posted on February 17, 2004 02:39:01 PM new
back to Kerry -
Four short months of service in Vietnam...during which time he receives three injuries that all him to use the excuse to leave his men....when he admits he was only off duty for a couple of days...and what does he do?
He joins a pro-communist group....makes accusations about the men/women still serving there...fighting for their lives...AND says his own country is the criminal.
He and Hanoi Jane made a great team.
Yea, vote for Kerry....and we'll be under A-Q's rule in short order.
posted on February 17, 2004 02:53:46 PM new
"Yea, vote for Kerry....and we'll be under A-Q's rule in short order."
Linda, impervious as you are to anything that even remotely hints at logic or common sense, if you truly believe that outlandish statement you just made it's time you headed for a little R&R. I hear the Betty Ford Clinic has recently expanded its facilities to treat the delusional...
posted on February 17, 2004 03:02:49 PM new
Don't believe a word of it. Linda refuses to back up her preposterous statements.
John Kerry volunteered for service in the Navy during the Vietnam War, where he served as skipper of a swift boat that patrolled the Mekong Delta. Lt. Kerry was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with Combat V, three Purple Hearts, the Presidential Unit Citation for Extraordinary Heroism, the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal, three Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medals, and the Combat Action Ribbon. He is a cofounder of the Vietnam Veterans of America and a life member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. In the United States Senate, he has led the fight to investigate the fate of POW/MIAs in Vietnam, treat and compensate victims of Agent Orange and study the cause of war-related illnesses in Gulf War veterans.
posted on February 17, 2004 03:21:55 PM new
taken from my link Kerry's War History:
Sen. Kerry, the "noble statesman" and "highly decorated Vietnam vet" of today, is a far cry from Kerry, the radical, hippie-like leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in the early 1970s.
Soon after Kerry, as a Navy Lieutenant (junior grade) commanding a Swift boat in Vietnam, was awarded the Silver Star, he used a loop hole in Navy regulations to leave Vietnam and his crew before completing his tour of duty.
After returing home, he quit the Navy early and changed the color of his politics to become a leader of VVAW. Kerry wasted no time organizing opposition in the United States against the efforts of his former buddies still ducking communist bullets back in Vietnam.
Kerry participated in the so-called Winter Soldier Investigation where his fellow protesters accused his fellow GIs of war crimes.
Kerry's betrayal of American prisoners of war, his blatant disrespect for the families of our missing in action, Vietnam veterans, the military, his support for communist Vietnam and his waffling over the issue of use of force in Iraq proves he is a self promoting Chameleon Senator who cannot be relied on to protect the best interests of the United States.
"who cannot be relied on to protect the best interests of the US." Boy, that's the truth...and his actions after his short 4 month stint proves that.
This nation made a sacred covenant with those it drafted and those who enlisted, but the truth is that every day in America the treatment of too many veterans is breaking that covenant. So for John Kerry, the fight continues. He will deliver the health care and prescription drugs that veterans need. He will grant full concurrent receipt to disabled veterans and fairly compensate soldiers and their families for their valiant service. For John Kerry, this is about keeping America’s promise. It is about national obligation. And it is about love of country and the help and honor we owe to those who defend it.
John Kerry
The Bush Administration chronically under-funds VA health care. There are nearly 90,000 veterans waiting for healthcare appointments. Instead of adding sufficient resources to a system desperately in need of them, President Bush has frozen whole classes out of the VA system. By the Bush Administration’s own estimate, their policies will exclude approximately 500,000 veterans from the VA healthcare system by 2005. President Bush also proposed increasing fees and co-payments in an effort to shift the burden for care onto the backs of veterans and drive an additional million veterans from the system. John Kerry will end the game of playing politics with funding for veterans health care. He will insist on mandatory funding for veterans health care. In a Kerry Administration, veterans will get the appointments they need with VA doctors and the federal government will invest the resources necessary to make sure that no veteran has an unmet health care need.
posted on February 17, 2004 03:32:19 PM new
Bush left his joke of a National Guard stint early to go to business school. Cheney had "other priorities". Rush had a boil on his ass.
You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
posted on February 17, 2004 04:33:02 PM new
Heh, Bear, you'd think that Laura's familiarity with Botox would've encouraged her husband to have a few shots himself, eh?
