YES, THE LEFT QUESTIONED BOB DOLE'S MEDALS IN 1996
Let's not hear any more talk about how high-minded the left was about Bob Dole and his medals eight years ago.
The Nation argued that Bob Dole got his first Purple Heart for a self-inflicted wound. Robert Ellis, who, like Dole 10th Mountain Division in World War II, sought to debunk the "myth" of Dole's heroism:
The truth about Dole's war record is considerably less than awe-inspiring. Yet the myth endures, and with the candidate running on the contrast between his and Clinton's military record, his campaign isn't eager to give a more accurate account. Dole, at the behest of his handlers, is less reticent about his service than in the past, but he mainly speaks about his wound and rehabilitation. He has passed up several opportunities to correct the exaggerated versions in biographies, and in the case of his self-wounding has even approved a sanitized account in which his maladroitly hurled grenade goes unnoted. Journalists continue to portray him as a hero, winner of two Bronze Stars. Joe Klein, for example, writes in Newsweek that Dole knows "what guns do. He also knows what politicians do, which is rarely anything quite so dramatic as leading an army into battle." Such attempts to make political capital out of Dole's war service go beyond the respect due him for the role he played as a soldier with the 10th Mountain Division.
A presidential candidate's fellow veteran makes claims, charging the candidate wasn't the hero his party says he was? Unprecedented!
BUSINESSWEEK: WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT VIETNAM? JOHN KERRY, OF COURSE
BusinessWeek Online has a surprisingly tough op-ed on Kerry and his use of his Vietnam record. Some excerpts from Editor Roger Franklin's piece:
As another Presidential contest loses the track and plunges back into the same old elephant grass, it's clear that Vietnam never went away. And the blame is John Kerry's, no doubt about it...
Yet Kerry's conduct in that long-ago war remains relevant — and not just because he has made his time in uniform both centerpiece and touchstone of his campaign, nor even, as the Swift Boat Veterans assert, because he painted his personal history in the false colors of faux heroics.
If Kerry did shade the truth, he sure wouldn't be the first politician to do so. Only last week, voters were treated to the spectacle of Kerry point man and Iowa Senator Tom Harkin fulminating about the Swift Vets' ads. Yet Harkin is himself an exposed fabulist, having once claimed to have jousted in his F-4 Phantom with North Vietnamese MiGs.
The truth? He never saw combat, spent his war ferrying military planes from Japan to the Philippines for routine servicing, and apologized for his fictions when subsequently exposed by fellow Senator Barry Goldwater.
So why pick on Kerry? Only this: Harkin doesn't want to be President. While voters will never know — can never know — if Kerry deserved those medals and his early ticket home, they can be absolutely sure that he did worse than merely embroider his exploits in the years that followed.
Kerry threw his medals over the White House fence — except he didn't. He slept out on the Mall in Washington, D.C., with anti-war protesters — except he didn't, having actually bunked down in a borrowed townhouse with Newsweek reporter Robert Sam Anson, according to an investigative story in the New York Observer.
And most troubling of all, Kerry has said he spent the last days of 1968 on a secret mission in Cambodia, under fire and listening to President Nixon deny that Kerry or any other U.S. servicemen were operating on the wrong side of the border. In one version, it was the Khmer Rouge doing the shooting. In another, drunken South Vietnamese troops celebrating Christmas, which isn't even a good fable, since Buddhists generally don't get too excited about the birth of the Christians' Messiah...
Oh, and another thing: It was President Lyndon Johnson Kerry would have been listening to, not Nixon, since the Republican was still four weeks away from his inauguration.
...With the benefit of hindsight, people can be absolutely sure that, then as now, one truth really does matter in Presidential politics: Boasts and a talent for self-serving fiction are no recommendations for a lease on the Oval Office.
HILLARY TO HEAD KERRY'S 'TRUTH SQUAD'?
The New York Post is reporting that Kerry's campaign, "which slighted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Democratic convention last month, now wants the former first lady to lead its "truth squad" at next week's GOP convention... Party insiders said that aides to Clinton were engaged in "intensive talks" over the weekend with Kerry's representatives about the role she is expected to play."
Insert joke about naming a Clinton to a group called the "truth squad" here.
Seriously, the RNC had Rudy Giuliani doing their "rapid response" during the convention in Boston. I'm not sure Hillary has quite the same appeal to swing voters and those few remaining undecided middle-of-the-road types.
OH, SURE, ROOD WAS CLOSE ENOUGH
A good observation:
Swift Boat Vets: Kerry was a egomaniacal jerk who turned three minor cuts and abrasions into three Purple Hearts, wasn't trusted by his fellow officers, and stabbed his "band of brothers" in the back by calling them war criminals when he got back.
Kerry defenders: You don't know that! You weren't on the boat with him!
Swift Boat Vets: We were on boats right next to him. And Steven Gardner was.
Kerry defenders: Gardner doesn't count! And you guys don't count! Only the people on the boat really know what Kerry was like in Vietnam!
Chicago Tribune editor William Root: I was on a boat next to him on one important day, and I say Kerry's story is true.
Kerry defenders: See, the matter is settled!
Swift Boat Vets: Wait, he was on the next boat over. Why is his testimony trustworthy, but not ours?
Kerry defenders: Only Root's testimony counts! Everybody else who wasn't in the boat with Kerry doesn't count!
Note to Kerry Spot editors, the man's name is WIlliam Rood, not Root. Try fact checking.
No comments:
Post a Comment