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....a paid-per-registration canvasser said he had been instructed only to accept registrations from Republicans, and that he "might" destroy those from Democrats....
LOL! Your first article makes ZERO allegations of any
specific Republican led voter fraud. Your second link is an
investigation of ONE person.
Are you equating the investigation of one person who "might"
have committed voter fraud with the widespread voter fraud
committed by an entire organization (ACORN) that just happens
to receive funds from a Teresa Heinz Kerry foundation (the
Tides organization)?
From the Washington Times
.....One group in particular has come under scrutiny. ACORN.... has received wide attention for claiming to have registered more than 1 million new voters nationwide. But in state after state, allegations are surfacing that ACORN activists are padding the registration books.....
...In Colorado, hundreds of voter registration forms are suspect....
Police in Duluth, Minn., stopped a 19-year-old motorist for running a stop sign and discovered 300 voter registration cards in the trunk of his car.... the driver, an ex-ACORN employee.... he was registering voters twice to double his fee.....
....Hamilton County officials subpoenaed 19 voter registration cards turned in by ACORN with similar handwriting and false addresses. In Columbus, Ohio, officials discovered dozens of faked names on voter cards and have indicted one ACORN worker.....
....In the battleground state of Florida, ACORN claims to have registered 212,000 voters for the general election. But one of them was the mayor of St. Petersburg who received a letter telling him he was ineligible to vote because his registration form was not turned in on time. Mayor Charles Schuh discovered someone from ACORN had fraudulently submitted his name.... ACORN is also under state and federal investigation in Miami-Dade County for unlawfully registering former felons to vote. (In New Orleans, ACORN registered 700 new voters at the jailhouse by signing up prisoners awaiting trial but not yet found guilty of a crime.) An ACORN worker registered a 13-year-old to vote in Albuquerque, N.M.
...."There's a lot of fraud committed," said former ACORN Miami-Dade field director Mac Stuart in the Oct. 2 Florida Today. He charges that ACORN submitted thousands of invalid registration cards while failing to turn in cards from registered Republicans.
ACORN's founder and chief organizer is one Wade Rathke... Mr. Rathke is chairman of the board of the San Francisco-based Tides Center and a board member of its affiliated Tides Foundation, the left-wing grantmaker that specializes in helping new political advocacy groups get organized. Grants from the Heinz Endowments, whose chairman is Teresa Heinz Kerry, to and from the Tides organizations have been the subject of major news stories recently, which speculate on the impact Mrs. Heinz Kerry's private philanthropy will have on the policies of a Kerry administration. The Tides connection to ACORN raises even more questions.
Why the liberals can't stand American unity
Ben Shapiro
October 20, 2004
John Kerry can't stop mouthing off about the so-called "politics of division." During the third presidential debate, Kerry blamed public polarization on President Bush: "I regret to say that the president who called himself a uniter, not a divider, is now presiding over the most divided America in the recent memory of our country." He also claimed that he'd be able to bring Americans together. "We have to change that. And as president, I am committed to changing that."
Too bad Kerry's a liar. In the most divisive presidential campaign in American history, Kerry and the party for which he stands have set out to break all bonds, to rend young and old, rich and poor, black and white, all for the sake of political power. The Democrats don't want a united America. They want an America bitterly divided, so that they can put on their faux "healing" hats and pretend that if elected, they will bridge all gaps.
There are plenty of issues about which Americans can honestly disagree. The two major political parties in this country are vastly different breeds, despite what third-party radicals say. The Democrats are foreign-policy appeasers and United Nations patsies who fear ascendant American power. Republicans are foreign-policy hawks, American interest-first unilateralists if necessary, who wish to maximize American global dominance.
The Democrats are big-government economic liberals who pledge a balanced budget but can only reach it by raising taxes. The Republicans are big spenders, too, but largely due to the pressures of a closely divided Congress; ideally, they want to balance the budget by cutting government spending and government taxation.
The Democrats are social liberals who wish to validate the gay activist agenda, forward abortion and devaluate traditional morality in schools and in government. The Republicans are social conservatives who prize traditional morality above all else.
So there's a good deal about which to argue. But for John Kerry and his Democratic ilk, arguing the issues isn't conducive to victory. Because, really, who wants a socially liberal, fiscally spendthrift, militarily weak party leading this country?
Instead, the Democrats have created false divisions between the parties in order to frighten Americans into voting for them. Democrats target youth voters, who have largely turned in favor of President Bush, by lying about a prospective re-institution of the draft. Kerry lied to the Des Moines Register, stating that "With George Bush, the plan for Iraq is more of the same and the great potential of a draft." The Democratic National Committee featured draft rumors in a recent news release. MoveOnStudentAction.org has spread rumors of a potential draft across the Internet, and has also launched a national campus campaign titled "Feel a Draft?" Rock the Vote pushes the idea that unless American foreign policy radically changes, a draft is inevitable.
It is, of course, complete bunk. Any political party attempting to bring back the draft would feel the wrath of American voters. In fact, the only politician who has seriously mentioned bringing back the draft has been Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.).
The Democrats aren't afraid to scare the AARP crowd, either. Kerry explained that President Bush has a secret "January surprise" plan to privatize social security, cutting benefits by up to 45 percent or $500 a month for many Americans. Kerry's latest ploy? Handing out pillboxes stamped with the Kerry/Edwards logo to retirement voters in Florida -- implying, of course, that with Kerry/Edwards, you'll get your pills, but with Bush, you'll have to eat dog food.
Democrats continue their scare tactics with regard to minorities as well. The ironically named "America Coming Together" group has posted flyers in Missouri carrying a picture of a black man being hosed by a fireman. The flyer carries the caption: "This is what they used to do to keep us from voting." (Meanwhile, Democrats are doing their best to ensure the non-existent vote: An NAACP worker in Ohio paid a 22-year-old man crack cocaine in exchange for fake voter registrations, including registrations for Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy, Michael Jordan and George Foreman.)
Democrats claim that President Bush is to blame for disintegrating American unity. But the Democratic Party and John Kerry are dedicated to dividing America. Democratic ideology rests on the foundation that divisiveness must be achieved in order for communitarianism to be accepted -- destroy unity in order to gain power and create drastic change. Republican ideology rests on the formulation that unity must be achieved in order for individualism to be accepted -- foster unity within a strong and moral society in order that each individual may be respected.
The Democrats have won this battle. We are indeed divided. Let's just pray the right side -- the side promoting unity -- triumphs.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/bs20041020.shtml
Excellent column!
Terrorism and the Mob
By William J. Stuntz Tech Central Station
By now, everyone in America knows that John Kerry has compared fighting terrorism to prosecuting organized crime figures for gambling and prostitution. The comparison has attracted a lot of criticism. Actually, it's a pretty good analogy -- but it leads to a different lesson than Kerry believes.
Begin with the candidate's own words:
<<<<"As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life.">>>>
When Kerry was a prosecutor in the late 1970s and early 1980s, "organized crime" meant the Mob. Gambling and prostitution were among the many ways Mafia families and similar organizations made money. Prosecutions for those crimes could take down leading crime bosses. That tradition goes all the way back to the 1930s, when then-District Attorney Tom Dewey made a national name for himself by nailing Lucky Luciano on prostitution charges.
The point of those prosecutions was never to stamp out gambling or prostitution. Gambling is hardly a scourge; most states run lotteries. Prostitution is widely tolerated. To prosecutors like Dewey and Kerry, those crimes were pretexts -- tools for convicting and punishing people like Luciano. Just like prosecuting Al Capone for tax evasion. The focus was on nailing the criminal, not stopping the crime.
Why not prosecute people like Capone and Luciano for more serious crimes? Mobsters used violence to take over legitimate businesses and labor unions, then looted them. The result was economic strangulation and fear. Why not convict and punish Mafiosi for that? Sometimes, we did. But only sometimes, because proving racketeering and extortion is and always has been both hard and expensive. Local prosecutors like Kerry couldn't afford to do it -- if they had tried, they would have had no time or manpower to go after ordinary street crime. Gambling and prostitution cases were the next best thing.
Enter terrorism. Prosecutors would like to nail would-be mass murderers for planning to blow up buildings or spread nerve gas or otherwise slaughter innocent men and women. But that is even harder than prosecuting Mafia bosses for racketeering. Proving that Mohamed Atta is guilty of mass murder is easy -- but he's already dead. Proving it ahead of time, before September 11, proving it beyond a reasonable doubt, proving it without disclosing sources the government will need in other investigations -- those things are nearly impossible.
That is why, when the Justice Department prosecutes would-be terrorists, it usually prosecutes them for something other than terrorism: immigration fraud, lying to government agents, money laundering, and the like. At least in this respect, Al Qaida is like the Mob. Pretext prosecutions are a practical necessity.
But hardly a solution. Pretext prosecutions are bad public relations -- they make the defendants seem sympathetic, like people who are being hounded by the government for penny-ante crimes. They are often expensive -- proving crime bosses guilty of gambling or prostitution was easier than proving racketeering, but it wasn't a walk in the park. So too, proving money-laundering might be easier than proving attempted mass murder, but it is far from a slam dunk. Finally, pretext crimes rarely generate long sentences. If you want to put someone away for the rest of his life, a prostitution or mail fraud charge is a poor way to do it.
All of which explains why the criminal justice system was never able to kill off the Mafia. Competition from drug gangs, state-sponsored lotteries, the decline of industrial unions, creative use of other regulatory tools by officials like then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani -- these and other trends killed off old-style organized crime. The criminal justice system didn't, because it couldn't. Proving the relevant crimes was too expensive.
If we wait long enough, Islamic terrorism will meet the same fate as the Mafia. Long-term political and social forces in the Muslim world will push toward secular democracy, not religious dictatorship. Eventually, terrorism will be "a nuisance," just as Kerry said. But that will take awhile, just as it took awhile for market forces to wear down the Mafia. We can't just wait; we have to do something to speed that happy day along.
And criminal prosecutions are not a promising option. No one is willing to wait for a nuclear weapon to blow away an American city and then prosecute the conspirators who survived the blast. Nor does it make sense to devote massive resources to building cases for small-potatoes crimes that will put away would-be murderers for a year or two, after which they can resume their homicidal careers.
Perhaps that is why military and intelligence services have played such a large role in the war on terrorism. Some crime problems are intractable. Seen as a crime problem, terrorism is intractable too. It makes sense to redefine the problem, to look for other tools. This war needs to be fought by the Army and the CIA, not merely the Justice Department.
Therein lies the real problem with Kerry's comments. Kerry thinks America's seventy-year-long battle against the Mafia was a success story. He is wrong. Tolerating Mob bosses (which is what we did for most of those seventy years) was very costly. Tolerating terrorism -- or leaving it to police and prosecutors, which amounts to the same thing -- would be a disaster.
William J. Stuntz is a Professor at Harvard Law School.
Copyright © 2004 Tech Central Station - www.techcentralstation.com
Kerry to troops: Your life is worthless unless UN blesses the fight
By Beldar on Politics
From a front-page story in tomorrow's WaPo (boldface added):
<<<<"NATO and the United Nations appear to be touchstones for the Democratic nominee, not just the troublesome hurdles that they appear to be to President Bush. In speeches over the years, Kerry repeatedly has denounced unilateral action.
Kerry's belief in working with allies runs so deep that he has maintained that the loss of American life can be better justified if it occurs in the course of a mission with international support.
In 1994, discussing the possibility of U.S. troops being killed in Bosnia, he said, "If you mean dying in the course of the United Nations effort, yes, it is worth that. If you mean dying American troops unilaterally going in with some false presumption that we can affect the outcome, the answer is unequivocally no." >>>>
The simplest reading of this weird statement is that the cause an American soldier fights and dies for is worthwhile if — but only if — it's been duly blessed by the United Nations. One presumes he means the Security Counsel — meaning we'd only have to get unanimous approval from the Brits, Germans, French, Russians, and Chinese to convert our solders' sacrifices from worthless to worthwhile.
Is there "nuance" here that I'm missing? I frankly can't make any sense of the phrase "false presumption that we can affect the outcome." In John Kerry's lifetime, there hasn't been a fight where the American military couldn't "affect the outcome," whether acting unilaterally or not.
The Vietnam War-era Kerry said American troops should only be deployed at UN direction. The 1994-era Kerry said whether American deaths are worthless depends on UN approval. The 2004-era Kerry said there's a "global test" and "we ought to pass a sort of truth standard." This seems pretty consistent to me.
Consistently wrong.
http://www.beldar.org/beldarblog/2004/10/kerry_to_troops.html
50 reasons to vote for Bush:
http://www.americandigest.org/mt-archives/002445.php
Hat tip to CobaltBlue
John Kerry and the Politics of Betrayal
E P I L O G U E
ADVANTAGE SWIFT VETS
In the concluding pages of Unfit for Command, we noted that our concerns about Kerry focused on the question of character and our conclusions were that Senator Kerry was unfit to be commander in chief. We believe Senator Kerry broke the trust indispensable to successful command and we expressed our concern that the pattern we had observed with Kerry’s history regarding the Vietnam War would only be played out again in the context of today’s international crises.
