SwiftVets.com

[LewWaters]

Ran across this last night and thought the rest might find it interesting. And, they say the media doesn't slant the news?

Vietnam veterans find validation in Kerry
Nomination symbolizes generational affirmation for many

By David Maraniss

Updated: 1:37 a.m. ET July 29, 2004

BOSTON, July 28 - Since the searing spring day in 1968 when a grenade blew away his legs and left only a stump of his right arm, Max Cleland has been on what he calls a long and discomforting search for meaning. He has wondered about the purpose of his time in Vietnam, the lessons of his wounds, the reasons for his survival. For seven minutes on Thursday night, when he rolls his wheelchair to center stage at the Democratic National Convention and introduces his friend John F. Kerry to the nation, Cleland thinks he will be closer than ever to answering those timeless questions.

It promises to be the most emotional scene of the convention: the gaunt presidential candidate from Massachusetts stooping to embrace the broad-faced triple amputee from Georgia -- fellow Vietnam vets and former Senate colleagues, both encircled by the aging warriors they call the band of brothers, including the Swift boat crewmates who served with young Lt. Kerry along the Mekong Delta 3 1/2 decades ago. The imagery is only a metaphor for something more profound, Cleland says, a culminating moment of personal and generational affirmation that sharply defines Kerry's rise and lends significance to the unresolved struggle of Cleland and many other Vietnam vets. (But they fail to mention that many struggles of Vietnam vets have been caused by the lies and distortions uttered by Kerry during his VVAW days)

'Search for meaning'
"John Kerry is really the tip of the iceberg, and the iceberg under the surface is the unconscious sense of lack of resolution of the Vietnam War," Cleland said in an interview Tuesday after taking part in a ceremony honoring veterans at Bunker Hill. "His success is like a validation of all this angst, storm and stress, and search for meaning, for people of his generation, not just for veterans, but especially for veterans because he personifies and embodies our own experience." (Lack of resolution? Have they forgotten who testified before Congress with lie after lie about atrocities on a day by day basis? Speaking for myself, I served there, went on to Germany after, Ft. Bragg after that and not once did I feel the need to go before Congress or any group and slander my fellow vets. In no way does Kerry “personify or embody my own experience.”)

Cleland devoured a dripping cheeseburger at the old Warren Tavern as he spoke, his legless body perched snugly on a worn wooden bench. His longing for validation was echoed by many members of Kerry's old crew, who have been omnipresent in Boston this week and escorted the candidate as he made his way into town on a water taxi Wednesday afternoon. (From what I remember, he had 23 vets showing support for him. I hardly classify that as “many.”)

"All of us have been waiting for this moment with John Kerry for 35 years," said Wade Sanders. "It has brought new meaning to our lives." (Spontaneous support, as they have been trying to show? 35 years spontaneity?)

"Why did we live through this?" asked crewmate Del Sandusky. "Why are we here? For what is happening now." (Are we to believe we all survived a war just for John “F”in Kerry?)

John Hurley, another Vietnam vet who helped organize the band of brothers for Kerry during the winter primaries, said, "This is not just a campaign, it is a homecoming." (Kerry had his “homecoming” with VVAW and Hanoi Jane, I feel. If he were to be elected, to me, it would be further alienation from this country that gave us Jimmy Carter who gave all draft dodgers amnesty, basically making them the heroes of the Vietnam War and Bill Clinton who actually did dodge the draft and protested our involvement there.)

By no means do all veterans feel that way. A rump group of Swift boat veterans from other crews have expressed skepticism about accounts of Kerry's exploits. Some vets cannot forgive Kerry for protesting the war when he returned home and for testifying before Congress in 1971 about what he called atrocities committed by U.S. troops. And Republicans have tried to undercut Kerry's war experience by questioning, among other things, why he cut short his tour of duty after receiving three Purple Hearts for relatively superficial wounds. Cleland, from his wheelchair, finds particular force in countering that line of attack with a quote from Shakespeare's Romeo: "He jests at scars that never felt a wound." (So, since the majority of vets oppose Kerry, are we all just a “RUMP” group to them?)

[rump (r¾mp) n. 1. The fleshy hindquarters of an animal. 2. A cut of beef or veal from the rump. 3. The buttocks. 4. The part of a bird's back nearest the tail. 5. The last or inferior part. 6. A legislature having only a small part of its original membership and therefore being unrepresentative or lacking in authority.]

