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Most people seem to believe that Kerry’s testimony to Congress in 1971, accusing Vietnam veterans of heinous war crimes, was based on personal experience.
In fact, few realize that Kerry’s testimony was explicitly based, not on any personal experience at all, but only on hearsay; and that hearsay had taken place, not even on the ground in Vietnam, but in America, at an anti-war gathering. Per Jeff Jacoby:
On April 22, 1971, Kerry went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to indict the American war effort in Vietnam for horrendous war crimes. These were “not isolated incidents,” he testified, “but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.”
He offered no evidence. Instead he trumpeted the charges of the “Winter Soldier Investigation,” an antiwar gathering a few months earlier at which men claiming to be Vietnam veterans—many were later exposed as frauds—described the atrocities they had allegedly committed.
“They told stories,” Kerry said, “that at times 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 a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam, in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.”
That hearsay is part of the foundation for our nation’s feelings of guilt about the Vietnam war. Has it every been substantiated? On the contrary. Per Col. George E. “Bud” Day, “the most decorated officer since Gen. Douglas MacArthur”, who shared John McCain’s cell in the Hanoi Hilton:
Kerry cast a long dark shadow over all Vietnam Veterans with his outright perjury before the Senate concerning atrocities in Vietnam. His stories to the Senate committee were absolute lies.. fabrications.. perjury.. fantasies, with NO substance. That dark shadow has defamed the entire Vietnam War veteran population, and gave “Aid and Comfort” to our enemies..the Vietnamese Communists. Kerry’s stories were outright fabrications, and were intended for political gain with the radical left ..McGovern, Teddy and Bobby Kennedy followers, Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, and the radical left who fantasized that George McGovern was going to be elected in 1972. Little wonder that returning soldiers from Vietnam were spit upon and castigated as “baby killers”. A returned war hero said so….
The word is getting out. The actions of the Swift Boat Vets have brought to the forefront the inherent falseness, of Kerry’s slandering the Vietnam vets who, in his acceptance speech, he called his “band of brothers.”
Yesterday I was listening to Al Rantel, and he was talking about the testimony Kerry made to Congress in 1971. Al made the point that these accusations are without foundation, and that even if they could be accurately applied to a very few soldiers, to apply them to the majority of soldiers would be a great injustice.
As a result of the Presidential campaign, this false basis for our nation’s feelings of guilt about the Vietnam war is being exposed. That guilt is being rejected by many as unjust.
It is the most unexpected possible turn of events that Kerry’s unintentional achievement in this election may be the repudiation of the very wounds he helped lead America to inflict on itself, more than 30 years ago.
I wasn’t photoblogging at the time of the Democratic convention, but my recollection is that the faces in the crowd were dour, serious, and notably lacking in excitement. Not so the crowd at the first day of the Republican convention.
That crowd is excited, inspired, energized. They believe in what they’re hearing and in what they’re doing.
From Gordon Apple:
This is a photo I took of the Razorback, actually named for a type of whale, coming up the Arkansas River with Little Rock in the background. The Razorback is one of two remaining submarines that were at the Tokyo Bay surrender of Japan. It spent the last 30 years in the Turkish Navy. As of this afternoon, August 29, 2004, is is moored in the Arkansas River at North Little Rock. Its last Captain, from Coronado, California, and about 150 other WWII submarine vets were present. It is supposed to be open for tours starting tomorrow.
(Rumor has it that now that North Little Rock has a submarine, Little Rock wants an aircraft carrier for defense. Let’s see them get that puppy past the bridge at the Clinton Library.)
Taking Glenn’s advice, that “bloggers should try to always have a digital camera handy”, I picked up a 4-megapixel Canon S410.
It comes with photostitching software, that lets you combine multiple shots. Here’s an example picture, which I took in a local post office:
Click for a larger version.
That’s four different pictures, shot without a tripod, and then combined later using the Canon software. It looks perfect, doesn’t it?
