AS, you first must understand that what was being said came from the Kerry camp, and that should be considered...
secondly, as you have moved away from saying they are best friends, which they are not, to now being best friends in the senate,,,that is much like me talking about _______ being my best friend on a board I sit on. It has nothing to do with it being social and sharing. A huge difference. You are too loose with your words.
As you can see, I do back up what I write.
You were misleading the public...again.
Here is the truth:
Friday, April 30
Kerry's best friend, David Thorne,
Kerry's war experiences shape complex politician
By Chuck Raasch | GNS
WASHINGTON - From his early childhood, John Kerry has confronted war and its aftermath. It seems perfect preparation for a wartime president, but as in most things about Kerry, it's not that simple.
The 60-year-old Democratic senator from Massachusetts is described variously as cerebral, conflicted, principled, aloof and engaging. Friends say he is both contemplative and decisive. Longtime friend Jonathan Winer says there is an ``inside John,'' who thinks a lot before he acts, and an ``outside John,'' who sometimes runs with a decision full throttle.
Kerry says he knows exactly where he wants to lead the country, with plans for health care reform, tax cuts targeted to the middle class, and a more collaborative foreign policy. His frontal assault on the Democratic primaries was overwhelming. But since capturing his party's nomination in March, Kerry also has struggled to define himself as something other than the anti-Bush.
Some say one of George W. Bush's best leadership traits is an ability to show conviction while defining good and evil. Kerry sees the same good and evil, but also the grays in between.
``The mark of a leader is to measure and really learn, not just react from ideology, but to really figure out what is the best way of doing something,'' Kerry said in an April 22 interview with Gannett News Service.
John Forbes Kerry can be best defined by contrasts.
Kerry thought deeply and wrote privately about his doubts about Vietnam while he served there from 1966 to 1970. But in combat he became known as a forceful commander who employed a daring, novel strategy of beaching his Navy combat boat to pursue the enemy. He won three Purple Hearts and two medals for bravery and killed an enemy at close range. He then he came home to help lead the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
Now, as a candidate for president, his struggle for definition intensifies. Bush has latched firmly onto the ``compassionate conservative'' label; Kerry has yet to come up with a catchy counter.
But to Kerry's friends, the choice will become clear.
``We have a bumper sticker guy in George W. Bush and a non-bumper sticker guy in John Kerry, and the voters in the end are going to have to decide what they want,'' said Winer, a former counsel to Kerry in the Senate.
Political destiny
Although his earliest memories are of post-World War II Europe, later seared by his experiences in Vietnam, Kerry argues that he is no more framed by war than most postwar presidents, many of whom - like him - served in combat.
``There is a part of me that, obviously, was affected by those things, but there is a huge part of me that was just pure, patriotic young American, who believed in my country and saw the Cold War the way it was described to us,'' Kerry told GNS.
His Vietnam journals are haunted with doubts, Douglas Brinkley recounts in his Kerry biography, ``Tour of Duty.'' Kerry's best friend, David Thorne, describes him as deeply moved by the death of John F. Kennedy, whom Kerry had met while he was a student at Yale in 1962.
Thorne recalled that day vividly. Yale was playing Harvard in varsity soccer, and Kerry and Thorne were on the bench. A ripple went through the crowd. Kerry, like everyone else, was obviously shaken.
``Everybody was wandering around, looking at television, trying to digest this,'' Thorne said. But not Kerry, who spent much of the day alone, some of it in a church, Thorne recalls. Over the next three days, Kerry joined his Yale friends in front of the television. Even when even the most obscure member of Congress or the Kennedy administration came on television, Kerry alone seemed to know the person.
wfmynews2.gannettonline.com
lol
"Mr. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, "continues to be interested in" Mr. McCain, a fellow Vietnam veteran whom Kerry aides describe as the candidate's best friend in the Senate, as a running mate, said one longtime Democratic official who works for the Kerry campaign.
But the official said the plan was unrealistic, because Mr. McCain "won't do it." In an interview on Friday, Mr. McCain said, "I have totally ruled it out." |
