Iraq Debate on PBS...Iraq Vet for Bush / Iraq Vet for Kerry

MARGARET WARNER: We get those two views from two officers who saw duty in Iraq last year.

Stan Coerr, a major in the marine reserves, was called to active duty last year. He fought in Iraq from March to May of 2003. He's now San Diego co-chair of California Republican Veterans of America.

And Jon Soltz was an army captain who served in Iraq during the occupation, from May to September of 2003. He is now a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh. He's also Pennsylvania state co- coordinator for the group Veterans for Kerry.

Jon Soltz, let me begin with you. Why are you supporting John Kerry for president?

JON SOLTZ: Well, John Kerry's the only one of the two candidates running for president who understands my war, the war I fought in Iraq, who understands what it's like to be far from your family in a war that... let's be honest, the truth has not been told. John Kerry's the only one of the two candidates who has the ability to put our direction on course.

He's the man who has the leadership and the character that we need. I want a commander-in-chief who knows what it's like to be in combat like I was, who knows what it's like to be far from your family and probably tell them things are okay when they're actually not, and he's the man who since he... I've come back with my experiences outlayed a plan to give us peace in Iraq... or a better opportunity for that.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. And Stan Coerr, you've reached the opposite conclusion. Why?

STAN COERR: I have. Margaret, I went to several different events, including California Veterans for Bush and California Veterans for Kerry.

I wanted to give each man a chance to prove to me he had what it took to lead this country as we head into a further asymmetrical world of the terrorist threat. And what I found was that John Kerry, in my opinion, is someone who needs to be president, not someone who wants to be president.

And that kind of person concerns me very much. I think George Bush has been resolute in his decisions about terrorism, in his decisions about what to do in Iraq and where to go from here. I feel that he will not waiver.

He's made it very clear that he will stay the course until we get the job done we need to have done, and I think the families of those men and women who have been killed in Iraq are deserving of the honor of having the job done properly and finishing what we started before we bring our troops home.

MARGARET WARNER: So you agree, in other words, with the president when he basically implies that John Kerry would waiver in this war on terror and in Iraq?

STAN COERR: Well, I'm not really sure what John Kerry would do, because it's very difficult to pin him down on what he actually believes.

I think all of us can agree that John Kerry served honorably and well in Vietnam. I think that the fact that he volunteered and then volunteered again for a very dangerous duty is commendable. And I think that his heroism is unquestioned.

What I do think is that his public service did not end in 1971. I think that his record in the Senate deserves some scrutiny, and I am questioning what he actually believes.

He has gone back and forth as to whether he supports the war or not, whether he supports a president who acts unilaterally or not. It's difficult to pin him down, and in his speech today at the convention, he made it even more muddled as to what he would actually do as opposed to just saying he's against whatever George Bush is doing.

Debating the war MARGARET WARNER: All right, Jon Soltz, what would John Kerry actually do, other than criticize what the president's done?

JON SOLTZ: Well, I mean, the first thing we need to note here is that the president is a failed commander- in-chief. President Bush sent soldiers like me to die for weapons that we can't find.

If that doesn't prove that he's failed his last four years as president, frankly, I'm not sure what does. Sen. Kerry is the only one of the two candidates who has the credibility to bring allies to our side.

Our force levels in Iraq are so high that soldiers like myself, who spent, you know, an entire year... or some of them have spent entire years in Iraq, have come home for a year, and are now going back. 43 percent of Operation Iraqi Freedom Three is going to be guard and reserve forces.

This president has broken this military. And John Kerry's the only one of the two who's given us any alternatives or any possibility of hope. He's the one who supports increasing the size of the army by 40,000 soldiers, not President Bush.

He's the one who has the credibility to go back to the world, because let's be honest, the world isn't against the United States; they're against our president.

And I'll tell you what, going it alone hurt soldiers like me. Going it alone burdened our American army to a point where we've had to back draft people in our military.

I went to war because of this backdoor draft. Even though my time was up, I still went, and I did my duty. But the American public has a right to know the truth about this war.

We can talk all day long about what Sen. Kerry said at the National Guard today, but, you know what, he leveled with the national guardsmen. He didn't make any crazy attempts to link al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. He leveled with the soldiers and said, "you know, you guys are fighting hard."

And I'm going to be honest with you, President Bush continues to mislead our country about the direction of our war. And he hasn't even... this is a guy... this is a president who will not even support mandatory funding for our health care.

It was a dark day for me when I had to return home from the war in Iraq, have some bad dreams, go to my veterans hospital only to find out that the same man who sent me to war has turned his back on me when I came home, and decided that he was going to close our veterans hospital here in Pittsburgh on Highland Drive.

He's turned his back on his veterans and he's led our country in the wrong direction in Iraq.

