Pentagon to check Kerry war record

By Julian Coman in Newark, Ohio
(Filed: 05/09/2004)

In a fresh blow to John Kerry's flagging presidential campaign, the Pentagon has ordered an official investigation into the awards of the Democratic senator's five Vietnam War decorations.

News of the inquiry came as President George W Bush opened an 11-point lead over his rival - the widest margin since serious campaigning began - according to the first poll released since last week's Republican convention.

The highly unusual inquiry is to be carried out by the inspector-general's office of the United States navy, for which Sen Kerry served as a Swift Boat captain for four months in 1968, making two tours of duty.

He was wounded in action and subsequently awarded three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star. But for the past month, the exact details of Mr Kerry's military service in Vietnam have become shrouded in a controversy that the navy has now decided warrants a full-blown search for the truth.

According to a self-styled group of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, many of whom served in Vietnam during the same period, Mr Kerry exaggerated the significance of combat incidents and inaccurately reported the circumstances of his injuries, at least one of which was allegedly self-inflicted. The accusations are repeated in a book, Unfit to Command, which was published last month.

Last week, the Kerry campaign attempted to leave the Vietnam debate behind, as signs appeared that the controversy was damaging Mr Kerry's standing in the polls. But to the consternation of campaign strategists, the US navy has now agreed to a request by Judicial Watch, a bi-partisan lobby group, for a full inquiry. Judicial Watch is calling for the Navy to report before the elections, but Navy officials are so far refusing to give any timetable for the inquiry.

In an August letter to the Pentagon, the group's president, Tom Fitton, requested an investigation into the "determination and final disposition of the awards granted to Lieutenant (junior grade) John Forbes Kerry, US Naval Reserve", in response to the Swift Boat Veterans' allegations.

A navy spokesman confirmed on Friday that the inspector-general's office at the Pentagon had authorised the inquiry. "It is the responsibility of all personnel to correct errors in official records," said the spokesman. Another official said privately: "There's a feeling that it's time to deal with this thoroughly, once and for all."

Among other records to be examined is a citation of Mr Kerry for bravery that was apparently signed by the former Navy Secretary, John Lehman, and contributed to the award of his silver star. The glowing citation states: "By his brave actions, bold initiative and unwavering devotion to duty, Lt Kerry reflected great credit on himself." But Mr Lehman denies all knowledge of the commendation. "It's a total mystery to me," he said last week. "I never saw it, I never signed it and I never approved it." The inquiry will also investigate other reports and citations leading to the award of Mr Kerry's medals.

On Friday, Mr Lehman endorsed the investigation of Mr Kerry's awards, saying that the relevant navy records needed to be "thoroughly researched and the facts established". Mr Fitton said: "We hope this is the beginning of an actual investigation of the legitimacy of Sen Kerry's awards by the navy and the Pentagon."

In an angry statement from the Kerry campaign headquarters, Michael Meehan, Mr Kerry's senior adviser, condemned the navy probe as an expensive waste of the Pentagon's resources.

"The facts are clear," said Mr Meehan. "The navy awarded John Kerry the Silver Star, a Bronze Star with Combat V and three Purple Hearts. This is a waste of taxpayers' dollars and the Pentagon's time, especially during wartime."

The inquiry comes at the end of the worst week of Mr Kerry's campaign. The poll showing an 11-point lead by President Bush, to be published in this week's Time magazine, was taken during the first three days of the Republican Convention in New York, which featured repeated direct attacks on Mr Kerry as an unreliable candidate for the role of Commander-in-Chief during the war on terror.

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MISSION: IMPLAUSIBLE

1996: Kerry judged false decorations 'very wrong'
'There's nothing that says more about your career,' he said after Boorda tragedy

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: August 28, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern



© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

Amid questions about one of John Kerry's combat "V" decorations, unearthed remarks by the senator eight years ago reveal he judged an admiral's allegedly false awards as a serious offense that disqualified him from leadership.

After the suicide of Adm. Mike Boorda in 1996, National Review columnist Kate O'Beirne notes Kerry gave his response to two Boston papers.

"In a sense, there's nothing that says more about your career than when you fought, where you fought and how you fought," Kerry told the Boston Herald.

"If you wind up being less than what you're pretending to be, there is a major confrontation with value and self-esteem and your sense of how others view you."

At that time, a left-leaning news service had raised questions about Boorda's combat "V" clip, which is awarded for valor under fire. The doubt was over whether Boorda's two tours in Vietnam aboard combat ships qualified him for the awards. The Washington Post reported Boorda's right to wear the clips apparently was supported by a Navy manual, but hours before he was scheduled to address the issue with Newsweek reporters, he shot himself.

The Herald described Kerry as among the veterans who said although they would take offense at someone falsely wearing the "V" pin, they couldn't see how it would drive Boorda to suicide.

"Is it wrong? Yes, it is very wrong. Sufficient to question his leadership position? The answer is yes, which he clearly understood," Kerry told the Herald.

Kerry also spoke with the Boston Globe.

"The military is a rigorous culture that places a high premium on battlefield accomplishment," he told the paper.

Of Boorda and his apparent violation, Kerry said: "When you are the chief of them all, it has to weigh even more heavily."

As WorldNetDaily reported, two researchers contend Kerry's Silver Star has an unauthorized "V" for valor which "makes it facially false and at variance with official government records." That's because Silver Stars are given for gallantry and never are accompanied with a combat "V," which would be redundant. But Kerry's DD 214, or "Report of Transfer and Separation," displayed on his website, shows the "V."

A U.S. Navy spokesman told the Chicago Sun-Times, "Kerry's record is incorrect. The Navy has never issued a combat 'V' to anyone for a Silver Star."

The allegations about Kerry's war record come amid a campaign by aSwift Boat Veterans for Truth, an independent "soft-money" group that has produced a New York Times best-seller, "Unfit for Command", endorsed by 254 men who served with Kerry in the Mekong Delta during his abbreviated tour from November 1968 to March 1969.


