Someone Stop Kerry!
 

He knows the Bushies can't handle the truth. Doesn't he know that Ashcroft will come after him he attempts to question our Lord Bush? The fool. Ha!



Kerry blasts Bush
over veterans' ad
Says president allows
others to do 'dirty work'
The Associated Press
Updated: 12:57 p.m. ET Aug. 19, 2004BOSTON - Sen. John Kerry accused President Bush on Thursday of relying on front groups to challenge his record of valor in Vietnam, asserting, “He wants them to do his dirty work.”

Defending his record, the Democratic presidential candidate said, “Thirty years ago, official Navy reports documented my service in Vietnam and awarded me the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts.”

“Thirty years ago, this was the plain truth. It still is. And I still carry the shrapnel in my leg from a wound in Vietnam.”

"Thirty years ago, official Navy reports documented my service in Vietnam and awarded me the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts,” Kerry told firefighters.

Kerry received five medals for his service in Vietnam a generation ago, but his record has come under campaign challenge in television commercials aired by “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” funded by supporters of the president.

Bush and the White House have refused to condemn the ads, despite calls to do so — from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former Vietnam prisoner of war, as well as from Democrats.

Senior Democrats, including some inside the presidential campaign, have urged Kerry to respond forcefully to the criticism, fearing that if left unanswered, it could hamper his quest for the White House.

In addition to Kerry’s speech before an audience of firefighters, his campaign released a new 30-second campaign commercial that features a former Green Beret saying the young Navy lieutenant saved his life under fire.

Recalling when his boat came under attack more than 30 years ago, Jim Rassmann says, “It blew me off the boat. All those Viet Cong were shooting at me. I expected I’d be shot. When he pulled me out of the river, he risked his life to save mine.”

Aides said the commercial would air in Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin, three battleground states. The decision to advertise even in a limited fashion marked a change in course for the campaign, which had hoped to remain off the air for August to conserve cash for the fall campaign.

In his speech, Kerry employed a wartime metaphor.

“More than 30 years ago I learned an important lesson. When you’re under attack the best thing to do is turn your boat into the attack. That’s what I intend to do today.”

Speaking of the organization airing the ads that challenge his war record, Kerry said, “Of course, this group isn’t interested in the truth and they’re not telling the truth. ...

“But here’s what you really need to know about them. They’re funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Republican contributor out of Texas. They’re a front for the Bush campaign. And the fact that the President won’t denounce what they’re up to tells you everything you need to know. He wants them to do his dirty work.”

Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt said, “That charge leveled by Senator Kerry is absolutely and completely false.”

Kerry's 'noble service'
“The Bush campaign has never and will never question John Kerry’s service in Vietnam. The president has referred to John Kerry’s service as noble service,” the Bush spokesman said.

Kerry said, “Of course, the president keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that. Well, if he wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: ‘Bring it on.”’

Kerry’s comments drew boisterous cheers from members of the union that had endorsed him last year at a time his candidacy was struggling.

Rassmann, too, played a pivotal role in Kerry’s campaign turnaround last winter. With the kickoff Iowa caucuses days away, the former Green Beret contacted the campaign and volunteered to appear with the Massachusetts senator and talk about his action in Vietnam.

Rassmann has since become the best known member of a group of veterans that Kerry calls his “band of brothers” — a stress on military service designed to erode the traditional Republican campaign advantage on national security issues.

Kerry’s response came as The Washington Post reported that a Vietnam veteran who claims Kerry lied about being under fire during a Mekong Delta engagement that won Kerry a Bronze Star was under constant fire himself during the same skirmish according to the man’s own medal citation.

The newly obtained records of Larry Thurlow show that he, like Kerry, won a Bronze Star in the engagement and that Thurlow’s citation says he also was under attack, the Post reported.

Thurlow, also like Kerry, commanded a Navy swift boat during Vietnam. He swore in an affidavit last month that Kerry was “not under fire” when he rescued Rassmann from the Bay Hap River.

Thurlow’s records, obtained by the Post under the Freedom of Information Act, include references to “enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire” directed at all five boats in the flotilla that day. In his Bronze Star citation, Thurlow is praised for helping a damaged swift boat “despite enemy bullets flying about him.”

Thurlow is a leading member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a public advocacy group of Vietnam veterans who have aired a television advertisement attacking Kerry’s war record.

