$10,000 Unclaimed...
 

i don't think Kerry or Bush's activities, vis a vis military service 30 years ago, are particularly relevant, but it's interesting that a $10,000 reward to anyone who actually saw Bush in Guard Service has gone unclaimed ....

imo, the only thing that might make these activities a real issue is if somebody is lying about what they did or didn't do back then...

ScrappleFace Offers $10 for Proof Doonesbury is 'Comic'

(2004-02-25) -- Scott Ott, editor-in-chief of the daily news satire site ScrappleFace.com, today announced a $10 reward to anyone who could prove that Doonesbury is a "comic" strip.

The lucrative contest comes in response to an offer by Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau to donate $10,000 to the U.S.O. on behalf of anyone who could prove that George W. Bush served in the Alabama Air National Guard. Mr. Bush now serves as Commander-in-Chief of all U.S. military forces.

Mr. Ott challenged the readers of ScrappleFace to prove that Doonesbury fits the following definition of "comic"...
1) of, relating to, or marked by comedy;
2) causing laughter or amusement;
3) FUNNY

Proof may be posted in the comment section under this item. The winning reader will receive the $10 prize via PayPal, and the winner's name will be posted at ScrappleFace.com.

"So don't let the smear artists define the president. If you personally witnessed George W. Bush reporting for drills at Dannelly Air National Guard Base between the months of May and November of 1972 we want to hear about it. Help Mr. Bush put this partisan assault on his character behind him, so he can focus on more serious issues like jobs, the deficit and the coming civil war in Iraq."

:rofl: rewards have been offered - and uncollected - since 2000. lol god, that trudeau 's a laugh riot, hehe.

mr. ott owes me a tenner. he can donate it to the reps. they'll need it this year.

- js.

Trudeau is not only usually funny and frequently hilarious, he is often amazingly prescient. considering his strips are drawn well in advance of their publication, it's amazing how timely and right-up-to-the minute relevant they are upon publication:ND:

i think the fact he was honorably discharged shows that he completed his duty. and that fact is indisputable without resorting to the time honored crutch of the left; "his daddy helped him", which again is something the left has no proof of but they circulate as fact.

you know, it's kind of amazing how all of a sudden the very people who most loathe the military and everything it represents.. are now so concerned about who served when and where and for how long.

the fact is bush was honorably discharged without ever being officially accused of desertion, or being away without official leave.

http://factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=131

the fact that he was honorably discharged means that he got a piece of paper. as to his actual service, funny how nobody's memory can be jogged to recall him on duty - even with a $10,000 incentive:hmm:

not remembering some non-descript officer 30+ years ago isn't exactly inconcievable or cause for suspicion.

of course not.

it's not like the non-descript officer was the son of a US congressman and later went on to be President of the United States - who'd remember someone like that? and it's not as if the non-descript officer later, as president, developed a credibility gap the size of the Grand Canyon between what he says and what's actually going on...who'd be suspicious about a guy like that?

the nerve of some people, huh?:J:

again your utter stupidity shines on

i went to school with my mayors daughter and i can't remember a damn thing about her, and that was only 8 years ago.

and did your mayor's daughter go on to become President?

i think not:no:

c'mon Spannie...let's come down to earth for a minute. if you had ever spent any time anywhere with someone who later went on to become President of the United States, do you really think you and every single person else who was there with you would have no recollection of it?

i think not :no:

perhaps if he actually had served, he would have been more circumspect about sending other young men off to die, no?

you fail to see the the point as usual. George Bush isn't a very memorable name, if, 30 years ago i meet a man name Bush i wouldn't remember him if he became the fucking Pope later in his life.

do you think he ran around base with a large sign on his back that said "FUTURE PRESIDENT OF THE USA" pinned to his back?

so, no one remember's a man who goes on to become president because he was so nondescript or no one remembers him coz he wasn't there?

protip: think Occam's Razor

well the honorable discharge proves he fulfilled his duties there so you really only have one choice.

why don't we look at john "I served in vietnam" kerry’s war record?


