Kerry's "Botched" Joke

[Backstop]

What a fracking jerkoff.

Go "botch" in France, will ya?

FoxNews.Com-We Report. You Decide.

Kerry Reloads in Dogfight Over Snipe at Troops in Iraq
Tuesday , October 31, 2006

WASHINGTON — Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry defiantly and in no uncertain terms declared Tuesday that he would "apologize to no one" for statements made a day earlier in which he told a gathering of California college students that if they don't do well in school, they will "get stuck in Iraq."

"I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and his broken policy," Kerry told reporters in a press conference in Seattle. "My statement yesterday, and the White House knows this full-well, was a botched joke about the president and the president's people and not about the troops."

"Shame on them, shame on them," Kerry said of the Bush administration, which he charged is afraid to debate "real men."

Video: Click here to watch Kerry's statement.

Kerry's bitter words for the administration were sparked by his own comments a day earlier to a group of students during a campaign stop at Pasadena City College for California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides.

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq," he said.

That remark spread like wildfire across the World Wide Web.

President Bush weighed in on the slight in remarks at a Georgia Victory 2006 rally scheduled Tuesday evening.

"The senator's suggestion that the men and women of our military are somehow uneducated is insulting and shameful. The members of the United States military are plenty smart and they are plenty brave, and the senator from Massachusetts owes them an apology," Bush said.

"Whatever party you're in in America, our troops deserve the full support of our government," he said.

White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters at his daily briefing Tuesday that Kerry's comments are emblematic of his disdain for the military.

"What Sen. Kerry ought to do first is apologize to the troops," Snow said of Kerry's remarks. "The clear implication here is, if you flunk out, if you don't study hard, if you don't do your homework, if you don't make an effort to be smart, and you don't do well you, quote, 'Get stuck in Iraq.' "

"An extraordinary thing has happened since Sept. 11, which is a lot of people, America's finest, have willingly agreed to volunteer their services in a mission that they know is dangerous but is also important," Snow added.

Kerry, speaking to reporters in Seattle, responded by repeating much of what he said earlier in the day in a statement issued immediately after Snow's press briefing.

"I am sick and tired of a bunch of despicable Republicans who will not take responsibility for their own mistakes," Kerry said. "Enough is enough. We are not going to stand for this. ... The American people are going to take this to the polls next Tuesday."

"This administration has given us a Katrina foreign policy: mistake upon mistake upon mistake; unwilling to give our troops the armor that they need; unwilling to have enough troops in place; unwilling to give them the Humvees that they deserve to protect them; unwilling to have a coalition that is adequate to be able to defend our interests," he added.

Kerry claimed in making his "botched joke," he was referring to the administration's failure to study Iraq and its decision to go to war.

He warned reporters that he'd learned the Republican campaign strategy playbook "deep and hard," and vowed not to let Republicans get away with distorting his record, a claim he's made in explaining his failed 2004 presidential race.

"If anyone thinks that a veteran, someone like me, who's been fighting my entire career to provide for veterans, to fight for their benefits, to help honor what their service is, if anybody thinks that a veteran would somehow criticize more than 140,000 troops serving in Iraq and not the president and his people who put them there, they're crazy," he said.

The latest round is just the latest of several nasty proxy battles between Democratic and Republican leaders in the run-up to next Tuesday's election.

In a statement released earlier in the day, Kerry took shots at Snow and other Republicans, including calling Snow a "stuff suit White House mouthpiece."

In "response to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, assorted right wing nut-jobs, and right wing talk show hosts," Kerry accused his opponents of distorting his comments to divert attention from what he called a dismal record on Iraq.

"I'm sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did," Kerry said. "I'm not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. It disgusts me."

Snow countered, asking reporters whether Democratic veterans who are running for office, like Jim Webb in Virginia and Tammy Duckworth in Illinois, really want to stand up next to Kerry.

Republican Sen. John McCain, who, like Kerry, is a decorated Vietnam veteran and potential rival to Kerry should both decide to run in 2008, said in a statement that Kerry "owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country's call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education."

House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, also called on Kerry to apologize, labeling his comments "disrespectful and insulting to the men and women serving in our military."

