Bring it on, John
by Oliver North
"Of course, the president keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that. Well, if he wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: 'Bring it on.'" -- Sen. John Kerry
Dear John,
As usual, you have it wrong. You don't have a beef with President George Bush about your war record. He's been exceedingly generous about your military service. Your complaint is with the 2.5 million of us who served honorably in a war that ended 29 years ago and which you, not the president, made the centerpiece of this campaign.
I talk to a lot of vets, John, and this really isn't about your medals or how you got them. Like you, I have a Silver Star and a Bronze Star. I only have two Purple Hearts, though. I turned down the others so that I could stay with the Marines in my rifle platoon. But I think you might agree with me, though I've never heard you say it, that the officers always got more medals than they earned and the youngsters we led never got as many medals as they deserved.
This really isn't about how early you came home from that war, either, John. There have always been guys in every war who want to go home. There are also lots of guys, like those in my rifle platoon in Vietnam, who did a full 13 months in the field. And there are, thankfully, lots of young Americans today in Iraq and Afghanistan who volunteered to return to war because, as one of them told me in Ramadi a few weeks ago, "the job isn't finished."
Nor is this about whether you were in Cambodia on Christmas Eve, 1968. Heck John, people get lost going on vacation. If you got lost, just say so. Your campaign has admitted that you now know that you really weren't in Cambodia that night and that Richard Nixon wasn't really president when you thought he was. Now would be a good time to explain to us how you could have all that bogus stuff "seared" into your memory -- especially since you want to have your finger on our nation's nuclear trigger.
But that's not really the problem, either. The trouble you're having, John, isn't about your medals or coming home early or getting lost -- or even Richard Nixon. The issue is what you did to us when you came home, John.
When you got home, you co-founded Vietnam Veterans Against the War and wrote "The New Soldier," which denounced those of us who served -- and were still serving -- on the battlefields of a thankless war. Worst of all, John, you then accused me -- and all of us who served in Vietnam -- of committing terrible crimes and atrocities.
On April 22, 1971, under oath, you told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that you had knowledge that American troops "had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam." And you admitted on television that "yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed."
And for good measure you stated, "(America is) more guilty than any other body, of violations of (the) Geneva Conventions ... the torture of prisoners, the killing of prisoners."
Your "antiwar" statements and activities were painful for those of us carrying the scars of Vietnam and trying to move on with our lives. And for those who were still there, it was even more hurtful. But those who suffered the most from what you said and did were the hundreds of American prisoners of war being held by Hanoi. Here's what some of them endured because of you, John:
Capt. James Warner had already spent four years in Vietnamese custody when he was handed a copy of your testimony by his captors. Warner says that for his captors, your statements "were proof I deserved to be punished." He wasn't released until March 14, 1973.
Maj. Kenneth Cordier, an Air Force pilot who was in Vietnamese custody for 2,284 days, says his captors "repeated incessantly" your one-liner about being "the last man to die" for a lost cause. Cordier was released March 4, 1973.
Navy Lt. Paul Galanti says your accusations "were as demoralizing as solitary (confinement) ... and a prime reason the war dragged on." He remained in North Vietnamese hands until February 12, 1973.
John, did you think they would forget? When Tim Russert asked about your claim that you and others in Vietnam committed "atrocities," instead of standing by your sworn testimony, you confessed that your words "were a bit over the top." Does that mean you lied under oath? Or does it mean you are a war criminal? You can't have this one both ways, John. Either way, you're not fit to be a prison guard at Abu Ghraib, much less commander in chief.
One last thing, John. In 1988, Jane Fonda said: "I would like to say something ... to men who were in Vietnam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of things that I said or did. I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I'm ... very sorry that I hurt them. And I want to apologize to them and their families."
Even Jane Fonda apologized. Will you, John?
Oliver North is a nationally syndicated columnist, host of the Fox News Channel's War Stories and founder and honorary chairman of Freedom Alliance.
Saturday, August 28, 2004
From National Review Online:
Purple Heart News
William Schachte speaks.
EDITOR'S NOTE:A new voice has been added to the debate over the circumstances surrounding Sen. John Kerry's first Purple Heart. William Schachte, who was a lieutenant in the Navy during Kerry's Vietnam tour — and who later rose to the rank of Rear Admiral — has released a statement describing the events of December 2-3, 1968, when Kerry received a minor shrapnel wound for which he was awarded the Purple Heart. What follows is Schachte's statement, in full. — Byron York
Statement of RADM William L. Schachte, Jr. USN (Ret.)
August 27, 2004
As was true of all "Swiftees," I volunteered to serve in Vietnam and was assigned to Coastal Division 14 for a normal tour of duty.
I was a Lieutenant serving as Operations Officer and second in command at Coastal Division 14 when Lieutenant (junior grade) John Kerry reported to us in mid-November, 1968. Lt. (jg) Kerry was an Officer-in-Charge (O-in-C) under training in preparing to be assigned as one of our Swift Boat O-in-C's.
At some point following President Johnson's announcement of the suspension of bombing in North Vietnam in March 1968, we were directed to become more aggressive in seeking to find and destroy or disrupt the enemy in our operating area. As part of this effort, I conceived a new operation that became known as "Skimmer OPS." The concept was simple. A 15-foot Boston Whaler was sent into an area where, based on coordinated intelligence, North Vietnamese cadre and Viet Cong were expected to be meeting or where, for example, concentrations of enemy forces might be involved in the movement of arms or munitions. We were to draw fire and quickly get out of the area. This would allow more concentrated firepower to be brought against the enemy forces we had been able to identify.
These operations were carried out only in "hot" areas and well away from any villages or populated areas. A Swift Boat would tow the skimmer to the general area of operations, and the ambush team would then board the skimmer and proceed to the designated area of operations. The Swift Boat would be riding shotgun and standing off, occasionally out of sight, to provide fire support and long-range communications. The Skimmer was powered by an outboard motor, and we carried an FM radio, handheld flares, an M-60 machine gun with a bipod mount, and an M-16 mounted with a starlight scope. If the night was heavily overcast, we brought an M-14 mounted with an infrared scope. We also carried an M-79 single-shot grenade launcher. In addition to our combat gear and flak jackets, we often carried .38-caliber pistols.
The operation consisted of allowing the skimmer to drift silently along shorelines or riverbanks to look or listen for sounds of enemy activity. If activity was identified, we would open fire with our automatic weapons, and if we received fire, we would depart the area as quickly as possible, leaving it to air support or mortar fire from a Swift Boat standing off at a distance to carry out an attack.
I commanded each of these Skimmer operations up to and including the one on the night in question involving Lt. (jg) Kerry. On each of these operations, I was in the skimmer manning the M-60 machine gun. I took with me one other officer and an enlisted man to operate the outboard motor. I wanted another officer because officers, when not on patrol, were briefed daily on the latest intelligence concerning our sector of operations and were therefore more familiar with the current intelligence. Additionally, at these daily briefings, officers debriefed on their patrol areas after returning to port.
On the night of December 2-3, we conducted one of these operations, and Lt. (jg) Kerry accompanied me. Our call sign for that operation was "Batman." I have no independent recollection of the identity of the enlisted man, who was operating the outboard motor. Sometime during the early morning hours, I thought I detected some movement inland. At the time we were so close to land that we could hear water lapping on the shoreline. I fired a hand-held flare, and upon it bursting and illuminating the surrounding area, I thought I saw movement. I immediately opened fire with my M-60. It jammed after a brief burst. Lt. (jg) Kerry also opened fire with his M-16 on automatic, firing in the direction of my tracers. His weapon also jammed. As I was trying to clear my weapon, I heard the distinctive sound of the M-79 being fired and turned to see Lt. (jg) Kerry holding the M-79 from which he had just launched a round. We received no return fire of any kind nor were there any muzzle flashes from the beach. I directed the outboard motor operator to clear the area.
Upon returning to base, I informed my commanding officer, Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, of the events, informing him of the details of the operation and that we had received no enemy fire. I did not file an "after action" report, as one was only required when there was hostile fire. Soon thereafter, Lt. (jg) Kerry requested that he be put in for a Purple Heart as a result of a small piece of shrapnel removed from his arm that he attributed to the just-completed mission. I advised Lt. Cmdr. Hibbard that I could not support the request because there was no hostile fire. The shrapnel must have been a fragment from the M-79 that struck Lt. (jg) Kerry, because he had fired the M-79 too close to our boat. Lt. Cmdr. Hibbard denied Lt. (jg) Kerry's request. Lt. (jg) Kerry detached our division a few days later to be reassigned to another division. I departed Vietnam approximately three weeks later, and Lt. Cmdr. Hibbard followed shortly thereafter. It was not until years later that I was surprised to learn that Lt. (jg) Kerry had been awarded a Purple Heart for this night.
I did not see Lt. (jg) Kerry in person again for almost 20 years. Sometime in 1988, while I was on Capitol Hill, I ran into him in the basement of the Russell Senate Office Building. I was at that time a Rear Admiral and in uniform. He was about 20 paces away, waiting to catch the underground subway. In a fairly loud voice I called out to him, "Hey, John." He turned, looked at me, came over and said, "Batman!" We exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, agreed to have lunch sometime in the future, and parted ways. We have not been together since that day.
In March of this year, I was contacted by one of my former swift boat colleagues concerning Douglas Brinkley?s book about Senator Kerry, "Tour of Duty." I told him that I had not read it. He faxed me a copy of the pages relating to the action on the night of December 2-3, 1968. I was astonished by Senator Kerry?s rendition of the facts of that night. Notably, Lt. (jg) Kerry had himself in charge of the operation, and I was not mentioned at all. He also claimed that he was wounded by hostile fire.
None of this is accurate. I know, because I was not only in the boat, but I was in command of the mission. He was never more than several feet away from me at anytime during the operation that night. It is inconceivable that any commanding officer would put an officer in training, who had been in country only a couple of weeks, in charge of such an ambush operation. Had there been enemy action that night, there would have been an after action report filed, which I would have been responsible for filing.
I have avoided talking to media about this issue for months. But, because of the recent media attention, I felt I had to step up to recount my personal experiences concerning this incident.
Purple Heart News
William Schachte speaks.
EDITOR'S NOTE:A new voice has been added to the debate over the circumstances surrounding Sen. John Kerry's first Purple Heart. William Schachte, who was a lieutenant in the Navy during Kerry's Vietnam tour — and who later rose to the rank of Rear Admiral — has released a statement describing the events of December 2-3, 1968, when Kerry received a minor shrapnel wound for which he was awarded the Purple Heart. What follows is Schachte's statement, in full. — Byron York
Statement of RADM William L. Schachte, Jr. USN (Ret.)
August 27, 2004
As was true of all "Swiftees," I volunteered to serve in Vietnam and was assigned to Coastal Division 14 for a normal tour of duty.
I was a Lieutenant serving as Operations Officer and second in command at Coastal Division 14 when Lieutenant (junior grade) John Kerry reported to us in mid-November, 1968. Lt. (jg) Kerry was an Officer-in-Charge (O-in-C) under training in preparing to be assigned as one of our Swift Boat O-in-C's.
At some point following President Johnson's announcement of the suspension of bombing in North Vietnam in March 1968, we were directed to become more aggressive in seeking to find and destroy or disrupt the enemy in our operating area. As part of this effort, I conceived a new operation that became known as "Skimmer OPS." The concept was simple. A 15-foot Boston Whaler was sent into an area where, based on coordinated intelligence, North Vietnamese cadre and Viet Cong were expected to be meeting or where, for example, concentrations of enemy forces might be involved in the movement of arms or munitions. We were to draw fire and quickly get out of the area. This would allow more concentrated firepower to be brought against the enemy forces we had been able to identify.
These operations were carried out only in "hot" areas and well away from any villages or populated areas. A Swift Boat would tow the skimmer to the general area of operations, and the ambush team would then board the skimmer and proceed to the designated area of operations. The Swift Boat would be riding shotgun and standing off, occasionally out of sight, to provide fire support and long-range communications. The Skimmer was powered by an outboard motor, and we carried an FM radio, handheld flares, an M-60 machine gun with a bipod mount, and an M-16 mounted with a starlight scope. If the night was heavily overcast, we brought an M-14 mounted with an infrared scope. We also carried an M-79 single-shot grenade launcher. In addition to our combat gear and flak jackets, we often carried .38-caliber pistols.
The operation consisted of allowing the skimmer to drift silently along shorelines or riverbanks to look or listen for sounds of enemy activity. If activity was identified, we would open fire with our automatic weapons, and if we received fire, we would depart the area as quickly as possible, leaving it to air support or mortar fire from a Swift Boat standing off at a distance to carry out an attack.
I commanded each of these Skimmer operations up to and including the one on the night in question involving Lt. (jg) Kerry. On each of these operations, I was in the skimmer manning the M-60 machine gun. I took with me one other officer and an enlisted man to operate the outboard motor. I wanted another officer because officers, when not on patrol, were briefed daily on the latest intelligence concerning our sector of operations and were therefore more familiar with the current intelligence. Additionally, at these daily briefings, officers debriefed on their patrol areas after returning to port.
On the night of December 2-3, we conducted one of these operations, and Lt. (jg) Kerry accompanied me. Our call sign for that operation was "Batman." I have no independent recollection of the identity of the enlisted man, who was operating the outboard motor. Sometime during the early morning hours, I thought I detected some movement inland. At the time we were so close to land that we could hear water lapping on the shoreline. I fired a hand-held flare, and upon it bursting and illuminating the surrounding area, I thought I saw movement. I immediately opened fire with my M-60. It jammed after a brief burst. Lt. (jg) Kerry also opened fire with his M-16 on automatic, firing in the direction of my tracers. His weapon also jammed. As I was trying to clear my weapon, I heard the distinctive sound of the M-79 being fired and turned to see Lt. (jg) Kerry holding the M-79 from which he had just launched a round. We received no return fire of any kind nor were there any muzzle flashes from the beach. I directed the outboard motor operator to clear the area.
Upon returning to base, I informed my commanding officer, Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, of the events, informing him of the details of the operation and that we had received no enemy fire. I did not file an "after action" report, as one was only required when there was hostile fire. Soon thereafter, Lt. (jg) Kerry requested that he be put in for a Purple Heart as a result of a small piece of shrapnel removed from his arm that he attributed to the just-completed mission. I advised Lt. Cmdr. Hibbard that I could not support the request because there was no hostile fire. The shrapnel must have been a fragment from the M-79 that struck Lt. (jg) Kerry, because he had fired the M-79 too close to our boat. Lt. Cmdr. Hibbard denied Lt. (jg) Kerry's request. Lt. (jg) Kerry detached our division a few days later to be reassigned to another division. I departed Vietnam approximately three weeks later, and Lt. Cmdr. Hibbard followed shortly thereafter. It was not until years later that I was surprised to learn that Lt. (jg) Kerry had been awarded a Purple Heart for this night.
I did not see Lt. (jg) Kerry in person again for almost 20 years. Sometime in 1988, while I was on Capitol Hill, I ran into him in the basement of the Russell Senate Office Building. I was at that time a Rear Admiral and in uniform. He was about 20 paces away, waiting to catch the underground subway. In a fairly loud voice I called out to him, "Hey, John." He turned, looked at me, came over and said, "Batman!" We exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, agreed to have lunch sometime in the future, and parted ways. We have not been together since that day.
In March of this year, I was contacted by one of my former swift boat colleagues concerning Douglas Brinkley?s book about Senator Kerry, "Tour of Duty." I told him that I had not read it. He faxed me a copy of the pages relating to the action on the night of December 2-3, 1968. I was astonished by Senator Kerry?s rendition of the facts of that night. Notably, Lt. (jg) Kerry had himself in charge of the operation, and I was not mentioned at all. He also claimed that he was wounded by hostile fire.
None of this is accurate. I know, because I was not only in the boat, but I was in command of the mission. He was never more than several feet away from me at anytime during the operation that night. It is inconceivable that any commanding officer would put an officer in training, who had been in country only a couple of weeks, in charge of such an ambush operation. Had there been enemy action that night, there would have been an after action report filed, which I would have been responsible for filing.
I have avoided talking to media about this issue for months. But, because of the recent media attention, I felt I had to step up to recount my personal experiences concerning this incident.
Friday, August 27, 2004
The character (or lack) behind the Kerry candidacy
by James Lileks
If presidents weren't limited to two terms, the Boston convention would have seen a familiar face at the podium, accepting his fourth nomination. I'm Bill Clinton, and I'm reporting for booty!
Leaving aside that pesky constitutional prohibition, Clinton could have gotten the nod if he'd wanted. He would have beat George W. Bush in 2000. He would probably beat Bush today, given our nostalgia for the happy, shiny '90s. But perhaps he enjoys retirement. Sure, it's good to be king, but there's something to be said for turning on "Monday Night Football" and letting someone else worry about loony long-beards with nukes.
So why does John Kerry want the job? It's the end of a private life, forever.
You can never walk down to the corner store for a beer again. You can't even rent "Wild Things 2" at the video store without wondering whether the Secret Service agent is noting your selection behind his dark glasses. The pay isn't bad, but your wife drops that every month in jet fuel bills. Half the country, which otherwise would have no opinion about you, now loathes your guts. Unless, of course, you have 80 percent approval ratings because you really united everyone after New York got nuked. But that's going down on your permanent record.
So why does Kerry want to be president?
The reason is almost tautological: John Kerry wants to be president because he is John Kerry, and John Kerry is supposed to be president. Hence his campaign's flummoxed and tone-deaf response to the swift boat vets. Ban the books, sue the stations, retreat, attack. Underneath it all you can sense the confusion. How dare they attack Kerry? He's supposed to be president. It's almost treason in advance.
It's not enough to believe you should be president. Clueless mortals need some hints. Is he motivated by a broad ideological agenda? There's no Kerry Doctrine, no Kerry Approach, no Tony-Blair-style "third way" gambit. There's just Lurch, lurching.
