Liars, D**ned Liars, and Democrats
"Due to the controversial nature of the book, most copies were pulled off the shelves when Kerry decided to run for office making this book a rare find."
The New Soldier
By: John Paul
Bloomsburg, Pa.
Bob:
I try to stay above the radar as far as politics are concerned until they step on my toes, I never disagree with anyones right to vote the way they want, go to what ever church they want(Or not go to church), and I don't give a damn if they are gay or lesbian, but please don't try to push your agenda down my throat. Now they have awakened a sleeping giant because one of our presidential hopefuls has forgotten that he made a mockery of the Iwo Jima Memorial. I will forever speak out on this issue as long as I have memories of all the good men that I saw die at Iwo Jima to protect our FREEDOM, the same as the pacifist and and LIBERAL Academia have a right to free speech
John Kerry's "The New Soldier" -- Why Is This Book So Hard to Find?
Kerry supporters are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to get a copy of Kerry's hard-to-find book, The New Soldier. Some of those bidding on Ebay reveal why.
(PRWEB) February 8, 2004--An unusual thing is happening over at Ebay. One of John Kerry’s books, The New Soldier, received a bid of $355 and didn’t even meet its reserve price. Another copy of the book is up to $147.50 and the bidding isn't over.
It isn't common for the books of presidential contenders to be that expensive. Wesley Clark’s book, Winning Modern Wars, is also available on Ebay. One copy has an asking price of $15.00, another is going for $9.99. Kerry's other books are selling at similarly reasonable prices.
One of the potential buyers says she was drawn to bid on the book because she is a Vietnam vet and interested in Kerry's viewpoint.
Another of the bidders said he'd recently donated to the Kerry campaign because he believes Kerry is the man to beat Bush. “John Kerry and his friends were right to do what they did in Washington, D.C. back then. I think the acts discussed in the book show great insight at an early age and quite frankly I want to read the manuscript to make sure my assumptions are correct.”
But the reason why a former library book with no dust jacket and “slight wear" might fetch an asking price of over three hundred dollars is somewhat more complex.
The description in one of the Ebay listings reads, "Due to the controversial nature of the book, most copies were pulled off the shelves when Kerry decided to run for office making this book a rare find."
The seller of the first book stated that he is a Republican with an open mind and had got his copy signed at the Old Capitol mall in Iowa City when Kerry was campaigning there recently. But he had some reservations about the item he was selling. “I am a marine and do not care for the cover of the book,” he said. Because “what they are actually trying to do is mock the Iwo Jima flag raising done by the marines in the past.”
Iwo Jima is where nearly 7000 marines died in World War II. Six marines were forever immortalized in a photograph as they raised the American flag over the island. Only three of the six ever got to go home again.
The cover of "The New Soldier" features a group of long-haired men mimicking the famous photograph with an upside down flag.
We'll probably be seeing a lot more of this rare book in the coming months.
[NOTE: The above was received in PM]
ice.he.net
The Book on John Kerry
From the February 16, 2004 issue: A look at the senator's 1971 antiwar opus, "The New Soldier."
by David Skinner
02/16/2004, Volume 009, Issue 22
HOW CONVENIENT that Douglas Brinkley's hagiographic "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War" should be hitting bookstores just as Kerry's star ascends in the Democratic primaries. Less convenient, perhaps, is the fact that another Kerry book is getting hot right now: "The New Soldier," published in 1971, for which Kerry shares authorial credit with the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Hot not in sales--only a tiny number of copies seem to be around--but in price.
A signed first edition in mint condition is being offered on Alibris for $850. Other copies in varying condition have been on the auction block at eBay, none fetching less than $100. The book's rarity has led to speculation that Kerry systematically rounded up existing copies. When Newsmax did a story on the book last summer, they had to get their copy from a bookstore in Britain. But it may simply be the case that the book is rare because it was a dud that no one hung onto.
Hoping to learn why this vintage paperback photo book might be worth so much, I turned to the Library of Congress. The LOC catalogue lists two copies. It also lists a copy of Kerry's much-less-rare 1997 book, "The New War," whose title suggests that Kerry, at least, had fond memories of his first book. (Attempting to master the literary output of a presidential candidate who's no Daniel Patrick Moynihan is my kind of journalism.)
Alas, the library could only produce Kerry's 1997 book. Returning my original
call slip, the librarian said simply that no copy of the book could be located. Possibly, both copies were in the process of being reshelved, which can apparently take days. It could be missing, he shrugged, for "any number of reasons."