Kerry fired back at McCain, telling the former Vietnam prisoner of war that he "ought to ask for an apology from (Defense Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld for the mistakes he's made. John McCain should ask for an apology for not sending enough troops" to Iraq.

Angelides is far behind in his bid to unseat Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and retired Gen. Wesley Clark suggested Kerry's remarks are not helpful to Democrats in general.

"I can not explain anything John Kerry said," said Clark, who also ran for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. Clark added that he's spoken to military leaders about the next troop rotation coming. "They tell me the troops are ready. The families are ready back here. They know what they're facing. It's the best army we've ever had."

As the march to Election Day draws to an end, the close nature of the race for the congressional majority has led to an increasingly nasty tit-for-tat among candidates and their proxies.

SNIP

[eversman]

im waiting for the day he gives a speech like this, and a soldier or marine is in the crowd and afterwards when john F'n kerry goes around shaking hands that soldier or marine breaks his face for what he says. and i hope to fucking god CNN gets it live on tape and i hope Fox news plays it endlessly.

that would be poetic justice.

ev

[Backstop]

Poetic justice, all right. That nose is a mighty big target.

The link is to the poll - not the results posted here.

Please vote.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2619383&page=1

Sen. John Kerry claims that the White House has distorted his comment that kids who don't do well in school "get stuck in Iraq." The White House has accused him of "troop bashing," and is demanding an apology.

Was Kerry's statement offensive to troops?

Yes. The comment was unnecessary and negative. Kerry should apologize.
11,086


No. This isn't even an issue. It's just Republicans trying to hurt Democrats close to elections. 3,764


Possibly. But I don't think that was his intention. The press is making too big a deal out of this. 737

Total Vote: 15,587

[Malsua]

Kerry is such a jackass.

We all know what he really thinks of the troops(stupid, low class dupes). We also know this was a barb more at Bush that at any of the troops. Too bad Bush isn't running now or EVER.

I hope he runs again and gets stomped, shattering his commie dreams of running the politburo and implimenting a socialist utopia(i.e. hell on Earth)

[eversman]

here is further evidence of just how 'LOYAL' and 'SUPPORTIVE' Senator John Kerry is of our military, his comrades in arms.

When John Kerry's Courage Went M.I.A. (Senator covered up evidence of P.O.W.'s left behind)
The Village Voice ^ | February 24th, 2004 1:00 PM | Sydney H. Schanberg

Posted on 11/01/2006 9:17:59 AM PST by dead

This article is from 2004 in the Village Voice. I figured I’d repost it today, now that John Kerry keeps blathering on about all he has done to “help the troops” during his time in the Senate. It’s just one of many examples of the “good work” he has done on their behalf over the years.

Senator John Kerry, a decorated battle veteran, was courageous as a navy lieutenant in the Vietnam War. But he was not so courageous more than two decades later, when he covered up voluminous evidence that a significant number of live American prisoners—perhaps hundreds—were never acknowledged or returned after the war-ending treaty was signed in January 1973.

The Massachusetts senator, now seeking the presidency, carried out this subterfuge a little over a decade ago— shredding documents, suppressing testimony, and sanitizing the committee's final report—when he was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on P.O.W./ M.I.A. Affairs.

Over the years, an abundance of evidence had come to light that the North Vietnamese, while returning 591 U.S. prisoners of war after the treaty signing, had held back many others as future bargaining chips for the $4 billion or more in war reparations that the Nixon administration had pledged. Hanoi didn't trust Washington to fulfill its pro-mise without pressure. Similarly, Washington didn't trust Hanoi to return all the prisoners and carry out all the treaty provisions. The mistrust on both sides was merited. Hanoi held back prisoners and the U.S. provided no reconstruction funds.

The stated purpose of the special Senate committee—which convened in mid 1991 and concluded in January 1993—was to investigate the evidence about prisoners who were never returned and find out what happened to the missing men. Committee chair Kerry's larger and different goal, though never stated publicly, emerged over time: He wanted to clear a path to normalization of relations with Hanoi. In any other context, that would have been an honorable goal. But getting at the truth of the unaccounted for P.O.W.'s and M.I.A.'s (Missing In Action) was the main obstacle to normalization—and therefore in conflict with his real intent and plan of action.

