Morton Kondracke: Bush's 9/11 vs. Kerry's Vietnam

Naples Daily News ^ | 2.17.04 | Mort Kondrake

[jwalsh07]

Pretty damn good article.

[onyx]

This one is bookmarked. I think Mort will vote for POTUS.

[rebel_yell2]

What weapons systems would we be stuck with had Kerry been successful? Anyone want to chime in . . . ?

[Plutarch]

So, does America choose a president this year who can't get over Vietnam?

Kerry and the Media will do everything they can to keep Kerry's "anti-war" record from gaining attention.

Witness NBC's keeping Kerry's Meet the Press interview sequestered deep within their vaults.

[COEXERJ145]

Vietnam era weapons. No joke intended.

[paul51]

There seems little question that, had Kerry's policy views prevailed, Hussein would still be in power — in fact, he would have scored a strategic defeat over the United States and might have resumed producing WMD.

Along with Libya, Iran, Syria and NK

[BenLurkin]

Kerry's Vietnam:

[tkathy]

The dims are a 9/10 party in a 9/11 world. They just don't get it.

[Utah Girl]

I'm having the best time posting this photo. Kerry is sooo Sept 10th.

[over3Owithabrain]

The dims are a 9/10 party in a 9/11 world. They just don't get it.

Unfortunately neither do a large amount of Americans. Perhaps enough to cost W re-election...

[WOSG]

Similar points to mine ....

Senator John Kerry has used his Vietnam war service skillfully to win his party's nomination. Yet Senator Kerry's stump-speech war hero boasts hide an ugly reality: Kerry has often used his 4 months of service in Vietnam as a prop in his 35 years in politics not to build up our military and our national security, but to tear it down.

Soon after leaving the military, John Kerry became a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War protest group. This group was one of the more radical of anti-war protest organizations. The group, including Kerry, advocated the "People's Peace Treaty" that proposed peace on the terms of the VietCong and the Communist Hanoi regime and supported Hanoi's position to use American POWs as a bargaining chip in negotiations. Group members in protests wore tattered fatigues marked with pro-communist graffiti and marched under the flag of the Communist VietCong.

In April 1971, Kerry testified to Congress that American soldiers in Vietnam had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam." Kerry testified, "We all did it." He said these claims were "not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." As B.G. Burkett points out in his book "Stolen Valor", these allegations were based almost entirely on trumped-up stories from phony veterans who alleged atrocities they could not possibly have committed or witnessed.

Kerry had defamed the military to further the anti-war cause.

Kerry used his war service as a prop to garner attention to his activism and as a shield to deflect criticism of how his actions harmed the military. Kerry even used his own medals for political theater when he threw what appeared to be his medals over a fence in front of the Capitol building. (His medals ended up on display in his Senate office later when they became something to be proud of again.)

Over the years, the politician John Kerry has followed the path laid out by his anti-war activism.

Senator Kerry helped the Communist Vietnamese regime in the 1990s, advocating normalization with Vietnam and voting to end the trade embargo against Vietnam. He prevented the Vietnam Human Rights Act from coming to a vote in the Senate, deflecting concerns about human rights abuses in Vietnam. His favors to Vietnam were rewarded. In 1992, Vietnam granted Colliers International, a company headed by Kerry's cousin C. Stewart Forbes, a contract worth $1 billion as the exclusive real estate agent representing Vietnam.

Senator Kerry consistently sought to downsize military and intelligence budgets and stop key military procurements. In 1995, Senator Kerry voted to freeze defense spending for seven years. In the 1980s, Kerry opposed the strategic modernization effort proposed by President Reagan, instead supporting the nuclear freeze. Yet Reagan's aggressive approach forced the Soviet Union to reform internally in ways that ultimately led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and Cold War victory.

When asked in the South Carolina debate if President Bush overstated the terrorist threat, Kerry said, "I think there has been an exaggeration." This comment echoed his 1971 Congressional testimony: "I think we are reacting under cold-war precepts which are no longer applicable. ... I think it [the Communist threat] is bogus, totally artificial. There is no threat. " Yet when the Communists invaded and took over South Vietnam in 1975, over a million Vietnamese 'boat people' were forced to flee.

In 1991, Kerry voted against the first Gulf War resolution to force Saddam out of Kuwait. After Kerry voted for the Iraq War resolution in October 2002, he voted against funding for the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq in September 2003. One could say that Kerry voted against finishing in 2003 what he voted to start in 2002, but Kerry insists his vote for military action in Iraq was only to support diplomatic efforts. Has he not noticed that hollow threat diplomacy always fails?

For both Kerry and Bush, it's not the service of their youth but their actions as public leaders that indicate their Presidential mettle.
Given Senator Kerry's questionable national security views and record, it is fair to ask: Who really has gone AWOL on our national security?

[centexan]

bump for later

[CyberAnt]

"Bush is deeply embarrassed at what they might find"

But .. IT'S NOT ABOUT BUSH .. it's what they will find out about the PRESIDENCY. That's what Bush is protecting. I'm sure Clinton will get plenty of blame for doing nothing about any of the attacks upon our military all over the world.