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War stories collide as Kerry's Vietnam medals come under fire

Monday, August 16, 2004

Stephen Koff
Plain Dealer Washington Bureau Chief

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group of Vietnam veterans, says Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry lied to get several of his commendations for gallantry in military service 35 years ago and later lied about other aspects of his service. An independent research organization, FactCheck.org, affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, recently examined some of the claims. Here are the conclusions from it and other sources:

The award:

Silver Star, for "extraordinary daring and per sonal courage . . . in attacking a numerically superior force in the face of in tense fire."

On Feb. 28, 1969, Kerry, commander of a Swift boat in Vietnam, first attacked an "entrenched enemy" less than 50 feet away, ordering "his boat to attack as all units opened fire and beached directly in front of the enemy ambushers," according to the commendation. "This daring and courageous tactic surprised the enemy and succeeded in routing a score of enemy soldiers" and capturing "many enemy weapons."

Later, 800 yards away, Kerry's boat encountered a second ambush and a B-40 rocket exploded "close aboard" Kerry's boat. "With utter disregard for his own safety, and the enemy rockets, he again ordered a charge on the enemy, beached his boat only 10 feet away from the VC [Viet Cong] rocket position, and personally led a landing party ashore in pursuit of the enemy."

The charge:

That Kerry was not forthright about what happened - specifically, that after beaching the boat he pursued a wounded enemy and shot him in the back. George Elliott, the retired Navy captain who recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and now a Swift Boat Veteran for Truth, recently signed an affidavit saying: "I was never informed that he had simply shot a wounded, fleeing Viet Cong in the back."

The facts:

The official citation shows Kerry was not awarded the Silver Star for simply pursuing and dispatching the Viet Cong. The killing is not even mentioned in the official citation but, rather, covers Kerry's decision to attack rather than flee from two ambushes. The citation was based on what Elliott wrote up at the time.

Elliott was quoted by the Boston Globe Aug. 6 as saying he had made a "terrible mistake" in signing the affidavit against Kerry. Later Elliott signed a second affidavit saying he still stands by the words he said in a recent TV ad: "John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam." But Elliott also said in that second affidavit, "I do not claim to have personal knowledge as to how Kerry shot the wounded, fleeing Viet Cong."

Rather, Elliott said his new beliefs were based on accounts including a book in which Kerry is quoted as saying of the soldier, "He was running away with a live B-40 [rocket launcher] and, I thought, poised to turn around and fire it."

Elliott previously defended Kerry. As recently as June 2003, he called Kerry's Silver Star "well deserved" and his action "courageous."

The award:

Bronze Star, for rescuing Jim Rassmann, an Army Special Forces lieuten ant, from the water while un der enemy fire. According to the official citation, Kerry's boat was under enemy fire on March 13, 1969, and Kerry had been wounded when an enemy mine exploded near his own boat. Rassmann, a longtime Republican, has said he was under sniper fire from both banks of the river when the wounded Kerry helped him aboard, risking his life "to save mine."

The charge:

Van O'Dell, a former Navy enlisted man who says he was the gunner on another Swift Boat, states in an affidavit that he was "a few yards away" from Kerry's boat when Kerry pulled Rassmann from the water. O'Dell insists "there was no fire" at the time, adding: "I did not hear any shots, nor did any hostile fire hit any boats" other than his own, PCF-3.

Others in Swift Boat Veterans for Truth back up that account. Jack Chenoweth, who was a lieutenant (junior grade) commanding PCF-3, said Kerry's boat "fled the scene" after a mine blast disabled PCF-3, and returned only "when it was apparent that there was no return fire." And Larry Thurlow, who says he commanded a third Swift Boat that day, says "Kerry fled while we stayed to fight," and returned only "after no return fire occurred."

The facts:

The proximity of these men to Kerry's boat during the incident is in dispute. They did not serve on Kerry's crew, and their statements are contrary to the accounts of Kerry and those who served under him.

"This smear campaign has been launched by people without decency," Rassmann, who considers Kerry a hero, said in a Wall Street Journal guest column last week. Retired Adm. William Crowe, a Kerry supporter, said on CNN that if Kerry had fled, it would have been a court-martial offense, yet none of the officers who now say he fled brought him "into account with a senior officer. That makes no sense whatsoever, that defies reason."

"Tour of Duty," a book by historian Douglas Brinkley based largely on accounts from Kerry, describes Rassmann's rescue and the sniper fire as happening "several hundred yards back" from where the crippled PCF-3 was lying, not "a few yards away," the distance from which the anti-Kerry veterans claim to have witnessed the incident.

The award:

Purple Heart (Kerry's first), for a shrapnel wound to Ker ry's left arm from a grenade on Dec. 2, 1968.

The charge:

Louis Letson, a medical officer and lieutenant commander, says Kerry's wound was self- inflicted and does not merit a Purple Heart. Letson says "the crewman with Kerry told me there was no hostile fire, and that Kerry had inadvertently wounded himself with an M-79 grenade." And Grant Hibbard, Kerry's commanding officer at the time, said in an affidavit that he "turned down the Purple Heart request" and recalled Kerry's injury as a "tiny scratch less than from a rose thorn."

The facts:

Letson says he treated Kerry for the wound. However, medical records provided by the Kerry campaign list another officer, not Letson. The Kerry campaign says the two crewmen with Kerry that day deny ever talking to Letson. And though Hibbard calls the wound "a tiny scratch," Letson's affidavit describes shrapnel "lodged in Kerry's arm" - though, he notes, "barely." Hibbard told the Boston Globe in an interview in April that he eventually acquiesced about granting Kerry the Purple Heart, an award sometimes granted for even relatively minor wounds during the Vietnam War, according to the Globe's biography of Kerry.

The award:

Purple Heart, Kerry's third, qualifying him to leave Vietnam more than six months early, for the injuries he received the day he rescued Rassmann. (Kerry got his second Purple Heart after re ceiving a shrap nel wound in his leg on Feb. 20, 1969, during a firefight, but that award has not been controversial.)

The charge:

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth says Kerry didn't deserve his third Purple Heart, which was received for shrapnel wounds in left buttocks and contusions on right forearm. The Swift Boat group's affidavits state that the wound in Kerry's backside happened earlier that day in an accident, not in the heat of battle. "Kerry inadvertently wounded himself in the fanny," Larry Thurlow said in his affidavit, "by throwing a grenade too close (to destroy a rice supply) and suffered minor shrapnel wounds."