Kerry denied back then that he disguised his real goal, contending that he supported normalization only as a way to learn more about the missing men. But almost nothing has emerged about these prisoners since diplomatic and economic relations were restored in 1995, and thus it would appear—as most realists expected—that Kerry's explanation was hollow. He has also denied in the past the allegations of a cover-up, either by the Pentagon or himself. Asked for comment on this article, the Kerry campaign sent a quote from the senator: "In the end, I think what we can take pride in is that we put together the most significant, most thorough, most exhaustive accounting for missing and former P.O.W.'s in the history of human warfare."

What was the body of evidence that prisoners were held back? A short list would include more than 1,600 firsthand sightings of live U.S. prisoners; nearly 14,000 secondhand reports; numerous intercepted Communist radio messages from within Vietnam and Laos about American prisoners being moved by their captors from one site to another; a series of satellite photos that continued into the 1990s showing clear prisoner rescue signals carved into the ground in Laos and Vietnam, all labeled inconclusive by the Pentagon; multiple reports about unacknowledged prisoners from North Vietnamese informants working for U.S. intelligence agencies, all ignored or declared unreliable; persistent complaints by senior U.S. intelligence officials (some of them made publicly) that live-prisoner evidence was being suppressed; and clear proof that the Pentagon and other keepers of the "secret" destroyed a variety of files over the years to keep the P.O.W./M.I.A. families and the public from finding out and possibly setting off a major public outcry.

The resignation of Colonel Millard Peck in 1991, the first year of the Kerry committee's tenure, was one of many vivid landmarks in this saga's history. Peck had been the head of the Pentagon's P.O.W./M.I.A. office for only eight months when he resigned in disgust. In his damning departure statement, he wrote: "The mind-set to 'debunk' is alive and well. It is held at all levels . . . Practically all analysis is directed to finding fault with the source. Rarely has there been any effective, active follow-through on any of the sightings . . . The sad fact is that . . . a cover-up may be in progress. The entire charade does not appear to be an honest effort and may never have been."

Finally, Peck said: "From what I have witnessed, it appears that any soldier left in Vietnam, even inadvertently, was in fact abandoned years ago, and that the farce that is being played is no more than political legerdemain done with 'smoke and mirrors' to stall the issue until it dies a natural death."

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What did Kerry do in furtherance of the cover-up? An overview would include the following: He allied himself with those carrying it out by treating the Pentagon and other prisoner debunkers as partners in the investigation instead of the targets they were supposed to be. In short, he did their bidding. When Defense Department officials were coming to testify, Kerry would have his staff director, Frances Zwenig, meet with them to "script" the hearings—as detailed in an internal Zwenig memo leaked by others. Zwenig also advised North Vietnamese officials on how to state their case. Further, Kerry never pushed or put up a fight to get key government documents unclassified; he just rolled over, no matter how obvious it was that the documents contained confirming data about prisoners. Moreover, after promising to turn over all committee records to the National Archives when the panel concluded its work, the senator destroyed crucial intelligence information the staff had gathered—to to keep the documents from becoming public. He refused to subpoena past presidents and other key witnesses.

When revelatory sworn testimony was given to the committee by President Reagan's national security adviser, Richard Allen—about a credible proposal from Hanoi in 1981 to return more than 50 prisoners for a $4 billion ransom—Kerry had that testimony taken in a closed door interview, not a public hearing. But word leaked out and a few weeks later, Allen sent a letter to the committee, not under oath, recanting his testimony, saying his memory had played tricks on him. Kerry never did any probe into Allen's original, detailed account, and instead accepted his recantation as gospel truth.

A Secret Service agent then working at the White House, John Syphrit, told committee staffers he had overheard part of a conversation about the Hanoi proposal for ransom. He said he was willing to testify but feared reprisal from his Treasury Department superiors and would need to be subpoenaed so that his appearance could not be regarded as voluntary. Kerry refused to subpoena him. Syphrit told me that four men were involved in that conversation—Reagan, Allen, Vice President George H.W. Bush, and CIA director William Casey. I wrote the story for Newsday.

The final Kerry report brushed off the entire episode like unsightly dust. It said: "The committee found no credible evidence of any such [ransom] offer being made."

