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Politics : Proof that John Kerry is Unfit for Command -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (8404)	9/8/2004 1:14:57 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27181

Move over, Swift Boat Vets ___________________________ Austin-based nonprofit group Texans for Truth, an offshoot of Drive Democracy.org and partially funded by MoveOn.org, has launched a new television ad regarding the black hole that is George W. Bush's record of service in the National Guard. "That was my unit. And I don't remember seeing you there," Lt. Colonel Robert Mintz (Ret.), who served in the 187th Tactical Squadron of the Alabama Air National Guard, says of Bush in the new 30-second spot titled "AWOL." Others who served in the 187th didn't recall Bush showing up to serve either, adds Mintz, noting that "it would be impossible to be unseen in a unit of that size." Mintz, along with fellow Guardsmen and Gulf War veteran Paul Bishop, has spoken out before. Last February he told the Memphis Flyer in a lengthy interview that he had a "negative reaction" to what he saw as "out-and-out dissembling on President Bush’s part" about having served in the Guard during Vietnam. According to the Flyer, Mintz was at one time a registered Republican, but in recent years cast votes in presidential elections for independent candidate Ross Perot and Democrat Al Gore. Bishop, who voted for Bush in 2000, told the Flyer in February that he "never saw hide nor hair of Mr. Bush" in Alabama in 1972. "I think a commander-in-chief who sends his men off to war ought to be a veteran who has seen the sting of battle," Bishop said. "It bothered me that he wouldn't 'fess up and say, Okay, guys, I cut out when the rest of you did your time. He shouldn’t have tried to dance around the subject. I take great exception to that. I spent 39 years defending my country." As Salon reported last week, President Bush's murky military record may again become a major campaign issue when Ben Barnes, a former Texas official who says he pulled strings to get Bush into the Air National Guard, speaks out on CBS' "60 Minutes" in an interview scheduled to air on Wednesday. texansfortruth.com

To: unclewest who wrote (8404)	9/8/2004 2:44:04 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27181

Commentary: Exploiting The Pain of Vietnam Veterans ___________________________________________ Those who thought they were too good to go to Vietnam are now exploiting those who did go to Vietnam. By Brad Kennedy It’s been thirty-seven years since I was lucky and returned from serving in Vietnam. I volunteered for the draft and ultimately served as a forward observer for the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. I still feel the horror of that war. Vietnam was like a bad dream where a monster was in control, reaching in and ripping out hearts and heads or pulling off arms and legs--American and Vietnamese. We never knew who was next. To escape its grasp was just the luck of the draw. The longer we were in that dream, the clearer we saw there were actually four monsters--North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, Viet Cong, and American. We came to see ourselves as tiny parts of the American monster. Some made up the legs, others the arms and the brain. We forward observers were the eyes. Together, we were perpetrating outrages as surely as the other monsters were. These acts were against our will, for certain. We were a monster run amok. In our fear and our horror, we had only one thing going for us--each other. No matter where or what unit an American was from, he was our brother. Creed or color or mother country were of no account. Our bonds of brotherhood seemed like they would last forever. Forged of love, they were our best hope for salvation. It was like we all had the same DNA, though that of a monster. Maybe because I have spent so much time thinking and writing about the war, I’ve become addicted to its pain. I see Vietnamese smiling in a hootch one moment, shrieking and flailing amid flaming havoc the next. I hear my friends laughing one second, then see them frozen in timelessness forever. But now, only now after all these years, I sense a new pain, a different one but one every bit as mournful. It is the pain of our veterans’ bonds of brotherhood being torn apart. Where is the love and hope we prayed would save us from being cast to the wind? The monster stirs in the night when we savor our hard-earned sleep, contriving movements to tear us asunder. All over the country others feel it, too. This is no dream. Who causes this pain? Some of us say John Kerry is to blame. They say he accepted medals he did not deserve and call him a liar. They tarred him for two weeks with these charges but couldn’t make the feathers stick. By now overwhelming new evidence has appeared in support of the official records and against their allegations. The accusers neither apologize nor recant, seemingly because it never was about the award of his medals. Several of them freely admit their actions and allegations have far more to do with what Kerry did with his medals afterwards. Principally, they object to his throwing them over the Capitol building’s fence in protest of the war, his public appearance(s) with Jane Fonda, and his raising the subject of war crimes in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. The war crimes statement seems to be the flash-point issue. These matters are filled with high-octane emotional charge, especially for Vietnam veterans. But righteous indignation is justified only when it’s right. Sincere folks have two reasons to be wary: First, the people attacking Kerry already have shown they will make false charges against him by their distortions about how he got his medals. Second, their charges are made in the context of a national election for the purpose of influencing votes. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad takes excerpts from Kerry’s testimony before the Fulbright Committee out of context in such a way that they easily can be misunderstood. The voiceover for the ad says he accused all Viet vets of war crimes. In truth, Kerry made clear that he was reporting what decorated vets had said about themselves in sworn testimony and that he was not accusing others. He bore testimony to the failures of the policymakers in Washington. It is also true that supporters of President Bush have advised, assisted, and bankrolled the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. It is they, not John Kerry, who thirty years after the fact have brought up these distortions about war crimes in Vietnam and repeated them over and over and over again. It is these wizards behind the curtain, who were too good to serve in Vietnam, who now manipulate for partisan purpose the pain and grief this issue causes those of us who did. They have no shame and they envy our honor. Fellow veterans, stand your watch. Why did John Kerry protest the war when he returned home? I can only speak for myself, since I did the same. I became convinced that Vietnam was not necessary to our national security, that we were doing more harm than good there, and that it was only a matter of time before the American people turned on a policy that claimed as many as five hundred American lives every week. Given that view, which history has sustained, it would have been a breach of the bonds of brotherhood I felt for the American troops still in Vietnam for me not to do all I could within our democratic system to correct an errant policy and bring them home alive. I protested out of love for my brothers-in-arms. When I visualize a sailor turning his boat back into gunfire to save a soldier from the water, I know that brotherly love steered that ship. One night John Kerry pulled one soldier from dangerous waters, the next he tried to pull hundreds of thousands more back to the safety of our own shores. _________________________ Brad Kennedy lives in New Jersey and served in the US Army in Vietnam from August 1966 to July 1967. He is the author of the forthcoming novel Blood and Country: A Soldier’s Call. interventionmag.com