The facts:

The grenade incident is actually supported by Kerry's own account, but the shrapnel wound was only part of the basis for his third Purple Heart, according to official documents. The evidence here is contradictory, says FactCheck.org.

Kerry's account is in the book "Tour of Duty": "I got a piece of small grenade in my ass from one of the rice-bin explosions and then we started to move back to the boats." He said his arm was hurt later, after the mine blast that disabled PCF-3, when a second explosion rocked his own boat and "threw me violently against the bulkhead on the door."

According to a Navy casualty report released by the Kerry campaign, the third Purple Heart was received for "shrapnel wounds in left buttocks and contusions on his right forearm when a mine detonated close aboard" Kerry's boat. The official citation for Kerry's Bronze Star refers only to his arm injury, not to the shrapnel wound. It says he performed the rescue "from an exposed position on the bow, his arm bleeding and in pain."

Even a "friendly fire" injury such as the wound from the grenade can qualify for a Purple Heart if the grenade is released with the intent of damaging or destroying enemy troops or equipment. Rice was being destroyed by grenades that day on the assumption that it otherwise might feed Viet Cong fighters.

Other dispute:

Kerry became an anti-war activist after returning from Vietnam, accusing American troops of rapes, beheadings, torture, and various other war crimes.

His critics say this was based on exaggerations and falsehoods that maligned all Vietnam veterans as misfits, addicts and baby killers.

Kerry also said in the Senate in 1986 that he entered Cambodia on secret missions, which would have been illegal, and in other accounts he specifically recalled being there on Christmas Eve, 1968, a memory "seared" in his mind.

Fellow officers and living commanders said he was 55 miles from the Cambodian border and never entered Cambodia.

They also criticize him for associating President Nixon with the alleged Cambodian incursions of 1968, since Nixon didn't take office until 1969.

Kerry adviser Michael Meehan said on Friday that Kerry was "near and around the border" on Dec. 24, 1968 - Christmas Eve - and "for certain he transported Special Operations folks into Cambodia" other times.


© 2004 The Plain Dealer.

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Kerry's war journal
contradicts medal claim?
At least 9 days after Purple Heart,
wrote he had not 'been shot at yet'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.

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 – 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.

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.

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Kerry citation a 'total mystery' to ex-Navy chief

August 28, 2004

BY THOMAS LIPSCOMB

Former Navy Secretary John Lehman has no idea where a Silver Star citation displayed on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's campaign Web site came from, he said Friday. The citation appears over Lehman's signature.

"It is 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.

The additional language varied from the two previous citations, signed first by Adm. Elmo Zumwalt and then Adm. John Hyland, which themselves differ. The new material added in the Lehman citation reads in part: "By his brave actions, bold initiative, and unwavering devotion to duty, Lieutenant (jg) Kerry reflected great credit upon himself...."

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.

Kerry senior adviser Michael Meehan could not be reached for comment on Kerry's records.


Thomas Lipscomb is chairman of the Center for the Digital Future in New York.

SOURCE: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES BEWARE POPUPS

Plot thickens after checking records

August 27, 2004

BY THOMAS LIPSCOMB

In the midst of the controversy between the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Kerry campaign representatives about Kerry's service in Vietnam, new questions have arisen.

The Kerry campaign has repeatedly stated that the official naval records prove the truth of Kerry's assertions about his service.

But the official records on Kerry's Web site only add to the confusion. The DD214 form, an official Defense Department document summarizing Kerry's military career posted on johnkerry.com, includes a "Silver Star with combat V."

But according to a U.S. Navy spokesman, "Kerry's record is incorrect. The Navy has never issued a 'combat V' to anyone for a Silver Star."

Naval regulations do not allow for the use of a "combat V" for the Silver Star, the third-highest decoration the Navy awards. None of the other services has ever granted a Silver Star "combat V," either.

Fake claims not uncommon



B.G. Burkett, a Vietnam veteran himself, received the highest award the Army gives to a civilian, the Distinguished Civilian Service Award, for his book Stolen Valor. Burkett pored through thousands of military service records, uncovering phony claims of awards and fake claims of military service. "I've run across several claims for Silver Stars with combat V's, but they were all in fake records," he said.

Burkett recently filed a complaint that led last month to the sentencing of Navy Capt. Roger D. Edwards to 115 days in the brig for falsification of his records.

Kerry's Web site also lists two different citations for the Silver Star. One was issued by the commander in chief of the Pacific Command (CINCPAC), Adm. John Hyland. The other, issued by Secretary of the Navy John Lehman during the Reagan administration, contained some revisions and additional language. "By his brave actions, bold initiative, and unwavering devotion to duty, Lieutenant (j.g.) Kerry reflected great credit upon himself... ."

One award, three citations



But a third citation exists that appears to be the earliest. And it is not on the Kerry campaign Web site. It was issued by Vice Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, commander of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam. This citation lacks the language in the Hyland citation or that added by the Lehman version, but includes another 170 words in a detailed description of Kerry's attack on a Viet Cong ambush, his killing of an enemy soldier carrying a loaded rocket launcher, as well as military equipment captured and a body count of dead enemy.

Maj. Anthony Milavic, a retired Marine Vietnam veteran, calls the issuance of three citations for the same medal "bizarre." Milavic hosts Milinet, an Internet forum popular with the military community that is intended "to provide a forum in military/political affairs."

Normally in the case of a lost citation, Milavec points out, the awardee simply asked for a copy to be sent to him from his service personnel records office where it remains on file. "I have never heard of multi-citations from three different people for the same medal award," he said. Nor has Burkett: "It is even stranger to have three different descriptions of the awardee's conduct in the citations for the same award."

So far, there are also two varying citations for Kerry's Bronze Star, one by Zumwalt and the other by Lehman as secretary of the Navy, both posted on johnkerry.com.

Kerry's Web site also carries a DD215 form revising his DD214, issued March 12, 2001, which adds four bronze campaign stars to his Vietnam service medal. The campaign stars are issued for participation in any of the 17 Department of Defense named campaigns that extended from 1962 to the cease-fire in 1973.

