SwiftVets.com

[integritycounts]

Here is John Kerry promoting his book “The New Soldier” back in 1971.
You can watch the entire 10 minute segment.
http://www.c-span.org/Search/basic.asp?ResultStart=1&ResultCount=10&BasicQueryText=viewpoints

IF Video does not start follow these instructions http://www.c-span.org/watch/help.asp

Senator Kerry states clearly what he thinks about Veterans and what he did with his metals...There is little left which can be “nuanced” away

Here are the more interesting points. When asked about metals being thrown back to the government: Kerry admits he threw back all his metals and all his ribbons. She asks about the specifics, and he indicates he gave back those AND his others…which would be the ribbons too.
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Interviewer: How many did you give back John?
Kerry: I gave back I can not remember 6 7 8 9 at the time
Interviewer: Well you were awarded Bronze Star Silver Star and 3 purple hearts
Kerry: Well above that I gave back my others


Kerry accuses Veterans of being “Monsters” dealing and trading in Violence.
================================================

Interviewer: “Let me quote something from your book, and have you comment on it.
"The country doesn’t realize it yet, but it has created “a monster” in the terms 1000s of men who been taught to deal and trade in violence.”

Kerry: “Well I think that is very true, Betty, the point is that men were taught how to kill. You were made into a killing machine. “

[MDunlap]

They have removed it already!

[integritycounts]

No
The link is active and works
You can go to www.c-span.org and search on video "viewpoints" or "1971" and get the link.....you have to click on the searched item after it comes up.

[jwb7605]

javascript:playClip('rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/c04/c04interview_kerry1971.rm')

Neither of my browsers (Firebird or Exploder) understand the "rtsp" protocol.

Where to get the plugin?

[neverforget]

Can't get it, either.

[integritycounts]

The Kerry medals mystery
By Jeff Jacoby | April 29, 2004
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/04/29/the_kerry_medals_mystery/
IF JOHN KERRY hadn't already clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, his medals meltdown on "Good Morning America" this week would have sunk his campaign. Much as Howard Dean's crazed "I Have A Scream" speech jolted voters into wondering whether someone so hotheaded should be allowed anywhere near the nuclear trigger, Kerry's abusive tirade on ABC gave millions of viewers a foretaste of how far presidential discourse will sink if Kerry becomes president.


Not one voter in 100 would vote against Kerry for trashing his Vietnam War medals when he was 27 years old. What he did with his combat decorations in 1971 has no bearing on whether he is fit to be president today. That long-ago episode is an issue today only because Kerry's versions of it have changed so many times and because it so perfectly typifies his lifelong habit of saying one thing today and something else tomorrow -- and then denying having done so.

So what does Kerry say he did with those medals? As with so many of his shifts and flip-flops, it's all on the record.

Take 1:

Q. Did Kerry throw his combat decorations away in an antiwar protest 33 years ago?

A. Yes. As The Boston Globe reported on April 24, 1971, "John Kerry . . . said before he threw his medals over the fence: `I'm 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.' "

Take 2:

Q. Did Kerry throw his decorations away 33 years ago?

A. Yes. In a Nov. 6, 1971, interview with WRC-TV, he recalled that the protesters had decided to "renounce the symbols which this country gives . . . the medals themselves." When the interviewer asked, "How many did you give back, John?" he answered: "I gave back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine." The interviewer noted that Kerry had won the Bronze and Silver Stars and three Purple Hearts. Kerry: "Well, and above that, I gave back my others."

Take 3:

Q. Did Kerry throw his decorations away 33 years ago?

A. No. In 1984, running for the Senate against a World War II Air Force veteran, he claimed he had refused to do so. "After showing a reporter his medals and ribbons on display in his Back Bay apartment," The Boston Globe reported on Oct. 15, 1984, Kerry "said he had disagreed with other protest leaders on throwing away medals." The medals he was seen tossing, Kerry added, were those of a "veteran from Lincoln [Mass.], at his request."

