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« Another Democratic Officeholder Endorses President Bush | Main | Karl Groves »

August 24, 2004

The Dog Days of August

John Kerry is having a horrible month because of his inept handling of questions surrounding his Vietnam service record, and the story isn't putting the Big Media in the best light, either. The Chicago Sun Times' John O'Sullivan dissects the mainstream media's attempts to protect John Kerry against the allegations of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and how the "freelance journalists" of the Internet (read: bloggers) pushed the story ahead anyway. Here's an excerpt, followed by my comments about the media's performance on this story, and the larger issue of John Kerry's Vietnam and post-Vietnam record.

Two weeks ago I pointed out that the main media outlets were ignoring the story that 254 swift boat veterans were accusing Sen. John Kerry of being, in effect, a liar and a blowhard. I doubted that this suppression could be sustained for long since free-lance journalists on the Internet were examining it - and uncovering what seemed like damaging evidence that at least some of the charges had substance.

It was sustained for exactly one week. Then the Kerry campaign quietly withdrew the senator's claim - a claim he had made repeatedly in speeches and articles for 20 years - that he had been on an illegal secret mission inside Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968. Kerry's admission was not reported the next day in either the New York Times or the Washington Post. True, the Post did carry an editorial supporting Kerry against the Swift Boat for Truth veterans. But it ignored the only new piece of news since that would have undermined the editorial's argument.

It's an excellent piece on the partisan nature of Big Media today - and on the power of the blogosphere to force Big Media's hand.

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is a collection of 254 Vietnam veterans who served with Kerry. Last week, Big Media hyped a column written by Willam B. Rood, a Chicago Tribune editor who was a Swift Boat officer who served with Kerry. Rood's piece dismissed the SWVT's allegations as lies.

So, a question for the media: Why did you widely publicize Mr. Rood's account of events - the recollections of one veteran - as The Truth while dismissing the accounts of 254 other Vietnam veterans as partisan lies? Is it because Rood is a journalist? Or is it because his version of the story is the version you want the public to hear and accept as The Truth?

I don't know if John Kerry deserved all of his medals, though he surely deserved some of them and volunteering for service in any branch of the military at a time of war makes one a hero regardless of whether one serves in the combat zone or not.

The basic SBVT charge is that glorified himself in his after-action reports in order to win some undeserved medals, even to gain a third Purple Heart. If that's the case - if he sought an undeserved Purple Heart so he could get the automatic early exit from the war zone that one got for getting three Purple Hearts, John Kerry will to live with that on his conscience.

If John Kerry glorified himself in order to enlarge his platform from which to denounce the military and the government, and to enhance his credibility in organizing and leading a group of anti-war vets, he'll have to live with that, too.

If he tried to burnish his war-hero image with claims - now proven false - of having run guns and CIA agents into Cambodia, and of having been on a mission in Cambodia on Christmas Eve of 1968 (when the records and the testimony of numerous witnesses prove he was 50 miles inside Vietnam at Sa Dec), Kerry will have to answer for that lie to God.

But his actions after returning from Vietnam, slandering Vietnam vets as war criminals, he must answer for now. Most Vietnam veterans served honorably, and they did not deserve the kind of treatment given them by Kerry, one of their own.

John Kerry made his Vietnam service the centerpiece of his campaign and his primary rationale for asking voters to make him Commander in Chief. That opened the floodgates on three decades of pent-up anger at Kerry on the part of many Vietnam vets who believe he slandered and betrayed them once he came home from the war zone, and who believe his post-Vietnam political record of incessant hostility toward America's defense and intelligence services make him unfit for command.

"The contradictions of being a war hero and an anti-war hero," says O'Sullivan, "have finally caught up with him."

That's why the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth aren't going away.

Posted in Kerry's Lies | Linked By |
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To find a fair and well-documented biography of John F. Kerry, and discover who this Presidential candidate really is, go to this Wikipedia Encyclopedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerry

You will find that:

Kerry came from German-speaking Jews, but the family concealed its background upon migrating to the United States, and raised the Kerry children as Catholics. Kerry professes to be a Catholic but is divorced and pro-abortion, positions from which his Diocese has distanced themselves. Kerry has a family history of flip-flopping and appearing to be something other than he is. There is nothing wrong with being German-speaking Jews or Catholics. There is something wrong about not having the character to be who you are.

