Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Sunday, Mar. 14, 2004 10:49 PM EST
Brinkley: Kerry Faces Questions about Senate Hit Plot
What did Sen. John Kerry know and when did he know it about a plot to
assassinate pro-Vietnam war U.S. Senators hatched at a November 1971
Kansas City meeting of the group Vietnam Veterans Against America?
According to presidential biographer Douglas Brinkley, that's the
question Sen. Kerry needs to answer. If it turns out that the likely
Democratic presidential nominee knew of the treasonous plan, Brinkley
says he had an obligation to go to the authorities.
"The question is: did Kerry quit [VVAW] before Kansas City or did he
quit after Kansas City," Brinkley told WABC Radio's Steve
Malzberg. "If he quit after Kansas City, that means he clearly knew
about this assassination plot against the Senators and never went to
the authorities."
Kerry says he submitted his official letter of resignation to the
VVAW just days before the critical Kansas City confab. But two
Vietnam veterans who attended the session told the New York Sun on
Friday that they remember Kerry was there.
Meanwhile copies of Kerry's resignation letter are nowhere to be
found.
Brinkley, whose book "Tour of Duty" chronicles Kerry's Vietnam war
exploits, said that the former Navy Lieutenant had an obligation to
warn authorities about the frightening plan, telling
Malzberg, "Clearly his critics would say, if he had known about it
why didn't he report it."
Once put to a vote, the death plot went down to defeat, with Kerry
voting in the majority, according to the two witnesses who say he was
there.
However, Kerry officials in Florida have recently invited the
assassination plan's author, Scott Camil, to join the Senator's
campaign, the Sun report claimed.
Brinkley described Camil as "a hothead Vietnam vet who wanted to
bring down the U.S. government."
"I'm a little shocked that the Kerry campaign would want him actively
working with them in Florida," he told Malzberg.
Get Steve Malzberg's exclusive NewsMax.com column emailed directly to
you at www.newsmax.com/malzberg.
U.S. Unloading WMD in Iraq
TEHRAN (Mehr News Agency) – Over the past few days, in the wake of
the bombings in Karbala and the ideological disputes that delayed the
signing of Iraq's interim constitution, there have been reports that
U.S. forces have unloaded a large cargo of parts for constructing
long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the
southern ports of Iraq.
A reliable source from the Iraqi Governing Council, speaking on
condition of anonymity, told the Mehr News Agency that U.S. forces,
with the help of British forces stationed in southern Iraq, had made
extensive efforts to conceal their actions.
He added that the cargo was unloaded during the night as attention
was still focused on the aftermath of the deadly bombings in Karbala
and the signing of Iraq's interim constitution.
The source said that in order to avoid suspicion, ordinary cargo
ships were used to download the cargo, which consisted of weapons
produced in the 1980s and 1990s.
He mentioned the fact that the United States had facilitated Iraq's
WMD program during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq and said that some of the
weapons being downloaded are similar to those weapons, although
international inspectors had announced Saddam Hussein's Baath regime
had destroyed all its WMD.
The source went on to say that the rest of the weapons were probably
transferred in vans to an unknown location somewhere in the vicinity
of Basra overnight.
"Most of these weapons are of Eastern European origin and some parts
are from the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. The U.S.
obtained them through confiscations during sales of banned arms over
the past two decades," he said.
This action comes as certain U.S. and Western officials have been
pointing out the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been
discovered in Iraq and the issue of Saddam's trial begins to take
center stage.
In addition, former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has
emphasized that the U.S. and British intelligence agencies issued
false reports on Iraq leading to the U.S. attack.
Meanwhile, the suspicious death of weapons inspector David Kelly is
also an unresolved issue in Britain.
------Occupation Forces Official Claims to Have No Information About
Transfer of WMD to Iraq -------
A security official for the coalition forces in Iraq said that he has
not received any information about the unloading of weapons of mass
destruction in ports in southern Iraq.
Shane Wolf told the Mehr News Agency that the occupation forces have
received no reports on such events, but said he hoped that the
coalition forces would find the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction one
day.
Coalition forces and inspectors have so far been unable to find any
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. invaded Iraq under the
pretext that Iraq possessed a stockpile of weapons of mass
destruction.
Don't know but go to www.newsmax.com and see for
yourself !
--- tgs5499f@... wrote:
> Why am I not hearing it on FOX news TV I have goin'
> on in the other room?
>
=====
Listen to J.R. on Talk Show America, a political conservative talk show that
webcasts Mon-Fri 4-6 PM EST live on the IBC Radio Network www.ibcrn.com or 24/7
@ www.talkshowamerica.com (Recorded)
__________________________________
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It has been confirmed but it won't make a difference
unless you find warehouses full of Chem/Bio weapons or
agents the left will say its no big deal. These
missles are radioactive which was not allowed under UN
Resolution 687 or 1441 and they fly 154 miles which
was over the limit allowed by the UN resolution. They
contain Uranium which can be used to make Dirty
Nuclear weapons, so this should be considered WMD
components but it won't be trust me.
Another question you have to ask yourself is why
didn't Blix and crew discover these when they were
there and if we just found these weapons why won't we
find WMDs at some point, it just as possible !
J.R.
--- tgs5499f@... wrote:
> Hot damn, I hope it's true!!
> Thanks Terry
>
=====
Listen to J.R. on Talk Show America, a political conservative talk show that
webcasts Mon-Fri 4-6 PM EST live on the IBC Radio Network www.ibcrn.com or 24/7
@ www.talkshowamerica.com (Recorded)
__________________________________
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Exclusive: U.S. Finds Radioactive Missiles in Iraq
Charles R. Smith
Tuesday, March 9, 2004
U.S. Army troops operating at a former Iraqi air base recently made a
startling discovery: Russian-made missiles marked with radioactive
warning signs.
Army bomb disposal troops confirmed using Geiger counters that the
missiles are indeed radioactive.
The discovery is not, however, considered the long-sought "smoking
gun" of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
The missiles appear to be part of a cache of weapons supplied to Iraq
before the 1991 Gulf War.
The Russian-made R-60, NATO code name AA-8 Aphid, air-to-air missiles
are part of a huge stockpile of former Iraqi Air Force munitions
uncovered in over a dozen concrete bunkers.
Photos Courtesy U.S. Army
The Russian-made missiles are more than 6 feet long. Each carries 1.6
kilograms or about 3.5 pounds of radioactive uranium wrapped around a
high explosive warhead.
The uranium is not pure enough nor in large enough quantity to be a
nuclear warhead but it is dangerous enough, as you can see from the
label:
Photos Courtesy U.S. Army
U.S. bomb experts noted the R-60 warheads are similar in design and
content to a so-called "dirty bomb" that could contaminate a small
area with radioactive materials.
Difficult Disposal
The discovery of the uranium-laced R-60 missiles illustrates the
difficulty that coalition troops have in trying to dispose of the
billons of dollars of Iraqi weapons left behind after the second war.
The R-60 missiles cannot simply be destroyed because the uranium-
laced warheads could pose a health hazard to coalition troops and
Iraqi civilians.
Army bomb-disposal experts have gathered up all the R-60 missiles
found at the site and quarantined them at a single, heavily guarded
location.
The R-60 has a very small 6-kilogram (13.2-pound) explosive warhead.
The R-60 missiles supplied to Iraq by Russia contained uranium in
their warheads to assist the small explosive charge in destroying
targeted aircraft.
Russian weapons designers added the uranium belt to the missile in
order to knock-out western aircraft using the dense metal as a way to
punch through heavily armored sections of U.S. made jets.
U.S. troops also found a small number of advanced R-60M warheads at
the site. The R-60M missiles are equipped with an advanced laser
destruct system that detonates the warhead when it passes close to a
target aircraft.
More Russian Missiles
In addition, U.S. troops uncovered several large air-to-surface Kh-28
missiles, NATO code-named AS-9 Kyle.
Photos Courtesy U.S. Army
The Kh-28 is a Russian-made, anti-radar, air-to-surface missile with
a top speed of more than 2,000 miles an hour.
The missile is approximately 19.5 feet long, 17 inches in diameter,
has a wingspan of 5.5 feet and weighs more than 1,500 pounds. It
carries a conventional 340-pound high-explosive warhead and has a
range of 54 miles.
U.S weapons experts are also handling the Kh-28 missiles carefully,
but not because of its electronic radar-seeking warhead.
The Kh-28 is powered by a liquid-propellant propulsion system that
consists of a fuel tank and an oxidizer tank. The oxidizer is a
dangerous chemical known as "red fuming nitric acid" or IRFNA. Each
missile carries approximately 20 gallons of IRFNA.
The oxidizer is considered to be highly dangerous and a possible
carcinogen. U.S. Air Force disposal squads dismantled a Kh-28 found
after the 1991 Gulf War using full Hazmat suits and special anti-
chemical gear.
Again, U.S. forces are taking great care in the disposal of the
missiles for fear of exposing coalition troops and local civilians to
hazardous chemicals such as the oxidizer found in the Kh-28 missiles.
Just who is John Forbes Kerry, the presumed Democrat presidential nominee? His answer, of course, depends on who is asking. Like so many Leftists, John Kerry is a case study in hypocrisy.
Kerry, the meticulously coiffed inheritance-welfare playboy, professes to be an Everyday Joe, a populist man of the people. Kerry, the Vietnam "war hero" who shamelessly surrounds himself with a "band of brothers" at every campaign stop, once cuddled with Hanoi Jane Fonda and has since opposed nearly every defense- and intelligence-spending program during his Senate tenure. Kerry, the self-described moderate whose rise to political power began under the tutelage of Teddy Kennedy, was recently named "Most Liberal Senator" by the National Journal, with a composite score of 96.5. All told, John Kerry's representation of his record -- his life, in fact -- leaves one longing for a Democrat candidate with the unimpeachable honesty of Bill Clinton. Indeed, Friend of The Federalist James Taranto recently dubbed Senator Kerry "Dukakis without the integrity."
As Federalist No. 04-04 noted, "Kerry, whose campaign appeared moribund just three weeks ago, is now the new-and-improved front-runner of the Demo pack. At first blush, he appears to be a "package" candidate for Demo voters -- the military veteran who was, and remains, an Ivy-league anti-war protestor; the consummate insider who's acting like an outsider; the Senate's wealthiest member (he married well and his middle name is "Forbes" after all) who's acting like a homeless advocate; and the terrorism dove who's taunting our wartime president to "bring it on." Basically, Kerry is running against his own record -- he's against NAFTA but voted for it, he's against the USA Patriot Act but voted for it, he's against Operation Iraqi Freedom but voted for it, etc."
The Kerry campaign insists on keeping his Vietnam record front-and-center. According to his website, "When John Kerry returned home from Vietnam, he joined his fellow veterans in vowing never to abandon future veterans of America's wars. Kerry's commitment to veterans has never wavered and stands strong to this day."
Is that right!
John Kerry may have served with distinction in Vietnam. He did receive a Silver Star after beaching his Swift Boat and chasing a loin-clothed young boy (who was thought to possess a rocket launcher) around the corner of a hut and killing him. (If nothing else, this serves to remind us that war is indeed an ugly business -- and that enemy combatants aren't always attired in combat fatigues.) He also collected three Purple Hearts (though today there is little or no evidence of his wounds received).
