Who Is John Kerry?

[Sparrowhawk]

This I had already posted on the tread...

lily-livered liberals

But after i saw that the Kerry committee had NASA pull his photos, it really irritated me.


John kerry, posed for those pictures

when they realized the pictures made him look duffus, they pressured NASA to take the photos off their site.

NASA Ordered to Pull Kerry Photos Offline

NASA Ordered to Pull Kerry Photos Offline
Keith Cowing
Thursday, July 29, 2004

On Monday Democratic Presidential Candidate John Kerry made a campaign stop at NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) [story]. Kerry was accompanied by former Ohio Senator John Glenn and Florida Senators Bill Nelson and Bob Graham. Photos taken of this visit depict Kerry and others wearing so called "bunny suits" which are required of all visitors entering a space shuttle orbiter in the Shuttle Processing Facility.

Bumbling by Kerry's staff, and a press corps itching for something to make fun of, and a perfect photo opportunity turns into a media nightmare. The net loser? NASA.

Now, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel has told NASA to remove all images of Kerry's visit to KSC from all NASA web sites - immediately - due to Hatch Act concerns. These images have now been removed.

CLARIFICATION 1:00 PM EDT: NASA sources are now saying that NASA's General Counsel ordered the images removed - not the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

YET ANOTHER CLARIFICATION 4:00 PM EDT: After reviewing all of the Kerry photos to ensure NASA's apolitical position, NASA has decided to put the photos of John Kerry in the OPF back online. The photos of the political rally at the KSC visitors center will remain offline.


Just as you think this silly story is going away some bureaucrat finds a way to breathe new life back into it.

*********************************


What a Vain individual

How can one individual prevent my rights to see a part of history on a government sponsored web site because the picture makes him look duffus



This really iritates me how this man, one individual can censor my rights to history when he is nothing but another US Senator.

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Who is John Kerry?

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In tonight's DNC John Kerry will be trying to identify himself to the American public. Here you get an insight on who he really is and can judge for yourself.

On Attacking President During Time Of War
On Death Penalty For Terrorists
1991 Iraq War Coalition
View Of War On Terror
Funding For Our Troops In Iraq



Who Is John Kerry?

[thedrifter]

Kerry's title for Boston stirs dispute over history


By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


BOSTON — Some folks are saying the man who wants to be the next Democratic president of the United States needs a history lesson.
During his six-day journey from his birthplace in Colorado to the Democratic National Convention in Boston, Sen. John Kerry has proclaimed his Massachusetts hometown to be America's birthplace — stirring the competitive juices of rivals in Pennsylvania and Virginia who say their states have equal or better claim to that title.

