posted on March 10, 2004 11:09:59 AM new
It's all scare tactics in an election year. The democrats are famous for trying to scare our elderly, EVERY ELECTION YEAR.
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From USAToday -
Social Security cuts: Real news or hype?
WASHINGTON — When does no news become news? When the media decide it is news.
All they have to do is make a big deal of something and it becomes news. Ignore it or play it down and it's nothing. It is that simple.
The most recent example of no news becoming news is the breathless reporting this past week that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called for cutting Social Security benefits.
It mattered little that Greenspan had issued similar recommendations in the past.
It mattered little that Greenspan, who has no legislative power, was only laying out the kinds of choices that may or may not be made to come to grips with greater demand for Social Security benefits in the next few decades and fewer people working to pay for them.
It mattered little that no one, not even Greenspan, was talking about cutting benefits for people retired or nearing retirement.
And it mattered little that such choices, which must be made by Congress and signed by the president, are unlikely to be made any time soon.
The major news outlets decided to make a big deal out of it in an election year, and that's what it became.
"Fed chief urges cut in Social Security," said the front-page headline in Thursday's Washington Post.
"To trim deficit, Greenspan urges Social Security, Medicare cuts," said a page one story in The New York Times.
The reports set off panic among senior citizens across the country as retirees whose main income is their monthly Social Security check saw that check shrinking in the face of rising prices and higher drug costs.
Local TV reporters rushed off to interview elderly citizens who expressed great consternation and outright fear about their monthly payments being reduced.
Democrats running for president and looking for senior citizen votes fanned the fears into flames by charging that President Bush was the evildoer behind Greenspan's words.
"The right way to cut the Bush deficit is to roll back George Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy and create jobs," said the likely Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.
Campaigning Wednesday in Ohio, he solemnly vowed, "No matter what was said in Washington, D.C., today, the wrong way is to cut Social Security benefits."
All this forced Bush to respond. Minutes after Greenspan made his remarks Wednesday at a House Budget Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, reporters at the White House got word of them and put the question to the president during a photo session after a meeting with Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili.
Caught unaware, Bush replied, "I haven't talked to (Greenspan) or read his comments. ... My position on Social Security benefits is this: Those benefits should not be changed for people at or near retirement."
He went on to say he continues to back his proposal to allow younger workers to put part of their Social Security payroll taxes into personal savings accounts to yield retirement benefits equal to or greater than Social Security, if they so choose.
But little media reporting focused on that. One thing came through: Social Security benefits might be cut.
Upon actually reading what Greenspan said, it was clear that he was just urging Congress to find ways to come to grips with the reality of more retirees down the road and less money to pay for them.
He laid out two possible paths: Cut benefits or raise taxes. And he seemed more against the latter than the former.
Again, Greenspan is not an elected official. He has little sway over votes in Congress on an issue as politically charged as Social Security. He was just pointing out the reality.
But the media were more interested in creating fantasy.
Nobody's Social Security is going to be cut any time soon, regardless of what the media or politicians say. Bank on it.
Re-elect President Bush!!
[ edited by Linda_K on Mar 10, 2004 11:13 AM ]
posted on March 11, 2004 09:25:41 AM new
Greenspan recommended either a cut in benefits or raising the retirement age or both.
And Bush was a deserter too. There has been NOTHING offered by Bush that has shown anything but he wasn't on duty when he should have been during a time of war.
Kerry could have been a military office jockey in the rear in Vietnam and he STILL would have been braver than chicken George, "The War President". LOL !!
George Bush, steady leadership when it is other people doing the fighting and getting shot at.
George Bush, steady leadership when it is other people losing their jobs.
George Bush, steady leadership when it is helping the wealthy and destroying the middle class.
Yup, he's sure to be elected this time around. LMAO !!!
He couldn't even beat Gore, and now that he has just about wrecked the country he's going to beat Kerry.
posted on March 11, 2004 02:05:35 PM new
So you are saying that what Greenspan says is pretty much useless and meaningless?
Why pray then is it given so much attention and indeed often moves the market.
Are all these wall street wizards hoodwinked into thinking he's something he's not/
posted on March 13, 2004 08:44:24 PM new"As for John Kerry...it was reported a few days ago the he tried very hard to get out of going to Vietnam. Just wasn't smart enough I guess."
gtootie,
You are right about Carl Rove's name but the comment above about Kerry is simply wrong. You will hear many such unreliable remarks and rumors about Kerry during this campaign.
posted on March 13, 2004 08:57:25 PM new
Briefly, Kerry enlisted in the Navy in February 1966 months before he graduated from Yale. In December 1967 Ensign Kerry was assigned to the frigate U.S.S. Gridley, after five months of service in the Pacific, with a brief stop in Vietnam, he returned to the United States and underwent training to command a Swift boat, a small craft deployed in Vietnam's rivers. In June 1968 Kerry was promoted to lieutenant and by the end of that year he was back in Vietnam where he commanded over time, two Swift boats.
For his service in Vietnam, he was awarded the Bronze Star and the Navy's Silver Star for gallantry in action and three purple hearts.
posted on March 13, 2004 09:33:01 PM new
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/07/wkerr07.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/03/07/ixnewstop.html
Senator John Kerry, the presumed Democratic presidential candidate who is trading on his Vietnam war record to campaign against President George W Bush, tried to defer his military service for a year, according to a newly rediscovered article in a Harvard University newspaper.