Upon his return home, however, Kerry abandoned each and every one of his fellow Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines on the ground in Vietnam -- not to mention the people of South Vietnam -- by fomenting wartime discord. In his now infamous 1971 testimony before Congress, Kerry said American soldiers were war criminals, claiming they "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs ... poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."
Kerry went on: "I personally didn't see personal atrocities in the sense I saw somebody cut a head off or something like that. However, I did take part in free-fire zones, I did take part in harassment and interdiction fire, I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were burned to the ground, and all of these acts, I find out later on, are contrary to The Hague and Geneva conventions and to the laws of warfare. So in that sense, anybody who took part in those, if you carry out the application of the Nuremberg Principles, is in fact guilty."
Kerry's protests and testimony did little more than aid and abet the Viet Cong, and his support for Communists did not end in 1971. In fact, it was Kerry who, years later, founded the Senate Select Committee for POW/MIA Affairs with the objective of normalizing relations and trade with the Vietnamese government and ending speculation about MIAs that were captive in Vietnam long after the cease-fire accord. As recently as 2002, Kerry even blocked the Vietnam Human Rights Act from coming to a vote.
And the rest of Kerry's congressional voting record is no better.
Massachusetts's most liberal senator -- check that, America's most liberal senator -- has, over the years, voted against defense-appropriations bills funding weapons that have proved essential to U.S. national security, including the Patriot Missile, the Tomahawk cruise missile and the B-2 stealth bomber. Kerry's voting record also shows his support for cutting funding or altogether canceling existing weapons systems such as the M-1 Abrams tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Apache helicopter, B-1 Bomber, F-14, F-15, F-16 and AV-8B Harrier. Kerry also voted against the Navy's Aegis Air Defense Cruiser and Trident Missile System for U.S. submarines.
The Center for Security Policy, a conservative Washington-based think tank committed to "promoting international peace through American strength," has rated Kerry among the worst on Capitol Hill when it comes to national security and defense. In 1995, the Center gave Kerry a score of five out of a possible 100 points. Two years later, Kerry earned a mind-blowing score of exactly zero.
It stands to reason, then, that Kerry has voted against the strategic missile-defense shield, as well as U.S. withdrawal from the antiquated Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty: But while these votes have clearly inhibited U.S. security, Kerry has cast two votes in the past ten years to loosen restrictions on the export of dual-use technology -- the sort of technology that enemies of the United States can convert into weapons and turn against us.
So much for the Massachusetts senator's commitment to the war on terrorism.
True to his Vietnam-era sympathies, John Kerry became one of President Ronald Reagan's most outspoken opponents regarding the policy of militarily suppressing Communist inroads in Latin America. His opposition culminated in a controversial April, 1985, visit to Nicaragua and its Sandinista regime.
Following the Cold War, Kerry's doveliness continued unabated. Following Iraq's seizure of Kuwait in 1990, Kerry voted against authorization for the use of force -- which was more than could be said for Saddam Hussein. In 1995, Kerry was among 29 other senators who voted against ending the arms embargo against the Bosnians, even as Slobodan Milosevic escalated his reign of terror.
Concerning the authorization for the use of force against Iraq last year, however, Senator Kerry had this to say on 23 January 2003: "Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real...."
Kerry now says he believes the war was a mistake, and that he voted to authorize the threat of force, but not the actual use of it. (We at The Federalist can't help but wonder about the seriousness of a post-9/11 presidential candidate so loath to make good on a threat. Kerry's approach won't strike fear into the heart of a schoolyard bully, much less that of a brutal dictator or a murderous band of Jihadist thugs.)
More recently, we note the senator's whiny, thin-skinned response to questions raised over his defense voting record by Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss -- questions utterly appropriate to anyone aspiring to be commander-in-chief: "[The President has] decided once again to take the low road of American politics. ... Saxby Chambliss, on the part of the president and his henchmen, decided today to question my commitment to the defense of our nation...." And again, when responding to similar queries: "I'd like to know what it is Republicans who didn't serve in Vietnam have against those of us who did." Wait a minute -- you mean John Kerry actually served in Vietnam? Who knew?
Finally, earlier this week Kerry breathed life into the conspiracy theory of a U.S.-led coup against erstwhile Leftist darling and Haitian president/autocrat Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who resigned and fled to Africa early last Sunday morning. Following Aristide's departure, Kerry remarked, "I think there should be some investigation of it. I have a very close friend in Massachusetts who talked directly to people who made that allegation [of a U.S.-led coup]. I don’t know the truth of it. I really don’t. But I think it needs to be explored and we need to know the truth of what happened."
So let's get this straight: Kerry admits he doesn't "know the truth of it," yet he's calling for an investigation because he's got a friend back home who talked to someone who says that the President of the United States ordered the kidnapping of a foreign leader.
This is the best the Democrat Party can offer for President?
Quote of the week...
"They don't know John Kerry's record. ... He is the Olympic gold medalist when it comes to special-interest money. .. I also think that he is very vulnerable on the issues of national security. If you look at his voting record, it is terrible as far as it comes to national defense and helping fund a good intelligence unit." --Senator Zell Miller, the Georgia Democrat who's campaigning against Kerry for a second Bush term
Open query for Kerry...
"Other than denoting your disapproval, what does the adjective mean in the phrase 'special interest'? Is the National Education Association a special interest? The AFL-CIO?... Is the National Rifle Association a 'special interest'? Is 'special' a synonym for 'conservative'? ... When you denounce 'lobbyists' do you include those for Planned Parenthood and the Sierra Club? Is 'liberal lobbyist' an oxymoron?... On Jan. 11, 1991, you said that going to war was abandoning 'the theory of deterrence.' Was it not a tad late to deter Iraqi aggression? The next day you said, 'I do not believe our nation is prepared for war.' How did unpreparedness subsequently manifest itself? ... On Jan. 22, 1991, responding to a constituent opposed to the Gulf War, you wrote 'I share your concerns' and would have given sanctions more time. Nine days later, responding to a voter who favored the war, you wrote, 'I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis.' Did you have a third position?... You oppose immediate termination of U.S. involvement in Iraq, and you opposed the $87 billion to pay for involvement. Come again? In 1994, the year after the first attack on the World Trade Center, you voted to cut $1 billion from counter-terrorism activities. In 1995 you proposed a $1.5 billion cut in intelligence funding. Are you now glad that both proposals were defeated?" --George Will, "A Few Questions for John Kerry"
Snap shots...
"I think it is entirely possible [the extramarital affair by Clinton] was a distraction that kept him from performing his duty as president." --John Kerry, September 2001
"If anything, there may now be a greater appreciation for the trouble you can get into for certain behavior. More parents are teaching their children about lying, about humiliation, about family hurt, about public responsibility, than before we ever heard the name of Monica Lewinsky." --John Kerry, February, 1999
"The country does not believe the fiber of our nation is unraveling over the President's egregious behavior, because most people have a sense of proportion about the case that seems totally lacking in the House managers' presentation. No parent or school in America is teaching kids that lying or abusing the justice system is now OK....Democrats were very sophisticated in making a distinction between the policies and personal behavior of President Clinton." --John Kerry during the Clinton impeachment proceedings
Dave & Katie Mellen Warren, Massachusetts USA DKDS01083@... AOL/AIM :DKDS01083 ICQ#864893 YAHOO: AmtCndr
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Jacksonville Daily News
http://www.jdnews.com
March 06, 2004
ERIC STEINKOPFF
DAILY NEWS STAFF
If Jim Refinger knows one thing it's this: Ousted Haitian president
Jean Bertrand Aristide is safe.
There was no kidnapping, as some sources reported. There was no
injury. And for Refinger there was no mystery.
Refinger was there. The former Jacksonville police sniper and retired
Marine was part of a private security team hired to protect
Aristide's inner circle.
"We left with him (but) I won't talk about where we went," Refinger
said Friday from his home in Jacksonville where he just returned. "We
escorted him safely out.
"Everything was done with the full knowledge and cooperation of the
president. There was no forcing the president to go anywhere. We
protected our principal without a shot fired and he is safe."
Refinger works for Steele Foundation, a security firm based in San
Francisco. The company has protection details all over the world and
does industrial security and risk analysis, Refinger said.
Aristide had a presidential protection unit, and a team from Steele
mirrored the unit in an inner circle. Refinger's job was running the
outer circle that kept the inner circle safe.
"We were protecting the protectors, and we worked closely with the
Haitian counter-ambush team," he said.
A good fit
Refinger, 55, seems a natural to train and lead a quick reaction
force in Port-au-Prince.
He was a Marine 1st sergeant and worked for 16 years with the
Jacksonville police department's special incident response team
before retiring in July 2002 and going to work for Steele.
"When I got to the Jacksonville police department I wanted to be on
their (special weapons and tactics) team," Refinger said. "I started
out as a sniper on the SWAT team and later was a sniper instructor
for the police department. Now they probably have one of the better
teams in the state."
Little wonder. Refinger was with 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company
from the end of 1966 to the end of 1969. He said he received "a
little ding in the leg" from North Vietnamese rocket shrapnel before
training enlisted recruits as a drill instructor at Parris Island,
S.C.
In 1983, he was an adviser to the Lebanese Army before the terrorist
bombing at the Beirut International Airport Oct. 23 that year.
Refinger was the senior enlisted member of Fox Company, 2nd
Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, and later first sergeant of
Headquarters Company of the regiment before retiring from the Marine
Corps in 1986.
In addition to his time as a sniper and sniper instructor at the
Jacksonville Police Department, he worked as a patrol officer,
narcotics officer and later a patrol supervisor.
After he retired from the department, Refinger's Marine buddy and
former Camp Lejeune special incident response team member Mark Moore
asked Refinger if he'd work for the Steele.
On speaking terms
While working in Haiti, Refinger has picked up a little of the Creole
language, especially terms like "stay back," "kneel," "stand there"
and "put your hands behind your back."
"Once you are their teacher in a basic course you become special to
them," Refinger said. "We did our best to teach them proper police
procedures and to treat people with respect because it reflects on
the presidency."
Although the country was considered unstable, Refinger said it really
wasn't a combat area.
"The threat of rebels didn't really happen until the first of the
year," he said. "Most of the time we were protecting (Aristide) from
people who loved him too much."
Thousands of people would show up at public events threatening to
crush the president with sick children in the belief that somehow the
former Catholic priest would cure them.
A lot of people also hated Aristide, seemingly to Refinger because
the president came from the poor, lower class.
"It never really came to Port-au-Prince," Refinger said. "We saw some
demonstrations and started hearing about it in Gonaives and Cap
Haitien. The police got pretty overwhelmed, especially in the small
towns, but Port-au-Prince is probably 80 percent pro-Aristide."
The Shamir or ghost pro-Aristide supporters blocked roads leading
into the capital, making it difficult, if not impossible for rebels
to enter the city.
Refinger speculated that Aristide may have decided to leave to avoid
further bloodshed, but questioned whether it was possible to avoid
that in Haiti.
The matter is under investigation, said Refinger, who added that he
may be called to testify and, therefore, could not go into details
about Aristide's departure.
