Kerry should be wary of dredging up past

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | February 15, 2004 | Mark Steyn

[Puzzleman]

If you own a computer or listen to talk radio or read the British or Australian papers, you'll know that John Kerry is currently beset by rumors of interns. By the time you read this, it may be that America's genteel broadsheets and network news shows will have overcome their squeamishness and tiptoed gingerly down the path blazed by Drudge and Fleet Street, or it may be that they decide to investigate it a bit longer, just to get chapter and verse nailed down, which means you may not get to read about it till, oh, midway through President Kerry's second term.

[CyberAnt]

Eisenhower was "Supreme Allied Commander"

[MeekOneGOP]

Come November 2nd-3rd, Kerry will wish he hadn't screamed 'Bring it on' so loudly !

[Mike Darancette]

Eisenhower was "Supreme Allied Commander"

Eisenhower:
On December 24, 1943, after the successful invasion of Sicily in July and Italy in September, he was appointed supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces. -From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Marshall:
Marshall authored the document that would become the central strategy for all allied operations in Europe and designed Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy. Throughout the remainder of the World War II, Marshall coordinated all allied operations in Europe and the Pacific. He was characterized as the organizer of Allied victory by Winston Churchill. Time Magazine named Marshall Man of the Year in 1944. -From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

I don't think that Eisenhower had much to do with operations in the Pacific.

[cyncooper]

Actually, I believe Ann's column was merciless and not entirely accurate.

From your link:

The story, Lloyd said, was wrong. Lloyd said the blast was caused by another soldier’s grenade — not Cleland’s.

From the excerpt you posted here from Steyn quoting Coulter:

As Ann Coulter pointed out in a merciless but entirely accurate column, it wasn't on the ''battlefield.'' It wasn't in combat. He was working on a radio relay station. He saw a grenade dropped by one of his colleagues and bent down to pick it up.

I'm missing the discrepancy you complain about.

[pgkdan]

I assume this photo is a few years old - she doesn't look 65!

There's no reason today for a woman with $500,000,000.00 to look 65.

[PhilDragoo]

Kerry was key to our Communist victory.

John Fonda Kerry accused them of war crimes.

Kerry wins the praise of the top Communist general,
while slandering tens of thousands of American soldiers.

There is no hell low enough, nor hot enough, to be fitting.

[GOPJ]

Powerful, very powerful:

Look at what everyone from Arthur Schlesinger to Chris Matthews wrote about the ''unconquerable'' Afghans only two years ago. That defeatism was the Kerry legacy from the '70s: a terrified, Kerrified America. If he wants to fight Campaign 2004 on Vietnam, then, as he would say, bring it on.

[Darksheare]

Kerry claims war hero status, for shooting an already dead body behind a hut for one, and then he slanders soldiers -REAL soldiers (REAL soldiers don't slander fellow soldiers teh way Kerry did) and he sees nothing wrong with it.

[FairOpinion]

The Chicago Sun Times is not on the list of newspapers. from which we must excerpt:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1073425/posts

So, to preserve the article, here it is in full:

=======

Kerry should be wary of dredging up past

February 15, 2004

BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

If you own a computer or listen to talk radio or read the British or Australian papers, you'll know that John Kerry is currently beset by rumors of interns. By the time you read this, it may be that America's genteel broadsheets and network news shows will have overcome their squeamishness and tiptoed gingerly down the path blazed by Drudge and Fleet Street, or it may be that they decide to investigate it a bit longer, just to get chapter and verse nailed down, which means you may not get to read about it till, oh, midway through President Kerry's second term.



Now let me say that I've no idea whether there's anything to the alleged intern business but . . . what's the word Howard Dean uses when he's on NPR and he wants to air some conspiracy theory about whether Bush was tipped off in advance about 9/11? Ah, yes, ''interesting.'' It's an ''interesting'' story. And, if you think we should have concrete proof before we bring it up, then I take the line Wes Clark does when he's asked to substantiate the wild claim made at a Clark event about whether Bush is a ''deserter'' and Clark replies he has no proof Bush isn't a deserter. I've no proof Kerry isn't an adulterer.

Nonetheless, while I enjoy ''the politics of personal destruction'' as much as the next chap, I've no desire to fight the 2004 election on anything as quaintly anachronistic as an intern scandal. That's so last millennium. On the other hand, so is Kerry droning on about Vietnam at every campaign stop and traveling the country with his own personal VFW detail. This year more than ever, the hack politician's laziest platitude is true: ''This election is about the future.''

Unfortunately, most politicians who say ''this election is about the future'' haven't given it a moment's thought. Say what you like about us right-wing war mongers, but after Sept. 11 we abandoned our long-cherished theories of realpolitik -- find your local strongman and shovel millions of dollars at him -- as inadequate, and indeed part of the problem. Sentimental liberal internationalism -- everything has to be done through the U.N., no matter how stinkingly corrupt and ineffectual it is -- is just as inadequate to the challenges of the age. Yet Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean and the rest of the left cling to it like a security blanket. Ask them anything about foreign policy, and they sing like the Von Trapp children, ''We need to get the U.N. in there.'' As Sam Goldwyn said, ''I'm sick of the old cliches. Bring me some new cliches.''