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A newcomer to this subject matter might reasonably ask why there was no great public outrage, no sustained headlines, no national demand for investigations, no penalties imposed on those who had hidden, and were still hiding, the truth. The simple, overarching explanation was that most Americans wanted to put Vietnam behind them as fast as possible. They wanted to forget this failed war, not deal with its truths or consequences. The press suffered from the same ostrich syndrome; no major media organization ever carried out an in-depth investigation by a reporting team into the prisoner issue. When prisoner stories did get into the press, they would have a one-day life span, never to be followed up on. When three secretaries of defense from the Vietnam era—James Schlesinger, Melvin Laird, and Elliot Richardson—testified before the Kerry committee, under oath, that intelligence they received at the time convinced them that numbers of unacknowledged prisoners were being held by the Communists, the story was reported by the press just that once and then dropped. The New York Times put the story on page one but never pursued it further to explore the obvious ramifications.

At that public hearing on September 21, 1992, toward the end of Schlesinger's testimony, the former defense secretary, who earlier had been CIA chief, was asked a simple question: "In your view, did we leave men behind?"

He replied: "I think that as of now, I can come to no other conclusion."

He was asked to explain why Nixon would have accepted leaving men behind. He said: "One must assume that we had concluded that the bargaining position of the United States . . . was quite weak. We were anxious to get our troops out and we were not going to roil the waters . . . "

Another example of a story not pursued occurred at the Paris peace talks. The North Vietnamese failed to provide a list of the prisoners until the treaty was signed. Afterward, when they turned over the list, U.S. intelligence officials were taken aback by how many believed prisoners were not included. The Vietnamese were returning only nine men from Laos. American records showed that more than 300 were probably being held. A story about this stunning gap, by New York Times Pentagon reporter John W. Finney, appeared on the paper's front page on February 2, 1973. The story said: "Officials emphasized that the United States would be seeking clarification . . . " No meaningful explanation was ever provided by the Vietnamese or by the Laotian Communist guerrillas, the Pathet Lao, who were satellites of Hanoi.

As a bombshell story for the media, particularly the Washington press corps, it was there for the taking. But there were no takers.

I was drawn to the P.O.W. issue because of my reporting years for The New York Times during the Vietnam War, where I came to believe that our soldiers were being misled and disserved by our government. After the war, military people who knew me and others who knew my work brought me information about live sightings of P.O.W.'s still in captivity and other evidence about their existence. When the Kerry committee was announced (I was by then a columnist at Newsday), I thought the senator—having himself become disillusioned about the Vietnam War, and eventually an advocate against it—might really be committed to digging out the truth. This was wishful thinking.

In the committee's early days, Kerry had given encouraging indications of being a committed investigator. He said he had "leads" to the existence of P.O.W.'s still in captivity. He said the number of these likely survivors was more than 100 and that this was the minimum. But in a very short time, he stopped saying such things and morphed his role into one of full alliance with the executive branch, the Pentagon, and other Washington hierarchies, joining their long-running effort to obscure and deny that a significant number of live American prisoners had not been returned. As many as 700 withheld P.O.W.'s were cited in credible intelligence documents, including a speech by a senior North Vietnamese general that was discovered in Soviet archives by an American scholar.

Here are details of a few of the specific steps Kerry took to hide evidence about these P.O.W.'s.

* He gave orders to his committee staff to shred crucial intelligence documents. The shredding stopped only when some intelligence staffers staged a protest. Some wrote internal memos calling for a criminal investigation. One such memo—from John F. McCreary, a lawyer and staff intelligence analyst—reported that the committee's chief counsel, J. William Codinha, a longtime Kerry friend, "ridiculed the staff members" and said, "Who's the injured party?" When staffers cited "the 2,494 families of the unaccounted-for U.S. servicemen, among others," the McCreary memo continued, Codinha said: "Who's going to tell them? It's classified."

Kerry defended the shredding by saying the documents weren't originals, only copies—but the staff's fear was that with the destruction of the copies, the information would never get into the public domain, which it didn't. Kerry had promised the staff that all documents acquired and prepared by the committee would be turned over to the National Archives at the committee's expiration. This didn't happen. Both the staff and independent researchers reported that many critical documents were withheld.