Staying the course in Iraq MARGARET WARNER: Let me get Stan Coerr's view on both of those. First of all, Stan Coerr, a big part of -- I don't know if you heard -- Sen. Kerry's speech today was that the president not only didn't level on why we went into war, but what he was saying today is he isn't leveling today about how bad things are.

I mean, the president said two days ago, "our strategy is working in Iraq, is succeeding in Iraq," and John Kerry said today, "look, Iraq is in serious trouble and the president hasn't told the American people the truth." What is your view of what's happening in Iraq, and is the administration a, leveling, and, b, have a plan to stabilize it?

STAN COERR: Margaret, I think as in most political situations, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle, between what Sen. Kerry is saying and what President Bush is saying.

I don't think all is bread and roses in Iraq. I would be naive to believe that things are going peacefully and beautifully everywhere American soldiers and marines have their boots on the ground.

However, I don't think it's completely coming unraveled either, as John Kerry wants us all to believe right up to the day that he stands for election this November.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me ask about the second... oh, go ahead. Did you want to say more on that?

STAN COERR: Yes, ma'am. What I was going to say was that the question of internationalizing this situation, making it more multinational, I think has been answered.

I know this personally because when I was in the war, I was there with the British army, as a liaison officer between the U.S. Marines and British army forces. I also dealt with soldiers of many different countries, including some of the royal Ghurka rifles from Nepal. We now have 30 different nations represented there.

Now they're not in large numbers, and we all understand that. There are two multinational divisions in the southern part of country, one led by the British and one led by the Poles.

And we don't have as multinational a cast on this event as we did in Desert Storm, but I think it shows how resolute this leader is that he nonetheless is willing to put his reputation, his administration on the line, as is Tony Blair and to get the job done properly.

How the war has shaped political views MARGARET WARNER: Jon Soltz, a big point of disagreement between the two is whether the war was properly planned for and whether the troops on the ground have what they need now, have and had and still have what they need now.

What was your experience on the ground there? And I realize you came home last fall, but...

JON SOLTZ: My experience on the ground was that, you know, we had a president who, prior to 9/11, his policies in Europe going against the Kyoto Accords, and deciding he wanted to build super-duper missile defense systems, had no credibility to build a coalition, spent our defense money on, you know, things like missile systems when we needed body armor and tanks.

My unit did not have body armor when we went to Iraq. When we got on the ground, I went from Kuwait to Baghdad in a convoy. Baghdad's very different from the southern part of the country where there's a British contingent.

Baghdad has lost... we've lost more American soldiers in Baghdad than any other place. That's why we're footing 90 percent of the bill for the war and 90 percent of the casualties.

And when we went to Baghdad, I heard my president tell our country that our mission was accomplished, and that same night I had two RPG's flung at my convoy and one of my trucks blown up. He clearly wasn't leveling with the American public. And then when I was in Baghdad, we started losing soldiers every day.

Every day we went out, there was combat. And when one of my soldiers died, I had to hear my commander-in-chief so eloquently entice my enemy with, "Bring it on," a deep sorrow day for me as an officer inside Iraq.

Differing opinions on Sen. Kerry's service MARGARET WARNER: Let me finish up by asking you, Stan Coerr, on this question of both men, both candidates this week made promises and pledges about what they would do for veterans, what they would do for active duty and reserves to ease the strain of all these deployments.

You're out there talking to veterans and military personnel now in advance of the election.

How in general do those promises and pledges resonate? Do veterans and military personnel feel more needs to be done? Is John Kerry making any inroads there?

STAN COERR: Margaret, John Kerry's not making inroads. And let me tell you why. I think most veterans, as I said before, along with the American people, honor what John Kerry did in Vietnam.

What they are unhappy about is what he did when he returned home, using Vietnam as sort of a springboard to political office. His testimony, which we've all seen on television before the Senate, about what he thought about the war, leading an anti- war effort.

I spoke several weeks ago at a convention here in Southern California alongside a retired three-star navy admiral who had been held prisoner in North Vietnam and said that he personally was tortured because of the comments John Kerry made, and the feeling among those being held was John Kerry has left us behind, he's abandoned us. Now, let me move back to the present time.

What I always hear from the Kerry people, and sometimes from Kerry himself, is two sides to the same coin. The first thing I hear is, "we're spending far too much money." There's far too much of our treasuries being looted for this war halfway around the world. The other thing I hear is, "we're not spending enough money. Why don't we have enough body armor? Why aren't we giving more money to our troops?"

I think because of that sort of back-and-forth that Kerry is trying to have both ways, I think veterans are pretty well disgusted with him. I can tell you that I have a photograph of myself meeting Sen. Kerry, and the friends that I sent that photograph to think I'm a traitor.

They can't believe that I would even shake hands with that man, and everyone I know, my peers and those I worked with, are all very strong Republicans and they're Bush supporters in this specific campaign.