He wrote to his local recruitment board seeking permission to spend a further 12 months studying in Paris, after completing his degree course at Yale University in the mid-1960s.
The revelation appears to undercut Sen Kerry's carefully-cultivated image as a man who willingly served his country in a dangerous war - in supposed contrast to President Bush, who served in the Texas National Guard and thus avoided being sent to Vietnam.
The Harvard Crimson newspaper followed a youthful Mr Kerry in Boston as he campaigned for Congress for the first time in 1970. In the course of a lengthy article, "John Kerry: A Navy Dove Runs for Congress", published on February 18, the paper reported: "When he approached his draft board for permission to study for a year in Paris, the draft board refused and Kerry decided to enlist in the Navy."
Samuel Goldhaber, the article's author who is now a cardiologist attached to the Harvard School of Medicine, spent 11 hours trailing Mr Kerry and still remembers that the subject of the Paris deferment came up during long conversations about Vietnam.
"I stand by my story," he told The Telegraph. "It was a long time ago, and I was 19 at the time, so it is hard to remember every detail. But I do know this: at no point did Kerry contact either me or the Crimson to dispute anything I had written."
Sen Kerry's campaign headquarters in Washington refused an opportunity to deny the report. Despite repeated telephone calls from The Telegraph, a spokesman refused to comment. Another Democrat official said merely: "In Vietnam, John Kerry proved his patriotism beyond question. Everyone knows that."
A senior Republican strategist, who asked not to be named, said: "I've not heard this before. This undercuts Kerry's complaints about Bush and it continues to pose questions as to his credibility among ordinary Vietnam veterans."
He said it would fuel concerns over the way Sen Kerry made a name for himself by leading anti-war protests in Washington and Boston in the late 1960s and early 1970s after he had completed his service in the US Navy, even while his former comrades continued to fight and die.
A newly-published biography of Sen Kerry by Douglas Brinkley, A Tour of Duty, makes no mention of the requested deferment or planned year in Paris. At the time, it was still unclear just how long America would remain in Vietnam, and it might have seemed that a year's deferral of service could render enlistment unnecessary.
According to the Democratic Party's version of Sen Kerry's military history, he joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps at Harvard through eagerness to do his duty, and sailed with the Navy for combat as soon as he graduated in 1966.
Sen Kerry won a gallantry medal for his service as a gunboat captain on the Mekong Delta, and was honorably discharged with three "purple heart" medals after sustaining three wounds. He has consistently presented himself as a leader who argued against the war only after fulfilling his duty in the field. Supporters argue that his war record makes him a more trustworthy leader than President Bush, who served sporadically in the National Guard at home.
"This means that Kerry didn't jump into all that heroic service until he was pushed, and it is a very nice piece of information," said Lucianne Goldberg, a prominent Republican campaigner.
Republican strategists for President Bush were already investigating Sen Kerry's record of three wounds sustained in Vietnam. "We find that he had only one day off sick - with three wounds? What exactly were these wounds?" she asked.
Mr Goldhaber recalled that, during a day spent with Sen Kerry and one assistant during his congressional campaign, he had described his involvement, service and decision to oppose the war in great detail.
"I am not at all surprised that he wants to be president, because he exuded ambition from the word go," said Dr Goldhaber. "At the time, the idea that he tried to persuade the draft board to let him spend a year in Paris was just a detail."
A spokesman for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign declined to comment.
posted on March 13, 2004 09:52:14 PM new
"According to the Democratic Party's version of Sen Kerry's military history, he joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps at Harvard through eagerness to do his duty, and sailed with the Navy for combat as soon as he graduated in 1966."
So, we have two conflicting stories. I have just finished reading a book by historian Douglas Brinkley, director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies and professor of history at the University of New Orleans. He does not mention such information.
The story that you posted could be a made up fatasy such as the lover that Kerry was accused of having. It's a shame that the Bush people have to resort to such dirty politics. But then they can't discuss the issues, can they? And they can't discuss Bush's less than stellar performance in the National Guard, can they?
posted on March 13, 2004 10:03:10 PM new
I really don't care if he was reluctant to go or if he was chomping at the bit to get to Vietnam. The fact is, he went. He did his duty, and came home. He didn't get a cushy Guard post. He didn't disappear for months at a time. He put in his time. As for his attitude for the war when he came home, it was shared by many, many other veterans. He comes from a wealthy background, the same as Bush, but didn't try to hide behind his daddy's coat tails.
******
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on March 13, 2004 10:11:31 PM new
Oh now this IS funny.
So, we have two conflicting stories
Well...hey...there's an easy way to clear this up. I think the Republicans should DEMAND kerry's military records. They should also DEMAND his FBI files be opened so we can better look into his anti-American actions which many Vietnam soldiers felt put their lives in jeopardy too.
After all....the dems fought to get Bush's dental records released. Fair's fair.
All it would take is kerry's signature on the release forms.
Come on Bush Administration don't go soft on us now. Return the goodwill you've been given all these past few months. Ask that those records be made public.
I know all about the papers in England, gtootie. especially the Telegraph. Maybe this revelation will hit the major media here tomorrow.... but don't hold your breath.
posted on March 13, 2004 10:23:30 PM new
Helen, I heard it on FOX, CNN and MSNBC. Maybe you weren't listening for the negatives about the Senator.
This is from an article that appeared in The Boston Globe. That's in America.