Liberal NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd had this to say on Letterman last night (no link – transcribed from a recording):
Dave: Just tell me your thoughts generally about the Democratic candidate first. What about John Kerry? What comes to your mind there?
Maureen: Lame. I think – just very very lame. [Laughter, applause.]
Dave: You said “lame”, is that right? Lame? Uh-huh. And what about him is lame?
Maureen: Well, he, for instance the swift boat thing—you’ve got a President who spent the Vietnam war defending Texas from Oklahoma, [laughter] and a Vice-President who got four deferments because he had other priorities, most of which seem to be making his wife pregnant so he could get more deferments, and somehow they’ve managed to paint the war hero as a war criminal, and it took him weeks and weeks to respond. And even now he’s not as mad as he should be.
... Dave: And what will come of this issue now as the campaign goes forward? Anything? Is it done? Is it finished?
Maureen: The swift boat? No. they just seem to be stuck, the whole campaign is stuck in the 60’s
... Dave: But i do notice now that we don’t hear much from [Teresa]. Do you think that they’ve muzzled her?
Maureen: No. No. There was a big Kerry fund raiser in the Hamptons last weekend and Teresa is always called upon to introduce her husband and, but sometimes she forgets to mention him or forgets he’s onstage and she gets lost in the thicket of her own fascinating background. [Laughter.] So she was going on about herself for 20 minutes. And after 20 minutes she finally said, oh, oh, and now i’d like to introduce my husband John Kerry. and someone in the audience screamed out, “Well go ahead, already!” [Laughter.] So I think she’s gonna be a barrel of fun.
... Dave: Do you think, looking at it right now, John Kerry can overcome his “lameness”?
Maureen: Looking at it right now, I don’t think so, no.
Dave: Is that right?
Maureen: I don’t know. Unless he can really pick up the pace.
You know the Kerry campaign is in serious trouble when Maureen Dowd finds it necessary to shoot holes in it.
It seems to me very odd that the Kerry campaign has been utterly paralyzed for around 3 weeks by the Swift Vets. Yes, the Swift Vets have blown a hole in the Kerry campaign’s boat which is likely to swamp it. But why isn’t Kerry out answering questions from the press and pretending that his boat isn’t taking on water? Why isn’t he out talking about the things which he pretends are the issues that need discussion?
It appears to mean he’s unwilling to answer the questions raised by the Swift Vets, such as the one he ducked when John Stewart did ask it point blank. “Were you or were you not in Cambodia?” It’s amazing that Kerry couldn’t even cough up a “yes” with some accompanying “nuance” to the effect that it wasn’t Christmas, it was some other time. Didn’t Kerry expect to discuss this? Wasn’t he welcoming the opportunity to attempt to clear the air over it? The more this goes on, the more you have to wonder, just how out of touch with reality is this guy?
The Left likes to consider the truth irrelevant; for example, the fact that Islamofascists are trying to nuke us, is something the Left likes to gloss over and ignore. Similarly, Kerry seems to consider the facts of his own personal history irrelevant. He made no mention of his Senate career in his acceptance speech, as if his long Liberal voting record was of no bearing on his electability. And when he called his fellow veterans his “band of brothers,” he disregarded his own testimony before Congress, in which he backstabbed those same fellow veterans, as if that testimony had never occurred.
But reality exists. And if you’re trying to accomplish a goal, such as steering your boat through rocky waters, or getting elected, you can ignore it only at your peril. That’s what’s happening to Kerry right now: he’s finding out, evidentally to his surprise, that the truth is real, and if you ignore the rocks your boat is in danger of get wracked up on them.
Conservatives often wonder why Liberals seem to ignore the facts. There is a great example in a Lewis Lapham article in the latest Harper’s. Lapham has written, and Harper’s has published, an article that slams the speeches made at the Republican convention—which has not yet taken place.