"Boston, although an important venue in our nation's history, kind of pales in comparison to Philadelphia, the real birthplace of America, where the greatest minds in Colonial America hammered out a Declaration of Independence and Constitution," said Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican.
Even members of Mr. Kerry's own party, supporters who will be speaking at the convention tonight, said they had to break with him on this issue.
"Birthplace of America, cradle of democracy — it depends on how you define it," Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat, said via a spokeswoman. "But we would contend Jamestown's the answer to that question."
The spokeswoman noted, though, that Mr. Kerry did stop in Norfolk on Tuesday morning, which placed him in the state's Tidewater region where Jamestown is located.
"So he can check that off," she said.
Refereeing the dispute, Timothy J. Shannon, a history professor at Gettysburg College, said, "I would call Boston the place of the pregnancy of America and Philadelphia the site of the actual delivery."
He said Virginia also can lay claim to being the birthplace of the nation because so many of those Colonial "greatest minds" Mr. Santorum spoke about who had gathered in Philadelphia actually were from the Old Dominion.
"There is a point of pride here between New Englanders on the one hand and especially Virginians on the other, who really created the American nation. The brain power was really on [Virginia's] side," Mr. Shannon said.
He did, though, credit New Englanders with being the "instigators — the people who rallied folks in the street" to spark the Revolutionary War.
Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat, took the issue straight to the top of the Kerry campaign this weekend.
At a meeting this weekend of the Pennsylvania delegation to the convention, with Pittsburgh resident Teresa Heinz Kerry present, Mr. Rendell said that "the birthplace of America is a little bit south."
Mrs. Kerry disputed that.
"I hate to correct the governor, but actually John said that [Boston] is the birthplace of freedom," she said, according to CBS News' Web site.
Actually, Mr. Kerry did not say freedom.
He visited Philadelphia on Tuesday afternoon, and the press announcement for the visit called Boston "home of this year's Democratic National Convention and the birthplace of America."
Also, a press release Monday announcing the beginning of the convention referred to Mr. Kerry's journey along "America's Freedom Trail, a trail they are blazing from Kerry's birthplace of Aurora, Co., to America's birthplace of Boston."
And Mr. Kerry, arriving in Boston yesterday, said, "We're here at the end of a journey that began where I was born — in Colorado — and ends where America was born — in Boston."
"This is clearly another case of John Kerry trying to rewrite history," said Sen. George Allen, Virginia Republican, who said he worried for the nation's impressionable youngsters. "It is hardly helpful to the education of our children."
In addition to the first permanent English colony at Jamestown, founded in 1607, Virginia also had the first elected legislative body in North America, started in 1619, "a year before the Pilgrims even got to Plymouth Rock," Mr. Allen said.
Mr. Allen's claim for Jamestown has some strong backing.
No less an authority than the National Park Service says on its Web page for Jamestown that it should be marketed as "America's birthplace."
Virginia and Massachusetts also spar for recognition as the site of the first Thanksgiving, with Virginians battling the Pilgrims' version with their Thanksgiving that took place at Berkeley Plantation in 1619.
Another former Massachusetts Democrat took the bold step of giving Virginia its due. President Kennedy in 1963 recognized Virginia's Thanksgiving claim.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20...1924-5058r.htm

Ellie

Cook I do have to agree with you.....We don't know much of this man.......

[Sparrowhawk]

KERRY FILM DIRECTOR: THE BULLETS IN THE WATER WERE NOT FROM THE ACTUAL EVENT

The official convention video introducing John Kerry tonight, directed by Steven Spielberg protégé James Moll, incorporates homemade film footage shot by Kerry in Vietnam.




“I would have used archival footage,” Moll tells the NEW YORK OBSERVER's Joe Hagan, “but it was a pleasant surprise that he had taken his own footage while in Vietnam.”

"When Army Green Beret Jim Rassman is talking about how John Kerry saved his life,” he said, “I’m using some of that footage. It shows the swift boat and various shots of the swift boat, and some firing like you see in the water. Bullets in the water.”

Entering controversy, director Moll explains how the bullets in the water were not from the actual event.

“It’s just illustrative.”

Moll mixes in the homemade Kerry film with stirring strings and a french horn soundtrack.

Moll is said to manipulate the speed of some of the film.

One moving scene shows Kerry in slow motion, in full gear, walking with his gun through the paddies.

Kerry's homemade films are at the center of a growing controversy in Boston.

A new bombshell book written by the man who took over John Kerry's Swift Boat charges: Kerry reenacted combat scenes for film while in Vietnam! "Kerry carried a home movie camera to record his exploits for later viewing," charges a naval officer in the upcoming book UNFIT FOR COMMAND.

"Kerry would revisit ambush locations for reenacting combat scenes where he would portray the hero, catching it all on film. Kerry would take movies of himself walking around in combat gear, sometimes dressed as an infantryman walking resolutely through the terrain. He even filmed mock interviews of himself narrating his exploits. A joke circulated among Swiftees was that Kerry left Vietnam early not because he received three Purple Hearts, but because he had recorded enough film of himself to take home for his planned political campaigns."

[thedrifter]

John Kerry's Newt Gingrich Problem?
Carl Limbacher
NewsMax.com
May 12, 2003



After Newt Gingrich hit the national spotlight in 1994 by becoming the first Republican speaker of the House in 40 years, he was skewered by reports that he had served his first wife divorce papers as she lay in a hospital bed battling cancer.
But the press has been far kinder to Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry, who, according to published accounts going back more than a decade, began extricating himself from his first marriage to Philadelphia heiress Julia Thorne at the same time she was battling a case of depression so debilitating that it drove her to the brink of suicide.