"We got out slick and fast, before they even knew what was
happening," Refinger said. "It wasn't until after it was all said and
done that we heard a report about kidnapping, but we knew that wasn't
the case."
More help
While Refinger was in Haiti, his wife Dee visited a couple of times,
once for 30 days and most recently for four months. The couple was
married in November 2002.
"Our first real date was a gun show and our first movie
was 'Hamburger Hill,'" said Dee.
What struck them most about Haiti was the poverty. Wild pigs, cows
and chickens wandered the streets and countryside. Infant mortality
was so high, they said, that families waited a year to name their
children in case they didn't survive.
"When you fly over it you can smell the rancid countryside," Refinger
said. "The bugs and mosquitoes are bad, the filth comes up over your
shoes and people live in that."
The couple also recalled mansions manned by servants who lived in mud
huts packed 12 to a room just across the street.
The situation convinced Dee Refinger to help. The couple is
sponsoring three children in Haiti.
"They fight to live and survive every day," Dee said.
"There's no middle class in Haiti," Refinger said. "There are haves
who have a whole lot and the poor who have nothing."
Contact Eric Steinkopff at esteinkopff@... or 353-1171, Ext.
236.
Yet another myth disproved, Oh well Mr. Kerry looks like one of your
calls for investigation may fall through, Again.
J.R.
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
by J.R.
I sit here this morning seething as I am gathering my thoughts on the
next J.R.'s Take. I am absolutely livid with the democratic
presidential front runner, Sen. John F. Kerry, and so should you be.
John F. Kerry has said that if elected, he will abandon the war on
terror, begin a dialogue with terrorist regimes, and apologize for
the mistakes of the Bush administration !
In a December foreign-policy address to the Council on Foreign
Relations, Kerry called the war on terror, led by President
Bush, "the most arrogant, inept, reckless and ideological foreign
policy in modern history."
Kerry's address was praised by the main stream media. "Kerry Vows to
Repair Foreign relations," headlined the Associated Press. The new
focus on foreign policy "plays to Kerry's strength" noted Knight
Ridder News Service. "Kerry Vows to Change U.S. Foreign Policy;
Senator Describes Steps he Would Take as President," headlined the
Washington Post. None of the major main stream media found Kerry's
address at all inappropriate.
Kerry promised that in the first 100 days of his administration that
he would travel the world to denounce his predecessor, apologize for
his "radically wrong" policy, and seek "cooperation and compromise"
with friend and enemy. Kerry said he would go to the United Nations
and travel to our allies and affirm that the United States has
rejoined the community of nations.
Apologize ? Cooperation and Compromise ? Radically wrong policy ?
What the hell is wrong with this guy ? He wants America to apologize
for responding to a terrorist attack that killed 3,000 innocent,
defenseless people, who were going about their business before they
were rudely interrupted and killed or wounded. He wants us to
apologize for a U.S. ship being attacked in a port in Yemen and 17
U.S. Sailors being killed and a ship being damaged. He wants us to
apologize for two of our U.S. embassy's being attacked and over 300
people being killed. He wants us to apologize for the first attack on
the World Trade Center in 1993 that killed 6 innocent people and
injured 1,000 more.
Apologize, Mr. Kerry ? Cooperate and compromise Mr. Kerry ? It's a
radically wrong policy to defend ourselves Mr. Kerry ? Let's not
forget that it was they (the terrorists) that attacked us. Let's also
not forget that with the exception of the 9/11 attacks, all the other
terrorist attacks happened on the Clinton administrations watch. Yes
Folks, can you believe it, the terrorists were attacking us even
before Bush became president. I know some of you will find that to be
a stunning revelation considering all you hear from the sniveling
liberals is that we are hated by the terrorists because of Bush's
foreign policy. I guess the terrorists' must have phoned Miss Cleo
and got their reading and conducted pre-emptive terrorist strikes
knowing that Bush would be President in the future.
It was the cooperate, compromise and apologize stratedgy that was
radically wrong with the Clinton administration's policies. Policies
that gutted our military hardware, demoralized our military
personnel, and invited our enemies to attack us, that led to the
attacks of 9/11. The terrorists, making the mistake of listening to
the ridiculous rhetoric of the whining liberals, believed that
because President Bush narrowly won the 2000 election, that he had no
mandate, that he would be a weak President. They, and the rest of the
world, would soon find out otherwise.
The majority of the American People will never support apologizing or
cooperating and compromising with our terrorist enemies, we have seen
where that has gotten us, Mr. Kerry. The majority of Americans
support the Presidents policies on the war on terror, even if they
don't agree with his other policies.
It appears, ladies and gentlemen that Kerry thinks this is still
the '70's and just as he aided and abetted our enemies then, he is
hell bent on doing the same thing again in 2005 if he is elected
President.
Meet the new Kerry, same as the old Kerry !
I'm J.R. and that's my take.
John Kerry (news - web sites) battled John Edwards (news - web sites) from New York to California in a 10-state show of strength Tuesday, seeking to shove his last major rival from the race and claim the Democratic presidential nomination.
Pre-election polling gave Kerry an edge in almost every Election Day venue as he sought a lion's share of the victories to make Edwards' presidential bid a political, if not quite a mathematical, impossibility. Kerry was already pivoting toward a general-election fight with President Bush (news - web sites).
"Boy, wait until you see the fire in my belly," he told a TV interviewer.
The White House dispatched Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) to TV studios to criticize the presumptive foe. "He very clearly has over the years adopted a series of positions that indicate a desire to cut the defense budget, cut the intelligence budget, to eliminate many major weapons programs," Cheney said of the four-term Massachusetts senator.
Edwards, a 50-year-old freshman senator who barely competed in half the states, targeted Georgia, Ohio and Minnesota for candidacy-saving victories. Surveys showed the race close in Georgia and barely within reach in Ohio, his prospects for survival dim.
The only other wild card was Vermont, home of former Gov. Howard Dean (news - web sites). He dropped out of the race last month, but sentimental small-state partisans hoped to give Dean a handful of delegates to leverage his budding reform movement.
In all, 10 states with a combined population of 94 million — one-third of the U.S. total — awarded 1,151 delegates, more than half of the 2,162 needed to seize the nomination. In addition to New York, California, Vermont and Edwards' three target states, voters cast ballots in four Kerry strongholds: Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Kerry, a 60-year-old senator, had 701 delegates to Edwards' 205, even before Tuesday's voting.
A 10-state sweep could give Kerry about 1,500 delegates — a virtually insurmountable lead. Even with a couple of victories and a better-than-expected showing in several other states, Edwards had to win at least 70 percent of the pledged delegates between now and June — and secure the support of uncommitted party leaders — to overtake Kerry in the delegate chase.
The lawmakers took a Super Tuesday time-out in the Senate to vote on extending the ban on military-style assault weapons. The extension passed, and they returned to campaign work after chit-chatting on the Senate floor.
The pair spent part of the day in Georgia, with Kerry looking ahead to November.
"President Clinton was often known as the first black president. I wouldn't be upset if I could earn the right to be the second," he told the American Urban Radio Network.
His unbridled optimism muted, Edwards shook hands outside a polling place in suburban Atlanta, then declined to take questions from reporters.
Answers came all day from 10 states with nearly 50 million registered voters, many of them torn between the two candidates.
"The issue that drove me is getting rid of Bush, and that led me to Kerry," said Ron Debry, 47, of suburban Cincinnati. "Maybe Edwards someday, but I don't think he's ready yet."
Ousting Bush was the top priority for voters in nearly every Super Tuesday state, with large majorities saying they are angry at the president, according to exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and TV networks by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International.
"Bush don't mean nothing to nobody but Bush," said Kerry voter John Richburg, 66, of Cleveland. "His lies done him out. He's got to go."
The economy and jobs were the dominant issue in the states, with a majority convinced that U.S. trade with other countries is more likely to take jobs from their states, exit polls showed.
Edwards hoped to seize a loser's share of delegates in New York, California and Maryland. He virtually ceded four New England states.
His best bet for victory was Georgia, but he needed a triumph outside the South — preferably in a battleground like Ohio — to justify a drawn-out fight for the nomination. Edwards believed his tough-on-trade message would play in Ohio, which has lost more than 250,000 jobs since Bush took office.
Kerry won 18 of the first 20 elections, many by routs, in a six-week campaign that drew attention to his decorated service in the Vietnam War and amplified Democratic criticism of Bush. However, with the White House gearing up for Bush's re-election, Democratic leaders grew increasingly eager to end the nomination fight.
"Edwards is a team player," New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said. "He'll know what to do."
Edwards won a single state, his native South Carolina — and that was four weeks and 11 defeats ago. He has had eight second-place finishes, five third-places and six fourth-places.
Bush's re-election campaign begins a multimillion-dollar TV ad blitz Thursday designed to bolster the president's sagging political fortunes. Kerry is prepared to dip into Democratic Party coffers to pay for his own ads.
Democratic interest groups, required to act independently of the Kerry camp, laid plans to air ads critical of Bush.
Two other candidates, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (news - web sites) of Ohio and Al Sharpton (news - web sites) of New York, had no chance of winning the nomination.
Dave & Katie Mellen Warren, Massachusetts USA DKDS01083@... AOL/AIM :DKDS01083 ICQ#864893 YAHOO: AmtCndr
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With John Kerry's success in Tuesday's primaries, the race for the Democratic nomination for president is all but over -- and speculation about his choice for vice president can now begin in earnest.
John Edwards, Kerry's closest rival [and who is expected to officially withdraw from the race today], is a proven campaigner and could attract Southern voters. Govs. Evan Bayh of Indiana and Bill Richardson of New Mexico have both regional appeal and executive experience. Dark-horse candidates include former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia.
Amid this conjecture, however, one name is conspicuously absent: Bill Clinton.
Clinton's strengths would compensate for Kerry's weaknesses almost perfectly. Not only is Clinton the most talented campaigner of his generation, but he is also a Southerner -- and since 1948, when Harry S. Truman chose Sen. Alben Barkley of Kentucky as his running mate, every successful Democratic ticket has included a citizen of a Southern state.
Besides, people might even pay to watch Bill Clinton debate Dick Cheney. So why not?
The first objection, the constitutional one, can be disposed of easily. The Constitution does not prevent Clinton from running for vice president. The 22nd Amendment, which became effective in 1951, begins: "No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice."
No problem. Bill Clinton would be running for vice president, not president. Scholars and judges can debate how loosely constitutional language should be interpreted, but one need not be a strict constructionist to find this language clear beyond dispute. Bill Clinton cannot be elected president, but nothing stops him from being elected vice president.
True, if Clinton were vice president he would be in line for the presidency. But Clinton would succeed Kerry not by election, which the amendment forbids, but through Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which provides that if a president dies, resigns or is removed from office, his powers "shall devolve on the vice president." The 22nd Amendment would not prevent this succession.
So much for the constitutional obstacles. The political ones may be more formidable. They can be summarized in two questions: Would Clinton want the job -- and would Kerry want him to take it?
We won't know until we ask, of course. But before asking, we might cite some compelling reasons for both men to consider a Kerry-Clinton ticket seriously.
For Clinton, the appeal of the vice presidency is both political and personal. First, he could help his party win. Yes, Clinton remains a divisive figure in American politics -- but not so much among Democrats. And surely many voters long for the strong economy and economic stewardship that was one of the hallmarks of his administration.