The war? He's said he would have gone to Iraq even if he knew then what he knows now — he just would have done it differently, whatever that means. He has endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war — but of course he would do it differently. It all seems to boil down to getting the French and the Germans on board so they can complain about the food and the quality of the sheets. He's pro-war when it counts, anti-war when it matters.
Inconsistencies are irrelevant, because he's consistently John Kerry. And he's supposed to be president.
Is he running to reseed the blasted heath we call America? But he's already had decades in the Senate without much to show for his effort. Good for him! Run on that record! It would be a refreshing campaign ad: "For years I have steadfastly avoided using my power to screw things up, preferring to aid the people of my state with small riders on large bills. Who am I to overturn the American health care system? I can, however, provide a nice swimming pool for poor Bostonians."
It's fair to wonder why Bush wanted the job — and please, spare us all the Daddy psychobabble. Bush wanted to be president for the usual reasons. It looks nice on the resume. It's a select club. You might get your face on money or a mountain.
He had two issues: tax cuts and cutting taxes, with some mushy conservatism thrown in to realign moderate voters. If Sept. 11 hadn't happened, he'd be running again for no particular reason except inertia. Who wants to move after just four years? You have to pack, you have to change your magazine subscriptions. It's easier to stay.
But Sept. 11 changed him and his presidency. He wants to win the war and change the world. That usually takes more than one term; ask FDR.
Some men run because they truly wish to shake up the old order. Alan Keyes ran because he believed passionately in his ideals, but unfortunately he struck many people as somewhat insane. Ronald Reagan ran because he believed in a new direction, and inhabited his ambitions with ease and grace.
John Kerry is running because his turn has finally come. See also: Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale. And Richard Nixon.
by James Lileks
If presidents weren't limited to two terms, the Boston convention would have seen a familiar face at the podium, accepting his fourth nomination. I'm Bill Clinton, and I'm reporting for booty!
Leaving aside that pesky constitutional prohibition, Clinton could have gotten the nod if he'd wanted. He would have beat George W. Bush in 2000. He would probably beat Bush today, given our nostalgia for the happy, shiny '90s. But perhaps he enjoys retirement. Sure, it's good to be king, but there's something to be said for turning on "Monday Night Football" and letting someone else worry about loony long-beards with nukes.
So why does John Kerry want the job? It's the end of a private life, forever.
You can never walk down to the corner store for a beer again. You can't even rent "Wild Things 2" at the video store without wondering whether the Secret Service agent is noting your selection behind his dark glasses. The pay isn't bad, but your wife drops that every month in jet fuel bills. Half the country, which otherwise would have no opinion about you, now loathes your guts. Unless, of course, you have 80 percent approval ratings because you really united everyone after New York got nuked. But that's going down on your permanent record.
So why does Kerry want to be president?
The reason is almost tautological: John Kerry wants to be president because he is John Kerry, and John Kerry is supposed to be president. Hence his campaign's flummoxed and tone-deaf response to the swift boat vets. Ban the books, sue the stations, retreat, attack. Underneath it all you can sense the confusion. How dare they attack Kerry? He's supposed to be president. It's almost treason in advance.
It's not enough to believe you should be president. Clueless mortals need some hints. Is he motivated by a broad ideological agenda? There's no Kerry Doctrine, no Kerry Approach, no Tony-Blair-style "third way" gambit. There's just Lurch, lurching.
The war? He's said he would have gone to Iraq even if he knew then what he knows now — he just would have done it differently, whatever that means. He has endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war — but of course he would do it differently. It all seems to boil down to getting the French and the Germans on board so they can complain about the food and the quality of the sheets. He's pro-war when it counts, anti-war when it matters.
Inconsistencies are irrelevant, because he's consistently John Kerry. And he's supposed to be president.
Is he running to reseed the blasted heath we call America? But he's already had decades in the Senate without much to show for his effort. Good for him! Run on that record! It would be a refreshing campaign ad: "For years I have steadfastly avoided using my power to screw things up, preferring to aid the people of my state with small riders on large bills. Who am I to overturn the American health care system? I can, however, provide a nice swimming pool for poor Bostonians."
It's fair to wonder why Bush wanted the job — and please, spare us all the Daddy psychobabble. Bush wanted to be president for the usual reasons. It looks nice on the resume. It's a select club. You might get your face on money or a mountain.
He had two issues: tax cuts and cutting taxes, with some mushy conservatism thrown in to realign moderate voters. If Sept. 11 hadn't happened, he'd be running again for no particular reason except inertia. Who wants to move after just four years? You have to pack, you have to change your magazine subscriptions. It's easier to stay.
But Sept. 11 changed him and his presidency. He wants to win the war and change the world. That usually takes more than one term; ask FDR.
Some men run because they truly wish to shake up the old order. Alan Keyes ran because he believed passionately in his ideals, but unfortunately he struck many people as somewhat insane. Ronald Reagan ran because he believed in a new direction, and inhabited his ambitions with ease and grace.
John Kerry is running because his turn has finally come. See also: Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale. And Richard Nixon.
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Chinese athlete: 'I owe it to the party'
By Li YongYan
BEIJING - "I owe my Olympic gold medal to my parents, my coach and, above all, to the wise leadership of the Republican Party and President Bush." Can anybody imagine such a remark from an American athlete speaking to Fox News Network? Of course not. Not even the irreverent, wise-cracking talk show host Jay Leno has such a fertile imagination.
But when it comes to Chinese athletes, this extravagant tribute to the political leadership of a country is anything but fictional in the 28th Olympic Games now under way in Athens. The minute a young Chinese girl bagged the gold medal in the women's table-tennis singles final on Sunday, a Beijing TV network reporter stuck a microphone under the nose of her parents. The father, without batting an eye, told the audience that his good daughter was a good Communist Party member and her success was a tribute to the party organization. We can only imagine the hyperbolic tributes, straining credulity, when Beijing hosts the 2008 Summer Olympics.
For all intents and purposes, he is right: the government and the Communist Party own all the Chinese athletes. They are trained, funded, and sent to the Olympics in Greece and to other sporting events by the China Sports Bureau, a cabinet-level ministry in the government. By international standards, the party trains them well: as of Wednesday, China was No 2 in overall medal earnings: 51 total, including 24 gold, 15 silver and 12 bronze (the US had 71 overall, including 25 gold, 27 silver and 19 bronze).
And the government treats its athletes well, too. Each gold medalist will receive 200,000 yuan (US$24,000) in reward money, or 23 years' worth of an average Beijinger's annual income, when he or she returns home, because such athletes have repaid the party's kindness by, as the grateful father put it, "bringing glory to the party and country".
Everybody knows that with a few exceptions, competition sports is an expensive activity that requires huge amounts of money but generates little if any revenue. Yet Beijing still retains full monopoly on this costly endeavor. Why in the world is the Chinese government, galloping on the capitalist road, willing to go to such expenses when it is now allowing private and even foreign ownership in most industries? The monopoly on such industries as telecommunications, aviation, postal service and defense is easier to understand: national security and high profit margin are the two chief motivations. But figure-skating and weightlifting never come close to making money or contributing to territorial integrity by any stretch of imagination.
The answer lies in history. Not unlike Adolf Hitler, who mixed a heavy dose of Nazi propaganda into the 1936 Berlin Olympics, China's association with sports has always been closely intertwined with politics. During the Mao Zedong years, Beijing boycotted every international sports event, refusing to share the same venue with fellow Chinese across the Taiwan Strait or its ideological enemies from the West. In its few staged sports events, participants were invited from Third World countries, all expenses paid by China's government. These "friends" had no skills; no problem. Chinese table-tennis players were ordered to strike the ball into the net so that each invitee would win a title or two. The government let it be known that the games were inversely rigged. "Friendship First, Competition Second" was the theme of such "Friendship Games". Problem was, many self-respecting athletes from Asian, African and Latin American countries felt manipulated and insulted by being given medals they had not earned. Belatedly, China realized that it couldn't buy or give away friendships.
With the opening of China since the late 1970s, sports and friendship took a back seat as the country was occupied with more pressing needs, such as abolishing the bankrupt commune system of agriculture and reforming the bleeding industries. Then something unexpected happened in the early 1980s. China's women's volleyball team, out of sheer determination and hard work, overcame seemingly unbeatable odds and clinched three consecutive world titles over three years - the World Cup, the World Championship and the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
It so inspired the politics-weary Chinese that some impressionable students took to the Beijing streets in celebration and hailed the victories as a "stimulus to revitalizing the Great China". The political significance was not lost on veteran propagandists who had been scratching their heads in search of the next bonanza. To their delight, they found that an athletic achievement served both to provide a convenient outlet for popular discontent with society and an emotional adhesive for nationalist unity.
After the death of Mao and his ideology, nothing has been able to focus the national attention and energy like the sound of China's national anthem in a Western stadium. The way the government media put it, when a red five-star flag is raised, the republic's past humiliation is washed away and replaced with a pride that every Chinese is thrilled to share. The "Sick Man of East Asia" is now strong, is fast, and stands high and proud. Thus national prestige suddenly finds a new support in the able-bodied, professional athletes - instead of the export of communist ideology.
So the government has increased the budget for competition sports. Untold bucks have poured into those teams that have a good chance of winning a gold medal, in less confrontational fields such as table tennis, diving and gymnastics. Exactly how much is spent on winning the gold medals is never clear. The latest public budget report from the Treasury Ministry is for the year 2000. A total of 2.6 billion yuan ($3.4 million) was allocated to culture, sports and broadcasting. No breakdown is given. With more than 3 billion yuan budgeted for a single Olympic stadium, Beijing certainly knows how to stretch, or cook, the budget. In any event, the government pays all the way, from training, equipment, multimillion-dollar contracts for foreign coaches, fashionable clothes for world tours. So the athletes and their families are telling the truth when they gush about how grateful they are to the party and the state.
If only the sports glory would rub off a bit on the nation as a whole. None of the country's many stadiums and sports centers are open to the public at no cost. That may be understandable from a commercial standpoint, but behind the glittering gold medals and silver trophies lies the less glamorous fact that China is still very sick. As many as 120 million people carry the active hepatitis B virus. Another 5 million suffer from tuberculosis (TB); as many as 150,000 people die from this terrible lung disease each year because they have no access to medication. China's government is doing so little that the world community cannot stand by and simply watch. Since 2002, the World Bank has lent $104 million to aid China's fight against TB. Another $48 million in grants is provided by an international health fund. Even the Japanese government gives $3 million each year to China's 12 provinces for this cause.
Few countries produce as many world-class sports champions as China does, but they have a much healthier population that is perfectly content being a spectator to the Olympics. On the other hand, the impressive records of China's athletes at the Athens arena will not help improve the life of the masses who have neither physical prowess nor fitness back at home. East Germany and the former Soviet Union were both big achievers in sports events. And where are these gold-plated countries now?
Li YongYan is an analyst of Chinese business, economy, politics and social trends.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd.)
By Li YongYan
BEIJING - "I owe my Olympic gold medal to my parents, my coach and, above all, to the wise leadership of the Republican Party and President Bush." Can anybody imagine such a remark from an American athlete speaking to Fox News Network? Of course not. Not even the irreverent, wise-cracking talk show host Jay Leno has such a fertile imagination.
But when it comes to Chinese athletes, this extravagant tribute to the political leadership of a country is anything but fictional in the 28th Olympic Games now under way in Athens. The minute a young Chinese girl bagged the gold medal in the women's table-tennis singles final on Sunday, a Beijing TV network reporter stuck a microphone under the nose of her parents. The father, without batting an eye, told the audience that his good daughter was a good Communist Party member and her success was a tribute to the party organization. We can only imagine the hyperbolic tributes, straining credulity, when Beijing hosts the 2008 Summer Olympics.
For all intents and purposes, he is right: the government and the Communist Party own all the Chinese athletes. They are trained, funded, and sent to the Olympics in Greece and to other sporting events by the China Sports Bureau, a cabinet-level ministry in the government. By international standards, the party trains them well: as of Wednesday, China was No 2 in overall medal earnings: 51 total, including 24 gold, 15 silver and 12 bronze (the US had 71 overall, including 25 gold, 27 silver and 19 bronze).
And the government treats its athletes well, too. Each gold medalist will receive 200,000 yuan (US$24,000) in reward money, or 23 years' worth of an average Beijinger's annual income, when he or she returns home, because such athletes have repaid the party's kindness by, as the grateful father put it, "bringing glory to the party and country".
Everybody knows that with a few exceptions, competition sports is an expensive activity that requires huge amounts of money but generates little if any revenue. Yet Beijing still retains full monopoly on this costly endeavor. Why in the world is the Chinese government, galloping on the capitalist road, willing to go to such expenses when it is now allowing private and even foreign ownership in most industries? The monopoly on such industries as telecommunications, aviation, postal service and defense is easier to understand: national security and high profit margin are the two chief motivations. But figure-skating and weightlifting never come close to making money or contributing to territorial integrity by any stretch of imagination.
The answer lies in history. Not unlike Adolf Hitler, who mixed a heavy dose of Nazi propaganda into the 1936 Berlin Olympics, China's association with sports has always been closely intertwined with politics. During the Mao Zedong years, Beijing boycotted every international sports event, refusing to share the same venue with fellow Chinese across the Taiwan Strait or its ideological enemies from the West. In its few staged sports events, participants were invited from Third World countries, all expenses paid by China's government. These "friends" had no skills; no problem. Chinese table-tennis players were ordered to strike the ball into the net so that each invitee would win a title or two. The government let it be known that the games were inversely rigged. "Friendship First, Competition Second" was the theme of such "Friendship Games". Problem was, many self-respecting athletes from Asian, African and Latin American countries felt manipulated and insulted by being given medals they had not earned. Belatedly, China realized that it couldn't buy or give away friendships.
With the opening of China since the late 1970s, sports and friendship took a back seat as the country was occupied with more pressing needs, such as abolishing the bankrupt commune system of agriculture and reforming the bleeding industries. Then something unexpected happened in the early 1980s. China's women's volleyball team, out of sheer determination and hard work, overcame seemingly unbeatable odds and clinched three consecutive world titles over three years - the World Cup, the World Championship and the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
It so inspired the politics-weary Chinese that some impressionable students took to the Beijing streets in celebration and hailed the victories as a "stimulus to revitalizing the Great China". The political significance was not lost on veteran propagandists who had been scratching their heads in search of the next bonanza. To their delight, they found that an athletic achievement served both to provide a convenient outlet for popular discontent with society and an emotional adhesive for nationalist unity.
After the death of Mao and his ideology, nothing has been able to focus the national attention and energy like the sound of China's national anthem in a Western stadium. The way the government media put it, when a red five-star flag is raised, the republic's past humiliation is washed away and replaced with a pride that every Chinese is thrilled to share. The "Sick Man of East Asia" is now strong, is fast, and stands high and proud. Thus national prestige suddenly finds a new support in the able-bodied, professional athletes - instead of the export of communist ideology.
So the government has increased the budget for competition sports. Untold bucks have poured into those teams that have a good chance of winning a gold medal, in less confrontational fields such as table tennis, diving and gymnastics. Exactly how much is spent on winning the gold medals is never clear. The latest public budget report from the Treasury Ministry is for the year 2000. A total of 2.6 billion yuan ($3.4 million) was allocated to culture, sports and broadcasting. No breakdown is given. With more than 3 billion yuan budgeted for a single Olympic stadium, Beijing certainly knows how to stretch, or cook, the budget. In any event, the government pays all the way, from training, equipment, multimillion-dollar contracts for foreign coaches, fashionable clothes for world tours. So the athletes and their families are telling the truth when they gush about how grateful they are to the party and the state.
If only the sports glory would rub off a bit on the nation as a whole. None of the country's many stadiums and sports centers are open to the public at no cost. That may be understandable from a commercial standpoint, but behind the glittering gold medals and silver trophies lies the less glamorous fact that China is still very sick. As many as 120 million people carry the active hepatitis B virus. Another 5 million suffer from tuberculosis (TB); as many as 150,000 people die from this terrible lung disease each year because they have no access to medication. China's government is doing so little that the world community cannot stand by and simply watch. Since 2002, the World Bank has lent $104 million to aid China's fight against TB. Another $48 million in grants is provided by an international health fund. Even the Japanese government gives $3 million each year to China's 12 provinces for this cause.
Few countries produce as many world-class sports champions as China does, but they have a much healthier population that is perfectly content being a spectator to the Olympics. On the other hand, the impressive records of China's athletes at the Athens arena will not help improve the life of the masses who have neither physical prowess nor fitness back at home. East Germany and the former Soviet Union were both big achievers in sports events. And where are these gold-plated countries now?
Li YongYan is an analyst of Chinese business, economy, politics and social trends.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd.)
A Rumsfeld Vindication
Abu Ghraib reports blow apart allegation of a "culture of permissiveness."
Since Operation Enduring Freedom began in October 2001, the U.S. has handled about 50,000 detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq and other venues of the war on terror. Among those, about 300 allegations of abuse have arisen. And as of this month 155 investigations have resulted in 66 substantiated cases of mistreatment. Only about a third of those cases were related to interrogation, while another third happened at the point of capture, "frequently under uncertain, dangerous and violent circumstances."
So notes Tuesday's report from the Independent Panel to Review DOD Detention Operations, empowered in May by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and chaired by former Pentagon chief James Schlesinger. The report offers invaluable perspective on the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib and is devastating to those who've sought to pin blame on an alleged culture of lawlessness going all the way to the top of the Bush Administration. John Kerry must be even more disoriented by the Swift boat story than he appears if he thinks now's the time to call for Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation.
"The behavior of our troops is so much better than it was in World War II," Mr. Schlesinger told us yesterday, by way of comparison. Of the Abu Ghraib photos, he added, "It is preposterous that what these pictures show is we were prepared to use torture to get information," as Senator Ted Kennedy and others have alleged. Rather, Mr. Schlesinger characterized the photographed Abu Ghraib abuses as "free-lance activities on the part of the night shift," echoing the testimony we've heard so far during the courts martial for the accused.
