Forgive?

From the Washington Times

Vets refuse to forgive Kerry for Antiwar Acts

The same record Mr. Kerry wields as evidence of his leadership abilities is also used by his harshest critics, who question the severity of the injuries he used to get sent home early and the five medals he garnered in five months.

"If I got three Purple Hearts for three scratches, I'd be embarrassed," said Ted Sampley, who fought in Vietnam and publishes U.S. Veteran Dispatch. He remembers soldiers turning away awards for minor injuries.

Mr. Kerry has said none of his Purple Heart injuries, only one of which removed him from the field for two days, was critical.

After his third Purple Heart, Mr. Kerry requested and was granted permission to return to the United States to work behind a desk in New York. Even while still a Navy man, he began traveling to antiwar rallies with leading war protesters such as Adam Walinsky, a former speechwriter for Robert F. Kennedy.

Mr. Walinsky recalled that Mr. Kerry flew him around the state of New York for several Vietnam Moratorium protests in October 1969.

"He was a guy who had been in the war," he said. "We spent a lot of time talking about the campaign, the presidential campaign and the Vietnam War."

Mr. Kerry has said he did not take part in the protests, but was intrigued by Mr. Walinsky's views about the war. The two men stayed in contact and "became reasonably good friends," Mr. Walinsky said.

Others were shocked by the Naval officer's association with the antiwar movement.

"He gets this cushy job in his hometown, goes around protesting the war, then asks to get out six months early," Mr. Sampley said. "What regulations were busted when Kerry — as a Naval officer and still on the payroll — was flying around protesting the war? And who had to stand in and fight for John Kerry after he left six months early?"

Mr. Sampley recently started a group called Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry. The Web site, which labels the senator "Hanoi John Kerry," has attracted thousands of anti-Kerry e-mails and online postings from other veterans.

In Mr. Kerry's first active-duty assignment, he served in the electrical department of the USS Gridley, a guided-missile frigate supporting the Navy's fleet of carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin.

"I didn't have any real feel for what the heck was going on [in the war]," Mr. Kerry told the Boston Globe in a story last summer, referring to his time on the Gridley.

He then became a commander of a Navy swift boat, which at the time were used to transport sailors to ships in the gulf. Two weeks after beginning his new assignment, the safe job he had picked became much more dangerous when the boats began being used in the Mekong Delta to seek out the Viet Cong and block North Vietnamese supply routes.

"I didn't really want to get involved in the war," the Globe cites Mr. Kerry saying in a 1986 book about Vietnam. "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to do."

Then Lieutenant (j.g.) Kerry got more than he had expected. He was involved in close combat with the Viet Cong, leading to all of his medals.

Questions arose during his 1996 Senate re-election campaign about whether Mr. Kerry deserved the awards, in particular the Silver Star. Accounts of the incident vary, but essentially Mr. Kerry chased down a wounded Viet Cong fighter, killed him and stripped him of the B-40 rocket launcher he had just fired at Mr. Kerry's swift boat.

The Viet Cong fighter had already been wounded by the boat's machine gunner, according to various reports from eyewitnesses, who had "laid down 50 rounds" into the hootch where the man had run to hide and from which Mr. Kerry emerged after applying what some described as the "coup de grace" to the wounded Viet Cong.

Silver Star

From the Fayetteville (NC) Observer

Decoration was not a solo affair, Wolford Says

Staff Sgt. Gerald Wolford received a Silver Star, the Army's third-highest award for valor, Feb. 12 for his performance last spring during a battle in Samawah, Iraq.

When asked about his award, Wolford is quick to note the actions of his cohorts from the 3rd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, during the four-hour battle March 31 and April 1.

He mentions Spc. Cory Christiansen, for example - the gunner who never left the turret despite being nearly shot 23 times. Or Spc. Michael Woodward, a driver, who stayed calm and returned to the fight after taking shrapnel during a rocket-propelled grenade attack.

Spc. Derick Rippee returned to battle, not once but twice. The first time after he was wounded in the grenade attack. The second time was after he passed out in the truck.

"The only reason that I was recognized was because of the work of my guys," Wolford said last week before heading to Oregon on leave.

"Those guys, I don't think, got the recognition they deserved."

<...>

"Once the bullets started flying it was a pretty shocking ordeal," Flippo said. "Everyone pretty much knew this was it." Christiansen saw a truck across the river with a heavy machine gun mounted on the back. Wolford gave the signal to fire.

The fight was on. As the platoon continued toward the second bridge, the Iraqis on the other side of the river shadowed the troops. The second bridge was the primary target because it provided the link over the Euphrates for Highway 8, the main north-south Iraqi highway.

Wolford's vehicle pulled into a little dip in the road. He didn't know that's what the Iraqis had been waiting for.

"Once we got into that position a guy literally popped up in the window with an RPG," Wolford said.

The man fired a grenade that struck the bridge above Wolford's truck. Woodward and Rippee took the brunt of the blast.

Wolford took the injured men to get medical attention. Both came back to the fight. The platoon continued taking fire, even as they were ordered to pull out.

After the battle, Wolford counted the bullet marks around Christiansen's turret. There were 23. "Somebody was looking out for him," he said.

"I had freedom of movement because they were doing their jobs."

Wolford's only injury was a ¼-inch piece of shrapnel that embedded under his right eye.

Heroes are all around you. Read the whole thing.

The Bright and Shining Moment

I would grow tired of examining John Kerry's military career, but since George W. Bush's military experience has been explored thoroughly here it's only fitting that his opponent gets equal time.

Without further ado, from Snopes.com, the defining moment of John Kerry's Vietnam experience:

Kerry earned his Silver Star on 28 February 1969, when he beached his craft and jumped off it with an M-16 rifle in hand to chase and shoot a guerrilla who was running into position to launch a B-40 rocket at Kerry's boat. Contrary to the account quoted above, Kerry did not shoot a "Charlie" who had "fired at the boat and missed," whose "rocket launcher was empty," and who was "already dead or dying" after being "knocked down with a .50 caliber round." Kerry's boat had been hit by a rocket fired by someone else — the guerrilla in question was still armed with a live B-40 and had only been clipped in the leg; when the guerrilla got up to run, Kerry assumed he was getting into position to launch a rocket and shot him:

On Feb. 28, 1969, Kerry's boat received word that a swift boat was being ambushed. As Kerry raced to the scene, his boat became another target, as a Viet Cong B-40 rocket blast shattered a window. Kerry could have ordered his crew to hit the enemy and run. But the skipper had a more aggressive reaction in mind. Beach the boat, Kerry ordered, and the craft's bow was quickly rammed upon the shoreline. Out of the bush appeared a teenager in a loin cloth, clutching a grenade launcher.

An enemy was just feet away, holding a weapon with enough firepower to blow up the boat. Kerry's forward gunner, [Tommy] Belodeau, shot and clipped the Viet Cong in the leg. Then Belodeau's gun jammed, according to other crewmates (Belodeau died in 1997). [Michael] Medeiros tried to fire at the Viet Cong, but he couldn't get a shot off.

In an interview, Kerry added a chilling detail.

"This guy could have dispatched us in a second, but for . . . I'll never be able to explain, we were literally face to face, he with his B-40 rocket and us in our boat, and he didn't pull the trigger. I would not be here today talking to you if he had," Kerry recalled. "And Tommy clipped him, and he started going [down.] I thought it was over."