By THOMAS LIPSCOMB Mr. Lipscomb, the founder of Times Books, was the publisher of Admiral Zumwalt’s best-selling book, “On Watch.”

Senator Kerry recently wrote a letter to President Bush complaining, “You and your campaign have initiated a widespread attack on my service in Vietnam, my decision to speak out to end that war,” and warning, “I will not sit back and allow my patriotism to be challenged.”

In the absence of any evidence from Mr. Kerry of an attack from the Bush campaign, Mr. Kerry seems to have originated his own doctrine of “pre-emption.” How valid are his concerns?

No one denies Mr. Kerry’s four bemedaled months in “Swiftboats” or his seven-months’ service as an electrical officer on board the USS Gridley, during its cruises back and forth to California, or even his months as an admiral’s aide in Brooklyn, before he was able get out of the Navy six months early to run for office.

Taking a look at Mr. Kerry’s much-promoted Vietnam service, his military record was, indeed, remarkable in many ways. Last week, the former assistant secretary of defense and Fletcher School of Diplomacy professor,W. Scott Thompson, recalled a conversation with the late Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. that clearly had a slightly different take on Mr. Kerry’s recollection of their discussions:

“[T]he fabled and distinguished chief of naval operations,Admiral Elmo Zumwalt,told me — 30 years ago when he was still CNO —that during his own command of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam,just prior to his anointment as CNO, young Kerry had created great problems for him and the other top brass,by killing so many non-combatant civilians and going after other non-military targets.‘We had virtually to straitjacket him to keep him under control,’ the admiral said. ‘Bud’ Zumwalt got it right when he assessed Kerry as having large ambitions — but promised that his career in Vietnam would haunt him if he were ever on the national stage.” And this statement was made despite the fact Zumwalt had personally pinned a Silver Star on Mr. Kerry.

Mr. Kerry was assigned to Swiftboat 44 on December 1, 1968. Within 24 hours, he had his first Purple Heart. Mr. Kerry accumulated three Purple Hearts in four months with not even a day of duty lost from wounds, according to his training officer. It’s a pity one cannot read his Purple Heart medical treatment reports which have been withheld from the public. The only person preventing their release is Mr. Kerry.

By his own admission during those four months, Mr. Kerry continually kept ramming his Swiftboat onto an enemy-held shore on assorted occasions alone and with a few men, killing civilians and even a wounded enemy soldier. One can begin to appreciate Zumwalt’s problem with Mr. Kerry as commander of an unarmored craft dependent upon speed of maneuver to keep it and its crew from being shot to pieces.

Mr. Kerry now refers to those civilian deaths as “accidents of war.”And within four days of his third Purple Heart, Mr. Kerry applied to take advantage of a technicality which allowed him to request immediate transfer to a stateside post.

Once back in the States, Mr. Kerry joined “the struggle for our veterans,” as he called it last week in Atlanta, by joining a scruffy organization called the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The VVAW’s executive director, Al Hubbard, supposedly a former Air Force captain wounded in Vietnam, quickly appointed Mr. Kerry to the executive committee.

Mr. Kerry participated with the VVAW at agitprop rallies such as Valley Forge and the “Winter Soldier” guerrilla theater atrocity trials in Detroit, finally testifying in April 1971 before the Senate as an authority on the war crimes his fellow American servicemen had committed in Vietnam.

Outside of his own “accidents of war,” there is no evidence that Mr. Kerry had then or has now the least idea what may or may not have been the realities of ground combat. However, he had no problem reeling off for the Senate a series of unproven, secondhand allegations that would have been perfectly at home at the Nuremberg trials indicting his fellow veterans.

Mr. Kerry stated there were “war crimes committed in Southeast Asia...not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-today basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.”Then Mr. Kerry got specific:

“They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam...we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free-fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search-and-destroy missions,the bombings,the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam.”

In other words, My Lai was just another day in the life of the Vietnam War.