* Another protest memo from the staff reported: "An internal Department of Defense Memorandum identifies Frances Zwenig [Kerry's staff director] as the conduit to the Department of Defense for the acquisition of sensitive and restricted information from this Committee . . . lines of investigation have been seriously compromised by leaks" to the Pentagon and "other agencies of the executive branch." It also said the Zwenig leaks were "endangering the lives and livelihood of two witnesses."

* A number of staffers became increasingly upset about Kerry's close relationship with the Department of Defense, which was supposed to be under examination. (Dick Cheney was then defense secretary.) It had become clear that Kerry, Zwenig, and others close to the chairman, such as Senator John McCain of Arizona, a dominant committee member, had gotten cozy with the officials and agencies supposedly being probed for obscuring P.O.W. information over the years. Committee hearings, for example, were being orchestrated to suit the examinees, who were receiving lists of potential questions in advance. Another internal memo from the period, by a staffer who requested anonymity, said: "Speaking for the other investigators, I can say we are sick and tired of this investigation being controlled by those we are supposedly investigating."

* The Kerry investigative technique was equally soft in many other critical ways. He rejected all suggestions that the committee require former presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush to testify. All were in the Oval Office during the Vietnam era and its aftermath. They had information critical to the committee, for each president was carefully and regularly briefed by his national security adviser and others about P.O.W. developments. It was a huge issue at that time.

* Kerry also refused to subpoena the Nixon office tapes (yes, the Watergate tapes) from the early months of 1973 when the P.O.W.'s were an intense subject because of the peace talks and the prisoner return that followed. (Nixon had rejected committee requests to provide the tapes voluntarily.) Information had seeped out for years that during the Paris talks and afterward, Nixon had been briefed in detail by then national security advisor Brent Scowcroft and others about the existence of P.O.W.'s whom Hanoi was not admitting to. Nixon, distracted by Watergate, apparently decided it was crucial to get out of the Vietnam mess immediately, even if it cost those lives. Maybe he thought there would be other chances down the road to bring these men back. So he approved the peace treaty and on March 29, 1973, the day the last of the 591 acknowledged prisoners were released in Hanoi, Nixon announced on national television: "All of our American P.O.W.'s are on their way home."

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The Kerry committee's final report, issued in January 1993, delivered the ultimate insult to history. The 1,223-page document said there was "no compelling evidence that proves" there is anyone still in captivity. As for the primary investigative question —what happened to the men left behind in 1973—the report conceded only that there is "evidence . . . that indicates the possibility of survival, at least for a small number" of prisoners 31 years ago, after Hanoi released the 591 P.O.W.'s it had admitted to.

With these word games, the committee report buried the issue—and the men.

The huge document contained no findings about what happened to the supposedly "small number." If they were no longer alive, then how did they die? Were they executed when ransom offers were rejected by Washington?

Kerry now slides past all the radio messages, satellite photos, live sightings, and boxes of intelligence documents—all the evidence. In his comments for this piece, this candidate for the presidency said: "No nation has gone to the lengths that we did to account for their dead. None—ever in history."

Of the so-called "possibility" of a "small number" of men left behind, the committee report went on to say that if this did happen, the men were not "knowingly abandoned," just "shunted aside." How do you put that on a gravestone?

In the end, the fact that Senator Kerry covered up crucial evidence as committee chairman didn't seem to bother too many Massachusetts voters when he came up for re-election—or the recent voters in primary states. So I wouldn't predict it will be much of an issue in the presidential election come November. It seems there is no constituency in America for missing Vietnam P.O.W.'s except for their families and some veterans of that war.

A year after he issued the committee report, on the night of January 26, 1994, Kerry was on the Senate floor pushing through a resolution calling on President Clinton to lift the 19-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam. In the debate, Kerry belittled the opposition, saying that those who still believed in abandoned P.O.W.'s were perpetrating a hoax. "This process," he declaimed, "has been led by a certain number of charlatans and exploiters, and we should not allow fiction to cloud what we are trying to do here."

Kerry's resolution passed, by a vote of 62 to 38. Sadly for him, the passage of ten thousand resolutions cannot make up for wants in a man's character.

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Additional research: Jennifer Suh

[Sean Osborne]

What "joke"? There was no "joke" in what Kerry said. It was an intentional insult. PERIOD.

And to the 3,764 idiots who responded to the simpleton abcnews poll Backstop cited above by answering:

No. This isn't even an issue. It's just Republicans trying to hurt Democrats close to elections.