In an attempt to explain why he decided not to let his wife's precarious mental state derail his 1982 bid to become Michael Dukakis' lieutenant governor, Kerry told the New Yorker magazine last December, "When I get focused and set out to do something, I'm pretty good at staying focused."

"You don't want to let yourself down, you know what I'm saying?" added the ambitious Democrat without a hint of irony.

Thorne, whose family is reportedly worth $300 million, married Kerry in 1970. According the New Yorker's Joe Klein, the couple's friends said Julia was not a typical political wife.

"There were times at dinner parties when John would be very pompous, unable to control his impulse to make a speech," one acquaintance told the writer. "It was all slightly laughable, and Julia was one of those who laughed. She'd say things like, 'What the f--k did you just say?'" Kerry's career focus was so intense that Thorne apparently felt she was an impediment to her husband's ambitions. In her 1994 book about that period in her life, titled "You Are Not Alone," she wrote:

"I could no longer pretend I was of use to my husband or my children. ... I knew that, once I was gone, my family and friends would be relieved of the burden of my incompetency."

By Thorne's own account, she began to contemplate suicide a full two years before Kerry ratcheted up his 1982 campaign. Reviewing her book shortly after it was published, the Boston Globe reported: "One night in 1980, Julia Thorne put her children to bed and then sat on the edge of her own bed to contemplate suicide. She was exhausted - overwhelmed by despair, self-loathing and pain. She wanted to lie down. Curl up. Sleep forever." The Kerrys were separated in 1982 but didn't divorce until 1988.

Press summaries of the New Yorker report focused on other details of Kerry's life story, such as his Vietnam heroism. Most omitted any mention of Kerry's first wife altogether, a fact that likely pleased the Massachusetts Democrat. "Kerry is understandably loath to talk about the details of the marriage," noted Klein.

In response to the New Yorker report, Sen. Kerry wrote what was described as "an anguished letter" of protest to the magazine. Thorne's two daughters by Kerry also registered their displeasure. Their mother, who has since conquered her depression and is happily remarried and living in Montana, told the Globe, "I support John's [presidential] candidacy, and I believe in John's candidacy. I think he is an immensely talented statesman, and I am 100 percent behind him."

But previous reports indicate that Thorne had problems with Kerry even after they split 21 years ago.

During the period the Kerrys were separated, for instance, the senator apparently felt little constrained by his marital vows. Gossip columns at the time linked him to Morgan Fairchild, Cornelia Guest and even President Reagan's liberal daughter, Patti Davis. An upcoming Boston Globe expose will reportedly feature details of the Massachusetts Democrat's 1980s affair with a 25-year-old British reporter.

According to a previous account offered by the paper, the fact that Kerry was still technically married till 1988 "reportedly came as a surprise to some of his frequent companions."

Just weeks before his May 26, 1995, remarriage to Ketchup heiress Theresa Heinz, Thorne took Kerry to court in a bid for an increase in child support payments, arguing that "his income was up substantially," according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Both Kerry and Thorne denied that the lawsuit had anything to do with Heinz or her fortune.

But friction arose again two years later when Kerry, a Catholic, applied to the Washington, D.C., archdiocese to have his marriage to Thorne annulled, even though the couple had two grown daughters.

Thorne "has written a letter of opposition to the archdiocese because she feels the process demeans their relationship and their children," reported the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1997.

The paper blamed Kerry's new wife on the annulment bid. His office issued a terse statement: "Sen. Kerry very much understands Julia's feelings and appreciates her support. Sen. Kerry believes that this is a private family matter."

The Washington Times noted in a Kerry profile several years ago that his critics consider him "a ruthless political opportunist." Given some of the more obscure details of Kerry's first marriage, that assessment may not be too far off the mark.


http://www.geocities.com/pentagon/2527/kerry7.html


Ellie

[Sparrowhawk]

Mon Jul 5, 7:55 AM ET Add Top Stories - Los Angeles Times
By Stephen Braun Times Staff Writer

A mission upriver in John F. Kerry's war started with a call to arms. "Saddle up, tigers," he would bark to his gunboat crewmen before they headed off on patrol deep into Vietnam's mangrove-choked canals. It was a command and a warning.

