Posted on 08/27/2004 8:29:05 AM PDT by hinterlander
Why are the Big Media savaging the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? Why are the Kerryites telling us to move on and debate the real issues--health care, education, the economy?
Because they know this could kill John Kerry's candidacy. Because they know this is not just about Vietnam, but also about the credibility and character of the man who would be President.
I have followed Kerry since he became famous. In 1971, I urged Nixon not to enforce Chief Justice Burger's order to remove Kerry's Vietnam vets from the Mall. We don't want another Bonus Army episode, I told the President. Kerry's vets were allowed to camp out, throw their medals over the fence, and depart.
While I thought Kerry's testimony to be execrable, I took him to be a man who served bravely. If Unfit For Command by Swift Boat vet and Kerry nemesis John O'Neill is true, Kerry is a dishonest man who slandered his superior officers and betrayed his comrades and country in wartime.
In that April, Kerry told the Senate he had met with 150 vets in Detroit who confessed to having witnessed and committed war crimes with the knowledge of their officers.
Said Kerry, they "had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wire from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."
Kerry's testimony was played back to Paul Galanti, a POW inside Hanoi's dungeons. Ted Cordier says he and fellow POWS were tortured to force them to tell the kind of lies about U.S. troops in Vietnam John Kerry told the Senate for free.
Kerry has made his service the centerpiece of his career, his convention and his campaign. He cannot evade the questions. If Vietnam was the dirty immoral war he said it was in 1971, how can he now celebrate his service in that war in 2004?
But if Kerry and his Band of Brothers were defending our country, as he now claims, why did he slime as war criminals the comrades he left behind to defend our country?
Kerry told the Fulbright committee "crimes threaten [the country] . . . not reds, but the crimes we are committing." We are "ashamed of and hated what we were called on to do in Southeast Asia." But if he was "ashamed of and hated" what he was called on to do in Vietnam by 1971, how could he be proud of it today?
"[T]o attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom," Kerry told Fulbright, "is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy." But after Saigon fell thousands of South Vietnamese were shot, thousands more sent to "reeducation camps."
Hundreds of thousands fled in leaky boats into the South China Sea where many were raped by Thai pirates and drowned. A million Cambodians were murdered in 1975 in one of the great holocausts of the 20th century. What does Kerry now think the Vietnam War was about, if not the freedom of these people from the barbarism of Asian Communism?
Kerry's credibility is now everywhere in question. Biographer Douglas Brinkley says Kerry told him he resigned by letter from the VVAW executive committee, Nov. 10, 1971, and was not at a Kansas City meeting days later, where the assassination of senators was discussed. FBI and pro-Kerry vets now say Kerry did not tell the truth. He was at Kansas City. Kerry's campaign no longer denies it.
Repeatedly, Kerry has said he was in Cambodia at Christmas 1968. Not one former commander, comrade, or any one of his Band of Brothers support his story. Kerry made it all up to portray himself as a secret suffering warrior risking his life in forbidden land while leaders like Nixon were lying by denying they had sent him there.
Now, it appears that it was John Kerry doing the lying.
In "the sampan incident," a fog-of-war episode, Kerry's gunner Steve Gardner shot and killed a man and boy and took a hysterical woman and baby off their bloody boat. The "after-action report" claimed five Viet Cong dead and two captured. Who wrote it?
Four of Kerry's five medals are now under question either for falsehoods or exaggerations. The more information that comes out, the less believable Kerry becomes. O'Neill's Swift Boat vets may be a little older, they may be a little grayer, but they still know how to fight for their country.
The world would be a much happier place without Kerry.
Pat's got it all together let's hope what he writes will stick.
Well, well, well. FINALLY !! The old has-been, Pat Buchanan, is saying something for a change that does not make him look like a horse's patoot.
How great is that? Kerry always likes to steal peoples quotes and turn them around.
Kerry now snivels "make them stop"
Truth will win out.
And we have your "six" my brothers. Time to RIGHT the WRONG!
bump TO SUPPORT THE NEW SWIFT VETS AD AND GEORGE BUSH... http://swift2.he.net/~swift2/gardner2.mpg
Very good point you don't see mentioned much.
Now? It seems the cornerstone of his entire campaign is a lie.
Other than O'Neill himself, Buchanan has command of the facts better than any other talking head I've seen on TV. It's clear he's actually read/studied the book, unlike others, and has a good memory for details and can keep the incidents straight.
How about in the words of Mark Twain, "If you speak the truth, you never have to remember what you've said."
I look at myself and wonder. What am I? Am I some nut that thinks that all that you have stated could be correct? Am I the only one that thinks Kerry should Drop his bid for the highest office of the land.After all that is stated about Kerry and Kerrys doings, I wonder why anyone sees him as a leader of this country. Am I a nut for thinking that? Am I the only one that thinks this way? Am I the only one that thinks Bush should stay in office?
You have posted this all over the place. For people that visit here your line may seem to infer some linkage between The Swift Vets and George Bush. There is no linkage. It may also be taken to infer that a lot of freepers might think that the Swift vets and George W. Bush are linked. I don't think most people here believe that.
I just wanted to point that out because there are a lot of people watching this site and I'd hate to see the MSM get the wrong idea.
No doubt about that. I'll watched Buchanan on Scarborough* and he really understands the details.
*Seems kind of wimpy to me.
Did you listen to Sean Hannity's show last night?
He did the "man in the street - Thursday", His help Flipper, jumped into a group of older teens, voting age and Sean would ask them questions. Out of 7 kids questioned, 7 would vote for Kerry. Believe this, one thought Kerry was "Jim Kearny" and Edwards was "Stu Ped", Sean had one convinced these same names were running. They all had one thing in common, they didn't know who John Kerry was, they didn't know his background, and they didn't care, they just wanted Bush out of office.
To me, that's scarey
Maybe it's not freddiedavis but rather Lanny Davis that is still smarting from that spanking he Admiral slapped on his lying ass the other night?
That will the nimrod to smear good Men. Old Warriors don't take that crap sitting down.
To me, that's scarey
17 posted on 08/27/2004 9:09:40 AM PDT by Zavien Doombringer (I am not late for Zots, I have stealth Zot capability.....)
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They won the battles in Vietnam. Now they are fighting where wars are won and lost, here in the U.S.
Ask Americans in 1971 to name someone connected to the Vietnam War and far too many would have named Lt. Calley.
No, in 1971 there was nothing shocking about Kerry's testimony.
Huge numbers of Americans got their "news" from the networks. The "anti-war" folks owned the networks. (Like today "anti-war" was not literally, "anti-war." Most of that crowd favored the peoples' struggle against the South Vietnamese oppressive running dogs of U.S. imperialism).
The U.S. military was worse than the reds, testified John Kerry.
Those are reasons North Vietnamese General Giap named the American press his "most valuable guerrilla" and praised the "anti-war" crowd.
Today the oppressed are in the Middle East. The imperialist is the same according to "anti-war" Americans.
There were sources of real news but you had to look beyond North Vietnamese Communists' "most trusted man in America."
The fighting where our wars are won or lost, here at home, is once again with us. We must not fail. It's for all the marbles this time.
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