Senator John Effin' Kerry made the statement you morons. If he'd kept his fracking mouth shut and didn't utter such patently offensive horse manure there would be no new issue with which to beat him over the head with.

As of today most Republican's can be quite quite satisified with the knowledge that John Effin' Kerry's stupidity has cost the Democrat party yet another election.

Even the Dem's (that kook Nancy Pelosi first and foremost) will be calling him 'John Effin' Kerry' by midnight on November 7th, 2006.

[Ryan Ruck]

My first thoughts when I first heard the clip of his remarks were:

1. Wow, he actually said in public what most liberals think about our military, and
2. thanks for handing us the upcoming election and providing election commercial material for years to come.

And what was funniest was when he got defensive after being called out on his remarks by referring to Tony Snow as a "stuffed suit" and Rush Limbaugh as "doughy"! Just like the mental midget he is to start hurling personal attacks when the screws are put to him.

[Aplomb]

In case you haven't seen the response from our troops in Iraq yet...
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2...656.shtml?s=br

[eversman]

i laughed so hard at that picture when i saw it this morning i had to leave the computer for a while to start breathing normally again. what a dunce. what an absolute friggin moron. if john kerry had two friggin brain cells to rub together i would be SHOCKED, ASTOUNDED AND AMAZED. what an idiot. and a COWARD to boot. typical massachusettes liberal scumbag, just like ted kennedy.


ev

[falcon]

Winter Soldier's web site will give you alot of info on this Commie.

The Winter Soldier Investigation

http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/

His statement that he put up on his web say nothing and means nothing.

[falcon]

Kerry's '72 Army Comments Mirror Latest

Nov 2, 3:12 AM (ET)

By JOHN SOLOMON

(AP) John Kerry, Democratic congressional campaigner in the Fifth District, speaks at a news conference...

WASHINGTON (AP) - During a Vietnam-era run for Congress three decades ago, John Kerry said he opposed a volunteer Army because it would be dominated by the underprivileged, be less accountable and be more prone to "the perpetuation of war crimes."

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran who turned against the war, made the observations in answers to a 1972 candidate questionnaire from a Massachusetts peace group.

After Kerry caused a firestorm this week with what he termed a botched campaign joke that Republicans said insulted current soldiers, The Associated Press was alerted to the historical comments by a former law enforcement official who monitored 1970s anti-war activities

Kerry apologized Wednesday for the 2006 campaign trail gaffe that some took as suggesting U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq were undereducated. He contended the remark was aimed at Bush, not the soldiers.

In 1972, as he ran for the House, he was less apologetic in his comments about the merits of a volunteer army. He declared in the questionnaire that he opposed the draft but considered a volunteer army "a greater anathema."

"I am convinced a volunteer army would be an army of the poor and the black and the brown," Kerry wrote. "We must not repeat the travesty of the inequities present during Vietnam. I also fear having a professional army that views the perpetuation of war crimes as simply 'doing its job.'

"Equally as important, a volunteer army with our present constitutional crisis takes accountability away from the president and put the people further from control over military activities," he wrote.

What the hell does this mean? More of his Commie line, he wants to destory this country,thats the bottom line. fac.

Kerry's spokesman, David Wade, said Wednesday the historical document needed to be viewed in the era in which it was written but that it nonetheless raised a "bedrock question in a time of war when sacrifice should be shared by all Americans."

"These are the words 34 years ago of a 28-year-old veteran home from a war gone wrong, wondering who in America will bear the cost of battle and shoulder the responsibility of military service," Wade said.

Kerry filled out the candidate questionnaire at the request of Massachusetts Political Action for Peace, an anti-war group that decades later turned over its historical documents to university researchers.

AP obtained the document from someone who gathered it from archives during Kerry's unsuccessful 2004 presidential campaign against President Bush. Republicans in that election relentlessly assailed Kerry's role in the anti-war movement decades earlier.

Kerry and Bush renewed their rivalry again this week, with the president accusing Kerry of offending troops. Kerry said he botched the text of a joke and didn't mean to insult troops.

