Kerry: war hero, or coward?

[UberBender]

<sarcasm>

 

Well, Clinton went to Canada as a draft dodger and he was a swell president!

 

</sarcasm>

[tyjet3]

It's funny how the last democratic president dodged the draft and no one said anything. But when a republican president just might have, democrats go awol over it...

[sixtofive]

did anybody hear that new add from some of the other soldiers that Kerry served in Vietnam with yet? they sure don't seem too happy with him

[Arrow_Diet]

Yeah, well, Kerry's CO retracted his statements about him, saying that the accusations he made to Kerry were false and unfound. What I don't understand is... there are two types of soldiers when it comes to the general opinion of Kerry, one side hates his guts and wants him to die, the other side worships him like a freakin' god.

 

What do you call it when some one transfers to a unit that they KNOW is not going into combat? What about when some one transfers to a unit that they KNOW is going to be under heavy fire 50% of the time?

 

Kerry put his ass on the line and Bush's daddy made sure his baby boy was gonna be ok. I don't like that.

[Guest]

To the one who said:

 

"I think people fail to realize that Bush didn't dodge the war. He joined the National Guard... You still have a very big chance of going to war if you are in the National Guard. (Ex: War with Iraq had some people from National Guard sent) "

 

 

How old are you? That's just plain not the way it 'was'. In the days of Vietnam we were also involved with the 'Cold War' with the Soviets. We had a much larger standing Army. Only about 400 Guardsmen went to Nam throughout the entire time we were there (over 10 years) and they were mostly supply clerks kept way out of the line of fire. Anyway....guys were crawling all over each other to get in the Guard BECAUSE there was almost no chance of leaving the country.

 

For that reason, there was very heavy competition to get in the Guard. There just weren't enough slots. Bush's daddy got him in by pulling political strings just like most rich kid's daddy's did. Then when he did get in and take the tests to try and get pilot training daddy had to step in again. Little DUHbya had failed miserably on his tests and didn't qualify. Daddy took care of it. To top it off, daddy got DUHbya assigned to an aircraft that was no longer used except for training. It was an obselete craft and would never even be used in domestic (in the US) troubles. In other words....even if Russia had attacked inside the U.S. G.W. would never have seen any action. His daddy guaranteed it for him.

 

It was a much different time. It is a fact that almost ALL people who joined the Guard during the Vietnam War were doing so to avoid going to Nam. It was the 'legal' dodge. Period.

 

G.W. couldn't even handle his light duty. He was AWOL (absent without leave) for at least 8 months of his duty...which makes him technically a deserter. That means he committed treason.

 

He also committed treason when daddy, his stable of rogue CIA agents, Jim Baker III and brother conspired to rig the election in Florida. They did it to keep him from looking like a fool in his brother's state. So, to be fair, they couldn't have known it would come down to Florida. The effect, and the crime, was the same. G.W. and all his cohorts are guilty of treason and should face a firing squad on public TV. The very fact that he was successful in seizing the executive branch of our government in a bloodless coup is the worst thing that has happened in the history of the U.S.. It's worse than Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination and 9/11 rolled into one and it ended democracy in America. We MUST restore democracy!

 

A vote for Bush is an act of Treason.

A vote for Nader is an act of Stupidity.

Period.

[surian]

did anybody hear that new add from some of the other soldiers that Kerry served in Vietnam with yet? they sure don't seem too happy with him

 

The ad in question featured not a single person who was actually *there* with Kerry for any of the events that earned him his medals. Every single one of those people who were on the boat with him during the event that earned him the bronze star attest to the fact that his story is accurate. After that ad aired Kerry and his election team returned with an 18 page report that discredited the ad. He has asked G. W. Bush to condemn the ad and pull it from the air because it is false.

 

The questions about Kerry's war hero status have been around ever since the 70s when he came back from the war and became a major Anti-war activist. He, at one point, took the medals he won and threw them over the wall of the white house in an anti-war demonstration. He ruffled a lot of feathers during that time and a lot of veterans are still angry with him for his actions after the war. However, every single report from those serving under Kerry are very clear in saying that he was, in actuallity, a war hero and that his statements about what happened are true.

 

In fact, even John McCain, who is one of the country's most well known Veitnam war veterans stands by Kerry's claim that he was a war hero.