This wasn’t a one-time occasion. The VVAW had been peddling this line from the day Mr. Kerry joined them and had been publishing charges like this for the previous two years. Mr. Kerry repeated them on “Meet the Press” with Al Hubbard, who was found to be a total fraud and who never served in Vietnam, much less was wounded. However, Mr. Kerry has never renounced the charges he made.

Recently, his fellow VVAW supporter, Jane Fonda, has tried to minimize a potentially damaging picture of him a few rows behind her at the three-day VVAW Valley Forge rally in September 1970.And many members of the press fell for the line that it was accidental or coincidental,including Fox’s Chris Wallace and ABC’s Tim Russert.

However, there were only eight or nine speakers that day, including Donald Sutherland, Mark Lane, Bella Abzug, and Ms. Fonda. And far from being a casual audience member, Mr. Kerry, an executive committee member, not Ms. Fonda, was the lead speaker.

Ms. Fonda had been funding VVAW events since before Mr. Kerry joined its executive committee. At Valley Forge, Ms. Fonda said: “…My Lai was not an isolated incident but rather a way of life for many of our military.”

Their appearance together in that picture may be a lot of things, but it was not a coincidence.

Mr. Kerry has already confessed his complicity in killing civilians as “accidents of war.”However, he has offered a classic Nuremberg defense that this was not only a commonplace occurrence throughout the Vietnam War, but he was carrying out a policy “with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.”

His commander of naval operations in Vietnam, who specifically designed the mission that Mr. Kerry and the other Swiftboat commanders executed, Admiral Zumwalt, clearly disagreed. An examination of the truth behind this disagreement is not an attack on Mr. Kerry. It is a matter of vital historical interest.

http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/ge.../27&ID=Ar00800

oh...you mean like bill "i'm a draft dodger" clinton did?

the guys at the time knew about bush. the guardsmen were "waiting for this famous celebrity son of a texas congressman" to show up - and they "never saw him" (the natguards' words, not mine.) they remember waiting for him, they remember never seeing him and they remember wondering where the hell he was (and if maybe his daddy pulled strings). they knew they couldn't just take a few months off whenever they felt like...and they sure as hell knew they themselves couldn't just not show up at all. these guys remember thinking it was mighty strange.

the argument that bush was somehow "nondescript" isn’t true. while i fully agree that he himself has much to be modest about, his position in life preceded him, particularly in the guard at that time. this new argument that no one remembers him because he was invisible is more loony psyops from the hardright, sitting behind their pc's, laughing at their own bs and anyone on the left gullible enough to give it even the slightest consideration. pure codswallop, the gasps of the truly desperate. that they now stoop to attack kerry, himself a true hero in actual combat no less, illuminates thier moral bankruptcy.

- js.

lol, kerry..a true hero?? pure codswallop, the gasps of the truly desperate! :J:

http://www.villagevoice.com/video/nyc-vets-02-28-04.php

and

http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/ge.../27&ID=Ar00800

onward christian soldier!

"And this statement was made despite the fact Zumwalt had personally pinned a Silver Star on Mr. Kerry."

that says it all. how convienient the allegedly conflicted admiral is no longer with us. morally bankrupt and then some. keep dialing span.

- js.

hahaha so it's discounted because he's dead? wow, talk about grasping for excuses to bash someone, i'm suprised you didn't claim Bush had him killed to keep him quiet.

February 28, 1969:

"When Kerry's Patrol Craft Fast 94 received a B-40 rocket shot from shore, he hot dogged his craft beaching it in the center of the enemy position. To his surprise, an enemy soldier sprang up from a hole not ten feet from Patrol Craft 94 and fled.

The boat's machine gunner hit and wounded the fleeing Viet Cong as he darted behind a hootch. The twin .50s gunner fired at the Viet Cong. He said he "laid 50 rounds" into the hootch before Kerry leaped from the boat and dashed in to administer a "coup de grace" to the wounded Viet Cong. Kerry returned with the B-40 rocket and launcher.”

"Dan Carr, a Marine who served 14 months in Vietnam, questioned whether such an honor should have been bestowed on a man who killed a retreating and wounded enemy soldier."


wow...what a brave hero.


the man who had this converstaion with zumwalt, w.scott thompson, is still alive.

why don't you give him a call?