But, the librarian said, I could initiate a formal search for the book in alcove number seven. There I found a gentle, older man who invited me to sit down and fill out the paperwork at his desk. When I handed him the completed form, he said, "Someone else was just looking for the same book--yesterday." (I smelled a fellow journalist, or perhaps one of the other campaigns.) "They didn't fill out a form, though." (Lazy bum.) He looked up the title on his computer. "But there are two copies, so you can both read it."
How convenient both copies would be missing in action. As we go to press, the LOC catalog has one copy listed as "not charged" and the other as charged on "internal loan." (Kerry's Senate office, by the way, denies any knowledge of the book's whereabouts.) So I decided to resort to eBay, and for a mere $132.50 became the owner of an unsigned paperback edition. Its condition is "certainly not perfect," the seller said, but this book is "selling like hot cakes. . . . Get John Kerry to autograph it for you. It will immediately go up in value."
"The New Soldier" commemorates the April 1971 Vietnam Veterans Against the War march on Washington. Kerry, not a longtime member of the organization, had become its impresario earlier that year. The theatrical protests included a staged "search-and-destroy" mission on the steps of the Capitol and, infamously, soldiers, Kerry included, throwing their medals at the Capitol. Kerry got to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The protest played as a major event in the media and went down as an important moment in the history of the antiwar movement. Kerry's testimony was broadcast on National Public Radio. He made appearances on "Meet the Press" and the "Dick Cavett Show" and was mocked for his self-promotional vanity by Garry Trudeau in his nascent "Doonesbury" comic strip. Depending on who you talk to, Kerry represented the moderate, respectable side of veteran protests (after all, he and VVAW were nonviolent and working within the system) or he was the slanderer responsible for the image of Vietnam veterans as either reluctant soldiers, ashamed of their service and angry at the United States, or vicious, misfit war criminals.
"The New Soldier" is a definite period piece. A dark photo of six soldiers planting an American flag, which is flying upside down, adorns the cover. The protesters camped out on the Mall that week (despite a cat-and-mouse permit dispute with Nixon's Interior Department), and it shows. One can almost smell body odor coming off the page. The VVAW guys are hairy men, many with "Easy Rider" mustaches. They appear ironic in their uniforms, toting toy machine guns. As they sit on the grass and eat in the open air, their faces grow dirty for lack of facilities.
Anti-Kerry oppo researchers will be disappointed to learn that Kerry wrote very little of the book. It reprints his Senate testimony and includes a brief afterword from him. But the bulk of its pictures and first-person narratives come
from VVAW members. The idea for the march, according to Brinkley, was Kerry's, though it grew out of the VVAW's Winter Soldier project, in which Kerry played only a minor role. Along with radical chic royalty like Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, and supported by Sen. Eugene McCarthy and Fr. Daniel Berrigan, VVAW members met in Detroit and testified to atrocities they had committed or been witness to in Vietnam. Allegations included torture, intentional dismemberment, and gang rape (some excerpts are included in "The New Soldier"). The project operated under the thesis that American atrocities like the one at My Lai weren't highly unusual but reflected the routinely criminal exploits of American military leadership and soldiers.
After Senator Mark O. Hatfield read the Winter Soldier testimony into the Congressional Record, he asked for an official investigation. When the Naval Investigate Service did just that, many of the veterans refused to cooperate (despite protections against self-incrimination). One soldier admitted that his testimony had been coached by members of the Nation of Islam; exact details of the atrocity he'd seen now escaped his memory. Several veterans hunted down by Naval investigators swore they had never been to Detroit and couldn't imagine who would have used their identities. (Somehow this episode was left out of the "Winter Soldier" chapter of Brinkley's book, but the details can be found in Guenter Lewy's "America in Vietnam" and in Mackubin Thomas Owens's account in the latest National Review.)
John Kerry seems to have had a way of eluding the bad odor that clings to his old associates. On "Meet the Press" in 1971, he appeared with VVAW member Al Hubbard, a veteran who was exposed around this time for lying about his rank and combat experience (he had seen no combat). While this confirmed suspicions about the dubious identities of many of the winter soldiers, it didn't keep Kerry from becoming famous. The young politician was able to have his cake and eat it, too, becoming the establishment, patriotic face of a radical, anti-patriotic movement. Quite a trick, really.
Now, if only I can get him to sign this book.
David Skinner is an assistant managing editor at The Weekly Standard and editor of Doublethink.
weeklystandard.com
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