From today's session... still no condemnation of the Swifties... ___________ Q On the Swift Boat ad, Kerry is saying that the President is relying on front groups to challenge Kerry's war record. Why won't the President denounce this particular ad? McCain asked the President to do so, and every day that you don't condemn it, it just leaves the door open for the issue to continue. MR. McCLELLAN: Well, first of all, Pete, I think there's a little bit of a mischaracterization there. Senator Kerry knows that his latest attack is false and baseless. The President has condemned all of the ads by the shadowy groups. We have called on Senator Kerry to join us in calling for an end to all the unregulated soft money activity that is going on in this campaign. And the President has stayed focused on the issues and the choices that the voters face. That's what this ought to be about. There are some clear choices that the voters face for the future. This should not be about the past, and we've made that very clear. Q But don't you think you could put this matter to rest if you would just condemn this particular ad? That's what Kerry is asking. MR. McCLELLAN: And the President has condemned all of the ads and condemned all of the soft money -- unregulated soft money that is going on. Senator Kerry should join us in calling for an end to all of this soft money -- unregulated soft money activity. Senator Kerry has declined to do so. The President has been on the receiving end of more than $62 million in negative, false attacks from these shadowy groups that exist. The President thought that we got rid of all of this kind of soft money activity when he signed the campaign finance reforms into law. Apparently Senator Kerry was against this soft money activity previously, too. Now he appears to be for it, as long as it benefits his campaign. Q There are the ads, and then there's the charge within the ads. Last week at one of the "Ask President Bush" events, a voter stood up and repeated the charge that Senator Kerry had self-inflicted wounds in Vietnam. The President didn't say anything. What does the President think about the charge? MR. McCLELLAN: Terry, the President thinks that we should get rid of all of this unregulated soft money activity by these shadowy groups. It's not known who is contributing to these groups. The President believes that there ought to be full disclosure and rapid disclosure of contributions. He's called for that previously. He has set an example by doing that himself. This campaign has focused on the future, not the past. We have focused on debating the issues and debating the candidates' visions. The President has talked about the clear choices we face on the important priorities, such as the war on terrorism. And there are some clear differences there. There are clear differences on how we go about supporting our troops while they wage the war on terrorism. Senator Kerry has voted against supporting our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, when last year he voted against the $87 billion appropriation. So there are some real differences on the issues, where this campaign ought to be focused. And that's what the President will continue to do. Q Well, the charge, though, has been made not just in advertisements, but it has now been made directly to the President. MR. McCLELLAN: And there have been a lot of false, negative charges made against the President by these shadowy groups. So if he would join us, we could get rid of all of this unregulated soft money activity. Q Let me ask it this way: The President has said and believes that John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam, right? MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, he's made that very clear. We've made it very clear that we will not make his -- will never raise questions about his service. We haven't, and we won't. Q This advertisement raises questions about his service, and in fact concludes that he served dishonorably. So the President thinks this ad is false, right? MR. McCLELLAN: Well, the issue here is these unregulated soft money groups that exist. The campaign finance reforms were passed in order to get rid of this kind of activity. Yet there is a loophole in the law, and the FEC has refused to address it. We think that all of this activity should be stopped. Q Could I follow on that? Because what Terry seems to be getting at, what's clear from this event that Bush had last week -- MR. McCLELLAN: Well, let's not be selective here. Let's look at the overall activity that's going on by all of these shadowy groups. I think we're being a little selective right now. And Senator Kerry is being -- is trying to have it all ways, yet again. He says one thing, while his campaign goes out there and does another thing. Q Well, even given your belief that it's selective, the President on the one hand will say -- MR. McCLELLAN: Well, is it not? I mean, the President has been on the receiving end of -- Q I'm asking the questions right now. The point is that the President has let stand these charges, even made by a voter at one his events, as Terry says, doesn't say a word about it when he quotes these charges, just lets it go. It seems like the President, while he has certainly called his service noble in the Vietnam War, is happy to let all the