John Kerry undoubtedly calculated he could have it both ways — for those who wanted to see a war hero, he could tout his decorations — for those who were anti-war, he could point to his role as spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. What John Kerry never calculated fully was that a great number of the men and women who served in Vietnam simply wouldn’t buy the story. 37
To the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, John Kerry was a betrayer, plain and simple. He betrayed the over two million men and women who served honorably in Vietnam when he testified to Senator Fulbright’s committee in April 1971 that they were the army of Ghengis Khan, committing war crimes on a daily basis, with their atrocities completely approved up and down the chain of command.
John Kerry wanted to be a war hero of a war he said was immoral. The self-contradiction implied in that statement never seemed to bother him. Put simply, he wanted to be an honored member of a select club, even though he insulted the club’s members and claimed to the world that the club itself had no legitimate moral authority.
Unfortunately for John Kerry, the most memorable speech of his life may prove to be one of his first, his 1971 testimony before Senator Fulbright’s committee. There he sat in street-theater military fatigues, claiming that the Vietnam War was a mistake, that the United States was a colonial power interfering in a civil war, that we were in Vietnam not to win a victory against godless communism but to protect a corrupt regime and a puppet dictator in South Vietnam.
John Kerry in that April 1971 testimony asked his most memorable public question: “How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?” But we know many comrades who died there who would count the trade of their lives for freedom as a fair bargain. Perhaps the ultimate mistake was his. To run for president with his Vietnam “war hero” story as the central pillar of his campaign invited the criticism that his true legacy was that of a Judas, a betrayer, who abandoned his brothers-in-arms on the field of battle and denigrated their honor once he secured the safety of home.
If the past is to be taken as prologue to the future, the parallels between John Kerry’s anti-administration rhetoric on Iraq today and his war-protest rhetoric of 1971 must be taken seriously. For Senator Kerry, terrorists are a nuisance, like gambling and prostitution.
This is not a surprise to the authors. By taking the side of the enemy, as he did in Vietnam, or reducing terrorists to the ranks of gamblers and prostitutes, as he does today, Kerry believes that Iraq is no more a war against terrorism than Vietnam was a war against communism. Indeed, John Kerry’s cynicism prevents him from understanding people’s desire for freedom.
John Kerry began his campaign at the Democratic National Committee a “war hero,” but as was the case with Vietnam, he has now shifted to his second phase, presenting himself as a vocal “anti-war” critic, this time of President Bush’s efforts in Iraq.
John Kerry clearly has no commitment to consistency, but he does have an unwavering ambition to win the presidential election in 2004, no matter what he has to say. The parallels to 1971 are all too apparent. How can we be sure that John Kerry will not end up this time where he ended up last time — betraying our troops by withdrawing from the field of battle at any cost should he ever get the chance to give the order?
Reviewing the controversy following the publication of our book, we hold fast to our original conclusion: John Kerry is truly unfit for command.
Advantage, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
APPENDIX
[PDF file with complete appendix available here.]
After-Action Report from Sampan Incident
After-Action Report from Silver Star Incident (page 1 of 2)
After-Action Report from Silver Star Incident (page 2 of 2)
Silver Star Citation Re-issued with John Lehman’s Autopen Signature
After-Action Report from Bronze Star Incident (page 1 of 2)
After-Action Report from Bronze Star Incident (page 2 of 2)
Casualty Report for Richard “Dick” Pees, Bronze Star Incident
Casualty Report for Leslie Lyle Vorpahl, Bronze Star Incident
Casualty Report for Kenneth Frank Tryner, Bronze Star Incident
Casualty Report for Earl Nathan Hollister, Bronze Star Incident
Casualty Report for John Kerry (buttock wound), Bronze Star Incident
Damage Report for Kerry’s Boat PCF-94
Damage Report for Larry Thurlow’s Boat PCF-51
NOTES
CHAPTER 1
1. Matt Drudge, “Anti-Kerry Vets Gather for Assault, Book Claims Kerry War Fabrications’”, THE DRUDGE REPORT, August 3, 2004, 21:35:02, eastern time.
2. Zachary Coile, “Vets group attacks Kerry; McCain defends Democrat,” SFGate.com, August 5, 2004.
3. “Politics as Usual,” New York Times, August 19, 2004, editorial page, 30.
4. Northern Alliance Radio Network, www.northernallianceradio.com, August 21, 2004.
5. Transcript available Online NewsHour, www.pbs.org, August 19, 2004.
6. Reported in Mark Holzer and Erica Holzer, Legal Terrorism, Front- PageMagazine.com, August 10, 2004.
7. Robert Novak, “Admiral speaks out, disputes Kerry’s account of 1st wound,” The Chicago Sun-Times, April 27, 2004.
8. Ibid.
9. “Political independent’ anti-Kerry vet Schachte contributed to George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.” MediaMatters.org, August 27, 2004.
10. Brinkley, Tour of Duty, 189. The discrepancy was reported by Art Moore, “Kerry’s war journal contradicts medial claim? At least 9 days after Purple Heart, wrote he had not ‘been shot at yet.’” World NetDaily.com August 17, 2004.
11. The discussion of the third Purple Heart can be found in Unfit for Command on pages 86–89. Kerry throwing the grenade at the rice pile and being wounded in the buttocks by a fragment of his own grenade can be found in Brinkley’s Tour of Duty on page 313.
12. First reported by Art Moore in “Another discrepancy erodes Kerry’s story.” WorldNetDaily.com, August 31, 2004.
13. Unfit for Command, page 83.
14. Congressional Record, Senate, January 28, 1998.
15. The Sampan Incident is discussed in Unfit for Command on pages 53- 62. The report on the after-action report under discussion is drawn from Michael Kranish, Brian C. Mooney, Nina J. Easton. John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), 136.
16. Tour of Duty, 269-270.
17. Henry Mark Holzer and Erika Holzer, “John Kerry’s Mysterious Combat ‘V’” published in FrontPageMagazine.com, August 20, 2004.
18. Henry Mark Holzer and Erika Holzer, “John Kerry’s Puzzling Silver Star Citations,” published in FrontPageMagazine.com, August 24, 2004.
19. Ibid. Parenthesis added for explanation.
20. Ibid. Parenthesis in original.
21. Thomas Lipscomb. “Kerry citation a ‘total mystery’ to ex-Navy chief.” Chicago Sun-Times, August 28, 2004.
22. Ibid.
23. “William Rood’s first-person account,” published in the Chicago Tribune, August 22, 2004.
24. Ibid.
25. For a fair analysis of the Rood controversy, see: Joseph Farah, “Kerry Supported by Viet comrade. ‘Unfit’ author sees little contradiction between swiftboat book, new report.” WorldNetDaily.com, August 21, 2004.
26. “Kerry Defender Rood Contradicted by Crewmate,” NewsMax.com, August 21, 2004.
27. “Kerry camp: Candidate ‘inaccurate’ on Cambodia. Says senator mistakenly thought it was Christmas trip when he crossed border.” WorldNetDaily.com, August 12, 2004.
28. This section was drawn from Jerome R. Corsi, “John Kerry’s Secret Meeting with the Enemy,” WorldNetDaily.com, October 8, 2004.
29. Michael Kranish and Patrick Healy, “Kerry spoke of meeting netotiators on Vietnam,” Boston Globe, March 25, 2004.
30. Scott Swett, “Yesterday’s Lies: Steve Pitkin and the Winter Soldiers.” WinterSoldier.com, September 15, 2004. A film clip is archived on WinterSoldier.com showing John Kerry conducting a preliminary interview with Steve Pitkin, coaching him prior to Pitkin’s testimony in Detroit.
31. Ibid.
32. Affidavit of Stephen J. Pitkin, State of Florida, County of Palm Beach, September 15, 2004. Archived on WinterSoldier.com.
33. Vietnam Veterans Against the War, The Winter Soldier Investigation: An Inquiry Into War Crimes. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972, 161.
34. Speech of Steve Pitkin at the “Kerry Lied” Rally, held by the Vietnam Veterans for the Truth in Washington, D.C., on September 12, 2004. Speech arrived at WinterSoldier.com.
35. “Navy Tells Judicial Watch It Will Not Release Additional Kerry Documents,” JudicialWatch.org, September 16, 2004.
36. Ann Gerhart, “The Political Guns of August Are Firing.” Washington Post, August 27, 2004.
37. This section draws extensively from Jerome R. Corsi, “John Kerry and the Politics of Betrayal,” which appeared on WorldNetDaily.com, October 1, 2004.
Copyright © 2004 by John E. O’Neill and Jerome L. Corsi
Kerry’s Refusal to Sign Standard Form 180
E P I L O G U E
ADVANTAGE SWIFT VETS
Unfit for Command called upon John Kerry to sign Standard Form 180, which would authorize the complete release of all his military records. To date, Kerry has refused to comply.
Kerry campaign surrogates have maintained that the Senator has completely disclosed his military records on his web site. On September 16, 2004, the public interest group Judicial Watch released a Navy response to a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request. In an email sent to Judicial Watch, the Navy confirmed that thirty-one pages of documents from Kerry’s military file were being withheld because the Navy had not received from Senator Kerry a signed release authorization. Typically, the Kerry campaign refused comment on why Senator Kerry had refused to sign Standard Form 180 and authorize the release of these yet hidden pages. Nor would the Kerry campaign respond to questions asking what the Senator was afraid might be disclosed should the pages become public. 35
The Kerry campaign has also refused to release to the public the Senator’s private Vietnam journals that he shared with campaign biographer Douglas Brinkley when Brinkley was writing Tour of Duty. As reported by the Washington Post, a mainstream newspaper generally pro-Kerry, the refusal to release the private journals rested entirely upon Kerry himself, not upon Brinkley:
<<<<The Kerry campaign has refused to release Kerry’s personal Vietnam archive, including his journals and letters, saying that the senator is contractually bound to grant Brinkley exclusive access to the material. But Brinkley said this week the papers are the property of the senator and in his full control.
“I don’t mind if John Kerry shows anybody anything,” he said. “If he wants to let anybody in, that’s his business. Go bug John Kerry, and leave me alone.” The exclusivity agreement, he said, simply requires “that anybody quoting any of the material needs to cite my book.” 36>>>>
Kerry’s camp continues to stonewall on the release of primary documents regarding his military records, despite extensive selective access he has given to writers known to be favorable or to the publication of documents on his website. This refusal to release information has been maintained in the face of intense public pressure to comply to the more open standards that have become customary for presidential campaigns in recent years, standards the Kerry camp has itself demanded from its Republican opponent.
Once again, we reach the same conclusion: Advantage, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
cont'd.......
The Winter Soldier Investigation
E P I L O G U E
ADVANTAGE SWIFT VETS
On September 15, 2004, Steven J. Pitkin came forward with an affidavit that supported the charge in Unfit for Command that the testimony before the Winter Soldier Investigation held by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War was largely fraudulent. Pitkin did not originally intend to speak at the Winter Soldier Investigation when he traveled to Detroit in January 1971. Unlike many who testified there, Pitkin was a veteran who had seen combat in Vietnam. What drew him to Detroit, however, was the prospect of meeting a few girls and hearing David Crosby perform with Graham Nash.
In Vietnam, Pitkin was injured in a mortar attack, suffering minor wounds to both legs. In the months following his injury, his legs became infected and he was medivaced to an Army hospital in Okinawa. He received a Purple Heart and an honorable discharge and was sent back to the states. Once back home, he received far less than a hero’s welcome. At nineteen years old, Pitkin was confused and angry. He signed up for classes at Catonsville Community College outside Baltimore, where he was recruited to join the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, although he had no clear idea what the organization was about.
Scott Swett, the creator of WinterSoldier.com, reported Pitkin’s story:
<<<<In January of 1971, Pitkin was invited to go to Detroit for the VVAW’s “Winter Soldier Investigation,” a national conference intended to convince the public that American troops were routinely committing war crimes in Vietnam. “I was just going to show support for the guys who were already picked out to testify,” said Pitkin. “Fighting in the war was terrible enough—I shot people—but I never saw any atrocities against civilians. The Vietcong hung up tribal chiefs and disemboweled them in front of their own families—they did that to their own people. I never saw Americans do anything like that.” 30>>>>
Pitkin met John Kerry on the trip from Washington, D.C., to Detroit. Scott Swett continues his description of events:
<<<<The Baltimore contingent met up with other VVAW members in Washington, where they were loaded into rental vans with no back seats. It was freezing cold in Pitkin’s van, and Kerry with another former officer were in the front where all the heat was, which made for a long drive. Pitkin was unimpressed with the tall, aloof Kerry, who rarely spoke to anyone other than the organization’s leaders, and tagged Kerry with the nickname “Lurch” after the Addams Family TV character. The ragtag group eventually made it to Detroit, got lost for a while, and then spent the night at somebody’s house. The conference was held at a Howard Johnson’s motel, in a room Pitkin remembers as having big concrete posts and no windows, with press lights glaring down on the participants. An entourage of VVAW leaders and reporters always surrounded John Kerry, who, Pitkin thought, looked like he was running for president. 31>>>>
According to Pitkin’s affidavit, he was pressured into giving testimony of war crimes in Vietnam even though he had not participated in any such war crimes, nor had he witnessed any atrocities. Two paragraphs of his sworn statement are important here:
<<<<In January of 1971, I rode in a van with John Kerry, a national leader of the VVAW, and others from Washington D.C. to Detroit to attend the Winter Soldier Investigation, a conference intended to publicize alleged American war crimes in Vietnam. Having no knowledge of such war crimes, I did not intend to speak at the event.
