Text 1246, 160 rader
Skriven 2004-08-12 03:13:08 av RICHARD JOHNSON (1:10/345)
Ärende: Republican against SVLiars
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This guy is a republican and no fan of John Kerry.


From Capitol Hill Blue

McTavish
Real Reasons to Doubt John Kerry
By WILLIAM D. McTAVISH
Aug 11, 2004, 20:55

As a registered Republican, I’m extremely disappointed in the involvement of
the GOP in the Swift Boats for Truth smear campaign against Democratic
Presidential candidate John F. Kerry.

As a Vietnam veteran, I’m even more disappointed to see my comrades in arms
conduct such a campaign of distortions, inaccuracies and downright lies about
one of our own. It’s not that I like John Kerry’s politics. I don’t. But I
dislike what is being done to him even more.  As this web site has documented
in great detail, the Swift Boat campaign is a Republican operation from start
to finish:  It is financed by money from two Texas millionaires with close ties
to George W. Bush, run by a longtime GOP operative first recruited by Richard
Nixon’s chief hatchet man, Charles Colson, and aided and abetted by a
slur-slinging, racial-epithet shouting PhD who likes to call Kerry ÿJohn F*ing
Commie Kerryö and Senator Hillary Clinton ÿthe fat hog.ö

But I come not to praise John Kerry nor to bury him, but to ask him questions
that still haunt me about two activities he called defining events of his life
ÿ one in Vietnam and the other after coming home:

1ÿWhy did he claim he threw his medals onto the Capitol steps in protest when
they were, in fact, decorations belonging to a comrade?

2ÿWhere the hell was he on Christmas Day in 1968?

Kerry has changed his story on the medals more than once. The issue first
surfaced not long after the junior Senator from Massachusetts took office. A
visitor noticed a shadow box on the Senator’s office wall contained his medals,
including a Purple Heart with Cluster, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.

ÿSenator, I thought you returned your medals in protest?ö

ÿNot really,ö Kerry replied. ÿThose were my combat ribbons I threw over that
fence at the Capitol.ö

I was that visitor to Kerry's office. After hearing Kerry’s explanation, I dug
up old videotape of the day when a war-protesting Kerry tossed something over a
makeshift fence onto the steps of the Capitol. I studied the tape. They were
medals, not ribbons.

So I called Kerry’s press secretary and asked for a clarification, explaining
that ÿ as a journalist ÿ I planned to write about the discrepancy.  Kerry
called back with an updated story, saying they were ÿa friend’s medals.ö

Kerry’s lie about the medals has always bothered me but it doesn’t bother me as
much as what seems to be a real whopper told by Kerry on the Senate floor in
1986.

Kerry, in an emotional speech, urged then-President Ronald Reagan not to allow
the United States to aid the Nicaraguan Contras.

"Mr. President, I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia.
I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and
Cambodians and have the president of the United States telling the American
people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia."

Now anybody in-country during the height of the Vietnam War knows we had
personnel in Cambodia as well as Laos, even though the official line swore we
did not.

But was Kerry there?  He later told a reporter he went to Cambodia under secret
orders. To another reporter, he bragged about keeping a boonie hat given to him
by the CIA agent in charge of the mission.

As a general rule, those who actually went on some of the CIA-sponsored forays
into Cambodia don’t talk about it. A little thing called the National Security
Act, which anyone involved in a clandestine operation has to sign, discourages
loose lips.

Yet here was Kerry, talking about it, bragging about it, and using such a
mission for political argument.

If he was, in fact, in Cambodia, it was foolish to admit it. And if he wasn’t,
it was downright stupid to claim he was.

While such operations did exist, finding an official record of who was involved
is not easy. That’s why they’re called ÿclandestine.ö

Even Kerry’s boat mates can’t agree.

"I was on that boat with him that Christmas, and we were not anywhere near
Cambodia," says Steven Gardner, Kerry's gunner's mate on PCF-44 (patrol craft
fast) and now a member of SBVT.

Another Kerry crew member remembers it differently.

öOn Christmas in 1968, we were close [to Cambodia],ö says Jim Wasser, radarman
and second in command on PCF-44. ÿI don't know exactly where we were. I didn't
have the chart. 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. I know that
for sure.ö

Wasser is now part of the Veterans for Kerry group within the Senator’s
campaign. He is extremely critical of SBVT.

ÿEven though he's wrong, and I truly believe that, he's my brother, and
Veterans should never say anything about each other," Wasser says of Gardner.
"Swift Boat Veterans for Truth say they're about the truth; that's a
falsehood.ö

Kerry says he was following orders. Those who would have given the orders say
they never did. Would John Kerry have risked time in Leavenworth to take an
unauthorized trip into Cambodia?

ÿTo have taken our boat and gone up into Cambodian waters would have been
suicidal for Mr. Kerry because they would have put him in prison so fast for
breaking international law that it was unreal, because there were no black ops,
nothing like that with our boats,ö says Gardner. ÿWe'd take our guys and drop
them into VC territory, of course, but nothing like what you hear these guys
talking garbage about.ö

Two different versions from two brothers in arms serving on the same boat
highlight the problems of trying to get to the truth about what John Kerry did
or did not do in Vietnam. Did he inflict a minor wound on himself to get one or
more of his three Purple Hearts? Some, who should know, say he did. Others, who
also should know, say he did not.

Yet the truth, wherever it lies, may well be lost amid the rampant political
smears of one of the dirtiest campaigns ever for President of the United
States.

I know for a fact that Swift Boats ventured into Cambodia. How I know is not
relevant to the debate here because I do not know, one way or another, if John
F. Kerry was on one of those boats on Christmas, 1968.

The one man who can answer this is Kerry himself but ÿ once again ÿ history is
under revision. The Cambodia story has been removed from the Vietnam service
page on the official Kerry campaign web site, although the CIA hat story
remains as part of a reprint of a June 6, 2003, story from The Washington Post.

The official line now from the Kerry campaign is that the young Navy officer’s
boat was ÿsomewhere near Cambodiaö during Christmas, 1968.

That makes two times John Kerry has changed a story about things that were
supposed to be major events in his life.

Enough reason for question. Enough reason for doubt.

Not enough reason to call a man a ÿtraitorö or accuse him of ÿtreasonö as the
SBVT attack dogs do on a regular basis, but enough reason for someone like me
to question whether or not I want this man as my next President.

Even as a Republican, I cannot ÿ and will not -- vote for George W. Bush
because I do not believe the man has been honest with the American people.

For the same reason, I cannot ÿ and will not ÿ vote for John F. Kerry.

ÿ Copyright 2004 Capitol Hill Blue
 
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