However, according to the Navy spokesman, Kerry should only have two campaign stars: one for "Counteroffensive, Phase VI," and one for "Tet69, Counteroffensive."

94 pages of records unreleased?



Reporting by the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs points out that although the Kerry campaign insists that it has released Kerry's full military records, the Post was only able to get six pages of records under its Freedom of Information Act request out of the "at least a hundred pages" a Naval Personnel Office spokesman called the "full file."

What could that more than 100 pages contain? Questions have been raised about President Bush's drill attendance in the reserves, but Bush received his honorable discharge on schedule. Kerry, who should have been discharged from the Navy about the same time -- July 1, 1972 -- wasn't given the discharge he has on his campaign Web site until July 13, 1978. What delayed the discharge for six years? This raises serious questions about Kerry's performance while in the reserves that are far more potentially damaging than those raised against Bush.

Experts point out that even the official military records get screwed up. Milavic is trying to get mistakes in his own DD214 file corrected. In his opinion, "these entries are not prima facie evidence of lying or unethical behavior on the part of Kerry or anyone else with screwed-up DD214s."

Burkett, who has spent years working with the FBI, Department of Justice and all of the military services uncovering fraudulent files in the official records, is less charitable: "The multiple citations and variations in the official record are reason for suspicion in itself, even disregarding the current swift boat veterans' controversy."

Thomas Lipscomb is chairman of the Center for the Digital Future in New York.


SOURCE: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES BEWARE POPUPS

Navy Probes Kerry Medal
Friday, September 03, 2004

NEW YORK — In what has been described by Navy officials as a routine process, the Pentagon's inspector general's office on Thursday referred to the secretary of the Navy a request to investigate medals won by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (search) during the Vietnam War.

Government watchdog group Judicial Watch (search) submitted the request for an investigation. Navy sources said the service will probe the medals, but added that most questions have arisen because of what appear to be errors in processing records.

Kerry received five medals during his four months in combat in Vietnam. Judicial Watch asked the Pentagon to investigate Kerry's receipt of the Silver Star with a "Combat V" designation (search), which stands for valor under fire.

Kerry's campaign Web site includes military records listing the Combat V citation. Navy procedures show that the Silver Star cannot carry a Combat V designation because part of the reason the medal is awarded is for valor under fire — the added designation would be redundant. The findings of the probe, therefore, will not change the record of Kerry's Vietnam service.

In a letter to Judicial Watch, the inspector general's office said: "Concerning our allegations of violations of Uniform Code of Military Justice (search), we have the responsibility to ... 'report suspected or alleged violations.' We have informed the secretary of the Navy of the allegations."

Kerry campaign adviser Michael Meehan released a statement to FOX News that criticized the attention being paid to the request.

"The facts are clear, the Navy awarded John Kerry the Silver Star, a Bronze Star with a Combat V and three Purple Hearts. It is waste of taxpayer's dollars and the Pentagon's time, especially during wartime, to investigate a 35-year-old Navy clerical error," the statement reads.

The Navy has said that it's the responsibility of all personnel to correct errors in official records.

In 1996, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jeremy Boorda committed suicide when he learned that a reporter was about to disclose he had wrongly worn two Combat V pins on a Bronze Star, a medal that does not denote valor under fire.

At the time, Kerry told the Boston Herald that wrongly wearing the medals is a severe error in judgment.

"Is it wrong? Yes, it is very wrong. Sufficient to question his leadership position? The answer is yes," he is quoted as saying.

Kerry also spoke to the Boston Globe about the matter.

"If you wind up being less than what you're pretending to be, there is a major confrontation with value, self-esteem and your sense of how others view you."

Judicial Watch representatives said the group also wants an investigation into Kerry's third citation for the same Silver Star. In 1986, Kerry received the third citation after requesting a copy of his original citations. This one carried the signature and some additional words of praise under the signature of then-Navy Secretary John Lehman (search).

In a statement to FOX News, Lehman, who served on the Sept. 11 commission that investigated pre-2001 terror attack intelligence failings, said he had no idea why Kerry received a third citation under his signature, and that Navy records should be "thoroughly researched and the facts established."

Meanwhile, in an exclusive interview with FOX News, former President George H.W. Bush said questions raised about Kerry's protests against the Vietnam War were legitimate, and he saw nothing wrong with airing a TV ad assailing Kerry's anti-war testimony by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (search), a loosely regulated, independent political action group known as a 527.

"My view is the advertisement showing Senator Kerry as a young veteran coming back and using his own words to describe atrocities committed by his own soldiers, sailors, marines or whatever it is, is devastating," Bush said.

Bush 41 also said Kerry owes the nation and Vietnam veterans an apology.

"I think it is not enough to say, well, I made a youthful indiscretion, and I think Senator Kerry ought to apologize."

FOX News' Major Garrett contributed to this report.


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THE CONTENDERS : John F. Kerry
John Kerry: Hunter, Dreamer, Realist
Complexity Infuses Senator's Ambition

By Laura Blumenfeld
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 1, 2003; Page A01

John Kerry eats dove. Even better, he shoots them. From behind the stalks of a Southern cornfield, he'll watch them flutter and dart, and fire.

"You clean them. Let them hang. It takes three or four birds to have a meal," said the Massachusetts senator. "You might eat it at a picnic, cold roasted. I love dove."

Dove, quail, duck, deer. 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. Bad table manners, perhaps, or good politics. After Sept. 11, 2001, some Democrats argue, they can't take the White House if they sound like doves. That is not a problem for the dove hunter. Kerry, 59, is the only combat veteran in the field. He stands 6-foot-4. He rides a Harley, plays ice hockey, snowboards, windsurfs, kitesurfs, and has such thick, aggressive hair he uses a brush with metal teeth.

"That's our slogan," quipped his ad man, Jim Margolis. "John Kerry: He's no weenie."

"He doesn't need a consultant to tell him how to dress like an alpha male," said his friend Ivan Schlager. "He is a damn alpha male."