From Hit and Run at Reason Online:
Perhaps the most revealing part of the article is the paragraph where Lapham pretends to have heard the speeches at the Republican National Convention that does not open until a week from today. Referring to “the platform on which [George W. Bush] was trundled into New York City this August with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the heavy law enforcement, and the paper elephants,” Lapham writes:
The speeches in Madison Square Garden affirmed the great truths now routinely preached from the pulpits of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal—government the problem, not the solution; the social contract a dead letter; the free market the answer to every maiden’s prayer—and while listening to the hollow rattle of the rhetorical brass and tin, I remembered the question that [Richard] Hofstadter didn’t stay to answer. How did a set of ideas both archaic and bizarre make its way into the center ring of the American political circus?
Most of us like our reporting to be done about things that have actually taken place.
The facts appear to be entirely irrelevant to Lapham; the anomaly is that here he reveals this so unequivocally.
(Hat tip: Andrew Breitbart )
Kerry accused the very men with whom he served of the most heinous war crimes, and now has the unmitigated gall to call those same men, his band of brothers. It’s as appalling as it is unbelievable.
If you put this in a script for a Hollywood movie, it would be laughed out of the room. If you saw this on the silver screen, it wouldn’t seem to make the remotest possible sense. How can he accuse these people of cutting off heads and all the rest of it, and then later call the very same people, his band of brothers?
Again it raises a question I’ve asked previously: Does Kerry have any idea what hes talking about?
His behavior would appear to be some form of madness; however, it’s much more likely that he just has no idea what he’s saying.
...Some 46,000 New Yorkers are registered to vote in both the city and Florida, a shocking finding that exposes both states to potential abuses that could alter the outcome of elections, a Daily News investigation shows.
Registering in two places is illegal in both states, but the massive snowbird scandal goes undetected because election officials don’t check rolls across state lines.
The finding is even more stunning given the pivotal role Florida played in the 2000 presidential election, when a margin there of 537 votes tipped a victory to George W. Bush.
...The News found that between 400 and 1,000 registered voters have voted twice in at least one election, a federal offense punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
...Of the 46,000 registered in both states, 68% are Democrats, 12% are Republicans and 16% didn’t claim a party.
That’s 31,280 Democrats, vs. 5,520 Republicans involved in this form of voting fraud.
Can we find a way to fix this before the November election?
Update 8-22-04: The previous title of this post was “Dems 5 Times More Likely than Repubs to Illegally Register to Vote in Both NY and Florida.” But we have to take into account that there are more registered Democrats than registered Republicans in NY to start with, so if members of both parties were equally likely to do this, we would still see more Democrats than Republicans in the absolute numbers.
This NY Daily News article provides info on the ratio of Democrats to Republicans in NY state:
The new poll also found that Republican Bush appears to be a viable option for New York voters in a state where Democrats have a 5-3 enrollment advantage over Republicans.
Putting these numbers together, we find that Democrats appear to be only 3.4 times more likely than Republicans to commit this form of voting fraud.
It’s a very strange way of speaking; I would call it sepulchral.
Listen to those tones – he wants them to be rich, flowing, melodious—and contrast that to the horrific accusations he’s making against the very soldiers with whom he served. The emotions he’s purporting to feel don’t seem to match the things he’s saying.
This reminds me of his taking a camera with him into combat. It seems to be all just a show for the cameras.
John Kerry: . . . razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan. . .
Paul Gallanti: John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I, and many of my, uh, comrades in North Vietnam, in the prison camps, uh, took torture to avoid saying. It demoralized us.
John Kerry: . . . crimes committed on a day to day basis. . .
Ken Cordier: He betrayed us in the past, how could we be loyal to him now?
Kerry’s tones are sepulchral; and it’s like the ghosts of the men he thought he was burying, have returned for justice.
Update 8-22-04:
Dole told CNN’s “Late Edition” that he warned Kerry months ago about going “too far” and that the Democrat may have himself to blame for the current situation, in which polls show him losing support among veterans.
