You don't have to listen to Chris. You can just read him. A good way to take the oppositions temperature.
'Hardball with Chris Matthews' for August 23
Read the transcript to Monday's show
MATTHEWS: Pat Buchanan, is this the genesis of the storm, not whether he deserved this or that Purple Heart, but the anger a lot of Vietnam veterans feel right now about those very words?
PAT BUCHANAN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: It‘s the rage and anger and bitterness they feel that John Kerry came home and slimed their service as reminiscent of Genghis Khan and their belief that this man dishonored them and does not belong as president of the United States. That is what motivated them, I believe, to come out and go back and find all the data and charge that that man also was not a war hero but that he was a fraud and a phony.
MATTHEWS: Let me to go Doug Brinkley, a biographer of—a prominent biographer of John Kerry. Why did John Kerry come back home after serving honorably, by everyone‘s account—you could argue about the details, but did he show courage under battle. He certainly faced enemy fire—and instead, came home not as a war hero, certainly not as an Audie Murphy, he came home as a guy who thought war stunk. He thought that the Americans fighting over there were bad guys.
Here‘s some quotes from that testimony, to remind everybody. You‘ve seen this. Quote, “We in no way consider ourselves the best men of this country. We are ashamed of and hated what we were called on to do in Southeast Asia.” These are strong, condemnatory lines from John Kerry‘s testimony. Nothing in this testimony that I can find is positive. The war stunk. We were the bad guys. He even makes fun of fighting reds. He said crimes (ph) threaten (ph) us not the reds over there but the crimes of our own men are the threat to America.
In other words, the cold war in this case wasn‘t bad guy, it was us.
How can he walk past this stuff now, Doug?
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, AUTHOR, “TOUR OF DUTY”: Well, first off, I mean, you know, we spent a lot of time with the “greatest generation” in World War II. And everybody knows that was the good war. Vietnam still has a moral ambiguity to it. It‘s not...
MATTHEWS: This isn‘t ambiguous.
BRINKLEY: Well, it is. When John Kerry came back from Vietnam, he was very wounded. He was wounded while he was in Vietnam. He was trying to lead his men on the crew, but was personally very upset about the way the war was going on. Remember, Nixon wins the election.
MATTHEWS: Right.
BRINKLEY: People didn‘t think he was going to, and now Melvin Laird and Vietnamization‘s taking hold. And John Kerry from ‘69, when he came home, continued serving Admiral Slekt (ph)...
MATTHEWS: Right.
GREGORY: ... in the Brooklyn Naval Yard. It‘s not...
MATTHEWS: But none of this, Doug...
BRINKLEY: ... until 1970 that he had enough.
MATTHEWS: But none of this was on display in Boston at the Democratic convention. There‘s two sides to John Kerry...
BRINKLEY: Yes.
MATTHEWS: ... on display this week. The one side is the self-loathing war hero or war veteran, who feels terrible about even the credit he‘s been given. On the other hand is this Audie Murphy character, this man of stellar reputation, who relished his chance to serve his country. Which is John Kerry today?
BRINKLEY: You know, Chris, when I wrote “Tour of Duty,” I did it because it‘s—Kerry was the perfect vehicle to write about Vietnam. You get both the war, Operation Sealords (ph), Mekong Delta, and the medals, the stories there, but you also get the anti-war movement. Vietnam is not just a...
MATTHEWS: Yes.
BRINKLEY: ... word of a war, it‘s a whole American experience. It‘s both the war and anti-war movement because people had to make personal decisions. You had to...
MATTHEWS: But doesn‘t it strike that at the time when he was building a political career in 1971, that he was going to the hard left, in terms of defining his service...
BRINKLEY: Absolutely.
MATTHEWS: ... and now he‘s going at least to the middle...
BRINKLEY: Absolutely.
MATTHEWS: ... in defining his service?
BRINKLEY: Well, he lost...
MATTHEWS: How do you defend that kind of—sort of...
BRINKLEY: Well, he lost his first two elections when he ran in ‘70 and ‘72. He was purely an anti-war candidate. Although he would talk about his Vietnam service, it was more in the terms that you heard...
MATTHEWS: OK.
BRINKLEY: ... in the testimony.
MATTHEWS: Let me go to...
BRINKLEY: By the ‘80s, when the Reagan came in, the military—and I think became a more popular side. And that side of John Kerry‘s biography...
MATTHEWS: Yes. There was a guy named...
BRINKLEY: ... started getting more (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
MATTHEWS: ... Bruce Capuno (ph) in New York who tried to do it both ways, and he was blown out of politics.