Heroism, and growing concern about war
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, 6/16/2003
Along with Kerry's unquestionable and repeated bravery, he also took an action that has received far less notice: He requested and was granted a transfer out of Vietnam six months before his combat tour was slated to end on the grounds that he had earned three Purple Hearts. None of his wounds was disabling; he said one cost him two days of service and the other two did not lead to any absence.
Futher down in the artible we find this:
Kerry served two tours. For a relatively uneventful six months, from December 1967 to June 1968, he served in the electrical department aboard the USS Gridley, a guided-missile frigate that supported aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin and was far removed from combat.
"I didn't have any real feel for what the heck was going on [in the war]," Kerry has recalled. His ship returned to its Long Beach, Calif., port on June 6, 1968, the day that Robert F. Kennedy died from a gunshot wound he received on the previous night at a Los Angeles hotel. The antiwar protests were growing. But within five months Kerry was heading back to Vietnam, seeking to fulfill his officer commitment despite his growing misgivings about the war.
Kerry initially hoped to continue his service at a relatively safe distance from most fighting, securing an assignment as "swift boat" skipper. While the 50-foot swift boats cruised the Vietnamese coast a little closer to the action than the Gridley had come, they were still considered relatively safe.
"I didn't really want to get involved in the war," Kerry said in a little-noticed contribution to a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing."
posted on March 13, 2004 10:28:07 PM new
Personally I'm sick and tired of the entire issue. I don't judge my leaders based on how they ended up in the military nearly 40 years ago. It's all a bunch or crap and mire that is irrelevant.
Where do the candidates stand on the actual issues facing us today. What are their platforms, are they in our best interest and are they obtainable. That's what I care about. For all I care they could have both been homosexual nudists smoking pot and juggling vials of crack on the street of Paris in their early 20's. Everyone is so obesssed with slinging mud they are forgetting that this not about voting for the most virtuos man. This is supposed to be about the plan.
yah yeah yeah... call me idealistic but all of these personality attacks are making me understand why so many that I know don't get into politics.
~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~
If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
Claim: John Kerry's Vietnam War service medals (a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts) were earned under "fishy" circumstances.
Status: False.
...Origins: In
Vietnam, Lieutenant John Kerry served aboard 50-foot aluminum boats known as PCFs (from "patrol craft fast" or "Swift boats" (supposedly an acronym for "Shallow Water Inshore Fast Tactical Craft". Despite the implications contained in the piece quoted above ("that duty wasn't the worst you could draw", Swift boat duty was plenty dangerous:
. . . two weeks after [Kerry] arrived in Vietnam, the swift boat mission changed — and Kerry went from having one of the safest assignments in the escalating conflict to one of the most dangerous. Under the newly launched Operation SEALORD, swift boats were charged with patrolling the narrow waterways of the Mekong Delta to draw fire and smoke out the enemy. Cruising inlets and coves and canals, swift boats were especially vulnerable targets.
Originally designed to ferry oil workers to ocean rigs, swift boats offered flimsy protection. Because bullets could easily penetrate the hull, sailors hung flak jackets over the sides. The boat's loud engine invited ambushes. Speed was its saving grace — but that wasn't always an option in narrow, heavily mined canals.
The swift boat crew typically consisted of a college-educated skipper, such as Kerry, and five blue-collar sailors averaging 19 years old. The most vulnerable sailor sat in the "tub" — a squat nest that rose above the pilot house — and operated a pair of .50-caliber machine guns. Another gunner was in the rear. Kerry's mission was to wait until hidden Viet Cong guerrillas started shooting, then order his men to return fire.
It was not at all unusual that a Swift boat crew member might be wounded more than once in a relatively short period of time, or that injuries meriting the award of a Purple Heart might not be serious enough to require time off from duty. According to a Boston Globe overview of John Kerry's Vietnam experience:
Under [Navy Admiral Elmo] Zumwalt's command, swift boats would aggressively engage the enemy. Zumwalt, who died in 2000, calculated in his autobiography that these men under his command had a 75 percent chance of being killed or wounded during a typical year.
"There were an awful lot of Purple Hearts — from shrapnel, some of those might have been M-40 grenades," said George Elliott, Kerry's commanding officer. "The Purple Hearts were coming down in boxes. Kerry, he had three Purple Hearts. None of them took him off duty. Not to belittle it, that was more the rule than the exception."
And according to Douglas Brinkley's history of John Kerry and the Vietnam War:
As generally understood, the Purple Heart is given to any U.S. citizen wounded in wartime service to the nation. Giving out Purple Hearts increased as the United States started sending Swifts up rivers. Sailors — no longer safe on aircraft carriers or battleships in the Gulf of Tonkin — were starting to bleed, a lot.
John Kerry was wounded in his first significant combat action, when he volunteered for a special mission on 2 December 1968:
"It was a half-assed action that hardly qualfied as combat, but it was my first, and that made it very exciting," [Kerry said]. "Three of us, two enlisted men and myself, had stayed up all night in a Boston Whaler [a foam-filled-fiberglass boat] patrolling the shore off a Viet Cong-infested peninsula north of Cam Ranh . . . Most of the night had been spent being scared shitless by fisherman whom we would suddenly creep up on in the darkness. Once, one of the sailors was so startled by two men who surprised us as we came around a corner ten yards from the shore that he actually pulled the trigger on his machine gun. Fortunately for the two men, he had forgotten to switch off the safety . . ."