(By the definition #6, do they feel the majority of vets are unrepresentative and lacking in any authority with vets? It seems so to me)

Central theme
The extent to which Kerry has embraced his Vietnam story and used it here in Boston, where a veterans caucus attracted 500 delegates on Monday and Cleland draws standing ovations at one delegation meeting after another as a revered speaker, has provoked weariness in some quarters. "I don't think they mentioned it this much at Woodstock," comedian Jon Stewart said of the Vietnam War in an interview with Katie Couric on NBC's "Today" show Wednesday morning. "I keep expecting to hear Buffalo Springfield." But for decades, Vietnam vets have grown accustomed to large segments of the public growing tired of them and wanting to move on, so a touch of sarcasm is not going to stop them now or make Cleland worry that they are overdoing it. (Did they again fail to mention the overwhelming majority of the caucus of 500 vets do not stand behind Kerry, as they have slanted this article to appear?)

Kerry is not the first Vietnam vet to be either major party's presidential nominee -- Al Gore served "in country" as an Army journalist -- but he is the first to make it a central theme of his candidacy, and that, Cleland said, makes all the difference. (A 4 month tour is “central” to his campaign but years with VVAW and lies to Congress about those 4 scant months isn’t?)

"I campaigned for Al Gore, campaigned hard for him, beginning in Iowa in January 2000. But there was no magic," Cleland said. "No emphasis on veterans. No organized veterans effort. As a matter of fact, Gore didn't even talk about it. And there was no band of brothers out there. This time it's the real deal. Kerry knows from whence he came. And all of that comes in the context of the search for meaning for veterans and the way meaning is being stripped away in Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction. No nuclear weapons program. No ties to al Qaeda. Okay. Okay. You can't call back those thousand kids who are now dead. You can't call back those arms and limbs over there at Walter Reed [Army Medical Center] that are now being fitted. That is what is so terrifying for the veterans of Vietnam. . . . I'm a student of history, and I can't think of a war in American history that had less meaning than Vietnam. And to sit and watch the meaning being stripped away again." (Organized Veterans effort? Doesn’t Cleland realize the “organized Veterans effort” is against Kerry? And, the Democratic party line about Iraq? Guess he didn’t read the 9-11 Commission report either. From what I remember, it was them who “stripped any meaning” away from Vietnam. It was them, the left, who caused us to tuck tail and run and let the region fall to Communism. It is also them who, today, are playing the same left-wing card against the effort in Iraq and trying to undermine Bush’s leadership.)

With Cleland, especially, the political and personal this year seem inextricably linked. "His resurrection has also been my personal resurrection," he said of Kerry's campaign.

A call to action
It was only two years ago that the 62-year-old from suburban Atlanta was defeated in his bid for reelection to the Senate and fell into a chasm of despair. Whatever rage he felt toward Republicans for running a campaign ad linking him to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, and questioning his patriotism for voting against a version of the homeland security bill, was dampened by a life-numbing sensation that any purpose had been drained from his existence. He did not have the energy to get mad or get even. His fiancee, Nancy Ross, recalled that the low point was not election night, when he lost to Rep. Saxby Chambliss (R), 53 percent to 46 percent, but rather the morning of Jan. 6, 2003, when the next session of Congress opened and Cleland was at home with nothing to do. "From that point on, it was hard, very very hard," Ross said. (Again, it’s all the Republicans fault. Cleland lost in Georgia because Georgia is a Conservative State and he switched to and adhered to the Liberal Party Line.)

Kerry, Cleland said, was among the first friends to call him after that defeat, and kept calling for weeks thereafter, urging him to "get back in the game."

"He said, 'Max, come join me, help me turn this country around,' " Cleland recalled. "I said, 'John, I will when I can.' " (More “spontaneous” support? Sounds to me more like the effort is for Democrats to pool their resources and get Democrats back in power)

It took him six months to recover from the psychological wounds of his defeat, and when he was ready he headed out to Iowa and went to work. Week by week his energy and sense of purpose increased. His appetite was back, for food and people and work. He tooled around Iowa with such force that the wheels came off his wheelchair one day in western Iowa and he had to call across the border to the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Omaha in search of repairs. When a bureaucrat there told him that he was not in the system, Cleland, who was head of the Veterans Administration under President Jimmy Carter, cackled and shouted with glee, "Sweetheart, I am the system." He was back. (A politician that can’t handle defeat? If being a Disabled Vet qualifies one for Public Office, did they support Bob Dole in 1996? Somehow, I doubt it.)

