Posted on 08/30/2004 11:12:46 AM PDT by Cableguy
As John Kerry gets ready to speak to the American Legion on Sept. 1, during the GOP Convention, it is worth recalling some of his earlier comments on that esteemed organization:
We will not quickly join those who march on Veterans' Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the "greater glory of the United States." We will not accept the rhetoric. We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars-in fact, we will find it hard to join anything at all and when we do, we will demand relevancy such as other organizations have recently been unable to provide. We will not take solace from the creation of monuments or the naming of parks after a select few of the thousands of dead Americans and Vietnamese. We will not uphold traditions which decorously memorialize that which was base and grim. It is from these things the New Soldier is asking America to turn. We are asking America to turn from false glory, hollow victory, fabricated foreign threats, fear which threatens us as a nation, shallow pride which feeds off fear, and mostly from the promises which have proven so deceiving these past ten years.
Those comments came in the epilogue to "The New Soldier," the book put out by Vietnam Veterans against the War. The book's cover features a group of not-particularly sober-looking antiwar protesters (vets, presumably) flying the American flag upside down, with the hygene associated with the protesters in New York City right now.
When the speech was announced August 18, Kerry's communications director, Stephanie Cutter, told reporters that Kerry is a member of the American Legion.
morning-of-kerry-speech BUMP
An incredulous bump!
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