Let me ask you, Mr. Karnow, you‘re an expert on Vietnam, was the testimony of John Kerry accurate?
STANLEY KARNOW, AUTHOR, “VIETNAM: A HISTORY”: Listen, I have the advantage of being the only person who was in Vietnam at the time.
MATTHEWS: Right.
KARNOW: OK. Didn‘t spend a long time there. I think Kerry had a lot of courage to enlist. The overwhelming majority of students in the United States at that time were taking advantage of deferments.
MATTHEWS: Right.
KARNOW: They were staying on campus...
MATTHEWS: I‘m one of them.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: But is his testimony accurate? That‘s what‘s the issue here.
KARNOW: Let me get to the point. OK. So one thing is, he comes back with the credibility of having gone through the war. He‘s not like the kids running around waving Viet Cong flags and burning American flags and burning draft cards. He comes back with that credibility. He‘s—in my estimation, the war was unwinnable, and he realized it when he got there. The reason the war was unwinnable is you‘re up against an enemy that‘s prepared to take unlimited losses.
MATTHEWS: Right.
KARNOW: We called it a body count. We went out to the battlefields, and we see 5,000 dead Viet Cong or North Vietnamese. It wasn‘t a war for territory because you go back to the same area six months later...
MATTHEWS: But that‘s not what John Kerry said.
KARNOW: So when he comes back...
MATTHEWS: Everything you say is manifestly true...
KARNOW: Wait a second.
MATTHEWS: He came back and said, We were the bad guys.
KARNOW: I have personally seen guys wired up...
MATTHEWS: OK.
KARNOW: ... people wired up...
MATTHEWS: OK. So we know.
KARNOW: ... with field telephones. Don‘t—the whole war was an atrocity. Atrocities were committed on both sides. The communist atrocities were awful. Look at the battle of Hue during the Tet offensive in ‘68. They committed atrocities. We committed atrocities. Individuals committed atrocities. Whether it was condoned or—guys in the field—the fog of war, the tensions...
MATTHEWS: Right.
KARNOW: ... the dangers were so...
BUCHANAN: But you know...
MATTHEWS: Does that explain, Stanley, why the Vietnam veterans are embittered by this, because it really happened, or because it didn‘t happen?
KARNOW: Only a few. And I want to make this one point, and then I defer to my senior citizen here. These guys and a lot of other people have trouble reconciling themselves to the fact that we lost the war. The Vietnam war was the longest war in American history. It was the first defeat in American history...
MATTHEWS: Yes.
KARNOW: ... and awoke Americans to the fact that we‘re not all John Waynes...
MATTHEWS: I hear you.
KARNOW: ... that we can‘t—and there‘s a certain bitterness that remains.
MATTHEWS: But are we all Lieutenant Calleys, is the different question...
BUCHANAN: No, we‘re not. And the Swift...
MATTHEWS: That‘s what he seemed to be saying there, didn‘t he?
KARNOW: That‘s—to say we‘re all—that‘s a kind of a rhetorical point, all Lieutenant Calleys. There were a lot of Lieutenant Calleys. We have scenes—Morley Safer did on CBS the famous scenes of the Camp Nay (ph)...
BUCHANAN: One year cut-off...
KARNOW: ... of the Marines lighting up the hutches.
BUCHANAN: Yes, what he—that was a hoked-up damn thing, if I‘ve ever seen it. I recall it very well. Listen...
KARNOW: Well, I mean, you‘re a partisan.
BUCHANAN: ... let me tell what you the problem is.
KARNOW: You‘re a partisan in this thing.
BUCHANAN: The guy comes home, and he‘s walking around with his swift boat—I mean, with his band of brothers. But when he came home, he said these guys and him and all of them were engaged in a dirty, immoral war, committing atrocities on a day-to-day basis, and their commanders knew about it. That‘s what he said then.
MATTHEWS: OK. OK. What he didn‘t say...
BUCHANAN: How now does he say we were over fighting for our country?
MATTHEWS: I hear you. I hear you. And what he didn‘t say is an unwinnable war. He said it was a bad war.
We‘ll be right back with Douglas Brinkley, Stanley Karnow and Pat Buchanan in just a moment. And when we come back, we‘ll have what Bob Dole said today about John Kerry and Dole‘s own words, by the way, about his own wounds, which are somewhat contradictory, to say the least. And later, Dick Cavett on why the Vietnam war is still a polarizing issue in this country more than 30 years later.
