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Eric, if you believe Bush has released all his records, I’ve got some South Florida land you might be interested in. I mean, just take a look at Kerry’s site. He’s got volumes of documents Bush has a few pages at best. You can actually tell Kerry went into combat from his. From Bush’s you can actually tell that he went into the base dentist’s office, and that’s about it! Even if Kerry’s releases aren’t everything, Bush’s are about nil. And they don’t discredit the assertion that Bush did not show up for much of his service.

Most importantly, Kerry actually has the life experience required to say the words “When I was in Vietnam…”. There’s a former Lieutenant Governor of Texas who has said that he used his influence to get Bush a National Guard slot. If so, if Bush did not get that slot on his own merits, there may just be a name on a wall somewhere that didn’t have to be there.

I can say with pride that my candidate did not put somebody’s name on a wall in order to stay home. That in his service, he did his best to make sure the men that served under him didn’t end up there. That when he got home, he did his best, having seen the war first hand, to make sure no other names were added to that wall. There have been hurt feelings about how he kept those names off the black stone wall in Washington, but in the end, he worked to save the lives of Americans.

Bush did not. He never made terrorism the priority that might have made a difference. He sent our troops into harms way without facts and truth to back them up, much less the number of allies and the amount of international support that would have saved their lives. Someday another wall will go up in washington, with names written into it, and another generation will ask us, why didn’t this president take greater care?

The answer will be plain: Because this president has never had to count the cost of his beliefs in his own blood, or that of his friends. It may not have come in a gushing spray, but Kerry has shed blood for this country, and most definitely has seen or has known those who died in the war. In fact, his short time in the Swiftboats is booked ended by two deaths. It is His friend Richard Pershing’s death in combat that leads Kerry to seek more dangerous duty. Only days after he leaves, the Captain of PCF-43, Donald Droz, dies in a ambush that utterly destroys his boat.

He was told that the point of all the raids, all the ambushes, and all the other things was to prove that the VC could not push us around, to fly the flag and impress that fact upon them by force. Yet the SEALORDS campaign never held the ground it was supposed to claim. It was just a matter of sending boats upriver, letting them get ambushed, having our fire back and pile up body counts. That strategy worked on our body counts too. Sent them high. And for what? So they could go patrol the next day and have to take that ground again?

A victory that doesn’t last or doesn’t make a difference is much worse for morale than a simple defeat. It takes away your purpose to fight an enemy that doesn’t seem to weaken despite one victory on your side after another. Resolve isn’t enough. The enemy can use your resolve to grind away at you, and wear away your will and ability to win. What one needed to do was get these people in a position where they were the ones grinding away resources without results, where they were the ones spending political capital while we gained it. Unfortunately, we made it into a test of endurance, which being the foreign power supporting its own war, we could not win.

“George Bush released all the records pertaining to his military service
why won’t Kerry do the same?”

Eric, you’ve gotta stop spouting off this BS — it’s just not true. George Bush very clearly HAS NOT released all pertinent information in his military records, nor has he himself come clean in speaking on the issue. Does he have something to hide? Is he afraid that he will walk right into a lie if he actually has to account for his whereabouts during his service?

Personally, I’m sick of questioning military records. I’d rather this campaign focus on actual ISSUES. But when you try and turn the issue of military service around on Kerry it is so beyond ridiculous.

I mean let’s be real for a moment: Kerry went to Vietnam, Bush did not. Kerry earned medals, Bush did not. This much is fact. This much is indisputable. This is what the issue looks like when you boil down through all the BS.

There is NO LEGITIMATE REASON that you guys are belaboring the issue of military service. The only reason it’s an issue at all is because Karl Rove is making it an issue — Kerry’s legitimate service poses a threat to the Bush campaign and Rove needs to construct public doubt through his scumbag smear tactics.

Eric, I’m afraid in this case you are just another one [wording deleted for violating our Critique the Message, not the Messenger policy — WatchBlog Manager] in line with Rove’s whitewashing and propaganda.

I think everyone should forget about John Kerry’s medals and focus on what he did and said after the war. That’s the issue, not whether he served honorably (he did).

In his antics after the war, he spoke to every camera he could find as if what he was saying was the norm, not the exception. He dishonored many men serving and was one of many that contributed to a “feeling” within the country that led many innocent and honorable veterans to feel unwelcomed when they finally came home.
A liberal will nuance and spin his actions after the war to death, but what he did after the war was shameful.

As for you Stephen…. ahem…… nevermind.

Eric, you’ve got it right. If you listen to Senator Kerry’s comments on the campaign trail, you’d swear that he reached his zenith 40 years ago and not much has happened since then. It’s a little like Al Bundy recalling his glory days on the gridiron in high school.