“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,” Dole said. “The next day he’s standing there, ‘I want to be president because I’m a Vietnam veteran.
“Maybe he should apologize to all the other 2.5 million veterans who served. He wasn’t the only one in Vietnam,” said Dole, whose World War II wounds left him without the use of his right arm.
That’s Kerry’s famous “nuance” for you: defaming his country, slamming the very veterans who served with him and accusing them of war crimes, including some who braved torture so as to avoid defaming their country themselves—and then later daring to call those same veterans, his band of brothers.
As used by Kerry, “nuance” is just another word for baloney.
Many had predicted that there would be no possibility of peace between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, and that this would doom our efforts at building a successful nation there.
No such civil war has yet occurred. And this is one of the times when it would be most likely, since leadership of the nation is more up-for-grabs now than it may ever be again.
The current action by Sadr and his followers is being dealt with decisively. It’s very meaningful that the Iraqi government is taking a leading role in putting down Sadr:
Iraq Issues Ultimatum as Militia Stays Put
NAJAF, Iraq Cleric Muqtada Sadr and his militia refused to budge from the Imam Ali Mosque here Thursday after the Iraqi government issued tough new demands on the conditions under which they would disarm and depart.
The ultimatum was delivered to Sadr not by the U.S., but by the new Iraqi government.
James Dunnigan has characterized Sadr’s actions as a civil war that is opposed by the vast majority of his countrymen (via Instapundit ):
The current hostilities are a very lopsided civil war, with over 90 percent of the population on one side. The Sunni Arabs fight on partly because they fear war crimes trials for atrocities committed when they served Saddam, and partly because they really believe that Iraq cant do without them. The foreign terrorists fight because of the non-Moslem foreigners, and later will fight because Iraq will be seen as not Islamic enough because of cooperation with infidels (non-Moslems).
The vast number of Iraqis opposing Sadr doom his movement to failure:
All of this makes Iraq a rather unique rebellion, guerilla operation, civil war, or whatever you want to call it. Comparisons to other guerilla wars will be difficult, because the size of the population supporting the guerillas has a direct bearing on the chances of the guerillas succeeding. In Iraq, the small portion of the population supporting guerilla operations indicates that the possibility of success is very low. But the fighting could go on for a while.
So the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds may surprise us, by seeking peace and prosperity rather than bloodshed. From Iraq the Model:
I was working in a village north of Basra a few weeks ago when news broke of the attack, apparently by Americans, on the Imam Ali shrine. I thought to myself: “That’s it. Tomorrow there will be an uprising that will involve all the southern ‘governates’, and I’ll be trapped here alone.” I couldn’t sleep that night, as I was preparing plan B and plan C to find my way back to Baghdad (I assumed the roads would be blocked when the uprising began). But the next morning kids were walking to school in the regular numbers I see every day, there were many cars in the street, and everything seemed normal. When I got to my clinic, I asked my assistant, Abu Hasan, a local man, about this strange peace. What did he think of the American attack? Abu looked shocked: “Dr Omar, this was a very naive try from Muqtada al-Sadr to drag us into his war. We all know that his fellow thieves are responsible for the attack, we know where he positioned his guns and we know where the Americans were. It can’t be anyone but Muqtada.” Here I got really confused. No uprising? No civil war? The Americans didn’t attack the shrine? Then I realised, because I’d spent several earlier months outside of Iraq, that I’d begun to believe the media.
-By Omar.
Given our military victory, the ever-growing Iraqi economy and infrastructure, and the democratic nature of the new government, it appears that the only outstanding question as to the success of the U.S. actions in freeing the Iraqi people to build a successful new nation, is this question of the possibility of such a civil war.
The absence of civil war in Iraq would equal unequivocal success for the U.S. in helping to build a free and democratic new nation.
Last night the center of the LA Blogosphere was an LA Press Club event at the Wyndham Bel Age, hosted by Amy Alkon, Emmanuelle Richard, and Cathy Seipp, celebrating Luke Ford’s new book.