Instead, the guerrilla got up and started running. "We've got to get him, make sure he doesn't get behind the hut, and then we're in trouble," Kerry recalled.

So Kerry shot and killed the guerrilla. "I don't have a second's question about that, nor does anybody who was with me," he said. "He was running away with a live B-40, and, I thought, poised to turn around and fire it." Asked whether that meant Kerry shot the guerrilla in the back, Kerry said, "No, absolutely not. He was hurt, other guys were shooting from back, side, back. There is no, there is not a scintilla of question in any person's mind who was there [that] this guy was dangerous, he was a combatant, he had an armed weapon."
Another member of the crew confirmed Kerry's account for the Boston Globe and expressed no doubt that Kerry's action had saved both the boat and its crew:

The crewman with the best view of the action was Frederic Short, the man in the tub operating the twin guns. Short had not talked to Kerry for 34 years, until after he was recently contacted by a Globe reporter. Kerry said he had "totally forgotten" Short was on board that day.

Short had joined Kerry's crew just two weeks earlier, as a last-minute replacement, and he was as green as the Arkansas grass of his home. He said he didn't realize that he should have carried an M-16 rifle, figuring the tub's machine guns would be enough. But as Kerry stood face to face with the guerrilla carrying the rocket, Short realized his predicament. With the boat beached and the bow tilted up, a guard rail prevented him from taking aim at the enemy. For a terrifying moment, the guerrilla looked straight at Short with the rocket.

Short believes the guerrilla didn't fire because he was too close and needed to be a suitable distance to hit the boat squarely and avoid ricochet debris. Short tried to protect his skipper.

"I laid in fire with the twin .50s, and he got behind a hootch," recalled Short. "I laid 50 rounds in there, and Mr. Kerry went in. Rounds were coming everywhere. We were getting fire from both sides of the river. It was a canal. We were receiving fire from the opposite bank, also, and there was no way I could bring my guns to bear on that."

Short said there is "no doubt" that Kerry saved the boat and crew. "That was a him-or-us thing, that was a loaded weapon with a shape charge on it . . . It could pierce a tank. I wouldn't have been here talking to you. I probably prayed more up that creek than a Southern Baptist church does in a month."

Charles Gibson, who served on Kerry's boat that day because he was on a one-week indoctrination course, said Kerry's action was dangerous but necessary. "Every day you wake up and say, 'How the hell did we get out of that alive?'" Gibson said. "Kerry was a good leader. He knew what he was doing."
Although Kerry's superiors were somewhat concerned about the issue of his leaving his boat unattended, they nonetheless found his actions courageous and worthy of commendation:

When Kerry returned to his base, his commanding officer, George Elliott, raised an issue with Kerry: the fine line between whether the action merited a medal or a court-martial.

"When [Kerry] came back from the well-publicized action where he beached his boat in middle of ambush and chased a VC around a hootch and ended his life, when [Kerry] came back and I heard his debrief, I said, 'John, I don't know whether you should be court-martialed or given a medal, court-martialed for leaving your ship, your post,'" Elliott recalled in an interview.

"But I ended up writing it up for a Silver Star, which is well deserved, and I have no regrets or second thoughts at all about that," Elliott said. A Silver Star, which the Navy said is its fifth-highest medal, commends distinctive gallantry in action.

Asked why he had raised the issue of a court-martial, Elliott said he did so "half tongue-in-cheek, because there was never any question I wanted him to realize I didn't want him to leave his boat unattended. That was in context of big-ship Navy — my background. A C.O. [commanding officer] never leaves his ship in battle or anything else. I realize this, first of all, it was pretty courageous to turn into an ambush even though you usually find no more than two or three people there. On the other hand, on an operation some time later, down on the very tip of the peninsula, we had lost one boat and several men in a big operation, and they were hit by a lot more than two or three people."

Elliott stressed that he never questioned Kerry's decision to kill the Viet Cong, and he appeared in Boston at Kerry's side during the 1996 Senate race to back up that aspect of Kerry's action.

"I don't think they were exactly ready to court-martial him," said Wade Sanders, who commanded a swift boat that sometimes accompanied Kerry's vessel, and who later became deputy assistant secretary of the Navy. "I can only say from the certainty borne of experience that there must have been some rumbling about, 'What are we going to do with this guy, he turned his boat,' and I can hear the words, 'He endangered his crew.' But from our position, the tactic to take is whatever action is best designed to eliminate the enemy threat, which is what he did."

Indeed, the Silver Star citation makes clear that Kerry's performance on that day was both extraordinary and risky. "With utter disregard for his own safety and the enemy rockets," the citation says, Kerry "again ordered a charge on the enemy, beached his boat only 10 feet from the Viet Cong rocket position and personally led a landing party ashore in pursuit of the enemy . . . The extraordinary daring and personal courage of Lt. Kerry in attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire were responsible for the highly successful mission."

Comments are open. Exercise your right to freedom of speech while you can.

The Second Purple Heart

Continuing with the Snopes account of John Kerry's adventure in Vietnam:

John Kerry earned his second Purple Heart while returning from a PCF mission up the Bo De River on 20 February 1969:

One of the mission's support helicopters had been hit by small-arms fire during the trip up the Bo De and the rest had returned with it to their base to refuel and get the damage inspected. While there the pilots found that they wouldn't be able to return to the Swifts for several more hours. "We therefore had a choice: to wait for what was not a confirmed return by the helos [and] give any snipers more time to set up an ambush for our exit or we could take a chance and exit immediately without any cover," Kerry recorded in his notebook. "We chose the latter."

Just as they moved out onto the Cua Lon, at a junction known for unfriendliness in the past, kaboom! PCF-94 had taken a rocket-propelled grenade round off the port side, fired at them from the far left bank. Kerry felt a piece of hot shrapnel bore into his left leg. With blood running down the deck, the Swift managed to make an otherwise uneventful exit into the Gulf of Thailand, where they rendezvoused with a Coast Guard cutter. The injury Kerry suffered in that action earned his his second Purple Heart.
Brinkley noted that, as in the previous case, "Kerry's wound was not serious enough to require time off from duty."

Comments are open. One question for consideration: would you accept a second Purle Heart for this incident, or would you even report the injury?

Military Justice

Looks like it's "Military Justice Week" in Mudville. With that in mind the following two stories are reposted from their original dates.

The First Cut is the Deepest?

From the Snopes article on whether Kerry earned his medals comes the account of how he received his first Purple Heart. From Douglas Brinkley's history of John Kerry and the Vietnam War:

"It was a half-assed action that hardly qualfied as combat, but it was my first, and that made it very exciting," [Kerry said]. "Three of us, two enlisted men and myself, had stayed up all night in a Boston Whaler [a foam-filled-fiberglass boat] patrolling the shore off a Viet Cong-infested peninsula north of Cam Ranh . . . Most of the night had been spent being scared shitless by fisherman whom we would suddenly creep up on in the darkness. Once, one of the sailors was so startled by two men who surprised us as we came around a corner ten yards from the shore that he actually pulled the trigger on his machine gun. Fortunately for the two men, he had forgotten to switch off the safety . . ."

