To: MulhollandDrive who wrote (46114 ) 9/1/2004 3:54:28 PM From: Bill Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 81568 I found this pretty enlightening:Kerry apparently loses fear of Legionnaire's disease By Howie Carr Wednesday, September 1, 2004 Talk about a doubly incongruous image - John Kerry in Nashville, addressing the convention of the American Legion. But that's where he's going today, and that's what he'll be doing. As for the Legionnaires, he's got no use for them, none whatsoever. Here are his own words, taken directly from his own 1971 book, ``The New Soldier'': ``We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars - in fact, we will find it hard to join anything at all . . .'' Except maybe the Somerset Club. ``We will not uphold traditions which decorously memorialize that which was base and grim,'' he wrote. The nice thing about this epilogue is that he wrote it. At the end of it are his initials, ``J.K.'' He can't blame this on somebody else, the way he does with everything else that comes back to bite him. How freaked out is Kerry by this whole Vietnam issue? He's barely speaking to reporters, even bow-tied ones. ``We were sent to Vietnam to kill communism,'' Sen. Kerry wrote. ``But we found instead that we were killing women and children.'' Imagine if George Bush had written this, for publication, and then flown off to Nashville to address the baby-killers. Yet John Kerry has already spoken to the VFW, and today it's the American Legion, and the trust-funded bedwetters of the lamestream media won't say boo. ``We will not quickly join those who march on Veterans Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the `greater glory of the United States.' '' Today, though, he'll do just that. He'll even give them his FleetCenter salute. And so the ``New Soldier,'' as he calls himself, rubs elbows with the American Legion today. It's quite a sacrifice, having to leave his wife's $9 million mansion on Nantucket. He'll miss out on dinner at the Chanticleer Inn, another of those moderately priced bistros that dot John Kerry's America. Maybe Lovey can get him some takeout - something simple and C-ration-like. How about the Chanticleer's trademark dish: Homard Roti Injecte au Beurre de Champagne, which is ``live lobster roasted whole injected while cooking with a champagne butter.'' The price is steep - $45 - but not nearly as steep as buying a copy of ``The New Soldier'' on eBay. Yesterday, a first edition was going for $410. news.bostonherald.com