rest of the charges sort of fester. MR. McCLELLAN: No, actually I disagree fully with you, David. Senator Kerry is the one who has given his tacit approval to this kind of unregulated soft money activity by shadowy groups. He can join us in condemning all of this activity and calling for an end to it, and then we can move on to really focus on what this campaign should be about, which is about the differences on the key issues, the differences on the war on terrorism, the differences on how we go about strengthening our economy, and the differences on how we go about supporting our troops when they're at war. Q You just don't want to get into the business of making a judgment about one ad, is your point. MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think that it's important that we recognize that there is a loop hole that groups are exploiting. And we should end all this activity. That was one of the purposes of the campaign finance reform. Q Do you and the President agree that John Kerry served dishonorably in Vietnam? MR. McCLELLAN: We've already said that. The President has already said that, we've already said that, we've made that clear, that -- the President said that he served nobly. Q Do you believe it's fair game for allies of the President to be charging that John Kerry served dishonrably? MR. McCLELLAN: Well, ultimately in any campaign the voters are going to make the ultimate decision on all the issues. But this goes to the issue of shadowy groups that are funded by unregulated soft money. That's what this issue is about. Q By not condemning this ad, you are leaving the impression that you support the contention that John Kerry served dishonorably. MR. McCLELLAN: We condemned all the ads, Dana. We condemned all the ads. The President condemned all the ads. You heard from him just recently. Why won't -- why won't Senator Kerry join us in calling for an end to of this activity, when we've been on the receiving end of substantial amounts of money of this kind of activity. Q Forget about the ads. Why won't you disassociate yourself from the charge that John Kerry served dishonorably in Vietnam? MR. McCLELLAN: We've never questioned his service, and we never will. So I think we've made that very clear. Q So he earned those medals? MR. McCLELLAN: Again, we're not going to question his service. We have not, and we will not.
you're obviously selectively reading it. bush has said, and reiterates, that the issue isn't one ad, it's all of them. if kerry will join him they'll end all of the ads "(although, legally, i don't think that's possible). also, he reiterated, numerous times, that he thinks kerry served "noblely". what's unclear about that?
How about we go one better and have both candidates pull all televised negative advertising, 527 ads and hard or soft money ads, for the remainder of the campaign -- and replace them with weekly policy debates? You think Bush would agree to that? Considering that the Bush in particular and the Republicans in general have relied on negative ads in national elections as their bread and butter for the last 30 years or so to a far greater extent than their opposition, I would guess not. If you do believe it, I have a bridge in Kampuchea to sell you.
I've seen some dancing in my time, but I have never seen anyone work so hard to avoid answering a direct question in my life
basso, get your standards for truth and lies straight. Stick up for it and be a man. People have agreed that Kerry wasn't in Cambodia in Christmas. He was mistaken or embellished that. By folks like you, who support Bush that doesn't equal lying. Others have published statements by Bush that were similarly or even more grossly misleading. I will ask again the ones that I remember. When Bush said he played varsity rubgy, was he lying? When Bush said that Iraq was six months away from a nuke based on an IAEA report that didn't exist was he lying? After it was discovered that the report didn't existed, and it was explained that the president was mistaken, but really meant a different report which also turned out not to exist, was Bush lying? When the second report that didn't exist and the Bush explanation was then that it was a different report which it turns out didn't even exist at the time Bush made the original statement, was Bush lying? When Bush says that he didn't really have much contact with Chalabi, but it turns out that Chalabi was a guest of honor at a whitehouse function, was Bush lying? There are other examples too, which I can't remember, but this is plenty. Of course Kerry hadn't mentioned that he was in Cambodia in over 10 years. Bush's claims were much more recent. You think that it's important when and why Kerry said what he said, you have the right to feel that way. I think it's important that for at least some of Bush's statements they were made in an effort to justify a war. I happen to think that war is probably as important a reason as there is. Now, basso, I ask you, to pick one standard and stick to it. If you don't think that Kerry was mistaken, or embellished, but lied, then what Bush did should qualify as lying as well, and in a more recent and far graver situation. But if Bush is somehow excused from all of these factual inaccuracies, then surely Kerry should be excused as well. Pick a standard and stick to it.