It is more complex than that, though. With Kerry it often is. 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. Echoing Robert F. Kennedy, he often closes with the line, "I'm running for president of the United States because I really believe it is time for this country to ask again, 'Why not?' "

In a series beginning today, The Washington Post will examine all nine Democratic presidential candidates: their campaign messages, the roots of their ambition, their ability to connect with voters. 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. He was a hero. Complexity worked the first time around.

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.

"It's the natural reluctance of a soldier to put young Americans in harm's way," said fellow Vietnam veteran and former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.).

But Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), one of Kerry's competitors, accused him of being "ambivalent" when the country needed leadership. 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.

"The most important thing with message is staying on it -- which I didn't do," said former senator and presidential candidate Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.), when asked about Kerry. "I liked to ramble around. Have a little fun."

Kerry's advisers have urged him not to ramble, to speak less about issues and more about his life. At a recent gathering of Democrats in Duncan, S.C., Kerry promised he'd make America safer. 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. "Bush is a one-topic man. He's going to hammer it in our ears. Even if it's not true, we will believe it."

"I understand you have to boil it down," Kerry said, his voice ratcheting up. "But I'm here, talking to smart Democrats."

Afterward, Muhaabwa said, "After he leaves, he'll be thinking about what I said."

That's where Muhaabwa was wrong. Because when Kerry left, he drove to the airport and climbed into the pilot's seat of a twin-engine Cessna. The cautious politician gave way to the other Kerry. 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. He turned the plane to dodge a threatening cloud. There were no ambiguities. It was simple.

"I Want to Win!'

Jacket off, shades on, Kerry stretched out on a park bench in Charleston, S.C., his head and feet sticking off the bench at both ends. "We need your help, man. Rally the troops," he said into his cell phone. "I want to win!"

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. "I'd peek, pick up the blinds. Soldiers would rap with their gun barrel -- you have to pull down the shades."

Two things happened to the boy. 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."

Often on his own, he tested his survival skills. 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. I know how to do it. I'm safe.' " He took risks to feel safe? Kerry likes to quote the French writer Andre Gide: "Don't try to understand me too quickly."

By the time Kerry arrived in New Hampshire at St. 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." Then he added, "And Kerry for dogcatcher!" 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. It gives you tremendous drive to make up for it."

After Yale, Kerry volunteered for the Navy. He returned from Vietnam with his faith in the government shaken. He felt betrayed; his friends had died in the war. 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. "He thrives on stress and pressure," said former senator Timothy E. Wirth (D-Colo.). "I said, 'The Republicans have 250 million dollars, it's going to be relentless.' He smiled and said, 'Bring it on.' " He's reflexively competitive, the first into freezing water, the skier with the fastest time. 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 could say, "Hello." He taught it to squawk in Italian and French.

His adventures, he said, are not reckless. "The things I do are completely in control, up to my ability," Kerry said firmly. "They're not big adrenaline rushes. More like meditations. Doing things correct is relaxing, rewarding. Fun, fun, fun. If you're doing aerobatics, it's very simple fun."

"It must be part chemical," said his wife. "Look at him. He's a total string bean. I mean, he's wired, bzzzzzz. In Portuguese you say fulminante, it means you're revved up. Why did he have to take up kitesurfing now? Not just windsurfing. It's so dangerous. And the guitar lessons! Why does he have to learn guitar at this time of his life? He challenges himself."

On a recent afternoon in his Senate office, Kerry was challenging himself with a piece of Spanish classical guitar music. "It's very hard," he said, mid-strum. "I broke one of my nails."

His hand raced up and down the neck of his guitar, his fingers working the frets.

"We've got to go, John," his chief of staff said.

He tried another song, picking the opening notes of "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina."

Another staffer cleared his throat.

"Oh, you'll like this," Kerry said, ignoring him, playing the theme song from "Love Story."

His press secretary interrupted, "Senator, the car's waiting. . . ."

Just one more song. A Beatles tune from 1965. He strummed the guitar and belted: "Yesterday. . . ."

'This Guy's Not Personable?'

Kerry's face appeared at the door to the Iowa Scott County Democrats dinner.

Mike Boland, 60, an activist, whispered, "I heard he's aloof."

Kerry stepped into the crowd, planting his big hands on workingmen's shoulders, quizzing students about their majors, telling a woman about the time his daughter's pet frog jumped on his nose. He waved, hugged, guffawed and sat knee to knee with a grandmother. Boland said: "This guy's not personable? What a phony issue."

Yet it has been an issue, especially with journalists, all the way back to yellowing newspaper clips of 1971, which describe Kerry in such terms as "slick," "too pretty," "ambitious," "opportunistic."

John Norris, Kerry's state director in Iowa, said he isn't worried: "The East Coast press uses the word 'aloof.' It's been an asset, because Iowans come with low expectations."

Kerry appreciates the irony. "I'll say thank you to every journalist who wrote [expletive] articles about me," he joked. Then he added, "I plead guilty to being a little brash when I first got into politics. I wish they had a delete button on LexisNexis."

There is something about him, "the Kerry effect," that provokes a visceral response. He is too towering, too confident and too rich (his wife's fortune exceeds half a billion dollars) for people to walk away indifferent. As one Kerry friend said, "People see him and say, 'Geez, I'm short, bald, stupid and poor.' " They feel either swept away or swept aside. When he smiles, one on one, people literally squint and blink; when he doesn't, light carves shadows in his face and his deep-set eyes sink into the dark. At a house party in Florence, S.C., the women giggled, charmed by the way he pronounced "y'all," and said he looked like GI Joe. The men anointed him the next JFK.

But even in Massachusetts, polls have put his job approval rating ahead of his personal popularity rating. His friend Dan Barbiero said it comes down to Kerry's complexity: "There's still a lot of idealism in John. It's corny and people tend to be cynical, and coming from this big, patrician-looking man you wouldn't expect it. You look at him and say, 'He's putting this on.' "

It's been a hard rap to overcome in part because Kerry is reserved. He inherited it from his mother, along with her devotion to public service. "She taught us you stiff-upper-lip it," said his sister, Diana Kerry. "John is a man of the people. Of the little people, actually. He needs to project who he really is by simplifying."

And who is he, really?

