War slur begins to stick on Kerry

The Telegraph - Calcutta, India ^ | August 13, 2004 | DAVID RENNIE

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Washington, Aug. 12: For the first time, Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential challenger, has been left floundering by allegations that he invented a key episode of his decorated wartime service in Vietnam — a central plank of his election platform.

Kerry has fought off charges for several years that he did not deserve all the medals he won in Vietnam, which included a Bronze Star and Silver Star for gallantry, and three Purple Hearts for combat wounds.

Crewmates from the small patrol boats in which he served in the Mekong Delta have always rallied to his support, contradicting allegations from other, hostile veterans.

Yesterday, however, the Kerry campaign was left in verbal knots after a new book accused the senator of inventing stories about being sent, illegally, over the border into neutral Cambodia.

The Kerry campaign responded, initially, that Kerry had always said he was “near” Cambodia.

Then a campaign aide said Kerry had been in the Mekong Delta “between” Vietnam and next-door Cambodia — a geographical zone not found on maps, which show the Mekong river running from Cambodia to Vietnam.

The book, Unfit for Command, is based on recollections from dozens of veterans who served in the same naval unit as Kerry, including crewmen on small patrol craft under his direct command.

In newspaper articles, interviews and at least one Senate speech, Kerry has claimed that he spent Christmas 1968 inside Cambodia, at a time when even the US President was publicly denying that American forces were inside that country.

He has cited the missions as a psychological turning point, when he realised that American leaders were not telling the truth to the world about the war in southeast Asia.

Michael Meehan, a Kerry campaign adviser, told ABC Television: “The Mekong Delta consists of the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, so on Christmas Eve in 1968, he was in fact on patrol ... in the Mekong Delta between Cambodia and Vietnam. He was ambushed, they fired back, he was fired upon from both sides, from the Cambodian side of the border and the Vietnam side during that day in 1968.”

It remains to be seen how serious an impact the row has on the Kerry campaign.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

TOUR OF DUTY author and John Kerry historian Doug Brinkley is rushing a piece for the NEW YORKER: to set-the-record-straight on Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia tale, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Kerry has turned to author Brinkley for a "modification" after it was exposed that Kerry was not in Cambodia during Christmas of 1968, as he once claimed from the Senate floor.

The Brinkley piece for the NEW YORKER will now say that Kerry was not in Cambodia during Christmas, but rather in January, publishing sources tell DRUDGE.

MORE .....

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Hard fact is, Kerry froze up during the Cold War***The Cold War also provides our best measuring stick for estimating how Kerry might perform as commander in chief, and in that conflict Kerry's instincts were always awry. Had the country heeded his counsel, we might not yet have won it.

Many leaders had a hand in Washington's Cold War triumph, but Ronald Reagan's contributions were pivotal, and Kerry opposed every one of them. Reagan's defense buildup disabused Soviet leaders of any hope that they could ultimately come out ahead of the United States. Kerry derided these military expenditures as "bloated" and "without any relevancy to the threat." In particular, Reagan's plan to seek a missile defense system against Soviet ICBMs and NATO's decision to station new missiles in Europe to counteract the new Soviet deployment there rendered futile the Kremlin's vast investment in nuclear supremacy. Instead of these measures, Kerry advocated that we adopt a one-sided "nuclear freeze."***

Polls suggest Arab-Americans gravitating toward Kerry

Kerry's World: Father Knows Best***As early as prep school, John Kerry showed signs that he shared his father's suspicions about America's cold war foreign policy. In a debate at St. Paul's in the late '50s, he argued that the United States should establish relations with Red China. During his junior year at Yale, he won a speech prize for an oration warning, "It is the specter of Western Imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism, and thus it is self-defeating." And, when he was tapped to deliver a graduation speech in 1966, he used the occasion to condemn U.S. involvement in Vietnam, intoning, "What was an excess of isolationism has become an excess of interventionism."***

Startling Comparisons (John Kerry and Benedict Arnold)

[Jaxter]

"..Kerry had been in the Mekong Delta “between” Vietnam and next-door Cambodia — a geographical zone not found on maps..