Kerry led his men into combat with a gambler's daring that masked a doubter's disillusionment. The remote southern coast of the Mekong Delta became a proving ground for a Navy lieutenant junior grade eager to test his mettle as a leader — and a crash course in failed policy for a Yale graduate skeptical of the war's outcome.

For four months, from the fall of 1968 into the spring of 1969, Kerry, then 26, experienced Vietnam's chaos from both vantages, piloting a succession of machine-gun-armed Swift boats on raids against Vietcong river outposts. His aggressive, unorthodox tactics made admirers of his crewmen, raised eyebrows among fellow officers and commanders, and earned him a Silver Star and a Bronze Star for valor.


He approached Vietnam with ambivalence, but intent on making his mark in wartime — much as had his political role model, President John F. Kennedy. Kerry's passage steeped him with self-confidence and a lasting "sense of what it means to be under fire," he said recently during an interview in Portland, Ore.


"I think I was a good warrior," Kerry said. "I think I knew how to fight. I also think I was smart enough and sensitive enough to see through it, and know what the downsides and the strategy faults were."


Kerry took calculated risks in battle even as his unease grew over the Vietnam War's stalemated strategy and rising death toll. After a final blur of firefights and close calls, a third combat wound allowed him to shorten his one-year tour. Kerry returned to the U.S. to publicly oppose the war and subsequently run for office.


His complicated stance and abrupt exit were emblematic of his layered, opaque character. If Vietnam helped define him as a soldier and a leader, Kerry also went to war displaying traits that have marked his public life. His fierce drive to excel and his knack for cementing lifelong friendships alternated with a cerebral aloofness and a barely sheathed instinct for advancement.


The loyal band of Navy crewmen and gunboat officers who bonded with Kerry 35 years ago now campaign for him, depicting him as a trusted fighter. "He got us psyched up to go out on patrol every day, even though he needed it as much as we did," said Del Sandusky, one of Kerry's gunboat helmsmen.


Other Swift boat officers — Republican sympathizers and veterans bitter over Kerry's post-Vietnam peace activism — pose a darker alternate history. Members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an anti-Kerry political committee, they are led by retired Rear Adm. Roy F. Hoffmann, a blunt-edged Navy career man who oversaw the hit-and-run river raids Kerry viewed as a costly waste of American lives.


In Vietnam, Hoffmann and other former officers contend, Kerry bucked Navy procedure, staying in country just long enough to prime his political resume. Some question the accuracy of Kerry's recollections and the legitimacy of the first of his three Purple Hearts — a minor wound, they claim, that was not suffered in action.


"He went to Vietnam to build a career," Hoffmann said. "He was a loose cannon while he was there, and he bugged out early."


Yet Hoffmann and Kerry had few direct dealings in Vietnam. A Los Angeles Times examination of Navy archives found that Hoffmann praised Kerry's performance in cabled messages after several river skirmishes. And while the Purple Heart account remains murky, its award was routine. Navy records show Swift boat crews were frequently raked with slight wounds of uncertain origin — injuries that often earned decorations.


"I don't know what conclusions you can draw about someone's ability to lead from their combat experience, but John's service was commendable," said James J. Galvin, a former Swift boat officer who, like Kerry, was honored for three minor wounds and left the coastal combat zone early. "He played by the same rules we all did."


Since George Washington's day, a candidate's wartime service has almost "always been seen as an advantage," said Alan Brinkley, professor of American history at Columbia University.


That presumption has been swept aside this presidential election year. Even as the Massachusetts senator uses his Vietnam days in media ads and speeches to emphasize his firmness on national security, sparring over his four-month tour shows how even a prized military record can be picked apart during an election.


Kerry went off to war cautiously, analyzing every move that nudged him closer.


Aware that he was eligible for the draft, Kerry explored his uncertainty in a valedictory speech to his 1966 Yale graduating class. "This Vietnam War," he said, "has found our policymakers forcing Americans into a strange corner." Solemnly insisting he valued military service, he mused about "the very roots of what we are serving."





He sidestepped the draft by applying to the highly competitive Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport, R.I. As U.S. troop levels escalated and fierce fighting flared, college graduates flooded the Navy OCS with applications because duty aboard a ship was seen as far safer than being a junior officer in the Army or Marines.