Neroter, my dear, not to worry! We have for you your very own subliminal message-to-kids cereal box. See the Bactrian camel on the left? It represents The Middle East. (Uh-oh, somebody at The Institute didn't do their homework! It should've been a dromedary.) See the red elephant on the right? It represents the truly communist GOP. And all those little toy soldiers marching across the bottom of the box? Well, as always, they're just playthings -- fodder for The Grand Strategies of 'children' ...
posted on February 17, 2004 04:41:23 PM new
Is Kerry a Phony?
Here's a couple of insightful sites....speaks to his willingness to go so far left -compares his voting with Ted Kennedy's - his is more left], his willingness to go so far down to get money, some for his financial backing for his campaign, his attempt to join the 'skull and crossbone' group, to get his first marriage annuled [catholic], and the one I thought was the funniest was he's a 16th cousin to President Bush
Lots of reading, but things I doubt you'll learn about Kerry from our main-stream media.
posted on February 17, 2004 04:53:39 PM new
Oh crikey, Linda, must you have another turn in the dunking booth before you'll do some serious research???
One does not 'attempt to get into' Skull & Bones; fifteen 'lucky' guys are 'tapped' by senior class Bonesmen, and those who refuse the 'tap' are never heard from again.
(But doesn't it just make you all goose-bumpy to envision George W Bush spanking the new recruits in his senior year at Yale, and branding their naked bodies with a red-hot coathanger? ) Yum yum!
posted on February 17, 2004 05:32:51 PM new
Linda, your "news story" contradicts itself:
At Yale, John Kerry was one of only 15 in his class upper-crusty enough to be invited to join Skull and Bones, as George W. Bush had done two years earlier...
When Kerry in 1986 tried privately to recruit into Skull and Bones Jacob Weisberg, now Slate.com editor, wrote the Boston Herald’s Andrew Miga, “Weisberg declined, pointedly asking Kerry how he squared his liberalism with membership in such an elitist club that refused to admit women. ‘Kerry got sort of flustered….’”
******
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
John Kerry believes that we need to treat our troops and their families with respect, dignity, and fairness in what they are paid, where they live, and where their children go to school. We need to make sure our troops are paid enough so that we address problems of retention and enlistment – and we should improve active duty housing for soldiers and their families. And as someone who has helped lead the fight on Gulf War Illness, John Kerry knows we have to be much more aggressive on health screenings for troops. They are required by law and they need to be given. John Kerry will also bolster the Family Assistance Centers and Programs on every military base so that they can provide information and services to families of deployed, wounded, and killed service members.
John Kerry and Senator John McCain chaired the country's most thorough investigation into the fate of POW/MIAs in Southeast Asia. Kerry has personally pressed Vietnamese officials to cooperate in ongoing efforts to get answers for families. And he also sponsored POW/MIA Recognition Day. Kerry's Senate committee pressed for unparalleled declassification of documents, increased excavation work in Vietnam, and gathering of testimony from 144 witnesses. According to the Boston Globe, "the effort produced real answers for the some 120 families who had lived for decades without knowing whether a loved one was still alive in Southeast Asia."
posted on February 17, 2004 06:08:15 PM newJohn Kerry and Senator John McCain chaired the country's most thorough investigation into the fate of POW/MIAs in Southeast Asia. Kerry has personally pressed Vietnamese officials to cooperate in ongoing efforts to get answers for families. And he also sponsored POW/MIA Recognition Day.
Obviously you didn't read the vietnam vets against kerry sites...because if you had you would have seen a much different story they tell about this POW/MIA issue, they feel he sold them out. Not that I'd expect that to matter to you.
posted on February 17, 2004 06:31:13 PM new
McCain and Kerry have worked for several years on the POW issue with success. Post whatever you are referring to.
George Bush Has Overstretched the U.S. Military. The Bush administration has compensated by using the National Guard and Reserve and more than 154,000 are on active duty. Reservists are overburdened and many may leave the military in large numbers because they can no longer make military service compatible with their lives.
