Kerry's Vietnam (Boston Globe painted into a Corner)

Boston Glob ^ | 6/10/05 | GLOBE EDITORIAL

[bitt]

DESPITE THE continuing gripes of his critics, records released this week show that Senator John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam. The documents should put to rest claims that Kerry misrepresented his military record in the presidential race. But Kerry's failure to respond to the smear campaign launched against him last summer lent credibility to its real objective: to impugn his equally honorable opposition to the war.

John O'Neill, a Houston lawyer and Kerry's adversary on the war since 1971, acknowledged as much in a telephone interview Wednesday. ''We produced seven commercials," he said of his anti-Kerry group, now called Swift Vets and POWs for Truth. ''Only one dealt with Vietnam activities." O'Neill was incensed by Kerry's memorable testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, in which the young veteran, clad in a combat shirt, criticized the war.

Kerry has said that he may have used a poor choice of words when he cited other veterans' reports of atrocities as being ''in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan." But his basic analysis was sound: Vietnamese and Americans were dying needlessly because the war was a mistake, and US policymakers allowed it to continue even though they were aware that their strategy for victory was failing.

The Swift Boat ads ....snip

[presently no screen name]

Hillary is my guess. skerry loves himself too much to go aganist her. 2008 will be the mother of all elections.

[CedarDave]

If you would wade through the form--which is all of one page, you would see that there are only three options. Deleted, undeleted or other--where other is a space for the signee to request "other information" apart from his separation materials.

No where in the Boston Globe article by Kranisch is it suggested that Kerry opted for that choice--that is, to ask for more material. The article only mentions an "undeleted" request, so it presumeably just involved him having checked off that option.

This is what Kerry's SF-180 request should look like:

>

[CedarDave]

See post #182

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

Give them idiots hell Brother!

[FreedomPoster]

Nicely done bump.

[JLO]

Bump/ping to post #182!

[Curious Yellow]

Turns out, that's pretty much what it did look like. The only difference being he only released it to the AP, Boston Globe and LA Times.