As it turned out, the two men really were just a pair of innocent fisherman who didn't know where one zone began and the other ended. Their papers were perfectly in order, if their night's fishing over. The fear was that they were VC. Allowing them to continue might have compromised the mission. For the next four hours Kerry's Boston Whaler, using paddles, brought boatloads of fisherman they found in sampans, all operating in a curfew zone, back to the Swift. It was tiring work. "We deposited them with the Swift boat that remained out in the deep water to give us cover," Kerry continued. "Then, very early in the morning, around 2:00 or 3:00, while it was still dark, we proceeded up the tiny inlet between the island and the peninsula to the point designated as our objective. The jungle closed in on us on both sides. It was scary as hell. You could hear yourself breathing. We were almost touching the shore. Suddenly, through the magnified moonlight of the infrared 'starlight scope,' I watched, mesmerized, as a group of sampans glided in toward the shore. We had been briefed that this was a favorite crossing area for VC trafficking contraband."
With its motor turned off, Kerry paddled the Boston Whaler out of the inlet into the beginning of the bay. Simultaneously the Vietnamese pulled their sampans up onto the beach and began to unload something; he couldn't tell what, so he decided to illuminate the proceedings with a flare. The entire sky seemed to explode into daylight. The men from the sampans bolted erect, stiff with shock for only an instant before they sprang for cover like a herd of panicked gazelles Kerry had once seen on TV's Wild Kingdom. "We opened fire," he went on. "The light from the flares started to fade, the air was full of explosions. My M-16 jammed, and as I bent down in the boat to grab another gun, a stinging piece of heat socked into my arm and just seemed to burn like hell. By this time one of the sailors had started the engine and we ran by the beach, strafing it. Then it was quiet.
"We stayed quiet and low because we did not want to illuminate ourselves at that point," Kerry explained. "In the dead of night, without any knowledge of what kind of force was there, we were not all about to go crawling on the beach to get our asses shot off. We were unprotected; we didn't have ammunition, we didn't have cover, we just weren't prepared for that . . . So we first shot the sampans so that they were destroyed and whatever was in them was destroyed." Then their cover boat warned of a possible VC ambush in the small channel they had to exit through, and Kerry and company departed the area.
The "stinging piece of heat" Kerry felt in his arm had been caused by a piece of shrapnel, a wound for which he was awarded a Purple Heart. The injury was not serious — Brinkley notes that Kerry went on a regular Swift boat patrol the next day with a bandage on his arm, and the Boston Globe quoted William Schachte, who oversaw the mission and went on to become a rear admiral, as recalling that "It was not a very serious wound at all."
Kerry earned his second Purple Heart while returning from a PCF mission up the Bo De River on 20 February 1969:
One of the mission's support helicopters had been hit by small-arms fire during the trip up the Bo De and the rest had returned with it to their base to refuel and get the damage inspected. While there the pilots found that they wouldn't be able to return to the Swifts for several more hours. "We therefore had a choice: to wait for what was not a confirmed return by the helos [and] give any snipers more time to set up an ambush for our exit or we could take a chance and exit immediately without any cover," Kerry recorded in his notebook. "We chose the latter."
Just as they moved out onto the Cua Lon, at a junction known for unfriendliness in the past, kaboom! PCF-94 had taken a rocket-propelled grenade round off the port side, fired at them from the far left bank. Kerry felt a piece of hot shrapnel bore into his left leg. With blood running down the deck, the Swift managed to make an otherwise uneventful exit into the Gulf of Thailand, where they rendezvoused with a Coast Guard cutter. The injury Kerry suffered in that action earned his his second Purple Heart.
Brinkley noted that, as in the previous case, "Kerry's wound was not serious enough to require time off from duty."
Kerry earned his Silver Star on 28 February 1969, when he beached his craft and jumped off it with an M-16 rifle in hand to chase and shoot a guerrilla who was running into position to launch a B-40 rocket at Kerry's boat. Contrary to the account quoted above, Kerry did not shoot a "Charlie" who had "fired at the boat and missed," whose "rocket launcher was empty," and who was "already dead or dying" after being "knocked down with a .50 caliber round." Kerry's boat had been hit by a rocket fired by someone else — the guerrilla in question was still armed with a live B-40 and had only been clipped in the leg; when the guerrilla got up to run, Kerry assumed he was getting into position to launch a rocket and shot him:
On Feb. 28, 1969, Kerry's boat received word that a swift boat was being ambushed. As Kerry raced to the scene, his boat became another target, as a Viet Cong B-40 rocket blast shattered a window. Kerry could have ordered his crew to hit the enemy and run. But the skipper had a more aggressive reaction in mind. Beach the boat, Kerry ordered, and the craft's bow was quickly rammed upon the shoreline. Out of the bush appeared a teenager in a loin cloth, clutching a grenade launcher.
An enemy was just feet away, holding a weapon with enough firepower to blow up the boat. Kerry's forward gunner, [Tommy] Belodeau, shot and clipped the Viet Cong in the leg. Then Belodeau's gun jammed, according to other crewmates (Belodeau died in 1997). [Michael] Medeiros tried to fire at the Viet Cong, but he couldn't get a shot off.
In an interview, Kerry added a chilling detail.
"This guy could have dispatched us in a second, but for . . . I'll never be able to explain, we were literally face to face, he with his B-40 rocket and us in our boat, and he didn't pull the trigger. I would not be here today talking to you if he had," Kerry recalled. "And Tommy clipped him, and he started going [down.] I thought it was over."