The Schlesinger report does place blame higher up the chain of command--including some with ex-theater commander Ricardo Sanchez--but for inadequate supervision of the detention facility and adapting too slowly to the Iraqi insurgency. Another report released yesterday by the U.S. Army and Major General George Fay likewise exonerates the military chain of command of policies that could be interpreted as sanctioning abuse, though it does say that an intelligence unit at Abu Ghraib was involved in abuses separate from those involving the now-famous Maryland National Guardsmen.
That distinction is critical, and the Schlesinger report emphasizes the latter "were not part of authorized interrogations nor were they even directed at intelligence targets." Looking at mistreatment both at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, the report says that "No approved procedures called for or allowed the kinds of abuse that in fact occurred. There is no evidence of a policy of abuse promulgated by senior officials or military authorities."
Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, for one, would seem to owe some apologies. In a May hearing he accused Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Peter Pace, and the rest of the Pentagon of sanctioning war crimes. Also owing apologies are all those journalists who applauded his demagogy as some kind of gotcha moment, and who threw around words like "torture" so glibly.
Worse than being wrong, these accusations have endangered the lives of soldiers by forcing a retreat in interrogation techniques so severe that it's hampering the U.S. ability to fight the counterinsurgency in Iraq. "We can't even use basic police interrogations tactics that they use in the States," a Marine officer is quoted as saying in a Journal news article yesterday by Greg Jaffe and David S. Cloud.
Administration critics have had to seize on the fact that the Schlesinger report shows attempts in 2003 to transfer some coercive interrogation techniques from Afghanistan and Guantanamo to Iraq. In the former, the U.S. policy was that the Geneva Convention protections for POWs did not apply, while in Iraq they did. But in fact the timeline shows the military chain of command operating as it should to clear up confusion over what was permissible.
The Schlesinger report also shines a well-deserved spotlight on the International Committee of the Red Cross. It notes that much of the ICRC criticism used to bludgeon the Pentagon stems--as we've noted in this column--from a radical interpretation of the laws of war under which "interrogation operations would not be allowed," and which "would deprive the U.S. of an indispensable source of intelligence in the war on terrorism."
In particular, the ICRC is rapped for insisting that the U.S. adhere to a controversial document known as Protocol 1, which the U.S. long ago explicitly rejected and which would grant terrorists and other non-uniformed combatants all the privileges of normal prisoners of war. The ICRC, the report says, promulgates this standard dishonestly "under the guise of customary international law."
The report suggests that the ICRC can still play a valuable role as "an early warning indicator of possible abuse," but that "the ICRC, no less than the Defense Department, needs to adapt itself to the new realities of conflict, which are far different from the Western European environment from which the ICRC's interpretation of the Geneva Conventions was drawn." We wonder if the journalists who've lived off Red Cross leaks will report this rebuke.
The Schlesinger and Fay reports obviously haven't satisfied some critics, who are furiously spinning them for political advantage even though their accusations about alleged command failure have shifted drastically from "condoning torture" to poor supervision and planning. Some others are dismissing them altogether as a whitewash.
But Mr. Schlesinger and his fellow panelists, having already had long and distinguished careers, have no motivation to risk their own reputations for Mr. Rumsfeld's. They have produced what's to date the definitive assessment of what went wrong, and the bottom line could hardly be more clear: While the Abu Ghraib abuses deserve to be punished, like other wartime excesses, the allegations that they had anything to do with so-called "torture memos" and a Pentagon "culture of permissiveness" are nothing but a political smear.
Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Abu Ghraib reports blow apart allegation of a "culture of permissiveness."
Since Operation Enduring Freedom began in October 2001, the U.S. has handled about 50,000 detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq and other venues of the war on terror. Among those, about 300 allegations of abuse have arisen. And as of this month 155 investigations have resulted in 66 substantiated cases of mistreatment. Only about a third of those cases were related to interrogation, while another third happened at the point of capture, "frequently under uncertain, dangerous and violent circumstances."
So notes Tuesday's report from the Independent Panel to Review DOD Detention Operations, empowered in May by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and chaired by former Pentagon chief James Schlesinger. The report offers invaluable perspective on the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib and is devastating to those who've sought to pin blame on an alleged culture of lawlessness going all the way to the top of the Bush Administration. John Kerry must be even more disoriented by the Swift boat story than he appears if he thinks now's the time to call for Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation.
"The behavior of our troops is so much better than it was in World War II," Mr. Schlesinger told us yesterday, by way of comparison. Of the Abu Ghraib photos, he added, "It is preposterous that what these pictures show is we were prepared to use torture to get information," as Senator Ted Kennedy and others have alleged. Rather, Mr. Schlesinger characterized the photographed Abu Ghraib abuses as "free-lance activities on the part of the night shift," echoing the testimony we've heard so far during the courts martial for the accused.
The Schlesinger report does place blame higher up the chain of command--including some with ex-theater commander Ricardo Sanchez--but for inadequate supervision of the detention facility and adapting too slowly to the Iraqi insurgency. Another report released yesterday by the U.S. Army and Major General George Fay likewise exonerates the military chain of command of policies that could be interpreted as sanctioning abuse, though it does say that an intelligence unit at Abu Ghraib was involved in abuses separate from those involving the now-famous Maryland National Guardsmen.
That distinction is critical, and the Schlesinger report emphasizes the latter "were not part of authorized interrogations nor were they even directed at intelligence targets." Looking at mistreatment both at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, the report says that "No approved procedures called for or allowed the kinds of abuse that in fact occurred. There is no evidence of a policy of abuse promulgated by senior officials or military authorities."
Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, for one, would seem to owe some apologies. In a May hearing he accused Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Peter Pace, and the rest of the Pentagon of sanctioning war crimes. Also owing apologies are all those journalists who applauded his demagogy as some kind of gotcha moment, and who threw around words like "torture" so glibly.
Worse than being wrong, these accusations have endangered the lives of soldiers by forcing a retreat in interrogation techniques so severe that it's hampering the U.S. ability to fight the counterinsurgency in Iraq. "We can't even use basic police interrogations tactics that they use in the States," a Marine officer is quoted as saying in a Journal news article yesterday by Greg Jaffe and David S. Cloud.
Administration critics have had to seize on the fact that the Schlesinger report shows attempts in 2003 to transfer some coercive interrogation techniques from Afghanistan and Guantanamo to Iraq. In the former, the U.S. policy was that the Geneva Convention protections for POWs did not apply, while in Iraq they did. But in fact the timeline shows the military chain of command operating as it should to clear up confusion over what was permissible.
The Schlesinger report also shines a well-deserved spotlight on the International Committee of the Red Cross. It notes that much of the ICRC criticism used to bludgeon the Pentagon stems--as we've noted in this column--from a radical interpretation of the laws of war under which "interrogation operations would not be allowed," and which "would deprive the U.S. of an indispensable source of intelligence in the war on terrorism."
In particular, the ICRC is rapped for insisting that the U.S. adhere to a controversial document known as Protocol 1, which the U.S. long ago explicitly rejected and which would grant terrorists and other non-uniformed combatants all the privileges of normal prisoners of war. The ICRC, the report says, promulgates this standard dishonestly "under the guise of customary international law."
The report suggests that the ICRC can still play a valuable role as "an early warning indicator of possible abuse," but that "the ICRC, no less than the Defense Department, needs to adapt itself to the new realities of conflict, which are far different from the Western European environment from which the ICRC's interpretation of the Geneva Conventions was drawn." We wonder if the journalists who've lived off Red Cross leaks will report this rebuke.
The Schlesinger and Fay reports obviously haven't satisfied some critics, who are furiously spinning them for political advantage even though their accusations about alleged command failure have shifted drastically from "condoning torture" to poor supervision and planning. Some others are dismissing them altogether as a whitewash.
But Mr. Schlesinger and his fellow panelists, having already had long and distinguished careers, have no motivation to risk their own reputations for Mr. Rumsfeld's. They have produced what's to date the definitive assessment of what went wrong, and the bottom line could hardly be more clear: While the Abu Ghraib abuses deserve to be punished, like other wartime excesses, the allegations that they had anything to do with so-called "torture memos" and a Pentagon "culture of permissiveness" are nothing but a political smear.
Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
It's Kerry's antiwar acts they resent
by Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist
IT WAS John Kerry, not the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who picked this fight.
He was the one who made his long-ago stint in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign for president. He's the one whose running mate urges voters to take Kerry's measure by spending "three minutes with the men who served with him 30 years ago." He's the one whose campaign ads dwell on his combat heroics. He's the one who has repeatedly played the Vietnam card against critics and opponents. And he's the one who challenged anyone "who wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam to bring it on."
So the Swifties brought it on. Their scorching attack on his wartime record is so effective precisely because they, like Kerry, were there. They too went to Vietnam when so many other young men didn't. They too fought and bled for their country. If his wartime experience lends him a certain moral authority, it does no less for them.
That doesn't mean their version of the facts is closer to the truth than his. There are conflicting eyewitness recollections, and, as The Washington Post says, "both accounts contain significant flaws and factual errors." Kerry certainly wouldn't be the first soldier to have embellished his war stories; the Swift Boat vets wouldn't be the first whose passions have altered their memories.
Of course, if Kerry really wants to silence the debate about his medals, he can authorize the government to release all his military records.
But that won't silence the Swifties. Because their real beef with him is not about what he did in Vietnam. It's about what he did when he came home.
On April 22, 1971, Kerry went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to indict the American war effort in Vietnam for horrendous war crimes. These were "not isolated incidents," he testified, "but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."
He offered no evidence. Instead he trumpeted the charges of the "Winter Soldier Investigation," an antiwar gathering a few months earlier at which men claiming to be Vietnam veterans -- many were later exposed as frauds -- described the atrocities they had allegedly committed.
"They told stories," Kerry said, "that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam, in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."
That is what thousands of Vietnam veterans, not to mention countless other vets, have never forgiven or forgotten. Bob Dole, whose right arm was crippled in World War II, suggested on Sunday that Kerry apologize to the 2.5 million veterans he defamed. His words -- which drew immense media coverage at the time -- helped poison public attitudes about Vietnam veterans and the cause they had fought in. Even worse, they gave encouragement to the enemy.
"The Viet Cong didn't think they had to win the war on the battlefield," says Paul Galanti, who appears in the second -- and far more devastating -- Swift Boat Veterans ad, "because thanks to these protesters they were going to win it on the streets of San Francisco and Washington."
Galanti has good reason to remember Kerry's testimony. He first learned of it in the notorious "Hanoi Hilton," where he spent nearly seven years as a POW.
Kerry has never taken back his terrible slur against his fellow soldiers -- men he now calls his "band of brothers." The most he has been willing to say is that his words "were a little bit over the top" and that he could perhaps "have phrased things more artfully." He certainly doesn't regret the propaganda coup he handed the Viet Cong: "I'm proud that I stood up," Kerry told NBC in April. "I don't want anybody to think twice about it."
And therein lies the fundamental hypocrisy of the Kerry candidacy.
He came to prominence as a radical opponent of the war in Vietnam, yet now he runs for president on the strength of his service in that war. He portrayed the men who fought there as unspeakable savages, yet now he surrounds himself with Vietnam vets at every turn. He lent respectability to those who demanded that America cut and run, that it abandon a beleaguered ally, that it drop "the mystical war against communism." Yet now he insists that he would be a tough and vigilant commander-in-chief, one who would never disrespect allies, one in whose hands the security of the United States would be safe.
Even after 33 years, Kerry's 1971 testimony, and his refusal to either repudiate or corroborate it, remains unsettling -- and relevant. For the Swift Boat vets, this fight may be personal. But all of us have a stake in its outcome.
Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.
by Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist
IT WAS John Kerry, not the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who picked this fight.
He was the one who made his long-ago stint in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign for president. He's the one whose running mate urges voters to take Kerry's measure by spending "three minutes with the men who served with him 30 years ago." He's the one whose campaign ads dwell on his combat heroics. He's the one who has repeatedly played the Vietnam card against critics and opponents. And he's the one who challenged anyone "who wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam to bring it on."
So the Swifties brought it on. Their scorching attack on his wartime record is so effective precisely because they, like Kerry, were there. They too went to Vietnam when so many other young men didn't. They too fought and bled for their country. If his wartime experience lends him a certain moral authority, it does no less for them.
That doesn't mean their version of the facts is closer to the truth than his. There are conflicting eyewitness recollections, and, as The Washington Post says, "both accounts contain significant flaws and factual errors." Kerry certainly wouldn't be the first soldier to have embellished his war stories; the Swift Boat vets wouldn't be the first whose passions have altered their memories.
Of course, if Kerry really wants to silence the debate about his medals, he can authorize the government to release all his military records.
But that won't silence the Swifties. Because their real beef with him is not about what he did in Vietnam. It's about what he did when he came home.
On April 22, 1971, Kerry went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to indict the American war effort in Vietnam for horrendous war crimes. These were "not isolated incidents," he testified, "but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."
He offered no evidence. Instead he trumpeted the charges of the "Winter Soldier Investigation," an antiwar gathering a few months earlier at which men claiming to be Vietnam veterans -- many were later exposed as frauds -- described the atrocities they had allegedly committed.
"They told stories," Kerry said, "that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam, in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."
That is what thousands of Vietnam veterans, not to mention countless other vets, have never forgiven or forgotten. Bob Dole, whose right arm was crippled in World War II, suggested on Sunday that Kerry apologize to the 2.5 million veterans he defamed. His words -- which drew immense media coverage at the time -- helped poison public attitudes about Vietnam veterans and the cause they had fought in. Even worse, they gave encouragement to the enemy.
"The Viet Cong didn't think they had to win the war on the battlefield," says Paul Galanti, who appears in the second -- and far more devastating -- Swift Boat Veterans ad, "because thanks to these protesters they were going to win it on the streets of San Francisco and Washington."
Galanti has good reason to remember Kerry's testimony. He first learned of it in the notorious "Hanoi Hilton," where he spent nearly seven years as a POW.
Kerry has never taken back his terrible slur against his fellow soldiers -- men he now calls his "band of brothers." The most he has been willing to say is that his words "were a little bit over the top" and that he could perhaps "have phrased things more artfully." He certainly doesn't regret the propaganda coup he handed the Viet Cong: "I'm proud that I stood up," Kerry told NBC in April. "I don't want anybody to think twice about it."
And therein lies the fundamental hypocrisy of the Kerry candidacy.
He came to prominence as a radical opponent of the war in Vietnam, yet now he runs for president on the strength of his service in that war. He portrayed the men who fought there as unspeakable savages, yet now he surrounds himself with Vietnam vets at every turn. He lent respectability to those who demanded that America cut and run, that it abandon a beleaguered ally, that it drop "the mystical war against communism." Yet now he insists that he would be a tough and vigilant commander-in-chief, one who would never disrespect allies, one in whose hands the security of the United States would be safe.
Even after 33 years, Kerry's 1971 testimony, and his refusal to either repudiate or corroborate it, remains unsettling -- and relevant. For the Swift Boat vets, this fight may be personal. But all of us have a stake in its outcome.
Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.
Morning in Which America?
by Pat Buchanan
“With the perception growing that the economy has turned a corner and is headed due north again, Democrats seem to be losing that issue as well. But there is a worm in the apple of prosperity, and the New York Times has spotted it.
“Hourly Pay in U.S. Not Keeping Pace with Price Rises,” ran the headline over July 18’s lead story: “Drop in Spending Power May Gain Prominence as a Campaign Issue.” (The subhead to that might have read, “At Least We Hope So.”)
The story, however, frames the decisive issue of 2004. Will news of rising profits and new jobs eclipse the dark side of this recovery? For scores of millions of U.S. workers, things are getting worse.
“The amount of money workers receive in their paychecks is failing to keep up with inflation,” said the Times.
“On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that hourly earnings of production workers—non-management workers ranging from nurses to teachers to hamburger flippers to assembly line workers—fell 1.1 percent in June, after accounting for inflation. The June drop, the steepest since the depths of recession in 1991, came after a 0.8 percent fall in real hourly earnings in May.”
What appears to have returned is a phenomenon Americans first came to experience between 1972 and 1994. In those two decades, despite the seven fat years of the Reagan era where U.S. workers were making impressive strides, real wages fell 19 percent.
Now the cancer has recurred. “In June, production workers took home $525.84 a week, on average. After accounting for inflation, this is about $8 less than they were pocketing last January and is the lowest level of weekly pay since October 1991.”
But why, when productivity is up and corporations are flush, are workers not demanding and getting pay raises to compensate for inflation and to share in the prosperity?
The answer lies in the law of supply and demand. U.S. workers are in no position to bargain because, in both the U.S. and the global economy, there is a vast surplus of labor for hire—at wages lower than Americans are able or willing to work.
The numbers tell the story. From the peak of employment in 2001 to the trough in 2003, 2.4 million U.S. jobs disappeared. Since recovery began, over a million jobs have been created. But that still leaves over a million jobs lost, plus millions of workers added in three years through immigration and natural population growth.
“[W]ith the lowest number of people employed as a share of the population since 1994, there is still a plentiful supply of unused labor looking for jobs,” writes the Times. “When Castle Harlan advertised ... to fill 70 to 80 positions at a Morton’s restaurant it opened in early July in White Plains, 600 to 700 people showed up.”
These numbers frame the issue for Bush vs. Kerry. Is it morning in America again? Or are we breaking up into the “two Americas”? And the deeper crisis remains unaddressed by either party.
In a global economy, how do U.S. workers win steady pay hikes, when hundreds of millions of foreign workers are able and willing to take their jobs at far less pay and to work longer hours with fewer benefits?
Does either party have a plan for dealing with the four forces driving down American wages, permanently?
The first is deindustrialization, the closing of U.S. factories to transfer production abroad. Some 2.6 million U.S. manufacturing jobs have disappeared in three years. While most of these workers found new jobs in the service economy, they are earning less.
The second is outsourcing via the Internet of white-collar jobs to Asia. These are not just call-center jobs, but are in accounting, medicine, computer programming, engineering, architecture.
Third, U.S. corporations are now importing workers to take jobs of Americans at wages below what an American family needs to maintain its standard of living.