To: unclewest who wrote (8404)	9/8/2004 4:33:57 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27181

An analysis of the war president's military record _____________________________________________________ The New York Times' Web site has posted the 32-page analysis of George W. Bush's Guard records by Gerald Lechliter, a retired Army colonel and self-described registered Independent, who in columnist Nicholas Kristof's assessment has "made the most meticulous examination" of Bush's records. Lechliter concludes that Bush received "unauthorized, i.e., fraudulent, payments for inactive duty training, even if he did show up for duty." His other findings: "The memorandum from Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Albert C. Lloyd, who affirmed for the White House that Bush met his retention/retirement year point requirement, is an obfuscation, or outright deception, that disregarded Bush's failure to meet the statutory and regulatory fiscal year satisfactory participation requirement. "Bush's superiors in the Texas Air National Guard failed to take required regulatory actions when Bushed missed required training and failed to take his flight physical. "Despite seemingly laudatory comments, Bush's May 1972 officer performance report was a clear and unmistakable indication that his performance had declined from the annual 1971 report. The report was the kiss of death before he left for Alabama that year. "Bush did not meet the requirements for satisfactory participation from 1972 to 1973." In his report, Lechliter explains why he thinks Bush's military record is fair game. "The nature of his service is an important issue in this 2004 presidential election because it received scant coverage in 2000 and because it strikes at the heart of Bush’s credibility. In 2000, Bush ran on bringing back 'dignity and honor to the White House (WH)' and being a 'compassionate conservative.' Since 9-11, he has wrapped himself in the flag to push forward a domestic agenda that is anything but compassionate and well to the right of center; embarked on a perilous new national security strategy of 'preemptive war' and invaded Iraq; and even has used the uniform to garner political support, the first for a President in my lifetime, although there have been others who had more illustrious military service. Bush himself brought on the renewed scrutiny of his military record by stressing his role as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. armed forces, declaring himself a 'wartime president,' and using the word 'war' more than 30 times in the course of an interview on 'Meet the Press' that lasted less than an hour." file is here: (it's a large PDF file fyi) nytimes.com