"The New Soldier" electronic adaptation can be found here

http://nomayo.mu.nu/ ^ | August 19, 2004 | Internet Sourced

[gorio]

August 19, 2004

The New Soldier

That's the title of the little book John Kerry wrote long before he decided that his service in Vietnam was something to boast about. Something to base a presidential campaign on. The introduction contains a portion of Kerry's 1971 testimony before congress as part of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Here is a bit of what he had to say about what he now so proudly trumpets as the foundation of his qualifications for the Presidency.

In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy.

if you read carefully the President's last speech to the people of this country, you can see that he says and says clearly, "but the issue, gentlemen, the issue is communism, and the question is whether or not we will leave that country to the Communists or whether or not we will try to give it hope to be a free people." But the point is they are not a free people now, and we cannot fight communism all over the world. I think we should have learned that lesson by now. So far I have only read the introduction. I hope to get into the text tomorrow. Then of course there is the Epilougue

[mylife]

John Kerry is a socialist.

Why?

He has all any man could want....

Or does he?

He wants POWER! He sees himself as the salve to the wounds of a nation, he desires to be a RIVER to his people.

Why?

POWER

[mylife]

I see a lot of this as having to do with the draft.

And you know..they were right.. in away..we dont want them aboard, And we ended the draft.

But thats not good enough for the left.

They honestly believe they can stop conflict

[GretchenM]

FYI

[BlessedAmerican]

Thanks...have saved it so as to read it fully. Is this all of the book or just excerpts? Has anyone tried to track down any of those whose 'stories' are told in the book in order to see their views so many years later???

[ppaul]

Honest men can disagree about whether or not Kerry fluffed up his record to get a purple heart, but his testimony before Congress was crystal clear: It's part of the Congressional record and tape recorded for posterity. His actions in testifying before Congress and in leading the VVAW gave great aid and comfort to the enemies of freedom. Only God Almighty knows the entire toll Kerry's actions had on the lives of the men he sold out, and on the innocent people of South Viet Nam who perished. My eyes well up with tears when I consider the years so many of our finest and bravest men suffered from injuries that were inflicted upon them when they were being held as prisoners of war by the enemy emboldened by Kerry's rhetoric. The names on the wall. The ones we will never know. Their blood cries out from the ground. Surely, we can in charity forgive John Kerry for his folly, maybe even excuse his actions because he was "swept up with the times." Maybe. But should this man ever be allowed the honor of serving as the President of the United States of America? Never.

[gilliam]

"In this section we present an overview of the book, along with most of the text and selected photographs. Much of the text consists of John Kerry's testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 22, 1971, and quotes from other members of the VVAW taken from the Winter Soldier testimony."

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

AMEN BROTHER

[Fedora]

Thanks! I've been trying to find that. . .

[Fedora]

Thank you!!!

[NormsRevenge]

Democratic presidential Candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) and Teresa Heinz Kerry arrives at Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton, N.Y., Saturday Aug. 21, 2004. (AP Photo/Ed Betz)

[bluecollarman]

We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service..."

Oh well..if you can't wipe it out Johnny, just lie and embellish till you get it like you want it.

[jordan8]

Here is a better transcript of Kerry's remarks before Congress which include his far more interesting remarks during a question and answer period after his set speech, including this bit:

Mr. Kerry: I would like to discuss that.

It is my opinion that the United States is still reacting in very much the 1945 mood and postwar cold-war period when we reacted to the forces which were at work in World War II and came out of it with this paranoia about the Russians and how the world was going to be divided up between the super powers, and the foreign policy of John Foster Dulles which was responsible for the creation of the SEATO treaty, which was, in fact, a direct reaction to this so-called Communist monolith. And I think we are reacting under cold-war precepts which are no longer applicable.

I say that because so long as we have the kind of strike force we have, and I am not party to the secret statistics which you gentlemen have here, but as long as we have the ones which we of the public know we have, I think we have a strike force of such capability and I think we have a strike force simply in our Polaris submarines, in the 62 or some Polaris submarines, which are constantly roaming around under the sea. And I know as a Navy man that underwater detection is the hardest kind in the world, and they have not perfected it, that we have the ability to destroy the human race. Why do we have to, therefore, consider and keep considering threats?

At any time that an actual threat is posed to this country or to the security and freedom I will be one of the first people to pick up a gun and defend it, but right now we are reacting with paranoia to this question of peace and the people taking over the world. I think if we are ever going to get down to the question of dropping those bombs most of us in my generation simply don't want to be alive afterwards because of the kind of world that it would be with mutations and the genetic probabilities of freaks and everything else.

Therefore, I think it is ridiculous to assume we have to play this power game based on total warfare. I think there will be guerilla wars and I think we must have a capability to fight those. And we may have to fight them somewhere based on legitimate threats and that is what I would say to this question of world peace. I think it is bogus, totally artificial. There is no threat. The Communists are not about to take over our McDonald hamburger stands. (Laughter)

Senator, I will say this. I think that politically, historically, the one thing that people try to do, that society is structured on as a whole, is an attempt to satisfy their felt needs, and you can satisfy those needs with almost any kind of political structure, giving it one name or the other. In this name it is democratic; in other it is communism; in others it is benevolent dictatorship. As long as those needs are satisfied, that structure will exist.

But when you start to neglect those needs, people will start to demand a new structure, and that, to me, is the only threat that this country faces now, because we are not responding to the needs and we are not responding to them because we work on these old cold-war precepts and because we have not woken up to realizing what is happening in the United States of America.

[mylife]

We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service..."

"Oh well..if you can't wipe it out Johnny, just lie and embellish till you get it like you want it."

Yup... Piss and moan. I understand battle can suck, best that you own it though

[mylife]

I think we have a strike force simply in our Polaris submarines, in the 62 or some Polaris submarines, which are constantly roaming around under the sea. And I know as a Navy man that underwater detection is the hardest kind in the world, and they have not perfected it, that we have the ability to destroy the human race. Why do we have to, therefore, consider and keep considering threats?

What a doofus

[Fedora]

I skimmed the text-only version. I'm still absorbing it, but one thing I noticed is that p. 16 quotes I.F. Stone, the left-wing journalist who was accused of being a Soviet agent recently. There is a good section on this in Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors, pp. 432-439. For an online summary of some of the details, see:

Cold War Without End

Some of the Venona files mentioning Stone are online here:

Part II: Selected Venona Messages

[Jim_Curtis]

From the Epilougue: We will not quickly join those who march on Veteran's Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the "greater glory of the United States." We will not accept rhetoric. We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars-in fact, we will find it hard to join anything at all

Uh, didn't he just give a speech in front of Veterans of Foreign Wars? He won't stoop to join em but he'll take their votes.

[mylife]

thats fedora,

The cold War was real

[mylife]

The cold War was real

My apologies.

it IS REAL, and we are fighting it on our own shores

[gorio]

This is a photo of a POW/ MIA Table. These tables have become routine fair at most military gatherings. This is one of the most unusual one's that I have seen.
I can't help but wonder when I see something like this...how can people like Mr. Kerry possibly use military service as a basis for becoming P.O.T.U.S.? This table is dedicated to the memory of those who never came home. Had John Kerry not had the focus in the 70's would we as a nation been focused on bringing home our POW's?
JMHO

[Fedora]

Looks like the Amazon.com reviews of this book need FReeping:

New Soldier

The anti-Kerry reviews seem to have been pushed down the list and onto the next page.