"Benedict Arnold was a war hero, wounded in battle -- before he turned against his country. Hitler was likewise a decorated and wounded veteran of the First World War. Being a war hero is not a lifetime "get out of jail free" card, exempting you from responsibility for what you do thereafter.


" -- Thomas Sowell

it just gets worse. has the right sunk so low they're attempting to compare this war hero to arnold, to hitler? all the while deifying bush the derelict? any officeholder engaged in such ungentlemanly behavior should resign in disgrace from american politics. unless he's a befuddled canadian. then he should simply be turned away at the border. he can leave the syrup tho. we’ll take that.

- js.

eh??

I don't think I was, but is that what you got out of it???

hmmm....you fellas seemed to think killing a retreating and wounded enemy was pretty nifty when it was done in Iraq, as caught on tape in the Apache killing video.
:RE:

hahaha all of Jackie's bleating about people attacking poor old Kerry brings a recent Krauthammer article to mind

Cryin' wolf

i don’t think that killing a wounded retreating enemy is “nifty”, and i'm sure that no-one else thinks it's "nifty". i’ve heard a lot about the video clip, haven’t seen it, and don’t want to see it.

obviously that film was released to the public…and obviously the army isn't going to release footage that makes them look bad. so, i think it's safe to say that it's a trimmed down version..put out with the sole purpose of making them look like murderers. our troops are trained to try not to return fire when they think that innocent civilians could be caught in the crossfire.

every single discharge of weaponry since the end of open hostility is being looked at very carefully by military investigators. if there wasn't just cause for the action depicted in that video clip, we'd of already heard about the court martials.

how do you know what happened 5 or 10 minutes before and after that video clip? were you there? how do you know that the reason for them firing wasn't edited out by one of you bush haters to spread more of your conspiracy and lies? let's get all the footage. the rule should be to give our people the benefit of the doubt. why do you assume that our guys are the bad ones, and the other guy is innocent?

what about the video from desert storm of the iraqi's on the bridge waving white flags..then when the helicopter gets close, their buddies below the bridge come out and shoot down the ‘copter.

sry for the rant…but you people make me see red. it’s one thing to disagree with the war in iraq, but to suggest that our men and women are murdering innocent civilians is pure propaganda against them. these same men and women are putting their lives on the line.. proctecting your right to bitch and moan against them, bush, the war on terror..and all you people do is try to make them look like murdering war criminals.

you think kerry is a “hero” and worthy of the “silver star” for killing a wounded retreating man. you respect him for protesting the war, and accusing his fellow soldiers of murder, testifying against them..pronouncing them guilty of all kinds of horrible atrocities, and making sure that the pow’s and mia’s wouldn’t stand a chance of ever coming home.

you all sound just like kerry, no wonder you admire him so much.

yeah but those guys aren't running for our nations highest office on nothing but their supposed "war hero" status like a certain someone.

A Shameful Past - Don't play the Vietnam card with me, John Kerry

BY LAURA BARTHOLOMEW ARMSTRONG
Monday, March 1, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST


The Vietnamization of the 2004 presidential campaign has unfortunately begun, thanks to the likely Democratic nominee. But John Kerry's service--Vietnam, in case you haven't heard--doesn't exist in a vacuum. His 19-year Senate record is at long odds with that short naval career, just as his vote to send troops to liberate Iraq is at odds with his later vote not to fund the mission. His supporters ask us to note his heroism in combat. We have, ad nauseam. But more important, and the thing he doesn't want discussed, is the well-documented though less well-known hypocrisy of those who use his service to further their antimilitary agenda.

I'm the daughter of Lt. Col. Roger J. "Black Bart" Bartholomew, a First Air Cavalry rocket artillery helicopter pilot who was killed in Vietnam on Thanksgiving Day 1968, when I was eight years old. I'm a former journalist with a military newspaper, a U.S. Marine widow, and I am appalled at Mr. Kerry's latest assertions that our president "has reopened the wounds of Vietnam." For months, I've heard President Bush talking about the present, while Mr. Kerry and the media want to focus on the past. I think we need to see the whole picture.