As it turned out, the two men really were just a pair of innocent fisherman who didn't know where one zone began and the other ended. Their papers were perfectly in order, if their night's fishing over. The fear was that they were VC. Allowing them to continue might have compromised the mission. For the next four hours Kerry's Boston Whaler, using paddles, brought boatloads of fisherman they found in sampans, all operating in a curfew zone, back to the Swift. It was tiring work. "We deposited them with the Swift boat that remained out in the deep water to give us cover," Kerry continued. "Then, very early in the morning, around 2:00 or 3:00, while it was still dark, we proceeded up the tiny inlet between the island and the peninsula to the point designated as our objective. The jungle closed in on us on both sides. It was scary as hell. You could hear yourself breathing. We were almost touching the shore. Suddenly, through the magnified moonlight of the infrared 'starlight scope,' I watched, mesmerized, as a group of sampans glided in toward the shore. We had been briefed that this was a favorite crossing area for VC trafficking contraband."

With its motor turned off, Kerry paddled the Boston Whaler out of the inlet into the beginning of the bay. Simultaneously the Vietnamese pulled their sampans up onto the beach and began to unload something; he couldn't tell what, so he decided to illuminate the proceedings with a flare. The entire sky seemed to explode into daylight. The men from the sampans bolted erect, stiff with shock for only an instant before they sprang for cover like a herd of panicked gazelles Kerry had once seen on TV's Wild Kingdom. "We opened fire," he went on. "The light from the flares started to fade, the air was full of explosions. 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.

"We stayed quiet and low because we did not want to illuminate ourselves at that point," Kerry explained. "In the dead of night, without any knowledge of what kind of force was there, we were not all about to go crawling on the beach to get our asses shot off. We were unprotected; we didn't have ammunition, we didn't have cover, we just weren't prepared for that . . . So we first shot the sampans so that they were destroyed and whatever was in them was destroyed." Then their cover boat warned of a possible VC ambush in the small channel they had to exit through, and Kerry and company departed the area.
The "stinging piece of heat" Kerry felt in his arm had been caused by a piece of shrapnel, a wound for which he was awarded a Purple Heart. The injury was not serious — Brinkley notes that Kerry went on a regular Swift boat patrol the next day with a bandage on his arm, and the Boston Globe quoted William Schachte, who oversaw the mission and went on to become a rear admiral, as recalling that "It was not a very serious wound at all."

Additional posts will cover the subsequent events from the source article. For now, comments are open and the debate is on. Although Mr Kerry would have it otherwise, whether you're military or not you are free to speak out here.

What did you do in the War?

John Edwards hasn't accepted Hugh Hewitt's offer to co-host; looks like the honorable Mr. Edwards has eyes on the VP prize. (Or '08) Two results: 1) John Kerry will cruise without opposition to the Democratic nomination and 2) I had time for a fairly long on-air talk with Hugh (thank you, sir). This being a slow year for news we discussed Blogopoly (Hugh is calling for a boycott because Aaron hasn't created a game piece for him yet).

After exhausting that topic we turned to John Kerry.

Hugh doesn't feel he has the credentials to speak on a veteran's war service (an attitude Terry McAuliffe would do well to adopt) and didn't want that to be the focus of his show. But after my call about 5 other vets/active duty guys called in from all over the country on the same topic, then time ran out on the show.

John Kerry.

Increasingly, mention of Kerry is prefaced with "Of course, no one's questioning his service, it's afterwards..."

Or "That's ancient history!"

Because in addition to "Bush was AWOL" these are the Democrat's campaign slogans this year: "Ancient History" and "Shut up - you never served!"

And so far they seem to be working. A recent Gallup Poll reveals these numbers:

Americans who think Kerry did his duty for his country in Vietnam: 68% Americans who know what Kerry did in Vietnam: 49% Americans aware of Kerry's anti-war activities after he returned from Vietnam: 39%

And it's not ancient history because the man's entire life has been an orchestrated quest for the White House. There are many very good reasons why the Senator from Massachusetts is declaring all that "off the table". But every one of these figures is an insult to military people everywhere.

Because of Kerry's whining, foot stomping demands that no one who hasn't served can question his service. Fair enough, Senator. Now lets begin.

Snopes has posted a brief history of the Senator's Swift Boat service here.

And we're going to look it over together here through the next couple of days.

It could be easy to accuse anyone of "using the left's own tactic" in this issue, but that's not the case. Kerry and McAuliffe opened the door - Bush AWOL was a lie, and the issues about Kerry's service are facts. I'd go so far as to speculate that the Bush/AWOL issue might have been designed to desensitize the public to the coming questions about Kerry's service. They are just starting to emerge, but this issue will grow.

Blogs didn't do much for Dean, but they are going to do a lot for John Kerry. He's just not going to like it.

What did you do in the War, Kerry?

We're going to lower that 61% number. We'll raise the rest.

Life's a Tale Told by an Idiot

Well, at least somes lives are.

HANAU, Germany — A soldier was sentenced Friday to six months in jail and given a bad-conduct discharge for stealing a Humvee while drunk and crashing it through a security gate, then head-butting one military cop and spitting blood into the face of another.

Pfc. Dennis C. Glick Jr., of the 19th Maintenance Company in Hanau, was acquitted on a charge that he later punctured 101 tires on Humvees, 5-ton trucks and other heavy vehicles belonging to the motor pool of 5th Battalion, 7th Air Defense Artillery at Underwood Casern.

Glick pleaded guilty — or was convicted — on five charges, including assault and destruction of government property, stemming from the Humvee incident, which occurred on May 6. The tire-stabbings happened on June 15.

<...>

Glick, who had four months left on his three-year hitch, choked up and sniffled when he read a statement asking for mercy.

“I truly do have battles with alcohol,” he said. “I know my conduct put others in danger and damaged government property. Please let me go and let me start rebuilding my life with the help of my family and friends.”

Glick could have been sentenced to up to 12 years of confinement. He was to begin his six-month sentence Friday night at the Mannheim Confinement Facility.

According to Capt. Chris Graveline, the prosecutor and the senior defense counsel for V Corps, at about 1 a.m. on May 5 Glick took the Humvee and drove through the candy-striped gate and out of Underwood Casern. He drove about 600 meters down the road before stopping, getting out and returning to the gate.

Comments on this story are limited to military members only. Based on the Kerry Rule only military members can comment about the military.

Heh II

If he wasn't in 'Bama in '72, then where was he?

(Hat tip: Scott Ott)

Heh

Leno: "Saddam Hussein said today that he doesn't think America is any safer now that Howard Dean has withdrawn from the presidential race."

Dear Mr. Kerry...

"But the point is that they are not a free people now under us. They are not a free people, and we can not fight communism all over the world, and I think we should have learned that lesson by now." -- John Kerry, address to Congress, 1971

Mr. Kerry, your cry for inaction was largely ignored by America, and communism has nearly vanished as a system of government around the globe.

Still, a few nations and many people suffer under the oppression of communist dictators. My questions for you today are simple: Do you still feel America's strength is inadequate to fight global conflicts, or, if needed, would you be willing to fight communism in Cuba or Korea, at least?

And do you still refute this:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. -- President JOHN F. KENNEDY, inaugural address to the American people, 1961

Leave 'em... Reading

Bravo. A must read (and a brief one). Hemingway would understand.

Update: Scroll to Men in a Time of Terror and curse blogspot!

MilBloggers Ready

MilBlogger Sean from Doc in the Box is packed and ready to go downrange. He hasn't left yet, so here's a chance to say goodbye to a departing troop.

Hook heads out for Afghanistan soon. He's got the itch. (Maybe donate to his BBQ fund while there.)

Send a couple bloggers off in style.

You're Getting Warmer...

A bedtime story

Son: Dad, what is Global Business Network?