During the Winter Soldier Investigation, John Kerry and other leaders of that event pressured me to testify about American war crimes, despite my repeated statements that I could not honestly do so. One event leader strongly implied that I would not be provided transportation back to my home in Baltimore, Maryland, if I failed to comply. Kerry and other leaders of the event instructed me to publicly state that I had witnessed incidents of rape, brutality, atrocities and racism, knowing that such statements would necessarily be untrue. 32>>>>
Succumbing to the pressure, Pitkin testified that in Vietnam he came to feel like an animal, that “You’re so scared that you’ll shoot anything, that you’ll look at your enemy, and these people that you’re sort of a visitor to—you’ll look at them as animals. And at the same time you’re just turning yourself into an animal, too.” 33
Even today Pitkin feels John Kerry pressured him into giving false testimony to the Winter Soldier Investigation: “The second day I was there, Kerry and the other leaders told me they wanted me to testify. They knew I was one of the very few real combat veterans in the room. I told them I didn’t have anything to say. Kerry said, ‘Surely you’ve seen some of the atrocities.’” Pitkin did not feel he could resist testifying the way Kerry and the other VVAW leaders wanted:
<<<<I kept saying “no” and the mood turned ugly. One of the other leaders whispered to me, “It’s a long walk back to Baltimore.” I’m not proud of this, but I finally agreed to speak. They told me what to talk about — American troops beating civilians and prisoners, shelling and destroying villages for no reason, and acts of racism against the Vietnamese.
John Kerry knew that the Winter Soldier testimony was a pack of lies. I know, because I was there, and I told some of those lies. 34>>>>
Pitkin’s testimony is just one example of the many lies told during the Winter Soldier “investigation.” One astute observer pointed out that in Kerry’s book The New Soldier, one purported Marine was photographed on a wheelchair in one page and then marching proudly down Pennsylvania on another page.
Kerry’s campaign has chosen to ignore Pitkin’s affidavit. The mainstream liberal press has followed suit, giving Pitkin’s claims no attention.
Still, the statements are documented and powerful. Unable or unwilling to rebut Pitkin’s testimony, the claim of Unfit for Command is substantiated — that the Winter Soldier Investigation was fraudulent. So too, was Kerry’s April 1971 testimony to Senator Fulbright’s Foreign Relation Committee since Kerry himself claimed he based his Senate testimony on the witness statements given at the Winter Soldier Investigation.
Conclusion: Advantage, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS FOR KERRY
1. Do you truly believe that war crimes were committed in Vietnam “on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command?”
2. If so, what were they? If not, why did you say it?
3. Do you believe that the officers commanding you in Vietnam were war criminals? Why did you say this?
4. Do you apologize for your war crimes charges? Were any of them false? Did any of your VVAW fellows make false war crimes charges?
cont'd.......
Meeting with the Enemy
E P I L O G U E
ADVANTAGE SWIFT VETS
On September 21, 2004, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth introduced a television ad entitled “Friends,” with the message that “John Kerry Secretly Met Enemy Leaders” during the Vietnam War, in 1970, while he was still in the Naval Reserves. 28
The Kerry rapid response team jumped into action, charging once again that the Swift vets were lying. John Kerry, his surrogates maintained, did not meet “secretly” with Vietnamese communist negotiators to the Paris Peace talks—–he openly told Senator Fulbright’s committee in April 1971 that he had traveled to Paris and met with “both sides” to the Paris Peace talks. Since he told the Fulbright Committee about his meeting, it could not be “secret,” the spokespersons for the campaign maintained. Besides, since he met with “both sides,” implying that one of the sides had to be ours, so how could the trip have been anything else other than a fact-finding trip? Kerry’s camp also suggested many anti-war radicals were in Paris in 1970 and 1971 meeting with the Vietnamese communists. So, why wouldn’t John Kerry have done the same?
The meeting was secret—certainly secretive. Only in March of this year did Michael Meehan, one of Kerry’s top spokespersons, finally admit to the Boston Globe that Kerry did actually meet with Madame Binh, the top Viet Cong negotiator to the Paris Peace talks. 29 Kerry has ignored questions regarding who arranged the meeting, where it was held, how long it lasted, or what precisely Kerry and Madame Binh discussed. These details remain hidden.
All we know for sure is that on July 22, 1971, John Kerry held a press conference in Washington, D.C., where surrounded by POW families, he called upon President Nixon to accept Madame Binh’s peace proposal, a peace proposal that called for the United States to set a date for military withdrawal and pay reparations—in effect, to surrender—to induce the Vietnamese communists to set a date for the release of our POWs.
Judged by the outcome, Kerry’s trip to Paris was no simple “factfinding mission.” The evidence is that Kerry, while still in the Naval Reserves, inserted himself into a complex negotiation with the result that he advanced the communist side to the detriment of our official negotiating position. From Paris where Kerry received the communist message, to Washington, D.C., where he mouthed that message, Kerry became the Vietnamese communists’ surrogate spokesperson.
There is no historical evidence that would support a Kerry contention that he met with anyone else other than the Viet Cong, officially known as the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG), of whom Madame Binh was the foreign minister, and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the official name of North Vietnam’s communist government, of which Lo Duc Tho was a member. There were two Vietnamese communist parties to the Paris Peace talks—these are the “both sides” with whom Kerry met. Because of Kerry’s refusal to disclose any of the details of his trip, we believe the charge still stands.
Advantage, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS FOR KERRY
1. Who arranged your Paris meeting with Madame Binh? Where was it held? Who else participated? What was discussed?
2. Did you visit the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in Paris on other occasions including the summer of 1971?
3. Where, when, and who were these talks with “the other side?”
cont'd...........
Christmas in Cambodia
E P I L O G U E
ADVANTAGE SWIFT VETS
The core of the Christmas in Cambodia story as told by John Kerry contained an obvious lie from which there was no immediate recovery. According to John Kerry, President Nixon had ordered his Swift Boat into Cambodia in Christmas 1968, while Nixon was at the same time denying to the world that any U.S. military forces were engaged in Cambodia.
This, as Kerry told the story, was “seared, seared” into his memory, a key experience which caused him to realize the Vietnam war was immoral and hence his Vietnam protesting justified.
The problem was that Nixon was not president until January 20, 1969. No one in the mainstream press had ever noticed this obvious fabrication in the over thirty years John Kerry had told multiple versions of the story, all predicated on Nixon’s supposed duplicity.
Once John Kerry’s obvious lie was brought to light, his campaign had little option but to obscure the edges of the story. Perhaps he had just wandered into Cambodia as a mistake. Impossible, answered the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The U.S. Navy heavily guarded the river entry into Cambodia, preventing accidental drifting into Cambodian waters.
Then Kerry’s supporters suggested that he was near Cambodia, if not actually in Cambodia. John Hurley, Kerry’s national director of veterans, was quoted as saying: “I don’t know that anyone can actually say whether or not they were in Cambodia. It’s a very watery area. There’s no sign that says welcome to Cambodia. It is obviously dusk and getting darker, and so they were in those waters.” There were suggestions that Kerry was in Cambodia on a different mission, one with Navy Seals, but he couldn’t provide any dates. Hurley again tried to come to the rescue:” “He was five miles into Cambodia, but what’s happened is these two stories have gotten confused.” Or, again, in yet another attempt to explain the problem away, Hurley offered this: “I think he knows that he was under fire in Cambodia. I think the date is what’s inaccurate, that it was just not Christmas Eve Day.” 27
Then Steve Gardner, the Kerry crewmember who joined Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, said he was never in Cambodia with Kerry. None of the crewmembers who support Kerry’s campaign came forward to support his Christmas in Cambodia story. The Kerry camp was reduced to claiming that the mission was so secret that no one but Kerry knew about it. Then, Kerry surrogates just decided to abandon the issue altogether. Kerry supporters tried to maintain that the story was not important, so what if Kerry got this thirty-four year-old story wrong?
Finally, Kerry himself may have revealed the truth in his journal in the following passage he wrote while on his final mission, quoted in Tour of Duty: “The banks of the [Rach Giang Thanh River] whistled by as we churned out mile after mile at full speed. On my left were occasional open fields that allowed us a clear view into Cambodia. At some points, the border was only fifty yards away and it then would meander out to several hundred or even as much as a thousand yards away, always making one wonder what lay on the other side.”
Kerry described his Christmas in Cambodia pivotal to his coming to the conclusion that the Vietnam War was immoral. As the story unraveled, so did a key pillar for Kerry’s explanation of why he became an anti-war activist. With this, Kerry’s credibility also collapsed.
Advantage, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS FOR KERRY
1. If you were in Cambodia, where in Cambodia? When was it? How did you get there? Who was with you?
2. If you had already been to Cambodia, why did you write in your diary that you were curious about what lay “on the other side”?
cont'd.......
The Silver Star
E P I L O G U E
ADVANTAGE SWIFT VETS
Following the publication of Unfit for Command, several distinct lines of controversy developed over John Kerry’s Silver Star decoration.
On August 20, 2004, Henry Mark Holzer and Erika Holzer, experts on the authentication of military records and decorations, published on the Internet an article that disclosed that Kerry’s military form DD 214 (a record of military separation or transfer prepared by the veteran) listed that Kerry’s Silver Star award included a combat “V” for valor. This form, archived on Kerry’s campaign website, was clearly in error. The Silver Star, the third highest medal bestowed by our nation’s military, is by definition a combat award, hence the combat “V” is never issued with a Silver Star because to do so would be redundant. As the Holzers commented:
<<<<The presence of the combat “V” with Kerry’s Silver Star on his DD 214 raises two extremely disquieting questions. How did the unauthorized “V” get there, and why has Kerry allowed it to remain?>>>>
The first question should not be taken lightly because we are talking about possible federal crimes. We are talking about the possibility of a forged official document.
We are talking, as well, about Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001, which states: “[W]hoever, in any manner within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the United States know- ingly and willfully . . . makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years or both.”
Was the combat “V” added by a sloppy clerk or a yeoman’s typo thirty years ago? Was someone pressured or persuaded to add it? If Kerry had nothing to do with the gratuitously added combat “V,” why didn’t he have his DD 214 corrected when he was separated from the Navy?
Which gives rise to the second disturbing question: If Kerry was not a party to the unauthorized “V,” why, for all these years, has he allowed his DD 214 to remain uncorrected and to repose on his website? 17
This observation became even more puzzling once Kerry’s DD 215 was examined. Kerry’s form DD 215, also on his website, was filed in 2001 to correct his DD 214, originally filed in 1970. In the corrected form, Kerry applied to add four bronze stars to his previously awarded Vietnam Service Medal, upgrading the award; however, the corrected form left unchanged the award mention of Kerry’s Silver Star with the unauthorized “V.”
On August 24, 2004, the Holzers published a second article revealing that John Kerry had not one citation for his Silver Star, but three different citations, “an unheard of number for a single award.” 18 The first citation includes the familiar account where Kerry leaps from PCF-94, pursues a fleeing Viet Cong armed with a rocket launcher and kills him. Although the second citation is undated, the Holzers argue that it was most likely issued in 1970. The second citation is shorter than the first and is significantly different because it omits any mention of the Viet Cong springing up from a spider hole, carry- ing a rocket launcher, and being pursued by Kerry who shot him in the back. The third citation, also undated, is similarly sanitized, though this time it is signed by Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, who held this position from February 1981 to April 1987. The Holzers speculate as to why John Kerry would have sought to have the second version of the citation issued:
<<<<Citation 2 raises two important and intriguing questions. First, why would Kerry bother to have a second citation issued? The obvious answer is that he wanted to expunge from the record that he had shot a fleeing enemy soldier in the back. Another possible explanation, speculative though plausible, is found in the relative ranks held by Admirals Zumwalt (who signed the first citation) and Hyland (who signed the second citation) at the time. Zumwalt had “only” three stars, Hyland four. 19>>>>
Regarding the third version of the citation, the Holzers explain:
<<<<While it is not difficult to understand why Kerry apparently sought and obtained a sanitized second version of his Silver Star citation, at first glance it is not so easy to surmise why Kerry went after yet a third citation, this time from Lehman (especially because the third citation is word-for-word, in every important respect, the same as the second). One theory dovetails with what may well have motivated him, at least in part, to prefer Hyland’s imprimatur over Zumwalt’s. Kerry, now a senator, may have been trying to upgrade his award, issued by a couple of “mere” admirals to one issued by the Secretary of the Navy. 20>>>>
The controversy over the issuance of the Silver Star citations did not stop here. On August 28, 2004, reporter Thomas Lipscomb wrote an article revealing that he had contacted former Navy Secretary John Lehman and Lehman disclosed that he had no idea where the Silver Star citation on John Kerry’s website (the third version signed by Lehman) came from. According to Lipscomb, Lehman was at a loss to explain how his signature got on the award:
<<<<“It’s a total mystery to me. I never saw it. I never signed it. I never approved it. And the additional language it contains was not written by me,” he said. 21>>>>
And again:
<<<<Asked how the citation could have been executed over his signature without his knowledge, Lehman said: “I have no idea. I can only imagine they were signed by an autopen.” The autopen is a device often used in the routine execution of executive documents in government. 22>>>>
Kerry’s campaign had no specific explanation for these oddities regarding the citation. At best, the campaign claimed the “V” designation on Kerry’s DD 214 resulted from a clerical error, with no reason given for why Kerry never corrected the error. Regarding the three versions of the Silver Star, the Kerry campaign was similarly silent, noting only that the citations were all evidently legitimate since they were issued—an answer which avoided the basic questions regarding why and how the multiple versions of the citation came into existence.