Liberal critics of American foreign policy have claimed they "support the troops"--but they're obviously hoping we have short memories. Many of us will never forget the hundreds of lawyers they dispatched to Florida in 2000 to make sure military absentee ballots did not get counted (some sources say that two out of three military voices in Florida were never heard). That was after the Clinton administration initiated rules making it more difficult to vote on overseas military bases.

Mr. Kerry and his party overwhelmingly oppose Pentagon funding and equipment, and make life miserable for our services on Capitol Hill. The liberals who sneered at the concept of duct tape keeping us safe last year are the same congressmen who find it acceptable when our brave and resourceful Marines must use it to hold together 40-year-old helicopters in combat. My brother Jay, a CH-46 pilot, used it during the first Gulf War, and our guys are still flying those same helicopters a decade later.

Mr. Kerry has tried to distance himself from some anti-war activists and surround himself with veterans, yet his anti-military voting record speaks much louder and resonates with those of us who are affected by the results.

Kerry supporters are the ones who would applaud my high school social studies teacher, a draft dodger who in 1976 banished me to the library for the duration of our Vietnam unit because I questioned his one-sided presentation of our troops as baby killers. Dare I say, these are the same people who spat on our guys back in the 1960s and disdained them in the '70s.

These were the people who in 1992 mocked Ross Perot's running mate, Adm. James Stockdale, a true hero and former prisoner of war, after his hearing aid (legacy of Viet Cong torture masters) gave him trouble during a televised debate. They downplayed Bob Dole's military service in 1996. And these are the same people who just last year yelled antimilitary slurs at dependents driving vehicles with Defense Department stickers--even picked on military kids about what their daddies did for a living. These are the Americans who love to enjoy the liberties of our land, yet have little understanding about those who actually risk their lives to ensure they exist. Until, of course, their candidate can claim that service on his résumé, and then they know all about us.

As the kid of a real war hero who did not come back, I'd like to comment not on Kerry's service, but his postservice activities. Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Mr. Kerry's organization of choice when he returned from his shortened tour of duty in Vietnam (and his springboard to fame), was known to me even as a child. The organization, while providing a place for angst-ridden vets to land after coming home, had an awful effect on those of us who lost our fathers.

It was bad enough to hear our dads criticized by those who hated the military, but to hear vets allege rampant war crimes and call their fellow soldiers evil before all the world really twisted the knife. Mr. Kerry led the way, proud in the company of Jane Fonda and others we believed had caused the deaths of good men. This group's testimony tarnished honorable actions. After taking the oath to preserve and protect, they grandstanded, throwing service awards in a show of defiance that diminished each sacrifice. Their stories dominated while the stories of thousands of honorable vets went untold. I don't hold it against them after so many years, but I'm dead sure I don't want their darling Kerry, the man who voted against funding our guys in Operation Iraqi Freedom, to be our next commander in chief.

In 2004, nothing is more important than continuing to protect America and fight terrorism. President Bush has led, not perfectly but earnestly. He has put much on the line to do what he believes is right. And he needs our continued support in the months to come.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110004738

i didnt get a real good look at that video but i thought the guys they killed from that chopper had rocket launchers?


something must of changed since vietnam..where i believe they shot anything that moved..including our guys..

ummm, sure you're in the right thread? who said anything about murdering innocent civilians in Iraq? wipe yourself off, sccob - you're like foaming at the mouth:eek:

doesn't that video depict the apache shooting at some supposedly innocent farmers..and isn't that the only reason you posted it?

wipe yourself off knife - you're like swimming in hypocrisy.