JON SOLTZ: If John Kerry is a traitor, then so am I. John Kerry fought for his right to come home and question his war in Vietnam; 12,000 Americans died after he testified in the senate. And I fought for my right to question this president's policies in Iraq.

It was a dark day for me when I had to go to the hospital in Germany to see one of my soldiers who was blown up. For the first time in my life, you know, I cried in uniform. I had to look at this guy and I had to say to him, you know, "I hope that this is worth it."

The fact of the matter is this administration is not being truthful with the war in Iraq. They've continually tried to tie it to al-Qaida. We've committed 85 percent of our ground army. Soldiers like me have died for weapons we can't find.

And they let Osama bin Laden run around in Afghanistan with zero of our ten military divisions not allocated to that. They failed us. They failed our soldiers. They failed our men and women in uniform.

They won't support mandatory funding for veterans health care. They won't support, you know, giving Iraqi veterans more than a two-year claim against the VA system. We know that these soldiers are going to have problems with PTSD. They won't sign a real concurrent receipt. They're closing our veterans hospitals, and they've broken our army to a point where we had to stop loss people in past their time.

It is time for them to level with the American public. Until they level with the American public, we cannot win the war in Iraq.

article on PBS from MRC.org

http://www.mediaresearch.org/BozellColumns/newscolumn/1997/col19970724.asp

Where's PBS's Gavel-to-Gavel Coverage?
by L. Brent Bozell III
July 24, 1997

"If PBS won't do it, who will?" The words from a $2 million advertising campaign echoed endlessly across 300 PBS affiliates in the wake of Newt Gingrich's unfulfilled pledge to privatize public broadcasting in 1995. (This probably doesn't mean anything in this corrupt city, but it was illegal for PBS to use taxpayer funds for that.) Two years later, the slogan has been exposed as a cruel hoax. Where on earth is PBS gavel-to-gavel coverage as the Senate investigates definite illegal fundraising, probable espionage, and possible treason in the belly of the Clinton-Gore campaign?

No major broadcast network has been inspired to air the hearings as a public service, leaving the field to feisty fledgling cable operations like Fox News Channel and National Empowerment Television, who have a fraction of the reach of PBS. Oh, how this mighty empire has forgotten its historical legacy -- or has it? Do they serve the American people -- or the liberal power elite that put them in place?

Laurence Jarvik notes in his book "PBS: Behind the Screen" how PBS used live coverage of the Watergate hearings -- complete with repeats in prime time -- to build PBS's reputation in the early years, and stick it to their enemies. Jim Lehrer wrote: "As programming, the Watergate broadcasts were a terrific hit with the audience and the stations and established once and for all that real public affairs programming has a permanent place on public broadcasting." Lehrer added vengefully: "As justice, it was pure delicious. We were being bailed out by the sins of a president who was trying to do us in. He and his minions were so distracted by the crumbling of his presidency that the plan to crumble us was abandoned and forgotten."

PBS also cleared the decks to air much of the Iran-Contra hearings, and the NPR-prodded kangaroo court known as the Hill-Thomas hearings. Washington station WETA even provided a live feed of confirmation hearings for Clinton Surgeon General nominee Henry Foster.

So why the blackout now? The public broadcasting newspaper Current reported: "PBS's traditional method of covering major hearings -- gavel to gavel -- appeared 'unmanageable' earlier this year when Sen. Fred Thompson? predicted that the hearings would run for a year, said [PBS "Democracy Project" boss Ellen] Hume. Stations' daytime schedles are largely devoted to children's programs -- so much so that only 4-6 percent of stations carried the 1995 Whitewater and Waco hearings." And WETA cut off its coverage of those hearings right in the middle, despite its press-release claims of a "history of live, uninterrupted coverage of Congressional hearings." WETA spokesman Pat Lute wouldn't explain why, simply repeating the mantra: "We made an editorial decision."

As a fig leaf to cover its failure to add historical balance to its Republican President-bashing marathons, Hume quickly green-lighted a 24-part series titled "Follow the Money," dragged on the air so quickly it's not aired in many major markets, or buried in dreary weekend time slots. Executive Producer Andrew Walworth told Current: "We've got to get people into the tent, we've got to engage them in a story that I think is bigger than just the hearings."

Translation: we plan to campaign for government-funded elections, and claim the problem emerging from the hearings is the system, not the Democrats who did an illegal end run around it. That's precisely what I was told by an attendee of a recent PBS programmers' meeting in Dallas, where Hume unveiled the "Follow the Money" mission.

And that's exactly what they're doing. In the second episode, Time reporter Viveca Novak (who came from the liberal lobby Common Cause's magazine) previewed with anticipation former RNC Chairman Haley Barbour's testimony: It will lay out there the fact that both parties have this problem. Perhaps what we'll end up with is a very good case that both parties were scrambling for money, both of them went overseas, and the system lends itself to these kind of abuses, and maybe it really does need to be reformed."