If Clark says something and Kerry says something else, that doesn't mean Kerry speaks with forked tongue. That means that two guys said two different things.
Speaking of GOP attack dogs smearing Vietnam vets, I want to confirm a story. My brother told me that Anne Coulter said it was Max Cleland's fault he lost his limbs. Has anybody else heard this?
Yes, I've heard it. Originally they claimed Cleland was drinking beer and playing with hand grenades, and that's how it happened. I think it turned out that he was doing a parachute drop and one of his grenades went off, or something like that. Whatever it was, it was definitely in the line of duty, but it may have been his own grenade. It's strange that I can't remember all the details, because at the time I was so angry about the claim, that I read a lot about it. I guess new subjects earned my ire, and I don't remember everything about it.
I heard on Hardballl tonight that Kerry's Vietnam wounds were self inflicted, or so says some Republican shill. I keep getting surprised on how low the Republicans will go.
From Cleland's Commanding Officer in response to Coulter's column... The 2nd of the 12th Cavalry was engaged in a combat operation at the time of this incident. Max Cleland was with the Battalion Forward Command Post in heavy combat involving the attack of the 1st Cavalry Division up the valley to relieve the Marines who were besieged and surrounded at the Khe Shan Firebase. The whole surrounding area was an active combat zone (some might call the entire country of Vietnam a combat zone). (Is Iraq a combat zone?) Max, the Battalion Signal Officer, was engaged in a combat mission I personally ordered to increase the effectiveness of communications between the battalion combat forward and rear support elements: e.g. Erect a radio relay antenna on a mountain top. By the way, at one point the battalion rear elements came under enemy artillery fire so everyone was in harms way. As they were getting off the helicopter, Max saw the grenade on the ground and he instinctively went for it. Soldiers in combat don't leave grenades lying around on the ground. Later, in the hospital, he said he thought it was his own but I doubt the concept of "ownership" went through his mind in the split seconds involved in reaching for the grenade. Nearly two decades later another soldier came forward and admitted it was actually his grenade. Does ownership of the grenade really matter? It does not. Maury Cralle' Battalion Executive Officer 2d/12th Cavalry Battalion 1st Air Cavalry Division During the assault on Khe Shan ------------------------ Coulter's column... ... Moreover, if we're going to start delving into exactly who did what back then, maybe Max Cleland should stop allowing Democrats to portray him as a war hero who lost his limbs taking enemy fire on the battlefields of Vietnam. Cleland lost three limbs in an accident during a routine noncombat mission where he was about to drink beer with friends. He saw a grenade on the ground and picked it up. He could have done that at Fort Dix. In fact, Cleland could have dropped a grenade on his foot as a National Guardsman – or what Cleland sneeringly calls "weekend warriors." Luckily for Cleland's political career and current pomposity about Bush, he happened to do it while in Vietnam. There is more than a whiff of dishonesty in how Cleland is presented to the American people. Terry McAuliffe goes around saying, "Max Cleland, a triple amputee who left three limbs on the battlefield of Vietnam," was thrown out of office because Republicans "had the audacity to call Max Cleland unpatriotic." Mr. Cleland, a word of advice: When a slimy weasel like Terry McAuliffe is vouching for your combat record, it's time to sound "retreat" on that subject. Needless to say, no one ever challenged Cleland's "patriotism." His performance in the Senate was the issue, which should not have come as a bolt out of the blue inasmuch as he was running for re-election to the Senate. Sen. Cleland had refused to vote for the Homeland Security bill unless it was chock-full of pro-union perks that would have jeopardized national security. ("OH, MY GOD! A HIJACKED PLANE IS HEADED FOR THE WHITE HOUSE!" "Sorry, I'm on my break. Please call back in two hours.") The good people of Georgia – who do not need lectures on admiring military service – gave Cleland one pass for being a Vietnam veteran. He didn't get a lifetime pass. Indeed, if Cleland had dropped a grenade on himself at Fort Dix rather than in Vietnam, he would never have been a U.S. senator in the first place. Maybe he'd be the best pharmacist in Atlanta, but not a U.S. senator. He got into office on the basis of serving in Vietnam and was thrown out for his performance as a senator. Cleland wore the uniform, he was in Vietnam, and he has shown courage by going on to lead a productive life. But he didn't "give his limbs for his country," or leave them "on the battlefield." There was no bravery involved in dropping a grenade on himself with no enemy troops in sight. That could have happened in the Texas National Guard – which Cleland denigrates while demanding his own sanctification.