A close associate hints: There's a secret compartment in Kerry's briefcase. He carries the black attaché everywhere. Asked about it on several occasions, Kerry brushed it aside. Finally, trapped in an interview, he exhaled and clicked open his case.

"Who told you?" he demanded as he reached inside. "My friends don't know about this."

The hat was a little mildewy. The green camouflage was fading, the seams fraying.

"My good luck hat," Kerry said, happy to see it. "Given to me by a CIA guy as we went in for a special mission in Cambodia."

Kerry put on the hat, pulling the brim over his forehead. His blue button-down shirt and tie clashed with the camouflage. He pointed his finger and raised his thumb, creating an imaginary gun. He looked silly, yet suddenly his campaign message was clear: Citizen-soldier. Linking patriotism to public service. It wasn't complex after all; it was Kerry.

He smiled and aimed his finger: "Pow."

SOURCE: WASHINGTONPOST MUST SIGN UP, BEWARE POPUPS

Democrats peddle their own unique truth

August 15, 2004

BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

"My truth is that I am a gay American,'' announced Gov. James McGreevey to the people of New Jersey last Thursday.



That's such an exquisitely contemporary formulation: ''my'' truth. Once upon a time, there was only ''the'' truth. Now everyone gets his own -- or, as the governor put it, ''One has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world.'' For Jim McGreevey, his truth is that he's a gay American; for others in the Garden State, the truth about McGreevey is that he's a corrupt sexual harasser who put his lover on the state payroll in a critical homeland security post, and whose I-am-what-I-am confessional is a tactical feint that distracts the media sob sisters from the fact that, as his final service to the Democratic Party, he's resigned in such a way as to deny the people an early vote on his successor.

We'll see whose truth prevails in the fullness of time.

In politics, it's helpful if whatever ''unique truth'' the consultants have run past the focus groups bears at least a passing relationship to the real, actual truth -- not the whole truth, but at least a grain of it. That was what was so ingenious about Bill Clinton's ''60 Minutes'' appearance in 1992. He didn't come clean -- he was, as usual, full of it -- but he set in motion his designated ''unique truth'' -- flawed but human. It was designed to get him past Gennifer, but it wound up also getting him past Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita. . . . Whatever goods you got on him, it fit ''his truth'' as he sold it to us on CBS that day. As his attorney Cheryl Mills put it during the impeachment trial, Bill Clinton, along with Jefferson, Kennedy and Martin Luther King, ''made human errors, but they struggled to do humanity good . . .''

Which brings us to John Kerry. What is his unique truth? In 1986, on the floor of the United States Senate, he said:

''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 the Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there, the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory, which is seared -- seared -- in me.''

Though the seared senator peddled this searing memory for a quarter-century, it had evidently been seared into him pretty haphazardly. It turns out at Christmas 1968 he wasn't in Cambodia but was instead 55 miles away at Sa Dec, South Vietnam. So the Kerry campaign's begun riffling hurriedly through its Sears Rowback catalog for more or less watertight back-pedaling of the story: They now say that ''many times he was on or near the Cambodian border,'' which is true in the sense that 80 percent of Canadians live on or near the American border. But most folks in Vancouver don't claim to be living in the Greater Seattle area.

Earlier, senior Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan told ABC News: ''The Mekong Delta consists of the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, so on Christmas Eve in 1968, he was in fact on patrol ... in the Mekong Delta between Cambodia and Vietnam.'' For a crowd of ostentatious multilateralists, they can't seem to hold the map the right way up: The Mekong River isn't the border between Cambodia and Vietnam; it cuts through the heart of Cambodia and then runs through Vietnam to the sea.

But this question isn't about geographical degrees of latitude so much as psychological ones. Here's the real reason Lt. Kerry wasn't spending Dec. 24, 1968, on a secret mission in Cambodia: On the previous day, Dec. 23, the U.S. government finally secured the release, after a five-month diplomatic stand-off, of 11 Americans whose U.S. Army utility landing craft had made a navigational error and strayed into Cambodian waters. Prince Sihanouk had rejected U.S. apologies and threatened to try the men under Cambodian law. It's unlikely, 24 hours after their release, anyone in Washington was thinking, ''Hey, we need to send that hotshot Kerry in there.''

So what are we to make of Sen. Kerry's self-seared 30-year-old false memory of Christmas in Cambodia with its vast accumulation of precise details? Of being shot at by the Khmer Rouge (unlikely in 1968) and of South Vietnamese troops drunkenly celebrating Christmas (as only devout Buddhists know how)?

It's not about dates and places. For Kerry, his Yuletide mission was an epiphany: the moment when he realized his government was lying to the people about what was going on. This is the turning point, the moment that set the young Kerry on the path from brave young war volunteer to fierce anti-war activist.

And it turns out it's total bunk.

Thirty-five years on, having no appealing campaign themes, the senator decides to run for president on his biography. But for the last 20 years he's been a legislative non-entity. Before that, he was accusing his brave band of brothers of mutilation, rape and torture. He spent his early life at Swiss finishing school and his later life living off his wife's inheritance from her first husband. So, biography-wise, that leaves four months in Vietnam, which he talks about non-stop. That 1986 Senate speech is typical: It was supposed to be about Reagan policy in Central America, but like so many Kerry speeches and interviews somehow it winds up with yet another self-aggrandizing trip down memory lane.

A handful of Kerry's ''band of brothers'' are traveling around with his campaign. Most of the rest, including a majority of his fellow swift boat commanders and 254 swiftees from Kerry's Coastal Squadron One, are opposed to his candidacy. That is an amazing ratio and, if snot-nosed American media grandees don't think there's a story there, maybe they ought to consider another line of work. To put it in terms they can understand, imagine if Dick Cheney campaigned for the presidency on the basis of his time at Halliburton, and a majority of the Halliburton board and 80 percent of the stockholders declared he was unfit for office. More to the point, on the swift vets' first major allegation -- Christmas in Cambodia -- the Kerry campaign has caved.

Who is John Kerry? What is his ''unique truth?'' Consider this vignette from New Hampshire primary season as retailed in a recent 8,000-word yawneroo puff piece in the New Yorker:

'' 'He'll often thrash around in the night,' the filmmaker George Butler, who is one of Kerry's oldest friends, told me. 'He smashed up a lamp in my house in New Hampshire, in the bedroom where he was staying. Most Vietnam veterans go through this.'''