Second, he could burnish his legacy. In exchange for joining the ticket, Clinton could negotiate for plum assignments as vice president. Mideast peace? National health care? Racial equality? He could focus on any or all of them.
And from a purely personal standpoint, it might be especially gratifying for Clinton to be part of the team that defeats the man who four years ago promised to restore "character" to Clinton's own White House.
The only remaining question, then, is what Kerry thinks of all this. Judging from recent debates, there's little chemistry between Kerry and Edwards.
But Kerry and Clinton would seem to have much in common; they are nearly the same age, worked with each other in Washington for almost a decade and have a shared interest in foreign affairs.
For Kerry, the question may well come down to whether adding Clinton to the ticket would appreciably increase his chances of victory. A couple of polls should give him the answer fast enough. If the results are good, the course is clear: Bring him on.
Dave & Katie Mellen Warren, Massachusetts USA DKDS01083@... AOL/AIM :DKDS01083 ICQ#864893 YAHOO: AmtCndr
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By: Bill O'Reilly for BillOReilly.com Thursday, Feb 26, 2004
The rule of law--it's what America is based on. We have very specific rules in this country designed to promote the general welfare and protect the citizenry, and if we don't obey those laws, we are punished. That's the way it's supposed to work.
Judge Roy Moore did not obey the law. He defied a Federal court order to remove a statue of The Ten Commandments he had placed in the courthouse where he worked as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. So his fellow justices fired him as they should have. Hundreds of newspapers across the country applauded that action on their editorial pages.
"His supporters don't see (Moore) as the scofflaw that he is," the Washington Post opined, "a man who feels free to ignore the constitutionally designated system by which law is interpreted in a democratic society."
The Orlando Sentinel put forth, "Mr. Moore's style is reminiscent of another popular Alabama politician - George Wallace. Just like Mr. Wallace, Mr. Moore has little respect for the Constitution or the rule of law."
And the San Antonio Express-News put it this way: "Moore's refusal to follow the law was clearly out of bounds."
Very noble, don't you think? Newspapers passionately standing up for the rule of law in the Ten Commandments case. Those editorial writers were certainly looking out for us.
But wait a minute. In San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsome has decided that California's law defining marriage as solely between a man and a woman, a law that was voted on directly by the citizens of the Golden State in a proposition, is not worthy of being obeyed. Newsome took a hard look at that marriage law and not only gave it a thumbs down, he gave it a middle finger up.
And by issuing marriage licenses to gay couples himself, Mayor Newsome may have actually broken the law in addition to defying it. California Penal Code Section 115 prohibits the filing or recording of any false instrument in any public office.
Uh-oh.
So I fully expected to see those tough "rule of law" editorials reprised in The Washington Post, the Orlando Sentinel, and the San Antonio Express-News vis-a-vis Newsome. But, alas, they did not appear in those publications or in most other newspapers. Apparently, the law rules in Alabama, but not in San Francisco.
This blatant hypocrisy has landed hard on the doorstep of the American left where Newsome is being hailed as a hero. Apparently, if you break laws that liberals don't like, it's okay, but you had better back off from those troubling Ten Commandments.
If Gavin Newsome really cared about the rule of law, he would have had the San Francisco police chief arrest him. The time honored tradition of civil disobedience is an American strength. But you're supposed to pay a price for that action. Newsome has paid zero. He fought the law and the law lost. California's Attorney General, Bill Lockyer, and Governor Arnold are still hiding under their desks.
What kind of message does this send to Americans who don't like a variety of other laws? What if some California mayor started issuing handgun permits because he believed the Second Amendment was being trashed in the Golden State? You think the media, Governor Arnold and Attorney General Lockyer would do nothing? Yeah, and I'm Annie Oakley.
Either the law rules or it doesn't. And in California and much of the liberal press, it doesn't.
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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.
Ms. Armstrong is a freelance writer in Atlanta and mother of two.
March 1, 2004 -- FOREIGN terrorists have an unwitting ally in the
American Left. Several liberal interest groups are waging a campaign
to unilaterally disarm our government. If they succeed, it could
hobble the United States in the War on Terror and eventually exact a
toll in American lives.
The liberals' campaign is mainly a propaganda war - a massive and
pervasive disinformation effort meant to convince the nation that the
Patriot Act infringes upon the civil liberties of ordinary Americans.
It's a battle on three fronts: in the presidential campaign, before
city councils across the country and in the courts.
THE Democratic presidential contenders constantly compete over who
despises the Patriot Act most - notwithstanding the fact that John
Kerry, John Edwards and 96 other senators voted for the law.
The candidates' claims are rife with legal and factual errors, but
accuracy isn't the point. Their goal is to discredit the Bush
administration and scare voters into believing that the FBI is spying
on ordinary Americans.
For example, Kerry promised in December, "In my first 100 days, I
will restore our commitment to civil rights and individual rights."
Specifically, he pledged to restrict the delayed notice of the
execution of search warrants and the seizure of library or business
records under the Patriot Act.
If delayed notice under Section 213 of the Patriot Act (the Left
calls it "sneak-and-peak") is such a threat to civil rights, then
Kerry has some explaining to do: It's been around for decades, and it
is routinely used in fighting garden-variety crime. Does Kerry think
that fighting terrorism is a lower priority?
Supreme Court cases dating back to 1967 confirm that delayed notice
is entirely permissible under the Fourth Amendment. Judicial approval
of the warrants is still required. But delayed notice is sometimes
necessary to prevent suspects from destroying evidence or fleeing
prosecution. It may also be necessary to protect the lives of
informants or intelligence operatives.
Either Kerry doesn't know this, or more likely, he doesn't care. (As
for the library records, more on that below.)
MORE insidious, however, is the battle going on in city halls across
America.
A platoon of "civil rights" groups have launched a lobbying offensive
for the passage of local resolutions that denounce the Patriot Act
and call for its repeal. In hysterical terms, these resolutions
scream that civil liberties have been violated. Eager protesters,
their beards graying with age, pack city council chambers to tell of
the horrors they have read on the Internet.
They never cite any case law or specific instances of lost liberties.
But they've duped more than 200 credulous city councils across the
country into passing these resolutions. And now it's hit a dangerous
extreme - crossing the line from denunciation to non-cooperation.
Last month, the Lawrence, Kan., City Commission considered a proposal
ordering police officers to refuse to cooperate with federal
investigations involving Patriot Act powers. They were following the
lead of Arcata, Calif., which made it a crime for city officials to
assist federal investigators in Patriot-related cases.
The practical effect of local resolutions is to prevent such police
departments from assisting the feds in all terror cases. In any
terrorist investigation, intelligence comes from a variety of
sources, including surveillance or information-sharing authorized
under the Patriot Act. So, to comply with the resolutions, police in
such cities must completely withdraw their assistance.
This non-cooperation makes the FBI's job much harder, places local
citizens in potential danger and is a profound disservice to the
country.
THE third front of this campaign is the most telling. In courts
across America, liberal interest groups have raised every possible
argument in challenging the Patriot Act's constitutionality.
If the law really were violating the civil liberties of ordinary
Americans, some court surely would have reached that conclusion. The
problem for the left is that unsubstantiated propaganda (usually)
doesn't go very far in court.
Numerous challenges to the Patriot Act have been raised; and
virtually all have been squarely rejected. To date, only one court (a
federal district court in the Central District of California) has
held any provision of the Act unconstitutional - and that in a highly
contrived case in which no one was actually arrested for anything.
The plaintiffs in the case succeeded in persuading the judge that
their public advocacy on behalf of the Kurdistan Workers' Party of
Turkey and the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka might hypothetically be
construed as providing "material support" to a terrorist organization
in the form of "expert advice or assistance." The judge, in a poorly
reasoned ruling, held the "expert advice or assistance" language to
be unconstitutionally vague.
In reaching this holding, the judge made two obvious errors. First,
she failed to see that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the
suit, since no federal official had ever interfered with any of their
activities. Nor was any interference even remotely likely. Their
supposed "injury" was based on pure conjecture.
Second, the judge grossly distorted the meaning of the words of the
Patriot Act. Congress was plainly referring to "expert advice or
assistance" in the form of flight training, chemical warfare and bomb
making - not in the form of making long-winded speeches at
conferences and writing self-indulgent letters to members of
Congress.
In all likelihood, her decision will be reversed on appeal, even in
the left-leaning Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. But what of the
other charges that the Left so frequently makes, such as the
unconstitutional seizure of library records? Pure fabrication.
Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which authorizes courts to order the
production of "tangible things" (including library records) has never
been used. And if ever it were used, a court would have to approve
and issue any such order. Moreover, what the Left neglects to mention
is that grand juries have long had the authority to subpoena such
records - without any judicial supervision.
The ultimate danger is not that the Left will defeat the Patriot Act
in court. The danger is that it will succeed in pressuring Congress
to let provisions of the Act expire in 2005 and succeed in tying the
hands of police departments across the country. If this happens,
terrorists will have cause to celebrate and American lives will be
put in jeopardy.
Kris W. Kobach, a professor of constitutional law at the University
of Missouri (Kansas City), served as counsel to the U.S. attorney
general, 2001-2003. He is running for Congress in Kansas' 3rd
District.
Gay Marriage and the Democratic Senate
NewsMax.com's Fr. Michael Reilly weighs in on the politics behind
same-sex marriage.
Who would have ever thought that gay marriage could be brought in to
the United States by two mayors and four unelected judges?
The same-sex marriage phenomenon is just the most recent development
in a long process by which the judiciary has been short-circuiting
the legislative process to advance the agenda of the radical left.
Remember when President Bush signed the long-awaited partial birth
abortion ban into law? The judiciary lost no time in whittling away
that law, legislation that represents the will of the people as
expressed through their elected representatives.
Now in California, we see the courts short-circuiting the will of the
people by allowing the mayor of San Francisco to defy state law by
issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
While Americans want a judiciary that respects our Constitution, a
minority of Democratic Senators have twisted Senate rules to block
the appointment of any judge who doesn't countenance the liberal
agenda.
President Bush needs to link these two issues: unelected judges
imposing gay marriage on the nation and the Democratic Senators who
impede reform of the judiciary by using arcane Senate procedures to
block the appointment of decent judges who respect the American
Constitution.
The American people have yet to react to the Democratic filibuster of
President Bush's judicial appointments, but polls show that the
people are angry about the "marriages."
Team Bush must make the American people see that the root cause of
all these problems is a corrupt judiciary and that the Democrats in
the Senate (including John Kerry) are committed to thwart any attempt
at reform.
Vietnam Veterans Denounce 'Hanoi John'
Hundreds of U.S. Army veterans and Vietnamese escapees demonstrated
Saturday outside John Kerry's campaign headquarters in Manhattan to
protest his betrayal of them.
"Waving American and South Vietnamese flags and singing the U.S.
national anthem, they held up signs saying 'Hanoi John,' and 'Kerry
Betrayed Vietnam Vets'," Reuters reported.
It claimed there were only 200 protesters, but New York Newsday
reported twice that number.
"We won't sit by and let the American people think that we are going
to stand by somebody who stabbed us in the back," said Jerry Kiley, a
veteran and one of the protest's organizers.
