Comments on: Kerry Fighting Swift Boat Vets Long After Loss

By: ob1

ob1 — Wed, 31 May 2006 00:02:58 +0000

anjin-san,

Actually, I have done my homework. Perhaps you should take your own advice. A quick google reveals the following links:

http://grunt.space.swri.edu/senatevet.htm - Senators who are Veterans as of Dec 2004

http://grunt.space.swri.edu/housevet.htm - Congressmen who are Vets as of Dec 2005

House - 95 total - 57 R : 38 D
Senate - 33 total - 18 R : 14 D : 1 I

I'm sure the numbers have changed since the webpages were updated but probably not much considering most incumbents get re-elected.

So as you can see, the R's have more Vets. If you have another source that proves otherwise, please post it.

As for "Does not change the fact that the sliming of vets for political purposes is reprehensible. "

I agree with you, which is why I despise Kerry. He personally slimed hundreds of thousands of Vietnam Vets by his statements to the Senate.

By: ICallMasICM

ICallMasICM — Tue, 30 May 2006 19:12:38 +0000

'But he did go to Viet Nam and he did bleed there.'

Not unless he cut himself shaving.

By: anjin-san

anjin-san — Tue, 30 May 2006 05:20:40 +0000

btw, I never cared for Kerry. My vote for him was a clothespin vote. Does not change the fact that the sliming of vets for political purposes is reprehensible.

By: anjin-san

anjin-san — Tue, 30 May 2006 05:19:30 +0000

ob1,

You are quite right, McCain is a decorated war hero. That did not stop the Bush machine from sliming him in 2000. And if you do your homework, you will see that quite a few well know Democrats did indeed serve.

By: yetanotherjohn

yetanotherjohn — Mon, 29 May 2006 16:05:32 +0000

To me this is a great example of the MSM missing an opportunity. We have had this out in the public for two years, so we aren't suffering from a deadline here. My own review of the accounts is some of the claims by the Swift boat vets were shown not to hold water, some where questionable, some where persuasive but not provable and some showed Kerry clearly lied (or misrecalled or failed to remember or whatever you want to call it). Most of the claims are the he said/ she said type that you can never discover the real truth this late in the game.. More importantly to me, the way Kerry handled the questioning says volumes to me. To blame aides for not responding vigorously is not what most Americans are looking for in a president. To push the issue of his service forward as a qualification for president and then complain when people question him about it is not an endorsement.

A truly objective piece would have brought all of this out. The question about his deserving a purple heart would ask why he wrote in his diary about never being shot at 9 days after the incident he claimed for his purple heart. There could be a good explanation (I was referring to the majority of the unit and not just to me) or something. It may be an example of one item where Kerry's words at the time disprove his claim. But the article didn't go down the path of providing a balanced look. And that is what will hurt Kerry or any other democrat in 2008. Just as you will discount arguments taken by those on the right or left if you think their political position is blinding them to inconvenient facts, so to with the MSM. When they can't do a fair and objective article under these circumstance, acknowledging that there is truth on both sides and lots that we can never know, then why should anyone believe what they write during the heat of the campaign?

By: Eneils Bailey

Eneils Bailey — Mon, 29 May 2006 14:05:28 +0000

Hey Ghost,
You mean a draft dodger like Clinton. To me, Clinton will always be remembered for blow jobs. Kerry for hyping boo-boos and scratches into purple hearts and betraying his fellow service members..

By: Ghost Dansing

Ghost Dansing — Mon, 29 May 2006 12:43:21 +0000

I still find it fascinating that Republican Veterans backed a draft dodger who used his name and family influence to avoid combat in Vietnam, while stabbing a real combat Veteran in the back.

It just goes to show how corrosive modern Republicanism has becomeâ�¦there really are no values for this crowd; no honor.

By: Roger

Roger — Mon, 29 May 2006 12:32:26 +0000

Odd1, read Kerry's testimony before you continue to repeat the lie that Kerry "betrayed his fellow vets." The guy didn't get elected and he won't be. The lies against him are no longer necessary.

By: G A PHILLIPS

G A PHILLIPS — Mon, 29 May 2006 11:24:51 +0000

Ken, Being an X-druggie and having done almost every drug known to man, for some reason I still can't figure out what your on? Oh and Kerry deserves every once of pain that the weight of the gigantic mountain of donkey poo( for donkey poo see Bullsh-t) that he has created and got caught under the landslide of smooshes out of him!

