Posted on 08/07/2004 10:18:24 AM PDT by Jenya
Kerry defends his '70s anti-war activities
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Sen. John F. Kerry [related, bio] expressed pride in his 1970s antiwar activism yesterday as controversy continued to swirl over a TV ad accusing him of betraying his fellow veterans when he protested the Vietnam war.
``I stood up against the war in the 1970s,'' Kerry said. ``Some people still don't like that, and they're still trying to fight that. That's 35 years old. But I'm proud of what I did to stand up. And I learned a lot.''
A group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth launched a TV spot accusing Kerry of dishonoring his country and ``lying'' in Senate testimony about atrocities committed during the war.
The ad also claims Kerry did not deserve his combat medals. But the controversy grew deeper yesterday as one key member of the group first seemed to back off his criticism - then stood by his original charges.
George Elliott, one of Kerry's war commanders, told the Boston Globe he should not have signed an affidatit suggesting Kerry didn't deserve his Silver Star.
``It was a terrible mistake probably for me to sign the affidavit with those words. I'm the one in trouble here,'' the Globe quoted Elliott as saying.
Later yesterday, Elliott issued another affidavit saying the Globe had misquoted him and that he believed Kerry has ``not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.''
Next week, the group will release a book called ``Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry [related, bio].''
But Jim Rassmann, who credits Kerry with saving his life in Vietnam, said, ``What these people have said is not true, and a lot of it is grossly inaccurate. These gentlemen appear to be making this up as they go along, and they are not keeping their stories straight.''
White House spokesman Scott McClellan yesterday repeated a call for ``an end to all the ads and activity by these shadowy groups that are funded by unregulated soft money.''
Uh....The Swift Boat Vets are Viet Nam War heroes. Decorated Veterans. I thought we weren't allowed to question war heroes! We're to blindly believe everything they say.
Now what? Politician vs. American citizens. Who do we believe? (Duh!)
All this makes me wonder if he will be an effective president in the war against. No, no he won't if he's so antiwar.
WHAT???
He was against the war before he was for it.
True. It's not what he did but how he did it. There were many ways to protest the war without calling our troops and his former compatriots inhuman monsters or supporting the enemy.
Both work with a little imagination. :-))
mc
10/4 I will have to include yours in some of my words of wisdom.
speaking of flyover states, just before getting to Kansas City, Kerry was booed and shouted down in Sedalia, MO on August 5 by a very active BushCheney04 group, and he was so dumbfounded that he kept handing off the mic to his wife and Edwards, when he finally spoke, the most he could think to do was to refer to Michael Moore's book and the supposed Bush connection to Saudi oil money ...
here's the write-up
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1506&ncid=696&e=4&u=/afp/20040806/ts_alt_afp/us_vote_kerry
Kerry campaign train gets whistles at stop
Fri Aug 6,11:26 AM ET
SEDALIA, United States (AFP) - Democratic presidential contender John Kerry and running mate John Edwards ran into a group of Republicans whose whistles and shouts drowned out a cheering crowd of supporters when their "Believe in America" train made a brief stop here overnight.
With signs proclaiming "Four more years" and "Flush the Johns", supporters of President George W. Bush in the November 2 elections were seen and heard above several hundred "Kerry-Edwards" followers at the station, as the Democratic hopefuls and their wives appeared at the rear of the train.
"You want four more years of what? Of adding deficit and debts for the children of our country," Kerry told the Republicans in the crowd. He promised relief for the middle class and to restore the US image abroad. "We can do better than we are doing today in this country," he told his cheering supporters. "I will never send a man to fight without a plan to win the peace," he said referring to Iraq. He called on his supporters to spread the Democratic word around the country.
The shouting match, which lasted about 15 minutes before the Kerry train pulled out of the station, is an unusual ocurrence at campaign rallies where supporters and opponents of the candidates usually stand nonchalantly shoulder to shoulder with no outbursts.
The Bush administration has invited a team of international monitors to observe the U.S. presidential election in November, but the group will not come from the United Nations, as some congressional Democrats had urged.
