BLITZER: Under pressure from Republicans and the news media, John Kerry's campaign today said it's working to release the Democratic presidential candidate's Vietnam-era military records and put them on his campaign Web site.
Kerry's long public career has been linked to Vietnam since the very beginning. He first rose to public prominence as an opponent of the war.
No kidding. According to Brit's show tonight, they are claiming they don't have anything.
I can't find ANYTHING on their site about it. Not even one page.
How do you run simultaneously on platform planks of "The terror threat is overrated," and "Bush didn't do enough to stop 9-11?"
Excellent point!
It's hard for me to tell,,,,but is Kerry the one in close to the flag with his mouth hanging open???
Bookmarked. Thanks for that. Think Wolfie needs a little help finding it?
It seems that John Kerry thinks he said MANY stupid things as a "kid fresh back from Vietnam". How can we be sure he doesn't still believe them?
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MR. RUSSERT: And people refer back to an interview when you first ran for Congress, back with The Harvard Crimson, where you said, "Kerry said the United Nations should have control over most of our foreign military operations. I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations."
SEN. KERRY: That's one of those stupid things that a 27-year-old kid says when you're fresh back from Vietnam and angry about it. I have never, ever, ever, in any vote, in any policy, in any speech, in any public statement advocated any such thing in all of the years I've been in elected office. In fact, I say the following and I say it very clearly, I will never cede the security of the United States to any institution and I will never cede our security to any other country. No country will have a veto over what we need to do to protect ourselves. But, that said, I will be a president who understands, as every president of the last century did, Tim, that multilaterism is not weakness, it is strength, and we need a president who understands how to reach out to other countries, build alliances. His father did a brilliant job of it. We
need to do the kind of alliance-building that we have done traditionally.
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MR. RUSSERT: You do not believe the war on terror is primarily a military operation, not a law
enfor...
SEN. KERRY: No...
MR. RUSSERT: You don't.
SEN. KERRY: ...not primarily.
MR. RUSSERT: You don't.
SEN. KERRY: Not primarily.
MR. RUSSERT: You do not.
SEN. KERRY: Not primarily. Tim, Iraq had nothing to do with al-Qaeda. America really needs to stop and focus on the truth again. This administration--and we now know it from Bob Woodward's book. I mean, you can go through the series of events in August when the president was at the ranch taking the longest vacation in presidential history. During that time, the president was talking about Iraq more than he was talking about al-Qaeda. Andy Card came back and made an announcement that they didn't introduce a new product in August because that's not what you do in August. They introduced it in September. They came back and started down the Iraq road. They kept looking for a connection. George Tenet kept saying no connection. The intelligence people said no connection.
MR. RUSSERT: This is the war on terror, Senator.
SEN. KERRY: But let me just finish.
MR. RUSSERT: The war on terror is a law enforcement, not military...
SEN. KERRY: No. I said "primarily." And here's why. If you don't know--if you're going to fight an intelligent war on terror, you don't want to fight it here in America. You do want to fight it abroad. You want to fight it where the cells are originating. And in order to know who they are, where they are, what they're planning and be able to go get them before they get us, you need the best intelligence, best law enforcement cooperation in the world. Now, I've always said once you know where they are, will you use the Delta Force or SEALs or Rangers or Special Forces of some kind? Absolutely. And I will not hesitate to use those forces effectively.
In fact, this administration--I was the one who pointed out they failed to use our forces effectively in Afghanistan. We had Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora. Rather than deploy the 10th Mountain Division or the 101st Airborne or the Marines, rather than use the best military in the world to go kill the world's number-one terrorist, what did we do? This administration held them back. They sent the Afghans up into the mountains who a week earlier had been on the other side, and they let him escape.
I think that I can fight a far more effective war on terror. I will build alliances and ooperation. I will make America safer. But I will use our military when necessary, but it is not primarily a military operation. It's an intelligence gathering, law enforcement, public diplomacy effort, and we're putting far more money into the war on the battlefield than we are into the war of ideas. We need to get it straight.