John Kerry's maternal grandfather, James Grant Forbes, was born in then American occupied Shanghai, China, where the Forbes family of China and Boston accumulated a fortune in the opium and China trade.

Kerry was born in France before migrating to the US. During his summers there, he became good friends with his first cousin Brice Lalonde, a future Socialist and Green Party leader in France who ran for president of France in 1981. This cousin influenced Kerry's anti-war protests after Kerry's early departure from Viet Nam.

He went to a Swiss boarding school at age 11 while his family lived in Berlin. While his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, Kerry was sent to Massachusetts to attend boarding school. He was raised in such fancy schools away from his parents.

After an application for a twelve month deferment to study in Paris was denied, Kerry joined the United States Navy thinking it would be away from combat. This is the same John Kerry that criticizes Bush & Cheney for not going to war as he did! Initially, Kerry had hoped to keep a relatively safe distance from most of the fighting by obtaining an assignment as commander of a Swift Boat.

From December 2, 1968 to February 28, 1969 Kerry received 3 purple hearts and his ticket home for flesh wounds that hardly kept him out of service. He spent a total of 4 months in Viet Nam.
Due to questions regarding the nature of his wounds, the Kerry Campaign released his military records. These show second citations for a Silver Star and a Bronze Star were issued by John F. Lehman, who was Secretary of the Navy eleven years after Kerry's service. His story indicates he left his Swift Boat (a violation of Navy regulations), chasing a wounded Viet Cong who dashed behind a grass hut that was shot to pirces by twin 0.50 caliber machine guns. Reportedly, Kerry emptied his gun into this wounded VC (a war crime, if true), or into the dead body of the VC (a sham). At best this was not medal worthy, especially not a Silver Star - unless your family has political ties. At worst, this might be one of the atrocities young Kerry admitted to as a leader of VVAW.

Within a week of his receiving his third purple heart, Kerry requested reassignment to the U.S. He was entitled to an early departure from Vietnam, subject to approval by the Bureau of Naval Personnel, according to then current regulations which said those who are wounded "three times, regardless of the nature of the wound or treatment required ... " This was usually not exercised by officers.

Kerry spoke before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. He informed the committee about the Vietnam Veterans Against the War's Winter Soldier Investigation, an event which took place from January 31 to February 2, 1971 in Detroit, Michigan. Kerry testified that he heard several veterans admit to, and he himself, committing war atrocities. Several of these testimonies were later proven false and that several of the men were not even veterans. From November 12 to 15, 1971, a VVAW meeting was held in Kansas City, Missouri, in which a member proposed that they escalate their tactics and assassinate pro-war politicians. Over the years, Kerry said that he did not remember attending the meeting in Kansas City, stating that he retired from the organization at the St. Louis meeting in July 1971. However, there are conflicting accounts, including newspaper articles, FBI reports, and witnesses who have different recollections.

The following day, April 23, Kerry and other veterans threw medals and ribbons over a fence at the U.S. Capitol building to protest the war. This became a controversy when it was discovered that he has his service medals on display, suggesting that what he threw were not his own medals. Kerry later said that he “threw some medals back that belonged to some folks who asked me to throw them back for them." He had clearly lied on ABC News saying he threw his medals and ribbons, and recently Chatles Gibson, GMA Anchor, nailed him on that lie on national TV.

Today, the combined net worth of the Kerry-Heinz fortune is reported to be between $199 million and $839 million, making Kerry the wealthiest U.S. senator. Kerry is wealthy in his own name, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family members, including his mother, who died in 2002. Both families have strong European ties and financial interests.

What this encyclopedia doesn't tell you is that Kerry:

Has secret support, which he admits but will not divulge, from European governments.
Has the most liberal voting record of any Senator by several indices.
Has flip-flopped on issues so that his positions are unintelligible.
Has consistently voted against funding the military and intelligence agencies, and pushed for intelligence fragmentation that made predicting and preventing 9/11 impossible.
Made the following statements about Iraq:
"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." - Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl
Levin (D-MI), Tom Daschle (D-SD), John Kerry( D - MA), and others Oct. 9, 1998

"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." - Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002

"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real" - Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003

Yet, Kerry now criticizes President Bush on going to war in Iraq and for suspecting Sadam had weapons of mass destruction as if Kerry never made the above statements.

Do we want this man who is so clearly influenced by Europeans as our Commander-in-Chief, especially at such a time as this?

Posted by: Dan Cross at August 30, 2004 07:59 PM
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