Posted on 08/07/2004 10:18:24 AM PDT by Jenya
Kerry defends his '70s anti-war activities
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Sen. John F. Kerry [related, bio] expressed pride in his 1970s antiwar activism yesterday as controversy continued to swirl over a TV ad accusing him of betraying his fellow veterans when he protested the Vietnam war.
``I stood up against the war in the 1970s,'' Kerry said. ``Some people still don't like that, and they're still trying to fight that. That's 35 years old. But I'm proud of what I did to stand up. And I learned a lot.''
A group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth launched a TV spot accusing Kerry of dishonoring his country and ``lying'' in Senate testimony about atrocities committed during the war.
The ad also claims Kerry did not deserve his combat medals. But the controversy grew deeper yesterday as one key member of the group first seemed to back off his criticism - then stood by his original charges.
George Elliott, one of Kerry's war commanders, told the Boston Globe he should not have signed an affidatit suggesting Kerry didn't deserve his Silver Star.
``It was a terrible mistake probably for me to sign the affidavit with those words. I'm the one in trouble here,'' the Globe quoted Elliott as saying.
Later yesterday, Elliott issued another affidavit saying the Globe had misquoted him and that he believed Kerry has ``not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.''
Next week, the group will release a book called ``Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry [related, bio].''
But Jim Rassmann, who credits Kerry with saving his life in Vietnam, said, ``What these people have said is not true, and a lot of it is grossly inaccurate. These gentlemen appear to be making this up as they go along, and they are not keeping their stories straight.''
White House spokesman Scott McClellan yesterday repeated a call for ``an end to all the ads and activity by these shadowy groups that are funded by unregulated soft money.''
Kerry was ticked that he was asked to leave Vietnam and so he comes back and speaks out against his 'band of brothers'.
Now he's proud of it?????
Well, Mr. Kerry, you brought it up.
I sure would be proud if I caused the death of a lot of soldiers by supporting the enemy. What a phony SOS he is!
Time to reference the N.Viet. General's memoirs. The one that says without Kerry's activities, the South would have won the war.
He's proud that he served in Vietnam...and he's also proud that he protested against the Vietnam war? Go figure
I hope you meant "POS".
BUMP!
So is your service record but that doesn't keep you from touting it, ahole.
I might if I knew what POS meant.
John F. Kerry: a traitor against these United States--and proud of it!
thanks for posting this thread.
I guess in Kerry's mind, it's ok to talk about what happened 35 yrs and 4 months ago, but he draws the line at 35 yrs. What a putz.
Will someone please tell the true story of Rassman? He was Army Spec. Forces, so was he assigned to Kerry's boat? One of the Swifties said Rassman was sitting on the back of the boat, eating a cookie and he fell off because Kerry sped out like a bat outta hell after one of the boats hit a mine, then came back when they realized Rassman wasn't there.
I think your "Piece" translates to his "Sack". IOW, "Piece of..." as opposed to "Sack of..."
Either one works for me when it comes to Monsieur Querry...
Are you kidding me? I get the feeling that he does not want to be re-elected. He could have just said so.
Really, Senator? Then why did you so carefully avoid all mention of your pro-Hanoi days during your recent nomination speech? And what of the Vietnam "heroism" you so prominently featured -- is that not also 35 years old?
Perhaps you have learned less than you would like people to believe.
Yes, I wonder if he is proud of all the guys that got killed because of what he did? But then again, he is a demon rat. Don't many demon rats support our enemies anyway? That doesn't make it right, just one of the harsh realities of the demon rats.
hanoi john spent 132 days in Vienam being a soldier. He spent 730 days trashing our sons, husbands, brothers, uncles and cousins as baby killers and rapists, along with his best bud hanoi jane.
Ho Chi Min? (?sp)
www.newsmax.com ^ | Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2004 10:25 PM EST
Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2004 10:25 PM EST Gen. Giap: Kerry's Group Helped Hanoi Defeat U.S.
The North Vietnamese general in charge of the military campaign that finally drove the U.S. out of South Vietnam in 1975 credited a group led by Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry with helping him achieve victory.
In his 1985 memoir about the war, General Vo Nguyen Giap wrote that if it weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S. - according to Fox News Channel war historian Oliver North.
That's why, he predicted on Tuesday, the Vietnam war issue "is going to blow up in Kerry's face."
"People are going to remember Gen. Giap saying if it weren't for these guys, [Kerry's group], we would have lost," North told radio host Sean Hannity.
"The Vietnam Veterans Against the War encouraged people to desert, encouraged people to mutiny - some used what they wrote to justify fragging officers," noted the former Marine Lieutenant Colonel, who earned two purple hearts in Vietnam.
"John Kerry has blood of American soldiers on his hands," North said.
When will someone ask him if he'll pull the plug on another group who believes in us just as he helped to do to the South Vietnamese?
I wouldn't be surprised if these damn journalists aren't getting their stories right. I want the transcript of the interview GWB gave when he said that because I don't think he would say that. The media is in full-fledge anti-Bush mode, even FOX.
After what these people are doing to these swift vets, I'm pissed and don't believe any of them anymore.
He wanted to talk about Viet Nam before he didn't want to talk about Viet Nam ??????
He.....is......such....a....DORK!
We have a local conservative talk show host who watched the entire Convention and now calls him "Lieutenant Kerry". His justficiation is that if someone from another planet had watched the Democratic Convention that's the conclusion he would have come to. Not "Senator Kerry", not Lieutenant Governor Kerry", but "Navy Lieutenant Kerry". So....he spent 4 months in Vietnam, came home, did some other stuff, and now he's running for President, right?
If this is true, he must be pretty confident he will be elected and is trying to prevent the Dems from complaining about it.