Instead, the guerrilla got up and started running. "We've got to get him, make sure he doesn't get behind the hut, and then we're in trouble," Kerry recalled.
So Kerry shot and killed the guerrilla. "I don't have a second's question about that, nor does anybody who was with me," he said. "He was running away with a live B-40, and, I thought, poised to turn around and fire it." Asked whether that meant Kerry shot the guerrilla in the back, Kerry said, "No, absolutely not. He was hurt, other guys were shooting from back, side, back. There is no, there is not a scintilla of question in any person's mind who was there [that] this guy was dangerous, he was a combatant, he had an armed weapon."
Another member of the crew confirmed Kerry's account for the Boston Globe and expressed no doubt that Kerry's action had saved both the boat and its crew:
The crewman with the best view of the action was Frederic Short, the man in the tub operating the twin guns. Short had not talked to Kerry for 34 years, until after he was recently contacted by a Globe reporter. Kerry said he had "totally forgotten" Short was on board that day.
Short had joined Kerry's crew just two weeks earlier, as a last-minute replacement, and he was as green as the Arkansas grass of his home. He said he didn't realize that he should have carried an M-16 rifle, figuring the tub's machine guns would be enough. But as Kerry stood face to face with the guerrilla carrying the rocket, Short realized his predicament. With the boat beached and the bow tilted up, a guard rail prevented him from taking aim at the enemy. For a terrifying moment, the guerrilla looked straight at Short with the rocket.
Short believes the guerrilla didn't fire because he was too close and needed to be a suitable distance to hit the boat squarely and avoid ricochet debris. Short tried to protect his skipper.
"I laid in fire with the twin .50s, and he got behind a hootch," recalled Short. "I laid 50 rounds in there, and Mr. Kerry went in. Rounds were coming everywhere. We were getting fire from both sides of the river. It was a canal. We were receiving fire from the opposite bank, also, and there was no way I could bring my guns to bear on that."
Short said there is "no doubt" that Kerry saved the boat and crew. "That was a him-or-us thing, that was a loaded weapon with a shape charge on it . . . It could pierce a tank. I wouldn't have been here talking to you. I probably prayed more up that creek than a Southern Baptist church does in a month."
Charles Gibson, who served on Kerry's boat that day because he was on a one-week indoctrination course, said Kerry's action was dangerous but necessary. "Every day you wake up and say, 'How the hell did we get out of that alive?'" Gibson said. "Kerry was a good leader. He knew what he was doing."
Although Kerry's superiors were somewhat concerned about the issue of his leaving his boat unattended, they nonetheless found his actions courageous and worthy of commendation:
When Kerry returned to his base, his commanding officer, George Elliott, raised an issue with Kerry: the fine line between whether the action merited a medal or a court-martial.
"When [Kerry] came back from the well-publicized action where he beached his boat in middle of ambush and chased a VC around a hootch and ended his life, when [Kerry] came back and I heard his debrief, I said, 'John, I don't know whether you should be court-martialed or given a medal, court-martialed for leaving your ship, your post,'" Elliott recalled in an interview.
"But I ended up writing it up for a Silver Star, which is well deserved, and I have no regrets or second thoughts at all about that," Elliott said. A Silver Star, which the Navy said is its fifth-highest medal, commends distinctive gallantry in action.
Asked why he had raised the issue of a court-martial, Elliott said he did so "half tongue-in-cheek, because there was never any question I wanted him to realize I didn't want him to leave his boat unattended. That was in context of big-ship Navy — my background. A C.O. [commanding officer] never leaves his ship in battle or anything else. I realize this, first of all, it was pretty courageous to turn into an ambush even though you usually find no more than two or three people there. On the other hand, on an operation some time later, down on the very tip of the peninsula, we had lost one boat and several men in a big operation, and they were hit by a lot more than two or three people."
Elliott stressed that he never questioned Kerry's decision to kill the Viet Cong, and he appeared in Boston at Kerry's side during the 1996 Senate race to back up that aspect of Kerry's action.
"I don't think they were exactly ready to court-martial him," said Wade Sanders, who commanded a swift boat that sometimes accompanied Kerry's vessel, and who later became deputy assistant secretary of the Navy. "I can only say from the certainty borne of experience that there must have been some rumbling about, 'What are we going to do with this guy, he turned his boat,' and I can hear the words, 'He endangered his crew.' But from our position, the tactic to take is whatever action is best designed to eliminate the enemy threat, which is what he did."
Indeed, the Silver Star citation makes clear that Kerry's performance on that day was both extraordinary and risky. "With utter disregard for his own safety and the enemy rockets," the citation says, Kerry "again ordered a charge on the enemy, beached his boat only 10 feet from the Viet Cong rocket position and personally led a landing party ashore in pursuit of the enemy . . . The extraordinary daring and personal courage of Lt. Kerry in attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire were responsible for the highly successful mission."