Snicker, snicker.

[coconutt2000]

So, normally Mr. Kerry patrolled with a squad of boats. But that night he was on a secret patrol in the Mekong Delta?

Perhaps he was there... Joy riding against orders, getting it on with a bevy of Vietnamese hookers.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Book-of-the-Month (Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry)***During the better part of the last three years we have endured an endless series of offerings from the Bush-Haters-Book-of-the-Month Club. These volumes have overexerted titles and overly verbose subtitles like Big Lies: The Rightwing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth or Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush. They contain very little unique information from one to the next. Most are petty; some are demonstrably fraudulent, such as Joe Wilson's The Politics of Truth. They are mostly written by people who are professionally distasteful of President Bush. All of them have been written by people who don't know him personally.

Unfit for Command by Vietnam veteran John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi, an expert on antiwar movements, shares none of those characteristics. It is a book unlike other campaign cycle books in that it injects new information into the public dialogue, avoids redundant circular arguments about issues, and, well, it has a point. That point is summed up with Thomistic bravado by John O'Neill in the book's first chapter: "I resolved that I would refute Kerry's lies."

The chapters in Unfit for Command are testimonies by swift boat captains and crew who knew current Democratic hopeful John Kerry personally. These men offer no insinuations. Their vignettes are not the paranoid ramblings of obese, low-budget filmmakers. The accusations are laid out in black-and-white for Sen. Kerry to read and respond to. That is, if anyone in the gaggle of reporters he travels with daily would bother to ask him about them.***

[SirBuck911]

Well...I would suppose that it depends on how he defined "between".

[Cincinatus' Wife]

A great letter to the Editor in Salem, Oregon:
_____________________________________________________

Kerry’s version of his life is too good to be true

August 13, 2004

So the Democrats have gotten themselves a left-wing zealot all gussied up to run for president. And a self-proclaimed committer of war atrocities too. Gee, not too long ago they feigned indifference when it was revealed their candidate loathed the military. Could be this boy feels the same considering what he did upon return from his so-called service.

Now the new Mr. Slick is whining the campaign should be run in a kinder, gentler fashion. This after months of vitriolic mud-slinging (honing his prevaricating technique, I guess) at President Bush.

Well, I hope the Bush camp gives all his mud back to him. Any truth about The Whiner will seem like mud, so we’ll be hearing a lot of whining.

This too-good-to-be-true candidate (and you know what they say about things that are TGTBT) has been in the Senate the last 20-ish years. Well, that’s what I hear. I could be wrong. He really hasn’t commented on it. Whoopsie — that usually means failure.

—Roberta Webster, Salem

http://news.statesmanjournal.com/article.cfm?i=85005

[igoramus987]

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/4/20/171506.shtml
Kerry Reneges on Promise to Release Military Records

Kerry emphatically told Tim Russert on NBC's “Meet the Press” last weekend that “people” could come on down to his campaign headquarters to eyeball his full file of military records.

“They’re available to you to come and look at. People can come and see them at headquarters and take a look at them,” Kerry told Russert.

Russert had asked Kerry if he would release his complete file, as President Bush did after Democrats raised questions about his service in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

Kerry shot back to Russert’s request, “They are” – indicating the records were already released. But Kerry has not realeased all his military records, only a small portion, and placed strict limitations on their examination.
...
Notably, Kerry's campaign has not released to the Globe, or to anyone else, the formal evaluations from superior officers or his complete, uncensored military file, as President Bush has.
...
"When President Bush committed to release all his military records on the same program, he kept his word. John Kerry should do the same," Gillespie said in remarks prepared for a Lincoln Day dinner in Lucas County, Ohio.

"Voters aren't stupid, and he shouldn't treat us as if we are."



Keep your word John Kerry. Sign Standard Form (SF) 180.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

***Notably, Kerry's campaign has not released to the Globe, or to anyone else, the formal evaluations from superior officers or his complete, uncensored military file, as President Bush has.