"He betrayed us. He stabbed us in the back. We will never allow him
to be our commander-in-chief. Ever!" Kiley exclaimed to the crowd on
Park Avenue.
"Veteran after veteran passionately lambasted Kerry," Newsday
reported.
"Equally fervent in their disdain for Kerry were the Vietnamese-
Americans, who hold the senator from Massachusetts responsible for
thrice blocking a bill in 2001 and 2002 that would have tied U.S. aid
to Vietnam to that country's human rights record."
Nam Pham, 48, a banker from Boston who is working with the
Massachusetts Human Rights Commission for Vietnam, observed: "Sen.
John Kerry has been working with the dictatorship in Vietnam. He lost
the moral authority to lead the free world."
Al Qaeda Builds a Euro Army
From DEBKA-Net-Weekly Feb. 20 Updated by DEBKAfile
February 25, 2004, 3:10 PM (GMT+02:00)
Zawahiri and bin Laden - elusive voices on tape
Warnings of al Qaeda's continuing threat came Tuesday, February 24,
from Washington and London as well as one of its top leaders.
Addressing the Senate intelligence committee, CIA director George
Tenet spoke of the spread of al Qaeda's radical agenda to local
groups who now threaten the United States and are capable of 9/11
scale attacks.
British interior secretary David Blunkett, announcing new stringent
measures to combat terror, said a terrorist attack on Britain
was "inevitable."
Pointing up these statements, Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-
Zawahiri gave not one but two signs that his group was still
after "Crusader" blood. Two recorded audiotapes reached the rival
Arab TV stations, al Jazeera and al Arabiya. In one he threatened the
United States with fresh attacks; the other condemned the French for
banning the headscarf for Muslim schoolgirls. The Egyptian terrorist
chief declared that the claim by US president George W. Bush that two-
thirds of al Qaeda's leadership has been crushed was untrue.
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His assertion had been confirmed previously by the preliminary
findings of a joint defense department-CIA inquiry ordered by the US
President.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources in
Washington, al Qaeda's backbone and that of its partner, al-
Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad are intact and fully operational.
The Egyptian half of al Qaeda in particular has led a charmed
existence. Since America's 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, only two
senior Jihad operatives have been killed and not a single active
member captured. The team found this discovery alarming enough to
rush to Bush and warn him: "We have a gap in our intelligence the
size of a big black hole."
Even more disquietingly, al Qaeda is discovered to be recruiting
manpower in Europe at a brisk pace in a push into the continent
personally advocated by Osama bin Laden. The Saudi-born terrorist has
thus gained the upper hand in a debate within his organization's top
leadership over its next focal arena. Bin Laden urged fostering the
war on the "far enemy" (Europe) as against concentrating the
movement's fury on the "near enemy" (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, South Asia).
The European arena, often neglected by American counter-terrorism
agencies, is showing a dangerous dynamism. Data assembled for a
preliminary assessment show al Qaeda in the process of evolving from
terrorist networks and cells into a professional fighting force with
military features.
According to French counter-intelligence, al Qaeda has recruited in
France alone between 35,000 and 45,000 men and is organizing them
into military-style units. They meet regularly for training in the
use of weapons and explosives, combat tactics and indoctrination and
are controlled from local and district command centers under the
organization's national French command.
In Germany, Al Qaeda has recruited 25,000 to 30,000 men. The British
domestic intelligence agency MI5 estimates 10,000 faithful have
joined up in Britain, providing Blunkett with more than ample cause
for concern.
Al Qaeda is a lot less active in Italy where counter-terrorist
agencies hunt its cells to earth relentlessly. Moreover, al Qaeda
does not need an important foothold in Italy because it already
maintains a thriving presence next door in the Balkan countries of
Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia, from which weapons, money and false
documents are easily secreted to its European bases.
But unknown numbers are enlisting in Belgium, Switzerland, Holland,
Sweden and Norway.
Recruitment across Europe continues apace and in greater secrecy than
ever as a result of a switch to new recruiting techniques and appeal
to fresh target-populations for building the Euro army. According to
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources, the authors of the
interim report found that al Qaeda, intent on beating surveillance
and penetration by intelligence services, no longer selects
combatants at its usual hunting grounds in mosques, Islamic culture
centers and Muslim immigrant neighborhoods. Instead, native Europeans
freshly converted to Islam are targeted.
The new campaign is styled "the white recruitment drive" or "coffee
shop conscription". Operational cells and recruiting agents patronize
ordinary cafes on the high streets of Europe's major cities where
they blend into the crowds. The new conscripts defy identification by
European intelligence services because their Islamic lives are lived
completely underground. There is therefore no way of finding their
addresses telephone numbers. Unit-level meetings or training
sessions, attended by 30 or 40 men, may take place under cover of
social activity such as a holiday camp in a remote part of Europe.
Tracking them down is getting harder as bin Laden's new Euro army
expands at the rate of tens of thousands and when "white" recruits
may already form some 25 percent of the total.
VIETNAM VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR
AND
THE WINTER SOLDIER INVESTIGATION (1971)
Dr. Ernest Bolt, University of Richmond
The most active group active expressing dissent of veterans was
Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Formed in 1967 by six
veterans involved in a protest march in New York City, by spring
1970, VVAW had 600 members. Over the next several years, thousands
more joined.
In 1971 VVAW held "hearings" on the war under the title "Winter
Soldier Investigation." At first, this group participated in antiwar
protests and demonstrations organized by others. Then, from January
31 to February 2, 1971, VVAW leaders held an investigation of the
conduct of the war in a Detroit Howard Johnson motel. Over a three
day period, over 100 veterans and sixteen civilians described their
war experiences, including rapes, torture, brutalities, and killing
of non-combatants. Senator Mark Hatfield (Republican-Oregon) entered
the testimony into the Congressional Record and urged hearings on the
conduct of U.S. forces in the war. Although the media showed little
interest in the Winter Soldier Investigation, veterans such as John
Kerry, a VVAW leader by 1971, testified about VVAW's investigation in
a Senate committee hearing April 22, 1971.
This group's efforts to document such testimony followed the well-
known 1968 massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. By the 1971
VVAW hearings, the trial of Lt. William L. Calley by the Army was
planned. The 1968 My Lai incident clearly resulted in more antiwar
sentiment here in the United States, including these efforts of
Vietnam veterans to describe vividly their personal experiences.
Calley was found guilty in March 1971. In all wars, both sides have
used terror against civilians and war crimes have been featured.
There is no better source for this than soldiers' letters and later
testimonies to such effects of the Vietnam War.
Richard R. Moser's The New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent
during the Vietnam Era (1996) is the latest treatment of this
subject. This title relates to Thomas Paine's criticism of American
soldiers of 1776 who were "sunshine patriots" -- leaving service in
the revolutionary war at summer's end. He hailed, however, those who
were "winter soldiers" -- fighting year-round. Moser's view is that
there were "new winter soldiers" in the winter of 1971, those who
testified at the VVAW's "Winter Soldier Investigation." Former GIs
who had served in Vietnam as citizen-soldiers (nonprofessionals,
draftees largely) spoke out as citizen activists for peace and
justice. Moser does not use their testimonies to examine "what went
wrong" in the military in Vietnam; rather he seeks to understand the
extent to which their testimonies "created something good from what
was one of the worst experiences of their lives" (p. 1).
Part of the GI dissent Moser examines is familiar -- such as racial
tensions at Da Nang following the MLK assassination. There was a
similar moment of tensions at the Long Binh Jail. But Moser reports
the less known Whiskey Mountain armed protest near Cam Ranh Bay. He
uses, also, articles in Bragg Briefs and All Hands Abandon Ship to
show early advocacy of "sexual self-determination" in the military,
quoting one Vietnam vet: "I got a medal for killing two men and a
dishonorable discharge for loving one" (p. 95).
For five days in April 1971 (19-23), VVAW also led demonstrations in
Washington. Leaders called their protest "a limited incursion into
the country of Congress," as it followed Dewey Canyon I and Dewey
Canyon II, code names for American and then ARVN invasions of Laos in
February-March 1971. They called their protest effort Dewey Canyon
III. The protest lasted a week and included an encampment to protest
the war and to lobby Congress. Veterans and mothers of soldiers
killed in Vietnam marched to Arlington Cemetery while veteran John
Kerry testified against the war during Senate Foreign Relations
Committee hearings. The protests that week also included "guerrilla
theater," with simulated attacks on "civilians" and the attempt of 60
vets to surrender to Pentagon officials for committing attrocities.
(The Pentagon turned them away.) VVAW continued antiwar protests in
1972, and as the war ended for us in 1973, VVAW advocated universal
amnesty for draft resisters and deserters.
The day after this VVAW-led protest, April 24, 1971, over 500,000
demonstrators arrived in Washington to lobby Congress and to "stop
the government" if President Nixon did not stop the war. May 4 saw
the arrest of over 1,400 protesters on the steps of Congress. Daniel
Ellsberg was one of the ex-Marines who had tried to block DC traffic
that day.
JOHN FUCKING KERRY
Will the Real John Kerry Please Stand Up
by Sandeep Kaushik
What to make of John Forbes Kerry, he of the face that hangs to his
knees, and the hair that threatens to mount its own presidential bid?
I don't much like him, this Senator Windbag from Massachusetts. He's
calculating and self-conscious--you can see the gears turning--a
pompous Brahmin elitist, and a bit of a bore.
On the other hand, meet John Fucking Kerry, who bitch-slaps Bush like
he's channeling Howard Dean--albeit with the volume turned down a
notch. Fucking's the tough-talking testosterone-fueled sonuvabitch
who volunteered for service in Vietnam, forged himself into a war
hero, and then had the guts to come back and lead the crusade against
a misbegotten war. John Fucking Kerry I really like: He's loose,
authentic, decisive, and pretty funny. Get this guy alone with the
tape recorder off and he'll regale you with hilariously filthy
stories, say vets who know him.
I spent a day on the campaign trail with Kerry in June and met both
John Forbes Kerry and John Fucking Kerry: Forbes delivered cautious,
bland responses to my questions; Fucking, in a series of self-
depreciating asides, revealed his sense of fun and toughness.
For most of this campaign, however, Forbes dominated on the trail.
The results were predictable. By last November, things were so bad
that, preceding an appearance on Jay Leno, Triumph the Insult Comic
Dog mercilessly lampooned him: "The poop I made in the dressing room
has more heat than John Kerry." In December, his press slipping from
bad to wretched and his fundraising kaput, Forbes was reduced to the
ignominy of mortgaging his Boston townhouse to dump a few more
millions into his flailing campaign. Just three weeks ago he was
written off as political roadkill by the Beltway idiocracy.
In this case--unlike what they're now doing to Howard Dean--the
pundits had reason for their pile-on. Forbes was too cautious, too
establishment, political to the core. While his war vote was
consistent with his record--he's been an Iraq hawk since the mid-'90s-
-he tied himself into a rhetorical pretzel trying to explain it. He
voted for the war, then blasted it, then blasted Dean for blasting
it. He was inconsistent and unbelievable.
But a funny thing happened in the frozen, stubbled cornfields of
Iowa. Fucking punji-sticked Forbes--and took over. The Midwestern
heartland responded and Fucking won big.