Kerry was injured yet again on 13 March 1969, in an action for which he was awarded both a Bronze Star and his third Purple Heart. According to Kerry's Bronze Star citation (signed by Admiral Zumwalt himself):
Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry was serving as an Officer-in-Charge of Inshore Patrol Craft 94, one of five boats conducting a Sealords operation in the Bay Hap River. While exiting the river, a mine detonated under another Inshore Patrol Craft and almost simultaneously, another mine detonated wounding Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry in the right arm. In addition, all units began receiving small arms and automatic weapons fire from the river banks. When Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry discovered he had a man overboard, he returned upriver to assist. The man in the water was receiving sniper fire from both banks. Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry directed his gunners to provide suppressing fire, while from an exposed position on the bow, his arm bleeding and in pain and with disregard for his personal safety, he pulled the man aboard. Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry then directed his boat to return to and assist the other damaged boat to safety. Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry's calmness, professionalism and great personal courage under fire were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
According to the Boston Globe, this was the only one of Kerry's three Purple Heart injuries that caused him to miss any days of service:
Kerry had been wounded three times and received three Purple Hearts. Asked about the severity of the wounds, Kerry said that one of them cost him about two days of service, and that the other two did not interrupt his duty. "Walking wounded," as Kerry put it. A shrapnel wound in his left arm gave Kerry pain for years. Kerry declined a request from the Globe to sign a waiver authorizing the release of military documents that are covered under the Privacy Act and that might shed more light on the extent of the treatment Kerry needed as a result of the wounds.
Although there was no hard-and-fast rule, U.S. military procedure generally allowed any serviceman who received three Purple Hearts to request reassignment away from a combat zone, so Kerry talked to Commodore Charles F. Horne, an administrative official and commander of the coastal squadron in which he served. Four days after Kerry took his third hit of shrapnel, Horne forwarded a request on Kerry's behalf to the Navy Bureau of Personnel asking that Kerry be reassigned to "duty as a personal aide in Boston, New York, or Washington, D.C." Soon afterwards Kerry was transferred to Cam Ranh Bay to await further orders, and within a month he had been reassigned as a personal aide and flag lieutenant to Rear Admiral Walter F. Schlech, Jr. with the Military Sea Transportation Service based in Brooklyn, New York.
Kerry served with Admiral Schlech until the end of 1969, when requested an early discharge from the Navy in order to run for a Massachusetts congressional seat. Admiral Schlech approved the request, and on 3 January 1970 Kerry received an honorable discharge, six months early.
******
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on March 13, 2004 10:34:15 PM new
The point is....He was trying to get an easy spot away from the action. He didn't know the mission would change. He did the same thing you are accusing President Bush of doing. It just didn't work.
posted on March 13, 2004 10:39:21 PM new
Yes, bunni and someone who served under kerry has also come forward and said negative things about his 3 month service in Vietnam.
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LOL gtootie - Thanks for the best laughs I've had all week. Don't know who you'll be voting for...doesn't matter to me...but thanks for your posts.
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fenix - Where do the candidates stand on the actual issues facing us today. What are their platforms, are they in our best interest and are they obtainable. That's what I care about. For all I care they could have both been homosexual nudists smoking pot and juggling vials of crack on the street of Paris in their early 20's.
It's been a BIG deal here for many to rehash all the problems Bush dealt with in his late 30s early 40s [drinking, etc. - a BIG deal].
And it's pretty hard to tell where kerry stands on the issues.....he keeps changing his positions.
I'd also agree that all the rest of the qualifications you listed wouldn't matter one bit if they all applied to kerry.....'cause those who don't want this President re-elected wouldn't care one bit either.....as long as they get Bush out.
posted on March 13, 2004 10:40:35 PM new
Kerry served with Admiral Schlech until the end of 1969, when requested an early discharge from the Navy in order to run for a Massachusetts congressional seat. Admiral Schlech approved the request, and on 3 January 1970 Kerry received an honorable discharge, six months early.
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So why all the fuss about President Bush leaving 8 months early to enter Harvard? Could all this be why Kerry asked to the Democrats to drop the military record issue?
posted on March 13, 2004 11:05:04 PM new
Not being able to see the difference says a lot about the mentality of some Bush followers.
And why do people keep bringing up the past in regards to Bush? Because he's such a hypocrite, it's nice to see him squirm.
He's running around now saying "Kerry wants toraise taxes, Kerry wants to raise taxes!" When he heads an administration that spends more than any in recent history. When he himself contstantly touts more & more programs that will cost billions, yet never says where the money is going to come from to pay for them. Not to mention taking us fromthe black into the red within months of gaining office.
Every time Bush touts his big-spending ideas, a song runs through my head (substituting Bush for Hoover):
All:
Today we’re living in a shanty
Today we’re scrounding for a meal
Sophie:
Today I’m stealing coal for fires
Who knew I could steal"
Men:
I used to winter in the tropics
Women:
I spent my summers at the shore
Fred:
I used to throw away the papers
All:
We’d like to thank you: George Bush
For really showing us the way
We’d like to thank you: George Bush
You made us what we are today
Prosperity was ’round the corner
The cozy cottage built for two
In this blue heaven
That you
Gave us
Yes! We’re turning blue!
They offered us Dick Cheney and Bush
We paid attention and we chose
Not only did we pay attention
We paid through the nose.
In ev’ry pt he said "a chicken"
But George Bush he forgot
Not only don’t we have the chicken
We ain’t got the pot!
Hey Georgie
Women:
You left behind a grateful nation
All:
So’ George our hats are off to you
We’re up to here with admiration
Sophie:
Come down and have a little stew
All:
Come down and share some Christmas dinner
Be sure to bring the missus too
We got no turkey for our stuffing
Why don’t we stuff you!
We’d like to thank you’ George Bush
For really showing us the way
You dirty rat’ you
Bureaucrat’ you
Made us what we are today
Come and get it’ George!
******
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on March 14, 2004 12:04:12 AM newNot being able to see the difference says a lot about the mentality of some Bush followers.