''Most?'' Whether or not John Kerry ever entered Cambodia, he seems unable, psychologically, to exit it.


SOURCE: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES BEWARE POPUPS

COMMENTARY

Godzilla vs. the 'Blogosphere'

By GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS
September 1, 2004; Page A12


With accredited bloggers at both conventions, this can fairly be called the first presidential election to be blogged. And that just might matter -- though if it does, it will be as much because of big-media vices as it is of bloggers' virtues.

The election coverage from Big Media has been unusually partisan this time around. As Newsweek's Evan Thomas famously remarked: "Let's talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. . . . They're going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there's going to be this glow about them . . . that's going to be worth maybe 15 points." When he made that remark, many were worried. If the big media all tilted toward one party (which was pretty clearly true) and if their influence was worth 15 points, enough to swing most any presidential election (which was plausible), then the institutional power of big media seemed to be a threat to democracy itself. But it hasn't worked out that way -- or if it has, John Kerry must be an awfully weak candidate to be neck-and-neck with President Bush despite a built-in 15-point advantage.

It's probably some of both. Mr. Kerry, as even many Dems are admitting, is a weak candidate. But the big media advantage doesn't seem to have turned out to be as big as some thought.

That has played hob with the Kerry campaign's strategy. It's been apparent for quite a while that Mr. Kerry's Vietnam record would be a centerpiece of his campaign, and it's also been apparent that he has stretched the truth more than a little where parts of it were concerned. In a Boston Herald piece inspired by "Apocalypse Now," Mr. Kerry wrote: "On more than one occasion, I, like Martin Sheen in 'Apocalypse Now,' took my patrol boat into Cambodia.

"In fact, I remember spending Christmas Day of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese Allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real." Mr. Kerry made similar claims on the Senate floor in 1986, adding that the memory was "seared -- seared -- in me." He also peddled variations on this story during press interviews over the years.

But the story isn't true. And the Kerry campaign eventually admitted that, but only after prodding from the media. Not from the newspapers and TV networks -- which studiously ignored the story for nearly two weeks -- but from blogs and talk radio. Bloggers researched the story on Google, on Factiva and Lexis, and in libraries. Talk-radio hosts, including some like Neal Boortz and Hugh Hewitt who are bloggers themselves, retailed the findings to the wider world. Eventually the Kerry campaign was forced to respond, which then forced the New York Times and the LA Times, grudgingly, to admit that the story existed and to start their own coverage.

As blogger Ed Driscoll noted, the Kerry media strategy was geared to the media environment of 1972, where the refusal to carry the story of a few big outlets chummy with the campaign would have been enough to keep things quiet. That didn't work, as the new media were enough to neutralize the media advantage that Kerry's strategy was built around. And that's quite a feat: Unlike the blogosphere's role in toppling Trent Lott, the Cambodia revelations happened not in the face of big media laziness, but in the face of active big-media opposition. (Even now, newspapermen like the Star Tribune's Jim Boyd are criticizing bloggers for covering the story, though without admitting that the bloggers had the facts on their side.)

Does this mean that blogs will work in the Bush campaign's favor? Not inevitably, and there are plenty of lefty blogs doing their best to beat Mr. Bush. But so long as the mainstream media are lazy, and biased -- and strongly in favor of a Democrat -- the fact-checking and media-bypassing power of the blogosphere is likely to disproportionately favor Republicans. That's not so much a reflection on blogs, alas, as it is a reflection on big media.

Mr. Reynolds, a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law, publishes the www.InstaPundit.com weblog.

SOURCE: WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE CACHED VERSION

Discarded Decorations
Videotape Contradicts John Kerry’s Own Statements Over Vietnam Medals

By Brian Ross and Chris Vlasto


April 26 — Contradicting his statements as a candidate for president, Sen. John Kerry claimed in a 1971 television interview that he threw away as many as nine of his combat medals to protest the war in Vietnam.

"I gave back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine medals," Kerry said in an interview on a Washington, D.C., news program on WRC-TV called Viewpoints on Nov. 6, 1971, according to a tape obtained by ABCNEWS.

Throughout his presidential campaign, Kerry has denied that he threw away any of his medals during an anti-war protest in April 1971.

Calling it a "phony controversy" instigated by the Republican party, Kerry said on Good Morning America today that he has always accurately said what took place. "I threw my ribbons. I didn't have my medals. It is very simple."

He also said he — and the military — didn't make a distinction between medals and ribbons. "We threw away the symbols of what our country gave us for what we had gone through," he said.

And in an interview with ABCNEWS' Peter Jennings last December, he said it was a "myth."

But Kerry told a much different story on Viewpoints. Asked about the anti-war veterans who threw their medals away, Kerry said "they decided to give them back to their country."

Kerry was asked if he gave back the Bronze Star, Silver Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for combat duty as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam. "Well, and above that, [I] gave back the others," he said.

The statement directly contradicts Kerry's most recent claims on the disputed subject to the Los Angeles Times last Friday. "I never ever implied that I did it, " Kerry told the newspaper, responding to the question of whether he threw away his medals in protest.

"I'm proud of my medals. I always was proud of them," he told Jennings in December, adding that he had only thrown away his "ribbons" and the medals of two other veterans who could not attend the protest.

Flip Flop?

The disputed incident happened 33 years ago this past weekend, on April 23, 1971, when Kerry led the group Vietnam Veterans Against the War in a protest against the war they fought.

Many veterans were seen throwing their medals and ribbons over the fence in front of the U.S. Capitol. The Boston Globe and other newspapers reported that Kerry was among these veterans.

"In a real sense, this administration forced us to return our medals because beyond the perversion of the war, these leaders themselves denied us the integrity those symbols supposedly gave our lives," Kerry said the following day.

But in 1984, when he first ran for the U.S. Senate, Kerry revealed he still had his medals. According to a Boston Globe report on April 15, 1984, union officials had expressed uneasiness with Kerry's candidacy because he had thrown his medals away. Kerry acknowledged the medals he threw away were, in fact, another soldier's medals. He reportedly invited a union official home to personally inspect his Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts, awarded for his combat duty as a Navy lieutenant.

