Did Kerry really say these things about his fellow troops?
Saturday, Jan. 31, 2004 11:20 AM EST
Kerry Campaign Echoes Bush Desertion Charge
The campaign of presidential front-runner John Kerry is echoing the same bogus charges about President Bush's military service that destroyed the credibility of Gen. Wesley Clark earlier this month, when Clark refused to distance himself from filmmaker Michael Moore's allegation that Bush was a "deserter."
Appearing alongside the Massachusetts Democrat on Friday, Bush-hating Kerry supporter ex-Sen. Max Cleland told a South Carolina audience that the president had run out on his unit after requesting a transfer from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama Guard in 1972.
"We need the real deal here, like John Kerry, not a raw deal, like what's in the White House now," Cleland said, as Kerry looked on. "We need somebody who felt the sting of battle - not someone who didn't even complete his tour stateside in the Guard."
Reporting Cleland's remarks, the New York Times claimed by way of explanation that Bush "did not appear for duty from May to November 1972 when he was working as the campaign manager for Winton M. Blount, a Republican Senate candidate in Alabama."
But in fact, the Times own investigation four years ago disproved the allegation, when it uncovered records showing that Bush had made up the time he missed in Alabama with the permission of his superiors.
In Nov. 2000 the paper reported:
"Mr. Bush's military records that showed credit for four days of duty ending Nov. 29 [a month the Times claimed in its more recent report that Bush was absent] and for eight days ending Dec. 14, 1972, and, after he moved back to Houston, on dates in January, April and May."
President Bush received an honorable discharge from the Guard in Sept. 1973, something military experts say would not have been possible if he had gone AWOL.
As with the "desertion" allegation from the Clark campaign, the Bush White House has not responded to the Kerry campaign's attempt to resurrect the discredited story - despite the leading Democrat's own vulnerability on the Vietnam war issue.
Some former Vietnam vets - including several who served with Kerry during the war - have complained about his depiction of them as war criminals.
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, Kerry - then a leader with the radical group Vietnam Veterans Against the War - said his fellow soldiers had "personally raped [Vietnamese civilians], cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan."
So far neither the Bush White House nor any of Sen. Kerry's presidential rivals have confronted the Massachussetts Democrat with his outrageous allegations against those who served in Vietnam.
With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
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