[Cincinatus' Wife]

Kerry Ads Underscore His Vietnam Service

[Cincinatus' Wife]

A frame grab shows Vietnam war-era Swift boat veteran Ken Cordier speaking during a television commercial over Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry 's war record. Kerry asked the Federal Election Commission August 20, 2004 to force Republican critics to withdraw the ads challenging his military service, and accused the Bush campaign of illegally helping coordinate the attacks. Photo by Swiftvets.Com/Reuters

[Jeff Chandler]

The Empire Strikes Back

[backhoe]

To read the latest on the Franchurian Candidate's bizzare exploits, click the picture, goto "last," and work backwards:

If you would like to help the Swift Boat Vets ( as I have, and I urge all to do-- even a few dollars will help ) kindly click on this logo:

To read the latest on the Franchurian Candidate's bizzare exploits, click the picture, goto "last," and work backwards:

If you would like to help the Swift Boat Vets ( as I have, and I urge all to do-- even a few dollars will help ) kindly click on this logo:

[ClancyJ]

Looks like Kerry is trying to drag Bush into the fight to deflect the attention from him and onto Bush.

Apparently free speech is only for Kerry and his unhinged handlers. Also, apparently, the only people democrats think can relay any negatives are democrats. Any ad by anti-Kerry should be only by people who do not know what Republican means.

Therefore, if you plan on voting for Bush or have ever voted for the GOP - you have to shut up and do nothing - no ads, no words, no books, no pamphlets. Kerry has SPOKEN.

Would it be safe to have such a man as President? What else would he forbid republicans from doing?

[ppaul]

If George Bush continues to smear (Kerry's) service, voters have a right to look at Bush's failure to serve out his time in the National Guard," Cutter added.

Jerk. The democRATS have been beating that dead horse since day one of this campaign. Kerry is finished, and the RATS know it. Payback is hell, eh?

[Reagan79]

"The Kerry camp yesterday announced plans to file a legal complaint with the Federal Election Commission, claiming the Swift Boat Veterans coordinated with the Bush-Cheney campaign and Republican National Committee, a charge that, if true, would be a violation of federal law."

Well it must be true because the article already said that the add is "Republican backed." Which is it???

[Bob]

"If George Bush continues to smear (Kerry's) service, voters have a right to look at Bush's failure to serve out his time in the National Guard," Cutter added.

Again??? How can they hope to find something different this time?

[Nick Danger]

Compiled from Knight Ridder Newspapers, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press.

[goldstategop]

I love the smell of good old-fashioned partisan combat in the morning.

[ClancyJ]

Another thing.....

So Kerry would not spend time reading to children after an attack?????? No, of course not, he would be getting lawyers and running around with his finger in the air trying to decide how to take advantage of the opportunity.

[scan58]

"...The words were honest, but on the other hand, they were a little bit over the top,"

What the hell does that mean? Sounds like an exaggeration...so in other words, senator kerry, you LIED, right?

[GeronL]

why do these idiots think they can keep claiming that Bush is smearing Kerry's service??

[syriacus]

Kerry's sole remaining explanation for his senate testimony:

"Yes...I did sit in that chair. Yes... I did open my mouth and talk."

"But let's make one thing clear -- Adam Walinsky is responsible for those very questionable words."

"I lied, exaggerated, misled and deceived in the manner of Charlie McCarthy"

[Chapita]

**************""John Kerry is a fighter and he doesn't tolerate lies from others," shot back spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter."*****************************************************************************************************

Yeah, uh-huh! I'll bet kerry was 12 years old before his maid could stop wiping his azz for him!

[DaveMSmith]

Reflecting on those comments this year, Kerry said they were too harsh. "I think some of the language that I used was a language that reflected an anger. ... The words were honest, but on the other hand, they were a little bit over the top," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press" in April.

Key sentence. Kerry is a fraud, coward, liar and traitor. Remainder of piece describes how he wishes he were Joe Stalin.