Thurlow, a registered Republican, said he was angry with Kerry for anti-war activities after his return to the United States, especially his claim that U.S. troops committed war crimes with the knowledge of their officers up the chain of command.

Thurlow told the Post that he got the award for helping to rescue a boat that was mined. He said he believed his own award would be fraudulent if it was based on coming under enemy fire.

He speculated that Kerry could have been the source of at least some of the language used in the citation.

Members of Kerry’s crew have said Kerry is telling the truth. Rassmann said he has vivid memories of enemies firing at him from both banks.

and yet with all that supposed firing at rassman and in the area, not ONE bullet hole appeared in any of the boats which were notoriously thin skinned....not one bullet in a supposed high fire area.

Plus, 200,000 spent by a Bush supporter? Egads, that's not even a months interest that the money the lefts 527's have spent. What a whiner Kerry is. This is the best the Democrats had to offer?

For such a hero, Kerry whines an awful lot.

I'll try not to post these Kerry responses any more. I can see they upset you. We all know that Bush never makes any mistakes - at least ones that he can remember. I didn't realize that his perfection also seeped down to his followers - even to his little dirty tricks gang. Kerry has no right to respond at all. My bad.

BTW, where do you keep those Swift boats? You know, the ones with no holes in them?

That's right Flipper, the first step is to acknowledge the ad exists. That gives it an air of credibility, it is worth his time to make a statement. As a matter of national media this swift boat vets for truth stuff has gotten minimal coverage. But if flipper starts squawking about it the media will start covering it out of necessity. The only place this stuff is seen right now is on cable talking heads shows. Anybody watching those probably has made up their mind on the issue. This is funny. HA HA HA. I just hope he keeps talking about it. This will be great.

Yeah one thing the supposedly dumb Bush does, is doesn't give any credibility to the anti-Bush ads. He doesn't respond and give any of them life. Kerry whines, has his shysters threaten media outlets (so much for the lefts love of free speech) and generally has a hissy fit.

Kerry has all the indicators of a narcissictic personality. And he has what my dad would call..... ' he can dish it out, but he can't take it' something that the youngest male sibling of several brothers and many cousins has to be able to do, take it and dish it back out. Kerry is a spoiled brat and a bully. As for sh*t not stinking, I bet it's Kerry that thinks his doesn't stink. For all his supposed silverspoonitis, GWB has more of the common touch than a stiff narcissist like Kerry could ever hope to.

Well, at least when Kerry flips, nobody dies.

I suppose that's because he spent so much time amongst the "common" people - getting drunk and snorting coke. That spoiled brat Kerry was busy being a war hero, studying law, working hard (without the benefit of influence) and making his own way.

The only tough times Bushie ever saw was from the back window of a limo. Ha!

He sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. I would suspect, with all of his leadership skills, that he could have made a case for his position in the Senate. Oops, gotta show up to do that. HA HA HA!

Military Documents Contradict Exile in Monkey Land and Smear Boat Vets

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...rry_war_critic

A Vietnam veteran who claims Kerry WAS NOT under fire when Kerry won his Bronze Star was under constant fire himself during the same skirmish, according to his medal citation.

Larry Thurlow's records include references to "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire" directed at all five boats in the flotilla that day. In his Bronze Star citation, Thurlow is praised for helping a damaged Swift boat "despite enemy bullets flying about him."

The records said Thurlow's actions "took place under constant enemy small arms fire," which Thurlow ignored in providing immediate assistance to the disabled boat and its crew.

http://www.bartcop.com/swift-apostles.jpg

Tell this to the soliders and the families of soliders that were tourtured or killed in vietnam due to Kerry's lies about war crimes.

An absurd claim w/ no basis in fact.

How about telling it to the men who got to come home from Viet Nam alive and in one piece because of the efforts to end the war by people like John Kerry?

Quotes

"Kerry did serve with distinction in Vietnam when he easily could have avoided that killing field. His service to his country shouldn’t be diminished by the same despicable, politically motivated tactics visited upon McCain Cleland, also Viet vets. This kind of gutter-bashing doesn’t belong in American politics, and vets shouldn’t allow themselves to be used as ammo for cheap shots at one of their own. The stalwart Brown Water Navy warriors who fought at Kerry’s side say he was A-OK, which is good enough for me."