But sea adventure also held allure, and Kerry shared the noblesse oblige of his social set. "In our circle, duty was a strong consideration," said Kerry intimate George Butler. "He knew what was expected."

The sons of New England's elite prep schools emulated fathers and heroes. Richard Kerry had been a World War II test pilot. John F. Kennedy, whose path Kerry talked of following and whose initials he shared, won renown on PT-109 in the South Pacific.

On training duty off Vietnam's coast in 1968 aboard the missile frigate Gridley, Kerry fixated on the 50-foot aluminum boats on patrol nearby. Shallow Water Inshore Fast Tactical craft were speedy oil rig transports modified with grenade launchers and .50-caliber machine guns.

"We were just enamored of those boats," said former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy Wade Sanders, who trained with Kerry. "It was cool; it was what Kennedy did."

Avoiding brutal warfare was also a factor, Kerry has admitted. Swift boat training prepared him for coastal duty, targeting junks and sampans that supplied the Vietcong. He expected a gentleman's war, with skirmishes and some casualties, not an infantryman's grinding combat.

But by his November arrival at the U.S. base at Cam Ranh Bay, Swift boat duty had grown hazardous. Frustrated at the Vietcong's ease at moving through the Mekong's web of rivers and canals, the Navy was probing inland. The Navy's new top officer in Vietnam, Vice Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., had launched Operation Sealords, a plan that relied on Swift boats to seek out and destroy enemy vessels and hamlets.

Nosing past rice paddies and elephant grass, the noisy, thin-hulled boats were vulnerable to ambush by guerrillas with rocket launchers. "People started getting wounded, and boats were getting shot up. They needed a steady stream of replacements," recalled Stephen Hayes, a former Swift boat officer.

Kerry arrived "intent on living up to standards." But "from my first week in country," he said, he was disturbed by the "lack of taking territory. Strategically, it didn't make a lot of sense."

Hoffmann, a decorated Korean War veteran whom Navy officials chose to carry out that strategy, has not forgiven Kerry for questioning Sealords' results.

"He never saw the big picture," Hoffmann, 78, said during an interview at his Virginia home. "The key concept was to take over the rivers and work up to the Cambodian border. Well, we did that."

Plucked off a destroyer to head the Navy's effort to slash Vietcong supply routes, Capt. Hoffmann demanded initiative and obedience. A distant figure known by his code name, Latch, he popped in on missions, standing watch on deck with a .45 on his hip and a cigar clenched in his teeth. He gave officers authority to fire at will, and demanded body counts to prove their success. Favored lieutenants were cheered on with terse "Bravo Zulu" messages that signified "Well done." Sometimes Hoffmann added: "Good shooting."

[Sparrowhawk]

Hoffman commanded more than 100 Swift boats, also called PCFs, for "patrol craft fast," as part of the Sealords mission. The boats advanced inland at a high cost. Several were sunk by rocket blasts, and, by the war's end, 51 men had died out of the nearly 3,000 officers and enlisted personnel in the "brown water navy."

As the boats pushed deep into Mekong waterways, only the dense southern Ca Mau Peninsula — where Kerry would spend most of his war — remained impenetrable. There, Hoffmann dispatched Swift boats carrying special forces and mercenaries on harassing coastal sweeps similar to "Jeb Stuart's civil war raids. There was never any real effort to take territory. We kept them off-balance," Hoffmann said.

Even before he had his first boat command, Kerry sailed off on a "dangerous mission" that led to his first wound — and to skeptical murmurs. Patrolling north of Cam Ranh Bay in a small skimmer on the night of Dec. 2, Kerry and two crewmen fired on Vietcong guerrillas massed on a beach. Amid the din, he felt a sting in his forearm.

"I didn't see where it came from," Kerry said. Radarman Jim Wasser, who patrolled that night in another boat and who later sailed with Kerry, recalled hearing a radio message that "someone had a slight wound."

The next day, the base medical officer used tweezers to remove a shrapnel shard from Kerry's arm. According to the former medic, retired Dr. Louis Letson, Kerry said he had been "under hostile fire." But corpsmen heard from other crewmen that there was no return volley, said Letson, now among Hoffmann's anti-Kerry faction.