*sigh* you're gonna have to start paying attention, scoobie - the rest of the class shouldn't have to wait for you to catch up, should they? of course not.

the apache video, as posted by Floydian Slip, depicts US troops firing on some Iraqis are fiddling about by the roadside and were, in all likelihood, planting bombs. that they are enemy combatants is undisputed. the video ends with a wounded Iraqi getting blown up as he crawls away.

i found the comments in that thread to be an interesting contrast to comments about Kerry, with regards to killing a wounded Viet Namese soldier, in this thread.

that's it - nothing more to it. are we up to speed now? good :kiss:

awww, you're just so cute in your predictably patronizing way.....and humble too! :BL:

Kerry hates the Military and Vets.......Can you really disagree?


One little quote from www.wintersoldier.com ---WinterSoldier.com is dedicated to the American veterans of the Vietnam War, who served with courage and honor.


---There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50 calibre machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.

-- John Kerry, on NBC's "Meet the Press" April 18, 1971


----------
I'm the daughter of Lt. Col. Roger "Black Bart" Bartholomew, a First Air Cavalry rocket artillery helicopter pilot who was killed in Vietnam on Thanksgiving day 1968 when I was 8 years old.

...

It was bad enough to hear our dads criticized by those who hated the military, but to hear vets allege rampant war crimes and call their fellow soldiers evil before all the world really twisted the knife. And Kerry led the way, proud in the company of Jane Fonda and others we believed had caused the deaths of good men. This group's testimony tarnished honorable actions. After taking the oath to preserve and protect, they grandstanded, trashing service awards in a show of defiance that diminished each sacrifice. Their stories dominated while the stories of thousands of honorable vets went untold.

-- Laura Bartholomew Armstrong

The Vietnam smear -- from McCain to Kerry
As Bush's military record comes under harsh scrutiny, the same smear campaign used against John McCain in 2000 is being rolled out against John Kerry.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Joe Conason

Feb. 10, 2004 | Many months before the dormant controversy over George W. Bush's military career resurfaced, conservatives and Republicans were raking over yellowed clippings as they sought to revive dim memories of the Vietnam War. Their target was not the errant National Guard Lt. Bush, of course, but the decorated Navy Lt. John F. Kerry.

Last year, when Kerry was considered the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, he began to take flak from the far right over his antiwar activism and his war record. Those attacks slowed when his candidacy stalled and temporarily sank.

But now, as he claims primary victories and climbs past Bush in the polls, Kerry is again the prime target of conservative invective that depicts his peace activism as unpatriotic, anti-military, and somehow hostile to his brothers in arms. With scrutiny focused on Bush's alleged failure to fulfill his Guard obligations, the destruction of Kerry's character has reached red-alert urgency on the right. And a key purveyor of this anti-Kerry propaganda is a former Green Beret named Ted Sampley, who has run a profitable business as a "POW/MIA advocate" from his home in North Carolina for most of the past two decades. Few remember that Sampley was critical to efforts to similarly smear Sen. John McCain, another war hero, when he ran for president against George W. Bush in 2000. Now Sampley has started an organization pointedly calling itself "Vietnam Veterans Against Kerry," which proclaims its determination to ruin Kerry's campaign.

Republicans are understandably rattled by Kerry's political appeal to Vietnam-era veterans -- and, by extension, to veterans of more recent conflicts as well. From the beginning, the Massachusetts senator has been accompanied by a contingent of vets; but their presence was dramatized last month in Iowa by the sudden appearance of James Rassmann, a veteran who described how Kerry had pulled him out of a river, while machine-gun fire raked their boat, and saved his life. That was why he had traveled from Oregon to join the campaign, Rassmann explained -- even though he is a registered Republican.

The Democratic vet offensive inspired a pair of contradictory responding salvos from the Republicans. Versions of both have appeared recently on the Wall Street Journal editorial pages. In a brief essay published on Feb. 7, World War II hero Bob Dole warned that "we do not need to divide America over who served and how," and pointed out that Kerry himself had issued a similar plea in 1992 regarding the issue of Bill Clinton's Vietnam draft history. Dole forgot to note that his fellow Republicans, ignoring Kerry's plea, incessantly excoriated Clinton as a draft dodger and worse.