John Kerry Will Reduce the Strain on the Military. He has called for a temporary increase of about 40,000 active-duty Army troops. This increase would be temporary but likely last the remainder of the decade. About 20,000 of the troops would be in such specialties as military police and civil affairs which are currently predominantly found in the reserves. The other 20,000 would be combat troops. Kerry’s proposal will be budget neutral because he will streamline some large weapons programs, putting more emphasis on electronics and advanced sensors and munitions and by reducing the total amount of money spent on missile defense.
posted on February 17, 2004 07:02:55 PM new
"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many and what day it's going to happen? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
Barbara Bush on March 18, 2003, in an interview with Diane Sawyer
You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
By Edward Walsh
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 3, 2004; Page A01
In November 2000, the twilight of his presidency, Bill Clinton traveled to Vietnam, a place that he and thousands of other young Americans tried to avoid in the 1960s. He spoke at the Vietnam National University of Hanoi, and among those in the audience that he singled out for recognition was a tall man from New England who had been to Vietnam many times before.
His name was John F. Kerry, and he had played a key role in bringing about the first visit to Vietnam by an American president since Richard M. Nixon briefly met with U.S. troops there in 1969.
The Vietnam War was the defining event in Kerry's life, as it was for so many others of his generation. Today, as the Massachusetts senator seeks the Democratic presidential nomination, the war provides a critical underpinning for his candidacy. Kerry, a decorated combat veteran, would not easily be portrayed by President Bush and the Republicans as soft on national security issues.
But Kerry's time as a combatant, and his equally well-known role as a leader of the veterans who returned from Vietnam and opposed the war, account for only part of his personal odyssey involving the war and its aftermath that symbolically culminated in Clinton's visit to Hanoi. More than any other member of Congress, it was Kerry, with his ally Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who cleared the way for normal diplomatic relations between the United States and Vietnam, beginning the process of healing the deep wounds of war.
They did so largely out of the limelight, in the tedious and grinding work of a special Senate committee that was appointed to investigate the fates of Americans still missing from the war and the rumors that some of them were alive and being held captive in Southeast Asia. When the committee completed its work, Kerry, the chairman, had produced a unanimous, 585-page report that declared: "There is, at this time, no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia."
McCain was the lightning rod for critics of the committee's more than yearlong search for the truth, but it was Kerry who held the enterprise together. A lawyer by training, he used his skills to mediate vast differences of opinion on an emotional topic within the committee and with many of those who appeared before it. According to those who watched the process, he was invariably calm, evenhanded and, above all, persistent.
"Kerry was always there saying, 'Hey, everybody calm down,' " said Mark Salter, McCain's chief of staff. "He kept it going. It should have imploded."
The committee's report did not eliminate the explosive POW/MIA issue, but it did much to defuse it and lift the cloud that had been hanging over the country since the fall of Saigon in 1973. A little more than a year after the report was issued in 1993, Clinton ended the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam; the next year, the United States established formal diplomatic relations with the Vietnamese. Both steps were preceded by passage of Senate resolutions, co-sponsored by Kerry and McCain, urging the actions.
Kerry was only one of many who eased the country down the long road to reconciliation with a once-bitter enemy, but other participants in the process describe his role as "pivotal" and that of "the catalyst."
"John, on behalf of this nation, brought us back to Vietnam with our heads held high," said former senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), who lost part of a leg and was awarded the Medal of Honor as a Navy Seal in Vietnam. "I think only John could have done it."
Shadow on the Trail
The Vietnam War shadows Kerry on the campaign trail. Part of this is by design. He does not dwell on it, but he almost always mentions the war in his speeches as a way to remind his listeners of who he once was: Lt. John F. Kerry, USN, commander of one of the "swift boats" that patrolled Vietnam's interior waters, frequently clashing with enemy forces.
There are often Vietnam veterans in Kerry's audiences, and they seek him out to share their experiences. Jim Cisco, 60, an Air Force veteran who was stationed in the Mekong Delta, recently told Kerry in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, how he and other airmen at the base would watch the heavily armed patrol boats careering along the Mekong River.
"We thought, damn, these guys are nuts," Cisco said.
"We were," Kerry replied, "and we thought [our superiors] were nuts for making us do it."
Kerry was awarded a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts in Vietnam. But it was not his bravery in battle that finally distinguished him; many others, whether recognized or not, were just as brave.