And the Bush supporters can, and do, say the same about the mentality of those who would vote for a man who's campaign statements go against way too many of how he voted on the same issues. A flip-flopper.
A man who when asked a question has no definite stand....even the news media have complained about his long drawn out answers that don't really address the questions asked.
And why do people keep bringing up the past in regards to Bush? Because he's such a hypocrite, it's nice to see him squirm. Oh so...it's okay for the dems to do it, but not okay for the republicans. Prepare yourselves....kerry and the dems have had the advantage during this long, drawn out dem nominiation process. That 'protected' time is over now. Now you're all going to hear from the other side....like it or not.
He's running around now saying "Kerry wants toraise taxes, Kerry wants to raise taxes!"
Many have the 'mentality' as you call it to see why a lot of our spending increased. [9-11, two wars, a recession, etc]. It's the dems who have held the 'honor' of being the tax and spend party.
And kerry is proposing approx. $900B dollars be spent on all his promises of all he's going to do. $900BILLION.
I've always found it funny that the dems have only complained Bush wasn't spending enough on this program or that program....and then they turn around a complain about how much he's spent. And you question our mentality?
posted on March 14, 2004 12:41:29 AM newAnd kerry is proposing approx. $900B dollars be spent on all his promises of all he's going to do. $900BILLION.
instead of spouting verbatim stuff you hear in Bush ads or on Fox news, you might want to do a little independent research. Kerry has not proposed any such thing.
******
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on March 14, 2004 12:59:01 AM new
Oh yes....the little Fox News jab. That ONE media source sure doesn't get a lot of dem feathers all fluffed up.
But I didn't hear about it on Fox News. You're a bright woman, go do a google search and find out for yourself. Put in Kerry's proposed spending and many links will come up even one from the National Taxpayers Association.
Then there's always the word from the horse's own mouth, when asked about his proposals and how HIS numbers didn't jive. He said [paraphrasing here] he's have his people recheck/re-calculate them.....cause things have changed. right.
It's MORE spending bunni. You're complaining about how much Bush has spent and MORE spending is okay with you?
I haven't been happy with the spending either. But as I said above MUCH of it was necessary, imo. I sure as heck don't want more.
But hey....since so many here are so willing to vote in a guy and they don't EVEN care what he's going to do, not going to do as long as he's not Bush.
posted on March 14, 2004 01:31:18 AM new
Here's one from the Associated Press 3-12-04
WASHINGTON (AP) - From child care for the toddler set to tuition credits for college students and better medical benefits for veterans, John Kerry has plans to distribute new federal dollars far and wide and still cut the deficit in half within four years.
Stock up on calculator batteries, though, because just how many dollars go where and whether Kerry's economic numbers really add up is sure to be the subject of heated debate in the presidential campaign for months to come.
It's early to be toting up the cost of campaign proposals, but President Bush jump-started the conversation Thursday with a new ad claiming that Kerry would raise taxes by $900 billion, which the Democrat immediately rejected as bogus. Kerry's campaign promises to fill in details of his economic plans soon.
Key to the debate is how much mileage Kerry can get out of repealing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and redirecting that money - about $250 billion over 10 years, by most estimates - to those he deems more deserving.
By far, his biggest-ticket proposal is a plan to extend health insurance to millions of uninsured people and reduce costs for those who already have coverage.
The health plan alone is estimated to cost nearly $900 billion over 10 years, according to an independent analysis last summer by Emory University economics professor Kenneth Thorpe. Thorpe said Thursday that he believes Kerry can find enough federal dollars elsewhere to pay for his proposals for health care, education and other initiatives. "It's probably doable, with the caveat that there's got to be some phasing-in and timing," he said. "You can't do it all in year one."
Mark Zandi, chief economist with Economy.com, said it's hard for any campaign to know how much its proposals really will end up costing. As for Kerry, he said, "you have to get it broadly right, and I think he's got it broadly right."
However, there are plenty of skeptics who think Kerry is overreaching.
"There's no way he can get from here to there," said Dan Mitchell, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation. He said Kerry hasn't released enough details to accurately add up what he would raise and spend - most likely on purpose.
"When you're running, you go after the other guy, you don't put out a detailed plan that the other guy can attack," Mitchell said.
Nonetheless, using a mix of firm numbers and estimates, the National Taxpayers Union, which advocates lower taxes and less government spending, calculates that Kerry's new spending initiatives would cost $277 billion a year - far more than could be paid for by repealing some of the tax cuts. Among Kerry's biggest annual costs, by the group's calculations: $90 billion for health care, $41 billion for veterans' health programs, $56 billion for education and $31 billion for roads and rail lines.
Peter Orszag, a Brookings Institution economist who has given occasional help to Kerry's campaign, said it's possible to get to $900 billion in Kerry tax increases by toting up $400 billion to repeal some of the tax cuts and retain a phase-out of personal exemptions and itemized deductions for wealthy Americans, $150 billion in estate tax reforms and $350 billion in higher taxes on capital gains and dividends. He said Kerry also has other proposals to save money, such as reducing so-called corporate welfare and holding down health care costs, that could be redirected to his domestic initiatives.
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So...not counting the tax cuts that are going to be tax increases to those now receiving them....it's still a 2.79 BILLION dollar a year increase. 2.79 TRILLION dollars increase in taxes over 10 years. That's IF he doesn't spend another penny while President and we all know that's not likely to be the case.