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MR. RUSSERT: Before we take a break, I want to talk about Vietnam. You are a decorated war hero of Vietnam, prominently used in your advertising. You first appeared on MEET THE PRESS back in 1971, your first appearance. I want to roll what you told the country then and come back and talk about it:
(Videotape, MEET THE PRESS, April 18, 1971):
MR. KERRY (Vietnam Veterans Against the War): There are all kinds of atrocities and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free-fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: You committed atrocities.
SEN. KERRY: Where did all that dark hair go, Tim? That's a big question for me. You know, I
thought a lot, for a long time, about that period of time, the things we said, and I think the word is a bad word. I think it's an inappropriate word. I mean, if you wanted to ask me have you ever made mistakes in your life, sure. I think some of the language that I used was a language that reflected an anger. It was honest, but it was in anger, it was a little bit excessive.
MR. RUSSERT: You used the word "war criminals."
SEN. KERRY: Well, let me just finish. Let me must finish. It was, I think, a reflection of the kind of times we found ourselves in and I don't like it when I hear it today. I don't like it, but I want you to notice that at the end, I wasn't talking about the soldiers and the soldiers' blame, and my great regret is, I hope no soldier--I mean, I think some soldiers were angry at me for that, and I understand that and I regret that, because I love them. But the words were honest but on the other hand, they were a little bit over the top. And I think that there were breaches of the Geneva Conventions. There were policies in place that were not acceptable according to the laws of warfare, and everybody knows that. I mean, books have chronicled that, so I'm not going to walk away from that. But I wish I had found a way to say it in a less abrasive way.
MR. RUSSERT: But, Senator, when you testified before the Senate, you talked about some of the hearings you had observed at the winter soldiers meeting and you said that people had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and on and on. A lot of those stories have been discredited, and in hindsight was your testimony...
SEN. KERRY: Actually, a lot of them have been documented.
MR. RUSSERT: So you stand by that?
SEN. KERRY: A lot of those stories have been documented. Have some been discredited? Sure, they have, Tim. The problem is that's not where the focus should have been. And, you know, when you're angry about something and you're young, you know, you're perfectly capable of not--I mean, if I had the kind of experience and time behind me that I have today, I'd have framed some of that differently. Needless to say, I'm proud that I stood up. I don't want anybody to think twice about it. I'm proud that I took the position that I took to oppose it. I think we saved lives, and I'm proud that I stood up at a time when it was important to stand up, but I'm not going to quibble, you know, 35 years later that I might not have phrased things more artfully at times.
MR. RUSSERT: The Boston Globe reports that your commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Grant Hibberd has suggested that you perhaps didn't earn your first Purple Heart and question whether you should have left Vietnam after six months. In order to deal with those kinds of issues, when I asked President Bush about his service in the Texas Guard, he agreed to release all his military records, health records, everything. Would you agree to release all your military records?
SEN. KERRY: I have. I've shown them--they're available to you to come and look at. I think that's a very unfair characterization by that person. I mean, politics is politics. The medical records show that I had shrapnel removed from my arm. We were in combat. We were in a very, very--probably one of the most frightening--if you ask anybody who was with me, the two guys who were with me, was probably the most frightening night that they had that they were in Vietnam and we're...
MR. RUSSERT: But you'll make all your records public.
SEN. KERRY: They are. People can come and see them at headquarters and take a look at them. I'm not going to--but I'll tell you this. I'm proud of my service. I'm proud of what we did. I know what happened. And the Navy 35 years ago made a decision and it's the Navy's decision and I think it was the right decision.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4772030/
Thanks, I had to miss the show because it was in the middle of the afternoon, here on the west coast. John O'Neill is such a fine, well spoken man. I wish I could have seen him, instead of just reading the transcript.
Exactly, it seems that this is an agenda of many of the anti-War on Terror crowd. If these battles are fought in American cities we will learn what nation-wide racial profiling is and next will come gun control. All very good reasons to fight this war in the terrorist backyard, not ours.
Thanks, Howlin...I missed the show. This helps a bunch. :-)
Actually, it's different from saying that the entire file will be posted. Everything that was sent is everything that was requested, probably not including medical records. We shall see, though.