Take 4:

Q. Did Kerry throw his decorations away 33 years ago?

A. Medals, no; ribbons, yes. During his 1996 reelection campaign, he told the Globe that he only threw the ribbons pinned to his uniform. "Asked why he didn't bring his own medals to throw since it was planned weeks in advance," the Globe reported on Oct. 6, 1996, "Kerry said it was because he didn't have time to go home [to New York] and get them." The medals he was seen tossing, he claimed, belonged to two other veterans -- the one from Lincoln and one from New York. "Kerry says he can't remember their names."

The variations don't end there. For example, his explanation that he "didn't have time to go home and get" the medals -- i.e., he would have trashed them if he could have -- is sharply at odds with his earlier "explanation" to the Boston Herald: "They're my medals. I can do goddam what I want with them."

On Monday's TV show, after being shown the tape of his younger self claiming to have thrown "six, seven, eight, nine" medals onto the trash heap, Kerry heatedly insisted that he had pitched only his ribbons, not his medals. Then he insisted even more heatedly that "ribbons, medals were absolutely interchangeable. . . . there was no distinction . . . I think, to this day, there's no distinction between the two."

Well, if ribbons and medals are identical, then by his own admission he did throw away his medals. So why does he angrily maintain that he didn't?

Kerry could acknowledge that his various statements on the subject are inconsistent. He could apologize for his deception. He could even resort to the Bush Sidestep: "When I was young, I did a lot of foolish things." Instead he attacks the president over his National Guard service -- an assault he has now escalated on the campaign trail -- and accuses ABC of "doing the bidding of the Republican National Committee."

But the questions won't go away just because Kerry snarls at the questioners. By itself, the medals incident matters hardly at all. But as a surrogate for all the issues on which Kerry has ducked and dissembled, it matters very much.

"The candidate who starts each morning by having to explain himself is a goner," the Village Voice remarked in an editorial this week. The Village Voice! If that's what they're saying on the far left, what must be going through the minds of the mainstream?

Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.

[igor]

[integritycounts]

One Fence, Nine Medals, Four Kerrys by Ingrid Langsather


ABC News recently uncovered tape from a November 1971 interview that John Kerry gave to "Viewpoints," a program on WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. It showed Kerry saying he "gave back" up to nine medals of his own on April 23 of that year when, as leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he joined a group that tossed their war medals over a fence at the U.S. Capitol.

But when Kerry ran for the U.S. Senate in 1984, his story about the medals began to change. He then admitted he had tossed away only his ribbons in 1971 and that the medals he tossed had actually belonged to two other veterans. This has been his story between then until now.

Last Friday, April 23--before the 1971 video clip made news--Kerry assured the Los Angeles Times, "I never implied that I did it," in reference to his tossing his medals away. Kerry maintains his story has been consistent since 1971. Readers can make up their own minds.

KERRY #1: 1971

Host: You're looking at a picture of a veteran who is throwing his medal away.

John Kerry: And that was the medals themselves. And so they decided to give them back to their country and . . .

Host: How many did you give back, John?

Kerry: I gave back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine (inaudible).

Host: Well, you were awarded, the Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts.

Kerry: Well, and above that, I gave back my others.

--"Viewpoints," WRC-TV
Nov. 6, 1971

KERRY #2: 1985

"Some criticized him for being unpatriotic when he made a flamboyant show during a Washington war protest of throwing his medals away. When, last year, he acknowledged that he had discarded someone else's, he was crucified for being a hypocrite. 'It's such a personal thing,' he says. 'They're my medals. I'll do what I want with them. And there shouldn't be any expectations about them. It shouldn't be a measurement of anything. People say, "You didn't throw you medals away." Who said I had to? And why should I? It's my business. I did not want to throw my medals away.'"

--The Washington Post
Feb. 21, 1985

KERRY #3: 1996

"[I]n a speech immediately afterward to the veterans, Kerry said: 'This administration forced us to return our medals....' But as it later turned out, the medals Kerry threw were not his own. In his recent interview with the Globe, Kerry added a new twist.