On August 21, 2004, the Kerry campaign persuaded William Rood to make a public statement favorable to Kerry regarding the Silver Star incident. Rood, an editor for the Chicago Tribune, overcame his reluctance to speak out in order to make one statement attacking the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth and supporting John Kerry. Specifically, Rood argued that the charges in Unfit for Command were untrue, claiming that “What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did.” 23
Still, Rood’s description of the Silver Star incident was fundamentally in agreement with that given in Unfit for Command. There we charged that the action to beach the boats and charge inland was preagreed among the three boat commanders involved in the action—a tactic thought likely to result in commendations. Rood’s account supported this point:
<<<<We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush, we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats’ twin .50-caliber machine guns on the attackers and beaching the boats. We told our crews about the plan. 24>>>>
Rood’s only significant point of difference was his contention that the Viet Cong killed was not a “young Viet Cong in a loincloth” as we had written in Unfit for Command.
As Rood explained:
<<<<I have no idea how old the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but both Leeds and I recall that he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore.>>>>
Still, mainstream press reporters touted Rood’s statement as confirmation that the account in Unfit for Command was discredited. 25 But in the Kerry biography written by the Boston Globe reporters (who claim to know him best) also noted that the Viet Cong was a teenager in a loincloth. The Globe reporters interviewed more than ten participants in the action that day.
The media bias of the mainstream liberal media was obvious: Within hours of the Chicago Tribune’s Saturday afternoon announcement that William Rood had decided to go public with his Kerry defense, more than 1,500 news outlets were touting the story on their web sites, with the Associated Press offering no fewer than 10 updates. 26
Had the story been supportive of the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, few if any of these news outlets would have considered the story worth covering.
Ted Koppel in Nightline, also tried to discredit the account in the book by traveling to Vietnam to interview Vietnamese who supposedly witnessed the action that day. Under the watchful eye of a Vietnamese Communist “minder,” the Viet Cong survivors told Nightline that there was an intense firefight between approximately twenty Viet Cong and the swift boat crews at the landing site, and that the individual killed by Kerry was a grown man, about twentysix or twenty-seven-years-old, wearing a type of uniform typically worn by the Viet Cong.
In the program, Koppel tried to associate the action that involved the other Swift Boats that fought the Viet Cong with Kerry’s separate landing. Koppel’s story is not supported by the after-action report, the Kerry biography written by the Boston Globe reporters, or the witnesses interviewed by the authors. Moreover, the account of the lone Viet Cong had been previously related to Koppel by Kerry’s crewmembers in an earlier Nightline show on June 24, 2004. In fact, in Kerry’s own authorized biography Tour of Duty, on page 296, Brinkley writes: “[Kerry] could not stop wondering: Instead of one VC with a B-40 in the spider hole, what if there had been three, or five, or ten?”
Unfit for Command’s major charge concerning Kerry’s Silver Star was not that his actions constituted a war crime. Rather, our major contention was that Kerry’s action was not meritorious. (my edit - the key for earning the Silver Star was the false contention that Kerry faced a numerically superior force, when by all accounts, including Kerry's own personal account {excepting the miraculously found Nightline peasants with communist "minders" present}, it was the lone, wounded young man Kerry is said to have killed)
In review of the controversy over the Silver Star, Unfit for Command’s argument is intact. Kerry killed a fleeing Viet Cong, most likely one who was already wounded, an action not reaching the level of valor expected of one awarded a Silver Star. We are not surprised to learn that Kerry’s revisions of the citation sanitized the incident by removing altogether any mention of the fleeing Viet Cong shot in the back.
Verdict: Advantage, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS FOR KERRY
1. Did you write the after-action report for this incident?
2. Why does the after-action report differ from the eyewitness accounts?
3. Why are there three different citations for your Silver Star medal?
4. How did you come to have a “V” on the citation?
cont'd..............
The Sampan Incident
E P I L O G U E
ADVANTAGE SWIFT VETS
As described in Unfit for Command, PCF-44, under the command of John Kerry, was involved in an incident where a child and a father aboard a sampan were killed when the crew opened fire, thinking that Viet Cong were aboard the sampan. We further discussed an after-action report first discovered by reporters for the Boston Globe when writing their biography of John Kerry. 15 This after-action report is material because it appears to be a fraudulent report, one written to cover the sampan incident by changing it to reflect not the killing of a father and child, but the capturing of the mother and a second child, the killing of one Viet Cong (supposedly the father), and four additional occupants who either escaped or were killed in action. Based on eyewitness accounts, Unfit for Command charges that the after-action report was a fraud written to transform a tragedy into a heroic victory, the only casualty being the truth of what actually happened.
The after-action report, obtained from the Naval Archives at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., is printed in the appendix. The report describes that PCF-44 was under fire, something even John Kerry’s own account of the incident never contended in Tour of Duty. 16 The report lists one woman and one child as “CIA” or “captured in action,” not “miraculously saved” as was the case. Further, the report clearly lists an estimate that four of the enemy were KIA, “killed in action,” and one enemy believed killed in action, the father of the family on the small fishing boat.
Kerry’s campaign has never responded to multiple requests to address this after-action report and resolve the discrepancy pointed out in Unfit for Command. Given the Kerry camp’s lack of response, the conclusion on the sampan incident controversy is again clear: Advantage, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS FOR KERRY
1. Did you prepare and submit to the Navy a report saying that there were five Viet Cong probably killed on the boat, omitting the child and describing the mother and baby as captured in action?
2. Why is there a discrepancy among the eyewitness accounts, the after-action report, and the account written by the Boston Globe reporters?
cont'd..........
The Bronze Star
E P I L O G U E
ADVANTAGE SWIFT VETS
The Bronze Star involved the March 13, 1969 incident in which a mine went off under PCF-3 and Jim Rassmann was thrown off Kerry’s boat, PCF-94. Kerry returned to pull Rassmann from the water in what the Kerry camp has characterized as a heroic “no man left behind” effort. Unfit for Command charged that after the initial mine explosion under PCF-3, commanded by Dick Pees, there was no more hostile fire. We further maintained that of the five boats involved in the incident, three remained on the scene and went to the aid of PCF- 3. Only Kerry fled for safety, accelerating so fast that he caused Rassmann to fall off the boat.
The Kerry camp noted that Larry Thurlow had also received a Bronze Star for the March 13 incident, a commendation which also listed enemy fire. This, the Kerry camp argued, proved that in the Rassmann incident there was enemy fire as Kerry described. But Thurlow was surprised to receive the Bronze Star because he knew the incident did not involve hostile fire, with the exception of the single mine that exploded under PCF-3. What he did not realize was that his decoration derived from the fabricated description of small arms and automatic weapons fire that Kerry had invented to justify his own decorations.
All total, eleven men on the river that day have confirmed that there was no enemy fire other than the mine explosion. In fact, after Rassmann was retrieved from the water, the boats remained in the same area for more than ninety minutes to rescue the damaged boat. Throughout that time, they suffered no hostile fire as opposed to what Kerry would have people believe. There was no report of any casualties, or serious damage to any of the other boats. As for Kerry’s “bleeding arm,” the military records show that it was a minor contusion—a small bruise—and that a cold cloth was recommended as the only treatment.
As the debate over Kerry’s Bronze Star progressed, a eulogy Kerry entered into the Congressional Record in 1998 gave support to the contention that Rassmann was thrown off his boat into the Bay Hap River when Kerry accelerated out of danger in the March 13 incident. 12 The eulogy was for Kerry’s crewmember, Thomas Belodeau, who incidentally had been on the record as having been the gunner who wounded the fleeing Viet Cong youngster in Kerry’s Silver Star incident.13
<<<<There was the time we were carrying special forces up a river and a mine exploded under our boat sending it two feet into the air. We were receiving incoming rocket and small arms fire and Tommy was returning fire with his M-60 machine gun when it literally broke apart in his hands.
He was left holding the pieces unable to fire back while one of the Green Berets [Rassmann] walked along the edge of the boat to get Tommy another M-60. As he was doing so, the boat made a high speed turn to starboard and the Green Beret kept going— straight into the water. 14>>>>
That this version differs from what Kerry told his campaign biographer Douglas Brinkley or what was related to the Boston Globe reporters writing their biography are not surprising. John Kerry frequently relates multiple versions of the same story when he discusses his experience in Vietnam. Typical of Kerry, he magically transports the real mine trajedy of another boat, PCF-3, to his boat, a circumstance that all acknowledge exists only in Kerry’s report.
The Kerry campaign has now changed its web site to reflect part of the truth. In an early version, the site said that the other boats fled while Kerry came back to rescue Rassmann. Now the site says that the other boats stayed, and it was Kerry’s boat that “turned” back. It was the longest turn in Swift Boat history.
Reviewing this record, the evidence coming forward to date, including the analysis of the various March 13, 1969 after-action reports supports the version of the Bronze Star story as told in Unfit for Command. The verdict here is as before: Advantage, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
UNANSWERED QUESTION FOR KERRY
1. How can you maintain that the incident occurred as you claimed when the testimony of others and the physical evidence undermines your version of the events?
2. You have two descriptions of how Rassmann fell off the boat, one is by a second mine, the other is that he fell off your boat when it sped away. Which is the truth? the lie?
3. When you came back, wasn’t another boat also proceeding to rescue Rassmann, and not the situation in which you had earlier claimed in your January 17, 2004 press release that while the “other swift boats were evacuating the area, [your] boat chose to turn their boat toward the ambush to save Rassmann.
4. Why was no one and nothing hit in the 75-yard canal when you claimed that the boats were receiving 5,000 meters of fire from both banks.
5. Do you admit that the damage to the boats occurred the day before, as described on page 304 of Tour of Dury?
6. Did you prepare the after-action report of the incident?
cont'd.......
Purple Heart #3
E P I L O G U E
ADVANTAGE SWIFT VETS
We argued that the injury from Kerry’s third Purple Heart was a wound to his buttocks resulting from a small grenade he threw at a rice pile earlier on March 13, 1969, the day in which a later separate action involved the Rassmann incident that resulted in Kerry’s Bronze Star award. This account is consistent with the one told in Kerry’s campaign biography, Tour of Duty. 11
In the appendix, we present the casualty report that led to Kerry’s third Purple Heart. The report was dated 13 March 1969 and documents Kerry’s wound as being to his buttocks. The report, however, as we noted in Unfit for Command, is fraudulent in that it attempts to link the buttocks wound suffered earlier in the day with the Rassmann incident, suggesting the injury resulted from a mine explosion rather than a self-inflicted wound. Even Rassmann himself has said in numerous public occasions that Kerry had wounded himself. So too, has the special forces officer who was in charge of the mission.
We have maintained that only one mine exploded in the Rassmann incident, that under PCF-3 commanded by Dick Pees. As we shall discuss, the damage report for Kerry’s PCF-94 does not show mine damage from that incident, so it is hard to understand how a mine exploding close to PCF-94 could have thrown up shrapnel through his boat to have injured his buttocks. The mine exploding under PCF-3 exploded at a considerable distance from Kerry’s boat and none of the other injury reports from that day reflect any shrapnel wounds.
In summary, a key conclusion regarding Kerry’s Purple Hearts remains undisputed in the controversy following publication of Unfit for Command: Kerry’s injuries that “earned” him Purple Hearts #1 and #3 were from accidental self-inflicted minor injuries. After examining the particulars of the argument presented above, we maintain that that the controversy regarding Kerry’s Purple Heart awards advances as follows: Advantage, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS FOR KERRY
1. Why was the wound received from the grenade thrown at the rice reported to the Navy for a Purple Heart as coming from a water mine?