I'm 42 years old, and I barely remember the Vietnam War. All I do remember is the freaks in long hair, smelly and stoned. To my 4 children, it is like talking about the Civil War. John Fing Kerry, should talk about his record now. He is a flaming liberal. He should be proud of it. He won't win any of the flyover states, but so what? At least his Hollywierd friends will love him.
Probably that would be considered not 'focusing on the issues'. Where does it say that you win when let your opponent define the argument all the time? Okay, Rove and company have their game plan, and this Swiftboat vet ad isn't what they haf in mind for week two or three, but life is messy. Think on your feet and deal with it. Who can play attack dog and reference the N.Viet General's memoirs? Dick Cheney, that's who.
``I stood up against the war in the 1970s,'' Kerry said. ``Some people still don't like that, and they're still trying to fight that. That's 35 years old. But I'm proud of what I did to stand up. And I learned a lot.''
So, if it happened 35 years old, its not important? Just like his 4 months in Vietnam, right? Oh wait, thats relevant because it speaks to his character. On the other hand, accusing the rest of your "band of brothers" of atrocities is just a youthful indiscretion that should be ignored. He is also strong on defense despite his 20 years of voting against the military in the Senate. What BS! I jsut hope that a majority of Americans see through this hypocracy before the election.
That's their story I think. Also that Kerry reached him just before another boat did. Once Rassman was back on board, Kerry bugged out. I think it will be in their book.
Who is it that isn't keeping their stories straight?
So, Mr. Kerry, just where did you spend Christmas 1968?
Was it in Cambodia as you claimed in a Senate speech? And just who sent you there? You claimed that it was President Nixon despite the fact that he wasn't inaugurated until the following month, right?
Or did you spend Christmas at at base near Cambodia as you claimed in your hagiography?
Kerry didn't take a stand AGAINST THE WAR. He took a stand in support of North Viet Nam.
About like Ted Kennedy is strong against DRUNK DRIVING!
It is still IN-YOUR-FACE -BABYKILLER VETERANS.
He had his say 35 years ago. Let the veterans have theirs. As a nation, we owe them that much. They were welcomed home with spit and the lable baby-killers.
Can anyone imagine coming home from fighting a war and being advised NOT to wear your uniform?
We never dealt with it. It was like the open family secret everyone knew, but no one talked about.
Let the vets' voices be heard with respect. Believe them or not, they deserve to be heard.
....what they had in mind for week two...' (Sorry.)
IMO it's like putting the Fox over the hen house. We will need monitors to monitor the monitors.
The reason you remember so easily "the freaks in long hair, smelly and stoned" is that they are still around.
No one else heard this? Maybe I misunderstood. I don't think so though.
Uh....The Swift Boat Vets are Viet Nam War heroes. Decorated Veterans. I thought we weren't allowed to question war heroes! We're to blindly believe everything they say.
Now what? Politician vs. American citizens. Who do we believe? (Duh!)
All this makes me wonder if he will be an effective president in the war against. No, no he won't if he's so antiwar.
WHAT???
He was against the war before he was for it.
True. It's not what he did but how he did it. There were many ways to protest the war without calling our troops and his former compatriots inhuman monsters or supporting the enemy.
Both work with a little imagination. :-))
mc
10/4 I will have to include yours in some of my words of wisdom.
speaking of flyover states, just before getting to Kansas City, Kerry was booed and shouted down in Sedalia, MO on August 5 by a very active BushCheney04 group, and he was so dumbfounded that he kept handing off the mic to his wife and Edwards, when he finally spoke, the most he could think to do was to refer to Michael Moore's book and the supposed Bush connection to Saudi oil money ...
here's the write-up
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1506&ncid=696&e=4&u=/afp/20040806/ts_alt_afp/us_vote_kerry
Kerry campaign train gets whistles at stop
Fri Aug 6,11:26 AM ET
SEDALIA, United States (AFP) - Democratic presidential contender John Kerry and running mate John Edwards ran into a group of Republicans whose whistles and shouts drowned out a cheering crowd of supporters when their "Believe in America" train made a brief stop here overnight.
With signs proclaiming "Four more years" and "Flush the Johns", supporters of President George W. Bush in the November 2 elections were seen and heard above several hundred "Kerry-Edwards" followers at the station, as the Democratic hopefuls and their wives appeared at the rear of the train.
"You want four more years of what? Of adding deficit and debts for the children of our country," Kerry told the Republicans in the crowd. He promised relief for the middle class and to restore the US image abroad. "We can do better than we are doing today in this country," he told his cheering supporters. "I will never send a man to fight without a plan to win the peace," he said referring to Iraq. He called on his supporters to spread the Democratic word around the country.
The shouting match, which lasted about 15 minutes before the Kerry train pulled out of the station, is an unusual ocurrence at campaign rallies where supporters and opponents of the candidates usually stand nonchalantly shoulder to shoulder with no outbursts.
The Bush administration has invited a team of international monitors to observe the U.S. presidential election in November, but the group will not come from the United Nations, as some congressional Democrats had urged.
Assistant Secretary of State Paul V. Kelly, who handles legislative affairs for the department, affirmed the invitation this week in a letter to 13 House Democrats. They had requested U.N. monitors for this year's elections in an effort to avoid the charges of disenfranchisement and voting irregularities that plagued the 2000 election, the closest in history.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the largest regional organization in the world with 55 participating nations, will monitor the U.S. election on Nov. 2. Members include Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain and the United States.
"OSCE members, including the United States, agreed in 1990 in Copenhagen to allow fellow members to observe elections in one another's countries," Mr. Kelly wrote. "Consistent with this commitment, the United States has already invited the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to observe the November 2, 2004, presidential elections."
[snip]
OSCE officials deployed an observer team to monitor the most recent U.S. elections, on Nov. 5, 2002.
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