I had the opportunity to chat with bloggers including Cecile DuBois, Luke Ford, Mickey Kaus, Moxie, Tony Pierce, Matt Welch, and our hosts Amy and Cathy.
I also had great conversations with French journalist Christelle Laffin, author Andrew Breitbart, DVD & Segment Producer Michael Kurcfeld, film critic Luke Thompson, and many others.
Cathy posts on the event here.
Currently on the Drudge Report home page:
The Kerry campaign calls on a publisher to ‘withdraw book’ written by group of veterans, claiming veterans are lying about Kerry’s service in Vietnam and operating as a front organization for Bush. Kerry campaign has told Salon.com that the publisher of UNFIT FOR COMMAND is ‘retailing a hoax’... ‘No publisher should want to be selling books with proven falsehoods in them,’ Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton tells the online mag… Developing…
KERRY CAMPAIGN CALLS FOR BOOK BAN
What a meltdown, to try to suppress the book utterly rather than presenting information to counter its claims. This is the behavior of dictators, to shut down the opposing press.
The Left claims to find its freedom of speech curtailed, yet attempts to ban this book.
This is not the behavior of a President. Kerry has insufficient ability to lead.
Update 8-20-04. From PowerLine:
John Kerry has filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission, asking to force the Swift Boat Vets’ ads off the air:
The Kerry campaign said it filed the complaint against the group behind the ads, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, “for violating the law with inaccurate ads that are illegally coordinated with the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign and Republican National Committee.”
The campaign said there is “overwhelming evidence” that the group is coordinating its spending on advertising and other activities with the President Bush’s campaign for reelection.”
Anyone giving Kerry the benefit of the doubt, that he was only asking nicely for PR purposes and would never try to forcibly suppress this book, must now see that the reverse is the case. Kerry doesn’t want to openly use facts to oppose dissent—he wants to suppress it.
That’s how a police state would act.
You just have to wonder what they’re smoking.
Iran warns of preemptive strike to prevent attack on nuclear sites
DOHA (AFP) – Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani warned that Iran might launch a preemptive strike against US forces in the region to prevent an attack on its nuclear facilities.
“We will not sit (with arms folded) to wait for what others will do to us. Some military commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly,” Shamkhani told Al-Jazeera TV when asked if Iran would respond to an American attack on its nuclear facilities.
Yeah, right. That’s hilarious. If Iran did any kind of official strike against our troops, we would own their entire country in a matter of weeks, remove its dictators, and turn it back over to its people, just as we are doing in Iraq.
Kerry’s web site and press releases have stated that Kerry served as vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. It turns out, that never happened. The explanation?
Wait for it—-
They confused their candidate with somebody else.
John Kerry, Bob Kerrey. It’s easy to get confused.
At least that’s how the Kerry campaign is explaining claims that Kerry the Democratic presidential candidate served as vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Oops. Make that Bob Kerrey the former Democratic senator from Nebraska who did serve as the panel’s vice chairman.
In news releases and postings on Kerry’s campaign Web site as recently as last Friday, the Massachusetts senator is touted as the panel’s former vice chairman. However, according to the Senate Historical Office, Kerry never had the seniority to hold a leadership position on the committee though he was a member from 1993 until 2001.
“John Kerry, Bob Kerrey similar names,” said Kerry campaign spokesman Michael Meehan, adding that any reference to Kerry as vice chairman was an error.
They are unable to get the facts right about their own candidate on their own web site—and they want to run the country?
“It’s difficult to take John Kerry’s claims about his intelligence experience seriously when one of his credentials is completely made up,” said Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson. “If he had shown up for Intelligence Committee hearings he would notice he wasn’t vice chairman.”
Kerry’s failure to attend three-fourths of the committee’s public hearings was criticized by RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie in a memo Tuesday to members of Congress.