... "When President Bush committed to release all his military records on the same program, he kept his word. John Kerry should do the same," Gillespie said in remarks prepared for a Lincoln Day dinner in Lucas County, Ohio.

"Voters aren't stupid, and he shouldn't treat us as if we are." ***

[sgtbono2002]

Voters arent stupid? The latest polls sho Kerry is neck and neck with George Bush. If they arent stupid then they are consciously prepared to vote for a man who is "Unfit to Command"

[PJ-Comix]

And as my first act of office, I am sending
Kerry's Swift Boat to this spot in Cambodia.

[Dane]

And as my first act of office, I am sending Kerry's Swift Boat to this spot in Cambodia(Christmas 68)

Even before I(Nixon) take the oath of office on January 20th, 1969.

[stockpirate]

This in no way suprises me about sKerry and his Taxocratic party trash.

On the point of the Swift boat vets, Kerry's own campaign showed a tape of sKerry and his men patrolling in the Swift boats and the tape was shot from another boat.

Although they keep saying to O'Neil and anyone that will listen that "they didn't serve with Kerry because they were not in the same boat."

They used this footage to show the American people that the best way to see the Swift boat in action was from another boat and it shows how close each boat was to the other. Therefore allowing each boat to be able to see the goings on in the other boats.

Now they have moved the bar to saying "not any of the Swift Boat vets served with sKerry during ALL three of his PH's."

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Your point is well taken.

Ignorance benefits Kerry.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

LOL

[Cincinatus' Wife]

And they'll keep moving the bar until the cows come home.

[RedEyeJack]

What will Brinkley use for sources... The "band of brothers" have already indicated that they don't recall going to Cambodia... of course they don't talk to anyone but "Kerry friendly" media so there is no telling what will be cooked up... I must say that it doesn't jive that CO's who didn't think much of Kerry as a sailor or leader, and are on record in that regard, would send him on a unique and dangerous mission into what are now being characterized as "uncharted" waters... Joseph Conrad... Where are you?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

He doesn't need any stinkin' sources, they've got John Kerry's word on it. Oops.

[devolve]

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

JOHN KERRY ON 911

John Kerry ran for Congress in 1972.......

Kerry lost that election and became very deeply depressed.

Kerry's next political and professional move was to withdraw and stay home for six months making model airplanes.

Kerry has criticized President George W Bush on 911 for spending seven minutes in a classroom after hearing the second terrorist highjacked jetliner struck the second World Trade Center tower.

John Kerry was in Washington DC on 911 watching the terrorists attack the World Trade Center on TV.

What did Senator John Kerry then do?

"And as I came in [to a meeting in Sen. Daschle's office on September 11th, 2001], Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid were standing there, and we watched the second plane come in to the building."

"And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think, and then boom, right behind us, we saw the cloud of explosion at the Pentagon."

"Nobody could think". -- Sen. John Kerry

It should be noted that the second plane hit the World Trade Center at 93 a.m., and the plane hit the Pentagon at 9:43 a.m. By Kerry's own words, he and his fellow senators sat there for forty minutes, realizing "Nobody could think".

When America was attacked on 911 Sen. John Kerry "could not think" and sat for forty (40) minutes paralyzed and impotent and unable to physically or emotionally or mentally function!

US Senator John Forbes Kerry said he "was stunned" and just sat down for forty (40) minutes unable to do anything at all!

Leadership!

"More thoughtful" and "more sensitive" leadership!

Not too "swift" Mr. Heinz-Kerry!

[Izzy Dunne]

The Brinkley piece for the NEW YORKER will now say that Kerry was not in Cambodia during Christmas, but rather in January, publishing sources tell DRUDGE.

Even if that was true (he was mis-"seared", LOL ), it's HIGHLY doubtful that Nixon, sworn in on Jan. 20th, would put such a high priority on sending this boat over the line.
It's even MORE doubtful that the memories of the Cambodians celebrating Christmas occurred in JANUARY !!

I think what he meant was that he got his memories from Sears & Roebuck.