2. Were you lying when you claimed to have received the shrapnel wound during the ambush?
3. Why have you continued to lie about the nature of the wound you suffered to your arm—whether it was bleeding or was truly just a bruise.
cont'd......
The Purple Heart Hunter
E P I L O G U E
ADVANTAGE SWIFT VETS
Unfit for Command charged that John Kerry’s first Purple Heart involved an accidentally self-inflicted superficial wound suffered on a training mission—the “Boston Whaler Incident.” The book asserts that Kerry launched an M-79 grenade too close to some rocks along the shore, causing a tiny piece of shrapnel to lodge loosely in his arm.
The Kerry camp’s first salvo was to charge that the physician quoted in Unfit for Command, Dr. Louis Letson, was not the physician who treated John Kerry. In the letter written by Marc Elias, general counsel of the Kerry campaign, to various television stations planning to air the first Swift Boat Veterans for Truth commercials, Mr. Elias placed Dr. Letson’s name in quotation marks, subtly raising doubt about Louis Letson’s qualifications.
Mr. Elias also charged that Dr. Letson did not attend Kerry’s wound because Dr. Letson’s name did not appear on Kerry’s sick call sheet. Instead, Mr. Elias noted, the person who signed the medical report was J.C. Carreon, since deceased. The Kerry camp contended that Dr. Letson was lying in his affidavit when he claimed that Kerry’s wound was superficial and that the shrapnel was removed with tweezers, the injury requiring no more medical treatment than the application of topical antiseptic and a band-aid.6
Dr. Letson quickly replied that J.C. Carreon was a lower-ranking corpsman who regularly assisted him at the sickbay and affirmed his initial report. Many vets who served at Cam Ranh Bay came forward to confirm that Dr. Letson was indeed the division’s physician. Furthermore, Dr. Letson had approached his local Democratic Party chairman about Kerry’s self-inflicted wound even before the controversy began. As for the hostile fire, no one on the mission with Kerry, including Retired Rear Admiral William L. Schachte, the officer who commanded the Boston Whaler that evening, said there was enemy fire.
Kerry’s surrogates next claimed that Schachte was lying, and that he was not on the boat. But Schachte in an in-depth interview with reporter Robert Novak, proved his credibility:7
“Kerry nicked himself with a M-79 [grenade launcher].” Schachte said in a telephone interview from his home in Charleston, S.C. He said, “Kerry requested a Purple Heart.”
Schachte, also a lieutenant junior grade, said he was in command of the small boat called a Boston whaler or skimmer, with Kerry aboard in his first combat mission in the Vietnam War. The third crew member was an enlisted man, whose name Schachte did not remember.
Two enlisted men who appeared at the podium with Kerry at the Democratic National Convention in Boston have asserted that they were alone in the small boat with Kerry, with no other officer present. Schachte said it “was not possible” for Kerry to have gone out alone so soon after joining the swift boat command in late November 1968.
Kerry supporters said no critics of the Democratic presidential nominee ever were aboard a boat with him in combat. Washington lawyer Lanny Davis has contended that Schachte was not aboard the Boston whaler and says the statement that Schachte was aboard in Unfit for Command undermines that critical book’s credibility.8 (emphasis added)
Novak also interviewed Swift Boat veterans Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, two Kerry supporters who claimed to be aboard the skimmer that night. But neither Zaladonis nor Runyon has ever asserted that they saw enemy fire (my edit - no enemy fire - no eligibility for a Purple Heart - case closed). Novak also interviewed Tedd Peck and Mike Voss who confirmed to him that Schachte was the originator of the technique to use the skimmer in missions designed to flush the Viet Cong out on the banks of the waterways along the Mekong River so larger boats could move in and destroy them; both men also confirmed to Novak that Schachte was always aboard the skimmer when it was used in such missions.
Unable to discredit the rear admiral’s account, the Kerry camp then engaged in an ad hominem assault. The strongly pro-Kerry Media- Matters.org, for instance, noted that Admiral Schachte had contributed $8,500 to federal candidates or national political organizations since 1997, of which $6,750 went to Republican candidates or the Republican Party, including donations of $1,000 to George Bush in each of his 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns.9 To leftist critics, Admiral Schachte’s political contributions disqualified him from giving a truthful affidavit.
As the controversy over the first Purple Heart progressed, a previously overlooked passage from Douglas Brinkley’s campaign biography came to light. The date of the skimmer incident was December 2, 1968. According to Brinkley, Kerry had written in his private journals that on December 11, 1968, just after he turned twenty-five, his crew had not yet come under enemy fire, even though the date was nine days after the skimmer incident, when Kerry had claimed he was wounded by enemy fire. Regarding the events of December 11, 1968, Kerry wrote the following journal entry:
<<<<They pulled away from the pier at Cat Lo with spirits high, feeling satisfied with the way things were going for them. They had no lust for battle, but they also were not afraid. Kerry wrote in his notebook, “A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn’t been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven’t been shot at are allowed to be cocky. 10
Taking at face value Kerry’s description of December 11, 1968, he and his crew had not yet experienced enemy fire, a statement that sounds like an implicit admission that the injury for the first Purple Heart was not suffered under enemy fire.
The Final Admission
John Hurley, veterans coordinator for the Kerry campaign has now admitted that it is possible that Kerry’s first Purple Heart was awarded for an unintentional self-inflicted wound.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS FOR KERRY
1. What really happened in that incident on December 2, 1968?
2. How did you end up getting this Purple Heart? From whom?
3. Why was a Purple Heart issued only after Hibbard and Schachte left?’
cont'd...........
E P I L O G U E
ADVANTAGE SWIFT VETS
John Kerry never saw them coming: not the book, the ads, or the 250 veterans of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. When the DRUDGE REPORT broke the story, an enraged spokesperson who was traveling with Kerry told DRUDGE, “They hired a goddamn private investigator to dig up trash!”1 The next day, Senator John McCain, without having ever studied the charges, called the Swiftees “dishonest and dishonorable.”2 Several days later, the New York Times declared the group to be a “shadow party” of the GOP.3
None of these unjustified attacks mattered to the Swiftees. They knew these attacks were not true. But more important, none of it mattered to the American people who wanted to find out the truth for themselves. In a few weeks, Unfit for Command was #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list, #1 on BarnesandNoble.com, and then #1 on the New York Times list for four weeks in a row. And even though in those early days when the Swift Boat vets could only afford to buy airtime in a handful of markets, polls showed that roughly half of Americans already saw or knew of the ads.
The truth was out.
From Minor Annoyance to Full-Scale Attack
At first, the Kerry campaign tried to treat the book and the ads as an irritation. They ignored the charges; dodged questions. It didn’t work.
The Kerry camp then launched an orchestrated plan to discredit the Swift Boat vets. Television stations that aired the ads were threatened with lawsuits. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was accused of being run and funded by Republicans. The Kerry camp “googled” coauthor Jerry Corsi and used his statements in an Internet discussion forum to attack his character. They accused co-author John O’Neill of holding a thirty-year-plus vendetta against John Kerry. They demanded that Regnery, the book’s publisher, pull the book off the shelves.
None of it worked.
Now the Kerry campaign is engaged in an all-out effort to brand the vets as liars, even though they do not have any evidence that the vets lied about the charges. The Kerry camp is hoping that if they repeat it often enough, Americans will come to accept it. But so far, this strategy hasn’t worked either. Indeed, it may already be too late.
We believe that truth has won.
The Liberal Media Falls in Step
The liberal mainstream media employed a parallel strategy. First, they ignored the Swift Boat vets, and then dismissed the charges. All the while, they gave tremendous play to those attacking President Bush.
The NBC Today Show, for example, gave Kitty Kelley’s anti-Bush book three straight mornings of airtime, but refused to interview the authors of Unfit for Command even once. NBC was more than willing to provide a forum for an author whose chief source denied the book’s account, but they ignored Unfit for Command even though the latter relied on documented evidence and multiple eyewitness accounts from veterans who had signed affidavits.
Then Dan Rather and CBS enjoyed a holiday from the truth. They proclaimed that they had documents criticizing President Bush’s National Guard service, charges that were accepted as fact by the mainstream media and widely reported. Even when it was quickly and universally concluded that the documents were forgeries, CBS stuck by their story for weeks. While CBS dismissed the meticulously documented Swift Boat charges, they continued to defend their fraudulent documents until poor ratings made it impossible to do so.
Perhaps the most telling example of the liberal media’s bias was the condescending manner in which they treated the Swift Boat veterans. Pat Oliphant’s cartoon depicting them as illiterate drunks 4 was an insult to veterans old and young. And yet, there was virtually no media outcry. On the NewsHour, Tom Oliphant declared that Unfit for Command was not up to journalistic standards.5 From what we’ve seen in the press, we believe the book’s standards are higher.
In this epilogue, our goal is to review the key arguments of the book that have been under attack and the statements the Kerry camp has made in response to the charges. There are still many unanswered questions. We are confident that after reviewing the summary and documentation, as well as Kerry’s statements, readers will conclude that the charges in the book are not a “pack of lies” as Kerry claimed.
Unfit for Command presents serious charges backed up with serious research. We intend for this epilogue to reinforce that conclusion.
Cont'd.....
Kerry has said many things. Many went to the trouble of collecting the more exotic sayings of John Kerry.
Here's what Kerry really thought about Reagan in 1984:
"The Reagan Administration has no rational plan for our military. Instead, it acts on misinformed assumptions about the strength of the Soviet military and a presumed 'window of vulnerability,' which we now know not to exist."
"The biggest defense buildup since World War II has not given us a better defense. Americans feel more threatened by the prospect of war, not less so. And our national priorities become more and more distorted as the share of our country’s resources devoted to human needs diminishes."
---
I think history showed us who was really misinformed. If Kerry's view was in the majority, the Berlin Wall would still be up, and that doomsday clock would still be ticking.
http://www.davidstuff.com/political/kerryquotes.htm
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/007749.php
http://boycottliberalism.com/biographies/Kerry-quotes.htm
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=4530
Hat tip to Scared but Hopeful
"Dude no one cares about Mary Cheney, get real."
Uh huh. And how many people did you ask before you drew that
false assumption?
Instapundit - FOR ONCE, I'M IN THE MAJORITY:
Fifty-seven percent say being homosexual is the way people are, not the way they choose to be - up from its level a decade ago. But likely voters by 2-1 also call it inappropriate for Kerry, when asked that question, to have noted that Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbian. Cheney himself mentioned his daughter's sexual orientation in a campaign appearance in August. . . .
Indeed only among one group, Kerry's own supporters, does a majority (52 percent) say it was appropriate for him to mention Mary Cheney. Among Democrats, 51 percent call it inappropriate; that rises to 64 percent of independents, 80 percent of Republicans and 82 percent of Bush supporters.
I said it was a mistake.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2004/story?id=169306&page=1
INTERESTING INTERVIEW with new Economics Nobelist William Prescott:
Instapundit
Prescott, speaking from Minnesota, where he advises the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, described Kerry's plan to roll back tax cuts for top wage-earners as counterproductive.
"The idea that you can increase taxes and stimulate the economy is pretty damn stupid," he said.
Bush's campaign on Monday released a letter signed by Prescott and five other Nobel laureates critical of Kerry's proposal to roll back tax reductions for families earning $200,000 or more.
In The Republic interview, he said such a policy would discourage people from working.
"It's easy to get over $200,000 in income with two wage earners in a household," Prescott said. "We want those highly educated, talented people to work."
Prescott also gave Bush the nod on another controversial campaign issue, dismissing Kerry's claims that outsourcing of jobs is damaging the economy. . . . Prescott also backed the idea, espoused by Bush, to reform Social Security by allowing some workers to place a portion of their payroll taxes into private savings accounts.
I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more attention.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/1019Prescott19.html
Kerry Reveals Bush Secret Plan to Draft Elderly
(2004-10-19) -- Previously unseen documents released by the Kerry-Edwards campaign today reveal a secret Bush administration plan to draft the elderly into military service.
"If George W. Bush wins this election, I warn you that he will kill two birds with one stone," said John Forbes Kerry, the Democrat presidential candidate. "He'll bail out Social Security by sending our nation's grandparents to the front lines in Iraq to die in the wrong war."
Mr. Kerry, who is also a U.S. Senator, said, "Senior citizens are patriotic, plentiful and many of them still have their old military uniforms and vintage rifles from World War II and Korea. It's a cynical scheme, and that's why this administration is hiding it until January."
According to Kerry, National Guard and Reserve troops will come home rapidly as they're replaced by five divisions of combat-ready "geriatric GIs."
To date, the Pentagon has not specifically denied the existence of the alleged secret plan dubbed 'Operation Joint Replacement.'