Later that day, Kerry displayed what his superior, Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, recalled as a "scratch." Kerry asked him to write an official injury report, but Hibbard said he told Kerry to "forget it." Vaguely recalling that he later "took some heat" for turning Kerry down, Hibbard was angered when he learned that Kerry had won a Purple Heart.

Hibbard and other critics cited the incident as a glaring mark against Kerry as an officer and a gentleman. By grubbing for an undeserved honor, they said, Kerry used it to reduce his Vietnam tour. "He fell short," Hibbard said.

Kerry testily denied initially pressing for the award, saying he simply reported the wound. "Later on, I asked where it was or something," he said, but insisted he played no role in obtaining the medal. "It wasn't my decision."

It was the Navy's. The award came from the Naval Support Facility in Saigon — issued without any evident formal protest at the time from Hibbard, Letson or other commanders. Neither the slightness of Kerry's wound nor its murky origins would have likely disqualified him, said Shelby Jean Kirk, a retired civilian director of the Bureau of Naval Operations awards branch.

The most critical element in an award decision was "action against the enemy." Conflicting battle accounts were not uncommon, and when Navy awards personnel could not make a clear determination, the serviceman often "got the benefit of the doubt," Kirk said.

"The fog of war forced the system to bend to interpretation," said former Navy Cmdr. David L. Riley, author of "Uncommon Valor," a history of the Navy's awards.

A review of injury reports from Kerry's boat units during his tour of duty confirms that pattern. Stacked in the Navy archives in Washington, the records show that in the last three months of Kerry's tour, 46 Swift boat personnel were wounded. Most were hurt by shrapnel, and all but five of the cases earned Purple Hearts.

Injury reports are missing from Kerry's first month — including his contested Dec. 2 wound. But at least two dozen of the 46 men who were wounded later suffered "light" or "minor" shrapnel injuries. In a similar number of cases, wounds could not be clearly traced to enemy fire.

"All I knew," Kerry said, "was I had a hole in my shirt and a hole in my arm."

Within days, he had his first boat command. Through late January, he led the five-man crew of PCF-44, patrolling between Cam Ranh Bay and An Thoi, a small base on the western rind of the remote Ca Mau.

The patrician Kerry worked hard at winning over his crew. Small-town boys, they were wary of the "long, tall Yankee," recalled Oklahoma boatswain's mate Drew Whitlow. Kerry patiently explained the details of each mission. After a firefight, he huddled with each man to "make sure we were all right," Wasser said.

Only gunner Steve Gardner held out. Convinced Kerry was a hesitant skipper and "in it for himself," Gardner said the two men had heated arguments.

Some fellow officers viewed Kerry as "aloof," often "bent over a typewriter in the corner while we had beers," Hayes said.

A prolific letter writer who also amassed a thick war diary, Kerry gravitated to officers who shared his fascination with politics and ideas. He bonded with close friend Lt. Elliot "Skip" Barker in long talks about philosophy and Vietnam's stirring landscape and tortured history.

Kerry told Barker of his interest in "some sort of public office." Other former officers said he astonished them by confiding a loftier goal — the presidency. In officers club discussions, "he would mention Kennedy and how he was an officer in charge of a small craft in wartime and went home a hero," said former Lt. Bill Shumadine. "John said he was going to do the same thing."

On routine patrol at sea, days could be idyllic. Kerry instigated speed races with other Swift boats and duels with flare guns. Using a tape deck plugged into the boat's public address system, he blared out favorite Doors albums. He spent hours documenting his tour, narrating his impressions on a tape recorder and using a hand-held movie camera he owned to film landscapes and sampan boardings. It was a hobby that stood out among sailors who mostly toted around cheap still cameras.

Nights in the canals were ambush hell. Just before Christmas near the Cambodian border, Wasser opened fire after a mortar round exploded. His shots killed an old man tending a water buffalo. "The holiday season's still tough on me," he said.

In another harrowing incident, Gardner blasted a Vietcong suspect off a sampan as he saw "the guy rise up with an AK-47." When the crew boarded, they found a frightened woman and a child's bullet-riddled body.

"It became a walk on the dark side," Kerry said, quieting at his memories.

