Posted on 03/26/2002 4:53:27 AM PST by edmundburk
"Politics in a Time of War" in the latest USNews shows liberal Sen. John Kerry on a war footing with President Bush, as a possible prelude to a presidential run by eternal hopeful Kerry in 2004. Kerry is a Vietnam War hero, as he reminds us every chance he gets. According to US News:
“Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts sat at his Senate office desk next to the bullet-punctured American flag that used to fly from the gunboat he commanded in Vietnam and implied that anybody who tried to question his patriotism was going to run into a buzz saw. "I've got a pretty good sense of what it means to serve your country," Kerry said in cold, measured tones. "I've got a pretty good sense of patriotism. I can go toe to toe with anybody.'"
But the article doesn’t mention a little detail that takes a bit of the shine off the war hero. There is a mention of the bullet-punctured flag, but no mention of his Purple Hearts, which, despite what Kerry himself would have had us believe, he still possesses.
Kerry was a leading voice in Vietnam Veterans Against the War, an effort that culminated in a famous 1971 protest where the veterans disposing of their medals on the Capitol steps. Kerry tossed his Purple Hearts. Or did he?
The Boston Globe reported:
Newspaper accounts described Kerry throwing his own medals, and in a speech immediately afterward to the veterans, Kerry said: ‘This administration forced us to return our medals...These leaders denied us the integrity those symbols supposedly gave our lives.'"
But the medals Kerry threw were not his own.
Years later, a reporter noticed the Purple Hearts on display on the wall of Sen. Kerry's office. The medals he threw away weren't his but belonged to two other veterans who had entrusted them to Kerry to make a statement with. He told The Globe the two sets of medals he threw had been handed to him by a wounded veteran in a New York VA hospital and by a World War II veteran from Massachusetts that he had met at a fundraiser. He couldn’t remember their names.
So Kerry made himself look righteous by disposing of something someone else had earned. The perfect liberal.
Did the cat have your tongue, Senator?
Kerry was apparently a genuine war hero in Vietnam--a little reckless, but ultimately successful--which gave him street cred opposing the war. But he does like to play war hero when it suits him, like now, when the country's at war.
We all know Democrats by definition can't be courageous or even noble, and that only the brave can win Purple Hearts. So therefore Kerry never won any medals in Vietnam, and any suggestions to the contrary are lies spread by a Liberal media.
But what did you think of the article?
Not only were the medals not his, but the speech he gave to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was ghost written for him by Adam Walinsky, former speechwriter for Robert F. Kennedy. Read all about John Boy in "Stolen Valor" pg. 135-136.
1) Being a War hawk (which eliminates most of the liberals from the outset. I too was wondering why Clinton was missing from the list at first)
2) public figure... obviously
3) Absence from military service.
My only point is that John Kerry did serve, he does know what war is and he is a patriot. Much more so that these war hawks that send american troops into conflicts, but haven't actually served.
I choose to ignore the list simply because he blatantly listed "Republicans" only. A chickenhawk is a chickenhawk, no matter what side of the Senate aisle you sit on. And as a paper man, his objectiveness was sorely missing.
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