Defiance is PBS's modus operandi these days. It skips out on fundraising scandal hearings, replacing it with propaganda advancing a liberal legislative agenda. It refuses to participate in a television ratings system, family-friendliness and the will of the taxpaying public be damned. They do it because they have absolutely no fear of the principle-challenged GOP.

In 1995, with an insincerity matching PBS's claims to serve the public interest, Rep. John Edward Porter promised PBS privatization advocates he would put the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on a "glide path" to zero - not a typical liberal glide upward with no questions asked. Now the hopelessly squishy Porter has announced House appropriators will grant an increase in the CPB's annual budget, from $250 million to $300 million, a clear betrayal of the Republicans' promise to bring this runaway, cash-rich dinosaur under control.

Good question. I do not have the answer. Assume he retired some time back. Perhaps this is all by design, if I may go off on a limb. Perhaps all these years, regardless of the front Big John Forbes Kerry, gee the guy isn't even Irish,
is really seathing in guilt over what he did to so many honorable men, especially those that ended up in the Hanoi Hilton, and other NV prisons and had to hear how a U.S. Naval officer was charging them with war crimes! They will never forgive JFK. He took such a brash chance to base his war record (man he was a loss cannon, the others did not want him there, it was a blessing for him to leave after four months), be his major platform at their convention.
He figured he has lied his way out of jail for some 35 years that once again he could pull it off. This time he will not get away with it if the Swift Boat and other VET orgs have anything to say about it.
The RNC ought to start to play dirty pool, hey just like the DNC and publically ask why JFK is a US Senator and is allowed to run for the presidency. After all, his un-authorized meetings in Paris with the "ENEMY", and anti war activities CLEARLY according to the US. Constitution Amendment 14, article 3, and a few United States Uniform Code of Justice articles put him in clear violation of these laws. So why is he now being allowed to run for the office of president of the United States, and why has he been allowed to hold a US Senator seat all these years?
Shame on our government for not trying him for war crimes many years back! He was still in the Navy when he went to Paris. He had no right to do that. One of the US UMCJ articles indicate that he could be tried for treason and receive the death penalty for what he did.
tis beyond me how certain Americans can get away with just about anything.

To Mr John Soltz:
"I think all of us can agree that John Kerry served honorably and well in Vietnam. I think that the fact that he volunteered and then volunteered again for a very dangerous duty is commendable. And I think that his heroism is unquestioned. "

John, this may come as a great surprise to you, but if you believe what you just said, then I would like to introduce you to the John Kerry that I knew 33 years ago. Not just me, but literally thousands more men and women who served in Vietnam, have a far different story to get you up to speed on who Mr. Kerry is, what he did (And still does) and why he doesn't deserve the accolades you just afforded him.
I hope you get a chance to read my story on this great website or "Wintersoldier.com" or better yet, just buy, beg, borrow or give me an address, and I'll send you a copy of the book "Unfit for Command" by John O'neill. Mr.O'neill is also quite familiar with John Kerry and will challange you to question your statement.
If after all of the above doesn't change your mind about the man who wants to take this Country over at this time, then I have some wonderful seafront property in Arizona that I'd gladly sell you.
In all seriousness, the blood that has been spilled from Vietnam to Iraq demands a much more closer look at the man who would have you believe that he "volunteered for Vietnam twice and his "heroism" is unquestioned.
You're in for the shock of your life young man!

I'm curious what duty position this Army Captain held. He drove in a convoy from Kuwait to Iraq without body armor? What type of unit was he in? Was he a finance officer, a staff officer, some other desk jockey? It has been my experience that the Soldiers who pant and pine the most about Iraq are those who didn't do jack when they were deployed. Because they can't get any attention by telling war stories, they seek attention by hopping on the anti-war bandwagon, so that someone will acknowledge them and give them some attention.

That's not intended as a personal attack. Rather, it is my observation about where so much of the controversy arises from Soldiers and veterans. It bolsters my theory that we have more than enough Soldiers in Iraq, but that they simply are not being used. There are tens of thousands of Soldiers who complete deployments to Iraq and never leave the comfort of their base. They compete in softball tournaments, water polo tournaments, 5K fun runs, get fat eating 4 meals per day at a KBR chow hall, and get daily massages and facials (you might think I'm making that up or exaggerating - that should only highlight the lunacy of the situation).

What is absent in the criticisms that this Captain makes are the logical explanations behind them. No infantry unit or other combat arms units go into battle without body armor - they didn't when we crossed the berm in March 2003 and they don't now. If you are going into Iraq (as opposed to going into battle) without body armor, then it is because you are taking a relatively safe route, traveling in an armored vehicle, of you have a heavily armed escort. I could go on, but a poorly formed argument does not merit a point-by-point rebuttal.

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