Finally, mass immigration, legal and illegal, from the Third World is a permanent depressant on the wages of our unskilled and semi-skilled. Why hire a Hispanic-American who needs $12 an hour to support his family when an unmarried Hispanic illegal will work for $8 an hour?
“Joe Six-Pack is under a lot of pressure,” says Ethan Harris, chief economist at Lehman Brothers, “He got a lousy raise; he’s paying more for gasoline and milk. He’s not doing that great. But proprietors’ income is up. Profits are up. Home values are up. Middle and upper-income people are looking pretty good.”
If neither party comes up soon with a solution to this crisis of one America steadily rising as the other America slowly sinks, this nation is headed for a time of trouble.
August 30, 2004 issue
Copyright © 2004 The American Conservative
by Pat Buchanan
“With the perception growing that the economy has turned a corner and is headed due north again, Democrats seem to be losing that issue as well. But there is a worm in the apple of prosperity, and the New York Times has spotted it.
“Hourly Pay in U.S. Not Keeping Pace with Price Rises,” ran the headline over July 18’s lead story: “Drop in Spending Power May Gain Prominence as a Campaign Issue.” (The subhead to that might have read, “At Least We Hope So.”)
The story, however, frames the decisive issue of 2004. Will news of rising profits and new jobs eclipse the dark side of this recovery? For scores of millions of U.S. workers, things are getting worse.
“The amount of money workers receive in their paychecks is failing to keep up with inflation,” said the Times.
“On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that hourly earnings of production workers—non-management workers ranging from nurses to teachers to hamburger flippers to assembly line workers—fell 1.1 percent in June, after accounting for inflation. The June drop, the steepest since the depths of recession in 1991, came after a 0.8 percent fall in real hourly earnings in May.”
What appears to have returned is a phenomenon Americans first came to experience between 1972 and 1994. In those two decades, despite the seven fat years of the Reagan era where U.S. workers were making impressive strides, real wages fell 19 percent.
Now the cancer has recurred. “In June, production workers took home $525.84 a week, on average. After accounting for inflation, this is about $8 less than they were pocketing last January and is the lowest level of weekly pay since October 1991.”
But why, when productivity is up and corporations are flush, are workers not demanding and getting pay raises to compensate for inflation and to share in the prosperity?
The answer lies in the law of supply and demand. U.S. workers are in no position to bargain because, in both the U.S. and the global economy, there is a vast surplus of labor for hire—at wages lower than Americans are able or willing to work.
The numbers tell the story. From the peak of employment in 2001 to the trough in 2003, 2.4 million U.S. jobs disappeared. Since recovery began, over a million jobs have been created. But that still leaves over a million jobs lost, plus millions of workers added in three years through immigration and natural population growth.
“[W]ith the lowest number of people employed as a share of the population since 1994, there is still a plentiful supply of unused labor looking for jobs,” writes the Times. “When Castle Harlan advertised ... to fill 70 to 80 positions at a Morton’s restaurant it opened in early July in White Plains, 600 to 700 people showed up.”
These numbers frame the issue for Bush vs. Kerry. Is it morning in America again? Or are we breaking up into the “two Americas”? And the deeper crisis remains unaddressed by either party.
In a global economy, how do U.S. workers win steady pay hikes, when hundreds of millions of foreign workers are able and willing to take their jobs at far less pay and to work longer hours with fewer benefits?
Does either party have a plan for dealing with the four forces driving down American wages, permanently?
The first is deindustrialization, the closing of U.S. factories to transfer production abroad. Some 2.6 million U.S. manufacturing jobs have disappeared in three years. While most of these workers found new jobs in the service economy, they are earning less.
The second is outsourcing via the Internet of white-collar jobs to Asia. These are not just call-center jobs, but are in accounting, medicine, computer programming, engineering, architecture.
Third, U.S. corporations are now importing workers to take jobs of Americans at wages below what an American family needs to maintain its standard of living.
Finally, mass immigration, legal and illegal, from the Third World is a permanent depressant on the wages of our unskilled and semi-skilled. Why hire a Hispanic-American who needs $12 an hour to support his family when an unmarried Hispanic illegal will work for $8 an hour?
“Joe Six-Pack is under a lot of pressure,” says Ethan Harris, chief economist at Lehman Brothers, “He got a lousy raise; he’s paying more for gasoline and milk. He’s not doing that great. But proprietors’ income is up. Profits are up. Home values are up. Middle and upper-income people are looking pretty good.”
If neither party comes up soon with a solution to this crisis of one America steadily rising as the other America slowly sinks, this nation is headed for a time of trouble.
August 30, 2004 issue
Copyright © 2004 The American Conservative
Kerry's testimony speaks volumes
By Cory Genelin
08/26/2004
I was recently able to hear almost all of John Kerry’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I must say I was impressed. His monologue was well structured and eloquently delivered. Being 28, I was not around during Vietnam. Like 99.99% of Americans I was not an eyewitness to Kerry’s service. Having no first hand knowledge therefore, I must rely on the testimony of those who, like Kerry, were there. If I had absolutely no knowledge of the subject matter, I would likely accept such well supported and obviously heartfelt testimony without question. However, I do have first hand knowledge as to a small fraction of the subject matter of his testimony. For most of that fraction, he's just plain wrong; eloquent, but wrong.
I separated from active duty about a year ago after spending just over Five years in the United States Air Force. I served as an Air Battle Manager aboard the E-8C Joint STARS. In addition to intelligence collection, surveillance and reconnaissance, my duties focused on the coordination and application of firepower. I worked with artillery, rotary-wing aircraft (helicopters), fighter aircraft, bombers, cargo aircraft, Special Forces ground units and unmanned aerial vehicles, from every branch of the military. In preparation for this duty I received extensive training on the Geneva Conventions, the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC), Rules of Engagement (ROE) and Fire Control Measures (FCMs). In addition to implementing these concepts myself, I served as an instructor for over two years, teaching them to others. I also served briefly in combat during Operation Iraqi Freedom. I offer this information not as self promotion, but only to suggest that I have both theoretical and practical knowledge of the following subject matter.
Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry testified that “we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions, in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, the killing of prisoners, accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is party and parcel of everything.” During his April 18, 1971 appearance on Meet the Press, Kerry said much the same and added, “I used .50 calibre machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people.”
Free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, and .50 caliber weapons all sound most unpleasant. Indeed to the average civilian they probably sound so horrible that they would be accepted as war crimes without question. But in reality all of these are within the Geneva Conventions and the LOAC.
A free fire zone (FFZ), which is now called a free fire area (FFA) is an FCM. (Why the name change? Well, it’s often said in the military, “Every time an acronym changes, a Colonel gets his wings.”)
Operational Terms and Graphics -- Army Field Manual 101-5-1/Marine Corps Reference Publication 5-2A 30 September 1997 -- defines a free fire area as follows:
free fire area (FFA) -- A specific designated area into which any weapon system may fire without additional coordination with the establishing headquarters. Normally, it is established on identifiable terrain by division or higher headquarters. (See also fire support coordination and rules of engagement (ROE).) See FM 6-20 series.
Here’s some background and a hypothetical to put it in layman’s terms. The Army and Marines divide the battlefield into lanes, and every unit from Corps down to Platoon has its own lane; its own slice of the battlefield. As a general rule, no one from Division A may fire into Division B’s lane without first coordinating with Division B. This is good because troops in Division A don’t usually know exactly where Division B is or what Division B is up to. Firing into Division B’s lane may cause fratricide or disrupt Division B’s plans in some way. This is also bad because if troops in Division A see the enemy in Division B’s lane, they can’t help Division B without time consuming coordination. So…
Let’s say Division A and Division B are fighting side by side. Let’s say there is a portion of Division B’s lane, in which Division B has no troops and which Division B can’t see (perhaps it’s behind a mountain). Let’s further imagine that Division A has good visibility of this area and has plenty of artillery or air support which could cover an enemy attack there. The commander of Division B will designate this area a “free fire area” meaning that Division A can fire into that portion of Division B’s lane without coordination. It does not mean that combatants are allowed to mow down anything and every thing that moves. The ROE, the LOAC, and the Geneva Conventions still apply in the FFA. It is an FCM not a war crime.
Army Field Manual 101-5-1/Marine Corps Reference Publication 5-2A also defines interdiction fire:
interdiction fire (NATO) -- Fire placed on an area or point to prevent the enemy from using the area or point. (See also interdict and interdiction.) See FMs 6-series and 7-90.
Again this sounds horrible, and you wouldn’t want interdiction fire at a family reunion, but it is not a war crime. When conducting interdiction fire, the ROE, the LOAC and the Geneva Conventions still apply.
“Search and Destroy Mission” is no longer defined in Army Field Manual 101-5-1/Marine Corps Reference Publication 5-2A, it is my (limited) understanding that the term was replaced by two separate orders, Movement to Contact followed by Engagement. In layman’s terms a seek and destroy mission meant, “Find the enemy and kill them.” Not a polite thing to do at Starbucks, but not a war crime.
Refutation of the .50 caliber reference is a little more involved. Since WWII, there has been a rumor floating around the military that use of .50 caliber weapons against soldiers (as opposed to use against tanks, equipment, aircraft, buildings, etc.) is banned by the Geneva Conventions, or the LOAC or some other international law. I heard this rumor as a cadet and I was skeptical since the Browning .50 caliber machine gun can be seen on tanks, helicopters, patrol boats, bunkers and just about everywhere it’s needed. During a LOAC briefing conducted by one of the instructors from the Air Force Judge Advocate School at Maxwell Air Force Base I learned that this was, in fact, only a rumor. Indeed a casual reading of the LOAC and the Geneva Conventions will uncover absolutely no restriction on the use of .50 caliber weapons. And that’s a good thing since the venerable .50 Caliber Browning machine gun has been mowing down the enemy at long range for going on 80 years now.
The above may sound like inconsequential minutia but I find it relevant for two reasons. First of all, I am disappointed but certainly not shocked to find that a junior officer was confused concerning the above. However, to think that a commander would lead men in to battle under such ignorance is appalling. That he professed such ignorance as enlightenment before the Senate and on national television is exponentially more appalling.
Secondly, most of us were not in Vietnam. But for a few, Americans did not see the courageous or cowardly actions of Kerry. Therefore, regarding most of the accolades and accusations delivered, it becomes a question of who are we to believe. Concerning some matters we have documented facts, such as Kerry’s recorded testimony and actual military documents. The fact that Kerry is wrong concerning that of which I have first hand knowledge is sufficient to, in my mind, divest him of the benefit of doubt, and shift the burden onto him to prove that which is unknown.
Cory Genelin, a law student, served in Operation Iraqi Freedom as a member of the United States Air Force.
http://www.commentarypage.com/genelin/genelin082604.php
© 2004 CommentaryPage.com
By Cory Genelin
08/26/2004
I was recently able to hear almost all of John Kerry’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I must say I was impressed. His monologue was well structured and eloquently delivered. Being 28, I was not around during Vietnam. Like 99.99% of Americans I was not an eyewitness to Kerry’s service. Having no first hand knowledge therefore, I must rely on the testimony of those who, like Kerry, were there. If I had absolutely no knowledge of the subject matter, I would likely accept such well supported and obviously heartfelt testimony without question. However, I do have first hand knowledge as to a small fraction of the subject matter of his testimony. For most of that fraction, he's just plain wrong; eloquent, but wrong.
I separated from active duty about a year ago after spending just over Five years in the United States Air Force. I served as an Air Battle Manager aboard the E-8C Joint STARS. In addition to intelligence collection, surveillance and reconnaissance, my duties focused on the coordination and application of firepower. I worked with artillery, rotary-wing aircraft (helicopters), fighter aircraft, bombers, cargo aircraft, Special Forces ground units and unmanned aerial vehicles, from every branch of the military. In preparation for this duty I received extensive training on the Geneva Conventions, the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC), Rules of Engagement (ROE) and Fire Control Measures (FCMs). In addition to implementing these concepts myself, I served as an instructor for over two years, teaching them to others. I also served briefly in combat during Operation Iraqi Freedom. I offer this information not as self promotion, but only to suggest that I have both theoretical and practical knowledge of the following subject matter.
Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry testified that “we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions, in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, the killing of prisoners, accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is party and parcel of everything.” During his April 18, 1971 appearance on Meet the Press, Kerry said much the same and added, “I used .50 calibre machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people.”
Free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, and .50 caliber weapons all sound most unpleasant. Indeed to the average civilian they probably sound so horrible that they would be accepted as war crimes without question. But in reality all of these are within the Geneva Conventions and the LOAC.
A free fire zone (FFZ), which is now called a free fire area (FFA) is an FCM. (Why the name change? Well, it’s often said in the military, “Every time an acronym changes, a Colonel gets his wings.”)
Operational Terms and Graphics -- Army Field Manual 101-5-1/Marine Corps Reference Publication 5-2A 30 September 1997 -- defines a free fire area as follows:
free fire area (FFA) -- A specific designated area into which any weapon system may fire without additional coordination with the establishing headquarters. Normally, it is established on identifiable terrain by division or higher headquarters. (See also fire support coordination and rules of engagement (ROE).) See FM 6-20 series.
Here’s some background and a hypothetical to put it in layman’s terms. The Army and Marines divide the battlefield into lanes, and every unit from Corps down to Platoon has its own lane; its own slice of the battlefield. As a general rule, no one from Division A may fire into Division B’s lane without first coordinating with Division B. This is good because troops in Division A don’t usually know exactly where Division B is or what Division B is up to. Firing into Division B’s lane may cause fratricide or disrupt Division B’s plans in some way. This is also bad because if troops in Division A see the enemy in Division B’s lane, they can’t help Division B without time consuming coordination. So…
Let’s say Division A and Division B are fighting side by side. Let’s say there is a portion of Division B’s lane, in which Division B has no troops and which Division B can’t see (perhaps it’s behind a mountain). Let’s further imagine that Division A has good visibility of this area and has plenty of artillery or air support which could cover an enemy attack there. The commander of Division B will designate this area a “free fire area” meaning that Division A can fire into that portion of Division B’s lane without coordination. It does not mean that combatants are allowed to mow down anything and every thing that moves. The ROE, the LOAC, and the Geneva Conventions still apply in the FFA. It is an FCM not a war crime.
Army Field Manual 101-5-1/Marine Corps Reference Publication 5-2A also defines interdiction fire:
interdiction fire (NATO) -- Fire placed on an area or point to prevent the enemy from using the area or point. (See also interdict and interdiction.) See FMs 6-series and 7-90.
Again this sounds horrible, and you wouldn’t want interdiction fire at a family reunion, but it is not a war crime. When conducting interdiction fire, the ROE, the LOAC and the Geneva Conventions still apply.
“Search and Destroy Mission” is no longer defined in Army Field Manual 101-5-1/Marine Corps Reference Publication 5-2A, it is my (limited) understanding that the term was replaced by two separate orders, Movement to Contact followed by Engagement. In layman’s terms a seek and destroy mission meant, “Find the enemy and kill them.” Not a polite thing to do at Starbucks, but not a war crime.
Refutation of the .50 caliber reference is a little more involved. Since WWII, there has been a rumor floating around the military that use of .50 caliber weapons against soldiers (as opposed to use against tanks, equipment, aircraft, buildings, etc.) is banned by the Geneva Conventions, or the LOAC or some other international law. I heard this rumor as a cadet and I was skeptical since the Browning .50 caliber machine gun can be seen on tanks, helicopters, patrol boats, bunkers and just about everywhere it’s needed. During a LOAC briefing conducted by one of the instructors from the Air Force Judge Advocate School at Maxwell Air Force Base I learned that this was, in fact, only a rumor. Indeed a casual reading of the LOAC and the Geneva Conventions will uncover absolutely no restriction on the use of .50 caliber weapons. And that’s a good thing since the venerable .50 Caliber Browning machine gun has been mowing down the enemy at long range for going on 80 years now.
The above may sound like inconsequential minutia but I find it relevant for two reasons. First of all, I am disappointed but certainly not shocked to find that a junior officer was confused concerning the above. However, to think that a commander would lead men in to battle under such ignorance is appalling. That he professed such ignorance as enlightenment before the Senate and on national television is exponentially more appalling.
Secondly, most of us were not in Vietnam. But for a few, Americans did not see the courageous or cowardly actions of Kerry. Therefore, regarding most of the accolades and accusations delivered, it becomes a question of who are we to believe. Concerning some matters we have documented facts, such as Kerry’s recorded testimony and actual military documents. The fact that Kerry is wrong concerning that of which I have first hand knowledge is sufficient to, in my mind, divest him of the benefit of doubt, and shift the burden onto him to prove that which is unknown.
Cory Genelin, a law student, served in Operation Iraqi Freedom as a member of the United States Air Force.
http://www.commentarypage.com/genelin/genelin082604.php
© 2004 CommentaryPage.com
From the Viet Nam News Service. Nice to see Kerry still giving aid and comfort to the enemy after all these years.
Friday June 11, 2004
Invoking Viet Nam to cover up Iraq abuses
The Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal calls forth questions over the American War in Viet Nam: "How were captured US troops treated?" and "How did the Americans treat the Vietnamese?"
Diem Quynh
The Voice of America has attempted to deflect criticism of American soldiers’ treatment of Iraqi prisoners by claiming recently that captured US troops were treated worse in Viet Nam.
Besides begging the fundamental question "what were the Americans doing in Viet Nam in the first place?" the claim is also patently false.
In fact, like in any of the dozens of countries they invaded, it was the Americans who perpetrated well-documented atrocities in Viet Nam, both at the individual and mass levels.
My Lai is a byword for callous mass murder while the Bach Mai hospital and Kham Thien street bombings, though less well-known outside Viet Nam, were no less brutal for their manner of execution. As if to show they were not merely capable of ‘impersonal’ atrocities (by dropping bombs), the Americans helped run the notorious Con Dao prison with its ‘tiger cages’. In each of these 3m by 1.5m cages, they held five Vietnamese prisoners.
Conditions at the prison prompted a visiting US legislator, William R Anderson, to write to then-president Richard Nixon slamming the human rights violations and asking him to reconsider American involvement in the south of Viet Nam.