Washington State is ground zero of the Starbucks ghetto, supposedly
hard-core Dean country. Except John Fucking Kerry does not have much
truck with the conventional wisdom these days. He is organizing for
Washington's February 7 caucuses, tripling his local staff post-Iowa.
Ali Wade, Kerry's state director, says that the campaign still
considers itself an underdog, but is gunning for 35 to 40 percent of
Washington's delegates.
Of course, Forbes isn't dead yet; he may be making a comeback in New
Hampshire. If he moves back into the ascendancy, Kerry will flop
again. Bostonian Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote 160 years ago that "a
foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," but he was
another pompous, annoying Brahmin. It's time for Fucking to kill
Forbes for good. Another lesson from Emerson: "Trust thyself."
sandeep@...
Linking? Use This URL!
ALI WADE Wading into Dean country.
Alice Wheeler
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VIETNAM WAR VETERAN JOHN KERRY'S TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN
RELATIONS COMMITTEE, APRIL 22, 1971
Editorial Notes by Dr. Ernest Bolt, University of Richmond
By April 1971, with at least seven legislative proposals relating to
the Vietnam war under consideration, the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee chaired by Senator William Fulbright (Democrat-Arkansas)
began to hear testimony. On the third day of hearings, six members of
the committee heard comments by John Kerry, a leader of the major
veterans organization opposing continuation of the war. Kerry was the
only representative of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) who
testified on April 22, but others in VVAW were in the audience and at
times supported his remarks with applause.
The committee began the hearing April 20 and continued to receive
testimony for four days in April and for seven days throughout May,
1971. The full testimony heard by the committee, including that of
Kerry, is in Legislative Proposals Relating to the War in Southeast
Asia, Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United
States Senate, Ninety-Second Congress, First Session (April-May
1971), Washington: Government Printing Office, 1971. Subject breaks
in Kerry's testimony were provided by the Senate staff in the form of
subtitles, which in some cases are retained below. Additional
editorial notes are provided by Professor Bolt. Excerpts from Kerry's
testimony are from pages 180, 181-183, 184, 185, 195, 204, and 208.
Statement of Mr. John Kerry
...I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of the group
of 1,000 which is a small representation of a very much larger group
of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to
sit at this table they would be here and have the same kind of
testimony....
WINTER SOLDIER INVESTIGATION
I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that
several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over
150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans
testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated
incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full
awareness of officers at all levels of command....
They told the stories 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 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.
We call this investigation the "Winter Soldier Investigation." The
term "Winter Soldier" is a play on words of Thomas Paine in 1776 when
he spoke of the Sunshine Patriot and summertime soldiers who deserted
at Valley Forge because the going was rough.
We who have come here to Washington have come here because we f eel
we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this
country; we could be quiet; we could hold our silence; we could not
tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens
this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not
redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it,
that we have to speak out.
FEELINGS OF MEN COMING BACK FROM VIETNAM
...In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South
Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the
United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one
American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to
the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is
to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of
hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart....
WHAT WAS FOUND AND LEARNED IN VIETNAM
We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who
had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial
influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we
had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take
up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.
We found most people didn't even know the difference between
communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies
without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their
villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to
do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the
United States of America, to leave them alone on peace, and they
practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force
was present at a particular time, be it Vietcong, North Vietnamese,
or American.
We found also that all too often American men were dying in those
rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand
how money from American taxes was used for a corrupt dictatorial
regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea
of who was kept free by our flag, as blacks provided the highest
percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American
bombs as well as by search and destroy missions, as well as by
Vietcong terrorism, and yet we listened while this country tried to
blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.
We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw
America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My
Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand
out chocolate bars and chewing gum.
We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that
moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives
of orientals.
We watched the U.S. falsification of body counts, in fact the
glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we
were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using
weapons against "oriental human beings," with quotation marks around
that. We fought using weapons against those people which I do not
believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the
European theater or let us say a non-third-world people theater, and
so we watched while men charged up hills because a general said that
hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons
they marched away to leave the high for the reoccupation by the North
Vietnamese because we watched pride allow the most unimportant of
battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and
we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American
bodies were lost to prove that point. And so there were Hamburger
Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 881's and Fire Base 6's and so many
others.
VIETNAMIZATION
Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly
while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible
arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese....
Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes
her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the
United States doen'st have to admit something that the entire world
already knows, so that we can't say they we have made a mistake.
Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are
his words, "the first President to lose a war."
We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a
man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be
the last man to die for a mistake? But we are trying to do that, and
we are doing it with thousands of rationalizations, and if you read
carefully the President's last speech to the people of this country,
you can see that he says and says clearly:
But the issue, gentlemen, the issue is communism, and the question is
whether or not we will leave that country to the Communists or
whether or not we will try to give it hope to be a free people.
But the point is they are not a free people now under us. They are
not a free people, and we cannot fight communism all over the world,
and I think we should have learned that lesson by now....
REQUEST FOR ACTION BY CONGRESS
We are asking here in Washington for some action, action from the
Congress of the United States of America which as the power to raise
and maintain armies, and which by the Constitution also has the power
to declare war.
We have come here, not to the President, because we believe that this
body can be responsive to the will of the people, and we believe that
the will of the people says that we should be out of Vietnam now....
WHERE IS THE LEADERSHIP?
We are also here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are
the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We are here to
ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatric, and so many others.
Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have
returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and
there is no more serious crime in the law of war. The Army says they
never leave their wounded.
The Marines say they never leave even their dead. These men have left
all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public
rectitude. They have left the real stuff of their reputations
bleaching begin them in the sun in this country....
Editorial Note: Concluding his formal statement, Kerry commented
about administration attempts to disown veterans and looked forward
thirty years (to 2001) when the nation could look back proudly to a
time when it turned from this war and the hate and fears driving us
in Vietnam.
Following his formal testimony, the committee members questioned him
during their discussion of some of the legislative proposals under
consideration. In the course of this discussion, Kerry spoke with
considerable familiarity and understanding about disengagement and
withdrawal proposals being considered. In response to a question from
Senator Aiken, Kerry endorsed "extensive reparations to the people of
Indochina" as a "very definite obligation" of the U.S. (p. 191).
Kerry also commented on growth of American opposition to the war, the
actions of Lt. Calley at My Lai, and strategic implications of the
war.
...It is my opinion that the United States is still reacting in very
much the 1945 mood and postwar cold-war period when we reacted to the
forces which were at work in World War II and came out of it with
this paranoia about the Russians and how the world was going to be
divided up between the super powers, and the foreign policy of John
Foster Dulles which was responsible for the created of the SEATO
treaty, which was, in fact, a direct reaction to this so-called
Communist monolith. And I think we are reacting under cold-war
precepts which are no longer applicable.
I say that because so long as we have the kind of strike force we
have, and I am not party to the secret statistics which you gentlemen
have here, but as long as we have the ones which we of the public
know we have, I think we have a strike force of such capability and I
think we have a strike force simply in our Polaris submarines, in the
62 or some Polaris submarines, which are constantly roaming around
under the sea. And I know as a Navy man that underwater detection is
the hardest kind in the world, and they have not perfected it, that
we have the ability to destroy the human race. Why do we have to,
therefore, consider and keep considering threats?
At any time that an actual threat is posed to this country or to the
security and freedom I will be one of the first people to pick up a
gun and defend it, but right now we are reacting with paranoia t this
question of peace and the people taking over the world. I think if
were are ever going to get down to the question of dropping those
bombs most of us in my generation simply don't want to be alive
afterwards because of the kind of world that it would be with
mutations and the genetic probabilities of freaks and everything else.
Therefore, I think it is ridiculous to assume we have to play this
power game based on total warfare. I think there will be guerrilla
wars and I think we must have a capability to fight those. And we may
have to fight them somewhere based on legitimate threats, but we must
learn, in this country, how to define those threats and that is what
I would say to the question of world peace. I think it is bogus,
totally artificial. There is no threat. The Communists are not about
to take over our McDonald hamburger stands. [Laughter.]...
Editorial Note: Kerry's exchange with the senators consumed two
complete hours, ranging from earlier French experiences in Indochina
to the status of the war in 1971. Kerry faulted the electronic press
for failure to report a recent antiwar conference because of its lack
of "visual" appeal and entertainment value. He also cited
the "exorbitant" power of the Executive, faulting Congress.
In response to Senator Symington's inquiry about American men and
women still in Vietnam and their attitude toward opposition to the
war within Congress, Kerry offered the following comments.
...I don't want to get into the game of saying I represent everybody
over there, but let me try to say as straightforwardly as I can, we
had an advertisement, ran full page, to show you what the troops
read. It ran in Playboy and the response to it within two and a half
weeks from Vietnam was 1,200 members. We received initially about 50
to 80 letters a day from troops arriving at our New York office. Some
of these letters -- and I wanted to bring some down, I didn't know we
were going to be testifying here and I can make them available to
you -- are very, very moving, some of them written by hospital
corpsmen on things, on casualty report sheets which say, you
know, "Get us out of here." "You are the only hope he have got." "You
have got to get us back; it is crazy." We received recently 80
members of the 101st Airborne signed up in one letter. Forty members
from a helicopter assault squadron, crash and rescue mission signed
up in another one.
I think they are expressing, some of these troops, solidarity with
us, right now by wearing black arm bands and Vietnam Veterans Against
the War buttons. They want to come out and I think they are looking
at the people who want to try to get them out as a help.
However, I do recognize there are some men who are in the military
for life. The job in the military is to fight wars. When they have a
war to fight, they are just as happy in a sense, and I am sure that
these men feel they are being stabbed in the back. But, at the same
time, I think to most of them the realization of the emptiness, the
hollowness, the absurdity of Vietnam has finally hit home, and I feel
is they did come home the recrimination would certainly not come from
the right, from the military. I don't think there would be that
problem....
Editorial Note: Kerry returned to the theme of the mood of troops in
Vietnam and back home as he concluded his testimony.
...You see the mind is changing over there and a search and destroy
mission is a search and avoid mission, and troops don't -- you know,
like that revolt that took place that was mentioned in the New York
Times when they refused to go in after a piece of dead machinery,
because it doesn't have any value. They are making their own
judgments.
There is a GI movement in this country now as well as over there, and
soon these people, these men, who are prescribing wars for these
young men to fight are going to find out they are going to have to
find some other men to fight them because we are going to change
prescriptions. They are going to have to change doctors, because we
are not going to fight for them. that is what they are going to
realize. There is now a more militant attitude even within the
military itself....
Editorial Note: Later as Democratic senator from Massachusetts, John
Kerry joined 61 others in favor of a nonbinding resolution to lift
the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam. The original embargo began
against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1964 and extended to
the united Socialist Republic of Vietnam in April 1975. Following the
nonbinding senate resolution, President Clinton repealed the embargo
4 February 1994.
John Kerry Article
A VERY interesting article by my brother, Mike, who won a bronze star
in
Vietnam. I hope this one becomes public.