wow, the WaPo editorializes on the Christmas tale, suggesting Kerry is...Unfit for Command!?! I'm sure some will find fault with the writer, but his presence in this particular paper should at a minimum suggest BIG MEDIA is finally getting it, which can't be good news for Kerry. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27211-2004Aug23.html?referrer=emailarticle -- Kerry's Cambodia Whopper By Joshua Muravchik Tuesday, August 24, 2004 Most of the debate between the former shipmates who swear by John Kerry and the group of other Swift boat veterans who are attacking his military record focuses on matters that few of us have the experience or the moral standing to judge. But one issue, having nothing to do with medals, wounds or bravery under fire, goes to the heart of Kerry's qualifications for the presidency and is therefore something that each of us must consider. That is Kerry's apparently fabricated claim that he fought in Cambodia. It is an assertion he made first, insofar as the written record reveals, in 1979 in a letter to the Boston Herald. Since then he has repeated it on at least eight occasions during Senate debate or in news interviews, most recently to The Post this year (an interview posted on Kerry's Web site). The most dramatic iteration came on the floor of the Senate in 1986, when he made it the centerpiece of a carefully prepared 20-minute oration against aid to the Nicaraguan contras. Kerry argued that contra aid could put the United States on the path to deeper involvement despite denials by the Reagan administration of any such intent. Kerry began by reading out similar denials regarding Vietnam from presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Then he offered this devastating riposte: "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me." However seared he was, Kerry's spokesmen now say his memory was faulty. When the Swift boat veterans who oppose Kerry presented statements from his commanders and members of his unit denying that his boat entered Cambodia, none of Kerry's shipmates came forward, as they had on other issues, to corroborate his account. Two weeks ago Kerry's spokesmen began to backtrack. First, one campaign aide explained that Kerry had patrolled the Mekong Delta somewhere "between" Cambodia and Vietnam. But there is no between; there is a border. Then another spokesman told reporters that Kerry had been "near Cambodia." But the point of Kerry's 1986 speech was that he personally had taken part in a secret and illegal war in a neutral country. That was only true if he was "in Cambodia," as he had often said he was. If he was merely "near," then his deliberate misstatement falsified the entire speech. Next, the campaign leaked a new version through the medium of historian Douglas Brinkley, author of "Tour of Duty," a laudatory book on Kerry's military service. Last week Brinkley told the London Telegraph that while Kerry had been 50 miles from the border on Christmas, he "went into Cambodian waters three or four times in January and February 1969 on clandestine missions." Oddly, though, while Brinkley devotes nearly 100 pages of his book to Kerry's activities that January and February, pinpointing the locations of various battles and often placing Kerry near Cambodia, he nowhere mentions Kerry's crossing into Cambodia, an inconceivable omission if it were true. Now a new official statement from the campaign undercuts Brinkley. It offers a minimal (thus harder to impeach) claim: that Kerry "on one occasion crossed into Cambodia," on an unspecified date. But at least two of the shipmates who are supporting Kerry's campaign (and one who is not) deny their boat ever crossed the border, and their testimony on this score is corroborated by Kerry's own journal, kept while on duty. One passage reproduced in Brinkley's book says: "The banks of the [Rach Giang Thanh River] whistled by as we churned out mile after mile at full speed. On my left were occasional open fields that allowed us a clear view into Cambodia. At some points, the border was only fifty yards away and it then would meander out to several hundred or even as much as a thousand yards away, always making one wonder what lay on the other side." His curiosity was never satisfied, because this entry was from Kerry's final mission. After his discharge, Kerry became the leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Once, he presented to Congress the accounts by his VVAW comrades of having "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires . . . to human genitals . . . razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan . . . poisoned foodstocks." Later it was shown that many of the stories on which Kerry based this testimony were false, some told by impostors who had stolen the