In the 1971 Viewpoints interview, he made no mention of the ribbons or the medals belonging to another veteran.

And in 1988, Kerry again clarified his statement by saying he threw out ribbons he had been awarded for three combat wounds, but not his medals. "I was proud of my personal service and remain so," he told the National Journal.

Eight years later in 1996, Kerry said while he did throw out his ribbons, he didn't throw out his own medals because he "didn't have time to go home [to New York] and get them," he told The Boston Globe.

Kerry's campaign Web site says he "is proud of the work he did to end the war. The Nixon Administration made John Kerry one of its targets and Republicans have been smearing him ever since. John Kerry threw his ribbons and the medals of two veterans who could not attend the event, and said, 'I am not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try to make this country wake up once and for all.'"

SOURCE: ABC NEWS BEWARE POPUPS

Who's to blame for nation's Vietnam wounds? Kerry

August 29, 2004

BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Every serious nation, in the course of history, loses a war here and there. You hope it's there rather than here -- somewhere far away, a small conflict in a distant land, not central to your country's sense of itself. During America's ''Vietnam era,'' Britain grappled with a number of nasty colonial struggles. Some they won -- Malaya -- and others they lost -- Aden -- or, at any rate, concluded that the cost of achieving whatever it was they wanted to achieve was no longer worth it.

No parallels are exact, but the symbolism of the transfer of power in Aden (on the Arabian coast) is not dissimilar to the fall of Saigon. On Nov. 29, 1967, the Union Jack was lowered over the city, and the high commissioner, his staff and all her majesty's forces left. On Nov. 30, the People's Republic of South Yemen was proclaimed -- the only avowedly Marxist state in Arabia. A couple of years earlier, the penultimate high commissioner, Sir Richard Turnbull, had remarked bleakly to Denis Healey, the British Defense secretary, that the British empire would be remembered for only two things: ''the popularization of Association Football [soccer] and the term 'f-- off.'

Sir Richard was being a little hard on his fellow imperialists, but those two legacies of empire are useful ways of looking at the situation when the natives are restless and you're a long way from home: Faraway disputes you're stuck in the middle of aren't played by the rules of Association Football, and it's important to know when to "f-- off.'' Aden had been British since 1839: that's 130 years, or 10 times as long as America was mixed up in Vietnam. And yet in the end the British shrugged it off. Just one of those things, old boy. Can't be helped. As the last high commissioner inspected his troops at Khormaksar Airport on that final day, the band of the Royal Marines played not ''Land Of Home And Glory'' or ''Rule, Britannia'' but a Cockney novelty pop song, ''Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be,'' as a jaunty reflection on the vicissitudes of fate.

So when John McCain sternly warns the swift boat veterans of ''reopening the wounds of Vietnam,'' it's worth asking: Why is Vietnam a ''wound'' and why won't it heal? The answer: not because it was a military or strategic defeat but because it was a national trauma. And whose fault is that?

Well, you can't pin it all on one person, but, if you had to, Lt. John F. Kerry would stand a better shot at taking the solo trophy than almost anyone.

The ''wounds'' McCain complains of aren't from losing Vietnam, but from the manner in which it was lost. Today Sen. Kerry says he's proud of his anti-war activism, but that's not what it was. Every war has pacifists and conscientious objectors and even disenchanted veterans, but there's simply no precedent for what John Kerry did: a man who put his combat credentials to the service of smearing his country's entire armed forces as rapists, decapitators and baby killers.

That's the ''wound,'' Sen. McCain. That's why a crummy little war on the other side of the world still festers. That's why the band didn't play ''Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be'' and move on to the next item of business. Because Kerry didn't just call for U.S. withdrawal, he impugned the honor of every man he served with.

In his testimony to Congress in 1971, Kerry asserted a scale of routine war crimes unparalleled in American history -- his ''band of brothers'' (as he now calls them) ''personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads . . . razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.'' Almost all these claims were unsupported.

Indeed, the only specific example of a U.S. war criminal that Kerry gave was himself. As he said on ''Meet The Press'' in April 1971, ''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 used 50-caliber machineguns, which we were granted and ordered to use.''

Really? And when was that? On your top-secret Christmas Eve mission in Cambodia? If they'd taken him at his word, when the senator said ''I'm John Kerry reporting for duty,'' the delegates at the Democratic Convention should have dived for cover.

But they didn't. So Kerry is now the first self-confessed war criminal in the history of the Republic to be nominated for president. Normally this would be considered an electoral plus only in the more cynical banana republics. But the Democrats seemed to think they could run an anti-war anti-hero as a war hero and nobody would mind. As we now know, a lot of people -- a lot of veterans -- do mind, very much. They understand that, whether or not he ever mowed down civilians with his 50-caliber machinegun, Kerry is responsible for a lot of wounds closer to home.

In the usual course of events, Kerry's terrible judgment in the '70s would render him unelectable. Instead, over two decades he morphed into a respectably dull run-of-the-mill pompous senatorial windbag. Had he run for president in the '90s or 2000, he might even have pulled it off. But the Democrats turned to him this time because the tortured contradictions of his resume suited an anti-war party that didn't dare run as such.

Ever since the first cries of ''Quagmire!'' back in the early days of the Afghan liberation in 2001, the left have been trying to Vietnamize the war on terror. They failed in that, but they succeeded in the Vietnamization of the election campaign, and that's turned out just swell, hasn't it?

Remember that formulation a lot of Democrats were using last year? They oppose the war but ''of course'' they support our troops. Kerry's campaign is a walking illustration of the deficiencies of that straddle: When you divorce the heroism of soldiering from the justice of the cause, what's left but a hollow braggart?

The Vietnamese government used Kerry's 1971 testimony as evidence of American war crimes as recently as two months ago. In Aden, Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, but in Hanoi Kerry's psychodrama-queen performance is a gift that keeps on giving. It would be a shame if they understood him more clearly than the American people do.

Scource: Chicago Sun-Times BEWARE POPUPS!!!!