I said earlier that I now believe this whole “when I was in Vietnam” thing is Senator Kerry’s way of keeping national attention away from his congressional record for as long as possible. I’m afraid that the swift boat guys are his unwitting enablers in that effort.

C’mon, Al Mr. Kerry, give it a rest.

I believe I visited your site, I know what you want to say. All I can say is God bless you, but you really don’t know me.

As for whether Kerry somehow magically turned everybody against the war, I think that’s inaccurate. By that time, the Pentagon papers had been published. By that Time, average political opinion was so much against the war, that even Republicans were running on a platform that involved ending the war. To say that Kerry somehow magically changed everybody’s opinion of it from unquestioning support is misleading.

No, what the Republicans were doing was vacillating. They wanted an exit from Vietnam, but weren’t willing to admit that Vietnam was a albatross around America’s neck that just needed to be thrown off.

Truth was, we had no position of strength. We had squandered and snuffed out support among the South Vietnamese, we had spent tens of thousands of American lives to make just about no difference in the long run. We would not have been withdrawing if there was a position of strength. We would not have been handing the Vietnamese the war, if we thought we could fight it better ourselves. By the time Kerry came along, we had already lost 38,000 men. By that time, the Pentagon Papers had already been published, revealing the deceptive behavior of the government towards the public, and the truly sorry state of the war.

Kerry was just said to people, there won’t be a miracle to save this war we know was a mistake to begin with.

I guess this is what I think your people miss: protests are symptoms more than they are causes. There are all kinds of pent up emotions that have to get stored up before average people will publically protest.

Which is why Bush should worry that hundreds of thousands of people would be willing to protest him. Hundreds of thousands. Hell, I saw the photos- Lord, people stretched for block.
How badly must Bush have pissed them off that they are willing to do that?

wasn’t there a report out recently stating that the key documents pertaining to Bush’s military service were destroyed in fire or something?

it was very shady….but clearly indicates that all of his records have not been disclosed…primarily because according to the state department, they no longer exist.

Very well said, Stephen. I was 21 when Kerry spoke before Congress, and after living through the 67 riots in Detroit, I had become an attentive 21 year old regarding news and politics, especially that having anything to do with Viet Nam.

The protests against the war were already well developed by 1968. The sentiment against the war had turned in this country by the end of 1969. The body bags were piling up, and the worn out message that we were winning, no longer held water for those who hung on such words in the hopes that their fathers, brothers, and sons, would not be another casualty in S.E. Asia. Such words were discovered to hold no protection against the endless stream of body bags returning to the states.

By 1969, we already had vets returning telling their stories of the horrors taking place over there. Every head shop in the country had underground newspapers covering returning vet stories because the main media would not give air to them. But, even mainstream media finally relented and began covering the vets stories about the lack of progress and horrors of the war by 1970. Evening TV news show anchors began making the war a prominent issue. The marches on Washington heralded vets against the war, and all this before 1971 when Kerry merely echoed what had been said by so many before.

What is telling about Kerry’s Congressional remarks is the fact that Republicans and Democrats alike sitting at the bench conducting the hearings praised Kerry for coming forth, praised Kerry for his testimony, and indeed, asked his opinions as to what THEY, Congress should do.

Many folks in this column and elsewhere, either due to youth and lack of historical experience, or a desire to rewrite history to support their present desires, simply do not have a desire to recognize that Kerry’s testimony before Congress was both invited, welcomed, and needed by our country. And it did indeed, in a nation so divided, at the time, take courage to stand up and speak for a halt to an endeavor in S.E. Asia that was killing and maiming 200,000 Americans, a majority of which had not even volunteered to fight that war.

>>In his antics after the war, he spoke to every camera he could find as if what he was saying was the norm, not the exception. He dishonored many men serving and was one of many that contributed to a “feeling” within the country that led many innocent and honorable veterans to feel unwelcomed when they finally came home.
A liberal will nuance and spin his actions after the war to death, but what he did after the war was shameful.

I can’t even fathom the ridiculousness of this argument. “Shameful”? How exactly did Kerry “dishonor” many men? By holding an opinion that was unpopular with them? Standing up for what YOU think is right dishonors no one.

And putting the blame on Kerry for contributing to anti-veteran sentiment is absurd. You can’t just sugarcoat a war under the pretenses that any dissent dishonors soldiers. It comes with the territory. The dissent is against the policy, not the soldiers, and it’s only those people that don’t differentiate the two that are to blame.

Blind patriotism and flagwaving dishonors the soldiers much more than healthy discourse and debate — the values for which the soldiers (in theory) ought to be fighting in the first place.

> George Bush released all the records
> pertaining to his military service

Eric, I will join the chorus of voices calling you on this whopper of a falsehood. Bush has released almost nothing regarding his military service. How can you write such a thing and still look at yourself in the mirror?