Candidate in this year’s American presidential elections, John Kerry, who fought in the war, went further in his criticism. In a statement to the US’ Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1971, he said the war crimes committed by US soldiers in Southeast Asia "were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."
But despite these abuses, the Vietnamese did not reciprocate in kind; instead, they treated captured US troops humanely.
A letter written to his family by the US navy’s Lt Stephen Anthony Rudloff shows a glimpse of the treatment received by American troops in captivity. He wrote, "Since my capture, I have been treated very well by the people of the DRVN [Democratic Republic of Viet Nam]. I am well fed, have had my injuries tended to by a doctor, and am in excellent condition."
Another navy man, Lt Albert Molinare, wrote home, "my treatment and the treatment of all the others I’ve talked to has been very fair. I feel we’re eating and living better than many Vietnamese outside the walls. I live with a group of other prisoners and we pass the time playing bridge and pingpong and doing some gardening. It’s nothing like home of course but the treatment has been a pleasant surprise."
Molinare was right that the detainees were living better than most Vietnamese who were subsisting on food rations and under extremely tough conditions.
It was also true that except for their incarceration, the American soldiers lived normal lives in prison though many of them had been caught red-handed committing crimes against humanity. They got fairly good food, exercised, played on the guitar and read books, received letters from home and celebrated Christmas with trees just like they would have at home.
They received periodic medical checks and treatment for injuries and illnesses.
In the three decades since the war, the Americans have used their hegemony over the world media – including films – and short public memory to gloss over their atrocities and to demonise Viet Nam.
The VOA report is merely another such attempt. — VNS
Friday June 11, 2004
Invoking Viet Nam to cover up Iraq abuses
The Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal calls forth questions over the American War in Viet Nam: "How were captured US troops treated?" and "How did the Americans treat the Vietnamese?"
Diem Quynh
The Voice of America has attempted to deflect criticism of American soldiers’ treatment of Iraqi prisoners by claiming recently that captured US troops were treated worse in Viet Nam.
Besides begging the fundamental question "what were the Americans doing in Viet Nam in the first place?" the claim is also patently false.
In fact, like in any of the dozens of countries they invaded, it was the Americans who perpetrated well-documented atrocities in Viet Nam, both at the individual and mass levels.
My Lai is a byword for callous mass murder while the Bach Mai hospital and Kham Thien street bombings, though less well-known outside Viet Nam, were no less brutal for their manner of execution. As if to show they were not merely capable of ‘impersonal’ atrocities (by dropping bombs), the Americans helped run the notorious Con Dao prison with its ‘tiger cages’. In each of these 3m by 1.5m cages, they held five Vietnamese prisoners.
Conditions at the prison prompted a visiting US legislator, William R Anderson, to write to then-president Richard Nixon slamming the human rights violations and asking him to reconsider American involvement in the south of Viet Nam.
Candidate in this year’s American presidential elections, John Kerry, who fought in the war, went further in his criticism. In a statement to the US’ Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1971, he said the war crimes committed by US soldiers in Southeast Asia "were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."
But despite these abuses, the Vietnamese did not reciprocate in kind; instead, they treated captured US troops humanely.
A letter written to his family by the US navy’s Lt Stephen Anthony Rudloff shows a glimpse of the treatment received by American troops in captivity. He wrote, "Since my capture, I have been treated very well by the people of the DRVN [Democratic Republic of Viet Nam]. I am well fed, have had my injuries tended to by a doctor, and am in excellent condition."
Another navy man, Lt Albert Molinare, wrote home, "my treatment and the treatment of all the others I’ve talked to has been very fair. I feel we’re eating and living better than many Vietnamese outside the walls. I live with a group of other prisoners and we pass the time playing bridge and pingpong and doing some gardening. It’s nothing like home of course but the treatment has been a pleasant surprise."
Molinare was right that the detainees were living better than most Vietnamese who were subsisting on food rations and under extremely tough conditions.
It was also true that except for their incarceration, the American soldiers lived normal lives in prison though many of them had been caught red-handed committing crimes against humanity. They got fairly good food, exercised, played on the guitar and read books, received letters from home and celebrated Christmas with trees just like they would have at home.
They received periodic medical checks and treatment for injuries and illnesses.
In the three decades since the war, the Americans have used their hegemony over the world media – including films – and short public memory to gloss over their atrocities and to demonise Viet Nam.
The VOA report is merely another such attempt. — VNS
from BBC.com:
Bob Dylan pens personal memoirs
Legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan is to shed light on his life and 40-year career in his memoirs, to be published later this year. Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One will be the first of a planned three-book series by the 63-year-old musician. Publisher David Rosenthal described the "beautifully written" book as "extraordinary and revealing". The memoirs will be followed by an updated edition of a book featuring lyrics to almost every Dylan song. The first part of his autobiography has 304 pages and will be published on 12 October. It will not be the first time the famous musician has been in print - his volume of poems, titled Tarantula, was published in 1971.
Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman in Minnesota in 1941. He moved to New York and got involved in the folk music scene in the early 1960s and soon became known for his protest songs, including The Times They Are A-Changin' and Blowin' In The Wind. He went on to sell millions of records and score hits such as Like A Rolling Stone. He also wrote songs for other artists including Joan Baez, The Byrds and Peter, Paul and Mary. Dylan was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and still continues to tour regularly. The singer-songwriter remains as much an influence among current rock musicians as he was to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in the 60s. Earlier this year, he was awarded an honorary degree by Scotland's oldest university, St Andrews. Dylan was made a Doctor of Music at the graduation ceremony in June.
www.rockrap.com
Bob Dylan pens personal memoirs
Legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan is to shed light on his life and 40-year career in his memoirs, to be published later this year. Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One will be the first of a planned three-book series by the 63-year-old musician. Publisher David Rosenthal described the "beautifully written" book as "extraordinary and revealing". The memoirs will be followed by an updated edition of a book featuring lyrics to almost every Dylan song. The first part of his autobiography has 304 pages and will be published on 12 October. It will not be the first time the famous musician has been in print - his volume of poems, titled Tarantula, was published in 1971.
Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman in Minnesota in 1941. He moved to New York and got involved in the folk music scene in the early 1960s and soon became known for his protest songs, including The Times They Are A-Changin' and Blowin' In The Wind. He went on to sell millions of records and score hits such as Like A Rolling Stone. He also wrote songs for other artists including Joan Baez, The Byrds and Peter, Paul and Mary. Dylan was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and still continues to tour regularly. The singer-songwriter remains as much an influence among current rock musicians as he was to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in the 60s. Earlier this year, he was awarded an honorary degree by Scotland's oldest university, St Andrews. Dylan was made a Doctor of Music at the graduation ceremony in June.
www.rockrap.com
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
The appeasement disease
by Walter E. Williams
President Bush's foreign-policy critics at home and abroad share characteristics and visions that have previously led to worldwide chaos and untold loss of lives. These people believe that negotiation, appeasement and caving in to the demands of vicious totalitarian leaders can produce good-faith behavior. Their vision not only has a long record of failure but devastating consequences.
During the late 1930s, France and Britain hoped that allowing Adolf Hitler to annex Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia would satisfy his territorial ambitions. This was after a long string of German violations of the terms of the Versailles Treaty ending World War I. Appeasement didn't work. It was seen as weakness, and it simply emboldened Hitler.
At the Yalta Conference, near the end of World War II, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt thought they could appease Josef Stalin by giving away Eastern Europe and making other concessions that ultimately marked the beginning of the nearly half-century Cold War and Soviet/China expansionism. War-weary Westerners hoped that brutal tyrants would act in good faith. Failing to stand up to Stalin resulted in unspeakable atrocities, enslavement and human suffering.
Quite interestingly, Western leftist appeasers exempted communist leaders from the harsh criticism directed toward Hitler, even though communist crimes made Hitler's slaughter of 21 million appear almost amateurish. According to Professor R.J. Rummel's research in “Death by Government,” from 1917 until its collapse, the Soviet Union murdered or caused the death of 61 million people, mostly its own citizens. Since 1949, communist China's Mao Zedong regime was responsible for the death of 35 million of its own citizens.
History never exactly repeats itself, but the vision of earlier appeasers was part of the West's vision of how to deal with Saddam Hussein. After devastating defeat in the first Gulf War, Iraq agreed to coalition peace terms. After documents were signed, every effort was made by the Iraqis to frustrate implementation of the terms, particularly U.N. weapons inspections.
Western appeasers, most notably Europeans, were quite willing to respond to Saddam Hussein's violation of peace terms in a fashion similar to their earlier counterparts' response to Hitler's violation of the peace terms of the Versailles Treaty. Had Britain or France launched a military attack on Germany between 1934 and 1935, when Hitler started his arms buildup in violation of the Versailles Treaty and before he fully developed his military capability, he would have been defeated and at least 50 million lives would have been spared.
What deters terrorists? We try to thwart them or kill them. What deters nations that might harbor or assist terrorist? We show them the kind of destruction we're prepared to rain down upon them. Whether we ultimately find nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in Iraq is one thing, but one clear message has been sent as a result of our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The world now knows, where it didn't know in the past, that we have the will to destroy a nation that supports terrorism. One measure of the benefit of that message is that Libya's Mohammar Qaddafi has decided to forgo his weapons program and Iran and North Korea might reconsider their agenda.
Some appeasers would like us to cut and run in the wake of terrorist threats just as Spain and the Philippines did. Others, especially our increasingly anti-Semitic European allies, would like us to be more “even-handed” in the Palestinian-Israel conflict. Even-handed might be translated as abandoning Israel. Such a move wouldn't bring any better results than when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sold the Czechoslovakians down the river to Hitler.
There's no evidence that today's fanatical terrorists and their nation-state sympathizers have any taste for compromise and negotiation. They want Western submission, and they just might get that with presidential candidate John Kerry's promise that if elected he will wage "more sensitive war on terror."
©2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
by Walter E. Williams
President Bush's foreign-policy critics at home and abroad share characteristics and visions that have previously led to worldwide chaos and untold loss of lives. These people believe that negotiation, appeasement and caving in to the demands of vicious totalitarian leaders can produce good-faith behavior. Their vision not only has a long record of failure but devastating consequences.
During the late 1930s, France and Britain hoped that allowing Adolf Hitler to annex Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia would satisfy his territorial ambitions. This was after a long string of German violations of the terms of the Versailles Treaty ending World War I. Appeasement didn't work. It was seen as weakness, and it simply emboldened Hitler.
At the Yalta Conference, near the end of World War II, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt thought they could appease Josef Stalin by giving away Eastern Europe and making other concessions that ultimately marked the beginning of the nearly half-century Cold War and Soviet/China expansionism. War-weary Westerners hoped that brutal tyrants would act in good faith. Failing to stand up to Stalin resulted in unspeakable atrocities, enslavement and human suffering.
Quite interestingly, Western leftist appeasers exempted communist leaders from the harsh criticism directed toward Hitler, even though communist crimes made Hitler's slaughter of 21 million appear almost amateurish. According to Professor R.J. Rummel's research in “Death by Government,” from 1917 until its collapse, the Soviet Union murdered or caused the death of 61 million people, mostly its own citizens. Since 1949, communist China's Mao Zedong regime was responsible for the death of 35 million of its own citizens.
History never exactly repeats itself, but the vision of earlier appeasers was part of the West's vision of how to deal with Saddam Hussein. After devastating defeat in the first Gulf War, Iraq agreed to coalition peace terms. After documents were signed, every effort was made by the Iraqis to frustrate implementation of the terms, particularly U.N. weapons inspections.
Western appeasers, most notably Europeans, were quite willing to respond to Saddam Hussein's violation of peace terms in a fashion similar to their earlier counterparts' response to Hitler's violation of the peace terms of the Versailles Treaty. Had Britain or France launched a military attack on Germany between 1934 and 1935, when Hitler started his arms buildup in violation of the Versailles Treaty and before he fully developed his military capability, he would have been defeated and at least 50 million lives would have been spared.
What deters terrorists? We try to thwart them or kill them. What deters nations that might harbor or assist terrorist? We show them the kind of destruction we're prepared to rain down upon them. Whether we ultimately find nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in Iraq is one thing, but one clear message has been sent as a result of our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The world now knows, where it didn't know in the past, that we have the will to destroy a nation that supports terrorism. One measure of the benefit of that message is that Libya's Mohammar Qaddafi has decided to forgo his weapons program and Iran and North Korea might reconsider their agenda.
Some appeasers would like us to cut and run in the wake of terrorist threats just as Spain and the Philippines did. Others, especially our increasingly anti-Semitic European allies, would like us to be more “even-handed” in the Palestinian-Israel conflict. Even-handed might be translated as abandoning Israel. Such a move wouldn't bring any better results than when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sold the Czechoslovakians down the river to Hitler.
There's no evidence that today's fanatical terrorists and their nation-state sympathizers have any taste for compromise and negotiation. They want Western submission, and they just might get that with presidential candidate John Kerry's promise that if elected he will wage "more sensitive war on terror."
©2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
from washingtonpost.com
So Much for Free Speech
by Robert J. Samuelson
The presidential campaign has confirmed that, under the guise of "campaign finance reform," Congress and the Supreme Court have repealed large parts of the First Amendment. They have simply discarded what were once considered constitutional rights of free speech and political association. It is not that these rights have vanished. But they are no longer constitutional guarantees. They're governed by limits and qualifications imposed by Congress, the courts, state legislatures, regulatory agencies -- and lawyers' interpretations of all of the above.
We have entered an era of constitutional censorship. Hardly anyone wants to admit this -- the legalized demolition of the First Amendment would seem shocking -- and so hardly anyone does. The evidence, though, abounds. The latest is the controversy over the anti-Kerry ads by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and parallel anti-Bush ads by Democratic "527" groups such as MoveOn.org. Let's assume (for argument's sake) that everything in these ads is untrue. Still, the United States' political tradition is that voters judge the truthfulness and relevance of campaign arguments. We haven't wanted our political speech filtered.
Now there's another possibility. The government may screen what voters see and hear. The Kerry campaign has asked the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to ban the Swift Boat ads; the Bush campaign similarly wants the FEC to suppress the pro-Democrat 527 groups. We've arrived at this juncture because it's logically impossible both to honor the First Amendment and to regulate campaign finance effectively. We can do one or the other -- but not both. Unfortunately, Congress and the Supreme Court won't admit the choice. The result is the worst of both worlds. We gut the First Amendment and don't effectively regulate campaign finance.
The First Amendment says that Congress "shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government" (that's "political association''). The campaign finance laws, the latest being McCain-Feingold, blatantly violate these prohibitions. The Supreme Court has tried to evade the contradiction. It has allowed limits on federal campaign contributions. It justifies the limits as preventing "corruption" or "the appearance of corruption." But the court has rejected limits on overall campaign spending by candidates, parties or groups. Limiting spending, the court says, would violate free speech. Spending enables candidates to reach voters through TV and other media.
Unfortunately, this artful distinction doesn't work. If groups can spend any amount on campaigns, their spending can easily become unlimited contributions. All they need to do is ask the campaign how their money ought to be spent -- on what TV ads, for example. To prevent this, the FEC imposes restrictions on "coordination" between candidates, parties and groups making "independent expenditures." John Kerry alleges that the Swift Boat Veterans and the Bush campaign "coordinated" illegally. Republicans see similar ties between Kerry and Democratic 527s.
But "coordination" is really "speech" and "political association." It's talking and planning among people who want to elect or defeat the same candidates. There's an indestructible inconsistency between the language of the First Amendment and campaign finance laws. Why shouldn't veterans coordinate with Bush? Why shouldn't Democratic 527s coordinate with Kerry? The Supreme Court upholds the campaign finance laws simply by ignoring the First Amendment's language.
All the legal twisting has (so far) produced mostly self-censorship. Politicians try to comply with the law's letter and evade its spirit. To maximize its support for Kerry, the Democratic National Committee has set up a separate "independent expenditures" unit. The unit's top officials aren't supposed to talk politics with the Kerry campaign or other DNC officials. In a recent Newsweek interview, DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe was asked about the unit's ads. Here's his abbreviated (for space) response:
McAuliffe: Legally, I cannot have that conversation. . . . I cannot signal to the Kerry campaign what type of ads we're doing, how much money we're spending, because that would be deemed coordination. . . .
Q: You can't tell him anything about what the themes of your advertising will be?
A: No sir, absolutely not . . .
Q: Do these rules strike you as absurd?
A: Yes.
Of course they're absurd. A party and its candidates should talk about whatever they want. If the First Amendment doesn't cover that, what would it cover? It's also unrealistic to think -- regardless of legal precautions -- that "signaling" won't occur between support groups and candidates.
The media poorly describe what's happening. Campaign finance reform is a respectable cause. It's inconvenient to say that the First Amendment is being scalped. Few do. The New York Times recently ran a story on two campaign lawyers -- one Democratic, one Republican -- who bring cases before the FEC to bend "the complex rules to their clients' maximum benefit." The story barely hinted that, once candidates need lawyers and rulings to say what they can do, their constitutional protections have disappeared.
But the truth cannot remain forever obscured. Campaign finance laws must fail at their larger aim of improving public confidence in politics and government. They breed disrespect for law, the Constitution or both. If the laws are aggressively expanded and enforced -- with more limits on contributions, spending and "coordination" -- people will realize they're losing their rights of free speech and political association. But if the laws are laxly enforced, as they have been, they will inspire continuing evasions and harsh condemnations by "reformers." Public confidence suffers either way. Americans will ultimately have to choose between the Constitution and a mere law -- or watch both be damaged.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
So Much for Free Speech
by Robert J. Samuelson
The presidential campaign has confirmed that, under the guise of "campaign finance reform," Congress and the Supreme Court have repealed large parts of the First Amendment. They have simply discarded what were once considered constitutional rights of free speech and political association. It is not that these rights have vanished. But they are no longer constitutional guarantees. They're governed by limits and qualifications imposed by Congress, the courts, state legislatures, regulatory agencies -- and lawyers' interpretations of all of the above.