You‘re watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. We‘re back with Doug Brinkley, Pat Buchanan and Stanley Karnow. Former Republican presidential candidate and World War II veteran Bob Dole today attacked Kerry—yesterday attacked John Kerry on two fronts. Yesterday, he said Kerry was trying to have it both ways on the Vietnam issue. He said, quote, “I mean, one day he‘s saying that we were shooting civilians, cutting off their ears, cutting off their heads, throwing away his medals or his ribbons. The next day, he‘s standing there, I want to be president because I‘m a Vietnam veteran.”
That was Dole‘s first shot. He also criticized Kerry for getting Purple Hearts for superficial war wounds. But here‘s where Bob Dole has a contradiction in his own words. In his autobiography that came out in 1988, Dole recalled receiving a Purple Heart for a similar shrapnel wound.
He wrote, quote, “As we approached the enemy, there was a brief exchange of gunfire”—this was, of course, in the mountains of Italy—
“and I took a grenade in hand, pulled the pin and tossed it in the direction of the farmhouse. It wasn‘t a very good pitch. (Remember, I was used to catching passes, not throwing them.) In the darkness, the grenade must have struck a tree and bounced off. It exploded nearby, sending a sliver of metal into my leg, the sort of injury the Army patched up with mercurochrome and a Purple Heart.”
So Bob Dole knows about the vagaries of getting Purple Hearts, even though he‘s taking a shot. I love Bob Dole, but he took a shot at him for this Purple Heart.
Pat, there‘s Bob Dole saying, Don‘t give the guy Purple Hearts for the reason I got them. Now, that‘s a little contradictory.
BUCHANAN: Well, i‘s—what you saw there is the Bob Dole that Richard Nixon wanted to be chairman of the Republican National Committee.
MATTHEWS: He‘s a great guy.
BUCHANAN: Well, he‘s wonderful. He was as tough as nails.
MATTHEWS: But he got a Purple Heart for the same...
BUCHANAN: Yesterday was the old Bob Dole.
MATTHEWS: ... kind of thing Kerry got one or two of them for.
BUCHANAN: Exactly. Kerry‘s first Purple Heart probably came from firing that rocket-propelled or that grenade, hit rocks in front of him, and he got a sliver from it. And as Hackworth, Colonel Hackworth, said...
MATTHEWS: Doesn‘t that happen all the time?
BUCHANAN: ... that justifies—Colonel Hackworth said if you‘re in
combat, that happens. It justifies a Purple Heart. And so I think we got
· everybody knows the truth of that story. And Bob got his real Purple Heart for when he took a German bullet.
MATTHEWS: Well, he still suffers from it.
BUCHANAN: He still suffers from it. He‘s crippled for life.
MATTHEWS: Let me—let me about this other attack. Let me go to Stanley Karnow again. There‘s a hard situation we‘re in. It‘s not just an historic question, whether Vietnam was a good or a bad war, or whether it was a bad idea, which I think is the middle-ground argument. It just wasn‘t right place to fight the communists, if they were communists. But this question, is this man fit for the presidency?
KARNOW: Well, that‘s another matter. That‘s a domestic political issue. I‘m going to talk about Vietnam. I‘m not...
MATTHEWS: How about character? Was his account of the war given in -
· let‘s talk about the character question. Was John Kerry...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Pat, let this fellow have a chance. Was his account of the Vietnam war, given in testimony, I assume under oath, in 1971, as head of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, was that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but?
KARNOW: It was his opinion and his observations, right? He came back disappointed, discouraged by what he‘d seen. There were a lot of other veterans who came back with the same sort of feeling. He was very articulate about it. I‘m telling you, in my opinion, he had the guts to stand up and say it. Now, he may have said it because he was going to—thinking of a political career and was going to take that...
MATTHEWS: It didn‘t take much guts to say that in Massachusetts, which was turning left in those days and voted for McGovern a year later. The idea that that wasn‘t a smart political foundation is a hard case to make in New England.
KARNOW: Let me just make a point. You used the word “left.” You know the newspaper that came out, the most—the earliest criticism of the Vietnam war came out in “The Wall Street Journal” opinion—editorial page...
MATTHEWS: OK.
KARNOW: ... which meant that the business community of America got turned off on the war very early.
MATTHEWS: Right.
KARNOW: And to use these terms like left and right, conservative, liberal, all that, is meaningless.
MATTHEWS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) it‘s the way it worked because McGovern campaigned on the left and was defeated on the left.
BUCHANAN: But Chris...
KARNOW: Well, McGovern—McGovern—I covered the McGovern campaign, let me tell you, in my brief moment back in the States.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
KARNOW: McGovern, as nice a guy as he is, and a war hero, incidentally...
MATTHEWS: Right. I know that. He wouldn‘t talk about it, though...
KARNOW: No.