There were no repercussions. In a "free-fire" zone, Hoffmann expected crews to use their guns when necessary. "Everything isn't peaches and cream in warfare," Hoffmann said. "You either get the message across that you've got firepower and you're willing to use it, or you go home."

But his lieutenants also had to hew to the Navy's strict chain of command and "standard operating procedure." For aggressive officers like Kerry, that meant walking a fine line.

After more than a month at the helm of PCF-44, Kerry was given command of a second boat, PCF-94, out of An Thoi. On a series of sweeps in the Ca Mau, he stretched his tactics. Weary of ambushes, he began beaching his boat under fire, a risky move shunned by most officers.

In training, Swift boat officers were warned that a Navy commander never left his boat — snipers and booby traps were a constant peril. But on Feb. 28, Kerry went on land. After transporting units of South Vietnamese soldiers for a raid on a Vietcong camp on the Rach Dong Cung canal, PCF-94 and two other Swift boats were attacked from the shore. The boats turned toward the volleys, scattering guerrillas with machine-gun fire.

[thedrifter]

Kerry Leaves a Large Hole in His Resume

By CALVIN WOODWARD
Associated Press Writer

July 29, 2004, 10:38 PM EDT


BOSTON -- John Kerry skipped past his role in the Vietnam protest movement that brought him to prominence when he talked of his younger days fighting for his country and ignored that conflict when praising the American tradition of going to war only "because we have to."

Kerry once famously called the Vietnam War "the biggest nothing in history," and says he is still proud of his anti-war activism when he came back. But in the text of his televised speech at the Democratic National Convention, he emphasized his war record and offered mere clues to his protesting past.

A video introduction shown at the convention before the broadcast networks began carrying his speech included a clip of the young Kerry, in military garb, testifying to Congress against the war in 1971.

And his speech made passing reference to his generation's marches for "civil rights, for voting rights, for the environment, for women, and for peace."

Kerry short-handed a few telling policy details in other parts of his speech.

He declared, for example, that "we value health care that's affordable and accessible for all Americans" and called that care "a right for all Americans."

But his plan, while aimed at expanding coverage and reducing premiums, does not ensure coverage for all. His campaign says the plan would extend coverage to an additional 27 million people, which would leave more than 10 million without health insurance.

He rhetorically asked, "What does it mean when 25 percent of the children in Harlem have asthma because of air pollution? America can do better. And help is on the way."

A study by Harlem Hospital Center last year found 25 percent of the children in a 24-block area of Harlem had the disease. But blaming all of that on air pollution as part of a case against the Bush administration is not supported by the study.

Apart from genetic factors, the study found that the asthmatic children were about 50 percent more likely to live with a smoker. Pollen, dust, animal dander, cockroaches and cold air were thought to be among the contributing causes, along with urban air pollution.

On equipping the military, he said, "You don't value families if you force them to take up a collection to buy body armor for a son or daughter in the service." He's had a long-running dustup with Republicans who criticize him for voting against an $87 billion package for Iraq and Afghanistan that included money for thousands of extra sets of body armor.

His campaign said he voted against the bill, among other reasons, because it included no-bid contracts for companies.

Kerry emphasized throughout his speech his credentials as a Vietnam veteran. "I defended this country as a young man," he said. "We fought for this nation because we loved it and we came back with the deep belief that every day is extra."

There was no telling from his remarks that Kerry became a leading anti-war protester after his return from Vietnam.

Testifying to Congress on behalf of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he detailed atrocities he said were committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam, including rapes, beheadings and random killings of civilians, only to acknowledge later he had not witnessed these acts.

He tossed away the ribbons he had received with his war medals, threw away the medals of other veterans who weren't able to attend a protest and told the 1971 Senate hearing: "The country doesn't know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history."

Despite his judgment then that Vietnam was about "nothing" -- and despite other wars and invasions of arguable necessity -- Kerry suggested Iraq was a departure from a long-held practice of last-resort wars.

"As president, "I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence," he said. "I will immediately reform the intelligence system so policy is guided by facts, and facts are never distorted by politics.

"And as president, I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: The United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to."
Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics...tics-headlines


Ellie

[Sparrowhawk]

Rejected by Vietnam Veterans

Couldn't help myself... LMAO

[Sgt Sostand]

John Kerry give the guy a brake at lease he did go to Vietnam as some others did not go. They stay back home under mother arms.