Assistant Secretary of State Paul V. Kelly, who handles legislative affairs for the department, affirmed the invitation this week in a letter to 13 House Democrats. They had requested U.N. monitors for this year's elections in an effort to avoid the charges of disenfranchisement and voting irregularities that plagued the 2000 election, the closest in history.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the largest regional organization in the world with 55 participating nations, will monitor the U.S. election on Nov. 2. Members include Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain and the United States.
"OSCE members, including the United States, agreed in 1990 in Copenhagen to allow fellow members to observe elections in one another's countries," Mr. Kelly wrote. "Consistent with this commitment, the United States has already invited the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to observe the November 2, 2004, presidential elections."
[snip]
OSCE officials deployed an observer team to monitor the most recent U.S. elections, on Nov. 5, 2002.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1186831/posts
Part One: A privileged youth, a taste for risk Handwritten letter to his parents Transcript of the letter
Part Two: Heroism, growing concern over war Kerry's journal from Vietnam Where Kerry served in Vietnam
Part Three: With antiwar role, high visibility Clips from Watergate tapes Transcripts of Watergate tapes Doonesbury cartoon about Kerry
Part Four: First campaign ends in defeat Sampling of Lowell Sun coverage
Part Five: Taking one prize, then a bigger one Kerry took loss in tax shelter Kerry's tax shelter documents Freeze Voter '84 memo
Part Six: With probes, making his mark
Part Seven: At center of power, seeking summit A quest for the edge Senator Kerry's voting record
The Christmas Eve truce of 1968 was three minutes old when mortar fire exploded around John Forbes Kerry and his five-man crew on a 50-foot aluminum boat near Cambodia. ''Where is the enemy?'' a crewmate shouted.
In the distance, an elderly man was tending his water buffalo -- and serving as human cover for a dozen Viet Cong manning a machine-gun nest.
"Open fire; let's take 'em," Kerry ordered, according to his second-in-command, James Wasser of Illinois. Wasser blasted away with his M-60, hitting the old man, who slumped into the water, presumably dead. With a clear path to the enemy, the fusillade from Kerry's Navy boat, backed by a pair of other small vessels, silenced the machine-gun nest.
When it was over, the Viet Cong were dead, wounded, or on the run. A civilian apparently was killed, and two South Vietnamese allies who had alerted Kerry's crew to the enemy were either wounded or killed.
On the same night, Kerry and his crew had come within a half-inch of being killed by "friendly fire," when some South Vietnamese allies launched several rounds into the river to celebrate the holiday.
To top it off, Kerry said, he had gone several miles inside Cambodia, which theoretically was off limits, prompting Kerry to send a sarcastic message to his superiors that he was writing from the Navy's "most inland" unit.
Back at his base, a weary, disconsolate Kerry sat at his typewriter, as he often did, and poured out his grief. "You hope that they'll courtmartial you or something because that would make sense," Kerry typed that night. He would later recall using court-martial as "a joke," because nothing made sense to him -- the war policy, the deaths, and his presence in the middle of it all.
standing up against a war is one thing. Defaming fellow soldiers is another.
My question is: Rassmann fell out of Kerry's boat, but three other men also fell in the water. There were four total. So which boat did they fall out of? Mr. O'Dell (one of the men in the Swift Boat Ad) said that a mine had gone off and one boat was disabled and could not move. Did the three other men fall out of the disabled boat?
Tonk, after your last ping, this should make you even more upset.
Because that's NOT what the Democrats really wanted. They just wanted the issue!
He really didn't have a choice. The Democrats are trying to monitor (steal) the election with thousands of left wing trial lawyers. This steals their fire. The lawyers will now have sue the UN if there are any complaints.
Great. So the SCOTUS not high enough now? I don't like this.
He had his say 35 years ago. Let the veterans have theirs. As a nation, we owe them that much. They were welcomed home with spit and the label baby-killers.
Bring it on, Hanoi John!
You TRAITOR wuss!
Kerry's "exploits" read like an 'Apocalypse Now.. Part Deux' novella
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