"John Kerry’s defense of his inconsistent and contradictory medal stories harkens back to the hair-splitting days of Bill Clinton debating the meaning of the word “is”. Not only is John Kerry incapable of taking a consistent position on any issue, he can’t even get his own personal story straight. He tailors his story to [fit] the times and the audience all to maintain, as Clinton did when he found a way around a draft notice, Kerry’s “political viability".
Kerry can’t have it both ways. He can’t go around using his “band of brothers” as a campaign prop, portraying himself as a vet who served his country honorably, while expecting his post-war medal tossing, and his testimony before Congress that his “brothers” were war criminals who lopped off heads and raped women, to be a non-issue.
Kerry claims that this is a “phony issue”, a “controversy the Republicans are pushing” even though it was reporter Brian Ross from the ultra-right ABC News that resurrected a 33-year-old interview with Kerry where he said he “gave back, I can’t remember, six, seven, eight, nine medals.” Not ribbons, but medals.
And it was Good Morning, America host Charlie Gibson in an interview on Monday who told Kerry point-blank: “Senator, I was there 33 years ago, and I saw you throw the medals over the fence."
Kerry, in response, attacked Bush’s National Guard twice during his five minutes with Gibson, as if being an Air National Guard F-102 pilot, charged with the defense of the United States against Soviet bombers during the Cold War, is nothing. Ironically, Kerry defended Clinton for his lack of Vietnam service, any service at all, in the 1992 primaries.
Kerry simultaneously wants praise for fighting in the Vietnam War and for opposing it, for both earning his medals and then for throwing them away with the same contempt he would later show for his “band of brothers.”. And now he expects us to make him commander-in-chief? I don’t think so."
illinoisleader.com |