-Cf

Well, it’s my understanding that Kerry has not released ALL of his records, nor has he signed form 180 to allow the military for others to access his military records.

“Has he signed the form?” he asked. “No. What he’s signed is his release of privacy to the United States Navy to turn over his entire military record and he’s posted it up on his Web site, so the whole world can see his entire military record.”

Mr. O’Neill, though, said the campaign has acknowledged in the past it that has withheld some records.

“That’s a lie or a carefully calculated set of words,” he said yesterday in a telephone interview. “He continues to conceal, for example, his medical records. He’s provided virtually none of his medical records, only an interpretation of them by a friendly physician.”

Mr. O’Neill said the key is Standard Form 180, which, if Mr. Kerry signed it, would let reporters or anyone else write the Defense Department to ask for all of his military records.

“If he executes Standard Form 180, he would no longer be the gatekeeper, the gatekeeper would be the U.S. military.” washingtontimes

cf-

Bush has released almost nothing regarding his military service.

Let’s see, the democratic party officials, including several candidates for President, call Bush a deserter and AWOL and immediately the press begins hounding Bush for answers to why he wasn’t there. Bush releases tons of documents detailing the times and dates of where he was and when, some are missing they say, but are later found and released:

The Pentagon on Friday released payroll records from President Bush’s 1972 service in the Alabama National Guard, saying its earlier contention the records were destroyed was an “inadvertent oversight.” The records cover July through September of 1972, when Bush was working as a campaign volunteer in Alabama. The future president had been transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama unit so he could stay in Alabama. abcnews

The idea that at the end of the war in Vietnam, which Kerry so valiantly helped persuade was all a war crime, and all Veterans war criminals, that George Bush went AWOL is a little ridiculous. When it was obvious #1 that he would not be sent to Vietnam, and #2 that Kerry did something very similiar after he returned. It appears that Kerry was in fact still in the Navy while calling his fellow veterans war criminals.

It also seems likely that some of Bush’s adversaries used the Guard issue as a way to get at other questions about the president. The Guard record was said to have a bearing on Bush’s credibility, on the war in Iraq, on his fitness to lead. In addition, some journalists were nearly obsessed with forcing the president to release medical records from his time in the Guard because they hoped those records might reveal some evidence of drug use. The White House did not release the full set of medical records but did allow reporters to view them; the documents were entirely unexceptional and contained nothing about drug use.

While all that was going on, both the White House and the Bush reelection campaign seemed consistently to underestimate the ferocity and resolve of the president’s adversaries. For weeks, as the controversy grew, the president did nothing to defend himself. Those who wanted to speak up in his defense, like William Campenni and Bob Harmon, were not contacted by the White House; instead, they decided to go public on their own. Even when John Calhoun, the man who remembers Bush in Alabama, sent the White House an e-mail saying he had useful information, he received a stock response, without any indication the White House was interested in what he had to say. national review

Eric, so you’re saying that your two contentions that a) Kerry has not released ALL of his records and b) that the Democrats’ AWOL accusations were unfair, that that’s all the justification you need to be allowed to get away with saying, falsely, that Bush did release all of his records? Payroll records don’t consitute “all”, not by a long shot. And not one of these few records is posted up on the Bush campaign’s web site. Not one.

Has anyone considered the possibility that maybe Kerry’s medical records might contain private stuff that he doesn’t want to share with the world, like maybe one of the peices of shrapnel he had been hit with might have damaged him in an intimate location? What man would want something like that released? It’s bad enough that right-wing web sites already ridicule the man for having had prostate cancer. Should he subject himself to even more of that kind of vicious right-wing personal attacks? No, he should not.

When has any presidential candidate ever released their medical records to the world? Never. Even Bush only let reporters view them, but not to examine them. Who knows if they were complete? And, it should be obvious, that Bush’s records probably do not provide any gory details about combat injuries.

Has Bush signed form 180? No.

This whole issue of Kerry’s “incomplete” records is a hypocritical crock at every level.

-Cf

Thank You, Eric!

You’ve offered up another inconsequential, but strident entry on Kerry’s war record, relying on dubious sources (the Washington Times?), again side stepping pointed responses from Christopher and David.

Which led me to a Google search of ‘Bush’s war record’, and thanks to you, I hit the mother lode!

Of course, you’ll immediately have a problem with it’s name - awolbush.com - but, it is chock full of information, sources, pdf files and links, a good investigative site similar to Media Matters.org and FactCheck.org, should have.

This linked page:

Service Records of Kerry vs. Bush

Details at the bottom, what is missing from Bush’s Natl Guard Service record.

Enjoy!!

I wonder how many here questioning Kerry’s actions following his return from Vietnam recall the climate of the day. I wonder how many were even alive.