And I won't be surprise if he proposes even more spending as he tries to gain the WH.
posted on March 14, 2004 01:40:21 AM new
taken from kaisernetwork.org
Under Kerry's plan, the federal government would assume all Medicaid costs to insulate the program from frequent state budget cuts, and states would be required to automatically enroll all eligible children.
States and the federal government would then share the cost of expanding coverage to children in families earning up to three times the poverty level and to all parents earning up to twice the poverty level.
The federal government would also assume 75% of medical costs above $50,000 annually for insured patients' care on the condition that insurers pass on those savings to employers and workers; the measure would reduce private insurance premiums by about 10% annually, according to Thorpe.
Kerry's plan would cover about five million more adults than Edwards' plan, or about 27 million uninsured, and it would cost $895 billion over 10 years, Thorpe estimates (Brownstein, Los Angeles Times, 2/28).
Edwards Criticizes Kerry's Health Care Proposal in Debate
In an hour-long debate in New York on Sunday, Edwards delivered his "harshest criticism yet" of Kerry, saying that his proposals on several issues, including health care, would "drive us deeper and deeper into deficit," the Associated Press reports. Kerry responded that the nation needs a president with experience and "proven ability to be able to stand up and take on tough fights." The debate came two days before voters in 10 states are scheduled to award 1,151 convention delegates -- more than half the 2,162 needed to secure the Democratic nomination. Kerry, with 688 delegates, has more than four times as many delegates as Edwards, according to the Associated Press (Pickler, Associated Press, 3/1).
posted on March 14, 2004 02:00:56 AM new
Bush Says Kerry Will Raise Taxes $900 Billion; Kerry Says That's False
Attack ad revives question of whether Kerry's numbers add up.
March 11, 2004
Modified: March 12, 2004 Summary
In its first attack ad to hit the airwaves, the Bush campaign accuses Kerry of proposing to raise taxes by $900 billion. Kerry denies that. And Bush's ad fails to mention that Kerry's "new government spending" would provide health insurance to more than 26 million who don't have it now.
But Kerry's ambitious health-care plan that would indeed cost an estimated $895 billion over 10 years. And Kerry has also promised to cut the current $500-billion federal deficit in half. Can he pay for all that while raising taxes only for the wealthy? Those numbers don't quite add.
Analysis:
Bush Spin:
Naturally enough, Bush's ad leaves out that the "new government spending" it mentions would benefit millions of Americans who lack health insurance.
According to a study by Emory University professor Kenneth Thorpe, which the Bush campaign's own background material cites as a credible authority, Kerry's plan would provide coverage for 26.7 million who currently have no coverage.
The ad also goes too far when it says "Kerry's plan" is to raise taxes by at least $900 billion. Kerry has never endorsed such a figure, and his campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter issued a statement accusing the Bush campaign of using "weapons of deception and distortion" and saying "The $900 billion ad is completely false."
Well, maybe not completely.
Kerry Spin:
Kerry himself issued a statement (see below) in which he didn't address the $900 billion figure directly. Instead he said, "What's most interesting about this ad is what's not in it." But the same can be said of Kerry's tax proposals, which leave out many specifics.
The Bush campaign -- in backup material issued to reporters -- argued that Kerry's health-care plan and other promised spending proposals are so expensive that only a $900-billion tax increase over 10 years will pay for them while still allowing Kerry to cut the deficit by half, as he has also promised to do.
And in fact, several news organizations have said that Kerry is overpromising, most recently a Washington Post story Feb 29. The Post said Kerry is proposing to spend at least $165 billion more on new programs in the next four years than his tax plan would pay for.
Kerry disputed that, saying the Post failed to account for his plan to save $139 billion by repealing Bush's Medicare prescription drug benefit, and overestimated what Kerry planned to spend -- temporarily, he said -- to stimulate the economy.
But Kerry hasn't yet shown in detail how he would close the gap between his spending promises and his somewhat vague promise to repeal portions of Bush's tax cuts.
Kerry's health-care plan alone would cost $895 billion over 10 years, according to the Thorpe study, which Kerry has accepted. And it's not clear how that would be paid for.
Kerry would not repeal the entire Bush tax cut; he's said he would preserve increases in the per-child tax credit, tax breaks for married couples, and lowered rates at the bottom of the income scale. He also speaks generally about raising taxes on those making over $200,000 a year.
But a look at some calculations made recently by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center suggests strongly that raising taxes only on individuals in that category wouldn't produce nearly enough to pay for Kerry's health plan, let alone reducing the deficit.
For example, restoring the top two marginal tax rates to what they were before the Bush cuts would produce only $224 billion over the next 10 years. And even that would hit some people making less than $200,000. The top two rates currently affect those making $174,700 or more in taxable income for a married couple filing jointly, or $143,500 for a single taxpayer. Those income brackets would be somewhat higher in years to come, as they are adjusted each year for inflation.
Kerry might also recoup some additional billions by restoring the estate tax and reversing the new, lower rates on capital gains and dividends. But still, accepting the Kerry campaign's statement that there's no plan to raise taxes by $900 billion, voters are left to wonder where the money to pay for Kerry's health plan would come from.
Pressed on that point, Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan told FactCheck.org: "John's not the president yet. When he becomes the president he'll send up a whole budget."
Meanwhile, Meehan said, "We're not going to get into the back and forth on that." He also said that the Thorpe analysis "doesn't take into account any savings," but Meehan would not be specific about what kind of savings he meant.