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

[CedarDave]

Thanks for the reminder... heh heh heh

[packrat35]

We are a Republic, not a democracy.

Kerry is a senator from Mass and I don't live there, so I have no vote. However, he does impact my life by his misdeeds in the senate.

[Calpernia]

Since you are the self appointed keeper of stupid websites...you may be interested in reviewing this one.

[ken21]

i have never understood why people like soros who have benefitted so much from capitalism then set out to destroy it.

[Calpernia]

You rock!

[bitt]

re: #107, I looked, I had to look. Pretty cool.

[cibco]

Keep going Tonk!

[Calpernia]

There is alot on that thread, sorry. But if you actually take time to read it, you will be lead to connections to our current time war. I have more in clip notes to post...I'm just organizing it all now.

Soros is part of the financial system that set up the finances with Genoud and Huber. They organized the big bank money systems that enabled foreign finance (with confiscated jew money from WW2) and have caused death since.

::self editing to stop my rant from hijacking thread::

[1066AD]

Some more here. Probably another FR thread too for this article.

[ken21]

amazing.

thanks.

[pepsionice]

Sanitization of military records simply doesn't happen. You can release parts of the records and simply hold the rest back. But you can't demand to remove entire records from the file...as if they never existed. His discharge paperwork is likely the item that is the question mark...and disciplinary paperwork if he was "booted" out. My guess is that he will not run for the senate again...because of the records issue.

[Calpernia]

>>>>what im saying is that there are many more important things going on than what some persidential wannabe did 40 years ago.

NO!

Kerry was directly involved with the SDS movement. That is the movement we are at war with today. He is STILL a direct arm for them. Hence him bringing the impeachment memo to the floor.

[CedarDave]

Thanks! I was there, in country, living on the patrol boat for just two weeks shy of a year. Thankfully I never had to interact with JFK, though I left about the time he appeared for his short time on the scene. Those of us who were there and served full tours get positively epileptic when someone as phony as him comes on the stage and makes it all about him and his heroics. Unlike most Vietnam vets, us few who served alongside the Swifties relate directly to his exaggerated exploits and manufactured Purple Hearts. Other veterans understandably connect his activities on behalf of the North Vietnamese as more important for us to remember. However, I'm one of the few on this board (that I know of) who spent time serving in the same squadron, though at a different location.

[j_tull]

He was the official Boston Globe Kerry butt wipe ballwasher from the 2004 election..

Adding my new favorite double entendre pejorative

[LibWhacker]

What's a combat shirt?

[CedarDave]

Thanks Ronnie. I saw the movie on TV a couple of months ago. Thank you for your service -- you more than me were in "harms way" during your time there.

[BIGLOOK]

No offense, Curtis, but you're new. Your take of Kerry is spot on. But take some time to read about Kerry's past actions and orations denouncing his fellow vets and senior command. Kerry's actions divided a generation, condemning those that served to censure and hardship. He caused great pain to the families of our fallen. He is a self proclaimed hero of a war in which he served a mere four months.

Kerry left VN on the three Purple Heart ticket. I suspected that at the time his subordinates and senior command were both sick of him. Their testimony, listened to, confirms my suspicions. Visit the SBVT site. Those are his shipmates and their opinions and thoughts of the man resonate.

You are correct that Senators who so not support justifiable military actions of the US should be replaced. Keep in mind that Washington is political and Kerry is the former presidential candidate of the Democrats. Even in defeat he is useful to his party.

Kerry must be defeated politically; battleground Massachusetts.

[MitchellC]

"Vietnamese and Americans were dying needlessly because the war was a mistake"

As opposed to the vietnamese that died after the war was over, right?

Somehow liberals think that if a despotic government kills people, it didn't really happen. Just like they forget about all the mass graves in Iraq from Saddam.

Nah, they just think the war was a "mistake" from the South Vietnamese POV. All the deaths occured because the South Vietnamese "needlessly" resisted, you see - and that made them just as bad, no, worse than the North. Since the North had the ideological sympathies of the American Left, any means could be forgiven as an oversight made while in pursuit of a good end. The same couldn't, and still can't, be said for the US, whose every procedural anomoly is the proof they need that Americans are actually evil, greedy, capitalist thugs.

I wonder what made the US's involvement in Vietnam any less justified than our involvement in Korea? Because the "international community" didn't give it the stamp of approval?

[MitchellC]

Anomaly, too.

[Curious Yellow]

If you would actually look at the form there is only one place where Kerry is supposed to send the forms--to code #14, which is the St. Louis location.

You and others here do yourselves a disservice by working from an assumption rather than trying to get to the facts. You have the process backwards.

You would rather repeat theories and outright misinformation, rather than try to get to the facts.

The Boston Globe Kranisch article had a lot of inconsistencies--including their claim that Kerry had designated them as the recipient, but then said they came from the Navy rather than St. Louis.

There is some inconsistencies--like that. Those should be questioned. And the Kerry sycophant Kranisch should be made to explain them. (And this could be a way to get him to at least release a copy of the form, if he was sent it--which he implies he was.)

But running around saying Kerry was dishonorably discharged based on an executive order from Carter (which, if you would bother to read it--had nothing to do with discharges, only draft evaders) is just a waste of everyone's time.

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.