identities of real GIs, but Kerry himself was not implicated in the fraud. And his own over-the-top generalization that such "crimes [were] committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command" could be charged up to youthfulness and the fevers of the times. But Kerry has repeated his Cambodia tale throughout his adult life. He has claimed that the epiphany he had that Christmas of 1968 was about truthfulness. "One of the things that most struck me about Vietnam was how people were lied to," he explained in a subsequent interview. If -- as seems almost surely the case -- Kerry himself has lied about what he did in Vietnam, and has done so not merely to spice his biography but to influence national policy, then he is surely not the kind of man we want as our president. The writer is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2105529/ war stories Military analysis. Holiday in Cambodia The "Christmas Eve" attack on Kerry is cheap and almost certainly wrong. By Fred Kaplan Posted Monday, Aug. 23, 2004, at 4:04 PM PT Kerry's Christmas story rings true It is a twisted state of affairs that George W. Bush's most avid surrogates are trying to make this election turn on the question of whether Lieut. John Kerry was or was not in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968. Having pretty much failed at their efforts to disprove the official U.S. Navy account of Kerry's valor in battle as skipper of a "Swift boat" patrolling the Mekong Delta, the veterans against Kerry have moved to discredit his more obscure claim—made a few times over the years, in interviews and Senate floor speeches—that, on Dec. 24, he took CIA or special ops forces across the border into Cambodia, even while Washington claimed no American troops were there. Kerry first told this story publicly in an article published in the Boston Herald on Oct. 14, 1979, before he was a senator: I remember Christmas Eve of 1968, five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. He elaborated the tale on March 27, 1986, during a Senate debate over whether to aid the Nicaraguan contras: I remember Christmas of 1968, sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians and have the President of the United States telling the American people that I was not there, the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared—seared—in me. A more intriguing reference—now known as "the famous good-luck-hat story"—was made in a Washington Post profile, by Laura Blumenfeld, published on June 1, 2003: There's a secret compartment in Kerry's briefcase. He carries the black attache everywhere. Asked about it on several occasions, Kerry brushed it aside. Finally, trapped in an interview, he exhaled and clicked open his case. "Who told you?" he demanded as he reached inside. "My friends don't know about this." The hat was a little mildewy. The green camouflage was fading, the seams fraying. "My good luck hat," Kerry said, happy to see it. "Given to me by a CIA guy as we went in for a special mission in Cambodia." But now some anti-Kerry veterans are saying he was never in Cambodia. John O'Neill, who has been dogging Kerry more than 30 years, told Matt Drudge that the senator's Christmas-in-Cambodia stories "are complete lies." As evidence, he cites Kerry's own wartime diary, as quoted in Douglas Brinkley's Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War. That book—according to Drudge's account of it—places Kerry in Sa Dec, 50 miles away from Cambodia, on Christmas Eve, and seemingly at peace. "Visions of sugarplums really do dance through your head," Kerry wrote in his diary that night, "and you think of stockings and snow and roast chestnuts and fires with birch logs and all that is good and warm and real." That passage is on Page 219 of Brinkley's book. But O'Neill, Drudge, and the other sneerers choose to ignore the 10 preceding pages—the opening pages of a chapter called "Death in the Delta." On Christmas Eve 1968, Brinkley writes, Kerry and his crew: headed their Swift north by the Cho Chien River to its junction with the My Tho only miles from the Cambodian border. … Kerry began reading up on Cambodia's history in a book he had borrowed from the floating barracks in An Thoi. … He even read about a 1959 Pentagon study titled "Psychological Observations: Cambodia," which … state[d] that Cambodians "cannot be counted on to act in any positive way for the benefit of U.S. aims and policies." [Italics added.] Brinkley also quotes from Kerry's diary: "It was early morning, not yet light. Ours was the only movement on the river, patrolling near the Cambodian line." [Italics added.] Brinkley continues: "At a bend just as they were approaching the Cambodian border, two [U.S. river-patrol boats] met the Swift." Then, again from Kerry's