MATTHEWS: ... because the left didn‘t want to hear that.
KARNOW: But McGovern—McGovern didn‘t quite know what the hell he was doing at the time.
MATTHEWS: Right.
KARNOW: And the fact of the matter is, with all the protests that were going on in the States at that time—moratoriums...
MATTHEWS: Right.
KARNOW: ... and so Nixon won by a landslide. Shows you how—how effective was the anti-war movement?
BUCHANAN: But this is about...
MATTHEWS: He didn‘t win where Kerry won—where Kerry ran, though.
BUCHANAN: This is about—Chris...
KARNOW: The only...
MATTHEWS: He didn‘t win in Massachusetts.
KARNOW: I know, but the only state that voted for McGovern was Massachusetts.
MATTHEWS: Right.
BUCHANAN: This is about truthfulness and credibility. Kerry came home, and these swift boats vets believe he lied through his teeth and smeared them. More important, he said he had a “road to Damascus” night at Christmas Eve in Cambodia.
MATTHEWS: OK.
BUCHANAN: That‘s a fraud, a phony!
MATTHEWS: OK.BUCHANAN: He didn‘t tell truth!
MATTHEWS: Perhaps that—perhaps poetic license. It doesn‘t matter what night it was. Was he in Cambodia? If he wasn‘t ever in Cambodia...
BUCHANAN: He said again and again! He had never been...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: I couldn‘t be less interested in that issue, on where he was on Christmas Eve.
BUCHANAN: But you‘ve had...
MATTHEWS: The issue is, did he show courage under fire?
BUCHANAN: Chris...
MATTHEWS: Did he face the enemy? And let‘s move on from that. Pat, these are picking points.
BUCHANAN: They‘re not! It‘s about a road to Damascus moment, where he turned against the American government because his president lied to him...
MATTHEWS: OK. All right.
BUCHANAN: ... while he‘s fighting in Cambodia. He said it again and
again and again! He was never there!~
MATTHEWS: Theater. I‘m talking about character, not theater.
We‘ll be right back with Doug Brinkley, Stanley Karnow and Pat Buchanan in just a moment.
You‘re watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: We‘re back with David Brinkley—actually, we‘re back with Douglas Brinkley, David‘s passed away—Stanley—I wish we had David Brinkley some nights—Stanley Karnow and Pat Buchanan.
Let me go to Doug. You‘ve written this biography, “Tour of Duty,” about the candidate, John Kerry. I will ask my question. I want to know if a young man who runs for president becomes an older man, older than me now, if he showed courage under fire? Did he face the enemy and did he show courage?
BRINKLEY: He showed courage time and time again. And I find it disgusting that people are discussing whether he earned his first Purple Heart. There‘s a medical report. Shrapnel was taken out. And this argument that the shrapnel was in his arm and it was a little wound—a shrapnel in the arm, by the grace of God, a few inches more, is shrapnel in the eye and you‘re blinded. That‘s what happened to people in Vietnam.
And this has been a ridiculous August of beating up on Kerry over his Purple Hearts, Silver Star and Bronze Star, in my opinion. There‘s time and time again he confronted the enemy and acted admirably. And it‘s not my opinion, it‘s the fact. And as the facts are coming out, there‘s no question that they were shot at when he earned his Bronze Star, also.
MATTHEWS: Did his crew seem as supportive of him as they are now when you did the interviews for the book?
BRINKLEY: I did the book before John Kerry—I interviewed these guys before they ran, and they all have similar stories. Nine out of ten of John Kerry‘s crewmates, the guys assigned to him, vouched for Kerry‘s heroism and have the same stories. Only one person that was on the boats with John Kerry has deviated from that. Now...
MATTHEWS: What was his beef? What is his beef?
BRINKLEY: His beef is that Kerry—when there was an incident where a—some people were killed in a free-fire zone, he shot them, and Kerry chewed out Gardner for shooting because he wouldn‘t stop the machine gun. And he doesn‘t like—years later, he‘s a conservative, lives in South Carolina, who does not like the fact that John Kerry chewed him out in Vietnam and that he—so it‘s a political difference...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: I want to go back to—I think there‘s another aspect. I think there‘s a lot of anger toward him because of what he said in ‘71...
BRINKLEY: Absolutely.
MATTHEWS: ... and a lot of envy toward him, I think. So we‘ll get right back with Doug Brinkley, Stanley Karnow and Pat Buchanan.
When we return, Dick Cavett will be here to talk about the fight over Kerry‘s war record 30 years ago—actually, 33 years ago, a third of a century ago. We‘re continuing this fight tonight.
You‘re watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) |