We have entered an era of constitutional censorship. Hardly anyone wants to admit this -- the legalized demolition of the First Amendment would seem shocking -- and so hardly anyone does. The evidence, though, abounds. The latest is the controversy over the anti-Kerry ads by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and parallel anti-Bush ads by Democratic "527" groups such as MoveOn.org. Let's assume (for argument's sake) that everything in these ads is untrue. Still, the United States' political tradition is that voters judge the truthfulness and relevance of campaign arguments. We haven't wanted our political speech filtered.
Now there's another possibility. The government may screen what voters see and hear. The Kerry campaign has asked the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to ban the Swift Boat ads; the Bush campaign similarly wants the FEC to suppress the pro-Democrat 527 groups. We've arrived at this juncture because it's logically impossible both to honor the First Amendment and to regulate campaign finance effectively. We can do one or the other -- but not both. Unfortunately, Congress and the Supreme Court won't admit the choice. The result is the worst of both worlds. We gut the First Amendment and don't effectively regulate campaign finance.
The First Amendment says that Congress "shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government" (that's "political association''). The campaign finance laws, the latest being McCain-Feingold, blatantly violate these prohibitions. The Supreme Court has tried to evade the contradiction. It has allowed limits on federal campaign contributions. It justifies the limits as preventing "corruption" or "the appearance of corruption." But the court has rejected limits on overall campaign spending by candidates, parties or groups. Limiting spending, the court says, would violate free speech. Spending enables candidates to reach voters through TV and other media.
Unfortunately, this artful distinction doesn't work. If groups can spend any amount on campaigns, their spending can easily become unlimited contributions. All they need to do is ask the campaign how their money ought to be spent -- on what TV ads, for example. To prevent this, the FEC imposes restrictions on "coordination" between candidates, parties and groups making "independent expenditures." John Kerry alleges that the Swift Boat Veterans and the Bush campaign "coordinated" illegally. Republicans see similar ties between Kerry and Democratic 527s.
But "coordination" is really "speech" and "political association." It's talking and planning among people who want to elect or defeat the same candidates. There's an indestructible inconsistency between the language of the First Amendment and campaign finance laws. Why shouldn't veterans coordinate with Bush? Why shouldn't Democratic 527s coordinate with Kerry? The Supreme Court upholds the campaign finance laws simply by ignoring the First Amendment's language.
All the legal twisting has (so far) produced mostly self-censorship. Politicians try to comply with the law's letter and evade its spirit. To maximize its support for Kerry, the Democratic National Committee has set up a separate "independent expenditures" unit. The unit's top officials aren't supposed to talk politics with the Kerry campaign or other DNC officials. In a recent Newsweek interview, DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe was asked about the unit's ads. Here's his abbreviated (for space) response:
McAuliffe: Legally, I cannot have that conversation. . . . I cannot signal to the Kerry campaign what type of ads we're doing, how much money we're spending, because that would be deemed coordination. . . .
Q: You can't tell him anything about what the themes of your advertising will be?
A: No sir, absolutely not . . .
Q: Do these rules strike you as absurd?
A: Yes.
Of course they're absurd. A party and its candidates should talk about whatever they want. If the First Amendment doesn't cover that, what would it cover? It's also unrealistic to think -- regardless of legal precautions -- that "signaling" won't occur between support groups and candidates.
The media poorly describe what's happening. Campaign finance reform is a respectable cause. It's inconvenient to say that the First Amendment is being scalped. Few do. The New York Times recently ran a story on two campaign lawyers -- one Democratic, one Republican -- who bring cases before the FEC to bend "the complex rules to their clients' maximum benefit." The story barely hinted that, once candidates need lawyers and rulings to say what they can do, their constitutional protections have disappeared.
But the truth cannot remain forever obscured. Campaign finance laws must fail at their larger aim of improving public confidence in politics and government. They breed disrespect for law, the Constitution or both. If the laws are aggressively expanded and enforced -- with more limits on contributions, spending and "coordination" -- people will realize they're losing their rights of free speech and political association. But if the laws are laxly enforced, as they have been, they will inspire continuing evasions and harsh condemnations by "reformers." Public confidence suffers either way. Americans will ultimately have to choose between the Constitution and a mere law -- or watch both be damaged.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
From the UK Telegraph:
Kerry: strange, stuck-up... and stupid
By Mark Steyn
According to Francis Harris in Saturday's Telegraph, allegations that John Kerry "lied about his Vietnam record" are "unravelling". Oh, I wouldn't say that. Right now, it looks like the sanity of the Kerry campaign and its pals in the media that's beginning to unravel.
Switch on the TV these days and you'll see John O'Neill, principal spokesman for the hundreds of Swift boat veterans who oppose their old comrade Kerry, talking calmly and patiently about the facts, citing chapter and verse and relevant footnotes, while some deranged interviewer is going berserk.
The other day it was CNN host James Carville, former skinhead-in-chief to Bill Clinton, yelling and howling all over O'Neill's answers before brushing him aside with, "I've got no use for this man."
Meanwhile, the grandees at the New York Times, having studiously ignored the story for two weeks, decided that, with the Kerry campaign all but paralysed by the issue, they'd have to sully their lily-white hands with the ghastly business and kill it themselves. Maureen Dowd, the paper's elderly schoolgirl columnist, dismissed the dissenting Swiftees as "creepy-crawly", "stomach-turning", "sleazoids".
Pat Oliphant, who appears in the Washington Post and many other newspapers, offered a cartoon showing the Swiftees as Bush-backing deadbeats sitting round a bar bitching: "I never seen Kerry do nothing hee-roic," says one loser. "Damn right," says another. "You and me was right there in latrine maintenance. We orta know."
The redneck spelling's a nice touch, ain't it? I wonder which of the anti-Kerry campaign's 254 Swift vets, including 17 of Lieutenant Kerry's 23 fellow officers, Oliphant thinks were in latrine maintenance. Maybe he's got in mind fellows like Paul Galanti, who appears in the latest anti-Kerry ad and whose plane went down over North Vietnam in 1966. He was held in the "Hanoi Hilton" Viet Cong POW camp until 1973. That's seven years getting tortured by the gooks, only to be mocked by some lame-o cartoonist as a redneck latrine operator.
I've never quite understood the preferred formulation of big-time Democrats – that "of course" they support our troops even though they oppose this war. But in practice they "support our troop" – singular – just Lieut Kerry and the handful of Swiftees willing to appear in public with him. The rest can go to hell and any of 'em impertinent enough to question the Senator are just "sleazoids" wading through their own backed-up latrine. I wonder if the Kerry campaign and its media cheerleaders have really thought this one through.
Nothing the "sleazoids" say about Kerry is as bad as what he said about them 33 years ago in his testimony to Congress, when he informed the world that his comrades – his "band of brothers" – had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads" etc, throughout their time in Vietnam.
Unlike John O'Neill's book, he didn't bother to give specifics: the US Army in general was rife with ear-severers. If you want to know why Paul Galanti is appearing in an anti-Kerry ad, it's because he first heard about this speech from his Viet Cong captors who cited it to try to persuade him and his fellow prisoners that resistance was now futile and they might as well cross over to the other side.
I said a couple of weeks back that John Kerry was too strange to be President, and a week or two earlier that he was too stuck-up to be President. Since I'm on an alliterative roll, let me add that he's too stupid to be President. What sort of idiot would make the centrepiece of his presidential campaign four months of proud service in a war he's best known for opposing?
I wouldn't stand for Parliament on a family values platform because I know someone's bound to bring up the 123 gay porn movies I had a bit part in back in Amsterdam in the 1970s.
How cocooned from reality do you have to be to think you can transform one of the most divisive periods in American history – in which you were largely responsible for much of the divisiveness – into a sappy, happy-clappy, soft-focus patriotic blur without anybody objecting? Most Vietnam veterans of my acquaintance loathe John Kerry, and, if he wasn't aware of that, he's too out of it to be President.
That can happen to rich guys, particularly touchy, thin-skinned rich guys who prefer to surround themselves with yes-men. Kerry was apparently infuriated by the cool reception he got from a veterans' audience last week. But why would he expect anything different?
And even if he'd never slimed his comrades, there's something ridiculous about a fellow with four months in Vietnam running as Ike, the Duke of Wellington and Alexander the Great rolled into one. On Sunday, after calling on the Senator to apologise to the 2.5 million veterans he slandered, Bob Dole couldn't resist chipping in his own view of Kerry's wounds.
"Here's, you know, a good guy, a good friend. I respect his record. But three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of," he said. "I mean, they're all superficial wounds." Dole's right arm is withered and useless from wounds received in World War Two, and he never made a big hoo-ha about it in the '96 campaign.
But, more significantly, Dole prizes bipartisan Senatorial chumminess over almost everything, and my guess is he wouldn't be slamming Kerry if he weren't so revolted by the unseemly showboating of this campaign. If Vietnam vets loathe him, World War Two vets seem to think he's a buffoon. Short of reversing over the last 128-year-old Spanish-American War veteran in the retirement home parking lot, it's hard to see how Kerry could more comprehensively diminish his military support.
Still, he's doing his best. After going around huffing and a-puffing that, if Bush wanted a debate about Vietnam, "Here is my answer: BRING. IT. ON," he's now gone to ground and is demanding Bush call it off. Meanwhile, his lawyers are threatening suits and the campaign's complained to the Federal Election Commission to get the Swift vets taken off air.
His hagiographer Douglas Brinkley, after an intriguing interview with the Telegraph's David Rennie, seems to have entered the witness protection programme. If this campaign were any more inept, Michael Moore would be making a documentary claiming Kerry's a Republican plant secretly controlled by Karl Rove and the House of Saud.
Kerry: strange, stuck-up... and stupid
By Mark Steyn
According to Francis Harris in Saturday's Telegraph, allegations that John Kerry "lied about his Vietnam record" are "unravelling". Oh, I wouldn't say that. Right now, it looks like the sanity of the Kerry campaign and its pals in the media that's beginning to unravel.
Switch on the TV these days and you'll see John O'Neill, principal spokesman for the hundreds of Swift boat veterans who oppose their old comrade Kerry, talking calmly and patiently about the facts, citing chapter and verse and relevant footnotes, while some deranged interviewer is going berserk.
The other day it was CNN host James Carville, former skinhead-in-chief to Bill Clinton, yelling and howling all over O'Neill's answers before brushing him aside with, "I've got no use for this man."
Meanwhile, the grandees at the New York Times, having studiously ignored the story for two weeks, decided that, with the Kerry campaign all but paralysed by the issue, they'd have to sully their lily-white hands with the ghastly business and kill it themselves. Maureen Dowd, the paper's elderly schoolgirl columnist, dismissed the dissenting Swiftees as "creepy-crawly", "stomach-turning", "sleazoids".
Pat Oliphant, who appears in the Washington Post and many other newspapers, offered a cartoon showing the Swiftees as Bush-backing deadbeats sitting round a bar bitching: "I never seen Kerry do nothing hee-roic," says one loser. "Damn right," says another. "You and me was right there in latrine maintenance. We orta know."
The redneck spelling's a nice touch, ain't it? I wonder which of the anti-Kerry campaign's 254 Swift vets, including 17 of Lieutenant Kerry's 23 fellow officers, Oliphant thinks were in latrine maintenance. Maybe he's got in mind fellows like Paul Galanti, who appears in the latest anti-Kerry ad and whose plane went down over North Vietnam in 1966. He was held in the "Hanoi Hilton" Viet Cong POW camp until 1973. That's seven years getting tortured by the gooks, only to be mocked by some lame-o cartoonist as a redneck latrine operator.
I've never quite understood the preferred formulation of big-time Democrats – that "of course" they support our troops even though they oppose this war. But in practice they "support our troop" – singular – just Lieut Kerry and the handful of Swiftees willing to appear in public with him. The rest can go to hell and any of 'em impertinent enough to question the Senator are just "sleazoids" wading through their own backed-up latrine. I wonder if the Kerry campaign and its media cheerleaders have really thought this one through.
Nothing the "sleazoids" say about Kerry is as bad as what he said about them 33 years ago in his testimony to Congress, when he informed the world that his comrades – his "band of brothers" – had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads" etc, throughout their time in Vietnam.
Unlike John O'Neill's book, he didn't bother to give specifics: the US Army in general was rife with ear-severers. If you want to know why Paul Galanti is appearing in an anti-Kerry ad, it's because he first heard about this speech from his Viet Cong captors who cited it to try to persuade him and his fellow prisoners that resistance was now futile and they might as well cross over to the other side.
I said a couple of weeks back that John Kerry was too strange to be President, and a week or two earlier that he was too stuck-up to be President. Since I'm on an alliterative roll, let me add that he's too stupid to be President. What sort of idiot would make the centrepiece of his presidential campaign four months of proud service in a war he's best known for opposing?
I wouldn't stand for Parliament on a family values platform because I know someone's bound to bring up the 123 gay porn movies I had a bit part in back in Amsterdam in the 1970s.
How cocooned from reality do you have to be to think you can transform one of the most divisive periods in American history – in which you were largely responsible for much of the divisiveness – into a sappy, happy-clappy, soft-focus patriotic blur without anybody objecting? Most Vietnam veterans of my acquaintance loathe John Kerry, and, if he wasn't aware of that, he's too out of it to be President.
That can happen to rich guys, particularly touchy, thin-skinned rich guys who prefer to surround themselves with yes-men. Kerry was apparently infuriated by the cool reception he got from a veterans' audience last week. But why would he expect anything different?
And even if he'd never slimed his comrades, there's something ridiculous about a fellow with four months in Vietnam running as Ike, the Duke of Wellington and Alexander the Great rolled into one. On Sunday, after calling on the Senator to apologise to the 2.5 million veterans he slandered, Bob Dole couldn't resist chipping in his own view of Kerry's wounds.
"Here's, you know, a good guy, a good friend. I respect his record. But three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of," he said. "I mean, they're all superficial wounds." Dole's right arm is withered and useless from wounds received in World War Two, and he never made a big hoo-ha about it in the '96 campaign.
But, more significantly, Dole prizes bipartisan Senatorial chumminess over almost everything, and my guess is he wouldn't be slamming Kerry if he weren't so revolted by the unseemly showboating of this campaign. If Vietnam vets loathe him, World War Two vets seem to think he's a buffoon. Short of reversing over the last 128-year-old Spanish-American War veteran in the retirement home parking lot, it's hard to see how Kerry could more comprehensively diminish his military support.
Still, he's doing his best. After going around huffing and a-puffing that, if Bush wanted a debate about Vietnam, "Here is my answer: BRING. IT. ON," he's now gone to ground and is demanding Bush call it off. Meanwhile, his lawyers are threatening suits and the campaign's complained to the Federal Election Commission to get the Swift vets taken off air.
His hagiographer Douglas Brinkley, after an intriguing interview with the Telegraph's David Rennie, seems to have entered the witness protection programme. If this campaign were any more inept, Michael Moore would be making a documentary claiming Kerry's a Republican plant secretly controlled by Karl Rove and the House of Saud.
Some of Kerry's biggest fans are in the press
Not much doubt who the media wants to win
By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist
With the exception of the Fox News Channel, the liberal tilt of the mainstream media - the major newspapers, the networks, National Public Radio, the news magazines - has long been a fact of American life. No one observing the coverage of this year's presidential campaign with both eyes open can have much doubt that the media establishment is pulling heavily for the Democratic ticket.
That explains why, for example, the intense media interest in George W. Bush's National Guard records last February wasn't matched by an equally intense interest in John Kerry's Navy history in May, when the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth first went public with their critcisms. Far from leaping on the charges that Kerry's Vietnam heroism had been greatly exaggerated, the mainstream media's initial reaction was to largely ignore them. And while the press saw no reason to question the credibility of Bush's accusers or to demand that Kerry repudiate them, their attitude toward the Swift Boat vets has been much more hostile.
None of this should come as a surprise. The nation's newsrooms are Democratic strongholds, and that cannot help but affect their coverage of the news. Evan Thomas, the assistant managing editor of Newsweek, put it plainly last month.
``Let's talk a little media bias here,'' he said on the PBS program ``Inside Washington'' on July 11. ``The media, I think, want Kerry to win. And I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards . . . as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there's going to be this glow about them that is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them, that's going to be worth maybe 15 points.'' Just how lopsided is the pro-Kerry bias? When New York Times reporter John Tierney surveyed reporters covering the Democratic National Convention last month, the results were striking.
``We got anonymous answers from 153 journalists, about a third of them based in Washington,'' he wrote on Aug. 1. ``When asked who would be a better president, the journalists from outside the Beltway picked Mr. Kerry 3 to 1, and the ones from Washington favored him 12 to 1. Those results jibe with previous surveys over the past two decades showing that journalists tend to be Democrats, especially the ones based in Washington. Some surveys have found that more than 80 percent of the Beltway press corps votes Democratic.'' Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, and for tasting liberal bias in journalism, no one tops the Media Research Center. Founded by conservative activist Brent Bozell in 1987, the MRC has become an indispensable resource for anyone interested in how political attitudes shape news coverage. Its most illuminating technique is the simplest: It monitors journalists' words and quotes them. What it has found time and time again is a skew to the left: a tendency to celebrate, echo, or defend Democrats, liberals, and left-of-center ideas.
Consider the reporting at the Democratic convention. In its latest ``Notable Quotables,'' the MRC serves up more than two dozen fawning quotes from journalists about the brilliance, wonder, and allure of the Democratic team. You can find the complete litany (plus detailed daily reports on the convention coverage) at www.MediaResearch.org, but these examples will give you a flavor of the whole: I was standing next to the young speechwriter who worked with Kerry on this speech. . . . The look on his face: rhapsody throughout. I don't know how this was perceived at home. But here in the Massachusetts delegation, where I was standing, it was perceived very well. - ABC's Dan Harris, following John Kerry's speech to the Democratic convention.
People who served with him in Vietnam said, You can't believe what he's like in battle. He just changes. He gets this look over him. And when I saw him walking down the aisle tonight on the way into the speech, I said, `Oh yeah, there's that look.' And I just knew at that point that he's going to nail this, and he did. I have never seen the man speak so well. - Time magazine's Joe Klein on CNN.
