I don't think it is smart politics or of good taste to attack Kerry's service record. Maybe it would be smart politics to attack Kerry's record if Bush's record of service was more inspiring but attacking Kerry's war record forces a comparison and that comparison makes Bush look lesser in weight. So to offset this a segment has decided to also lesson Kerry's military contribution - belittle it and denigrate it so that his war record can be besmirched and thus not used against Bush - so this side hopes. I want no part in such policies. Thankfully for my continued support, so far such an attack is not directed by the Bush campaign because Bush unlike many on the cretins on this forum has too much class to do such a thing. The only reason anybody is even bringing up the subject of 1960's era Vietnam conduct and choices a 2004 campaign issue is because:
1. The Democrats, especially DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe, made it an issue by portraying Kerry as the equivalent of Audie Murphy and portraying Bush as a coward and the equivalent of someone who fled to Canada.
2. The liberal news media enthusiastically jumped into that game.
So, that dead fish was put on the table by the Democrats and what goes around comes around.
An objective view of the Vietnam choices of both Bush and Kerry will show that both Kerry and Bush made choices designed to avoid Vietnam combat.
By contrast, my uncle volunteered and fought at the Bay of Pigs, volunteered for the U.S. Army immediately after his release as a Bay of Pigs POW, was severely wounded with the First Cavalry Division ealy in the Vietnam War, was severely wounded again later in the Vietnam War as a Green Beret and later engaged in covert combat with the Green Berets in South America. With Kerry's Band-Aid Purple Heart criteria, he could have been permanently out of combat after the first two weeks of his first Vietnam combat tour.
The illusion of a record such as that is what Kerry wants to portray to the voters. However, such an illusion is "Stolen Valor".
It was only by sheer bad luck that Kerry ended up in combat. By his own admission, Kerry stated that he chose swift boats precisely because "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing." Once he was in combat, Kerry whined his way into three dubious Purple Hearts and sea-lawyered himself out of combat as fast as he possibly could.
Kerry has allowed his Democrat attack dogs to brand Bush as a coward for trying to avoid Vietnam combat. If pointing out, with Kerry's own words, that Kerry tried to do exactly the same thing is "belittling", then, so be it.
As it is now, the liberal press has been hyping the "Bush is a coward who avoided combat while Kerry is a brave stud who volunteered for combat" Big Lie. If left unaddressed, the Democrat created Big Lie can turn enough vote to potentially decide a close election.
The Big Lie has not come directly from Kerry himself. He coyly allows his DNC and liberal media attack dogs to put out the Big Lie.
However, with the power of the Internet, the objective examination of Kerry's Vietnam choices and his machinations to cut his combat tour short are beginning to come to light.
Journalists lurk on sites like FreeRepublic as it is a source of investigative footwork. The truth about Kerry is coming out and now journalists are beginning to present a more balanced picture of Kerry's Vietnam choices and manipulation of the Purple Heart requirements and the "Three Purple Hearts and you go home" policy.
This past week, our local newspaper had an article questioning the appropriateness of Kerry's manipulation of the "Three Purple Heart" rule.
Kerry's Vietnam choices and his sea-lawyering himself out of combat are a matter of fact.
If exposing the truth of those Vietnam choices and his sea-lawyering is "belittling", then Kerry has nobody but himself to blame. If Kerry had not wanted his own conduct examined, he should not have allowed his DNC and liberal media attack dogs to make George Bush's Vietnam conduct a major part of his attack campaign against Bush.
Although I have not kept a close eye on them, it seem to me, Destro, that your posts usually take a slant that opposes the use of American power. If that is a correct read of your underlying philosophy, then it makes perfect sense that you would advocate the perpetuation of the "Bush is a coward who avoided combat while Kerry is a brave stud who volunteered for combat" Big Lie.
A Kerry Presidency would definitely result result in an America unwilling to use it's power, even in it's own defense.
Man, I love your retorts!! I note that Destro has yet to adequately respond to any of them.
I object to Kerry's military record because (in addition to your keen observations):
1) he uses it as a shield to cover his clearly unpatriotic and possibly seditious post-Vietnam activities and voting record. He constantly fantasizes about anti-patriotic allegations from the President and his allies, although there is absolutely no record of same.
