John Kerry Confuses Himself With Bob Kerrey

Of course John Kerry is afraid to run on his left-wing Senate record, but does that mean he should pose as a colleague?

Imagine the screaming headlines and nationwide media ridicule if President Bush confused himself with another pol. But don't expect the New York Times and company to report this:

In trying to defend his horrendous record on intelligence "and spin their way out of his lousy committee attendance record," Kerry's campaign "claimed on its website Monday, 'John Kerry served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for 8 years and is the former Vice Chairman of the Committee.' Fact is John Kerry has never – ever! – served as vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence," the Republican National Committee noted today.

"Turns out, there as a senator named Bob Kerrey from Nebraska who was vice chairman for a while. Kerry’s website later pulled the plug on the page, which might be construed as a metaphor for the whole campaign."

The RNC suggested: "Instead of posting false qualifications on the campaign website, maybe it would be wiser for John Kerry and the Gang That Couldn’t Spin Straight to follow the advice of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who called on the Kerry campaign Monday to end the controversy by simply releasing his committee attendance records. What are the odds?"

And thanks to Bush-Cheney '04 for finding this quote Feb. 10, 1994 in the Congressional Record from Kerry's Democrat colleague Dennis DeConcini, then a U.S. senator from Arizona: "Mr. President, the Kerry amendment includes a $1 billion cut in fiscal year 1994 and $5 billion over the next 5 years from intelligence activities."

Here's what Rep. Hastert said Monday: "John Kerry served on the Intelligence Committee from 1993 to 2000, and according to official records, John Kerry missed 76 percent of the public Senate Intelligence Committee hearings during that time. This figure doesn’t include his attendance at closed door meetings. Those records can only be released to the public at John Kerry’s request. This is something that needs to be done, and I join Senator Roberts, Senator Chambliss, Senator Cornyn, and Senator Coleman and others in calling on him to do so, so that the American people can judge the whole picture for themselves."

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said Sunday on "Meet the Press," "The easiest way out of this is for John Kerry and John Edwards to request of Senator Rockefeller and myself to release the attendance hearings; not only the public hearings, which they have rebutted, but the closed hearings."

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., said Sunday on CNN: "So I would go to what is solid, uncontrovertible fact, and that is the records that each committee keeps with regard to the attendance at every hearing of all the members, whether they're there or not. Now, those records are available. John Kerry, if he questions the authenticity of this ad that's out there now, should simply get those records and put them into the public domain."

Let's see, is there a positive spin to the fact that Kerry missed 38 of 49 public hearings of the Intelligence Committee, including the June 8, 2000, hearing on the National Commission on Terrorism's warning about the terrorist threat? Well, at least his 22 percent attendance rate was better than his Senate attendance recently.

Then there's this from Gerald Nicosia's Home to War, sourced to interviews by the author with John Forbes Kerry: "Kerry had had an action-filled tour as a swift-boat commander in Vietnam, where he was severely wounded in an ambush, gaining three Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, in addition to the Silver Star, which by all rights should have been a Navy Cross. But Admiral Elmo "Bud" Zumwalt Jr. had intercepted the paperwork for Kerry's Navy Cross and changed it to a lesser award so that he could approve it himself (the Navy Cross requires congressional approval) and pin it on Kerry a few days later, as an 'impact award,' to boost morale. (italics mine)

In the next paragraph, p. 72: "Kerry could not help but sense the irony of his being a war hero, since he had not wanted to fight in the war at all... ...Though he questioned the policy behind the war, he did not see either jail or exile as a reasonable alternative for himself; besides, he says he 'believed very strongly in the code of service to one's country.' So he enlisted in the Navy, to see for himself what was going on and at the same time to stay out of combat. To that end, he volunteered for assignment on one of the swift boats--short, fast aluminum craft that were used for patrol duty off the Vietnam coast. Two weeks before he arrived in Vietnam, the Navy began changing the deployment of the boats, sending them up the rivers instead to ferret out pockets of Viet Cong that were guarding the waterways for their own use."

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.