"He says that the two sets of medals he threw had been handed to him by a wounded veteran in a New York VA hospital and by a World War II veteran from Lincoln, Mass., whom he'd met at a fund-raiser. Kerry says he can't remember their names. While he did not throw his own medals (they remain tucked away in a desk at his home in Boston), Kerry says he did throw the ribbons on his uniform that symbolized the medals he had earned. Asked why he didn't bring his own medals to throw since it was planned weeks in advance, Kerry said it was because he 'didn't have time to go home (to New York) and get them.'"

--The Boston Globe
Oct. 6, 1996

KERRY #4: TODAY

Charles Gibson: Well, Senator, I, I was there 33 years ago. I-I saw you throw medals over the fence and we didn't find out 'til later that those were--

Kerry: No, you didn't see me throw. Wrong.

Gibson: --those were someone's medals.

Kerry: Charlie, Charlie, you're wrong. That is not what happened. I threw my ribbons across. And all you have to do is go back and find the file footage.

Gibson: And someone else's medals? And someone else's medals, correct?

Kerry: Later, after, excuse me. Excuse me, Charlie. After the ceremony was over, I had a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart given to me, one Purple Heart by a VA in New York and the Bronze Star by an older veteran on World War II in Massachusetts.

Gibson: But, but--

Kerry: And I threw them over 'cause they asked me to. I never, never--

Gibson: But, Senator, let me, let me come back to this, the thing you just said is that the military makes no distinction--

Kerry: This is a phony controversy.

Gibson: --that the, that the military makes no distinction, that the military makes no distinction between ribbons and medals, but you're the one who made the distinction. In 1984--

Kerry: No. We made no distinction back then, Charlie. We made no distinction in 1971.

Gibson: But, but 1984, Senator, I, I don't want to argue with you--

Kerry: Correct.

Gibson: I just want to question. In 1984 . . . when you were running for the Senate . . .that was the first time that you called someone in from labor because they were upset that you had thrown ribbons away.

Kerry: No, someone from labor--

Gibson: You, you called them in and you made the distinction and said, I didn't throw my medals away, I just threw the ribbons away. You made the distinction.

Kerry: I was asked specifically in greater detail about what took place. And I answered the question truthfully. Which was exactly consistent with what happened in 1971. I mean, Charlie, go back and get the file footage…

Gibson: Is it not fair to draw the inference that when trying to appeal to the anti-war people in 1971, you said, as in that interview, it was the medals, and then when the people who supported the war were giving you political problems, you then said, no, I didn't throw the medals away 13 years later.

Kerry: Charlie, that's the most, with all due respect, that's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. . . .

Gibson: In 1985, you said to the Washington Post, "it is such a personal thing, I did not want to throw my medals away." Then, in 1996, you said to the Boston Globe, "I didn't bring my own medals to throw because I didn't have time to go home and get them." Which one was it? Did you want to throw the medals away or not?

Kerry: That's accurate. I, I've expressed that there was great, sort of, sense of wrenching about the whole thing. Many of us, we had a long argument the night before, Charlie, it's a matter of record, as to how we were going to do it. And the vote was taken. I was not in favor of throwing them over the fence. . . . They voted to throw. I threw my ribbons. I didn't have my medals. It's very simple.

--ABC's "Good Morning America"
April 26, 2004

[lucky]

HUH???????? I am so confused.
_________________
life is great

[Rdtf]

thanks for this link - good stuff. Kerry should not only apologize but donate all of his proceedings he got back then from this piece of trash book (and more) to the homeless shelters or men's group homes, where they are mostly vietnam vets with flashbacks. That's the right, liberal thing to do

[integritycounts]

This was the lie that the media was just starting to question Kerry on, but they stopped themselves....maybe it was Abu Graib the took over.

regardless, Kerry is caught in a lie AGAIN. It is more than trivial...his throwing of Metals was a major story at the time.

He also calls Veterans Monsters, which he should apologize for.

[mtpNY]

[Tom Poole]

[napnip]

[rparrott21]

Got mine working in realplayer,,,