As Kerry’s foes and supporters strive to interpret his words and motives in 2004, many do so without understanding or appreciating what was happening in our nation at that point in time. When viewed outside the context of the political and social realities of 1971, Kerry’s testimony is an anachromism.

A thorough reading of the entire testimony, including the fawning comments of the members of the Senate Committee, gives some sense of the political undercurrents surging through Washington and the nation at the time of Kerry’s speech. But even that fails to give a full picture.

I wish I knew of a source that put Kerry’s testimony, and our withdrawal from the Vietnam War, in the proper historical context. Anyone?

The media studied George Bush’s military record in the last election. They found that he served with no distinction, but fulfilled his obligations and received an honorable discharge. That’s all you can really say about it. Being AWOL is a specific charge. You can’t just be AWOL; you have to be declared AWOL. It is not a philosophical problem or something you can speculate about. If you find no record of him being AWOL he was not, no matter what anyone thinks or says.

If George Bush referred to incidents that happened during his guard service, the media and others would have the right to question details. BUT he doesn’t. He neither reports life-changing events from that time, nor tells us that his brief time in uniform is what qualifies him to be president. There is no story here.

If John Kerry had left his memories of Vietnam alone, there would be no reason to dig into them. Unfortunately, he brings it up and uses Vietnam as an offensive weapon. An analogy might be a college course you took years ago. Nobody would feel they had to check your grades or look at your term paper under normal circumstances. But if you and I were competing for a job and you told me that you should get it mainly because of that course, I think I would like to have a look at your transcript. Kerry has brought his experience 35 years ago into the present. That gives his opponents the right to question it. I think John Kerry was a hero. I don’t think it is good to dig into his past. Memories fade. Some people would look critically into Kerry’s past no matter what. But the only reason it is a big story it has become because Kerry himself has made it so.

SwiftVets surfaced about May 2004. The Democratic convention was a few weeks ago. It takes months to publish a book. SwiftVets came out with it about a month ago.

I think it’s highly unlikely that Kerry provoked this, since it was going on long before the convention. The error of that statement is called Post hoc ergo propter hoc- After this, therefore because of this. Reality is, They were planning this long before Kerry saluted the Democratic convention floor.

Swift vets were working against John Kerry before the convention, but it was his emphasis on Vietnam that gave power to their attacks. Besides, he was saluting and telling war stories long before the convention. I remember when he med Wesley Clark and said something like, “the U.S. Navy reporting”. How silly is that, anyway, for a grown man to act.

Without Senator Kerry’s complicity, doubts about his service would make as much difference as doubts about George Bush’s or Bill Clinton’s made to them. It might have been an irritant, but would not be standing at center stage.

Stephen,

I think it’s highly unlikely that Kerry provoked this, since it was going on long before the convention. The error of that statement is called Post hoc ergo propter hoc- After this, therefore because of this. Reality is, They were planning this long before Kerry saluted the Democratic convention floor.

You’re only partially right Stephen, you’d have a point but Kerry provoked it long before the convention. In fact it goes back to the ‘approved’ biography Tour of Duty and the democratic primaries. Some of the Swift Vets couldn’t believe the version of Kerry’s events for some of these events. I think John O’Neil said they started when they realized Kerry would win the nomination. Which if you recall was very early.

A thorough reading of the entire testimony, including the fawning comments of the members of the Senate Committee, gives some sense of the political undercurrents surging through Washington and the nation at the time of Kerry’s speech. But even that fails to give a full picture.

Thanks, Jerome, for raising a very important point. I’ve thought about this often, especially during the past few weeks. I fear that ignorance of those times may cause us to repeat them.

It was a scary time and I was genuinely concerned that the whole country would be destroyed…no exaggeration. Instead of a nation of laws, we became a nation of protests and violence. Campuses, power plants and other facilities were taken over, some were bombed and people were killed. Mobs shouted things like “Kill the pigs!” and “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many babies did you kill today?” in cities all over the country.

As a military type at the time, I felt threatened every day and took precautions to protect myself and my family; we tried to keep a low profile and I rarely wore my uniform in public. People like Kerry, Fonda, and others did us no favors at all. And now, because he has chosen to take us all back to what he apparently considers to be his finest hour, Kerry has opened this whole can of worms again.

I guess that’s why what I’m seeing on the streets of New York and other cities today really worries me. Once again, I see that free speech is fine, but only if it’s the free speech of a mob. The ballot box and democracy are at best secondary to many of these people.

I lived through this ignorance and intolerance forty years ago and now here we go again. Elections don’t count unless their guy wins. If you can’t win at the ballot box then demand something else.

It’s starting to get scary again.

Hi, I noticed you were talking about Prostate Cancer at this site
Please feel free to submit your site to shdir.com (if im mistaken, im very sorry, it’s a semi-auto program to find relevant sites ;-)