Dad: Well son, Global Business Network was created in 1987 around a pool table in a Berkeley, California basement by five friends. These GBN cofounders envisioned a worldwide learning community of organizations and individuals—a network, connected by the open and generous exchange of ideas, "out-of-the-box" scenario thinking, ruthless curiosity, and exciting new information technologies.

Son: Out of the box? Berkeley?

Dad: Yup. Here are the founders:

Peter Schwartz, futurist and business strategist; author of The Art of the Long View, When Good Companies Do Bad Things, and The Long Boom; former head of scenario planning at Royal Dutch/Shell in London, and director of the Strategic Environment Center at SRI International

Jay Ogilvy, author of Living Without a Goal and China's Futures, professor of philosophy at Yale and Williams, and past head of SRI's Values and Lifestyles research

Napier Collyns, networker extraordinaire, a 30-year veteran of Royal Dutch/Shell, responsible for planning, public affairs and human resources

Stewart Brand, writer, futurist, and inventor of ideas; author of The Clock of the Long Now, How Buildings Learn, The Media Lab, and originator of The Long Now Foundation, the Whole Earth Catalog, CoEvolution Quarterly, and The WELL computer network

Lawrence Wilkinson, multi-media innovator; current vice-chair of Oxygen Media and former president of Colossal Pictures

Son: Wow! A philosophy professor, a futurist with the Whole Earth Catalog, a VP of Oprah's company who used to make movies...

Dad: I know. An impressive group. And also instrumental in GBN's creation were several key colleagues in Europe: Kees van der Heijden and Arie de Geus, both former heads of Group Planning at Shell, and Bo Ekman, a consultant and former Volvo executive.

Son: Must be money guys. So, are they making cable TV movies for women?

Dad: Why no. In fact, Schwartz, along with group member Doug Randal, wrote this piece in Wired magazine.

President Kennedy understood that dominating space could mean the difference between a country able to defend itself and one at the mercy of its rivals. In a May 1961 address to Congress, he unveiled Apollo - a 10-year program of federal subsidies aimed at "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth." The president announced the goal, Congress appropriated the funds, scientists and engineers put their noses to the launchpad, and - lo and behold - Neil Armstrong stepped on the lunar surface eight years later.

"The country now faces a similarly dire threat: reliance on foreign oil. Just as President Kennedy responded to Soviet space superiority with a bold commitment, President Bush must respond to the clout of foreign oil by making energy independence a national priority. The president acknowledged as much by touting hydrogen fuel cells in January's State of the Union address. But the $1.2 billion he proposed is a pittance compared to what's needed. Only an Apollo-style effort to replace hydrocarbons with hydrogen can liberate the US to act as a world leader rather than a slave to its appetite for petroleum.

Once upon a time, America's oil addiction was primarily an environmental issue. Hydrocarbons are dirty - befouling the air and water, possibly shifting the climate, and causing losses of biodiversity and precious coastal real estate. In those terms, the argument is largely political, one of environmental cleanliness against economic godliness. The horror of 9/11 changed that forever. Buried in the rubble of the World Trade Center was the myth that America can afford the dire costs of international oil politics. The price of the nation's reliance on crude has included '70s-style economic shocks, Desert Storm-like military adventures, strained relationships with less energy-hungry allies, and now terror on our shores.

George W. Bush arrived in Washington, DC, as a Texan with deep roots in the oil business. In the days following September 11, however, he transformed himself into the National Security President. Today, his ambition to protect the United States from emerging threats overshadows his industry ties. By throwing his power behind hydrogen, Bush would be gambling that, rather than harming Big Oil, he could revitalize the moribund industry. At the same time, he might win support among environmentalists, a group that has felt abandoned by this White House.

Son: Ohhh... they're scientists?

Dad: No. Not at all. Schwartz, cofounder and chairman of Global Business Network, is an "internationally renowned futurist and business strategist. A specialist in scenario planning, he works with corporations and institutions to create alternative perspectives of the future and develop robust strategies for a changing and uncertain world."

Doug Randall is a senior practitioner at GBN with over ten years of scenario planning, business strategy, and sales experience working with large corporations, not-for-profits, universities, and research organizations to address complex business, social, and environmental challenges.

Son: Ohhh... so they're sorta like science fiction writers...

Dad: Well, sort of. But they are hired by businesses to develop plans for possible future scenarios...

Son: Right, science fiction stuff, by guys who can't write well enough to be pros. But they aren't scientists?

Dad: No.

Son: Not Meteorologists?

Dad: Heh. No.

Son: Climatologists...

Dad: No, no...

Son: Chemists or Physicists?

Dad: No. What exactly...

Well, why does the Observer put so much faith in the "Science Fiction" story they supposedly wrote for the Pentagon?

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.. A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

<...>

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

Dad: Well, it's sort of a sensationalistic newspaper...

Son: But why do so many bloggers just take what they read as though it were some sort of scientific proof? I mean really, these guys are saying Nuclear war will result because of...

Dad: Yea I know. Some people will believe anything they read. You've got to watch out. The truth is out there.

Son: And who leaked the report to the Guardian? Do you think maybe the authors got angry when they were laughed at? And how much taxpayer money...

Dad: Bedtime, son.

Update:

Son: Dad, does Tim Blair have more on this story, exposing the Australian press for jumping in; links to earlier, less sensational BBC coverage, and ridiculous new claims from Greenpeace?

Dad: Yes.

Son: Did Tom Tomorrow suddenly add a weak disclaimer on his post saying the report "might" be speculative, even though he knows it is, and then suggested everyone should still have a hard time sleeping?

Dad: Yes.

Son: Calpundit has lots of things posted, but his "global warming" story is almost the hottest thread going. Almost, because the hottest thread is one that says he just doesn't like Bush and can't see how the guy got elected President because he didn't earn it. Do they really care about whether the world ends or do they just hate Bush?

Dad:

Caption Kerry

Captain's Quarters has a great caption contest featuring John Kerry. Go, enter. Don't be afraid, take a jab at Johnny.

Update: After you've had that bit of fun, re-read this post and follow the newly added links at the end. A longer discussion here soon.

Kerry the Hero

Misha & co have a lot to say about Kerry's 'heroics'.

So do these guys.

Any time I think I'm being too hard on ol "cut 'n' run" I remember the bug eyed look on Terry McAuliffe's face when he stared into the camera and said George Bush was AWOL.

I don't know if this stuff will be common knowledge in time to save Edwards from the VP candidacy he seems to be angling for, but it will be known far and wide long before November.

Bring it on.

Jeremy Hinzman

Meet Jeremy Hinzman, a GI making news:

Hinzman, who grew up in Rapid City, S.D., joined the Army in January 2001. The socialist structure of the military appealed to him, he said. He liked the subsidized housing and groceries and, at the end of his service, the money for college.

"It seemed like a good financial decision," he said. And, he said, "I had a romantic vision of what the Army was."

But from the beginning, basic training bothered him. He said he was horrified by the chanting about blood and killing during marches, by the shooting at targets without faces and by what he called the dehumanization of the enemy.

"It's like watching some kind of scary movie, except I was in it," he said. "People would just walk around saying things like, 'Oh, I want to kill somebody.'"

Turns out one of those lucky young bloodthirsty soldiers might just get to kill Jeremy, who, it turns out,

...figured it was only a matter of time before his unit would go to Iraq. He said he felt the war there was unjust and was being fought over oil interests.