President Bush, asked to respond to the Kerry allegation during a campaign stop, said, "This is the first I've heard of it. But we don't need to draft our seniors. If we'd let 'em, they'd volunteer. Next question."
by Scott Ott /
www.scrappleface.com
Kerry has sponsored only five bills which have been passed by both the Senate and the House in their original form, an average of one bill every four years. They include these momentous pieces of legislation:
* S.791: Authorizes $53 million over four years to provide grants to woman-owned small businesses. (1999)
* S.1206: Names a federal building in Waltham, Massachusetts after Frederick C. Murphy, who was killed in action during World War II and awarded (posthumously) the Medal of Honor. (1994)
* S.1636: A save-the-dolphins measure aiming "to improve the program to reduce the incidental taking of marine mammals during the course of commercial fishing operations." (1994)
* S.1563: Funding the National Sea Grant College Program, which supports university-based research, public education, and other projects "to promote better understanding, conservation and use of America’s coastal resources." (1991)
* S.423: Granting a visa and admission to the U.S. as a permanent resident to Kil Joon Yu Callahan. (1987)
He also authored two bills which were passed with some slight modifications. These two momentous achievements were:
H.R.1900 (S.300): Awarded a congressional gold medal to Jackie Robinson(posthumously), and called for a national day of recognition. (2003)
H.R.1860 (S.856): Increased the maximum research grants for small businesses from $500,000 to $750,000 under the Small Business Technology Transfer Program. (2001)
http://www.factcheck.org/article282.html
"for every voter fraud story about democrats I can find one about Republicans"
I documented some very serious instances of Democratic
sponsored voter fraud. Show me some actual instances of
Republican voter fraud relating to this election. You claim
you can easily match my real stories.
Or is this going to be the same as always? Will it be more of
your personal & unsubstantiated opinion presented as rock
solid fact, but never any credible evidence to support it?
If proof is as easy to find as you claim it is, then prove
it. Link me to it.
War of Words
By TOMMY FRANKS
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR - NYT
President Bush and Senator John Kerry have very different views of the war on terrorism, and those differences ought to be debated in this presidential campaign. But the debate should focus on facts, not distortions of history.
On more than one occasion, Senator Kerry has referred to the fight at Tora Bora in Afghanistan during late 2001 as a missed opportunity for America. He claims that our forces had Osama bin Laden cornered and allowed him to escape. How did it happen? According to Mr. Kerry, we "outsourced" the job to Afghan warlords. As commander of the allied forces in the Middle East, I was responsible for the operation at Tora Bora, and I can tell you that the senator's understanding of events doesn't square with reality.
First, take Mr. Kerry's contention that we "had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden" and that "we had him surrounded." We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001. Some intelligence sources said he was; others indicated he was in Pakistan at the time; still others suggested he was in Kashmir. Tora Bora was teeming with Taliban and Qaeda operatives, many of whom were killed or captured, but Mr. bin Laden was never within our grasp.
Second, we did not "outsource" military action. We did rely heavily on Afghans because they knew Tora Bora, a mountainous, geographically difficult region on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is where Afghan mujahedeen holed up for years, keeping alive their resistance to the Soviet Union. Killing and capturing Taliban and Qaeda fighters was best done by the Afghan fighters who already knew the caves and tunnels.
Third, the Afghans weren't left to do the job alone. Special forces from the United States and several other countries were there, providing tactical leadership and calling in air strikes. Pakistani troops also provided significant help - as many as 100,000 sealed the border and rounded up hundreds of Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
Contrary to Senator Kerry, President Bush never "took his eye off the ball" when it came to Osama bin Laden. The war on terrorism has a global focus. It cannot be divided into separate and unrelated wars, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. Both are part of the same effort to capture and kill terrorists before they are able to strike America again, potentially with weapons of mass destruction. Terrorist cells are operating in some 60 countries, and the United States, in coordination with dozens of allies, is waging this war on many fronts.
As we planned for potential military action in Iraq and conducted counterterrorist operations in several other countries in the region, Afghanistan remained a center of focus. Neither attention nor manpower was diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq. When we started Operation Iraqi Freedom we had about 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, and by the time we finished major combat operations in Iraq last May we had more than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan.
We are committed to winning this war on all fronts, and we are making impressive gains. Afghanistan has held the first free elections in its history. Iraq is led by a free government made up of its own citizens. By the end of this year, NATO and American forces will have trained 125,000 Iraqis to enforce the law, fight insurgents and secure the borders. This is in addition to the great humanitarian progress already achieved in Iraq.
Many hurdles remain, of course. But the gravest danger would result from the withdrawal of American troops before we finish our work. Today we are asking our servicemen and women to do more, in more places, than we have in decades. They deserve honest, consistent, no-spin leadership that respects them, their families and their sacrifices. The war against terrorism is the right war at the right time for the right reasons. And Iraq is one of the places that war must be fought and won. George W. Bush has his eye on that ball and Senator John Kerry does not.
Tommy Franks, a retired general and former commander in chief of the Central Command, is the author of "American Soldier." He is a member of Veterans for Bush.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
Uh, what exactly did your link prove? And how did it rebut my
response? Actually, your link references evidence that calls
Kerry a liar.
FWIW, the Nightline show your link discussed did NOT prove
the Swift Boat Vets lied. It did however, provide alleged
eyewitness testimony that completely contradicts John Kerry's
personal description of events. In fact, John Kerry's
personal account remains at odds with every other documented
account, including Nightline's presentation of the alleged
eyewitnesses accounts of peasants under the watchful eyes of
their communist handlers.
Now back to your original false assertion.....
"See the movie "Going Upriver" The Swift Boat group was put together by Nixon and Colson in 1972 to attack Kerry. They were unsucessful liars then and they have been brought back now to aid another Republican president in trouble in yet another misguided war of choice in Iraq. The Swift Boat Veterans are liars and Republican political operatives."
I completely disagree with your personal opinion. You have
not provided any evidence to support your opinion. A "movie"
is not "evidence" of anything. And Nightline provided
questionable evidence that completely contradicts Kerry's
personal account of the event.
Please show me evidence that supports your as yet,
unsubstantiated opinion.
By any means necessary.......
...."There's a lot of fraud committed," said former ACORN
Miami-Dade field director Mac Stuart in the Oct. 2 Florida
Today. He charges that ACORN submitted thousands of
invalid registration cards while failing to turn in cards
from registered Republicans......
Democratic deception
By Terrence Scanlon
Washington Times
Newspapers are reporting an incredible surge in new voter registrations this year. Democratic and Republican activists have sponsored registration drives in the hope that millions of new voters will elect John Kerry or George W. Bush president. Voter offices are swamped with thousands of last-minute registrations.
That makes the possibility of voter fraud very real.
Increasingly, reports of fake and forged voter registration cards are surfacing across the nation, and they are prompting official investigations into voter drives. One group in particular has come under scrutiny. ACORN -- it stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- has received wide attention for claiming to have registered more than 1 million new voters nationwide. But in state after state, allegations are surfacing that ACORN activists are padding the registration books.
In Colorado, hundreds of voter registration forms are suspect. On Oct. 12, Denver television station KUSA reported that one woman admitted to forging three people's names on 40 registration forms to help her boyfriend earn an extra $50 from ACORN. According to the Associated Press, she also signed herself up to vote 25 times.
Police in Duluth, Minn., stopped a 19-year-old motorist for running a stop sign and discovered 300 voter registration cards in the trunk of his car. According an Oct. 8 article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the driver, an ex-ACORN employee, admitted the cards were there for weeks and months. ACORN says it paid the canvasser $1 per registration and fired him because it suspected he was registering voters twice to double his fee. The Associated Press reports that ACORN claims to have registered 36,000 new voters in Minnesota.
An Oct. 8 report in the Cincinnati Inquirer says Hamilton County officials subpoenaed 19 voter registration cards turned in by ACORN with similar handwriting and false addresses. In Columbus, Ohio, officials discovered dozens of faked names on voter cards and have indicted one ACORN worker. ACORN says it has registered 158,000 new voters in Ohio and 26,000 in Cincinnati/Hamilton County.
A Sept. 26 New York Times county-by-county analysis of heavily Democratic areas in Ohio (mainly low-income and minority neighborhoods) finds that new registrations since January are up by 250 percent compared to registrations during the same period in 2000. In Florida, the increase over 2000 is 60 percent in Democratic areas --compared to just 12 percent in heavily Republican areas.
In the battleground state of Florida, ACORN claims to have registered 212,000 voters for the general election. But one of them was the mayor of St. Petersburg who received a letter telling him he was ineligible to vote because his registration form was not turned in on time. Mayor Charles Schuh discovered someone from ACORN had fraudulently submitted his name, reports an Oct. 4 article in the St. Petersburg Times. The Palm Beach Post reported on Oct. 8 that ACORN is also under state and federal investigation in Miami-Dade County for unlawfully registering former felons to vote. (In New Orleans, ACORN registered 700 new voters at the jailhouse by signing up prisoners awaiting trial but not yet found guilty of a crime.) An ACORN worker registered a 13-year-old to vote in Albuquerque, N.M.
"There's a lot of fraud committed," said former ACORN Miami-Dade field director Mac Stuart in the Oct. 2 Florida Today. He charges that ACORN submitted thousands of invalid registration cards while failing to turn in cards from registered Republicans.
ACORN's principal activity is not voter registration. With some 150,000 dues-paying members organized into 65 city chapters, the group is better known for public disruption.
For more than 30 years its "community organizing" has relied on in-your-face confrontation. In 1995, ACORN famously bused in 500 protesters to disrupt a Washington, D.C. speech by House Speaker Newt Gingrich. In 2002, it burst into the Heritage Foundation to harangue welfare-reform expert Robert Rector. Dozen of city councils and state legislatures have had to face angry ACORN protesters demanding higher minimum wages and more welfare entitlements. Banks have been pressured to change their lending practices or face ACORN charges of discrimination before regulators.
ACORN's founder and chief organizer is one Wade Rathke, a veteran activist who is also president of the New Orleans-based Local 100 of the Service Employees International Union. More importantly, Mr. Rathke is chairman of the board of the San Francisco-based Tides Center and a board member of its affiliated Tides Foundation, the left-wing grantmaker that specializes in helping new political advocacy groups get organized. Grants from the Heinz Endowments, whose chairman is Teresa Heinz Kerry, to and from the Tides organizations have been the subject of major news stories recently, which speculate on the impact Mrs. Heinz Kerry's private philanthropy will have on the policies of a Kerry administration. The Tides connection to ACORN raises even more questions.
Clearly, the 2000 election cliffhanger rankles leftist activists. It's no wonder they are determined to change the results in 2004. But will groups like ACORN play fair, and if they don't will they be caught in time?
Terrence Scanlon is president of the Capital Research Center, a non-profit philanthropic watchdog organization.
Jonah Goldberg sums up the Mary Cheney issue (and its implications for Kerry) nicely: (Hat tip to Gina Vener)
..What is important and revealing is not what Kerry said about Mary Cheney but what Kerry's comments about Mary Cheney say about him. Andrew Sullivan, Hilary Rosen, and others can complain all they like about double standards and false outrage — none of that changes the fact that what Kerry did was creepy. Think of it this way: If Kerry had said that Dick Cheney's daughter is a "deviant," Andrew Sullivan would be furious at Kerry and he wouldn't care one whit if Dick and Lynne Cheney were upset with Kerry. Because it is Kerry's actions that are at issue, not the Cheneys' reactions.
So what did Kerry do? He tried to score political points by using the status — for want of a better word — of his opponents' family. He claimed to know the mind of someone else's child as a way to hurt the parents. It's the ultimate wedge issue, trying to divide or ridicule a family because of an abstract or partisan political point.
Bill Safire says that it was all premeditated. Bob Novak's reporting seems to indicate it was off-the-cuff. I suspect that it was Kerry off-the-cuff — which is the more damning interpretation if you ask me. If you actually watch the tape of Kerry's comments, you can see he's struggling to say something profound. You can tell that he was on the defensive — as he was on all the values questions — and, I think, you can tell that he was searching for a way to put Bush on the defensive instead. That was clearly John Edwards's intention when he mentioned Mary Cheney in the vice-presidential debate. All of the attention, by the way, to Cheney's graciousness in response to Edwards also misses the point. Cheney's motives for taking the high road were surely political. But Cheney's feelings and motives don't change the objective fact of the Kerry camp's intent.
I cringed when Kerry explained, "We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as." Others in the room groaned. But it was obvious to everyone that Kerry was searching to score points, to twist the knife, to use Mary Cheney as a cudgel. The fact that Kerry used Mary's homosexuality was secondary. Gay rights, gay marriage, etc. — all of that is incidental to the fact that Kerry relished the opportunity to use Mary Cheney.
I'm no huge poll watcher, but the polls clearly show that most Americans "got it." Kerry can't resist the gravitational pull of a political opportunity. Indeed, as Brit Hume noted on Fox News Sunday and as I've written before, I think this goes further in explaining Kerry's flip-flops than anything else. He has terrible political instincts. And I don't think anyone can deny that his comments were driven by political instinct and not the "integrity, integrity, integrity" he claims his mother drilled into him.
