Posted on 08/22/2004 10:54:07 AM PDT by Carl/NewsMax
Severely wounded World War II combat hero Sen. Bob Dole questioned whether John Kerry deserved his three Purple Hearts on Sunday, and suggested that the top Democrat should apologize to his fellow Vietnam veterans for engaging in anti-war protests while they were still fighting the war.
"I respect his record - but three Purple Hearts, he never bled that I know of," Dole told CNN's "Late Edition." "They were all superficial wounds."
"As far as I know he never spent one day in the hospital, I don't think he draws any disability pay. He doesn't have any disability. And he's boasting about three Purple Hearts, when you think of some of the people who really got shot up in Vietnam."
Dole, who nearly died as a member of the US 10th Mountain Division from wounds he sustained during the 1944 invasion of Italy, is the nation's foremost champion of veterans causes, recently completing a successful mission to create a World War II memorial on the Capitol Mall this summer.
Drawing on those credentials, Dole called on Kerry to issue a public apology for calling his fellow Vietnam soldiers war criminals during his 1971 Senate testimony, telling CNN, "Maybe he should apologize to all the other two-and-a-half million veterans who served. He wasn't the only one who was in Vietnam."
"I think Sen. Kerry needs to talk about his Senate record, which is pretty thin." Dole added. "That's probably why he's talking about his war record, which is pretty confused."
Lets see how the MSM spins this one. All along they've pumped the liberal line that said if you didn't see combat you had no standing to criticize Kerry. Now we see Mr. "Damn Straight I Saw Combat", Senator Dole, coming out and nailing Kerry's gnarly hide to the barn door!
Your move MSM. BWAAHAAAHHAAAAA!
John McCain on Sen. Dole's comments on Sen. Kerry's Senate record---
I think his words are dishonest and dishonorable. He should never break the Senatorial wall of silence.
Ahhh, another offering left at the altar of sarcasm
I hope the GOP will make Dole the pivot man to counteract the Kerry's non-vets who support him and attack the real vets who dont.
Ever since Bob Dole left the senate he has been a good fighter. I recall during the Florida Y2K debacle he was in the thick of it with the rallies the Bush supporters were putting on.
Thanks for the reality check, Mr. Dole!
Just when you think you really do live in a parallel universe, truth speaks to power.
Even better is that the Bob Dole interview was NOT on Fox, but on CNN, which is watched by fewer people. But CNN is likely watched by more people, who consider themselves moderates/undecided. This is growing.
The real issue is not Viet Nam. Viet Nam is a diversion from his 30+ years of public life AFTER Viet Nam.
>>Exactly...if face, I wrote to McCain and asked him that very question...when is he going to denounce Kerry's ad?<<
I did too. Told him that he was letting Kerry slam not only the POW's , but all viet Nam Vets as well. I told him if he is a true Bush supporter, than now is the time to stand up and say so.
Holy batman.
My respect for the former senator from my state just shot up.
I gotta wonder if Dole didn't sandbag CNN and make 'em think he was going to speak out against the Swifties.
Regardless, nice work, sir!
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4534274/
Nixon targeted Kerry for anti-war views
White House tapes reveal then-president’s attempt to discredit Kerry during 1971 war protests, Senate testimony
By Brian Williams
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 6:59 a.m. ET March 16, 2004John Kerry’s first steps onto the national political stage took place back in 1971, when as a returning Vietnam War hero, Kerry led fellow veterans to Washington to protest against the Vietnam War and testify to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the horrors of the war he had seen first hand. Now an NBC News examination of White House audio tapes shows that Kerry’s leadership drew the attention and the ire of President Richard Nixon.
Kerry was a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and went to Washington for a week in April, 1971 to protest, lobby Congress, even to return hundreds of medals and service decorations — thrown into a heap on Capitol Hill. Though the president was gradually withdrawing American ground troops, the veterans said that wasn’t enough. They wanted the United States to pull out immediately.
The Nixon administration went to court to block the 1,200 veterans from camping out on the Mall during their protest, but Kerry and his group stayed put. The reaction from Nixon’s inner circle was real contempt for the veterans. In private conversations inside the White House, Nixon called them “horrible” and “bastards,” H.R. "Bob" Haldeman described the veterans as “ratty-looking,” and Henry Kissinger dismissed them as “inarticulate.”
But John Kerry was just the opposite — presentable, politically astute and very articulate. He appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to testify against the war, critical of the President’s Vietnam policy. “Someone has to die,” Kerry told the committee, “so that President Nixon won’t be, and these are his words, ‘the first President to lose a war.’”
"Well, he is sort of a phony, isn't he?
— President Richard Nixon, May, 1971
Speaking with aide Charles Colson about John Kerry
Kerry also questioned the administration’s strategy of gradual “Vietnamization” of the war — pulling out U.S. ground troops, and turning the war over to the South Vietnamese military. “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam?” Kerry demanded. “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
White House attention
Kerry's testimony reached a national audience, including, we now know from once-secret White House tapes, the president himself, who brought it up with his chief of staff Bob Haldeman. Here is an excerpt from a tape recorded on April 23, 1971, the day after Kerry’s Senate testimony:
Nixon: Apparently, this fellow, uh, that they put in the front row, is that what you say, the front [unintelligible] the real stars — Kerry.
