Richard Basile, organizer of N.C. Veterans for Kerry, talks with retired Marine Phil Leslie and Leslie's wife, Sallie, reflected in the glass, while planning a Kerry rally in Fayetteville. Staff Photo By Travis Long
Posted on 08/28/2004 3:29:01 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Military veterans in North Carolina solidly back President Bush's bid for re-election, according to a survey conducted this week for The News & Observer. Fifty-seven percent of Tar Heel vets said this week that they would vote for Bush, the Republican, while 35 percent prefer Democratic challenger John Kerry.
And after weeks of public focus on Kerry's war record, 40 percent of North Carolina's veterans don't think he is being honest about his Navy service in Vietnam, while 35 percent believe him.
The responses varied sharply by party affiliation: 71 percent of the Democratic veterans said they believed Kerry, while only 3 percent of Republicans did.
The survey has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
"The military veterans in North Carolina are much more conservative, more pro-Bush than in other parts of the country," said Del Ali, president of Research 2000, the Rockville, Md., polling firm that conducted the survey. In a similar poll Ali conducted in New York, veterans said they believed Kerry over his swift boat critics by a 2-to-1 margin, he said.
Kerry's service in Vietnam is a cornerstone of his campaign. His detractors, most prominently a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, are trying to undermine his war record by running ads questioning whether he deserved all his medals -- three Purple Hearts, the Silver Star and the Bronze Star. And they criticize his activities as a prominent spokesman for an anti-war group after his return from Vietnam.
Veterans who support Kerry are holding a rally this afternoon in Fayetteville, home of Fort Bragg, to talk about his service and about the needs of veterans and service members' families.
North Carolina is home to about 780,000 veterans -- 13 percent of the adult population -- plus 92,000 active duty military personnel and nearly 40,000 reservists and National Guard members.
Both of the major parties' presidential candidates have received contributions from donors who said they worked for a branch of the military or, more broadly, for the Department of Defense. Bush had received $340,655 through July from donors nationwide, and Kerry had received $249,823.
Hubbub over Kerry
Some of Bush's opponents among military people make a point that he did not serve in combat, as Kerry did, and question whether Bush met all his commitments while in the Air National Guard. But those questions are faint echoes compared with the Kerry hubbub.
Forty-three percent of veterans in The N&O survey said they thought Bush was being honest about his service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War, while 29 percent did not believe him.
Ron Eckstein, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, repeated the campaign's demand that Bush denounce the Swift Boat ads.
"If you just repeat things over and over, it doesn't matter if they're true; people start to believe them," Eckstein said.
Although the Vietnam War ended nearly 30 years ago, voters are reliving a condensed version -- both the battles and the protests against it. Both sides are embodied in Kerry.
The focus on the war -- who served, who was wounded and who dissented -- are an unwelcome intrusion for Orren Hightower, a veteran from Charlotte.
For him, the campaign is a reminder of battles, wounds and his return to this country as a soldier in an unpopular war.
"It was pretty bad coming back," Hightower said. "All I wanted to do was forget about that bad experience in Vietnam. That's what I did for 30 years."
Hightower, a 56-year-old building materials salesman, was drawn into the presidential campaign when he was asked to attend a Kerry rally in Charlotte last week.
Hightower calls Kerry a "brother in arms" but says Kerry's role as a prominent anti-war protester troubles him.
"I just don't understand how Kerry could experience such a thing as Vietnam and then come home to protest the war," said Hightower, who said he voted for Bush in 2000 and is leaning that way again.
Heroism and dissent
Kerry's testimony in April 1971, when he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about atrocities committed by service members in Vietnam, is a key reason why veterans who contact Richard Basile, organizer of N.C. Veterans for Kerry, say they don't support him.
Basile, who lives in Raleigh and is a Vietnam veteran himself, said critics misconstrued Kerry's comments to mean that all service members in Vietnam committed atrocities.
"That's a misrepresentation of what Kerry did," Basile said. "I think with Kerry's action, it was a way to bridge military heroism with informed civil dissent."
Kerry crewmate Del Sandusky and a retired rear admiral, a swift boat captain and the mother of an Iraqi soldier are on the program for today's rally, which Basile helped organize.
The Fayetteville rally is part of a North Carolina tour for Sandusky. He will stop in Greenville and Goldsboro to talk to veterans before the rally.
Deja vu in Iraq
Vietnam vets in North Carolina who support Kerry see shades of Vietnam in the war with Iraq and say concerns about extended tours, struggling reservists' families and questions about an overextended fighting force will help sway voters to their candidate.
Rod Martenis, a Vietnam veteran from Clemmons, counts the war in Iraq as one of the Bush administration's "blunders." Bush shifted focus to Iraq before finishing the job of tracking down terrorists in Afghanistan, Martenis said.
"I just don't get the sense of truthfulness coming out of the Bush administration," said Martenis, 59, a retired information technology manager.
But another veteran, Edward Parungo of Raleigh, said he believes Kerry's swift boat critics and also supports the Iraq war.
"If all that's being said by the swift boat people is wrong, why does he not stand up and say it was wrong," Parungo asked. "He is not a commander. He is not leadership material."