When trying to explain why it was wrong, people have offered hypotheticals of Kerry mentioning an alcoholic or drug addict in his opponents' family. Kerry's defenders take immediate offense at the suggestion that being gay is like being a drug addict. We can discuss all that another day. But what if George W. Bush had said "divorce is a difficult issue. On one hand we all think society is healthier when marriages are healthier. On the other hand, we understand that good and decent people sometimes have irreconcilable differences. I'm sure if you asked John Kerry's first wife, she would tell you that there are no easy answers..." Or if he had said, "I'm sure if you asked John Kerry's lovely daughters whether it was easy for them to cope with their parents' divorce..." Or what if Bush had said, "America is a land of great opportunity for immigrants. I'm sure John Kerry's second wife Teresa, who was born in Africa, would agree..."
In any of those scenarios, I guarantee you that "getting it" would not have been a problem for the press.
http://nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200410190836.asp
"Gosh, you people whine about everything."
So, Mr. Smarty Pants, what exactly did I whine about?
"Nixon funded John O'Neill's group in 1972 to attack Kerry."
Izzat so? Got links to back it up"
"Do you deny that or don't you know?"
Actually, I know that happens to be a bunch of bunk, but I'll
look at any credible evidence you may have to prove your
assertion has merit.
"John O'Neill when debating Kerry on the Dick Cavatt show in 1972 admitted participating in free fire zones. That's a war crime according to the Geneva conventions - see the debate as I did twice to get his admission."
I'm impressed. I've seen it several times & read the
transcripts. I've also watched Kerry's testimony under oath
before the Senate in 1971 & read the transcripts, plus much
much more.
Kerry admitted to more war crimes than you asserted (see below).
Free fire zones were NOT war crimes. Kerry lied about that too.
All that meant was that they could return fire if fired upon
(they didn't need to get permission first). They could fire on
threatening or suspicious activity in that specific zone, but
that zone had already been cleared of civilians who were warned
to stay clear or they could be shot.
Kerry's false description of Free Fire Zones would make him a
war criminal as he openly admitted that he did partake them.
Your spin is interesting, but does not mitigate the fact Kerry
told horrific lies under oath. Because of that POW's suffered,
the commies hung on & more of our troops died
unnecessarily..........
.....in front of the US Congress, John Kerry had the following to say:
“We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them.”
“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.”......
Videotape, MEET THE PRESS, April 18, 1971):
MR. KERRY (Vietnam Veterans Against the War): There are all kinds of atrocities and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free-fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals........
.....They played the tape where Kerry lied about war crimes he claimed to have seen. He spoke about “FREE FIRE ZONEs” and how we murdered innocent civilians in them. Every Soldier I ever met in Vietnam from Private to General knew we moved all civilians to “New Life Hamlets” before any area was declared a “FREE FIRE ZONE.” Only John and his “Band of Brothers” seem to have missed the point.
http://dev.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=20433697
.....Kerry repeatedly embellishes this lie by referring to "U.S. designated FREE-FIRE ZONEs," implying that such ZONEs authorized indiscriminate killing, in order to portray the U.S. military as unwanted, brutish conquerors in Vietnam. In truth, FREE-FIRE ZONEs fell within the normal rules of engagement and authorized not an order to FIRE but discretion to FIRE first if threatened by, or when confronting, enemy forces......
http://dev.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=20542712
.....The intent of the FREE FIRE ZONE designation was to declare certain areas where GIs could return FIRE at will without getting permission form a FSCOORD (FIRE Support Coordinator) or other higher HQ.
It did not provide authority to abrogate the rules of war...In fact conventional American units gave each field soldier a card telling him he could not shoot civilians indiscriminantly and other rules listed here...
International Rules About Civilians.....
http://dev.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=20502043
....Retired Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, who was ultimately responsible for ordering Kerry into the FREE-FIRE ZONEs, took such offense at Kerry's allegations .....
....the retired officers who criticized Kerry said he misled the public by lumping together documented atrocities like My Lai with his complaints about the inhumanity of the US military's policy on FREE-FIRE ZONEs.
They also questioned whether the 1971 testimony of
veterans at the Winter Soldier hearings in Detroit was
accurate.....
One of Kerry's former commanders, Coast Guard Captain
Adrian Lonsdale of Massachusetts, said he has no
recollection of Kerry ever expressing concern about
atrocities during their conversations while in Vietnam.
Lonsdale was among those who said he opposed Kerry on
grounds that he falsely made allegations about atrocities.
'Atrocities by US Navy men and Coast Guardsmen under my command were never reported to me," Lonsdale said via e-mail....
http://dev.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=20128388
Kerry Off the Leash
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times
John Kerry wasn't nominated because of his sparkling personality. He wasn't nominated because of his selfless commitment to causes larger than himself. He was nominated because he's a fighter. At the end of every campaign he comes out brawling. This was the guy who could take on Bush.
So nobody could imagine how incompetent, crude and over-the-top Kerry has been in this final phase of the campaign. At this point, smart candidates are launching attacks that play up the doubts voters already have about their opponents. Incredibly, Kerry is launching attacks that play up doubts voters have about him. Over the past few days, he has underscored the feeling that he will say or do anything to further his career.
In so doing, he has managed to squelch any momentum he may have had coming out of the first two debates. Some polls have him stagnant against Bush. More polls show Bush recovering from the debate season and now pulling slightly ahead. The blunt truth is that Kerry is losing the final phase of this campaign.
Let's review the string of heavy-handed assaults from the Kerry-Edwards campaign.
On Monday, Kerry told seniors in Florida that Bush is plotting a "January surprise" to cut their Social Security benefits by as much as 45 percent. "That's up to $500 a month less for food, for clothing, for the occasional gift for a grandchild."
As Kerry knows, that's ludicrous - it's a stale and transparent canard that Democrats have brought out in election after election, to less and less effect. President Bush has not entertained and would not entertain any plan that cut benefits to seniors. Bush would sooner give up any Social Security reform than cut benefits.
Kerry's second wild attack is that Bush would reinstate the draft. The administration, which hasn't even asked for trivial public sacrifices in a time of war, does not want to bring back the draft. The Pentagon does not want to bring back the draft. The Republican Party does not want to bring back the draft. Given the nature of military technology, it doesn't make sense to bring back the draft. There may be some in the bureaucracy taking precautions, but it is hard to imagine an attack with less basis in fact.
Kerry's third attack is the whole Mary Cheney thing. That's been hashed over enough. But remarkably, Kerry has not apologized. You use somebody's daughter to attack the father and his running mate. The parents are upset. The only decent thing is to apologize. If anything, an apology would make Kerry look admirable. But Kerry, in his permanent attack dog mode, can't do the decent and politically advantageous thing.
The fourth assault is Kerry's attack on the Bush administration's supposed "ban" on stem cell research. John Edwards's ludicrous statement that if Kerry was president, people like Christopher Reeve would be able to get up and walk was only the farcical culmination of a series of exaggerations about the possibilities of finding cures for Alzheimer's and spinal cord injuries.
I'm not trying to make a moral point here about sleazy campaigning. Politics ain't beanbag, and in the final days of a close campaign, exaggerations are the norm. I'm talking about competence and what this period says about Kerry and his campaign.
Bush's key vulnerability is that people fear he is in over his head. By lashing out wildly, Kerry muddles all that. Instead his blunderbuss approach suggests a candidate devoid of perspective, driven by unattractive and naked ambition.
Why is he doing this? First, because in the insular Democratic world, George Bush is presumed to be guilty of everything, so the more vicious you can be about him, the better everybody feels.
But there is a deeper assumption, which has marred Democratic politics for years. Some Democrats have been unable to face the reality that people have been voting for Republicans because they agree with them. So these Democrats have invented the comforting theory that they've been losing because they are too virtuous for the country.
According to this theory, Republicans - or usually some omniscient, omnipotent and malevolent strategists, like Lee Atwater or Karl Rove - have been tricking the American people into voting against their true interests. This year, many Democrats decided, we'll be vicious in return.
The truth, however, is that voters are not idiots. They are capable of independent thought. If you attack your opponent wildly, ruthlessly, they will come to their own conclusions.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
UN Fails "Global Test"
UN oil for food chief faces inquiry into property deals
BY Damien McElroy and Charles Laurence in New York
TELEGRAPH UK
American prosecutors are preparing charges against Benon Sevan, the former head of the United Nations oil for food programme, who has been accused of accepting millions of dollars in kickbacks from Saddam Hussein's regime.
Congressional investigators examining alleged corruption in the programme disclosed that Mr Sevan's diplomatic immunity would not prevent an indictment being issued. Mr Sevan has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Benon Sevan: denial
"We have tried to find out what part he had and we've been working to lift the lid on what he did," said one official on the US Congress International Relations committee. "My understanding is that we can indict him without lifting diplomatic immunity. That's what we did with Noriega."
Gen Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian leader, was indicted in 1988 by a federal grand jury in Miami for drug trafficking. He had allowed the Medellin cartel to launder money and build cocaine laboratories in Panama.
Former officials in Iraq's state oil company, Somo, have alleged to investigators reporting to the International Relations committee that Mr Sevan was "sacked" on Saddam's orders in 2001 for failing to keep promises to campaign on ending sanctions.
"The basic understanding of these officials is that Saddam felt short-changed by this guy who took the money but did not deliver," said one committee staffer.
Mr Sevan had been due to retire this year until a committee was appointed to investigate allegations that he had taken kickbacks from Saddam's regime. In his native Cyprus last week, he denied that he was running away from his accusers.
"These people are digging, digging. That's nothing to do with me," he said from his five-star hotel. "Cyprus is my home. I'm here because I want to be here. I've made my statement and stand by it. It's not for me to comment on anything else."
A spokesman for the Southern district of Manhattan's federal prosecutor's office said it was "too early" to comment on its indictment efforts over Mr Sevan. Officials are, however, examining the diplomat's extensive property portfolio in the United States.
According to records, properties registered in his name include a flat in Manhattan, a house in the Hamptons on Long Island, a house in the nearby district of Rye, and a house on New Jersey's "Gold Coast". The Congressional official said: "It's an issue that he has property in the Hamptons and Manhattan."
A second Congressional official said that the US hoped to recover some of the funds allegedly siphoned off from the now-defunct oil sales programme, which was designed to alleviate shortages of basic goods in Iraq as a result of sanctions.
He said: "Our priority is to recover as much money as we can for Iraq, for various reasons, because they need the money and every dollar they have is a dollar we don't have to put in there."
A CIA report published earlier this month claimed that Mr Sevan was allocated vouchers by Saddam to sell 7.3 million barrels of Iraqi oil through a Panamanian-registered company. Quoting "high-level sources", the report said: "Sevan never received his oil allocation in person. Sevan's vouchers were always picked up by Fakhir Abdul Noor, an Egyptian now residing in Switzerland and connected to the African Middle East Petroleum Co, who would sign documents on Sevan's behalf and pick up his allocation."
"if i wanted to I could provide a mountain of evidence"
Uh huh. If it was that easy you would have only needed to
provide a mole hill's worth, rather than waste bandwidth
blowing smoke & mirrors.
"stay in your delusional world"
Hmmmmm... Who provided factual evidence to prove their POV to
be correct"
That would be me.
And who still claims they are right despite all evidence
contrary to their misguided POV?
That would be you.
And who is delusional?
By any means necessary.....
Who’s Behind the Bush-Futures Attacks?
Whoever it is, he’s trying to sway the election toward Kerry.
October 18, 2004, 11:32 a.m.
President Bush’s enemies have found a new avenue of attack — the online financial markets.
There have now been four separate “speculative attacks” on the market in futures contracts on Bush’s reelection probabilities. These futures are real-money “bets” — placed by thousands of traders around the world — on whether or not George Bush will be reelected. For the last several months the futures have been a reliable leading indicator of where conventional polls are heading, and they’ve received increasing mainstream media attention.
The attacks on the Bush futures have involved massive sell orders placed by a single individual — the same individual all four times — according to a spokesman for Tradesports.com, the Dublin-based futures-trading website. Each attack caused a massive temporary drop in the price of the Bush reelection futures. The most recent attack came last Friday at about 1:30 p.m. Eastern time. It whacked the Bush futures from a price of 54 cents (indicating the market’s estimate of a 54 percent probability of a Bush reelection) all the way down to 10 cents (indicating a 10 percent probability of reelection) in just eight minutes. Six minutes after the attack the Bush futures were back to 54. That’s the equivalent of an 8,000-point crash in the Dow Jones Industrial Average followed by an 8,000-point recovery. All within 14 minutes.
What could have been the attacker’s motive? Obviously, it couldn’t have been to maximize profits. Even if Bush loses the election and the futures position pays off, those attacked would make more money by being patient and selling at 54 instead of 10. In fact, last Friday when the futures snapped back to 54 once the attacker was done selling, every contract he had sold at 10 showed an immediate 44 point loss.
So, if the motive wasn’t profits, it must have been political — a scheme to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt among Bush supporters, and to create the false impression of winning momentum for John Kerry. Indeed, two of the attacks occurred just after the second and third presidential debates. The seller must have wanted to make it seem as though the futures — an instantaneous poll of very special credibility in which you have to truly put your money where your mouth is — were giving Bush a big thumbs-down.