John Kerry working himself literally into a sweat. Or as my high school English teacher would prefer, into a high state of perspiration. An almost literal thunder inside the hall, shaking the Fleet Center in a way that it seldom shakes, if ever, even during a Celtics basketball playoff game or a Bruins hockey playoff game. These Democrats, as the speech built, having what amounted to maybe a three-thousand-gallon attack about every three minutes, united in a way the Democratic Party has not been for about half a century. - CBS anchor Dan Rather.
For those who doubted John Kerry could pull off a stirring speech, doubts dispelled. For those who doubted John Kerry could unite a traditionally fractious party, doubts dispelled. - ABC's Charles Gibson on ``Good Morning America.'' The personality that Edwards exudes when he comes to these events is something that's pretty infectious with these delegates. And I talked to one delegate yesterday who says, `You know, I'm coming to like John Kerry, but I haven't yet fallen in love with him. But I will tell you this, I have fallen in love with John Edwards.' It's obvious the charisma out there gets to everybody here in the Fleet Center.- CBS's John Roberts, after John Edwards finished his convention speech.
People talk about John Edwards being the sexiest politician in America. I think Teresa Heinz may be the sexiest spouse of a national candidate in my memory. She comes across pretty strong, soulful, tender even, in a way. So I think she had an effective performance. - Wall Street Journal reporter John Harwood on CNN.
Don't expect next week's Republican convention in New York to inspire similarly starry-eyed adulation. As Newsweek's editor concedes, the media want Kerry to win. To be sure, most journalists are professionals who take seriously their obligation to be accurate and fair. But what is true for most people is true for journalists, too: When you want something badly enough, it shows.
Not much doubt who the media wants to win
By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist
With the exception of the Fox News Channel, the liberal tilt of the mainstream media - the major newspapers, the networks, National Public Radio, the news magazines - has long been a fact of American life. No one observing the coverage of this year's presidential campaign with both eyes open can have much doubt that the media establishment is pulling heavily for the Democratic ticket.
That explains why, for example, the intense media interest in George W. Bush's National Guard records last February wasn't matched by an equally intense interest in John Kerry's Navy history in May, when the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth first went public with their critcisms. Far from leaping on the charges that Kerry's Vietnam heroism had been greatly exaggerated, the mainstream media's initial reaction was to largely ignore them. And while the press saw no reason to question the credibility of Bush's accusers or to demand that Kerry repudiate them, their attitude toward the Swift Boat vets has been much more hostile.
None of this should come as a surprise. The nation's newsrooms are Democratic strongholds, and that cannot help but affect their coverage of the news. Evan Thomas, the assistant managing editor of Newsweek, put it plainly last month.
``Let's talk a little media bias here,'' he said on the PBS program ``Inside Washington'' on July 11. ``The media, I think, want Kerry to win. And I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards . . . as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there's going to be this glow about them that is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them, that's going to be worth maybe 15 points.'' Just how lopsided is the pro-Kerry bias? When New York Times reporter John Tierney surveyed reporters covering the Democratic National Convention last month, the results were striking.
``We got anonymous answers from 153 journalists, about a third of them based in Washington,'' he wrote on Aug. 1. ``When asked who would be a better president, the journalists from outside the Beltway picked Mr. Kerry 3 to 1, and the ones from Washington favored him 12 to 1. Those results jibe with previous surveys over the past two decades showing that journalists tend to be Democrats, especially the ones based in Washington. Some surveys have found that more than 80 percent of the Beltway press corps votes Democratic.'' Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, and for tasting liberal bias in journalism, no one tops the Media Research Center. Founded by conservative activist Brent Bozell in 1987, the MRC has become an indispensable resource for anyone interested in how political attitudes shape news coverage. Its most illuminating technique is the simplest: It monitors journalists' words and quotes them. What it has found time and time again is a skew to the left: a tendency to celebrate, echo, or defend Democrats, liberals, and left-of-center ideas.
Consider the reporting at the Democratic convention. In its latest ``Notable Quotables,'' the MRC serves up more than two dozen fawning quotes from journalists about the brilliance, wonder, and allure of the Democratic team. You can find the complete litany (plus detailed daily reports on the convention coverage) at www.MediaResearch.org, but these examples will give you a flavor of the whole: I was standing next to the young speechwriter who worked with Kerry on this speech. . . . The look on his face: rhapsody throughout. I don't know how this was perceived at home. But here in the Massachusetts delegation, where I was standing, it was perceived very well. - ABC's Dan Harris, following John Kerry's speech to the Democratic convention.
People who served with him in Vietnam said, You can't believe what he's like in battle. He just changes. He gets this look over him. And when I saw him walking down the aisle tonight on the way into the speech, I said, `Oh yeah, there's that look.' And I just knew at that point that he's going to nail this, and he did. I have never seen the man speak so well. - Time magazine's Joe Klein on CNN.
John Kerry working himself literally into a sweat. Or as my high school English teacher would prefer, into a high state of perspiration. An almost literal thunder inside the hall, shaking the Fleet Center in a way that it seldom shakes, if ever, even during a Celtics basketball playoff game or a Bruins hockey playoff game. These Democrats, as the speech built, having what amounted to maybe a three-thousand-gallon attack about every three minutes, united in a way the Democratic Party has not been for about half a century. - CBS anchor Dan Rather.
For those who doubted John Kerry could pull off a stirring speech, doubts dispelled. For those who doubted John Kerry could unite a traditionally fractious party, doubts dispelled. - ABC's Charles Gibson on ``Good Morning America.'' The personality that Edwards exudes when he comes to these events is something that's pretty infectious with these delegates. And I talked to one delegate yesterday who says, `You know, I'm coming to like John Kerry, but I haven't yet fallen in love with him. But I will tell you this, I have fallen in love with John Edwards.' It's obvious the charisma out there gets to everybody here in the Fleet Center.- CBS's John Roberts, after John Edwards finished his convention speech.
People talk about John Edwards being the sexiest politician in America. I think Teresa Heinz may be the sexiest spouse of a national candidate in my memory. She comes across pretty strong, soulful, tender even, in a way. So I think she had an effective performance. - Wall Street Journal reporter John Harwood on CNN.
Don't expect next week's Republican convention in New York to inspire similarly starry-eyed adulation. As Newsweek's editor concedes, the media want Kerry to win. To be sure, most journalists are professionals who take seriously their obligation to be accurate and fair. But what is true for most people is true for journalists, too: When you want something badly enough, it shows.
From wahingtonpost.com:
Kerry's Cambodia Whopper
by Joshua Muravchik
Most of the debate between the former shipmates who swear by John Kerry and the group of other Swift boat veterans who are attacking his military record focuses on matters that few of us have the experience or the moral standing to judge. But one issue, having nothing to do with medals, wounds or bravery under fire, goes to the heart of Kerry's qualifications for the presidency and is therefore something that each of us must consider. That is Kerry's apparently fabricated claim that he fought in Cambodia.
It is an assertion he made first, insofar as the written record reveals, in 1979 in a letter to the Boston Herald. Since then he has repeated it on at least eight occasions during Senate debate or in news interviews, most recently to The Post this year (an interview posted on Kerry's Web site). The most dramatic iteration came on the floor of the Senate in 1986, when he made it the centerpiece of a carefully prepared 20-minute oration against aid to the Nicaraguan contras.
Kerry argued that contra aid could put the United States on the path to deeper involvement despite denials by the Reagan administration of any such intent. Kerry began by reading out similar denials regarding Vietnam from presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Then he offered this devastating riposte:
"I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me."
However seared he was, Kerry's spokesmen now say his memory was faulty. When the Swift boat veterans who oppose Kerry presented statements from his commanders and members of his unit denying that his boat entered Cambodia, none of Kerry's shipmates came forward, as they had on other issues, to corroborate his account. Two weeks ago Kerry's spokesmen began to backtrack. First, one campaign aide explained that Kerry had patrolled the Mekong Delta somewhere "between" Cambodia and Vietnam. But there is no between; there is a border. Then another spokesman told reporters that Kerry had been "near Cambodia." But the point of Kerry's 1986 speech was that he personally had taken part in a secret and illegal war in a neutral country. That was only true if he was "in Cambodia," as he had often said he was. If he was merely "near," then his deliberate misstatement falsified the entire speech.
Next, the campaign leaked a new version through the medium of historian Douglas Brinkley, author of "Tour of Duty," a laudatory book on Kerry's military service. Last week Brinkley told the London Telegraph that while Kerry had been 50 miles from the border on Christmas, he "went into Cambodian waters three or four times in January and February 1969 on clandestine missions." Oddly, though, while Brinkley devotes nearly 100 pages of his book to Kerry's activities that January and February, pinpointing the locations of various battles and often placing Kerry near Cambodia, he nowhere mentions Kerry's crossing into Cambodia, an inconceivable omission if it were true.
Now a new official statement from the campaign undercuts Brinkley. It offers a minimal (thus harder to impeach) claim: that Kerry "on one occasion crossed into Cambodia," on an unspecified date. But at least two of the shipmates who are supporting Kerry's campaign (and one who is not) deny their boat ever crossed the border, and their testimony on this score is corroborated by Kerry's own journal, kept while on duty. One passage reproduced in Brinkley's book says: "The banks of the [Rach Giang Thanh River] whistled by as we churned out mile after mile at full speed. On my left were occasional open fields that allowed us a clear view into Cambodia. At some points, the border was only fifty yards away and it then would meander out to several hundred or even as much as a thousand yards away, always making one wonder what lay on the other side." His curiosity was never satisfied, because this entry was from Kerry's final mission.
After his discharge, Kerry became the leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Once, he presented to Congress the accounts by his VVAW comrades of having "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires . . . to human genitals . . . razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan . . . poisoned foodstocks." Later it was shown that many of the stories on which Kerry based this testimony were false, some told by impostors who had stolen the identities of real GIs, but Kerry himself was not implicated in the fraud. And his own over-the-top generalization that such "crimes [were] committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command" could be charged up to youthfulness and the fevers of the times.
But Kerry has repeated his Cambodia tale throughout his adult life. He has claimed that the epiphany he had that Christmas of 1968 was about truthfulness. "One of the things that most struck me about Vietnam was how people were lied to," he explained in a subsequent interview. If -- as seems almost surely the case -- Kerry himself has lied about what he did in Vietnam, and has done so not merely to spice his biography but to influence national policy, then he is surely not the kind of man we want as our president.
The writer is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Kerry's Cambodia Whopper
by Joshua Muravchik
Most of the debate between the former shipmates who swear by John Kerry and the group of other Swift boat veterans who are attacking his military record focuses on matters that few of us have the experience or the moral standing to judge. But one issue, having nothing to do with medals, wounds or bravery under fire, goes to the heart of Kerry's qualifications for the presidency and is therefore something that each of us must consider. That is Kerry's apparently fabricated claim that he fought in Cambodia.
It is an assertion he made first, insofar as the written record reveals, in 1979 in a letter to the Boston Herald. Since then he has repeated it on at least eight occasions during Senate debate or in news interviews, most recently to The Post this year (an interview posted on Kerry's Web site). The most dramatic iteration came on the floor of the Senate in 1986, when he made it the centerpiece of a carefully prepared 20-minute oration against aid to the Nicaraguan contras.
Kerry argued that contra aid could put the United States on the path to deeper involvement despite denials by the Reagan administration of any such intent. Kerry began by reading out similar denials regarding Vietnam from presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Then he offered this devastating riposte:
"I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me."
However seared he was, Kerry's spokesmen now say his memory was faulty. When the Swift boat veterans who oppose Kerry presented statements from his commanders and members of his unit denying that his boat entered Cambodia, none of Kerry's shipmates came forward, as they had on other issues, to corroborate his account. Two weeks ago Kerry's spokesmen began to backtrack. First, one campaign aide explained that Kerry had patrolled the Mekong Delta somewhere "between" Cambodia and Vietnam. But there is no between; there is a border. Then another spokesman told reporters that Kerry had been "near Cambodia." But the point of Kerry's 1986 speech was that he personally had taken part in a secret and illegal war in a neutral country. That was only true if he was "in Cambodia," as he had often said he was. If he was merely "near," then his deliberate misstatement falsified the entire speech.
Next, the campaign leaked a new version through the medium of historian Douglas Brinkley, author of "Tour of Duty," a laudatory book on Kerry's military service. Last week Brinkley told the London Telegraph that while Kerry had been 50 miles from the border on Christmas, he "went into Cambodian waters three or four times in January and February 1969 on clandestine missions." Oddly, though, while Brinkley devotes nearly 100 pages of his book to Kerry's activities that January and February, pinpointing the locations of various battles and often placing Kerry near Cambodia, he nowhere mentions Kerry's crossing into Cambodia, an inconceivable omission if it were true.
Now a new official statement from the campaign undercuts Brinkley. It offers a minimal (thus harder to impeach) claim: that Kerry "on one occasion crossed into Cambodia," on an unspecified date. But at least two of the shipmates who are supporting Kerry's campaign (and one who is not) deny their boat ever crossed the border, and their testimony on this score is corroborated by Kerry's own journal, kept while on duty. One passage reproduced in Brinkley's book says: "The banks of the [Rach Giang Thanh River] whistled by as we churned out mile after mile at full speed. On my left were occasional open fields that allowed us a clear view into Cambodia. At some points, the border was only fifty yards away and it then would meander out to several hundred or even as much as a thousand yards away, always making one wonder what lay on the other side." His curiosity was never satisfied, because this entry was from Kerry's final mission.
After his discharge, Kerry became the leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Once, he presented to Congress the accounts by his VVAW comrades of having "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires . . . to human genitals . . . razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan . . . poisoned foodstocks." Later it was shown that many of the stories on which Kerry based this testimony were false, some told by impostors who had stolen the identities of real GIs, but Kerry himself was not implicated in the fraud. And his own over-the-top generalization that such "crimes [were] committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command" could be charged up to youthfulness and the fevers of the times.
But Kerry has repeated his Cambodia tale throughout his adult life. He has claimed that the epiphany he had that Christmas of 1968 was about truthfulness. "One of the things that most struck me about Vietnam was how people were lied to," he explained in a subsequent interview. If -- as seems almost surely the case -- Kerry himself has lied about what he did in Vietnam, and has done so not merely to spice his biography but to influence national policy, then he is surely not the kind of man we want as our president.
The writer is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Monday, August 23, 2004
From www.adamyoshida.com:
When John Kerry Committed a Capital Offense
Here’s an interesting fact: when, in 1970, John Kerry travelled to Paris to meet privately with the North Vietnamese delegation and Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, the Foreign Minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government on Vietnam (the communist “government-in-waiting” of South Vietnam) he committed an offence for which he could have (and ought to have) been sentenced to death. Now, I fully realize that the Kerry Campaign and others have already addressed this point, noting that Kerry didn’t violate (or just narrowly missed violating) US Law. However, I’m not talking about the law as it applies to civilians: I’m talking about the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Let’s step back for a second so that I can explain a few things. Contrary to published reports that Senator Kerry left the Navy in 1970 he, in fact, remained an officer in the Naval Reserve right through 1978 (he was simply released from active duty in 1970). This means that, potentially, he would have been liable to be prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is a set of laws passed by the Congress in 1950 which apply to members of the Armed Forces, some members of the reserves, and various other individuals employed by or serving with the military.
In meeting with and advocating the positions of the Communist Vietnamese, Kerry clearly violated Article 104 of the UCMJ, entitled “Aiding the Enemy” which states that, “Any person who… without proper authority, knowingly… communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly; shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct.”
Now, we know that Senator Kerry met with representatives of the enemy. This much is certain because he’s admitted to it. Now, the question must be: were his actions taken with the aim of giving aid and comfort to the enemy? The answer, unquestionably, must be yes. In his 1971 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry not only mentioned his visit to Paris to meet with Communist negotiators, but also advocated the adoption of the “eight points” put forward by Madame Binh. The Communist’s position in the negotiations was that the United States would have to begin a withdrawal from South Vietnam and that then would discussions about the repatriation of US prisoners of war would begin. Kerry, presumably on the strength of his meeting with the Communist negotiators, endorsed this position, saying that, “if the United States were to set a date for withdrawal the prisoners of war would be returned.”
Frankly, at this point, I think that we’re nearing the threshold which divides simply loyalty from outright treason. In my mind there’s very little doubt that the John Kerry of 1971: the John Kerry who denounced his fellow soldiers, dishonoured his flag, and disgraced his country was, in his heart, a traitor. An opportunistic traitor, to be sure, but a traitor nonetheless.
I’m sure that some people will take offense at my earlier suggestion that John Kerry should, in 1971, have been put to death for his treasonous actions and words. But I ask you this: what else would you have us do with traitors? Let them run free to go about their lives and achieve their goals?
Vietnam was not a war lost upon the battlefield. Despite some poor strategic decisions, America’s fighting forces were never defeated by the enemy and, in fact, inflicted massive casualties upon them. The Viet Cong essentially ceased to exist as a force on the battlefield after the Tet Offensive in 1968. Improvement in South Vietnamese forces under Nixon eventually forced the North Vietnamese to cease irregular attacks and turn towards invading the South with a regular army. The first attempt to do so, however, was crushed by a combination of US and RVN forces. Victory would have been won and a free Vietnam saved but for one thing: those traitors and seditionists at home who undermined public support for the war and who eventually convinced the Congress to, in South Vietnam’s moment of greatest need, abandon them to the enemy. Our brave soldiers, the ones who John Kerry now claims to honor, were, in fact, stabbed in the back by John Kerry and those like him.