On Wednesday, Kerry canceled campaign appearance on behalf of Democratic congressional candidates and issued an apology.

apnews.myway.com/article/20061102/D8L4QH580.html

[falcon]

Shame on Him
John Kerry picked the wrong people to insult.

BY RONALD R. GRIFFIN
Friday, November 3, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST I missed the joke. You must forgive me, for there just is not a lot of room in my life for even good jokes--and there is absolutely no room for "botched jokes"--when the subject of the joke is my son who was killed in Iraq. I know exactly what came out of Sen. John Kerry's mouth, and in those words there is no interpretation required. His attempt to convince us--and, I believe, to convince himself that that there was really a botched joke buried deep within his insult is in fact a reaffirmation of his ever-present condescending nature. He actually believes that we are stupid enough to agree with him and start laughing simply because he said it was a joke. Mr. Kerry said exactly what he meant and meant exactly what he said. In those words Mr. Kerry did in fact wash completely away the facade of his support of our magnificent troops and revealed for all to see his true colors.
All one had to do is look into the face of Mr. Kerry as the last word came out of his mouth, and it was painfully obvious that he knew that he had just disparaged the entire military. As the firestorm grew, the calls for an apology filled me with unease. It is not up to him to determine if an apology is in order. That decision most certainly rests with the millions of individuals he offended, and then they would decide if they were going to accept one or not.

As Sen. Kerry began his soon-to-be-reversed "I apologize to no one" rebuttal to a call for an apology, I was driving by the memorial built in honor of Kyle, my son, and the other fallen heroes from my town. As I listened, I tried unsuccessfully to make sense of the meteor shower of thoughts that were streaking through my mind. Then came one remembrance that brought all those other thoughts to an instantaneous halt. Last year I had written an editorial and I received a number of written replies. Among those was one postmarked from San Diego addressed simply to "the father of a hero" and my town of Emerson, N.J. It started off friendly enough then quickly became argumentative and before the first paragraph was completed this individual had written, "I am glad that your son got killed for he probably was an idiot just like you". My first reaction, and really the only reaction I have ever had, was sadness for an individual who is so consumed with anger that he felt it necessary to lash out at me for my beliefs.
That is exactly how I feel about John Kerry. His anger was in full bloom as he tried desperately to control the damage that his words had caused. He knew full well that he could not defend his remarks, so he attacked President Bush. In doing so he reinforced his now fully revealed condescending attitude towards our troops. He talked over them, as he always does, never even beginning to understand that there might be individuals who were truly and deeply offended by his remarks. The explanation for that is quite simple: He firmly and deeply believes that anyone who would be so stupid as to join the military is beneath the high moral perch on which he thinks he sits.
Even in his so-called apology the next day, Mr. Kerry could not bring himself to admit that he had made a mistake. It was not his fault that I might be offended; it is my fault because I "misinterpreted" what he said.
Over these past 3 1/2 years, whenever I have been asked to be interviewed or speak at a function, I purposely do not write anything down. I do not want my emotions to be confined by the words that I have practiced; rather, I want to share with the people I am speaking with the full range of emotions that I live with each day in order that they might understand me in human terms. On the day that he aggrieved so many individuals by his words, that is what Sen. Kerry was doing. He dropped the pretense and revealed to the world what was in is heart, to his never-ending detriment.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time with our troops comes away with a sense of awe, attributable not just to their bravery and valor but to their intelligence and character. In one of the many conversations I had with Kyle, I reminded him that as he moved up the ladder in the military, he would have to be ever mindful that the caliber of the individual got better and better and that he would have to work harder and harder. Kyle did not want to go to college; he wanted to be a soldier. He joined and only had one demand and that was to be Infantry. He was airborne qualified and had orders to go to Ranger school, but the war in Iraq came first. I can still recall to this day the astonishment in his voice when he told me of his passing of the 82nd Airborne Pre-Ranger course and the incredible individuals he graduated with. Only four in 10 did so. Little did I know at the time that he was voted by those other graduates as Best Ranger. Sen. Kerry has really picked on the wrong crowd this time. Not so much the individual soldiers he so clearly insulted, for they are great judges of true manhood, and in him they have found him wanting. When he ran for president, they voted against him by almost 4 to 1.
They will laugh him off, but their loved ones are a different matter. Kyle died with two of his buddies, Spc. Michael Gleason and Spc. Zachariah Long. Ironic in a way, for they came from Pennsylvania, the great state that has given us these two and so many other magnificent heroes--and Rep. John Murtha, who disparages their service just like Senator Kerry. Kyle and Zack were inseparable. They trained together; rode dirt bikes together; one taught the other how to milk a cow; they deployed together; they earned their Bronze Stars together in rescuing a compromised unit; and they died together at age 20, one asleep on the other's shoulder.
In their death and our sorrow, I have come to know and love Zach's mom Karen as Kyle did during those many days spent riding the dirt bikes on their farm in Pennsylvania and eating her out of house and home and probably a cow or two. On Wednesday I called Karen to ask what she thought of Sen. Kerry's remarks. I was shocked that she had no idea what I was talking about, for she hardly watches any news anymore. I read her the quote from Mr. Kerry and shut up as she digested and interpreted the words. She then simply said, "Shame on him for insulting my boy. He just called my boy stupid. Shame on him."
John Kerry can attempt to apologize in as many forms and as many times as has the breath but he can be assured that the pain that he has inflicted upon this wonderful woman will forever be part of the pain that she endures each day and in reality there was no reason for it to happen.