"Had we, say, gone to war with North Korea or someone that was an imminent threat, I would have gone along with it," he said. "I signed up to defend our country, not be a pawn in some sort of political ideology."

Which pretty much destroys your shot at Conscientious Objector status, jackass.

Nope, ol' Jeremy's a deserter in time of war.

According to the Toronto Globe and Mail, Hinzman is believed to be the first U.S. soldier filing for refugee status in Canada for refusing duty in Iraq. During the Vietnam War, an estimated 30,000 Americans sought refuge in Canada to avoid compulsory military service.

But there's a huge difference between draft dodging and deserting, and bear in mind this guy was Regular Army, and a volunteer.

Hinzman's chances of receiving refugee status are statistically slim: According to Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board, none of the 268 American applicants last year was accepted. But people who are denied refugee status are not automatically deported; they may be granted permission to stay in Canada under other provisions, said Charles Hawkins, a spokesman for the board.

Though surely President Kerry will pardon him.

(via Wizbang)

Osama Bin Surrounded?

Personally I always thought he was a gelatinous smear on a cave wall.

Blackfive saves me a lot of typing here. Thanks, bro.

Veterans Sound off on Kerry

The number of veterans speaking out against John Kerry continues to grow. FrontPage Magazine reproduces this post from a Marine chat net authored by a retired Marine Master Sergeant. It repeats a lot of my recent questions, and sums up a growing number of veteran's thoughts on JFK's illustrious military career. It's full of great quotes, too. "...hardly in Vietnam long enough to get good tan" is among my favorites. (Think what he'd have earned in a full tour!) This guy missed the angle of Kerry abandoning his command, but we know that one already.

Those who insist on using the "ancient history" clause to ignore Kerry's record should skip forward to the second to last paragraph. (We'll talk later.)

I was in the Delta shortly after John Kerry left. I know that area well. I know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the doctrine used, and I know the equipment. Although I was attached to CTF-116 (PBRs) I spent a fair amount of time with CTF-115 (swift boats), Kerry's command.

Here are my problems and suspicions:

(1) Kerry was in-country less than four months and collected a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. I never heard of anybody with any outfit I worked with (including SEAL One, the Sea Wolves, Riverines and the River Patrol Force) collecting that much hardware that fast, and for such pedestrian actions. The Swifts did a commendable job, but that duty wasn't the worst you could draw. They operated only along the coast and in the major rivers (Bassac and Mekong). The rough stuff in the hot areas was mainly handled by the smaller, faster PBRs.

(2) He collected three Purple Hearts but has no limp. All his injuries were so minor that he lost no time from duty. Amazing luck. Or he was putting himself in for medals every time he bumped his head on the wheel house hatch? Combat on, the boats were almost always at close range. You didn't have minor wounds, at least not often. Not three times in a row. Then he used the three Purple Hearts to request a trip home eight months before the end of his tour. Fishy.

(3) The details of the event for which he was given the Silver Star make no sense at all. Supposedly, a B-40 was fired at the boat and missed. Charlie jumps up with the launcher in his hand, the bow gunner knocks him down with the twin .50, Kerry beaches the boat, jumps off, shoots Charlie, and retreives the launcher. If true, he did everything wrong.
(a) Standard procedure when you took rocket fire was to put your stern to the action and go balls to the wall. A B-40 has the ballistic integrity of a frisbie after about 25 yards, so you put 50 yards or so between you and the beach and begin raking it with your .50's.
(b) Did you ever see anybody get knocked down with a .50 caliber round and get up? The guy was dead or dying. The rocket launcher was empty. There was no reason to go after him (except if you knew he was no danger to you just flopping around in the dust during his last few seconds on earth, and you wanted some derring-do in your after-action report). And we didn't shoot wounded people. We had rules against that, too.
(c) Kerry got off the boat. This was a major breach of standing procedures. Nobody on a boat crew ever got off a boat in a hot area. EVER! The reason was simple: If you had somebody on the beach, your boat was defenseless. It coudn't run and it couldn' t return fire. It was stupid and it put his crew in danger. He should have been relieved and reprimanded. I never heard of any boat crewman ever leaving a boat during or after a firefight.

Something is fishy.

Here we have a JFK wannabe (the guy Halsey wanted to court martial for carelessly losing his boat and getting a couple people killed by running across the bow of a Japanese destroyer) who is hardly in Vietnam long enough to get good tan, collects medals faster than Audie Murphy in a job where lots of medals weren't common, gets sent home eight months early and requests separation from active duty a few months after that so he can run for Congress. In that election, he finds out war heroes don't sell well in Massachsetts in 1970, so he reinvents himself as Jane Fonda, throws his ribbons in the dirt with the cameras running to jump start his political career, gets Stillborn Pell to invite him to address Congress and has Bobby Kennedy's speechwriter to do the heavy lifting. A few years later he winds up in the Senate himself, where he votes against every major defense bill and says the CIA is irrelevant after the Berlin Wall came down. He votes against the Gulf War (a big political mistake since that turned out well), then decides not to make the same mistake twice so votes for invading Iraq -- but that didn't fare as well with the Democrats, so he now says he really didn't mean for Bush to go to war when he voted to allow him to go to war.

I'm real glad you or I never had this guy covering out flanks in Vietnam. I sure don't want him as Commander-in-Chief. I hope that somebody from CTF-115 shows up with some facts challenging Kerry's Vietnam record. I know in my gut it's wildy inflated.

Veterans are deeply divided; while many respect the President, others can't stand John Kerry.

Blogging the President

There may still be a few folks who haven't read Rex Hammock's blog entry about his encounter with the president.

The bottom line from this non-political blogger:

If George W. Bush could spend 25 minutes chatting with everybody in America like he did with me and five other folks today, he would win any election by a landslide.

Which makes reason #500 why Bush should win in a landslide.

For his trouble, Rex has been labeled "a mouthpiece for the Bush regime" - and worse.

IRAN

CNN.com's headline story this morning was on the gay marriage issue in San Francisco.

Those who checked the international edition found a different focus, on a story that at that time received no coverage on the US "front page"

CNN has since toned down it's coverage, backing off the "high turnout" angle and instead announcing "conflicting reports"

The "Blog Iran" folks offer this photographic evidence in support of their claims.

Sharp eyed readers also may have noticed this story from the international page, detailing the concerns of Iranian bloggers

"It will be the end of the blog era in Iran," said a Tehran-based blogger who operates pinkfloydish.com, the name indicative of her love of Western music.

Of course, everyone has their own spin:

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the winner of the election was the Iranian nation. He was upbeat about voter turnout, even though it marked a drop from previous elections.

"The loser of this election is the United States, Zionism and enemies of the Iranian nation," he told state media.

Leave 'em Laughing

If this is true, then for what it's worth and ignoring that he must first beat Edwards, the Kerry people can now paint him as the "center" candidate in a three-man race, Nader, Kerry, Bush.

But if such a race were to be, who would really be the "far-left" candidate?

By the way, Edwards isn't just number two with the Dems, he's number two with google too.

BRAC

Most communities with a military installation nearby take a very nervous interest when talk of closing that installation begins. However, when the DoD looks at ways to save money that topic inevitably comes up.

As you might expect, BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) is a politically charged process. To appreciate what's at stake, note that Lowry Air Force Base was the largest employer in the Denver metro area until its closure in 1994. Many military installations are in or near small or medium size towns that can't absorb such a loss. Thus, when BRAC talk begins, civic groups tend to circle the wagons, concessions are made, deals are cut, and the best and worst of power politics come into play. The DoD, congress, and local communities often have conflicting interests and points of view, and what you see or hear about it is just the tip of the iceberg.