And few people are so in need of some new cliches as the Democratic Party. That's why they've wound up running on the twin planks of where Kerry was in the late '60s and where George W. Bush wasn't in the early '70s. You could hardly ask for a neater precis of the atrophied boomer heart of the Dems than their decision to fight the 2004 election on the oldies station slogan of ''Where were you in '72?''

In 2002, the Dems had no ideas and they ran on biography: In Missouri, Jean Carnahan was the brave widow of the late governor; in Georgia, Max Cleland was a Vietnam veteran and triple amputee; in Minnesota, Walter Mondale was the lion of the '84 campaign and a friend of Paul Wellstone. In all three cases the public shrugged and voted Republican. These are serious times and they demand politicians rise to them.

Yet here we are two years later, and they're running on biography all over again. But this time their chosen biography is Vietnam, and for many Americans, and especially boomer Democrats, that's far more psychologically complicated. Look at Kerry's stump speech: ''We band of brothers,'' he says, indicating his fellow veterans. ''We're a little older, we're a little grayer, but we still know how to fight for this country.'' Thirty years ago, he came back from Vietnam and denounced his ''band of brothers'' as a gang of drug-fueled torturers, rapists and murderers.

These versions are not reconcilable. When he was palling around with Jane Fonda in the '70s, he hated the military. It wasn't just that he opposed the war but that he accused his ''band of brothers'' of a level of participation in war crimes and civilian atrocities unmatched by the Japanese, the Nazis and the Soviets. If he'd said, ''We band of brothers . . . We're a little older, we're a little grayer, but we still know how to get high, murder the gooks and rape their womenfolk,'' it would at least have been consistent with his congressional testimony.

So one John Kerry is a fake. Which is it? The Jane Fonda in pants of the early '70s? Or the Bob Hope USO tour Kerry of today? Running on biography is lame enough. Running on fake biography is pathetic.

Likewise, Max Cleland, the former Georgia senator turned cable show hit man for the Kerry campaign on the Bush National Guard ''scandal.'' He's untouchable because, as Terry McAuliffe likes to say, he's a ''triple amputee who left three limbs on the battlefield of Vietnam.''

As Ann Coulter pointed out in a merciless but entirely accurate column, it wasn't on the ''battlefield.'' It wasn't in combat. He was working on a radio relay station. He saw a grenade dropped by one of his colleagues and bent down to pick it up. It's impossible for most of us to imagine what that must be like -- to be flown home, with your body shattered, not because of some firefight, but because you made a stupid mistake. Once upon a time, Cleland loathed the Silver and Bronze Stars he'd been given: He was, in his words, ''no hero'' -- which is true. He was a beneficiary of the medal inflation that tends to accompany unpopular wars. But Cleland learned to stop hating himself to the point where he's happy to be passed off as a hero wounded in battle because that makes him a more valuable mascot to the campaign. Sad.

Next to these deceptions -- and self-deceptions -- what are Dems hoping to pin on Bush? Thanks to Kerry in his Hanoi Jane period, Vietnam was a disaster for America that gave the establishment a wholly irrational fear of almost every ramshackle Third World basket case on the planet. Look at what everyone from Arthur Schlesinger to Chris Matthews wrote about the ''unconquerable'' Afghans only two years ago. That defeatism was the Kerry legacy from the '70s: a terrified, Kerrified America. If he wants to fight Campaign 2004 on Vietnam, then, as he would say, bring it on.

[malia]

If I were his age and had a woman with her looks and money, I'd behave myself---.

I would just insert ----- -and had his looks.

[moonhawk]

"I can't believe I posted the whole thing."

Thanks, Poke

[moonhawk]

"I do not intend to be the the one who has to hire a lawyer and fly back and forth between Illinois and California to defend myself in a lawsuit."

Then why not just send Pokey an FRmail with the link so he can post the whole thing himself and ping his Steyn list?

Doh!

[faithincowboys]

It's clear to me that Mr. Steyn is a Freeper.

[quidnunc]

moonhawk wrote: ("I do not intend to be the the one who has to hire a lawyer and fly back and forth between Illinois and California to defend myself in a lawsuit.") Then why not just send Pokey an FRmail with the link so he can post the whole thing himself and ping his Steyn list? Doh!

Why not just open the link and read from the source page?

Doh!

[Ruth A.]

If you want to be so cautious about copyright infringement, it seems that you could avoid it by not posting. Let others bear the burden of risk.

[lainde]

Welcome to freerepublic...It kept me sane during the 2000 nightmare. Bump for another brilliant Steyn!!

[lainde]

bttt

[MeekOneGOP]

Amen !

[VadeRetro]

I would just insert ----- -and had his looks.

... And had his history.

[quidnunc]

Ruth A. wrote: If you want to be so cautious about copyright infringement, it seems that you could avoid it by not posting. Let others bear the burden of risk.

Why not jusy do it right?

That works too.