It is in my mind the height of irony that John Kerry, a Yale graduate, would make two other Yale graduates the butt of his supposed joke. One we all knew as President Bush; the other is known mostly to those who have proudly served with and under him. On the day Kyle died, this gallant warrior was to take command of Kyle's parent unit, the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion. Kyle was on his way to the ceremony when he and his buddies were killed. Here is a man who is the epitome of intellect, character and gallantry--an individual that Mr. Kerry does not believe exists. John Kerry stands alone, to be judged by his words. He has given us the rare opportunity to look into the soul of a politician, and he has shown himself wanting, especially in view of the fact that he asked us to allow him the honor and privilege of leading our gallant military at a time of war. It is rare in life to be able to know the consequences of both sides of a decision. Mr. Kerry has clearly demonstrated what manner of president he would have been. Fortunately the American electorate denied him that high honor.


Mr. Griffin is the father of Spc. Kyle Andrew Griffin, a recipient of the Army Commendation Medal, Army Meritorious Service Medal and the Bronze Star, who was killed in a truck accident on a road between Mosul and Tikrit on May 30, 2003.


http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009186

[Phil Fiord]

Sorry about the above delete. I entered the code in twice and it was messing the browser up.

So here it is.

CBS Late Night did a spoof alteration of Kerry's bad comment. It is worth the watch.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=M6Bz_r5CZTk

[Backstop]

Aplomb, thanks for that pic.

[Isaiah40:31]

Kerry is a *bleep* *bleep* disgrace to this nation and an embaressment to the military.

I had a chance to watch the original 1952 "Manchurian Candidate", have not seen the remake. The spooky thing is the whole time I watched it reminded me of how plausible it would be in the future war of Vietnam. When we recall how Kerry's "seered" memory has him in Cambodia for three days when he allegedly wasn't supposed to be there at all. Then he immediatly returns stateside and begins the historical most treasonous, treacherous onslaught against our great nation.

I get sooooo steamed thinking about that 'person'.

[mike taylor]

Given that most of the Democrat/liberal candidates have little or no experience in the military, it shouldn't suprise us that they hold this elitist opinion.

I got to believe the candidates on the left all think think this way, they just are a little bit smarter than J. E. Kerry and keep thier opinion to themselves.

You have got to hand it to the soldiers who put up the banner; it is funny and further amplifys exactly how stupid J. Effen Kerry sounded.

God please bless our military.

[Backstop]

Just so ya know, we've been ragging on Kerry for a while: http://communities.anomalies.net/for...page/0/fpart/1

Please read all 23 pages.

[Sean Osborne]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=M6Bz_r5CZTk

Phil,

By far the very best post you've ever made.

ROTFLMAO!!!

[Sean Osborne]

At this late date, this one is just for the record...


A West Point Cadet sends this along with the photo below:
I'm a cadet at West Point, and tonight at our game against the Air Force Academy, a big sign emerged, and it was shown to the Corps of Cadets, who cheered wildly, and then shown to the Air Force cadets, who also cheered.

[American Patriot]

That clip isn't working. Just takes me back to TAA