Only two weeks earlier, the Journal editors had published a harsh attack on Kerry's war record titled "Conduct Unbecoming: Kerry Doesn't Deserve Vietnam Vets' Support." Written by a former Special Forces lieutenant, the essay complains that Kerry's antiwar activism was "financed by Jane Fonda," whose 1972 solidarity visit to Hanoi made her a permanent symbol of betrayal to many Vietnam vets. "Many veterans believe these protests led to more American deaths," wrote the author, Stephen Sherman, "and to the enslavement of the people on whose behalf the protests were ostensibly being undertaken." Significantly, he also berates Kerry for suppressing a "revealing inquiry" into the POW/MIA issue, another matter of deep sensitivity for vets, as co-chairman of a Senate investigating committee. Even for the Journal, that was a remarkably irresponsible accusation.

But for the Republicans, cutting off Kerry's potential base among veterans is as vital as deflecting questions about Bush's military record. From obscure Web sites to Rush Limbaugh to the Weekly Standard, the right-wing media are eagerly popularizing the same attacks featured in Sherman's essay. The Web site for Ted Sampley's Vietnam Veterans Against Kerry offers a pungent example of the right's rhetorical style: The Viet Cong's National Liberation Front flag is the background to a shot of a young, fatigue-clad Kerry. That picture is pure computer magic -- in other words, a fake.

According to author Susan Katz Keating, who has written extensively on Vietnam veterans and the POW/MIA movement for the Washington Times and Soldier of Fortune magazine, deception is what Sampley does for a living. Her book "Prisoners of Hope: Exploiting the POW-MIA Myth in America," published in 1994 by Random House, exposes how Sampley and his allies abused the hopes of grieving families for fun and profit. Their best-known victim, until now, was Sen. John McCain. He first drew Sampley's poisonous attention when, along with Kerry, he debunked the idea that Americans were still being held by Vietnam, and endorsed the restoration of diplomatic relations with the Communist government.

Keating describes in detail how, in 1992, Sampley commenced a "scurrilous" crusade to punish McCain:

"Sampley ... accused McCain of being a weak-minded coward who had escaped death by collaborating with the enemy. Sampley claimed that McCain had first been compromised by the Vietnamese, then recruited by the Soviets.

"To those who know McCain and are familiar with his behavior in captivity, the charge is ludicrous. McCain resisted his captors to such a degree that he was isolated in a special prison for troublemakers. He repeatedly refused special favors, including early release, and emerged as a spiritual and religious leader for other prisoners. Nonetheless, Sampley was persistent enough in his claims that the press in McCain's home state of Arizona picked up on the KGB story."

In 1992, Sampley wrote a long article that portrayed McCain as a "Manchurian candidate," who had betrayed America to the North Vietnamese and then enlisted as a secret Communist agent. But it wasn't until seven years later that the celebrated Navy pilot and ex-POW found out how much damage such smears could inflict. After McCain declared his presidential candidacy in 1999, Sampley revived the "Manchurian candidate" smear as a convenient weapon for the Senator's political enemies. Some of them, including the prominent conservative Paul Weyrich and Richard Mellon Scaife's Newsmax Web site, didn't hesitate to pick up the slimy stuff generated by Sampley. The fringe assault on McCain, amplified by the likes of Weyrich and talk radio, caused grave injury to his campaign during the pivotal South Carolina primary.

Insinuations of treason are being revived for deployment against Kerry, who happens to be a close friend of McCain (Kerry defended McCain against Sampley, denouncing him as a "stupid ass" in print). The simplest way to tar Kerry as an antiwar extremist -- and indict him for unpatriotic betrayal in the eyes of many vets -- is to pair him with "Hanoi Jane" Fonda. On Monday, Rush Limbaugh published a photograph of Fonda at what appears to be an antiwar rally, under the headline "John Kerry With Hanoi Jane in September, 1970." And indeed, a blurry face about two rows behind her does resemble the young Kerry.

