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| 5/24 |
| 2004/8/10-11 [Politics/Domestic/Election] UID:32818 Activity:insanely high |
8/10 Another Wash-Post quote by Kerry about being in
Cambodia as a CIA agent. WTF!??
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59559-2003May30?language=printer
\_ Your reading comprehension skills must be rather paltry. His
swift boat was responsible for taking agents and special forces
upriver to drop them off. The quote says nothing about him being
in CIA.
\_ "It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of
Colonel Walter E. Kurtz's memory - any more than being
back in Saigon was an accident. There is no way to tell
his story without telling my own. And if his story
really is a confession, then so is mine."
\_ Except his patrol area was Sa Dec, 50 miles from the border.
\_ CIA mission led them furthest inland, they weren't sure
where they were. Here you go:
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200408101318.asp
If anything Kerry is guilty of boasting over a "secret mission
to Cambodia", where he probably did the drop off closer to
the border than other boats had.
\_ The part about not 'knowing where you are' is
bullshit. I have personally navigated sea craft
from charts, its not hard. If a commander or navigator
of a boat doesn't where he is he should be reprimanded.
Not to mention you don't randomly drop of CIA agents
if you don't know your location.
\_ You're right, he probably did know where he was:
Closer to the border than any other boat had been that
night, not in Cambodia, but it sure made a good story
to say "close enough!" and say he was, and then blame
Nixon for it (although he wasn't President at the time).
In any case, his buddy just wanted to back him up.
\_ Have you personally navigated seacraft in tricky
inland waterways at night, in the jungle, under
blackout condition? I kind of doubt it. The idea
blackout conditions? I kind of doubt it. The idea
that he was at least a bit lost is not outlandish.
And I can tell you from personal experience in the
Airborne, the military drops people miles off target
routinely. -ausman
\_ Were not talking about dropping someone from
an airplane. Navigating a boat is significantly
different. You are telling me they were lost
in the middle of the night and just decided
to willy-nilly continue in any arbitrary direction?
The riverways were heavily mined, it just doesn't
make any sense.
Just like the Bhuddist Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge
Cambodians were celebrating Christmas.
Face it - Kerry is lying.
\_ It was fun watching your "fact" about the Khmer
Rouge change.
\_ So you believe he engaged the Khmer Rouge?
\_ If anything it is easier to figure your
position in the air than in the jungle. I spent
three weeks in the Panamanain jungle and my unit
was pretty much lost the whole time. They don't
call them SNAFUs for nothing. Kerry might or
might not be lying, but I wouldn't be so
confident about it just yet.
\_ wow i might actually read a url from the wash post - danh
\_ DAMN THAT LIBERAL MEDIA!
\_ Why does he keep on bragging about his war record when he said he's
anti-war? Trying to be a two-headed snake and please both sides?
\_ What's anti-war about him saying he stands by his vote for
authorizing force, and he would have had a plan to win the peace?
\_ He is proud of his military service and record. he also came to
believe the war itself was a bad idea (disagreed with top-level
leadership). In the same way, we can support and respect our
troops currently fighting in Iraq even if we disagree with the
leadership that managed them and got them there.
\_ Who are you going to believe, Patriotic Matt Drudge or the
liberal media???
lying liberal media??? |
| 5/24 |
|
| washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59559-2003May30?language=printer -> www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59559-2003May30?language=printer com John Kerry: Hunter, Dreamer, Realist Complexity Infuses Senator's Ambition By Laura Blumenfeld Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, June 1, 2003; From behind the stalks of a Southern cornfield, he'll watch them flutter and dart, and fire. It takes three or four birds to have a meal," said the Massachusetts senator. Kerry described how to hunt and gut them, talking as he sliced through a steak at midnight after campaigning all day in Iowa for the Democratic presidential nomination. Carve out the heart, he said over dinner, pull out the entrails and cut up the meat. He rides a Harley, plays ice hockey, snowboards, windsurfs, kitesurfs, and has such thick, aggressive hair he uses a brush with metal teeth. "He doesn't need a consultant to tell him how to dress like an alpha male," said his friend Ivan Schlager. Yes, his message is the hard-line "stronger, safer, more secure America." But there's another part of his message, and it borders on the sentimental. "We have to get back to dreaming again," he told Democratic activists in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. On all three counts, Kerry is nuanced and often misconstrued. What makes him compelling as a person makes him vulnerable to opponents who say he lacks clarity as a candidate. Kerry's complexity has been an issue since his national debut in 1971. He became famous for a war within himself: He had fought in Vietnam and came, reluctantly, to believe the war was wrong. As spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" The senators were awed by the