Bigger things. I've long thought that John Kerry's war record was
phoney. We
talked about it when you were here. It's mainly been instinct
because, as
you know, nobody who claims to have seen the action he does would so
shamelessly flaunt it for political gain. So I spent a couple of
hours on
the internet yesterday, made a bunch of notes, and I'm sending them
as an
attachment. In addition, look at the website
http://25thaviation.org/johnkerry/id15htm
Somebody went to a lot of trouble to chronicle Kerry's checkered
career.
I was in the Delta shortly after he left. I know that area well. I
know the
operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the
doctrine
used. I know the equipment. Although I was attached to CTF-116 (PBRs)
I
spent a fair amo! unt of time with CTF-115 (swift boats), Kerry's
command.
Here are my problems and suspicions:
1) Kerry was in-country less than four months and collected, a Bronze
Star,
a Silver Star and three purple hearts. I never heard of anybody with
any
outfit I worked with (including SEAL One, the Sea Wolves, Riverines
and the
River Patrol Force) collecting that much hardware so fast, and for
such
pedestrian actions. The Swifts did a commendable job. But that duty
wasn't
the worst you could draw. They operated only along the coast and in
the
major rivers (Bassac and Mekong). The rough stuff in the hot areas
was
mainly handled by the smaller, faster PBRs.
2) Three Purple Hearts but no limp. All injuries so minor that no
time lost
from duty. Amazing luck Or he was putting himself in for medals every
time
he bumped his head on the wheel house hatch? Combat on the boats was
almost
always at close range. You
didn't have minor wounds. At least not often. Not three ! times in a
row.
Then he used the three purple hearts to request a trip home eight
months
before the end of his tour. Fishy.
3) The details of the event for which he was given the Silver Star
make no
sense at all. Supposedly, a B-40 was fired at the boat and missed.
Charlie
jumps up with the launcher in his hand, the bow gunner knocks him
down with
the twin 50, Kerry beaches the boat, jumps off, shoots Charlie, and
retreives the launcher. If true, he did everything wrong.
(a) Standard procedure when you took rocket fire was to put your
stern to
the action and go balls to the wall. A B-40 has the ballistic
integrity of a
frisbie after about 25 yards, so you put 50 yards or so between you
and the
beach and begin raking it with your .50's.
(b) Did you ever see anybody get knocked down with a .50 caliber
round and
get up? The guy was dead or dying The rocket launcher was empty.
There was
no reason to go after him (except if you knew he was no danger to you
just
flopping around in the dust during his last few seconds on earth, and
you
wanted some derring do in your after-action report). And we didn't
shoot
wounded people. We had rules against that, too.
(c) Kerry got off the boat. This was a major breach of standing
procedures.
Nobody on a boat crew ever got off a boat in a hot area. EVER! The
reason
was simple. If you had somebody on the beach your boat was
defenseless. It
coudn't run and it couldn't return fire. It was stupid and it put his
crew
in danger. He should have been relieved and reprimanded.
I never heard of any boat crewman ever leaving a boat during or after
a
firefight.
Something is fishy.
Here we have a JFK wannabe (the guy Halsey wanted to court martial
for
carelessly losing his boat and getting a couple people killed by
running
across the bow of a Jap destroyer) who is hardly in Vietnam long
enough to
get a good tan, collects medals faster than Audie Murphy in a job
where lots
of medals weren't common, gets sent home eight months early, requests
separation from active duty a few months after that so he can run for
Congress, finds out war heros don't sell well in Massachsetts in 1970
so
reinvents himself as Jane Fonda, throws his ribbons in the dirt with
the
cameras running to jump start his political career, gets Stillborn
Pell to
invite him to address Congress and Bobby Kennedy's speechwriter to do
the
heavy lifting, winds up in the Senate himself a few years later,
votes
against every major defense bill, says the CIA is irrelevant after
th! e
Wall came down, votes against the Gulf War, a big mistake since that
turned
out well, decides not to make the same mistake twice so votes for
invading
Iraq, but oops, that didn't turn out so well so he now says he really
didn't
mean for Bush to go to war when he voted to allow him to go to war.
I'm real glad you or I never had this guy covering our flanks in
Vietnam. I
sure don't want him as Commander in Chief. I hope that somebody from
CTF-115
shows up with some facts challenging Kerry's Vietnam record. I know
in my
gut it's wildy inflated. And fishy.
J.R.
February 23, 2004 -- JOHN Kerry arrives in New York today. Our city
is an old stomping ground of his, of course. He used to hang out at
156 Fifth Avenue - the headquarters of Vietnam Veterans Against the
War.
Kerry was present at those offices in September 1970, when the group
decided to write then-Mayor John V. Lindsay and demand that the city
refuse to welcome another organization, one dedicated to representing
other American servicemen.
The group John Kerry and his associates were protesting was The
National Guard Association, which had its 1970 convention in New York
at the Americana Hotel (now the New York Sheraton) from Sept. 13 to
Sept. 17. Kerry's group set up a picket line in front of the
Americana, and staged a protest rally against the Guard on Sept. 17,
1970 at 5:30 pm.
Why would they do such a thing? Here's the sort of rhetoric Kerry and
Co. used to gather anti-war forces in a mimeographed flyer:
"The National Guard Uses Your Tax Dollar:
"To support the military-industrial complex
"To honor war criminals - Westmoreland, Laird, Nixon, etc.
"To applaud campus murders by National Guard units
"To encourage armed attacks on minority communities"
The decision to stage this defamatory protest against the National
Guard - which then comprised 409,412 Army Guard and 89,847 Air Guard
personnel - was made in John Kerry's presence and with his full
knowledge. Executive-committee minutes for Vietnam Veterans Against
the War note that among the six "members attending" a meeting to plan
the protest was "John Kerry-NE Rep."
Now, Kerry and others will tell you that Vietnam Veterans Against the
War was a group dedicated to advancing the interests of American
servicemen - protecting them, bringing them home, helping them. The
group's protest against the National Guard Association demonstrates
that this claim is revisionist history with a vengeance.
Four months before the National Guard protest in New York, 100 Ohio
Guardsmen confronted 1,500 rioting students at Kent State University
who pelted them with rocks and bottles. Mistakenly believing that
they were coming under gunfire, 30 Guardsmen fired into the crowd,
killing 4 and wounding 9.
The Kent State killings were horrifying tragedies, and the anti-war
movement portrayed them as deliberate acts of murder. They weren't.
But even if you think that those 30 Guardsmen in Ohio had been guilty
of a terrible crime, the fact remains that they were only 30
Guardsmen out of 500,000 nationwide.
Despite that fact, John Kerry and his organization thought that it
was acceptable and desirable to tar the reputations of 500,000
American servicemen by assigning collective guilt to the "campus
murders" the flyer decries.
And what about the flyer's accusation that the National Guard
staged "armed attacks on minority communities"? Across the country in
1968, the Guard were called up to protect businesses and individuals
from rampaging rioters. The rioters who burned down whole
neighborhoods and laid minority communities to waste in Washington,
Detroit, Newark and other cities.
The only thing that saved those cities from mass anarchy were young
National Guardsmen, called up to protect innocent citizens from
violent criminals. And yet John Kerry's group thought it was OK to
say the entire National Guard perpetrated "armed attacks in minority
communities."
But then Kerry was throwing around a lot of collective-guilt
accusations in those days. He went before the Senate and accused his
fellow American soldiers in Vietnam of "crimes committed on a day-to-
day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of
command." He compared American conduct in Vietnam to the behavior of
Genghis Khan, and said American forces "generally ravaged the
countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of
war."
But according to Kerry, these American war criminals weren't the
truly responsible parties. Kerry made a speech in April 1971 in front
of the New York Stock Exchange in which he referred to William
Calley, who was responsible for one of the few documented American
atrocities committed during the Vietnam war.
"Guilty as Lt. Calley might have been of the actual act of murder,"
Kerry said, "the verdict does not single out the real criminal. Those
of us who have served in Vietnam know that the real guilty party is
the United States of America."
You see, America had become so evil, in Kerry's eyes, that when it
constituted a military force to fight the Vietnam war it "created a
monster." This "monster" came "in the forms of millions of men who
have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who have
returned with a sense of danger."
Thus was John Kerry a key midwife in the birthing of one of of the
worst myths ever fostered in this country: The myth of the crazed,
violent, dangerous Vietnam vet who had come back to America to wreak
the same kind of devastation here he had wreaked in Southeast Asia.
At the same time John Kerry was trashing 3 million Americans who
served in Vietnam and the National Guard, a young man named George W.
Bush was piloting F-102 aircraft in the Texas National Guard. By this
point in his six-year service, the future president had already spent
nearly two years on active duty - not weekend-warrior stuff, but full-
time service to his state and his country.
True, Bush's service can't compare to John Kerry's. Kerry saved
lives, suffered injuries and won medals for his valor in Vietnam. But
Kerry's heroics aboard a Mekong Delta patrol boat does not excuse his
conduct afterward, when the future senator felt free to engage in
shocking acts of libel against his country and against an entire
generation of Americans who served their country just as he did.
Among those he libeled was Texas Air National Guardsman George W.
Bush, against whom John Kerry and his organization protested on that
dark day back in September 1970 on Seventh Avenue and 52nd Street.
Enjoy your stay in New York, John Kerry. This city is the worse for
having hosted you and your smelly little protest 34 years ago.
John Podhoretz will read from his new book, "Bush Country: How Dubya
Became a Great President While Driving Liberals Insane," Tuesday
night at 7:30 at the Barnes and Noble on Broadway and 82nd Street. E-
mail: podhoretz@...
J.R.
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2004
This is Part II in a series revealing the front-runner's track record
on the important issues of the day.
Part I. Kerry on the Record: Pow/MIA
Sen. John Forbes Kerry, D-Mass., in his "vision for a better America"
manifesto, "A Call to Service," may have unwittingly named his own
poison when it comes to his record on defense:
"There's one thing you cannot take away from President Bush: He did
establish beyond a shadow of a doubt the credibility of U.S. threats
to use military force against our enemies. Our strength is a national
asset. ..."
Some critics wonder what the value of that national asset of strength
would be today if Kerry had had his way with the defense cuts he has
supported over the decades.
There are those who suggest that in the era of the post-Cold War, the
senator from Massachusetts was simply one of a host of politicians
anxious to collect a so-called "peace dividend" and pass the savings
along to worthy social programs.
Not so, observe other Kerry watchers, who race to point out that it
was during the height of the Cold War that he fought against the
entire strategic modernization effort proposed by President Reagan,
including the Peacekeeper, B-1 and B-2 bombers, the Trident submarine
and D-5 missile.
Furthermore, in those dangerous times Kerry was a proponent of the
nuclear freeze, which would have spelled permanent obsolescence for
U.S. nuclear forces – at a time when the Evil Empire's nuclear forces
were becoming most formidable.
And it wasn't some blind party loyalty thing. Democratic luminaries
such as Sam Nunn, Al Gore, Norman Dicks, Sonny Montgomery and Les
Aspin, to name a few, agreed with Ronald Reagan.
Kerry reached his anti-defense stride in those days when "The Gipper"
was looking to build up American muscle and back the Soviet Union
into the disastrous catch-up game that some suggest caused the
collapse of the communist powerhouse.
For example, Kerry opposed the U.S. cruise missiles and Pershing
missiles based in England, Germany, Holland and Italy – but it was
just these tools of war and deterrence that helped bring on eventual
victory in the Cold War.
