These two sites were being publicized by a Vietnam vet. outside the Vietnam memorial on Friday when I was there. Take them for what you will but I thought it was interesting how Kerry claims to have 3 purple hearts, but he doesn’t say that he got two of them from self inflicted wounds. http://www.scaryjohnkerry.com/vietnam.htm http://www.kerrylied.com
For what it’s worth, self-inflicted wounds do no result in the awarding of the Purple Heart. I don’t know what Kerry’s wounds were, but they had to be documented and treated by a military doctor to qualify. Like I said, I don’t know his wounds, I guess it’s conceievable he could have faked them and scammed the awards.
Exactly the same point the Vet made in the mall. He told a story of having met Kerry’s CO and the story was basically that the CO wouldn’t approve a purple heart because Kerry nearly killed his entire boat of people by not knowing how to operate an M79 Granade launcher. But somehow kerry got the purple heart. He also did the exact same thing a few months later and receive a third purple heart for a simular self inflicted wound.
The vet also was telling the group that JK has refused to release his service records, I’m sure everyone is aware of the question GWB got when he did release his records.
i am a conservative by nature. however, the reason the republican party is having such a hard time keeping traction is because of “the federalist” and other idealogical and propagandist organizations that propagate myths like those you cite.
it’s too bad you ascribe any truth to stuff like this. if you don’t like kerry, perhaps best to choose not to like him for real reasons. when you give reasons such as this, it causes people to distrust the republican cause, and pushes them toward that voting lever you’d prefer they didn’t pull.
I’m not going to get into a thing about Kerry and whether or not he’s a liar. I’m not really for or against Kerry. I was just pointing out the requirements for the award. I don’t know what it was like in Vietnam, but nowadays it isn’t just a matter of tossing your name around and you get an award. As for his service records, there is a link to them on his website.
It’s unfortunate that you feel the need to propagate such manufactured lies to forward your political agenda. It would be nice to see you like or dislike a candidate based on his policies and experience, rather than try to patch a candidate’s perceived weakness by attacking another’s rather solid record in the same area.
For what it’s worth, I believe Kerry has in fact released all of his military records, documenting his entire time in service, unlike some other candidates.
Not to brownnose, but I have to second the Slowman. Kerry was on the gunboat in Vietnam, even if it was only for four months. I wasn’t. He gets my respect for that.
It is a little matter of the 20 years that he spent in the Senate that is the foundation for my prolblem with the guy. If you watched the convention, I doubt you would have ever realized he was a Senator. There is a reason for that.
“Not to brownnose, but I have to second the Slowman. Kerry was on the gunboat in Vietnam, even if it was only for four months. I wasn’t. He gets my respect for that.”
Very good…
“It is a little matter of the 20 years that he spent in the Senate that is the foundation for my prolblem with the guy. If you watched the convention, I doubt you would have ever realized he was a Senator. There is a reason for that.”
Is Bush going to get your vote then? If so, what accomplishments in his six years as Texas governor are most significant? What do you consider to be his most significant accomplishments in the past four years - and what, if any, are his failures?
michael
I think it is an absolutely fair assessment to suggest that Kerry has given short shrift to his Senate record. It’s absence in his speeches has been glaring.
However, the Republican attack machine has already rolled into it, suggesting that Kerry has vetoed every weapons system for the last 20 years, therefore making him “weak on defense”. This is nonsense. If you look at the record, and many have, he vetoed a lot of systems that many others vetoed, including a certain Dick Cheney (who advocated killing the Apache helicopter), for many reasons, including cost, effectiveness, and need. Some of these were rolled into omnibus spending packages (otherwise known as “pork”), and in at least one instance, one weapons systems wasn’t even desired by the military. John McCain has come out in support of Kerry on this particular point, saying, This kind of rhetoric, I think, is not helpful in educating and helping the American people make a choice…"
It defies logic and common sense that anyone, much less a US Senator with combat experience, would want the country to be “weak on defense”. But that is what people are being fed, and evidently, some eat it up.
I’m sure there will be plenty of things to attack in John Kerry’s Senate record. Defense is not one of them.
My 2 cents:
I’m 51. I was a war protester back in the day. I remember Kerry and his posse, Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, Abbie Hoffman, Chicago Seven etc. When I was a teenager, I thought they were the patriots and heroes.