 

The basic view from the Kerry campagin right now is that if Bush wants to make an issue about Kerry's war hero status, Kerry will win that debate. They have no worries on that front as they feel it's one of their strongest points in this election. Kerry, from the very beginning, has been very vocal about his actions in Veitnam. He would not be so vocal if he thought that he couldn't defend himself from such accusations, or if there was the slightest doubt that he was faking his status as a war hero.

 

Bush is strong on the subject of Terrorism, if you get into a debate about who has a better record when it comes to being tough on terrorism Bush will win hands down (that doesn't mean I agree with him, but he has been tougher than any other president). On the flip side of the coin, if you get into a debate about Vietnam, Kerry will win that debate no questions asked. Kerry's campaign right now is more than happy to make his war-hero status a debatable issue because they know that they will win that fight without effort.

[ImmortalSnafu]

I'm sure someone else has mentioned this before...but Kerry wasn't drafted into the armed forces, he VOLUNTEERED. You can't call someone a coward who joined the fight of his own accord, not because he was forced.

 

Kerry is a true patriot.

[sixtofive]

The ad in question featured not a single person who was actually *there* with Kerry for any of the events that earned him his medals.  Every single one of those people who were on the boat with him during the event that earned him the bronze star attest to the fact that his story is accurate.  After that ad aired Kerry and his election team returned with an 18 page report that discredited the ad.  He has asked G. W. Bush to condemn the ad and pull it from the air because it is false.

get your facts straight. The men that assembled the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth group did in fact serve with Kerry in person while in Vietnam. The Kerry team sent a 33 page response. A writer for the Boston Globe wrote a story that said one of the men in the add had recanted his statements which turned out to be an utter lie. The man that he said this about cleared that up the very same day. This same reporter should loose his job on grounds of conflict of interests by the way. He is on the Boston Globe staff, traveling as an embedded reporter in the Kerry campaign, while on the Kerry payroll to write a book about the capmpaign from their perspective at the same time. If his employer had any ethics what so ever they would let him go on conflict of interest violations.

 

http://www.swiftvets.com/

see this video if you have any doubts

 

I think it is utterly rediculous to have people automatically question the integrity of these real heroes. Kerry has asked for the add to be removed because it is true, and very damning to the image of himself that he want the public to believe. too bad for him, people will know the truth.

 

as far as the issue of volunteering making you a hero. this is just intentions, and all the best intentions in the world won't ever amount to anything unless you have the character to back them up and do something about them. The people that have known him closely don't seem to think he has this character.

[surian]

Get YOUR fact's straight.

 

Quote from an article on this subject:

The Kerry campaign has denounced the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, saying none of the men in the ad served on the boat that Kerry commanded. The leader of the group, retired Adm. Roy Hoffmann, said none of the 13 veterans in the commercial served on Kerry's boat but rather were in other swiftboats within 50 yards of Kerry's.

 

Jim Rassmann, an Army veteran who was saved by Kerry, said there were only six crewmates who served with Kerry on his boat. Five support his candidacy and one is deceased.

 

"I don't know how these guys can stretch the truth like this," said Del Sandusky, who was on Kerry's swiftboat.

 

link to the article: http://keyetv.com/topstories/topstories_st..._218133257.html

 

EDIT: oh, and there's this:

Kerry aides circulated an 18-page packet discrediting the veterans group and trying to link its backers to Republicans.

 

and the article : http://cayankee.blogs.com/cayankee/2004/08..._boat_vete.html

 

Edit once again: Here's something about the guys who made the ad, swiftboat veterans for the truth.

 

Behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are veteran corporate media consultant and Texas Republican activist Merrie Spaeth, who is listed as the group's media contact; eternal Kerry antagonist and Dallas attorney John E. O'Neill, law partner of Spaeth's late husband, Tex Lezar; and retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffman, a cigar-chomping former Vietnam commander once described as "the classic body-count guy" who "wanted hooches destroyed and people killed."

 

Here's some on Merrie Spaeth:

Although not as well known as Karen Hughes, Spaeth is among the most experienced and best connected Republican communications executives. During the Reagan administration she served as director of the White House Office of Media Liaison, where she specialized in promoting "news" items that boosted President Reagan to TV stations around the country. While living in Washington she met and married Lezar, a Reagan Justice Department lawyer who ran for lieutenant governor of Texas in 1994 with George W. Bush, then the party's candidate for governor. (Lezar lost; Bush won.)