What made Kerry stand out was that he did not try to forget about the war, put Vietnam behind him and get on with his life. He became a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, took part in protests and testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Elected to the Senate in 1984, he returned to Vietnam in May 1991. Frances Zwenig, his chief of staff at the time and later the staff director of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, recalled that even before returning to Washington, Kerry had instructed her to try to organize another trip to Vietnam by the leaders of American veterans organizations.
"This was totally his idea, and it was the right idea," Zwenig said. "If these people could see the need for going forward, that was exactly what we needed politically."
Bob Wallace, now executive director of the Veterans of Foreign Wars' Washington office, was among the veterans who returned to Vietnam in July 1991, when the United States was allowed to open a U.S. office for POW/MIA affairs in Hanoi.
"It came about because of John Kerry," Wallace said. "We had breakfast, and he said that the Vietnamese would welcome a trip from the veterans organizations. We firmly believed that if we wanted to make our point about the POWs and MIAs, we had to do it face to face. He was the catalyst."
Both countries were cautiously seeking a better relationship. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush announced a "road map" to normalization, inviting the Vietnamese to take a series of steps and promising a positive U.S. response.
The critical hurdle was the more than 2,200 Americans who were unaccounted for from the Vietnam War era. The families of the missing yearned for answers and had organized themselves into a politically potent force. Since the war ended, some had come to believe that Americans had been left behind in Southeast Asia and were alive. A cottage industry grew up around the issue, encouraging the darkest conspiracy theories about a coverup of their fate.
The issue was further inflamed in the early 1990s by the publication of a photograph purporting to show three such Americans being held in Southeast Asia. (The photograph was later shown to be a fake.) The Senate responded by passing a resolution, sponsored by Sen. Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.), that created the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. Its task was to try to get to the truth.
The Vietnam veterans who were in the Senate at the time were expected to serve on the committee, and they did -- reluctantly. It was seen as a time-consuming and thankless task, certain to be controversial and probably inconclusive, a distraction with no political upside. "It was a no-win situation," McCain said.
Kerry's staff unanimously urged him to reject the chairmanship, but he accepted it. "I thought as a Vietnam veteran that I had an obligation to my fellow Vietnam veterans and to all veterans to get the answers," he said.
The committee's hearings were contentious. Years of uncertainty had left relatives of the missing with raw emotions, and some of them lashed out.
"All of us who were veterans were accused of being murderers, being traitors," Kerrey said. "It got very, very ugly. People treated John McCain worst because he had been a POW and John Kerry the second-worst because he was chairman of the committee."
McCain, a Navy pilot who spent more than five years in Vietnamese POW camps, recalled that when he came under attack during the hearings, Kerry would frequently "put a restraining hand on my arm" in a silent show of support. "I became very grateful that he did," McCain said.
Anthony Lake, who was Clinton's first national security adviser, said the missing from the Vietnam War constitute "a difficult and emotional issue because, even though there are huge numbers of Americans missing and unaccounted for from World War I, World War II and the Korean War, we hadn't lost those wars. The issue of the return of the remains to their families is very important psychologically, not just to the families but as part of a sense of closure, of being able to put it behind us. If the families couldn't have that closure, it's hard to argue that the nation would."
There were divisions within the committee as well. Smith, sponsor of the resolution that created the panel, tended to side with those who were most distrustful of the government's handling of the POW/MIA issue. "Smith had been fed a lot of strange and unusual information by strange and unusual people," said retired Army Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as liaison to the Vietnamese on the POW/MIA issue in the 1980s.
Smith clashed frequently with the volatile McCain; it fell to Kerry to mediate their sharply different points of view. "Smith came in pretty much convinced that there were still a large number of Americans being held captive in Vietnam," McCain said. "That's why John did such a miraculous job in getting every member of the committee to sign off on the phrase that said there is no compelling evidence that there are [captive] Americans alive in Southeast Asia. Our hearings were so exhaustive and thorough that you couldn't arrive at any other conclusion."
The committee's final report was hammered out in Kerry's conference room during negotiations that stretched over days. Salter, McCain's chief of staff, said it took "an unbelievably skillful, herculean effort" by Kerry to produce the unanimous result.
Not everyone was satisfied with the outcome. Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, said the committee never focused on the key question, which, she said, was the degree to which Vietnam was cooperating with American authorities on the issue and whether it could do more. "That is still the question," she said. The report "was done for conscious reasons. They had an agenda to normalize political relations with Vietnam."