By: ob1

ob1 — Mon, 29 May 2006 11:10:24 +0000

anjin-san,

Of course, you conveniently left out McCain.

Your comment also applies to MOST of the Democrats. Very few Dems are Veterans, too.

Of course, you would only apply the standard of wartime experience when it suits you.

The fact of the matter is that Kerry betrayed his fellow Vets when he lied in his Senate testimony. I would not care if he had won the Medal of Honor...whatever honor he earned on the battlefield was lost when he publicly trashed and lied about his fellow Vets. It is almost impossible for him to recover from that betrayal.

ob1
Desert Storm Veteran

By: anjin-san

anjin-san — Mon, 29 May 2006 07:25:21 +0000

It is possible that Kerry puffed up his war record a bit for political reasons.

But he did go to Viet Nam and he did bleed there. A hell of a lot more then you can say for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Frist and the majority of the GOP leadership.

By: LaurenceB

LaurenceB — Mon, 29 May 2006 05:52:02 +0000

Tom Maguire and his bunch are nothing if not conspiracy theorists when it comes to this topic. Kerry won three purple hearts, two bronze stars and a silver star - by any measure he is a war hero. Meanwhile these guys scour the documents for meaningless inconsistencies in some soldier's thirty-year old memories. When one of their deeply troubling questions (tm) about loincloths can't be answered to their satisfaction, they pontificate at great length - as if the answer (should it ever come to light) would surely prove that Kerry was unworthy of his medals. This is just silly, of course. Yet when someone points out this obvious fact, they will quickly change the subject, claiming that what actually bothers them is Kerry's postwar behavior, not the validity of his medals. Yeah, right. Kerry was a war hero. Republicans should just learn to deal with it.

By: Hoystory » Blog Archive » Still not so swift

Hoystory » Blog Archive » Still not so swift — Mon, 29 May 2006 02:48:05 +0000

[...] Further reading: John in Carolina New England Republican QandO Outside the Beltway [...]

By: Tom Maguire

Tom Maguire — Mon, 29 May 2006 00:39:10 +0000

And the business about Kerry killing â��a lone, fleeing, teenage Viet Cong in a loinclothâ�� is just unbelievable coming 35 years after the fact. Just for the record - that is the version presented by Kerry to the Boston Globe for a 2003 series: On Feb. 28, 1969, Kerry's boat received word that a swift boat was being ambushed. As Kerry raced to the scene, his boat became another target, as a Viet Cong B-40 rocket blast shattered a window. Kerry could have ordered his crew to hit the enemy and run. But the skipper had a more aggressive reaction in mind. Beach the boat, Kerry ordered, and the craft's bow was quickly rammed upon the shoreline. Out of the bush appeared a teenager in a loin cloth, clutching a grenade launcher. An enemy was just feet away, holding a weapon with enough firepower to blow up the boat. Kerry's forward gunner, Belodeau, shot and clipped the Viet Cong in the leg. Then Belodeau's gun jammed, according to other crewmates (Belodeau died in 1997). Medeiros tried to fire at the Viet Cong, but he couldn't get a shot off. In an interview, Kerry added a chilling detail. "This guy could have dispatched us in a second, but for ... I'll never be able to explain, we were literally face to face, he with his B-40 rocket and us in our boat, and he didn't pull the trigger. I would not be here today talking to you if he had," Kerry recalled. "And Tommy clipped him, and he started going [down.] I thought it was over." Instead, the guerrilla got up and started running. "We've got to get him, make sure he doesn't get behind the hut, and then we're in trouble," Kerry recalled. So Kerry shot and killed the guerrilla. "I don't have a second's question about that, nor does anybody who was with me," he said. "He was running away with a live B-40, and, I thought, poised to turn around and fire it." Asked whether that meant Kerry shot the guerrilla in the back, Kerry said, "No, absolutely not. He was hurt, other guys were shooting from back, side, back. There is no, there is not a scintilla of question in any person's mind who was there [that] this guy was dangerous, he was a combatant, he had an armed weapon." The "unarmed" seems to have been an extrapolation by the Swiftees. A fleeing teenager in a loin cloth is all Kerry/Globe.

By: ken

ken — Sun, 28 May 2006 21:15:51 +0000

I think the most interesting thing about all this is that it proves once again that combat veterans and patriots make for typically more liberal than conservative politician.