Posted on 08/10/2004 11:57:57 PM PDT by Tamzee
Senator John Kerry, the presumed Democratic presidential candidate who is trading on his Vietnam war record to campaign against President George W Bush, tried to defer his military service for a year, according to a newly rediscovered article in a Harvard University newspaper.
He wrote to his local recruitment board seeking permission to spend a further 12 months studying in Paris, after completing his degree course at Yale University in the mid-1960s.
The revelation appears to undercut Sen Kerry's carefully-cultivated image as a man who willingly served his country in a dangerous war - in supposed contrast to President Bush, who served in the Texas National Guard and thus avoided being sent to Vietnam.
The Harvard Crimson newspaper followed a youthful Mr Kerry in Boston as he campaigned for Congress for the first time in 1970. In the course of a lengthy article, "John Kerry: A Navy Dove Runs for Congress", published on February 18, the paper reported: "When he approached his draft board for permission to study for a year in Paris, the draft board refused and Kerry decided to enlist in the Navy."
Samuel Goldhaber, the article's author who is now a cardiologist attached to the Harvard School of Medicine, spent 11 hours trailing Mr Kerry and still remembers that the subject of the Paris deferment came up during long conversations about Vietnam.
"I stand by my story," he told The Telegraph. "It was a long time ago, and I was 19 at the time, so it is hard to remember every detail. But I do know this: at no point did Kerry contact either me or the Crimson to dispute anything I had written."
Sen Kerry's campaign headquarters in Washington refused an opportunity to deny the report. Despite repeated telephone calls from The Telegraph, a spokesman refused to comment. Another Democrat official said merely: "In Vietnam, John Kerry proved his patriotism beyond question. Everyone knows that."
A senior Republican strategist, who asked not to be named, said: "I've not heard this before. This undercuts Kerry's complaints about Bush and it continues to pose questions as to his credibility among ordinary Vietnam veterans."
He said it would fuel concerns over the way Sen Kerry made a name for himself by leading anti-war protests in Washington and Boston in the late 1960s and early 1970s after he had completed his service in the US Navy, even while his former comrades continued to fight and die.
A newly-published biography of Sen Kerry by Douglas Brinkley, A Tour of Duty, makes no mention of the requested deferment or planned year in Paris. At the time, it was still unclear just how long America would remain in Vietnam, and it might have seemed that a year's deferral of service could render enlistment unnecessary.
According to the Democratic Party's version of Sen Kerry's military history, he joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps at Harvard through eagerness to do his duty, and sailed with the Navy for combat as soon as he graduated in 1966.
Sen Kerry won a gallantry medal for his service as a gunboat captain on the Mekong Delta, and was honorably discharged with three "purple heart" medals after sustaining three wounds. He has consistently presented himself as a leader who argued against the war only after fulfilling his duty in the field. Supporters argue that his war record makes him a more trustworthy leader than President Bush, who served sporadically in the National Guard at home.
"This means that Kerry didn't jump into all that heroic service until he was pushed, and it is a very nice piece of information," said Lucianne Goldberg, a prominent Republican campaigner.
Republican strategists for President Bush were already investigating Sen Kerry's record of three wounds sustained in Vietnam. "We find that he had only one day off sick - with three wounds? What exactly were these wounds?" she asked.
Mr Goldhaber recalled that, during a day spent with Sen Kerry and one assistant during his congressional campaign, he had described his involvement, service and decision to oppose the war in great detail.
"I am not at all surprised that he wants to be president, because he exuded ambition from the word go," said Dr Goldhaber. "At the time, the idea that he tried to persuade the draft board to let him spend a year in Paris was just a detail."
A spokesman for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign declined to comment.
He chose the swift boat patrol assignment precisely because he would see little combat action. And no one says he faced a threat to his life in four months in Vietnam. At the earliest available opportunity, he hightailed it out of there and never looked back.
You're right and that isn't what this is about
Kerry brags about volunteering ..
Remember Clinton at the convention .. "Kerry said Send Me"
Kerry's problem is not being honest .. he either embellishes a story or he bold face lies
Character Counts and he lacks it big time
"Those of us who didn't go to Vietnam, for whatever reason, didn't go, but John Kerry raised his hand and said 'Send Me!!'".
Exactly. Character matters. Kerry isn't boasting about dodging his duty to his country but rather that he took it upon himself to go despite his leanings against the war. Something's still fishy and that's why Kerry's in big trouble. If his life was constructed in the service of lies, its going come tumbling down around him.
Here is the actual article from The Harvard Crimson... so much for the Libby "TELEGRAPH IS A RIGHT WING RAG!!!!!!!!" defense...
Sorry, it's late, I'm tired, and lazy... so I will just post the link... :)
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=352185
Thanks for the clarifcation but ""thet aint the way I heared it."
They were considered one of the least risky, but on another FR thread, I read where their "misson" was changed to the "More risky" aspect, shortly after kerry had decided he wanted to "drive" one.