Smith, who now sells real estate in Florida, signed the report but later tried to distance himself from some of its conclusions. "I didn't believe the Vietnamese were totally forthcoming with us. I still don't think they have been completely forthcoming," he said.
In the end, the select committee under Kerry's leadership turned out to be "a springboard to normalization," Smith said. That is not at all what he had in mind when he started the endeavor, he said.
One Last Obstacle
The select committee issued its report on Jan. 13, 1993, one week before Clinton took office. By then Kerry and McCain, initially distant when McCain entered the Senate in 1987, had forged a strong friendship. Together, they set out to move the new administration the next steps along the road to normalization.
Kerry said he began to think about that subject in the late 1980s. He traveled to the Far East, saw the emergence of China, began to think about his own country's long-term interests in the region.
"I felt that it was important to the United States, in terms of the region and our own security interests and our long-term interests, to begin to get over the past, the war relationship," he said.
Kerry said he also realized that some resolution of the POW/MIA issue was necessary before normal relations with Vietnam could even be considered.
"I knew it was a step in moving in that direction," he said. "So did others [on the select committee] who resisted. . . . It happened to be a step that was critical, but it also absolutely had to be resolved on its own merits. You couldn't live as a country with people who had serious evidence that you may have left some soldiers behind and you didn't care."
After Kerry's committee completed its work, one more political obstacle remained: the newly elected president and his history as an opponent of the Vietnam War who had avoided military service during the conflict.
"That's what the internal debate was about: Can the draft dodger do this or not?" Salter said. "That's what was going on in the White House, with some of the political people saying, 'Where's the upside in doing this?' "
Winston Lord, who was then assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs and a strong advocate for normalization, said, "The president and the White House staff were always quite nervous about this issue because of the president not serving in Vietnam. He and his aides were always concerned about attacks on him."
Lake, the national security adviser, agreed that the Clinton White House approached the normalization issue cautiously, but he said this was not only because of political concerns.
"There were good reasons to pursue [normalization], but there were also good reasons to pursue it carefully," Lake said. "Not just for political reasons, but also because, if in the process of doing it, you blew it up here at home, did it in the face of very strong objections from veterans groups or whatever, you would have precisely the wrong effect in terms of putting [the war] behind us. So you had to do it right, and there McCain and Kerry were pivotal."
Kerry and McCain were said at the time to be providing "political cover" for Clinton. On May 23, 1995, they went to the White House and met with Clinton in the Oval Office. McCain told Clinton it did not matter to him anymore who was for or against the war. Kerry, the lawyer, summarized the reasons why it was in the interests of the United States to normalize relations with Vietnam.
Six weeks later, Clinton took that step.
In his speech at the University of Hanoi, Clinton referred to Kerry and other American veterans who had returned to Vietnam. He said they had done so "to honor those who fought without refighting the battles; to remember our history, but not to perpetuate it; to give young people like you in both of our countries the chance to live in your tomorrows, not in our yesterdays."
Asked recently how he would explain to Americans who were born after the war why the path to normalization was important, Kerry said, "It was the true making of peace. It really was the making of peace. There wasn't peace until that. There was a great scar that was still open in America, a wound that was open."
Staff researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
posted on February 17, 2004 08:20:27 PM new
Don't hold your breath waiting for others to see the parallel in normalizing relations with post-war Japan, Helen, and how that effort strengthened both the U.S. and Japan. That's wayyyyy too complex for the VendioFundies...
posted on February 17, 2004 08:38:19 PM new
bunni - I responded to you earlier....but it either got lost or has ended up on another thread.
I don't see the contradiction you're speaking of. Both President Bush and Kerry are reported to be members of the club.
Kerry tried to recruit the Salon editor and he challenged Kerry on the fact no women were allowed. Which Kerry supposedly later changed.
Please point out to me where you see the contradiction.
OR if it's the issue with the 1 n 15....there are 15 chosen each year, usually in the junior year. But I believe it said it was 1986 when Kerry tried to recruit the editor?
Re-elect President Bush!!
[ edited by Linda_K on Feb 17, 2004 08:42 PM ]
[ edited by Bear1949 on Feb 17, 2004 04:19 PM ]