And for every looser there's usually a winner in the process, as many functions of certain bases are transferred to others.

If you fully grasp the ramifications of this, you'll understand why Smash appears to have scored quite a coup for the blogosphere.

The Original "Cut and Run"

Gallup reports that most American's don't know or don't care about "questions raised about George W. Bush's National Guard service". Expect a few pundits to declare that a failure of a Democratic strategy. Perhaps it is.

Or perhaps not. It's a failure unless the object was to get all questions of military service off the table. I'll maintain that's exactly the point. In reality, Bush's service was rather unremarkable, except for the fact that he served at all, and that his service was certainly not in a "cushy job".

And if eliminating the question was the desire, then the ploy was a success. American's don't care. In fact, one possible interpretation of the results would be that Americans will get very tired of hearing about anyone's service very soon.

But another result of the poll says that

Still, there are lingering doubts about Bush's military service more generally. The public is divided as to whether the characteristic or quality, "did his duty for the country during the Vietnam War," applies to Bush: 42% say the statement applies to Bush and 40% say the statement does not apply to him (18% have no opinion). In contrast, 68% say that characteristic or quality applies to Kerry, with 11% saying it does not and 21% not expressing an opinion.

However,

Kerry's wartime activities are unknown to many Americans -- less than half (49%) have heard a great deal or moderate amount about his combat experience in Vietnam. Even fewer, 39%, have heard much about Kerry's anti-war activities after he returned from Vietnam.

So although less than half know anything about Kerry's service, 70% characterize him as having "done his bit".

So, a failed strategy? Hardly. Because it's Kerry's service that bears a bit more scrutiny (though as previously stated, everyone's tired of hearing about that now aren't they?)

I'll rephrase and expand an as-yet unanswered question asked earlier:

Although fully trained and completely fit for duty, Kerry abandoned his command (within the rules) after less then four months, leaving his men to adapt to a new situation at the height of the war. Are there any other examples that any one is aware of where officers took similar actions during the Vietnam war? Or any other conflict?

I maintain that Kerry's choice to "cut and run" with his three purple hearts was a rare event, and not indicative of the mindset of officers then, now, or ever. I've never heard of such a thing, and I have nearly 20 years of active duty and a family with well over a century of service in every branch of the military from 1942 to now. I could be wrong; if this sort of thing were common it could explain a lot of setbacks America sustained during the conflict.

I am aware of one comparison. The officers of the Iraqi army were said to have abandoned their men at the front (they "pulled a Kerry", if you will) prior to onset of ground operations in Desert Storm. This action is cited as a significant reason why the ground war was over before it started.

The Bush team, however, will choose other avenues to illustrate the many failures of John F. Kerry, to include his subsequent anti-war actions. Expect Kerry's handlers to scream "dirty tricks" at this use of their man's actual record:

"The beauty of John Kerry is 32 years of votes and public pronouncements," said Mark McKinnon, the (Bush campaign) chief media adviser. McKinnon suggested a possible tag line: "He's been wrong for 32 years, he's wrong now."

Indeed, but for now our question is this: "Were Kerry's actions in abandoning his command rare or common among American officers in time of war?

Comments are open.

Update: The screaming has begun. And though Bush & co have yet to "attack" Kerry on his actions during or immediately after Vietnam the Dems are insisting that he is. And don't miss this entry at Wizbang.

Comments

It's been brought to my attention that comments were banned from this blog today. An accident on my part, problem now solved. (Thanks Tammi!)

Chief Wiggles

Chief Wiggles is home.

And has a great read for you.

Conflict and Contrast

The Army has issued a press release detailing charges in the case of Ryan G. Anderson, Washington National Guard soldier accused of attempting to supply military intelligence to the al Qaeda terrorist network.

Reading the brief linked story you'll see a portrait of a man with a lot of issues, as they say. As has been noted here before, his willingness to enlist in the Guard as a graduate of a major university certainly indicates a zeal for service to his cause. Determining just what that cause is will be the purpose of his trial.

Since he's innocent until proven guilty we'll refrain from speculating more.

A minor correction to the story, the "Article 132 hearing" is actually an "Article 32 hearing". Surely just a typo made by a reporter in a hurry to get the facts out to the public.

Hat tip to the Strykers, where I also found this story for contrast:

The day before Valentine's Day, Michele Bunda received a delivery of three roses and a card signed by her husband. It said, "I love you, Chris."

It came nearly three weeks after Bremerton resident Christopher Bunda, a highly respected Army staff sergeant with the Fort Lewis-based Stryker brigade, had died during a mission on the Tigris River. He was 29.

The flowers brought his grieving wife Michele to tears. From the battlefield in Iraq, he placed his Valentine's Day order a month early so the flowers would arrive on time.

<...>

On Jan. 25, Christopher Bunda died in the same manner he lived. He thought of someone else before himself.

With members of his A Company, several Iraqi policemen and an interpreter, Bunda went searching for insurgents on the Tigris River. They had been lobbing mortar rounds at U.S. targets the previous few nights.

Riding in an Iraqi police boat, Bunda, a sniper and squad leader, went to scout two islands on the river. Just as the boat passed under low-hanging wires, it ran out of gas.

It then drifted back toward the wires and those in the boat ducked safely under. However, the boat snagged the wires and capsized.

Dumped into the Tigris, Bunda, a top-flight swimmer and a certified diver, attempted to save one of the Iraqis who also fell overboard.

Moments later, however, Bunda, under the weight of his heavy flak vest and helmet, disappeared into the darkness of the mighty river near Mosul, and perished.

Bunda, a native of the Philippines, is survived by his wife, a 6-year old daughter and 3-year old son.

You should read the whole thing.

A Make-Believe World Needs a Make-Believe Iraq

Matthew Yglesias writing in Tapped reveals a shocker: the New York Times is anti-Bush.

With hardly a pause he uncovers another stunning bit of foolishness: Iraq Blogs - written by people who aren't in Iraq!

Maybe I'm unenlightened, but when I want Ground Truth from the real Iraq, I'll check with MilBloggers like Warren, who is now up and blogging as a soldier with the CPA.

Or Deeds. Veteran John Galt has been the source for info on the countdown to handover to the Iraqi's for quite some time now.

Or Healing Iraq, or Iraq the Model...

...or even the guys Glenn Reynolds links here.

Still, some day soon maybe the left will have a blogger in Iraq. From what I hear the place is actually getting to the point where they have a growing Idiotarian class. Surely one of them is literate?

Semi?

Til then, MilBlogs. And thanks for stopping by.

The Tangled Webb

I noted in the "Redux" post below that the media would attempt to portray veterans as "deeply divided" between Bush and Kerry, if they were to be the options for President this November. Former Secretary of the Navy James Webb's USA Today opinion piece is probably an early salvo in that campaign.

James Joyner, the Deacon, and Donald Sensing have done a rather admirable takedown on the piece, and have rather adroitly addressed all the problems I have with it. (Balance to the left, this guy has the opposite opinion of everyone here. You decide.)

Deacon shines a light on the fact that Vietnam veterans will have a specific problem with Kerry because they are Vietnam veterans, but will be as likely to have a problem with Bush as non-veterans. He's right, but I'd add that Webb's point seems to hint that Vietnam vets have earned a right to have their opinion count more then others. There could be arguments made for that point, but I disagree with Webb on that. I think the majority of vets do, too, and likewise they recognize the horrible necessity of the Iraq war.

