot reporter doesn't even know Kerry was a sailor, not a soldier.
19 guys say Kerry was a weenie. 1 guy says Kerry was the best thing since sliced bread.
Nuff said.
Paging Douglas Brinkley....
>JFKerry might have a Dean moment
JEffingKerry IS a Dean moment!
Al Hunt is up and running in today's WSJ (I don't subscribe to the paid website, so I don't have a link -- it's not on the free OpinionJournal.com). Just a few excerpts:
[After comparing the swiftvets' charges to a hypothetical charge against Bush 41 by Clinton of marital infidelity] That would be almost as crazy as the current effort by some Bush backers to focus attention on John Kerry's Vietnam War record and subsequent protests. This is being significantly funded and directed by Texas fat cats and political operatives who have more than a passing relationship with Bush political guru Karl Rove. . . .The charges are that Sen. Kerry has exaggerated his war record, maligned all American soliders when he later protested agains the war, and learned the wrong lessons from Vietnam.
The allegations against Mr. Kerry in Vietnam are that he only served four months, hyped his heroism and idn't earn hhis medials, particularly his first Purple heart, presumably because if you got three you could leave early.
Hunt argues that Kerry volunteered [his emphasis] three times: for the Navy, for Vietnam and for the swift boat. He notes that Zumwalt pinned the Silver Star on him and that "men in his boat say he saved their lives."
He says that Kerry is charged with accusing all American forces in Vietnam of atrocities. "Still, what he actually said was tha atrocities were widespread, but he never suggested they were committed by most Americans." He cites Hackworth on "hundreds of My Lais" and notes that Tommy Franks acknowledged that atrocities occurred. He claims that "[a]ll accounts clearly indicate that Mr. Kerry was a moderating influence in the antiwar veterans group, calming the palpable anger and sense of betrayal of so many and countering the radicals."
He closes with the assertion that it is Karl Rove's "pals" who may raise Vietnam questions from about 16th or 17th in importance in the elections to a much higher spot.
"JEffingKerry IS a Dean moment!"
Agree, but the nation has not got to see the glitch in his program like they got to see from Dean. Dean is just a doctor and JFKerry is royalty.
It's already started, the Kerry campaign is saying these men didn't even serve with Kerry in Nam. Forget that they appear in the same picture Kerry used in his own campaign.
They served with him in Vietnam before they didn't serve with him in Vietnam.
'Nuff Said.
The Washington Times, July 30, 2004 [and next-day correction]
Kerry's exploits in Vietnam are disputed in best seller
by Rowan Scarborough, THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Democrats capped Sen. John Kerry's presidential nomination last night by showing a Hollywood-produced movie of his life, featuring amateur film clips and testaments about his service in Vietnam as commander of a Navy river patrol boat.
But a group of former sailors who served with Mr. Kerry are telling a different story. Rather than depicting Mr. Kerry as a war hero, they are quoted in a new book accusing him of exaggerating and falsifying his experiences.
The group says that of 23 crew members photographed with Mr. Kerry more than 30 years ago in Vietnam, only one supports his presidential campaign. They will announce a nationwide campaign by "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" to tell the American public about what they say is Mr. Kerry's true war record.
The biographical movie shown last night, "A Remarkable Promise," shows "family and friends talking about the courage he has shown as a soldier and a veteran, the fights he has waged for middle-class values and the faith in family he has exhibited as a father and husband," the Kerry campaign said before its prime-time convention appearance.
The film was produced by James Moll, a partner of director Steven Spielberg.
The book, "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry," from Regnery Publishing, is written by John E. O'Neill. Mr. O'Neill served in Vietnam at the same time as Mr. Kerry and followed him as commander on the swift boat.
Mr. O'Neill, riled by what he considered Mr. Kerry's false charge in 1971 of widespread war crimes committed by U.S. troops, has waged a public debate with the politician dating back to the "Dick Cavett Show" that year.
The book quotes Mr. Kerry's fellow combatants as saying two of his Purple Hearts came from friendly fire, not the enemy. The veterans also will dispute other stories Mr. Kerry has told.
"Unfit for Command" will not be released until Sept. 25, [sbs note: see corrected date, below] but the online Drudge Report yesterday broke news of what it called a "bombshell book." The book hit No. 2 on Amazon.com's best-seller list. Radio and TV hosts were clamoring for Mr. O'Neill to appear.
Regnery, which boasts a long list of best-selling conservative books, has put a tight hold on information until the official release.
Some of the book's charges have been aired by Veterans for Truth.
Retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, who commanded Mr. Kerry's task force in Vietnam, is one of the book's sources.
Adm. Hoffmann said yesterday he has supplied several instances of Mr. Kerry's purported lies. One example, he said, is Mr. Kerry's contention that he warned admirals of the folly of a certain river operation. Adm. Hoffmann said he and others were at the meeting, and that Mr. Kerry never made such a statement.
"The real truth is he didn't say a ... word," Adm. Hoffmann said.
Mr. Hoffmann is chairman of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which plans what it calls a grass-roots campaign.
"We're going to tell the truth - the fact that he was a perpetual, habitual liar," Adm. Hoffmann said. "I don't care whether it was perjury or lying before the Senate of the United States, or that two of his Purple Hearts are at least very specious, if not absolutely false, because he filed false after-action reports."
CORRECTION (July 31, 2004): Because of an editing error, The Washington Times yesterday incorrectly reported the publication date of "Unfit for Command," in which men who served in Vietnam with Sen. John Kerry question his accounts of his service. The correct date is Aug. 15.
Copyright 2004 News World Communications, Inc.
Some vets challenge Kerry’s medals
Some of John Kerry’s Vietnam War compatriots are questioning the circumstances of how Kerry was awarded one of the three Purple Hearts he received in 1968.
The Kerry campaign responded it has been 35 years since the medals were awarded and no one raised the issue before Kerry got involved in the race for the White House.
...
Kerry’s campaign contends Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is an organization created for this year’s election to destroy Kerry’s record.
“It’s really a sign of desperation about the support veterans are giving Kerry that a group of Republicans are doing this,” said Michael Meehan, of the Kerry campaign. “Putting a lie on TV doesn’t make it true.”
Forget the old men part and you get Michael Moore.
These guys may be Republicans precisely because of What Kerry did.
Right! It doesn't change the fact that out of 23 of his "brothers", 19 say he is unfit for command, and only 2 actually support him.
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