[clee1]

Bows and arrows???

[ambrose]

Agree.

[kayak]

That's what I was thinking, too. Rocks. Maybe a few muskets. At any rate, it wouldn't be a very fearsome arsenal.

[PISANO]

Their can't be all that much that GW wants to hide that DERIVES directly from his (only) 7 1/2 months in office prior to 911. My goodness his FBI Director was only sworn in a week prior to 911. After Al Qaeda & Saudia Arabia's Islamists, it is William Jefferson Clinton that is the most responsible for that infamous date in Sept 2001.

[kayak]

The following was posted on another thread. It's an excellent letter. Please copy it and send it out in emails, post it on other threads, do whatever you can to spread it far and wide.

A friend sent the below letter to our retired SGT/MAJ. Please read it and pass it on.... It should be read by every voter.....Thanks, Bev

Open Letter to John Kerry:

My wife had rotator cuff surgery earlier this year, and the recovery is terribly painful. Then, she developed a staph-epi infection, and they had to cut the same scar open and operate on her again. Just thinking about the pain and anxiety of facing that painful surgery a second time in the same wound, makes me cringe. That experience, however pales in comparison to what I am going through right now, in my heart.

The old hurts are surfacing and the feelings of betrayal by fellow citizens, and their leader stirring them up, are breaking my heart again. I am being cut in the same scar. How did we who served in Vietnam suddenly become cold-blooded killers, torturers, and rapists, of the ilk of the Nazi SS or the Taliban? Most of us were American soldiers who grew up idolizing John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and all the other heroes. That was why I volunteered. But for political expediency, you have rewritten history, again. After spending only four months in the country of Vietnam, you testified before Congress in 1971 with these exact words about incidents you supposedly witnessed or heard about from other vets: "They personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."

I was a green beret officer who volunteered for duty in Vietnam and fought in the thick of it in 1968 and 1969 on a Special Forces A-team on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, just for starters. We were the elite. We saw the most action. Everybody in the world knows that. But we did not just kill people, we built a church, a school, treated illnesses, passed out soap, food, and clothing, and had fun and loving interaction with the indigenous people of Vietnam, just like our boys did in Normandy, Baghdad, Saigon, and everywhere American soldiers ever served. We all gave away our candy bars and rations to kids. Our hearts to oppressed people all over the globe.

My children and grandchildren could read your words, and think those horrendous things about me, Mr. Kerry. You are a bold-faced, unprincipled liar, and a disgrace, and you have dishonored me and all my fellow Vietnam veterans. Sure, there were a couple bad-apples, but I saw none, and I saw it all, and if I did, as an army officer, it was my obligation to stop it, or at the very least report it. Why is there not a single record anywhere of you ever reporting any incidents like this or having the perpetrators arrested? The answer is simple. You are a liar. Your medals and mine are not a free pass for lifetime, Senator Kerry, to bypass character, integrity, and morality. I earn my green beret over and over daily in all aspects of my life.

Eight National Guard green berets, and other National Guard soldiers, have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and you totally dishonored their widows and families by lumping National Guard service in with being a draft-dodger, conscientious objector, and deserter, just so you can try to sabotage the patriotism of our President who proudly served as an Air National Guard jet pilot. I have a son earning his green beret at Fort Bragg right now, and his wife serves honorably in the Air National Guard, just like President Bush did, and I am as proud of her as I am my son. I volunteered for Vietnam and have no problem whatsoever with President Bush being our Commander-In-Chief. In fact, I am proud of him as our leader.

John Kerry, you personally derailed the Vietnam Human rights Bill, HR2883, in 2001, after it had passed the House by a 411 to 1 vote, and thousands of pro-American Montagnard tribespeople in Vietnam died since then who could have been saved, by you. Earlier, as Chair of the Senate Select Committee on MIA/POW Affairs, you personally quashed the efforts of any and all veterans to report sightings of living POW's, when you held those reins in Congress. You have fought tooth and nail to push for the US to normalize relations with Vietnam for years. Why, Mr. Kerry? Simple, your first cousin C. Stewart Forbes, CEO, of Colliers International, recently signed a contract with Hanoi, worth BILLIONS of dollars for Collier's International to become the exclusive real estate representative for the country of Vietnam.

"Hanoi John," now that it works for you, you beat your chest about your Vietnam service, but to me, you are a phony, opportunistic, hypocrite. You are one of those politicians that is like a fertilizer machine: all that comes out of you is horse manure, and you are spreading it everywhere.

Medals do not make a man. Morals do.

209 posted on 02/15/2004 11:16:16 PM EST by bevlar

[kayak]

There are a couple of zingers in this article but, in general, it's very good .... at least Mort seems to understand the situation when it gets down to basics. If we don't fight the terrorists as if there is no tomorrow, there might not be a tomorrow! I wish a few more liberals would grasp this concept.