Obviously character didn't matter to the Left in 1992, now all of a sudden, it's the one thing that matters, even if it's a total lie, only to defeat Bush. Kerry spends most of his time boasting about a war he didn't want to go to in the first place, and when someone comes along and challenges him on it, the whole Democratic party wants to stifle that side of the story.
Right. The point being it did not turn out to be what Kerry had hoped and expected. Also, it's said that the vessel was the closest thing to PT-109 that Kerry could find.
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Hundreds of opponents to the Vietnam War will meet this coming Saturday in a Third District Citizens Caucus to choose a Democrat strong enough in the September primary to oust Philip J. Philbin (D-Mass.) from the Congressional seat he has held for 26 years. Philbin, whose District stretches from Fitchburg to Newton, is the second-ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee and many people consider the 71-year-old Congressman a hawk on Vietnam and an all-around conservative. Any resident of the Third District, including college students under 21, will be eligible to vote at the open caucus, which will be held at Concord Carlisle Regional High School.
The caucus will assign electoral votes to each city and town in the Third District, based on the latest population figures. Residents from each locality will meet in Concord and the candidate who gets the majority of each locality's votes will take all the city's or town's electoral votes. For example, I come from Waban, a village of Newton, which happens to be the most populous city in the District. If I'm the only delegate who shows up from Newton, all of Newton's electoral votes will go to the candidate of my choice.
The leading contenders for the caucus's nomination are Father Robert F. Drinan, dean of the Boston College Law School; Harrison Chandler Stevens, who ran as an Independent against Philbin in 1968 and enjoyed the support of many college volunteers; and John F. Kerry, who favors immediate withdrawal, and was the first Vietnam veteran to run for Congress with a dovish platform on the War.
Drinan, for the moment, is considered the favorite. He is well known in academic circles and at the age of 49 has mustered an impressive list of credentials. He is distinguished especially as the first priest to run for Congress since 1822.
Stevens, who would have to change his registration from Independent to Democrat in order to oppose Philbin in the September primary, is shied away from not only because he is not a Democrat, but also because he refused to endorse any Presidential candidate when he ran in 1968. Although Stevens had built up an impressive political machine, he has been assistant to the governor of Puerto Rico for the past year and returned to the District only two weeks ago.
Kerry has the most explicit stand against the Vietnam War and although his youth is a plus, the fact that he is a political unknown does not help him. Now 26, he was honorably discharged from the Navy last month but has been laying the groundwork for the race ever since November. Occasionally, Kerry makes obvious his recent return to civilian life and the Third Congressional District. When he came into the CRIMSON building last Friday, I introduced myself, saying I was from Waban.
"Waban, where's that?" he asked.
"It's in the District."
"W-O-B-O-N? Wobon? That's not in my District," he said.
"There's no such thing as Wobon. You must be thinking of Woburn. Anyway, I'm in Waban, a village of Newton, and certainly you've heard of Newton, haven't you?"
"So Waban's in Newton? Well, you learn something new every day," he said.
At Yale, Kerry was chairman of the Political Union and later, as Commencement speaker, urged the United States to withdraw from Vietnam and to scale down foreign military operations. And this was way back in 1966.
When he approached his draft board for permission to study for a year in Paris, the draft board refused and Kerry decided to enlist in the Navy. The Navy assigned him to the USS Gridley which between December 1966 and July 1968 saw four months of action off the Vietnam coast. In August through November, 1968, Kerry was trained to be the skipper of a patrol boat for Vietnamese rivers. For the next five months, until April of 1969, Kerry was the commanding Lieutenant of a patrol boat in the Mekong Delta. He was wounded slightly on three different occasions and received a Silver Star for bravery. His patrol boat took part in Operation Sealords, mostly scouting out Viet Cong villages and transporting South Vietnamese marines to various destinations up and down narrow rivers covered with heavy foliage on either side. One time Kerry was ordered to destroy a Viet Cong village but disobeyed orders and suggested that the Navy Command simply send in a Psychological Warfare team to be friend the villagers with food, hospital supplies, and better educational facilities.
Pulling Out
Immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, Kerry said, would take about seven months due to complex logistics problems. During that interval he would allow only "self-defense return of fire." "Logistic suport is now what Nixon is talking about leaving there and I don't want to see that. I don't think we should leave support troops there and I don't think we should give Vietnam any more than the foreign aid given any other one country." He does not feel there would be a massive slaughter of American, sympathizers once the United States pulled out.
In America, "everybody who's against the war is suddenly considered anti-American," Kerry said. "But I don't think they can turn to me and say I don't know what's going on or I'm a draft dodger." Referring to the House Armed Services Committee, chaired by L. Mendel Rivers (D-S.C.), Kerry said, "I want to go down to Washington and confront Medel Rivers, who never fought in a war.