--David H. Hackworth, the most decorated living American soldier

http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/c...97045780231683

This whole thing just gets funnier all the time :laugh:



Kerry's war journal

contradicts medal claim?
At least 9 days after Purple Heart,
wrote he had not 'been shot at yet' :kiddingme ???

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: August 17, 2004
8:00 p.m. Eastern


By Art Moore
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

A previously unnoticed passage in John Kerry's approved war biography, citing his own journals, appears to contradict the senator's claim he won his first Purple Heart as a result of an injury sustained under enemy fire.

John Kerry receving medal for Vietnam service.

Kerry, who served as commander of a Navy swift boat, has insisted he was wounded by enemy fire Dec. 2, 1968, when he and two other men took a smaller vessel, a Boston Whaler, on a patrol north of his base at Cam Ranh Bay.
But Douglas Brinkley's "Tour of Duty," for which Kerry supplied his journals and letters, indicates that as Kerry set out on a subsequent mission, he had not yet been under enemy fire.

While the date of the four-day excursion on PCF-44 [Patrol Craft Fast] is not specified, Brinkley notes it commenced when Kerry "had just turned 25, on Dec. 11, 1968," which was nine days after the incident in which he claimed he had been wounded by enemy fire.

Brinkley recounts the outset of that mid-December journey, which included a crew of radarman James Wasser, engineman William Zaladonis, gunner's mate Stephen Gardner and boatswain's mates Drew Whitlow and Stephen Hatch:


"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 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.'"
The diary entry apparently confirms assertions made by Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, a group of more than 250 vets opposing his presidential candidacy who served in the Naval operation that patrolled the rivers and canals of the Mekong Delta area controlled by North Vietnam.

Kerry has made his four months of service in Vietnam a central theme in his campaign, arguing his purported war heroics help qualify him to be commander in chief.

In the swift-boat group's newly published book, "Unfit for Command," authors John O'Neill, who took over command of Kerry's boat, and Jerome Corsi assert the wound for which Kerry received his medal actually was caused by him firing an M-79 grenade launcher too close, "causing a tiny piece of shrapnel (one to two centimeters) to barely stick in his arm."





Could the "we" to which Kerry referred in his notebook entry have meant only that his crew, rather than Kerry in particular, had not encountered enemy fire?

At least one other PCF-44 crew member was with Kerry during the Boston Whaler incident, Zaldonis, according to the Boston Globe's account of the story.

Whatever the case, Corsi told WorldNetDaily he believes the apparent contradiction in Kerry's journal, as presented by Brinkley, deserves a response.

"We're not interested in charges that cannot be documented," he added.

The Kerry campaign's press staff has not answered WND's request for a response.

Corsi contends Kerry has a "pattern" of equivocation, "distinguishing and extending" his answers to charges, including responses to alleged participation in a 1971 Kansas City meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War where a plot to assassinate seven U.S. senators was considered.

"Finally, he said he was there, but he doesn't remember it," Corsi said.

Last week, Kerry was forced to revise his decades-long contention he was on a secret mission in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968.

"Tour of Duty" author Brinkley is reported to be writing a piece for the New Yorker saying it actually was January 1969 when Kerry was sent into Cambodia, not December 1968.

As WorldNetDaily reported, the authors of "Unfit for Command" claim that despite the senator's many public references to spending Christmas Eve in Cambodia – including a1986 speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate – the candidate was never in Vietnam's neighboring country. Rather, they say he was more than 50 miles from the Cambodian border at Sa Dec.

'Dear diary moment'

Conservative commentator and attorney Chris Horner, a defender of the swift-boats group who alerted WND to the diary entry, called it a "stunning" revelation.

On recent television and radio appearances, he said, claims made by eyewitnesses to events surrounding the first Purple Heart have been countered by "surrogates of Kerry" who do not address the substance of the charges.

"So finally, you have an eyewitness in a dear diary moment, saying, 'Dear diary, I still haven't been shot at,' confirming what the Swiftees have been saying," observed Horner, who has defended the group's claims in recent appearances on television news shows.

"Admittedly the source is questionable – John Kerry :laugh: – but it at last provides a witness from his camp to address the charges that his first Purple Heart resulted from a scratch borne of his own fire," Horner said.