[enviro]

No service is better than dishonorable service.

Let's say I went to the church every Sunday and cussed out the preacher accusing him of being a child molester and tried to get everyone else in the community to believe this about our preacher based on the premise that there are SOME preachers out there who are indeed molesters. Now this innocent preacher is spit upon and can't get another job because of my false rantings. Then I go and throw my bible over the fence of church and start protesting with all of the atheists.

Am I better than the man that believes in God but doesn't go to church? At least I went to church...... Right?

[eddief]

enviro
The preacher (if he's a real man of God) would forgive you just like there are veterans that have forgiven Kerry for his anti-war activities. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't do the same. Everyone has to make that choice for themselves.

[yellowwing]

Is anyone researched how Kerry came to giving his controversial Congressional testimony? Who and why got him on the Hill that day to talk about Vietnam?

[enviro]

Fine - so the molesting preacher forgives me. I'll sleep better knowing that.

The question still remains unanswered - am I a better person for going to church than the guy who believes in God but chooses to mow his yard or catch the game on Sundays instead?

I'll answer it. NO. The point is John Kerry should have stayed home instead of running off to Vietnam and then trying to find a way to use it to further his political career at the expense of the other veteran's.

I didn't complain about draft dodging Bill's lack of service.
I don't complain about Bush's half-ass service.
I take extreme exception to an anti-war, anti-military, medal-throwing dumbass that is trying to gain political favor by talking about his war record.

If he'd just keep his mouth shut and quit bragging about what a good job he did and how much of a hero he is, I wouldn't care.

He claims he's proud of his service. He seems to be since he won't shut up about it. I say he needs to start bragging about what he did after he left Vietnam. Isn't he proud of that too? If he felt so strong about it then, what changed?

He may want to wipe that era from his mind and sic his lawyers after all the people posting photos of his actions on the internet, but it won't go away that easily.

I say let GOD forgive John Kerry. John Kerry can kiss MY ass.

[eddief]

He's just using his military service the way Bush uses his supposed born again status.

[Sparrowhawk]

Originally posted by Sgt Sostand
John Kerry give the guy a brake at lease he did go to Vietnam as some others did not go. They stay back home under mother arms.

What break did Kerry give to those that died honorably believing in what they were doing?

President Bush did more and was more prepared to serve and defend our country then Kerry who went to Vietnam and used the war and his boat mates purely for political reasons. Kerry has been groomed by the political left for such a time like this.

Going back to hostile areas to film scenes for political reasons, endangering his crew for that reason shows what he will do, for personal glorification and if that wasn't enough his anti-war efforts sucked the last drops of blood of the Vietnam Veteran that died believing in what he was doing for his country.

Kerry dressed like a grunt for pictures of glory. A navy lieutenant does not dress for combat like you saw him dressed in the combat gear showed on film during last night's DNC meeting.

One thing has always stuck with me, about George Bush that occurred on 9-11 and that was when he was asked about giving the command to shoot down the remaining two commercial airlines after the first two had struck the twin towers.

His thoughts went to his training and the jets he flew and he knew he would do it himself if he had been ordered to, and that shows me the courage of a warrior prepared to do what is right if called upon to do so.

Bush has certainly proved himself above and beyond Kerry who went to war for the pictures and medals and got out right away.

I would bet that over 20-30% of Marines in Nam received wounds equal to or larger then the total scrape marks Kerry got and was awarded purple hearts for, and those Marines never reported them.

My own lieutenant was struck twice by shrapnel and bullets fragments but because they were only flesh wounds he never put in nor receives recognition for them


Even when a Marine was wounded three times did not mean he was taken out of the field and when they were, they finished their tour of duty in Vietnam, not like Kerry who finished the time he should have been in Vietnam demonstrating against the war, then meeting with our enemies.

Can you imagine what he will do if he is elected?

The first thing he would do is ask to meet with al-Qaida terrorist to make peace with them. He did this before can we expect any difference?

He has given us no indication otherwise, nor has he presented anything different then what is now being done against our enemies.

Anyone voting for Kerry is once again slaping the face of the Vietnam Veteran for having served with honor.