"I as effectively as anyone else in the country, can address myself to the issue of Vietnam," Kerry said. "I'm very realistic, though. I'm just going to be one man adding to the work of men like Lowenstein."
Kerry is a pilot, and on October 14 and 15 he flew Ted Kennedy's advisor Adam Walinsky by private plane throughout the State of New York so that Walinsky could give speeches against the Vietnam War. But Kerry was smart enough not to put down "Moratorium" on the Navy signout sheet for that Tuesday and Wednesday. The following month, Kerry was sick and did not engage in the November moratorium activities.
He supports a volunteer Army, "if and only if we can create the controls for it. You're going to have to prepare for the possibility of a national emergency, however." Kerry said that the United Nations should have control over most of our foreign military operations. "I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations."
On other issues, Kerry wants "to almost eliminate CIA activity. The CIA is fighting its own war in Laos and nobody seems to care." He also favors a negative income tax and keeping unemployment at a very low level, "even if it means selective economic controls."
Kerry's Background
"I have a somewhat Establishment background," Kerry admitted modestly. Kerry, whose family comes from Groton, attended Fessenden, a prestigious private school in West Newton, until he was old enough to go to St. Paul's. From there he went on to Yale where he majored in political science.
Kerry's interest in politics began in 1960, when John Kennedy was running for President. Kerry gave his first political speeches for JFK and at St. Paul's founded a political group, the John Winant Society. In the summer of 1962, Kerry worked for Ted Kennedy, who was then making his first Senate bid. "I wanted to see how the political machine works."
At Yale, Kerry was instrumental in organizing the demonstrations for giving tenure to philosophy professor Dick Bernstein, even though Bernstein had not done very much publishing. As President of the Political Union, Kerry met an impressive array of political figures and spent much of his time fighting for a new YPU building, which Yale eventually built.
Kerry's style can turn people off at first because he gives the initial impression of being too good to be true, of being just a little bit insincere. His preppiness might make you think he's a blueblood WASP, but Kerry is really a Roman Catholic. However, an afternoon on the campaign trail with Kerry leaves you with quite a different impression.
Out in Bolton, a town smaller than Waban, he went to a genuine Yankee house, built in 1740, I watched Kerry as he tried to convince four ladies to go to Saturday's caucus in Concord. While the ladies drank tea. Kerry stuck to his guns and told the women that most welfare recipients did deserve to be on the lists. He said Spiro Agnew was one of the poorer vice-presidents, not one of our great statesmen.
Because of Kerry's background, and his style which the ladies adored, he may have succeeded in charming them into driving out to Concord on Saturday. And four Kerry votes from Bolton would probably mean all of Bolton's electoral votes for Kerry.
What if Kerry loses at the caucus? "If it's a representative group," he said, "I'll support the candidate that comes out." He said he might campaign for Stevens, if Stevens wins the caucus's approval. Another idea of his is creating a national citizen's lobby which would be primarily educational and which "would be a new kind of interest group that will demand attention from the men who are legislating."
In the last month, Kerry has driven 4000 miles back and forth across the District. "I should be at law school," he said, "but the problems are too great to sit back and watch them go by."
Absolutely. Every study on the subject demonstrates that valor has little to do with patriotism. It is much more dependent on group loyalty to immediate comrades in arms. Kerry's service in Viet Nam may or may not be admirable evidence of his courage. However, his post-Viet Nam activities and calumnies of his peers certainly call his patriotism into question.
Also posted here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1185739/posts
He's whole life seems to be one lie after another ..
He has built himself up so high that he is gonna fall real hard.
"Republican strategists for President Bush were already investigating Sen Kerry's record of three wounds sustained in Vietnam."
This is the key line. This sets up the incorrect fact that the Prez's official reps are embracing the issue in a fervor vs. the reality that this is strictly a 527 grey-area issue ('course, according to the MSP, the left-leaning '27s are righteous while the right-leaning '27s are conniving, manipulative, delusional, anti-human "...blah, blah, blah...")
Whuh? Kerry was in Vietnam?!? I didn't know that!
3 - "Oh and I thought the libs said he "volunteered to go"
I am the same age as Kerry, and also graduated class of 66. I remember distictly - you were deferred from the draft in college, and they were changing the rules, and they deferred you until a bachelors degree only, then they deferred only if you had wife and/or child for post grad degrees. They pulled the noose tighter and tighter.
So, you could be defered until you got your degree, upon which you would be drafted into the Army (as a private), or you could 'volunteer' for the Navy or AirForce and be trained as an officer. I chose to 'volunteer' and became an Air Force Officer.
If Kerry implodes well before he election, every 'rat in the race will have egg on their face for not tripping this guy up sooner. And, apparently, it wouldn't have been too hard.
And that fire-eater Dean is going to be singing, "I told ya so! I told ya so!"
What do you get when you put all that into the Democratic Spin Cycle?
Kerry Volunteered for Vietnam
I have no doubt about that *L*
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