Given that the actions of Senator Kerry, and his friends, essentially rendered the deaths of 58,000 Americans as meaningless and led indirectly to the death of millions of friends of freedom in South-East Asia, it would be no exaggeration to say that I am entirely untroubled by the idea that those who committed treason ought to have been executed.
posted by Adam at 3:06 PM, 8/22/04
When John Kerry Committed a Capital Offense
Here’s an interesting fact: when, in 1970, John Kerry travelled to Paris to meet privately with the North Vietnamese delegation and Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, the Foreign Minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government on Vietnam (the communist “government-in-waiting” of South Vietnam) he committed an offence for which he could have (and ought to have) been sentenced to death. Now, I fully realize that the Kerry Campaign and others have already addressed this point, noting that Kerry didn’t violate (or just narrowly missed violating) US Law. However, I’m not talking about the law as it applies to civilians: I’m talking about the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Let’s step back for a second so that I can explain a few things. Contrary to published reports that Senator Kerry left the Navy in 1970 he, in fact, remained an officer in the Naval Reserve right through 1978 (he was simply released from active duty in 1970). This means that, potentially, he would have been liable to be prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is a set of laws passed by the Congress in 1950 which apply to members of the Armed Forces, some members of the reserves, and various other individuals employed by or serving with the military.
In meeting with and advocating the positions of the Communist Vietnamese, Kerry clearly violated Article 104 of the UCMJ, entitled “Aiding the Enemy” which states that, “Any person who… without proper authority, knowingly… communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly; shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct.”
Now, we know that Senator Kerry met with representatives of the enemy. This much is certain because he’s admitted to it. Now, the question must be: were his actions taken with the aim of giving aid and comfort to the enemy? The answer, unquestionably, must be yes. In his 1971 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry not only mentioned his visit to Paris to meet with Communist negotiators, but also advocated the adoption of the “eight points” put forward by Madame Binh. The Communist’s position in the negotiations was that the United States would have to begin a withdrawal from South Vietnam and that then would discussions about the repatriation of US prisoners of war would begin. Kerry, presumably on the strength of his meeting with the Communist negotiators, endorsed this position, saying that, “if the United States were to set a date for withdrawal the prisoners of war would be returned.”
Frankly, at this point, I think that we’re nearing the threshold which divides simply loyalty from outright treason. In my mind there’s very little doubt that the John Kerry of 1971: the John Kerry who denounced his fellow soldiers, dishonoured his flag, and disgraced his country was, in his heart, a traitor. An opportunistic traitor, to be sure, but a traitor nonetheless.
I’m sure that some people will take offense at my earlier suggestion that John Kerry should, in 1971, have been put to death for his treasonous actions and words. But I ask you this: what else would you have us do with traitors? Let them run free to go about their lives and achieve their goals?
Vietnam was not a war lost upon the battlefield. Despite some poor strategic decisions, America’s fighting forces were never defeated by the enemy and, in fact, inflicted massive casualties upon them. The Viet Cong essentially ceased to exist as a force on the battlefield after the Tet Offensive in 1968. Improvement in South Vietnamese forces under Nixon eventually forced the North Vietnamese to cease irregular attacks and turn towards invading the South with a regular army. The first attempt to do so, however, was crushed by a combination of US and RVN forces. Victory would have been won and a free Vietnam saved but for one thing: those traitors and seditionists at home who undermined public support for the war and who eventually convinced the Congress to, in South Vietnam’s moment of greatest need, abandon them to the enemy. Our brave soldiers, the ones who John Kerry now claims to honor, were, in fact, stabbed in the back by John Kerry and those like him.
Given that the actions of Senator Kerry, and his friends, essentially rendered the deaths of 58,000 Americans as meaningless and led indirectly to the death of millions of friends of freedom in South-East Asia, it would be no exaggeration to say that I am entirely untroubled by the idea that those who committed treason ought to have been executed.
posted by Adam at 3:06 PM, 8/22/04
Excellent Kerry timeline from the blog A Large Regular:
No Way to Run a Campaign
If it seems to you like every day something new and damaging to the Kerry Campaign pops up - it's because literally almost every day something damaging to the campaign has popped up.
Let's take a look at the month of August to illustrate how the Kerry Campaign has truly been the gang that couldn't shoot straight. (How come nobody has been fired for this epic bumbling?)
Aug. 1 - Normally a candidate gets a "bounce" in the polls immediately after his convention - not so for Kerry.
Aug. 2 - Kerry advisor says Kerry will make world safer by giving Iran nuclear fuel and hope that they use it for good. Sane people everywhere say, "Are you friggin' kidding me?" Meanwhile the Kerry campaign suffers some guilt from association after Howard Dean questions the timing of terror alerts in New York - claiming they could be politically motivated. Again, sane people everywhere ask, "Are you friggin' kidding me?"
Aug. 3 - Swift Boat Veterans for Truth explain their version of the real story of John Kerry's military history - this picture was interesting
Aug. 4 - The Kerry campaign and DNC lawyers threaten legal action against any stations that air the Swift Boat ads. Instead of addressing the allegations made by the vets - Kerry decides that threat of legal action would be better. The campaign slogan is officially amended to "Bring it on.....and we'll sue!" Meanwhile Senator Kerry announces:
I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history.
Aug. 5 - Kerry tells reporters that he would not have waited around like Bush did for 7 minutes on 9/11. He states:
"Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whispered in my ear, 'America is under attack,' I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to -- and I would have attended to it."
This claim comes back to bite him in the ass when his actual reaction to the morning of 9/11 is revealed - over 40 minutes of not being able to think or act.
Aug. 6 - Former New York Mayor - Rudy Giuliani notes that it is sad that a man running for the president seems to be getting his clues from Michael Moore and Rudy adds for good measure:
John Kerry is an indecisive candidate [with] an inconsistent position on the War on Terror, who voted against funding for our troops and who cannot give a clear answer on his position concerning the decision to remove Saddam Hussein
On the Swift Boat front - the now controversial Michael Kranish pens a piece for the Boston Globe that claims that George Elliot has recanted his criticism of John Kerry. George Elliot responds under oath saying "I said no such things."
Aug. 7 - Kerry's wife Theresa contradicts Kerry's claim that the President did not act properly on the morning of 9/11 by saying:
"I think the president behaved correctly in terms of being quiet amidst stunning news like that in a classroom of kids," she told the host of MSNBC's "Hardball With Chris Matthews" during an interview before the Democratic National Convention last month. "You know, what can you do? It takes you a couple of minutes to digest what you have just heard. And then he was . . . not in his White House and in his office with all of his people. He was in the school in Florida."
Aug. 8 - At the DNC Theresa Heinz-Kerry claimed to be active in anti-Apartheid protests but evidence suggests that she attended just a single protest.
Aug. 9 - A Reuters article notes that; "Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said on Monday he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing force against Iraq even if he had known then no weapons of mass destruction would be found." This goes over well with the Deaniac base.
Aug. 10 - The Mary Ann Knowles story about having to work through chemotherapy that Kerry used at the DNC turns out to be untrue.
Aug. 11 - The Kerry Campaign changes its story on Christmas in Cambodia. I don't think "seared into my memory" means what I think he thinks it means.
Aug. 12 - Quiet day for the Kerry Campaign. Whoever was in charge today should get a promotion.
Aug. 13 - Grumbling from the Kerry Press Corps. Oh and an article by Kathleen Antrim in the ultra liberal San Francisco Examiner leads with, "John F. Kerry's campaign for president is imploding. And he knows it."
Aug. 14 - Dave Kopel examines media bias on the Swift Boat Veterans issue.
Aug. 15 - The Christmas in Cambodia claims are examined in of all places - The Seattle Times
Aug. 16 - It is noted that the Kerry / Edwards Campaign site touts that "Kerry is an Experienced Leader in the Intelligence Field - John Kerry served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is the former Vice Chairman of the Committee" - the problem is that was actually Bob Kerrey. John Kerry was never Vice Chairman (maybe there was an attendance requirement?). The claim was later removed from the site but it is strange that Kerry doesn't even seem to know his own resume.
Reports that David Alston never served with Kerry on a Swift Boat turn out to be false but the truth is that it is likely that Alston only served a week with Kerry. Alston is quietly dropped by the Kerry campaign. Bonus - Christmas in Cambodia gets coverage in the Wall Street Journal.
Aug. 17 - FactCheck.org researches a Bush ad claim that Kerry missed 76% of the meetings for the Senate Intelligence Committee (a committee on which Kerry sat and something on his resume that he touts as reason to vote for him). After checking the available data - FactCheck.org says that the amount of meetings missed or skipped by Kerry was probably higher than 76%. Kerry refuses to release records on his attendance at "closed" meetings
Aug. 18 - Swift Boat vets respond to a counter ad by MoveOn PAC
"We find it odd that MoveOn PAC would question the right of a group of veterans to voice an opinion on a legitimate issue-an issue first raised by John Kerry-and now the centerpiece of his campaign," said Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, U.S. Navy (Ret.), founder and chairman of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (www.swiftvets.com). "The 300-plus veterans who make up the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have every right to participate in a public debate concerning the controversy surrounding John Kerry?s military service record. We were there. We served alongside John Kerry and we know the history of his service. We will not be silenced."
Aug. 19 - Veterans from the USS Gridley (who served with Kerry on his first tour of Vietnam) come forward as not real enamored of the Senator and the words "just another goofy Ensign" enter the national consciousness.
Aug. 20 - A second ad from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is released. This ad deals with Kerry's testimony in front of Congress in which he alleges war crimes were rampant in Vietnam. The Veterans in the ad are none too happy with Kerry. The NY Post also has a Christmas in Cambodia piece.
Aug. 21 - The Washington Post profiles William Ferris (who was severely wounded in action and who watched John Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony about war crimes from his hospital bed) and other Swift Boat veterans. The article reminds the reader that Kerry has not released his medical or military records.
Aug. 22 - Bob Dole says something that probably many were thinking:
"One day he's saying that we were shooting civilians, cutting off their ears, cutting off their heads, throwing away his medals or his ribbons," Dole said. "The next day he's standing there, 'I want to be president because I'm a Vietnam veteran.
"Maybe he should apologize to all the other 2.5 million veterans who served. He wasn't the only one in Vietnam," said Dole, whose World War II wounds left him without the use of his right arm.
Dole added: "And here's, you know, a good guy, a good friend. I respect his record. But three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they're all superficial wounds. Three Purple Hearts and you're out."
The Main Stream Media handling of Kerry's Vietnam record starts to turn from kid glove coverage to real journalism with articles by Michael Barone and John Leo in US New & World Report, a column asking for answers from Kerry by Ken Tower in Investor's Business Daily
Now there were many more things that I could have added in but I think you get the idea. Whoever is running the Kerry Campaign has no clue, no strategy and no control over the message that the campaign should be getting out. They pinned their hopes on presenting Kerry as a decorated war veteran and pretty much nothing else. That strategy is coming back to haunt them in a big way.
With the Swift Boat ads doing damage to their candidates credibility - the Kerry Campaign now wants to focus on issues but the questions raised by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth remain unanswered and claims of wanting to run an issues oriented campaign ring hollow when one considers that the DNC was pretty much issue free.
posted by chris @ 9:04 AM
No Way to Run a Campaign
If it seems to you like every day something new and damaging to the Kerry Campaign pops up - it's because literally almost every day something damaging to the campaign has popped up.
Let's take a look at the month of August to illustrate how the Kerry Campaign has truly been the gang that couldn't shoot straight. (How come nobody has been fired for this epic bumbling?)
Aug. 1 - Normally a candidate gets a "bounce" in the polls immediately after his convention - not so for Kerry.
Aug. 2 - Kerry advisor says Kerry will make world safer by giving Iran nuclear fuel and hope that they use it for good. Sane people everywhere say, "Are you friggin' kidding me?" Meanwhile the Kerry campaign suffers some guilt from association after Howard Dean questions the timing of terror alerts in New York - claiming they could be politically motivated. Again, sane people everywhere ask, "Are you friggin' kidding me?"
Aug. 3 - Swift Boat Veterans for Truth explain their version of the real story of John Kerry's military history - this picture was interesting
Aug. 4 - The Kerry campaign and DNC lawyers threaten legal action against any stations that air the Swift Boat ads. Instead of addressing the allegations made by the vets - Kerry decides that threat of legal action would be better. The campaign slogan is officially amended to "Bring it on.....and we'll sue!" Meanwhile Senator Kerry announces:
I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history.
Aug. 5 - Kerry tells reporters that he would not have waited around like Bush did for 7 minutes on 9/11. He states:
"Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whispered in my ear, 'America is under attack,' I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to -- and I would have attended to it."
This claim comes back to bite him in the ass when his actual reaction to the morning of 9/11 is revealed - over 40 minutes of not being able to think or act.
Aug. 6 - Former New York Mayor - Rudy Giuliani notes that it is sad that a man running for the president seems to be getting his clues from Michael Moore and Rudy adds for good measure:
John Kerry is an indecisive candidate [with] an inconsistent position on the War on Terror, who voted against funding for our troops and who cannot give a clear answer on his position concerning the decision to remove Saddam Hussein
On the Swift Boat front - the now controversial Michael Kranish pens a piece for the Boston Globe that claims that George Elliot has recanted his criticism of John Kerry. George Elliot responds under oath saying "I said no such things."
Aug. 7 - Kerry's wife Theresa contradicts Kerry's claim that the President did not act properly on the morning of 9/11 by saying:
"I think the president behaved correctly in terms of being quiet amidst stunning news like that in a classroom of kids," she told the host of MSNBC's "Hardball With Chris Matthews" during an interview before the Democratic National Convention last month. "You know, what can you do? It takes you a couple of minutes to digest what you have just heard. And then he was . . . not in his White House and in his office with all of his people. He was in the school in Florida."
Aug. 8 - At the DNC Theresa Heinz-Kerry claimed to be active in anti-Apartheid protests but evidence suggests that she attended just a single protest.
Aug. 9 - A Reuters article notes that; "Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said on Monday he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing force against Iraq even if he had known then no weapons of mass destruction would be found." This goes over well with the Deaniac base.
Aug. 10 - The Mary Ann Knowles story about having to work through chemotherapy that Kerry used at the DNC turns out to be untrue.
Aug. 11 - The Kerry Campaign changes its story on Christmas in Cambodia. I don't think "seared into my memory" means what I think he thinks it means.
Aug. 12 - Quiet day for the Kerry Campaign. Whoever was in charge today should get a promotion.
Aug. 13 - Grumbling from the Kerry Press Corps. Oh and an article by Kathleen Antrim in the ultra liberal San Francisco Examiner leads with, "John F. Kerry's campaign for president is imploding. And he knows it."
Aug. 14 - Dave Kopel examines media bias on the Swift Boat Veterans issue.
Aug. 15 - The Christmas in Cambodia claims are examined in of all places - The Seattle Times
Aug. 16 - It is noted that the Kerry / Edwards Campaign site touts that "Kerry is an Experienced Leader in the Intelligence Field - John Kerry served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is the former Vice Chairman of the Committee" - the problem is that was actually Bob Kerrey. John Kerry was never Vice Chairman (maybe there was an attendance requirement?). The claim was later removed from the site but it is strange that Kerry doesn't even seem to know his own resume.
Reports that David Alston never served with Kerry on a Swift Boat turn out to be false but the truth is that it is likely that Alston only served a week with Kerry. Alston is quietly dropped by the Kerry campaign. Bonus - Christmas in Cambodia gets coverage in the Wall Street Journal.
Aug. 17 - FactCheck.org researches a Bush ad claim that Kerry missed 76% of the meetings for the Senate Intelligence Committee (a committee on which Kerry sat and something on his resume that he touts as reason to vote for him). After checking the available data - FactCheck.org says that the amount of meetings missed or skipped by Kerry was probably higher than 76%. Kerry refuses to release records on his attendance at "closed" meetings
Aug. 18 - Swift Boat vets respond to a counter ad by MoveOn PAC
"We find it odd that MoveOn PAC would question the right of a group of veterans to voice an opinion on a legitimate issue-an issue first raised by John Kerry-and now the centerpiece of his campaign," said Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, U.S. Navy (Ret.), founder and chairman of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (www.swiftvets.com). "The 300-plus veterans who make up the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have every right to participate in a public debate concerning the controversy surrounding John Kerry?s military service record. We were there. We served alongside John Kerry and we know the history of his service. We will not be silenced."
Aug. 19 - Veterans from the USS Gridley (who served with Kerry on his first tour of Vietnam) come forward as not real enamored of the Senator and the words "just another goofy Ensign" enter the national consciousness.
Aug. 20 - A second ad from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is released. This ad deals with Kerry's testimony in front of Congress in which he alleges war crimes were rampant in Vietnam. The Veterans in the ad are none too happy with Kerry. The NY Post also has a Christmas in Cambodia piece.
Aug. 21 - The Washington Post profiles William Ferris (who was severely wounded in action and who watched John Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony about war crimes from his hospital bed) and other Swift Boat veterans. The article reminds the reader that Kerry has not released his medical or military records.
Aug. 22 - Bob Dole says something that probably many were thinking:
"One day he's saying that we were shooting civilians, cutting off their ears, cutting off their heads, throwing away his medals or his ribbons," Dole said. "The next day he's standing there, 'I want to be president because I'm a Vietnam veteran.
"Maybe he should apologize to all the other 2.5 million veterans who served. He wasn't the only one in Vietnam," said Dole, whose World War II wounds left him without the use of his right arm.
Dole added: "And here's, you know, a good guy, a good friend. I respect his record. But three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they're all superficial wounds. Three Purple Hearts and you're out."
The Main Stream Media handling of Kerry's Vietnam record starts to turn from kid glove coverage to real journalism with articles by Michael Barone and John Leo in US New & World Report, a column asking for answers from Kerry by Ken Tower in Investor's Business Daily
Now there were many more things that I could have added in but I think you get the idea. Whoever is running the Kerry Campaign has no clue, no strategy and no control over the message that the campaign should be getting out. They pinned their hopes on presenting Kerry as a decorated war veteran and pretty much nothing else. That strategy is coming back to haunt them in a big way.
With the Swift Boat ads doing damage to their candidates credibility - the Kerry Campaign now wants to focus on issues but the questions raised by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth remain unanswered and claims of wanting to run an issues oriented campaign ring hollow when one considers that the DNC was pretty much issue free.
posted by chris @ 9:04 AM
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