 

More on Spaeth:

she coached Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel, to prepare him for his testimony urging the impeachment of President Clinton before the House Judiciary Committee. She even reviewed videotapes of his previous television appearances to give him pointers about his delivery and demeanor. The man responsible for arranging her advice to Starr was another old friend of her late husband's, Theodore Olson, who was counsel to the right-wing American Spectator when it acted as a front for the dirty-tricks campaign against Clinton known as the Arkansas Project

 

And still more:

In 2000, Spaeth participated in the most subterranean episode of the Republican primary contest when a shadowy group billed as "Republicans for Clean Air" produced television ads falsely attacking the environmental record of Sen. John McCain in California, New York and Ohio. While the identity of those funding the supposedly "independent" ads was carefully hidden, reporters soon learned that Republicans for Clean Air was simply Sam Wyly -- a big Bush contributor and beneficiary of Bush administration decisions in Texas -- and his brother, Charles, another Bush "Pioneer" contributor. (One of the Wyly family's private capital funds, Maverick Capital of Dallas, had been awarded a state contract to invest $90 million for the University of Texas endowment.)

 

article for the above quotes: http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/...t/index_np.html

 

More Edit: Here's something on John E. O'Neill:

 

The GOP's not-so-impartial hit man

Desperate to denigrate John Kerry's war record, Republicans have trotted out a "nonpartisan" Navy Vietnam vet -- who was a protege of Nixon dirty trickster Charles Colson and whose law firm is closely tied to the Bush White House.

 

article: http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/...l/index_np.html

 

Here's another good one:

MMFA investigates: Who is Jerome Corsi, co-author of Swift Boat Vets attack book?

 

While much has been written about the identity and history of John E. O'Neill -- one of the authors of the forthcoming Regnery book Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry (whose links in the GOP go back to his days as "protégé of Nixon-era dirty trickster Charles Colson") -- little has been said about his co-author, Jerome R. Corsi, PhD.

 

    • Corsi on Islam: "a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion"

 

    • Corsi on Catholicism: "Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press"

 

    • Corsi on Muslims: "RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters -- it all goes together"

 

    • Corsi on "John F*ing Commie Kerry": "After he married TerRAHsa, didn't John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm? He also has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?"

 

    • Corsi on Senator "FAT HOG" Clinton: "Anybody ask why HELLary couldn't keep BJ Bill satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?"

 

So, nice bunch of people huh? I think i've defended my point pretty well... off to bed for me.

[sixtofive]

Get your facts straight.

Mcain is only doing this as a personal jab against Bush because he is still a sore loser. He should go join the demecratic party wheere that kind of attitued is the norm.

 

"McCain"

"I wish they hadn't done it," McCain said of his former advisers. "I don't know if they knew all the facts."

he doesn't know because he wasn't there, they were. I do not say this to question his service, just that he did not serve with Kerry.

 

he then contradicted himself in the same breath

Later, McCain said the Bush campaign has denied any involvement and added, "I can't believe the president would pull such a cheap stunt."

 

they then spend some time on campsign finance reform. The press seems to have no problem with the exact same thing happening on a daily basis from 527 groups that support the decratic party candidates like moveon.org and george soros, but when one comes up against the dems all hell breaks loose and this is suddenly a terrible thing.

 

once again people are thinking they can be slick here by manipulating the words just right to twist the truth into their favor. It is being said that none of these people served on his boat. this is not a whole truth. some of them did, one was his superior officer, and many more were in close enough contact to be well aware of who he was, and who he was not. so in totality that is not a relevant statement.

 

the truth of the matter is that McCain did not slam the add, he spoke out against something that he has no first hand knowlege about, and did so as part of a personal vendetta. (Could it be more obvious that this is the true motivation?)

 

The vets who made this add have documented their point of view and why they hold credibility very well on their site which i posted the link for above. I guess it comes down to who do you trust? Veterans who came home and made an honest living, or a veteran who has turned his service into the basis for a political career. I'm sure it's obvious where I stand on the matter.