Joyner hammers the general "war was a failure" angle, a point we will determine some time in the future.

Donald Sensing thoroughly describes the considerable number of other factual inaccuracies in the piece, and counters the remaining talking points.

On reflection, the title of Webb's piece looks barely related to the substance of his post, but again, I think we'll be seeing lots more of that "veterans deeply divided" line in the immediate future.

But it's not true. While that will hopefully be apparent to all long before November the real potential loser of this argument is Edwards. The current talk of Bush vs. Kerry for the military/veteran vote eliminates Edwards from the equation by painting him as unable to compete with Bush on National security issues. After all, who is Kerry running against this week?

If Edwards doesn't attack Kerry on that issue between now and "Super Tuesday" then you can bet the farm that he's running for vice president right now.

A final related note: In addition to the "deeply divided" mantra the "we've lost the war" screed (with variations and mutations) is going to become quite loud in the near future. We are far from "losing" unless you allow the crier considerable leeway to define what constitutes "loss". Time will tell, as the cliché goes.

Over the past 12 months, however, I haven't seen any forecast of the future of Iraq borne out very well. This year "another Beirut" is going to replace last year's prediction for house-to-house fighting, hundreds of thousands of dead, and millions of refugees.

Now that was failed intel.

Two More for the Road

Nearly 500 people have seen the post below and thus far no answers.

But here are a couple more questions. (Almost seems unfair, I know.)

According to official John Kerry press releases,

John Kerry, who served two tours of duty in Vietnam commanding a Swift Boat in the navy, made it clear that as President, keeping faith with veterans would be a personal mission.

And I'm all for the "keeping faith" part. Problem is, according to a Kerry timeline in the Boston Globe:

December 1967: Kerry begins his first tour of duty, serving on the guided-missile frigate USS Gridley.

February 1968: With Kerry aboard, the Gridley sails into war to patrol the coast of Vietnam. He never came into contact with the enemy during this time.

June 6: Kerry's first tour ends as the Gridley returns home.

December: Begins second tour of duty as the skipper of swift boat No. 44, patrolling the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam.

April 1969: Kerry ends his second and final tour in Vietnam.

To be gracious, that's 8 months total, four of which were relatively uneventful, and only one 4-month tour was as a commander of a boat. (And that tour was ended abruptly when Kerry abandoned his command after having received three minor injuries.)

The character of that service is open for discussion in the previous post. The point here is that the quote from Kerry's website "John Kerry, who served two tours of duty in Vietnam commanding a Swift Boat in the navy" is a deceptive one by any reasonable measure. The truth could have been told in very brief sentences, and Mr. Kerry should not be ashamed of the truth.

Is the remainder of the quote true? "...as President, keeping faith with veterans would be a personal mission."

Or just kinda-sorta-approximately true?

Later on in the Globe timeline we learn this:

January 3 1970: Discharged from the Navy.

Feb. 16 1978: Discharged from the US Navy Reserves

An inactive Reserve period? Not if CNN has it right

Military Service: Navy, 1966-1970; Naval Reserves, 1972-1978

That looks like a separate period of service, not a fulfillment of an obligation to inactive Reserve.

Obviously CNN is not a reliable source; no one there knows the difference between active and inactive Reserve status. But if Kerry was in the Reserves I'm not sure why he hasn't released his drill records. My fellow MilBloggers and I would certainly like to see them, I'm sure many other veterans would too. Maybe we could even show the Bush crowd what a real set of military records looks like.

And so my search begins. Of course, Mr. Kerry could save a lot of effort and just release the records now.

Redux

I've asked several subjective questions regarding the past, present, and future John Kerry on this Blog this week. Although over ten thousand visitors have read them, as yet none have been answered with valid support points for Kerry.

Another chance: I've tried to consolidate some of those questions here. I recognize that I'm coming from an anti-Kerry side, but I'd legitimately like to see these answered. To make it easier though, I'll also allow for folks to simply explain why they aren't important.

Any issues with Bush can be addressed in comments elsewhere on this blog. This is about Kerry. Likewise, I'd rather there be no "Kerry bashing" - just honest attempts to answer these questions on his behalf.

Questions:

1) Kerry abandoned his command after 4 months in time of war. He did so under the rules that were in place at the time, so he broke no laws, only faith with those who depended on him. This is unexpected behavior from those in command. Can anyone defend this action in a leader? Would he do the same today?

2) Kerry was defeated in his first run for office. Was his subsequent abrupt change from "Kennedy style patriot" to virulent anti-war activist a shallow move, calculated to appeal to more voters? If not, what life-changing experience did he have that led to this conversion?

3) Did he actually believe the atrocity stories told by the false veterans in Jane Fonda's Winter Soldier group? Or did they fit his world view, so he didn't look too closely into them before repeating them before congress? Or is he just gullible?

4) Is the "flip-flop" issue 30 years old or is it ingrained into his personality? He's also flipped on Iraq, having been forced to recant his vote and dance to Dean's tune when Dean's was the message perceived to be desired by the Democratic Primary voters. Was he tricked into supporting the President originally, or was he tricked into supporting Dean? Or were his motives purely political, and we are left struggling to determine what Kerry's real position is. (His self-defense statements would seem to imply that he feels betrayed by Bush in that the President "had no plan". In other words - "tricked by Bush")

5) Has Kerry finally made up his mind that no one will fool him again?

6) What is the Kerry platform? (Both he and Miss America want "world peace", as do I.)

7) Is he the most extreme left candidate ever to be seriously considered for President of the United States of America? If not, who was?

8) The media wants to convince America that John Kerry represents a generation of Vietnam Veterans. Does he? Or does he represent a generation of draft dodgers who have found a veteran they can respect?

I believe that the military-related arguments above will be tabled under the weight of truth spoken by several generations of veterans all around this country. This may happen before Kerry secures the Democratic nomination. I also believe the media coverage will focus on the small minority of those who support Kerry, or at least attempt to portray some sort of one-to-one "deeply divided" ratio. Again, the truth will be available in VFW halls and military clubs around America.

Will America get the message?

These are subjective questions, but the answers matter, as we are discussing whether or not this man should have our support in his quest to be the most powerful man in the world.

And by the way, would Kerry abdicate that power to another group?

Comments are open. 112402

Afghanistan's Hungry Hookers

Looks like Hook is moving ever closer to moving. I first posted this some time ago, but it's time to re-launch.

You may note the absence of a paypal button on this site. Some day I may need one, until then I yield to the many fine charities I've linked in the sidebar.

But now for something completely different.

I'm going to link to a post from Sgt Hook detailing why he now has a paypal button.

All proceeds will go to the Sgt Hook morale fund which will be used to help keep morale up for my soldiers once we get to Afghanistan. I'm hoping to have a BBQ each weekend we are there so that they can enjoy a little down time and count down "52" BBQs until we are mission complete.

You can also buy merchandise, but to really maximize the benefit to Hook's troops I recommend the paypal button on his sidebar.

Note to my fellow MilBloggers - I hit Hook's Paypal tip jar (using my real name, thou shalt not tell, Hook.) and I challenge the rest of you to do so also. (Yes, we did just survive Christmas.) I think among all of us we can certainly afford to buy Hook's gang at least one BBQ.

And I've made another link banner to keep in permanent position on my sidebar while he's deployed.