young man's poise and by his Bronze Star, Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. It is much tougher now, as he presents himself as both a dreamer and a realist, an old liberal and a new Democrat, for the war in Iraq and yet troubled by it. While other White House hopefuls lined up for or against Iraq, Kerry voted for the war and then criticized the president for failing at diplomacy. Republican strategist Richard Galen said, "People who were disappointed by the Gore campaign sniff another Gore coming because he doesn't have any clear message." Kerry always has enjoyed breaking down issues, arguing all sides for sport, like a game of mental racquetball. While his Yale roommates played cards, he'd be refining a debate-team speech. He still debates his staff for fun, often playing devil's advocate against himself. Sitting on his office balcony at the Senate, he scribbles speeches on yellow pads. Occasionally, he'll even write poems, like the one he reluctantly read to a reporter: "I had a talk with a deer today/ we met upon the road some way . between his frequent snorts/He asked me if I sought his pelt/cause if I did he said he felt/quite out of sorts!" He has been testing his writing talent on the campaign trail. Some lines have worked, such as: "Never before has so much had to be done in America and so little asked of Americans." Others have not, like his call for a "regime change" at home during the Iraq war. "It showed a political tin ear," said Merle Black, a professor of politics at Emory University. More likely, it showed a man stumbling on his love for a turn of phrase. Kerry's advisers have urged him not to ramble, to speak less about issues and more about his life. Then he touched on his usual themes of health care, energy independence, progressive internationalism, creating jobs while protecting the environment. He finished with a smile that held until a man raised his hand to speak. "I'm sorry to say -- that won't be able to beat Bush," said Elvis Muhaabwa, 52. "I understand you have to boil it down," Kerry said, his voice ratcheting up. Afterward, Muhaabwa said, "After he leaves, he'll be thinking about what I said." Because when Kerry left, he drove to the airport and climbed into the pilot's seat of a twin-engine Cessna. This was Primal John, the pilot who flies barrel rolls, who relaxes by windsurfing in a squall, who ran with the bulls at Pamplona and, when trampled, got up, chased the bull, and grabbed for its horns. Now Kerry revved the plane's engines, clamped on his headset, cracked a joke about the Red Sox and rumbled down the strip. "This is Five Papa Juliet at 120 degrees, climbing to 7,500 feet," he told the control tower as the ground dropped away. As the tiny plane bumped and shook, he looked more and more relaxed. Flying to his next campaign stop, he chatted about maneuvers to avoid flak in combat. The political flak he'd just taken was far from his mind. Throttle, propeller, speed, fuel: Kerry was happily in the moment. Kerry was on a fundraising jag, dialing supporters between campaign stops. He has excelled at raising money, at creating a national campaign network, and at hiring top consultants. First to announce his candidacy, he's been unambiguous about his ambition. To get from that Charleston bench to the roots of Kerry's ambition, roll back 50 years to postwar Europe, to a boy riding alone on a train. Kerry, the son of a Berlin-based American diplomat, was sent to a Swiss boarding school at age 11. If he wanted to go home, he had to take a train to Zurich, switch trains to Frankfurt, then switch to a military train that passed through communist Berlin. "Your blinds had to be down as you traveled through the forbidden east sector," Kerry said in an interview. Soldiers would rap with their gun barrel -- you have to pull down the shades." He biked around, saw the rubble of Hitler's bunker, sneaked into bleak East Berlin (until his father found out and grounded him), and was awakened to the impact politics had on people's lives. Second, he kept on challenging himself -- bigger adventures, greater dares. "When you travel alone at age 12," he said, "you gain confidence and self-reliance." He biked through France, took the ferry from Norway to England, camped alone in Sherwood Forest. His wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, explained: "It's like, he's landed a jet: 'I can control. Kerry likes to quote the French writer Andre Gide: "Don't try to understand me too quickly." Paul's boarding school -- his seventh school by eighth grade; his family moved around -- his need for challenges and his interest in public affairs expressed itself in politics. A Catholic Democrat in a predominantly Republican Protestant school, he represented John F Kennedy in a debate during the 1960 campaign. Lloyd MacDonald, the class president, stood in for Richard M Nixon: "John was very ambitious. As far as John was concerned, he expected to be president of the United States. I wanted to be president, too, but I never would have admitted it. It was at odds with prevailing notions of what was cool." Kerry volunteered for Edward M Kennedy's 1962 Senate race. He broadcast from a loudspeaker on his Volkswagen Beetle, "Kennedy for Senate." At Yale, classmates teased him about his initials, "JFK." The F was for Forbes, his mother's old-line New England family. "John was from a prominent family, but he wasn't wealthy" compared to his peers, said his friend George Butler. Kerry loaded trucks in a grocery warehouse