Parungo, a retired Marine who fought in the Korean and Vietnam wars, said reports on military deaths in Iraq are overemphasized.
"I would rather, and will -- any day, any time -- go overseas and blow up their real estate and kill and maim their people than have them come over here and do that over here," said Parungo, 75. "This country has forgotten 9/11 a lot quicker than I thought they would."
Staff writer Lynn Bonner can be reached at 829-4821 or lbonner@newsobserver.com. Staff writer Bill Krueger and news researcher Denise Jones contributed to this report.
Richard Basile, organizer of N.C. Veterans for Kerry, talks with retired Marine Phil Leslie and Leslie's wife, Sallie, reflected in the glass, while planning a Kerry rally in Fayetteville. Staff Photo By Travis Long
They're getting out the truth so Kerry won't be Commander in Chief!
_________________________________________________
That challenge was shouted at anti-war demonstrations.
In Chicago they shouted, "The whole world is watching!"
Well, the whole world is watching again and this time it's Iraq.
We can't win the debate on Iraq until we recognize Vietnam for what it was.
The Swift Boat fracas is the surface manifestation of a large, open, deep divide in American political thought. .....
misconstrued?
John F. Kerry, APRIL 22, 1971, Senate Foreign Relations Committee ...
"I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command...."
"They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires 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 in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."
The word misconstrue takes on a whole new meaning here.
" mis·con·strue" (mskn-str) tr.v. mis·con·strued, mis·con·stru·ing, mis·con·strues ...
To mistake the meaning of; misinterpret.
Yeah..politicians the great 'promise keepers'....the Dems always tell veterans and their families what raw deals they got and how they are going make things right.....at least that's what they say 'before' the election...
Afterwards they get pretty scarce...
The VAMCs are still woefully underfunded when it comes to how much actually 'trickles' down to direct hands on patient care and patient's needs....
Two things have to happen...for VAMCs to actually do what they are supposed to do...real cleanup in the VA pork....and real funding for actual needs
It seems the govt always believes that bureaucrats always ask for about 50% more than they need...so they never give them what they ask for -always less.... The problem in the VA is that when the govt. leans them out...the friggen hospital directors always cut patient care...and make sure the fat cats never suffer...
In my local VA they take the money and apply it to the outside...they dress up the hospital to make it look good when the VIPs go through...while patient care and services suffer...
They have a nice little (expensively) well maintained golf course...nice interior paint jobs...new decorative architecture on the face...new wallpaper...etc etc... But medical equipment...training...medical supplies....and services for care get cut...
And the worst cuts in service I ever saw were under 8 yrs of Clintons..... The Clintons got VA hospitals new coats of paint...and at the same time cut services by first making new rules to get rid of patients...once the patients were gone there was no justification for services...really slick...
Kerry is a major liar...how any one can actually believe he will fulfill any promise....he will say anything to get elected...and since he has no honor and feels no guilt...there is no reason for him to fulfill any promise made..
Veterans have a much better chance of themselves their buddies and their returning kids from battle getting taken care of under GW Bush than John (the prevaricator) Kerry
imo
They can't change his testimony.
***As a student of the left, Jamie Glazov, has observed in an article about the middle-class defenders of recently captured Seventies terrorist Kathy Soliah: "if you can successfully camouflage your own pathology and hatred with a concern for the 'poor' and the 'downtrodden,' then there will always be a 'progressive' milieu to support and defend you."*** ***Source
Later examination of those who testified at those hearings revealed that many were not even veterans, and others who were, but who had not served in Vietnam. In other words, Kerry's "hearings" comprised those who hated the United States and wanted to see the nation humiliated and defeated. This is Kerry's legacy: he was the ally of the enemies of the nation.
FYI....BTW this has got to help in the Senate race...any news there?
$25 is less than the cost of lunch for our family at a fast-food joint, less than a couple of movie tickets, less than a pair of tennis shoes, less than a steak dinner, less than a few weeks' worth of soda! And isn't the TRUTH a much more worthy recipient of your next disposable $25? Click the logo above to donate to the Swiftees.
Was and is. Not only that, he was a leader of those enemies.
I was aware of the "non veterans and false veterans". Would all the country be aware as you, I, and others of these facts.
As I stated yesterday in a post, this cancerous wound called Vietnam, brought about by those lies created by Kerry and others of the deviant left in the '60's and '70's, needs to be scraped open by the scalpel of truth thereby allowing it to heal.
ping
Why is it not being discussed that those so called
veterans kerry was quoting in his testimony were frauds ,they were never in vietnam ,this was a jane fonda event
Jane Fonda event in that she was the most widely known.
Anti- Americans of all stripes came out to destroy the governments credibility. The press, being the American haters they are and had been, front paged the story daily.
They assaulted the Nixon Presidency with the zeal of a Mongoose killing a snake.
And of course we all know the rest. First they got VP Spiro Agnew for indiscretions as Governor of Maryland. Then came Watergate.
They are trying to do the same to GWB, but so far he has stayed one step ahead.
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