Targeting veteran vote
There was an evening in Des Moines in the dead of winter when Cleland realized that the fire was blazing inside him again. It was four degrees below zero when he headed over to Bakers Square for dinner. Sanders and Sandusky and the Swift boat guys were there, along with the Bolanos brothers of El Paso, four brothers who served together in Vietnam, and Kerry's Vietnam vet friends from Massachusetts, who called themselves the dog hunters and brought with them at least four vets they found at a Boston homeless shelter. Cleland pulled out his American Express card and paid for dinner for the whole crowd, and it was then that he recited parts of the well-worn St. Crispin's Day speech from "Henry V" and dubbed them the band of brothers. (Paying for dinner for what, maybe 7 people?)

Cleland had a sense then, long before the national press corps realized it, that Kerry could win Iowa and go on from there. "What organization has targeted veterans before? Nobody," he recalled. "But John Kerry did. And when he accepts the Democratic nomination Thursday night, a large part of the reason will be because of that." (Targeted Veterans? Like he did with his 1971 lies to Congress? And, he had all of 23 out of how many million vets alongside him?)

When Kerry asked him to give the introductory speech on Thursday night, Cleland began shaping his thoughts. It was because of Vietnam that Cleland was handed the assignment, and he decided not to steer away from Vietnam as he put together the speech. Ten days ago, using the chicken-scratch cursive scrawl of his left hand, he began writing on some hotel stationery in Memphis. He kept writing until he had a draft that Ross could transcribe onto a computer. Then it went through three Kerry speechwriters and back to Cleland, who refined the final draft. The themes are simple: the Swift boat, the young skipper, the trust of his men, the band of brothers, the call to service, the quiet character, the affirmation of a generation, the skipper for the ship of state. (And still, no mention of what he spent more time on, denigrating all Vetearns)

Cleland has a soft, deep, modulated voice with only a hint of the South. It evokes a radio voice from the past, which fits with his notion that he will be delivering a fireside chat to the convention hall and to the people back home. "I don't want to scream. That's not me," he said. "It'll be calmer and quieter and probably more emotional and intense than maybe I'm even comfortable with. But I think it will liberate my friend John Kerry. . . . I hope I can get through it without choking up." (Puking comes more to my mind)

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5542805/

[stop kerry]

Lew isn't it true that Cleland never received a Purple Heart because the grenade was not from the enemy I don't understand Cleland except that he's livid that he lost his seat and blames Bush. I don't see how someone injured that badly can even stand to be in the same room with kerry who's three wounds () , did not cause him more than a day off from combat. also maybe we should all send emails to David Maraniss
and tell him to kiss our 'rump' because many more are against kerry than for him.

[carpro]

Maraniss (the reporter) must be on something.

He's totally disconnected from reality.
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"If he believes his 1971 indictment of his country and his fellow veterans was true, then he couldn't possibly be proud of his Vietnam service."

[waltjones]

Nice fisk job, Lew. Regarding Max Cleland, the political lightning rod: he's no more a war hero than I am, but if you don't agree with that accolade, you're some kind of knuckle-dragging, anti-military cretin. The fact is, Max made a mistake, similar to many mistakes made by many soldiers in Vietnam. He picked up a grenade that he probably should have not picked up, and it blew up. It's my understanding it was an American grenade, in plain sight, and had nothing to do with enemy action. He served his country well, like many of us, and he made a HUGE sacrifice, but let's keep in mind it WAS an accident. The Democrats shamelessly use Max, and he shamelessly lets them. ANYBODY who in ANY way - such as Ann Coulter, who simply stated the facts of Cleland's misfortune - doesn't agree with the Democrats' fantasy about Cleland, is blasted mercilessly, and nobody will defend them - even with the truth. Such is the Democrats' poltical reality - they really can't handle the truth, especially when it comes to John F*ing Kerry. Semper Fi!
_________________
Walt Jones (USMC, '65 - '69) It says much about the person who defends a man with no honor.

[LewWaters]

And, just how many of these people now embracing Kerry and Cleland as "bona fide war heroes," were protesting us and joined in with the spitting?

[JN173]

[Theresa Alwood]

Too many...too many.

Thanks to all you Vietnam vets for all you have done then and now!
_________________
Born to raise a little hell!