God Bless America

[pettifogger]

The new ad by the Republican-backed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth depicts three former Vietnam POWs condemning Kerry's April 22, 1971, testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where he described alleged U.S. atrocities and called for an end to the war.

"He betrayed us in the past. How could we be loyal to him now?" Ken Cordier, a retired Air Force colonel who was a POW for seven years, asks in the ad.

I noticed with interest that the Seattle Times did not use Galanti's much more evocative quote about Kerry giving the North Vietnamese for free, what he and his fellow POWs withstood torture to avoid saying. Cordier's quote makes the ad look as though the vets are merely bitter about Kerry's anti-war activities.

The focus on the vets' bitterness "after 33 years" is a transparent attempt to put the best possible spin on this devastating ad. It allows those favorably disposed to Kerry to hold onto their mythological view that Kerry's anti-war activities somehow saved lives in Vietnam. Had the Seattle Times used Galanti's quote, there would have been no doubt about the real effect of Kerry's treason.

[risk]

The more Kerry's camp attacks the swift vets the more they remind America how visciously unscrupulous Jane Fonda, John Kerry, and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War were in their opposition to the war. Opposing the war on basic grounds would have been fair, but they used smear tactics, atrocity propaganda, and outright lies to sell their positions.

The reason the swift vets won't be silcenced is the guilt Americans feel for what happened to our Vietnam vets during after the war. Every Kerry camp barb against the swift vets drives those shards of guilt deeper into our memories. So Kerry campaigners, just remember, when you blame O'Neil for standing with the swift vets, just remember that his defense of the war, his defense of the vietnamization policy for the Nixon administration, and his words of support for veterans everywhere sound better and better to saddened American ears.

The picture that launched a thousand anti-war activist organizations, the Kim Phuc "napalm girl" photo, was enlisted in this campaign of hate and lies. Unlike the vile legends spread by the left, and associates of groups like VVAW, Kim Phuc was hit by South Vietnamese air force and targeted by South Vietnamese strategic air commanders, not those heartless Americans as is almost always believed.

As Ronald N. Timberlake writes in 1999:

The Girl In The Photo was accidentally burned by her own countrymen, who were fighting her future countrymen. The only American participants of any nature were the journalists who reported the event and made her famous, and the doctors who saved her life.

After the war, Phuc was inducted into the communist cause by agents and eventually moved to Moscow, where she eventually managed to escape the system and defect to the capitalist west.

The legacy of America's involvement in Vietnam will continually work against John Kerry. His camp would have been better off never to say a word about our president's coldwar serivce to country, and even restrain themselves from addressing the swift vets at all.

But that's just not like them. They want to keep misleading Americans about the real price of defending our country -- and misleading them about the cost of not defending it.

Unsurprisingly, Peter Arnett was involved with "breaking" the story, but was forthcoming regarding ARVN and VNAF involvement in his Stars and Stripes coverage as far as I can tell.

[Ladysmith]

Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot went on CNN and said the Kerry campaign has come "unhinged," and that Kerry himself "looks wild-eyed." White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Kerry is "losing his cool." The Bush campaign used similar language in 2000 to portray rival Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as potentially too unstable to run the country.

Hey, if the shoe fits...

[SunkenCiv]

Kerry's opposition to the war and claims that U.S. troops had engaged in atrocities have reopened a split

and that's the operative sentence for the entire campaign. KERRY reopened the split. He's cheered on only by people who agreed with his 1971 turncoat activity.

George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent

[Krodg]

Kerry's opposition to the war and claims that U.S. troops had engaged in atrocities have reopened a split between veterans who salute his service as a skipper of a Navy Swift boat in Vietnam and those who object to his subsequent protests.

I guess Kerry thought 30 yrs would be enough time for everyone to forget what he said and that it would be safe for him to run for president.

Concluding his formal statement, Kerry commented about administration attempts to disown veterans and looked forward thirty years (to 2001) when the nation could look back proudly to a time when it turned from this war and the hate and fears driving us in Vietnam.

http://www.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/JohnKerryTestimony.html