I remember what they said.
(Personally, I had an epiphany, reversed course, voted for Nixon and eventually joined the Army National Guard–Mechanized Infantry.)
I do respect Kerry’s military service and that he put himself in harms way.
The issue I have with Kerry now is that he is spininning his military career as a plus, showing videos of him in a flak jacket, helmet and M-16 etc… like he was a proud war hero (maybe he was/is).
But. That is not what Kerry and crew were saying back then.
He has morphed his position to appease more voters. That’s what I don’t like about Kerry/Edwards. I don’t trust him and won’t vote for him for President. Doesn’t matter what any right or left website has to say about him.
Personally, I think Bush/Cheney is the better choice, in this election, so I support them.
I’m not sure why service in the military and protesting war are at odds with one another. Almost no one who has been to war thinks it’s a particularly good thing. You go to Vietnam, even though you don’t agree with why we’re there. You do your time and come home. Maybe you’re injured, maybe not, maybe you’re a hero, maybe not, but you do your time which is more than a lot of people did. When you get home, you speak out about why you think that the war was a bad thing. I don’t see the conflict.
Yes, I will be voting for Bush in November.
His failures are many, almost all in domestic issues. The Medicare bill is a disaster that will provide an ongoing drag on the economy for years into the future. That one issue is a greater disaster than any of his other policy errors. On the other hand, he did campaign for such a plan, so he gets points for honesty.
The other issues include signing a Campaign Finance bill he promised he would veto. The Energy bill he wanted was a disaster. The pending highway bill is a disaster. The dramatically increased federal education spending is money down a black hole. The Farm bill he signed is a disaster. In general he has signed off on spending that will damage the economy in the long term.
He has cut taxes, which is terrific and he did it at just the right time. Given the mess of the internet bubble, 9/11, and the business cycle, his policies have allowed us to get away with a very minor recession when we deserved a much worse one. Of course the main reason to cut taxes is to restrain government spending. He hasn’t done that, and the Republican Congress is a big disappointment in that regard.
He has fought two absolutely brilliant wars that will be studied for generations to come. How many people realize that fewer than 500 sets of US boots were on the ground in order to crumble the Taliban? Absolutely amazing. Crumbling Iraq in three weeks with the available forces and unbelievably low casualties was equally amazing. His record on reconstruction has plenty of mistakes, but an awful lot of things are being done well. Even Joe Biden opined yesterday that we had a 50/50 shot of establishing a stable representative government in Iraq. Success there will change the world as we know it.
I can not comment effectively on his work in Texas except to say that he was very popular because of his ability to pull competing interests together for a common cause.
Probably the most important thing though is that he is an honest man, who says what he believes from a foundation of firmly held beliefs. The same applies to Nader as well, who also has my respect. Ditto for Dean. Kerry, on the other hand, has no core beliefs other than his own advancement. He is on all sides of every issue like the clever Ivy League lawyer that he is. As a Ivy League graduate, I am sick to the point of puking of the spin coming out of my peers. You would think we would have learned that lesson from the Clinton years, but I guess we forget.
Bush wanted to become president because he wanted to change the world. Kerry, like Clinton, wants to become president in order to be president. It really comes down to which kind of person you want. I can understand a vote for Nader, and his supporters have many reasons for their support. I have yet to read a single blog, editorial, Slowtwitch post, or to even hear a well reasoned argument that supports Kerry.
(Personally, I had an epiphany, reversed course, voted for Nixon and eventually joined the Army National Guard–Mechanized Infantry.)
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This would be irony. You made a 180 deg reversal of your own opinion, for whatever reason, but when Kerry does the same it’s ‘morphing his position to appease more voters’.
kinda inconsistent, don’t ya think?
Sorry, I can’t let this one pass. Kerry was at the forefront of the nuclear freeze movement in the 80’s. He opposed the Reagan defense build up, SDI, the support of Soviet opposition in Afghanistan, and the basing of nuclear missles in Germany. These are policies that crumbled the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union might still be in existence if Kerry’s policies were followed.