and sold encyclopedias door to door. "He was a little bit of an outsider because he had to work during college summers. He returned from Vietnam with his faith in the government shaken. In 1972, he ran for Congress as a "peace candidate," campaigning so relentlessly that once when an aide came to pick him up, he found Kerry asleep in the shower. Kerry lost, but he won as lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982 and as senator in 1984. The same avenging anger that animated him after Vietnam shaped his work on the Hill. Rather than focusing on legislative matters, he went after government corruption. In 2000, he considered running for president and was a finalist as a running mate for Al Gore. It wasn't his time, but there was no question of his ultimate goal. Now, he's competing in the extreme sport of politics, running for president. Excelling was the Kerry family ethic, starting with his father, who taught young John to sail while wearing blinders so he'd learn to navigate in the fog. It wasn't enough that John's pet parakeet coul... |
| www.nationalreview.com/york/york200408101318.asp August 10, 2004, 1:18 pm Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" A member of his crew says it didn't happen. A former member of John Kerry's swift-boat crew says the Democratic presidential candidate's account of spending Christmas 1968 in Cambodia is not true. Steve Gardner, who served on board PCF-44 under Kerry's command in December 1968, as well as part of January 1969, says that at the time, in the area in which Kerry and his crew were operating, it was not possible to take a swift boat to Cambodia. Click Here Click Here "It was physically, totally, categorically, across-the-board impossible to get into the canal that went to Cambodia with a swift boat," says Gardner. plus, the Navy kept patrol boats there to make sure nobody went in. When I was on the 44 boat, it was a physical impossibility to take a swift boat into Cambodian waters." Over the years, Kerry has said on a number of occasions that he spent the Christmas holiday in 1968 in Cambodia. a profile of Kerry that appeared in the Washington Post in June 2003, Kerry revealed that he kept an old camouflage hat from the war in a secret pocket in his briefcase. "Given to me by a CIA guy as we went in for a special mission in Cambodia." In March 1986, Kerry said, during a speech on the Senate floor, that, "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; " On other occasions, Kerry has said he was not actually in Cambodia but rather "near" the country. In an interview with the Providence Journal-Bulletin that appeared in April, 1994, Kerry said "Christmas Eve I was up getting shot at somewhere near Cambodia." The account of Kerry's service in Douglas Brinkley's Tour of Duty says Kerry was on patrol near Cambodia, but does not mention him being in the country. " Brinkley also quotes from Kerry's Vietnam journal, in which Kerry wrote that he was "patrolling near the Cambodian line." Of course, the US military did undertake missions in Cambodia -- missions that resulted in enormous controversy at the time and in later years. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, says that PCF-44's "nothernmost patrol area" was the town of Sa Dec, about 50 miles from Cambodia. And retired admiral Roy Hoffman, a leader of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, said "You've got to be kidding," when asked by National Review Online about Kerry's account of entering Cambodia. Kerry's other commanding officers have denied any Cambodian incursion, as well. Hoffman said that after an earlier incident in which some soldiers had unintentionally crossed the Cambodian border, the line was very clearly marked with signs warning not to cross. Finally, another member of Kerry's crew, Jim Wasser, who supports Kerry in the presidential race, told the Dallas Observer last month that he wasn't sure where PCF-44 was at the time in question. It was easy to get turned around with all the rivers around there. But I'll say this: We were the farthest inland that night. Wasser's recollection introduces the idea that Kerry and some members of his crew might simply have been confused about where they were. While that conflicts with Gardner's recollection, it might still seem plausible if Kerry had, over the years, said only that he was in Cambodia at one time. Given today's questions, Kerry might now say that he simply believed he was there, but in retrospect sees that he might not have known his precise position at the time. That explanation, however, might be difficult for Kerry to attempt, because of the detailed descriptions he has offered about what he says was his time in Cambodia. He was there with at least one operative of the CIA on a "special mission," Kerry has said -- a mission that the US government was officially denying. The CIA man gave Kerry a hat on that special mission, a memento that is so meaningful to Kerry that he has kept it close -- in his briefcase -- for decades. Lowry: Air SecDef 08/10 4:35 pm York: Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" 08/10 1:18 pm WFB: The New Warhawk 08/10 12:48 pm O'Sullivan: Commanding Attention 08/10 10:00 am O'Beirne: On Kerry's Honor 08/10 9:15 am Murray & Klein: Climate Consensus 08/10 8:46 am Waters: Right Here, Right Now 08/10 8:45 am Ponnuru: The Case Against Tax-Reform Leadership 08/10 8:43 am May: Clinton's War 08/10 8:41 am Ledeen: Intelligence and Imagination 08/10 8:36 am Rubin: Shifting Sides? |