2) He, and his DNC cronies, pummeled the President for weeks on his service, belittling it and nitpicking it to the point of distraction. They called him a liar, a cheat, and a deserter, when the President went out of his way to find and release all documents. Kerry is still hiding some of his. Wonder why? For any number of reasons, the usually liberal Boston Globe is outing Kerry every chance they get. Clearly, they know something about him they plain don't like. For once, I agree with the Globe!
3) Kerry verbally wears his medals on his chest every day (the one's he didn't throw over the fence). Every statement is littered with war references, i.e. "fought," "frontlines," "battle," etc., and, lest we forget, "I was in Vietnam (in case you didn't know by now)." It is the equivalent of Clinton lacing his public statements with sexual innuendo and rape jokes! The more Kerry does it, the more I think it is a distraction from the fact that, as Zell Miller once remarked, he has a spectacularly weak record in the Senate, and his voting record is the equivalent of the death by a thousand cuts for America's defense and counterintelligence organizations.
4) Kerry lied about, and/or participated in war crimes/atrocities committed in Vietnam. Either way, what he did was reprehensible. He either did it, and didn't turn himself in, or saw it, and didn't report it, or didn't do it and lied about it for effect, or heard about it third hand, and repeated it as if he were there, or made it up.
5) the antiwar statements he made when he got back were used against POWs still in Vietnam, as recounted in the following Newsmax story:
(
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/2/17/124410.shtml) Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2004 12:35 p.m. EST
McCain: Hanoi Hilton Guards Taunted POWs With Kerry's Testimony
These days, former Vietnam War POW Sen. John McCain has nothing but praise for his fellow Vietnam veteran Sen. John Kerry, the Democrats' current presidential front-runner.
But after he was released from the Hanoi Hilton in 1973, McCain publicly complained that testimony by Kerry and others before J. William Fulbright's Senate Foreign Relations Committee was "the most effective propaganda [my North Vietnamese captors] had to use against us."
"They used Senator Fulbright a great deal," McCain wrote in the May 14, 1973, issue of U.S. News & World Report. While he was languishing in a North Vietnamese prison cell, Kerry was telling the Fulbright committee that U.S. soldiers were committing war crimes in Vietnam as a matter of course.
Sen. Ted Kennedy, a key Kerry presidential backer, was "quoted again and again" by jailers at the Hanoi Hilton, McCain said.
"Clark Clifford was another [North Vietnamese] favorite," the ex-POW told U.S. News, "right after he had been Secretary of Defense under President Johnson."
"When Ramsey Clark came over [my jailers] thought that was a great coup for their cause," McCain recalled. Months earlier, Sen. Kerry had appeared with Clark at the April 1971 Washington, D.C., anti-war protest that showcased his testimony before the Fulbright Committee.
"All through this period," wrote McCain, his captors were "bombarding us with anti-war quotes from people in high places back in Washington. This was the most effective propaganda they had to use against us."
McCain biographer Paul Alexander chronicled the Arizona Republican's anger toward Kerry during their early careers in the Senate together.
"For many years McCain held Kerry's actions against him because, while McCain was a POW in the Hanoi Hilton, Kerry was organizing veterans back home in the U.S. to protest the war."
In his 2002 book, "Man of the People: The Life of John McCain," Alexander says that the two Vietnam vets finally reconciled in the early 1990s after having "a long - and at times emotional - conversation about Vietnam" during a mutual trip to Kuwait.
Later, Kerry sought to minimize the rift, telling Alexander: "Our differences occurred when we were kids, or at least close to being kids. It was a long time ago, and we both came back and realized that there were a lot of difficulties in the prosecution of that war."
NewsMax gratefully acknowledges the help of U.S. Veteran Dispatch editor Ted Sampley for supplying McCain's revealing 1973 account in U.S. News."
Does anyone doubt for a nanosecond that the public statements of Kerry and crackpot theories of Kennedy (and other Democrats), used specifically for political reasons (attacking President Bush), are not splashed all over the screens of Al-Jazeera or the pages of ME newspapers? Can anyone doubt that their statements have resulted in more than a few of the flag draped coffins whose picture they so eagerly plastered all over the pages of major (liberal) newspapers last week, again in a thinly veiled attempt to make the President look bad? In a world where there is no such thing as "local news" anymore, do these people think that their statements do not hearten and embolden the terrorists, insurgents, guerillas or whatever you choose to call them?
Nobody who is intellectually honest could.
And these sanctimonius ba$tards sit there and claim to "support the troops." With friends like that, who needs insurgents (to paraphrase a bit)?
Give 'em hell, Polybius!