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Me#1You#10
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Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
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 Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 3:34 pm Post subject: NY Sun Editorial: "Kerry Without Tears" |
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The NY Sun cuts to the chase...
| Quote: | Kerry Without Tears
New York Sun Editorial
January 25, 2007
Senator Kerry had to choke back tears as he announced, on the floor of the Senate, the end of his long quest for the presidency, but our own eyes are dry. His career, by our lights, has been one of the most disgraceful of his generation. It was begun, in 1971, with his testimony before the Senate, besmirching the honor of the GIs along with whom he'd had the honor to serve in Vietnam and whom he left on the battlefield to meet in Paris with envoys of our enemies. He sought, in his vainglory, to advance the notion that he was a "winter soldier" who was not abandoning the fight but carrying it on in a different way. Well, one of the great things about a democracy is its long memory, and Mr. Kerry was exposed, in 2004, in a way that couldn't have been more dramatic — by a grassroots campaign of the swift boat veterans he'd betrayed.
It is typical of Mr. Kerry that he tried to wrap his decision yesterday in all sorts of high minded motives. He had become damaged goods in his own party because during the 2006 campaign, he insulted our GIs by suggesting they were stuck in Iraq because they were uneducated losers. It was quickly recognized as a profound error, one that, the more Americans thought about it, echoed in subtle ways his derision of American GIs in the earlier war. Mr. Kerry spent a good bit of time yesterday in a reprise of his own return from Vietnam and relating those times to Iraq, saying he wanted now to do "all I can to end the war." Quoth he: "I don't want the next president to find that they have inherited a nation still divided and a policy destined to end as Vietnam did, in a bitter and sad legacy."
If there has ever been a more hypocritical sentence uttered on the floor of the Senate, we are unaware of it. It comes from a senator and a party doing all they can to bring this war to exactly the kind of end to which the same party brought Vietnam in 1975. There are those scurrying now to put the gloss on what happened back then. The latest example was from the Slate Web site, which published a history that tried to blame everyone but the Democrats who actually forced the abandonment of Vietnam. It tried to tarnish President Ford, Secretary Kissinger, and the Republican leadership on the Hill, who sought to re-supply free Vietnam as the communists mounted their eventually successful drive for conquest.
Mr. Kerry's announcement yesterday was made in the course of encouraging the Senate to force just such an end to the current war. The thing for the new generation entering politics to remember as they watch this spectacle is the point about democracy's long memory. What the politicians do today is going to enter the historical record. People are going to talk about it and tell their children. Those who stay with the fight are going to be remembered for decades to come, and their glory will be untarnished, even if we lose. Those who betray them, or force them to stand down, will be remembered as well. Who knows which of them may some day, a generation or two from now, seek the presidency in the kind of campaign that Mr. Kerry attempted in 2004. Let them learn what happened in 1971 and 1975, and study the tears that Mr. Kerry just shed.
The New York Sun |
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USMCWayne
Lt.Jg.
Joined: 12 Oct 2004
Posts: 117
Location: Montana
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| Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 6:50 pm Post subject: |
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God Bless the New York Sun!
While Kerry has declared he's not running for POTUS...this time around, he's still a danger to our country, for his arrogance and ignorance.
The Sun, to their undying credit, have hit the nail on the head when they say the Swift Vets exposed Kerry for his disgraceful career, which started with his 1971 Senate testimony.
From the beginning, I enjoyed ever bit of the effort taken to expose Kerry's war record, and how the expose made him squirm in embarrasment. I could also feel and understand the anger of the many veterans as to Kerry's inflated record and claims.
I could also understand how that record fit into the larger scheme of exposing Kerry for what he is...conniving, arrogant, uncaring, and self-serving.
All in all, it was a job well done.
Now, three years after the fact, I wonder if or what is still being done to hold Kerry to account for his 1971 violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice?
A charge of treason during time of war would seem to be enough to prevent Kerry from being even remotely considered for a cabinet post, should a Democrat prevail in 2008 and, it would seem, would also hinder his Senate reelection campaign.
I also seem to recall, from either Unfit for Command, the epilogue, or this web site, that Kerry may have actually been charged with violating the UCMJ and had indeed been striped of his medals?
And that, somewhere along the line, he received a pardon from President Carter for his anit-war activities and later, as a newly minted politician, he asked that his medals be reinstated? |
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USMCWayne
Lt.Jg.
Joined: 12 Oct 2004
Posts: 117
Location: Montana
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| Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 7:20 pm Post subject: |
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Amazingly, it was the New York Sun, who originally printed the story on the mystery surrounding Kerry's discharge.
| Quote: | Mr. Carter's first act as president was a general amnesty for draft dodgers and other war protesters. Less than an hour after his inauguration on January 21, 1977, while still in the Capitol building, Mr. Carter signed Executive Order 4483 empowering it. By the time it became a directive from the Defense Department in March 1977 it had been expanded to include other offenders who may have had general, bad conduct, dishonorable discharges, and any other discharge or sentence with negative effect on military records. In those cases the directive outlined a procedure for appeal on a case by case basis before a board of officers. A satisfactory appeal would result in an improvement of discharge status or an honorable discharge.
There is one odd coincidence that gives some weight to the possibility that Mr. Kerry was dishonorably discharged. Mr. Kerry has claimed that he lost his medal certificates and that is why he asked that they be reissued. But when a dishonorable discharge is issued, all pay benefits, and allowances, and all medals and honors are revoked as well. And five months after Mr. Kerry joined the U.S. Senate in 1985, on one single day, June 4, all of Mr. Kerry's medals were reissued. |
http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=3107 |
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WaffleFlipper
Seaman Recruit
Joined: 24 Sep 2004
Posts: 5
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| Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:57 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | There are those scurrying now to put the gloss on what happened back then. The latest example was from the Slate Web site, which published a history that tried to blame everyone but the Democrats who actually forced the abandonment of Vietnam. It tried to tarnish President Ford, Secretary Kissinger, and the Republican leadership on the Hill, who sought to re-supply free Vietnam as the communists mounted their eventually successful drive for conquest. |
Typical left-wing revisionism. They remember it the way they want to, facts be damned. |
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