If these attacks were carried out for such purposes, then they were flat-out market manipulations. Tradesports has indicated these trades are entirely legal, both within their offshore regulatory framework and by their own house rules. But if such manipulations had occurred on regulated stock or futures exchanges in the U.S., they would likely result in criminal charges of securities fraud.
Who would stoop to such a sleazy — even if entirely legal — trick? One person comes to mind, and I’m not thinking of Hillary Clinton (despite her ample experience in futures markets). I’m thinking of a billionaire market speculator who has pledged to spend $100 million dollars of his own fortune to bring down President Bush; a man who recently said that “These aren’t normal times. The ends justify every legal means possible.” I could be wrong, but of course I’m thinking of George Soros.
Soros is the master of the speculative attack. In 1992 he became famous as “the man who broke the Bank of England” with similar attacks against the British pound. He is widely believed to have earned $1.1 billion in trading profits when the pound finally collapsed under his onslaught, and the Bank of England was forced to withdraw England from the European exchange rate mechanism. He was accused of doing the same thing in 1997 against the Malaysian currency, the ringgit, during the Asian financial crisis.
The trades involving the speculative attacks on the Bush re-election futures were miniscule by comparison — measured only in the tens of thousands of dollars — yet they were sufficient to have a major impact on a small market.
And there’s more. The potential for manipulating futures to demoralize the Bush camp is one thing. But the Bush reelection futures — and similar futures that trade on the Iowa Electronic Exchange — are closely watched by Wall Street and have an influence on stock prices. I pointed out early this year that the stock market trades in near tandem with the ups and downs of the Bush futures. In fact, the Bush futures, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq all made their lows for the year on the very same day — August 12. After that point, the stock market rallied along with Bush as the lackluster Democratic convention played out. Similarly, the market swoon of the last couple of weeks has corresponded with a drop in the Bush futures, a drop that began even before the first presidential debate.
Manipulating the Bush reelection futures to spook the stock market would be a terrific way to make voters feel down about the economy when they step into the voting booth on November 2. Would the man who broke the Bank of England hesitate to do this? Remember, Soros said that “The ends justify every legal means possible.”
And it’s not as far fetched as you think. Soros has written extensively on what he calls his “theory of reflexivity.” Years ago, before he got involved in politics, he used to grouse that he was being passed over for the Nobel Prize in economics for this idea. Simply, “reflexivity” says that financial markets can have impacts on the real world. So if you want to move the world, just move the markets. That’s what someone is doing right now with the Bush futures. If it isn’t Soros, then likely it’s someone who has read his book.
Officials at Tradesports tell me that they have no intention of taking any action against the attacker. As far as they are concerned, any trade is a fair trade. “All emerging markets will experience volatility,” a spokesman said. “We are gratified that the market recovered so quickly and without any intervention on our part.”
Fair enough — and far be it for me to call for more regulation (the best thing about Dublin, Ireland, is that it’s one of the few places where Eliot Spitzer doesn’t have jurisdiction). But there’s something that all of us can do to police the political futures market and help keep it free from manipulation. It’s simply this: Take advantage of the stupid trades the attacker makes.
Here’s what I’ve done (and anyone with an account at Tradesports can do the same). I’ve entered orders to buy the Bush futures at absurdly low prices — and I’m just going to leave those orders there, in the hopes that the attacker will hit them. If he wants to sell more futures at 10, I’ll buy them all day long.
I’ll even make the attacker a special deal. I’ll buy literally as many futures contracts as he wants to sell at a price of zero. It’s a riskless trade for me — and it’s a speculative attacker’s ultimate dream to beat a market all the way down to nothing. That way, we both win.
To the attacker, whoever he is, I say: Are you feeling lucky? Make my day.
— Donald Luskin is chief investment officer of Trend Macrolytics LLC, an independent economics and investment-research firm. He welcomes your comments at don@trendmacro.com.
More irrefutable proof that the economy is in the crapper.
:-o
"when can you install it?
fist time their installer team is not booked is:
after christmas
"What do you mean by "real facts"?
Well, you originally asserted the following to be true....
"See the movie "Going Upriver" The Swift Boat group was put together by Nixon and Colson in 1972 to attack Kerry. They were unsucessful liars then and they have been brought back now to aid another Republican president in trouble in yet another misguided war of choice in Iraq. The Swift Boat Veterans are liars and Republican political operatives."
I know that none of this is true. You continue to assert they
are facts, but still you provide zero evidence.
And asking me to see a movie is like asking me to take the
absolute BS Michael Moore calls a "documentary" as fact, but
I know better. Movies are less reliable sources of "facts"
than crapumentaries by Michael Moore.
"I thought there as only one kind of facts."
Well, I used to think there were only one kind of facts too.
You know, real facts. Unfortunately I find folks like you
make false & baseless assertions as though they were fact.
When I ask folks like you to back up their false assertions,
they almost never provide credible, factual evidence, just
like you did.
When I press further, these folks then begin to call me names
& attack me personally, while reasserting their false
assertions once again as rock solid fact. Yet they still
provide no evidence at all, just their say so.
Meanwhile, I have known from the beginning that they were
only repeating discredited lies and have links to irrefutable
facts that show they are lies.
Hat tip to Scared but Hopeful:
The disadvantage for the leader of a nation is that there are a lot of things he cannot say.
The base fact of the matter is a leader of any large organization cannot be hands on. Outside of major strategies and directions such as "preemption", a president's success and failure rests sorely on the team he depends on. This is why a failure by any member of his team ultimately gets amplified rests on his shoulder and becomes an even bigger failure on his part --- ie: he hired the guy, so he has to face the consequences. This is a basic truth, appointing the wrong person can have very drastic consequences, and is a failure of the leader.
I think Bush did say these are his failures. But to go in front of the nation and go through how he failed in appointing the wrong people would pull in 3rd parties into the debate, something tawdry and cheap that Bush was not able to do, unlike Kerry.
There are other things Bush cannot say in public. To not antagonize France, neither the president nor the vp can point out that a top french political figure has been implicated in the iraq oil for food corruption scandal.
To avoid further antagonizing the UN, they also cannot point out that Kofi Anand's son is also implicated in the same oil for food corruption scandal. However, Anand clearly supports Kerry and has made veiled statements against the Bush administration, I think Anand realizes what could happen to his son if Bush wins on Nov 2nd.
A candidate like Kerry on the other hand, can do outrageous things without consequences.
He can attempt to influence the australian federal election by having his sister warn australians to not support the current leadership in their October federal election.
He can insult leaders of Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Turkey, United Kingdom and Uzbekistan by calling them corrupt or coerced. (Now you know how Howard Dean feels like).
He can have his surrogate insult as a puppet : a key iraqi leader supported by the UN, whose support the US needs to succeed in Iraq.
He can do all these without consequences.
Or can he?
In his first foreign policy failure, his sister failed to achieve the desired regime change in Australia. John Howard's party won by a landslide.
In a public rebuke, Poland's President voiced his displeasure at Kerry's characterization of his nation as corrupt or coerced.
We've seen JK's attempt at masterful diplomacy, and frankly, his foreign policy results are not only unimpressive, they are foolish for attempting to destroy those leaders who are willing to take the political risk to ally themselves with the US.
There's no words for this beyond --- go out and vote on Nov2nd or live with the consequences.
I believe everything your said in your post is false. Perhaps
you could substantiate your allegations with real facts &
links?
Tia
John Kerry's Sad List of Achievements
LGF
In his 20 years in the Senate, John Kerry authored a grand total of five bills that passed both the Senate and House and became law: Just How Many Bills Has Kerry ‘Passed?’ (Hat tip: Paul.)
* S.791: Authorizes $53 million over four years to provide grants to woman-owned small businesses. (1999)
* S.1206: Names a federal building in Waltham, Massachusetts after Frederick C. Murphy, who was killed in action during World War II and awarded (posthumously) the Medal of Honor. (1994)
* S.1636: A save-the-dolphins measure aiming“to improve the program to reduce the incidental taking of marine mammals during the course of commercial fishing operations.” (1994)
* S.1563: Funding the National Sea Grant College Program, which supports university-based research, public education, and other projects “to promote better understanding, conservation and use of America’s coastal resources.” (1991)
* S.423: Granting a visa and admission to the U.S. as a permanent resident to Kil Joon Yu Callahan. (1987)
He was also author of two bills that became law in modified form:
* H.R.1900 (S.300): Awarded a congressional gold medal to Jackie Robinson (posthumously), and called for a national day of recognition. (2003)
* H.R.1860 (S.856): Increased the maximum research grants for small businesses from $500,000 to $750,000 under the Small Business Technology Transfer Program. (2001)
... and co-authored four “joint resolutions” that are not technically “bills:”
* S.J.Res.158: To make the week of Oct. 22 — Oct. 28, 1989 “World Population Awareness Week.” (1989)
* S.J.Res.160: To renew “World Population Awareness Week” for 1991. (1991)
* S.J.Res.318: To make Nov. 13, 1992 “Vietnam Veterans Memorial 10th Anniversary Day.” (1992)
* S.J.Res.337: To make Sept. 18, 1992 “National POW/MIA Recognition Day.” (1992)
That’s it. This is what Kerry has to show for 20 years in the Senate.
In his claim during the final debate that he had “passed 56 individual bills” that he had “personally written,” Kerry was including every bill that passed the Senate (whether or not it became law), and 24 resolutions that have no force of law. The man is a self-aggrandizing liar of the worst sort, with almost nothing of substance to show for a 20-year career in politics.
IS The New York Times systematically biased against President Bush?
Of course it is.
By Bob Kohn
I was recently introduced to a radio audience as someone who hates The New York Times. Hate was too strong a word; I love this newspaper, and if you are reading this, you love it, too. To love this paper is to care what happens to it. We want it to be there for us - always - especially every Sunday morning with that cup of coffee, and we hope to hand the experience down to our children, so that they too may be informed and delighted by its pages.
Several weeks ago, Daniel Okrent, this paper's public editor, courageously stated the obvious: of course The New York Times is a liberal newspaper ("Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?" July 25). And he wasn't just talking about an editorial page he finds "thoroughly saturated in liberal theology" or the Sunday carvings of Frank Rich, who "slices up" President Bush and friends in the Arts & Leisure section.
More incisively, the public editor demonstrated how The Times - in its purportedly objective news pages - leans left on the social issues, showing by example how The Times presents same-sex marriages in a tone that approaches "cheerleading." Now, turning to politics, the public editor would have us believe there is no systematic bias against either presidential candidate.
This divide-and-conquer approach - separating The Times's advocacy of liberal causes from its campaign coverage - masks the powerful means this paper employs to undermine the Bush campaign.
Same-sex marriage, abortion, stem-cell research, gun control, environmental regulation, capital punishment and faith-based initiatives - are these not issues in the presidential election? Hoist with his own petard, the public editor has already demonstrated how The Times, by advocating its liberal social agenda, systematically slants the news against President Bush.
Now, let's assume that what the public editor asserted here last week is correct - that The Times's campaign coverage, viewed in its entirety, is providing a fair presentation of President Bush's views. What does such fairness mean when the very same news pages are advocating the opposite?
To readers, it means that President Bush is wrong, not only because the editorial page of The Times says he's wrong, but because the president's views fly in the face of what are being presented as objective facts. No technique of bias is more powerful - more useful as a means of influence - than presenting a candidate's unadulterated views through a prism of advocacy passed off as hard news.
And the practice is by no means limited to the social questions. The justification for the Iraq war, now John Kerry's top campaign issue, provides a poignant backdrop for how The Times systematically uses its front page to undercut President Bush's credibility. In fact, the bias against Bush on Iraq has become so acute that two of the paper's own Op-Ed columnists have established a virtual annex to the public editor's office.
When The Times in a banner headline this summer declared ("Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie," June 17) William Safire fired back: "All wrong." While Republicans charged The Times with bias, Safire blamed the Sept. 11 commission. I would have gone along with Safire had the paper's editors corrected the story in a typeface as large as the one they had used to distort it. They haven't. Not even in small type.
When The Times front page recently proclaimed, ("U.S. Report Finds Iraqis Eliminated Illicit Arms in 90's," Oct. 7) David Brooks, referring to the general media coverage, came unglued: "I have never in my life seen a government report so distorted by partisan passions." Despite Mr. Brooks's efforts, a report that made it "crystal clear" why Saddam Hussein had to go instead became a talking point for Kerry - courtesy of The New York Times.
What kind of newspaper will we leave to our children? If you still don't believe it's the wrong kind, put yourself in my slippers: imagine how your Sunday morning coffee encounters with The Times would sour if the front page of the Arts & Leisure section were turned over to, say, Ann Coulter. Is that the kind of paper you want? That's the paper you have.
The public editor serves as the readers' representative. His opinions and conclusions are his own. His column appears at least twice monthly in this section.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
So, are you calling me naive for being factually accurate, or
Webster's dictionary for providing the evidence?