Haldeman: Kerry. He is, he did a hell of a great job on the, uh --
Nixon: He was extremely effective.
And Haldeman concluded: “I think you’ll find Kerry running for political office.”
Related documents
Extended excerpts from the Nixon White House tapes
Kerry ended his week in Washington with a speech to a huge anti-war rally at the U.S. Capitol, again pointing the finger at the Nixon administration for its conduct of the war, and its reaction to the veterans’ protests. “This is a government that cares more about the legality of where men sleep than the legality of where we drop bombs and why men die,” Kerry declared.
The Nixon White House saw Kerry as a threat, and set out to discredit him and infiltrate his organization. The week after the protest rally, Nixon is heard discussing Kerry with White House aide Charles Colson:
Colson: This fellow Kerry that they had on last week --
Nixon: Yeah.
Colson: -- hell, he turns out to be, uh, really quite a phony.
Nixon: Well, he is sort of a phony, isn't he?
Colson: Well, he stayed, when he was here --
Nixon: Stayed out in Georgetown, yeah. [edit]
Colson: -- was out at the best restaurants every night and, uh --
Nixon: Sure.
Colson: -- you know, he's just, the complete opportunist.
Nixon: A racket, sure. [edit]
Colson: We’ll keep hitting him, Mr. President.
Nixon's counter-attack
Colson was Nixon’s point man against Kerry, and he found a weapon in another veteran: John O’Neill. He was a spokesman for Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace, which backed Nixon administration policy in Vietnam, and in turn was supported by the White House.
Fresh out of the Navy like Kerry, O’Neill was angry at Kerry for saying U.S. servicemen in Vietnam routinely committed war crimes. The weekend before the Washington protests, Kerry made the accusations on NBC’s Meet the Press, saying, “I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed, in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones.” And, Kerry claimed, “I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All this is contrary to the laws of warfare.”
John O’Neill hit back at Kerry with administration-orchestrated press appearances of his own, including a news conference that June. O’Neill asked rhetorically, “Shall Mr. Kerry and his little group of one thousand or twelve thousand embittered men be allowed to represent their views as that of all veterans, because they can appear on every news program? I hope not, for the country’s sake.”
After the news conference, O’Neill met with Charles Colson at the White House, where the attack on Kerry was seen as a public relations coup. In a conversation with the president, Haldeman gave the credit to Charles Colson, and raved about John O’Neill:
Haldeman: -- crew cut, real sharp looking guy who is more articulate than Kerry. He’s not as eloquent; he isn’t the ham that Kerry is. But he’s more believable. [edit]
Haldeman: This guy now, is gonna, he’s gonna move on Kerry.
“This is a government that cares more about the legality of where men sleep than the legality of where we drop bombs and why men die.”
— John Kerry, April, 1971
Anti-war rally, U.S. Capitol
The White House encouraged O’Neill to challenge Kerry to a debate. Kerry agreed and before the event, President Nixon called O’Neill into the Oval Office for a pep talk. “It’s a great service to the country,” declared the president.
Nixon: Give it to him, give it to him. And you can do it, because you have a pleasant manner, too, because you’ve got — and I think it’s a great service to the country. [edit]
Nixon: You fellows have been out there. You’ve got to know, seeing the barbarians that we’re up against, you’ve got to know what we’re doing in that horrible swamp that North Vietnam is. You’ve got to know from all our faults of what we have in this country that, that what we’re doing is right. You’ve got to know too, people are critics. Critics of the war, critics of [unint], run America down. [edit] You’ve gotta know that you’re on the winning s—that, that you’re on the right side.
Two weeks later, the veterans squared off on the popular Dick Cavett show:
O’Neill: Mr. Kerry is the type of person who lives and survives only on the war weariness and fears of the American people. This is the same little man who on nationwide television in April spoke of, quote, crimes committed on a day to day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.
Kerry: We believe as veterans who took part in this war we have nothing to gain by coming back here and talking about those things that have happened except to try and point the way to America, to try and say, here is where we went wrong, and we’ve got to change.
Later that year, even as the war continued, Kerry left the increasingly radical Vietnam Veterans Against the War. But the Nixon White House kept after John Kerry. It’s said that when Kerry ran for Congress in 1972, Nixon stayed up late on election night until he knew for sure that Kerry had been defeated.
12 - That article in the Harvard Crimson, you linked, from 1970, has a very important, but seldom addressed declaration:
"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."
Good for Dole. Such a good man. A different generation and it shows, sadly enough for the younger generation.
I don't recall him speaking this harshly ever before...
To a man like Senator Dole, who uses his useless hand as a pen holder (bless him!), Kerry's claims have got to make him grind his teeth whenever the man's (for lack of a better term) name is mentioned.
"I think Sen. Kerry needs to talk about his Senate record, which is pretty thin." Dole added. "That's probably why he's talking about his war record, which is pretty confused."
WOW!!!
Big Bob BUMP!!!
Hey, I was outside Cheney's house, too! Wonder if we bumped into one another. GET OUTTA CHENEY'S HOUSE!
Senator Dole, thank you and God Bless.
It was excellent also how he put Harkin in proper perspective.
Nice job...you've be taking lessons from MiaT, I see..
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.