But Limbaugh, like so many who attack Kerry for working with Fonda against the war, distorts reality. Fonda didn't travel to Hanoi until August 1972. Obviously that was two years after the September 1970 rally and, more important, a year after she joined demonstrations led by Kerry and his fellow vets in Vietnam Veterans Against the War. By the time Fonda visited Hanoi, Kerry was running for Congress in Boston. There's no evidence that he worked with Fonda after her notorious trip. (If Monday's rant indicates Limbaugh's state of mind, he is absolutely unhinged by the prospect of renewed debate over Vietnam. Might his hysteria have anything to do with his own embarrassing escape from the draft?)

Searching for proof of Kerry's alleged anti-American radicalism has frustrated his more intelligent adversaries. The current issue of the Weekly Standard carries a windy account of this ongoing quest by David Skinner, who dug up a copy of the New Soldier, a 1971 antiwar volume that carried Kerry's byline. Skinner offers a long, dull account of his effort to find a copy of this minor, somewhat moldy period piece -- and when he does, the results are anticlimactic. "Anti-Kerry oppo researchers will be disappointed to learn that Kerry wrote very little of the book," he reveals at long last. "It reprints his [1971] Senate testimony and includes a brief afterword from him." Skinner can't manage to work up much righteous anger. At the end, he complains that in the midst of the movement's turmoil, Kerry "was able to have his cake and eat it, too, becoming the establishment, patriotic face of a radical, anti-patriotic movement."

Please allow me to translate: The Weekly Standard found nothing because there was nothing to find. But that won't stop the desperate, screaming smears, escalating in volume as Kerry stumps toward his party's nomination.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason...0/kerry_smear/

I'm not sure what the issue is here.

Does Kerry 'hate' the military and 'hate' veterans? Hmmmmm, no. Hyperbole overload. Lets be realistic, as I've said before, his treatment of MIA's was pretty bad and I'm not exactly Kerry's greatest fan, but war crimes did happen in Vietnam. I doubt that this could be considered as debatable. Actions were taken that did contradict the Geneva Convention - unless you believe that war is civilised?

When I read the quote you posted, made by Kerry, my interpretation was that he was pointing the finger at both the orders given and those who issued them. My interpretation was that Kerry was angered by the at-all-costs nature of the Vietnam conflict. My interpretation is that he was he was stating that 'atrocities' had occured (in which he took part), and that the blame should fall on the shoulders of those who either issued such orders or endorsed them. Apparently, the much-scoffed line of: "I was simply following orders", is an acceptable excuse on this occasion.

Again, lets be realistic - the Geneva Convention says 'this', 'that' and 'the other', but in reality, the laws of war will be flouted at every opportunity. This is not Good V's Evil, or Right V's Wrong (despite how 'the communist threat' was percieved), war is simply about two sides doing whatever they can, sinking to whatever depths to defeat the other - war crimes and 'atrocities' included.

I can understand that some vets will feel anger with Kerry. He made statements in the 70's that sliced through the touchy issue of war and its effects - and slicing usually divides things into two halves.

Trouble is, if you can accept that war crimes will happen, that war will inevitably cough up 'unlawful' actions and manipulate the baser instincts of those involved - why would you balk at the idea that Vietnam was any different?

It's all part of the course. It never changes.

oh...so when it's bush's record, it's simply called "harsh scrutiny". but putting kerry's record under "harsh scrutiny", it's called a "smear campaign".

nah. it only seems that way. here, i'll try to help. see when one's a hero and one's a deserter well, the deserter doesn't look so good in comparison.

- js.

keep repeating that lie and maybe it'll come true

maybe? that's funny. :D

- js.

stay tuned jacky...all of this "awol" and "deserter" lying rhetoric against bush is going to blow up in kerry's botoxed face.

can't wait. kerry'll handle whatever crap quivering republicans throw at him. unlike bush, he's been tested under real fire.

- js.

republicans don't throw crap, they throw facts.
let's see how kerry does under "real fire" of the facts.

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blow it out ya ass..
 

the thing here is conservatives throw facts that always smell like crap..

Re: blow it out ya ass..
 

that's 'cause liberals are so full of crap, everything smells like crap.