Some suggest that the Kerry mindset was a tenacious carryover from
those halcyon post-Vietnam peacenik days when he was testifying on
Capitol Hill that in his opinion communism posed no threat to the
United States.
In April 1972 when Kerry moved into Massachusetts' 5th District to
run for Congress a second time, he won the Democratic nomination but
lost the election to the Republican.
Still very much riding his anti-war wave, the young candidate had
promised to cut defense spending. On what he'd do if elected to
Congress, Kerry said he would "bring a different kind of message to
the president." He said he would vote against military
appropriations.
Apparently with the Vietnam War still alive and well in Southeast
Asia, the electorate was not quite ready for Kerry's premature peace
dividend.
Not to be dissuaded, when Kerry finally made his entrée into politics
as Michael Dukakis' lieutenant governor (1983-1985), he and his boss
linked up with a liberal group dedicated to the proposition of
slashing defense.
Beating the Drum
Sitting on the board of the Jobs With Peace Campaign, Kerry worked to
bring into fruition the credo of that organization, which existed
solely to drum up public support for cutting the defense budget.
There was no stopping Kerry's assault on the Pentagon. When first
running for his Senate seat in 1984, Kerry explained carefully that
he was firmly against such mainstays of the defense establishment as
the B-1 bomber, B-2 stealth bomber, AH-64 Apache helicopter, Patriot
missile, the F-15, F-14A and F-14D jets, the AV-8B Harrier jet, the
Aegis air-defense cruiser, and the Trident missile system.
He also ran on a platform of cutting back on the M1 Abrams tank, the
Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Tomahawk cruise missile, and the F-16.
The average newspaper-reading American, of course, recognizes these
systems as the veritable tip of the spear that not only crushed
Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War but also smashed the Taliban in
Afghanistan and punched through to Baghdad in the second Gulf War.
Once in the Senate, where he has been entrenched for the last 19
years, Kerry amassed an impressive record of defense bashing.
Recently, GOP chairman Ed Gillespie in an address to the Republican
National Committee ticked off vote after vote in which Kerry sought
to cut the nation's defense budget:
In 1991 Kerry voted to cut defense spending by 2 percent. Only 21
other senators voted with Kerry, and the defense cut was defeated.
In 1991, Kerry voted to cut over $3 billion from defense and shift
the funds to social programs. Only 27 senators joined Kerry in voting
for the defense cut.
In 1992, Kerry voted to cut $6 billion from defense. Republicans and
Democrats alike successfully blocked this attempt to cut defense
spending.
In 1993, Kerry voted against increased defense spending for a
military pay raise.
In 1993, Kerry introduced a plan to cut the number Of Navy submarines
and their crews; reduce tactical fighter wings in the Air Force;
terminate the Navy's coastal mine-hunting ship program; force the
retirement of 60,000 members of the armed forces in one year; and
reduce the number of light infantry units in the Army down to one.
The plan was DOA.
In 1995, Kerry voted to freeze defense spending for seven years,
cutting over $34 billion from defense. Only 27 other senators voted
with Kerry.
In 1996, Kerry introduced a bill to cut Defense Department funding by
$6.5 billion. Kerry's bill had no co-sponsors and never came to a
floor vote.
In 1996, Kerry voted yes on a fiscal 1996 budget resolution – a
defense freeze that would have frozen defense spending for the next
seven years and transferred the $34.8 billion in savings to education
and job training. The resolution was rejected 28-71.
Such votes add up to "a 20-year record of being weak on the
military," says former Republican National Chairman Richard Bond. "To
this day, the defining issue of this election is that America is
under attack. I do not believe in the end Americans will vote for
someone with a soft worldview
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
I don't know about anyone else but I have had it with this ridiculous
assertion that President Bush was AWOL from The National Guard in
1972. The President had provided proof in 2000 that this was not true
and now is again having to provide proof in 2004 of the same. Enough
already. The President has responded to his critics and should close
the book on this issue.
They will not stop. A news article released just today quotes Terry
McAuliffe, chairman of the DNC as saying:
"The fact remains that there is still no evidence that George W. Bush
showed up for duty as ordered while in Alabama," McAuliffe said
The records, some being released for the first time, didn't satisfy
Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe. He argued
that the payroll and summary service records posed more questions
than they answered.
McAuliffe continues to try and resurrect this issue even after
officials say that Bush's service is satisfactory:
"This paperwork doesn't say where he was or what type of training he
conducted," said Lt. Col. Scott Gorske, a military fellow at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "What
it does say is the days that he did train and that he got paid."
He said National Guard members are not necessarily required to attend
a drill each month, but rather to train a certain amount of time over
a 12-month period. That is why Bush could have met his yearly service
requirements even if there were some months in which he did not
attend a drill, Gorske said.
Folks, President Bush received an HONORABLE DISCHARGE from the
National Guard. You would think with the way the DNC is on this
ridiculous ranting that the President received a dishonorable
discharge. I might understand their tenacity if that was the case,
but it isn't.
Quite frankly the questions were asked and answered in 2000.
So, President Bush is not a war hero, Oh, okay, so that means that he
shouldn't be President ? What a ridiculous thought that is.
Especially after Slick Willie was elected and was President for eight
years, and never served in ANY military capacity at all, and as a
matter of fact, dodged the draft by going to England to protest, er,
I mean get an education at Oxford University.
When President George H.W. Bush, in 1992, alluded to the fact that
Clinton never served in the military and in fact dodged the draft, it
was John Kerry who chastised the President for calling attention to
the fact and stated that military service didn't matter. Now all of a
sudden if you are not a war hero you are not qualified to be
President. Funny we didn't hear from McAuliffe on Clinton's military
career, oh that's right I forgot, he doesn't have one.
And, as for our current soon to be democratic Presidential nominee,
yes he was a war hero, yes he saved a few lives, but how many lives
were lost as a result of him and Hanoi Jane by giving aid and comfort
to the enemy by protesting and calling America's Vietnam Vets,
murderers, rapists, and Ghingas Khans. How about Mr. Phoney baloney,
throwing away his, oops I mean, someone else's medals in Washington.
His are still on his wall. How genuine is that, and later on in life
he now reveres those medals, why don't the rest of the veterans who
actually threw theirs away speak out .
The North Vietnamese General in charge of the military campaign that
drove the U.S. out of South Vietnam in 1975 credited a group led by
now democratic front runner John Kerry, with helping the NVA achieve
victory. In a 1985 memoir Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap stated that if it
weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the
War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S. Wow, that's pretty
powerful stuff if you ask me, Senator. You and your group may have
been responsible for the death of untold thousands of U.S. and South
Vietnamese soldiers and civilians by your actions.
Lt. Col. Oliver North(Ret.), himself a Vietnam Veteran and recipient
of two purple hearts, put it best, " The Vietnam Veterans Against the
War encouraged people to desert, encouraged people to mutiny, some
used what they wrote to justify "fragging officers." John Kerry has
the blood of American soldiers on his hands."
Oh and by the way, Terry McAuliffe never served in any military
capacity, and for those of you who will try to jump on this, neither
did I, but I'm not attacking anyone's military service, I'm defending
the President of the United states. A President who served honorably
in the National Guard, and who is being unfairly labeled as AWOL and
a deserter by some.
Furthermore, Senator Kerry and Mr. McAuliffe, how dare you besmirch
the reputation of the fine men and women who have served in the
National Guard whether in war time or not, whether they were war
heroes or not. Kerry likens guard service to those who wanted to
avoid the draft and Mc Auliffe stated that serving in the Guard was
not military service and not service to your country. Where is the
OUTRAGE from these people that served in the Guard. This WILL NOT GO
UNANSWERED.
It is time for Americans to get OUTRAGED and speak out against those
who are trying to degrade the President. Write your newspapers, call
talk show, and your congressmen, and senators. Tell them that you've
heard enough of these ridiculous accusations that are baseless and
meaningless to the qualifications for President.
God Bless President Bush, and God Bless the United States of America !
I'm J.R. and that's my take !
It's 'OUR' Opinion...
As a Vietnam Veteran, I for one find it extremely interesting
watching Senator John Kerry gain momentum across the country.
However, would the REAL John Kerry please stand up! When I
got 'carried back' from Vietnam, I had to fight my back thru months
of physical therapy and determination to be able to walk again. When
I was well enough to be mobile enough to try to go to college, I was
targeted by 'some' of the Peace protestors including the Vietnam
Veterans Against The War. Now WHO was one of the organizers of this
movement and WHO stood up in front of a demonstration
and 'supposedly' threw his medals from Vietnam back at the
Washington, D.C. government...'John Kerry'...The REAL fact of the
matter is, yes he protested, and that's his right, and yes he threw
medals back, but they were NOT his, and yes he has gone on to become
former Massachussets and President candidate Mike Dukakais's Lt.
Governor and now a U.S. Senator running for President. WHO was it
that 'spat' at me, and threw 'red paint' at me to symbolize 'blood'
you ask, John Kerry's group. So, you think I would support a fellow
Vietnam Veteran in his quest, NO WAY! I ask ALL of you to LOOK at
John Kerry's voting record and list of PAC supporters and 'maybe'
you'll see what I'm pointing out. Meanwhile Howard Dean managed to
get 'some' of his base back after that great scream heard round the
world in Iowa. In New Hampshire he finished in 2nd place and
says "he's back." How STUPID can you be??? If Howard Dean doesn't
have a STRONG 2nd place finish in MOST of the Super Tuesday states
and win at least ONE, he's DONE! It seems Howard has to be reminded
where he is and what he's 'supposed' to say. Now along comes Gen.
Wesley Clark, who was removed from his command in Bosnia by Bill
Clinton. The general is showing well in the polls in Oklahoma at the
moment, but as far as winning any states, it isn't going to happen.
You can't be everywhere at once, but Senator John Edwards should
have a good showing in South Carolina, the state where he was born,
but who knows? It now appears that Senator's Kerry and Edwards now
seem to be emerging as the 1-2 punch for the Democrats. Then there's
the Reverand Al Sharpton. His BEST attribute was his impression of
James brown when he hosted Saturday Night Live. You've just got to
love this stuff, it's absolutely hilarious! And poor Joe Lieberman,
who is a good and decent man, is so far behind the rest, you've got
to wonder WHEN he'll fold up his tent. 'Dennis the Menace', cause
that's what he reminds ME of, has 'No Clue' of what's going on and
he needs to QUIT the race. Keep watching as I'm SURE there'll be
more laughable and unbelieveable comments made. These people
are 'self destructing' THEMSELVES and they have NO CLUE what they're
doing to themselves and their Party. These Liberals are having a
good time trying to act like Conservatives, something they are NOT,
and it's just part of the 'show'. But it's Political season and
that's just the way it is...That's MY story and I'm sticking to
it!...
Now it's looking more and more like these Presidential hopefuls
would like ANY story to get out -- except the REAL one. The truth is
far too 'unflattering', especially for THEM. It's time for the REAL
truth to get out, and that's what I just TOLD you...It's 'OUR'
Opinion, written by: *Matt Bruce*...
http://newssarasota.excitewebpages.com ,
http://www.newssarasota.com
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