Kerry opposed many weapons systems during this time, but my memory is just not accurate enough for me to step through them. Sure Cheney opposed the Apache, and he was probably right about that. We have lost a lot of those helicopters along with their crews. Kerry advocated substantial intelligence cuts.
Kerry of course opposed the first Gulf War. At a minimum, Hussein would still be in power and in control of Kuwait if Kerry had his way. Give that some serious thought.
Kerry has just been on the strategically wrong side of the important defense issues of the 80’s and 90’s. In his convention speech he spoke about only going to war when we had to, a policy which seems to rule out Greneda, Panama, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, WW I, Korea, Iraq, Kuwait and Vietnam. He is running from his record, and I don’t blame him.
This would be irony. You made a 180 deg reversal of your own opinion, for whatever reason, but when Kerry does the same it’s ‘morphing his position to appease more voters’.
kinda inconsistent, don’t ya think? <<
That is a smart comeback, I’ll give you that.
It’s not about me. I only gave my background to show that I was actually there, of age, in that era. Unlike a lot of liberal Kerry supporters on this forum. I’m not comparing myself to anything.
I don’t think Kerry is evil. I respect him as a Vietnam vet.
Kerry’s Vietnam hero spin campaign stands on its own. Judge for yourselves.
Me? I don’t trust him as a candidate for President of the USA-leader of the free world, that’s about it.
But no.
Kerry came on to say that this administration has made the world a more dangerous place after 9/11. In the same breath he stated that he supports being on the offensive and being pro-active in the war on terrorism. He voted for this war and had the opportunity to view the same intelligence that Bush had…he criticizes but his actions supported the very policies that he’s criticizing.
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I think Bush has made the world a much more dangerous place to be an American. That in no way means that I think we should cease our efforts to combat terror. Bush Sr. worked hard to create world consensus, to implicity acknowledge that the US is not the only country that matters in the world. Bush Jr. has done exactly the opposite. So now an atmosphere prevails in which the N Koreans feel a little freer to be feisty, because we’re overextended by fighting a war on two fronts, and because Dubya’s belligerent attitude has left us w/ far fewer allies, who are far more tepid in their support of our interests.
Inasmuch as Kerry was a senator, and only got a ‘yes/no’ decision, rather than having the ability to direct the (anti-terror) campaign, this isn’t necessarily inconsistent. Given the choice between a ‘yes’ vote to a flawed plan, or a ‘no’ vote and effectively saying ‘do nothing’, I would have held my nose and voted yes.
Mind you, I’m gonna be voting not for Kerry, but against Bush. Dubya has been a disaster and has to go. This election is a referendum on Dubya and his handling of the war, and if he’s reelected the 2nd term damage would be far worse, simply because he’d probably feel like the election gave him even more carte blanche than he apparently feels he already has.
I think most politics today is pretty crappy, but Kerry is not the first to use his service as a selling point. He has every right to be proud of his service, and the fact that he exercised his right to protest. One has nothing to do with the other. He didn’t “apply” for his Purple Hearts, he was awarded them in accordance with military regulation. Also, I don’t have transcripts of his protests, but I’ve never heard anyone accuse him of protesting the troops or men with whom he served. Just America’s policy on going to that war. He’s certainly not alone in that protest. Again, I’m not a big Kerry guy, but I would assume he threw his medals over the wall to show how upset he was about Vietnam. If he didn’t care at all about his service and those medals, the statment wouldn’t mean as much.
I won’t put my knowlege up against your Tibbs, but we lose a lot of those helicopters by putting them into situations were they get a lot of ground fire. These helicopters go down relatively easily to ground fire. I can’t tell you if it is a problem with the design, with the way the helicopter is used in practice, or if I am just dead wrong and it is the cost of doing business in a war zone.
We lose a lot of Apaches against unsophisticated enemies. Seems like something is wrong.
Cheney doesn’t need me to defend him.
Kerry’s Vietnam hero spin campaign stands on its own. Judge for yourselves.
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In comparison to Bush standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier and giving a ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech in a flightsuit, Kerry’s spin tactics are minor league. Kerry’s trying to take advantage of his war record, whereas Bush is trying to create one.
The only thing that bothers me about Kerry’s war record is the home videos he shot. Re-enacting battles for the camera? I don’t get it. What’s the deal with that?