Swift boat veteran John O'Neill, co-author of "Unfit for Command." (Fox News Channel)

Kerry's journal entry indicating he had not yet been fired upon is noted in a soon-to-be released book by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, editors of the left-leaning, alternative newsletter Counterpunch. In an excerpt of their book, they write regarding Kerry's first Purple Heart, "there's no evidence that anyone had fired back, or that Kerry had been in combat, as becomes obvious when we read an entry from his diary about a subsequent excursion, written on December 11, 1968, nine days after the incident that got Kerry his medal."

Enemy fire?

According to "Unfit for Command," Kerry's initial requests to receive a Purple Heart for the wound were flatly rejected.

In "Tour of Duty," Brinkley quotes Kerry as saying he and his comrades were "scared s---less" that night, thinking fishermen in sampans might be Viet Cong.

When some of the sampan occupants began unloading something on the beach, Kerry lit a flare, causing the startled men on shore to run for cover. That's when Kerry says he and the other Americans began firing.

Said Kerry in "Tour of Duty":


My M-16 jammed, and as I bent down in the boat to grab another gun, a stinging piece of heat socked into my arm and just seemed to burn like hell. By this time one of the sailors had started the engine and we ran by the beach, strafing it. Then it was quiet.
O'Neill and Corsi, however, claim there is no evidence whatsoever Kerry took any enemy fire that night.

Patrick Runyon was operating the engine on the Boston whaler during the incident.

"I can't say for sure that we got return fire or how [Kerry] got nicked," Runyon is quoted as saying in "Unfit for Command." "I couldn't say one way or the other. I know he did get nicked, a scrape on the arm."

Wrote O'Neill: "In a separate conversation, Runyon related that he never knew Kerry was wounded. So even in the [Boston] Globe biography accounting, it was not clear that there was any enemy fire, just a question about how Kerry might have been hit with shrapnel."

The book also asserts another one of Kerry's three Purple Hearts was self-inflicted.

Best website on Smear Boat Smutmasters

One stop shopping to refute the anti-veteran Republican slime spree

http://www.eriposte.com/media/liars_inc/swiftboat.htm

Go here for refutation of lies in post #13:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200408120007

Media matters???? They are a left wing version of the MRC.

This is some granola muncher's left wing circle jerk site. Nothing to see here either.

This is some granola muncher's left wing circle jerk site. Nothing to see here either.

Guess that's a shortcut to actually challenging any of the facts cited.

Give it up, man!

Everything your Swift Boat Goons for Bush has said about Kerry has been proven to be bunk.

Even the Washington Post ran a story saying as much today.

Media matters? They are a left wing version of the MRC.

Now you're really getting desperate.

If you'd actually read the article, you'd have seen that all of its claims are backed up by a plethora of legitimate/mainstream sources.

Has Chris Matthews rediscovered his soul....which was bought and paid for long ago by Jack Welch and GE (just like Timmy The Catholic over there on Eat the Press?)

Probably not, since his recent defenses of Kerry have more to do with the fact that he has a boner for anyone who ever wore a uniform, but it has been funny watching him go after the Swiftboat Liars For Bush.

Check out the replay of Hardball if you missed it, Chris screams at another Swiftboat Liar and then drives nasty-ass nazi b**** and Anthrax Coulter-wannabe Michelle Malkin into a tizzy (the best part of the show.) Man, was she shrill.

Well worth it.

Come on LABF, you wouldnt give Brent Bozzel the time of day but you're throwing Media Matters out there?



I didn't really want to get involved in the war," "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing."


-John Forbes Kerry

Come on LABF, you wouldnt give Brent Bozzel the time of day but you're throwing Media Matters out there?

Just as I thought--you can't answer the article's point-by-point refutation of the Smear Boat Vets' claims (for which sources are provided) so your only recourse is to attempt to discredit the source (again, without proof.)

I didn't really want to get involved in the war...

You conveniently omit one important detail:

Kerry's combat experience/swift boat duty took place during his second Viet Nam tour (a tour for which he volunteered.)

But isn't all this talk about Kerry's service absurd (considering that you voted for a coward who found a way to avoid Viet Nam altogether and then deserted?)

It's very long, but I suggest that you take the time to read through the article you're trying to offhandedly dismiss as "a granola muncher's left wing circle jerk site", Njbil... if you do, you'll find that the page bases its conclusions on information from sites like factcheck and snopes... as well as from official military records.

But I think a big bone of contention in this whole thing is the military records /citations were based on Kerry's reports while noone elses reports mention coming under fire.