Leave 'em Laughing?

Help: I'm trapped in an endless loop... (and truth is stranger than fiction, but Kerry blurs the lines).

The Kerry statement on NASCAR was another flip-flop for him. Thanks Scott, for tying together about three threads I've been running here into one tidy package. (Those who've been here a few times or followed the Instapundit links here this week will appreciate this more.)

And I'm doing other topics, and linking other people tomorrow. If Kerry would just keep his mouth shut one day, and Hewitt would just not play tapes of him...

Making History

"We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Iraq? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? But we are trying to do that, and we are doing it with thousands of rationalizations, and if you read carefully the President's last speech to the people of this country you can see that he says clearly:

"But the issue, gentlemen, the issue is al Qaeda, and the question is whether or not we will leave that country to al Qaeda."

But the point is that they are not a free people now under us. They are not a free people, and we can not fight al Qaeda all over the world, and I think we should have learned that lesson by now."

John Kerry's 1971 speech to Congress, but Hugh Hewitt changed Kerry's words, substituting Al Qaeda for Communism and Iraq for Vietnam. But to be fair, he said so. And to be fair, in the recording the voiceover sounds nothing like Kerry. An obvious "makeover" of history, with a purpose: to make people think. Would Kerry say those words today? The Kerry of 30 years ago hardly matters today, unless it's the same fundamental man that stands before us now, asking us to help make him the most powerful man in the world. Hugh asked the question of several callers, none took the question on, but they got the point.

Josh Marshall was one of those on the show. He's got an interesting bit on his website:

Knocked on his heels by increasing evidence that he willfully deceived the American public, President Bush is off to a new strategy of spreading around the blame. Let's call it the anti-buck gambit. Don't pass the buck. Just get an M-80, light it, put it over in the corner with the buck on top of it. Then no more buck, no more problem.

In any case, back to our story. The new line is, well, okay maybe we were wrong. But everyone else was wrong too. So who's gonna cast the first stone.

He's referencing this piece from Reuters that includes this quote:

"My administration looked at the intelligence and we saw a danger. Members of Congress looked at the same intelligence, and they saw a danger. The United Nations Security Council looked at the intelligence and it saw a danger. We reached a reasonable conclusion that Saddam Hussein was a danger."

Josh isn't stupid, far from it. Does he think his readers are? For he's decided to re-write history too, just like Hugh did, but unfortunately doesn't announce the deception. First he pretends the President was referring to WMD when he said danger. Put one foot in Marshalls land of make-believe and allow that it's so. It's not, but the numbers of people who've expressed convictions that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and/or the capability to produce them includes every politician on both sides of the aisle in America and most other nations of the world.

The President isn't saying anything new, nor is he passing the buck. He's making a statement of historical fact, and his context is not one of blame. Again, the left tends to assign their own motives to others.

And to build a fantasy world in which to live. A world of convenience, where Bush stole the election, there was no 911, and there were no elections in 2002. Good is relative, truth is maleable, crime is an opinion, and France was our bestest friend ever.

And from that world they will vote in November.

And hope that those of us in the real world do not.

Meme? No, Me Me Me.

An interesting offer to John Edwards from Hugh Hewitt.

Would Hugh make the same offer; three hours a day to the droning monotone of "me" that is John Kerry?

And yes, I'm aware of the unfairness of judging a man by the mere sound of his voice, but I've never heard a person exude self-convinced superiority quite the way Kerry does. (See Hugh's previous post to the one above.) The Doonesbury strips had him nailed in '71, the testimony Hugh broadcast last night bore it out, and the more recent examples show he hasn't changed a bit.

Like it or love it, I think Dubya's folksy style of speech is for real, ingrained from years of Texas and months in 'Bama that couldn't be erased at Yale. Likewise I think Kerry's haughty tone is for real, though perhaps amplified by his time at Yale. And his newly adopted (?) third-person style (the royal "we") suits him quite well.

But would mere "royal" status satisfy the new JFK?

He believes that we need a President who will lead the nations of the world into a new era of security, freedom, and peace.

Kerry might have problems with the new Mel Gibson movie when he discovers he has competition as messiah, too.

A Relentless Campaigner and a Man on the Run

Blackfive points out Phil Carter's recent bit in the Trib. (Congrats on getting ink, Phil, though it was pretty lame of them not to link or mention your blog).

The Paratroop of Love also notes that no has one responded yet. Well, Phil didn't send out notices (not to me at least) and the rest of us were busy pointing out the fallacies of those types of argument anyway. Since the piece is dated Feb 15, and since it sounds a bit like an earlier entry in Intel Dump I'll assume the writing was done before the White House "released everything." Thus to address it would be chasing the tail, since there are several subsequent entries on this blog (here and here, to include comments) and others that detail how that sieve of a story doesn't hold a drop of water now.

Or does it? As predicted (and rather well documented) here, the media will reference "questions being raised" without noting they were subsequently answered from now 'til November. And without asking some other questions (more on those in a minute).

And if it's not obvious, look which version of the story is in a major metropolitan daily and which is known only to the entire US military past and present, and the good folks who read blogs.

Phil Carter's not stupid; he is a student at UCLA, after all. He does know most American's don't understand Guard service and the records keeping for it. Phil desires to appear as though he's giving the President a chance at redemption, but he knows better. If you're a Kerry man Phil, admit it. (As we say in the MilBlogs Ring: "Members are aware of the likelihood of difference of opinions between fellow members, and although we may not agree with each other on everything we say we will fight for the rights of each other to say it. We mean that literally.")

Ignoring the "lifetime ago" aspect of the events (which you did), your argument is weak (apples, oranges, and a lot of speculation) when applied to Bush, but ironclad evidence of "unfit for command" when applied to Kerry. He took an "easy out" and abandoned the men who depended on his leadership with three admittedly "low-grade" injury Purple Hearts during the height of the war. Yes, that was "within the rules" but I challenge any military leader to defend the action here.

That's not "Intel" dumped on Chicago. But thanks for opening that door.

Leave 'em Laughing

Gotta hit the link at Tim Blair's. See #1 GI Joe with Kung Fu grip!

Sacre bleu! C'est le scandale du jour!

This is an example of feeble attack journalism from the right.

McCain: Hanoi Hilton Guards Taunted POWs With Kerry's Testimony

These days, former Vietnam War POW Sen. John McCain has nothing but praise for his fellow Vietnam veteran Sen. John Kerry, the Democrats' current presidential front-runner.

But after he was released from the Hanoi Hilton in 1973, McCain publicly complained that testimony by Kerry and others before J. William Fulbright's Senate Foreign Relations Committee was "the most effective propaganda [my North Vietnamese captors] had to use against us."

"They used Senator Fulbright a great deal," McCain wrote in the May 14, 1973, issue of U.S. News & World Report. While he was languishing in a North Vietnamese prison cell, Kerry was telling the Fulbright committee that U.S. soldiers were committing war crimes in Vietnam as a matter of course.

Sen. Ted Kennedy, a key Kerry presidential backer, was "quoted again and again" by jailers at the Hanoi Hilton, McCain said.

A careful read of the whole thing will reveal no quotes from McCain, either supporting the headline or the first line of the story. So if there was such a quote, they dropped the ball.

Unless the goal is to get McCain to make a statement on his current opinion. A statement that many might not want to hear. (Yea, I loose sleep over this one. Thanks Glenn.)

Really, there's plenty of real stories to look into on Kerry.

Like his