diary: "Suddenly, there is an explosion and a mortar lands on the bank near all three boats." The next few pages detail a ferocious firefight, one part of which involved (as his diary noted) "the ridiculous waste of being shot at by your own allies." Only a few hours later, in the evening, did Kerry's boat reach the stationing area of Sa Dec. "The night for once is comforting," Kerry wrote in his diary, "and you take a Coke and some peanut butter and jelly and go up on the roof of the cabin with your tape recorder and sit for a while, quietly watching flares float silently through the sky and flashes announce disquieting intent somewhere in the distance." It is in this context that Kerry then wrote, in a letter to home, about "visions of sugarplums" and thinking of "snow and roast chestnuts." So let's review the situation. On Christmas Eve 1968, Kerry's Swift boat and at least two river-patrol boats were doing something unusual (Kerry wrote that he'd never been so far in-country) at least in the vicinity of the border—"near the Cambodian line," as he put it in his diary. And Kerry had with him a book that described a Pentagon study on psychological operations against Cambodia. It is certain that by this time, the United States had long been making secret incursions across the border. This is from Page 24 of William Shawcross' 1979 book, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia: Since May 1967, when the U.S. Military Command in Saigon became concerned at the way the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were evading American "search and destroy" and air attacks in Vietnam by making more use of bases in Laos and Cambodia, the U.S. Special Forces had been running special, highly classified missions into the two countries. Their code name was Daniel Boone. The Daniel Boone teams entered Cambodia all along its 500-mile frontier with South Vietnam from the lonely, craggy, impenetrable mountain forests in the north, down to the well-populated and thickly reeded waterways along the Mekong River. [Italics added.] We know that Kerry's boat and two others were in those reeds on Christmas Eve '68. The Cambodian special forces' incursions—which were conducted without the knowledge, much less approval, of Congress—were escalating around that time. Just over a month later, on Feb. 9, 1969, Gen. Creighton Abrams, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, requested a B-52 bombing attack on a Communist camp inside Cambodia. (Richard Nixon, the new president, approved the plan on March 17; the first strikes of Operation Breakfast—the secret bombing of Cambodia—started the next day.) Shawcross writes that special forces were always sent across the border to survey the area for targets just before an air operation. Did Kerry cross the border or just go up to it? We may never know for sure. Not much paperwork exists for covert operations (officially, U.S. forces weren't in Cambodia). Nor is it likely that a canny Swift-boat skipper (and Kerry was nothing if not canny) would jot down thoughts about such covert operations in a diary on a boat that might be captured by the enemy. The circumstances at least suggest that Kerry was indeed involved in a "black" mission, even if he had never explicitly made that claim. And why would he make such claims if he hadn't been? It was neither a glamorous nor a particularly admirable mission—certainly nothing to boast of. But one thing is for sure: Lieut. Kerry did not spend that Christmas Eve just lying around, dreaming of sugarplums and roasted chestnuts. He had plenty of time to cover the 40 miles from the Cambodian border to the safety of Sa Dec (he did command a swift boat, after all). More to the point, the evidence indicates he did cover those 40 miles: He was near (or in?) Cambodia in the morning, in Sa Dec that night. Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. Photograph of John Kerry on the Slate home page by Getty Images/Agence France Presse.
This lie by Kerry does more to bolster the story of the Swift Boat Veterans than anything else. Kerry has proven himself to be dishonest about his service. This lie about Cambodia confirms that. Why should we believe Kerry on his other accounts, especially considering he won't release his full set of records as support? At a bare minimum, this means that Kerry should let the Veterans speak. You have 254 swift boat veterans who dispute Kerry's stories about his 4 months in Vietnam. That's a lot of veterans.
don't know why you continue to try and defend this fantasy, since Kerry's own campaign has given up. moreover, regarding where kerry was that night, it's pretty well document he was on a base about 50 miles from the border. might as well have been in saigon. as to the daniel boone ops, please, where is the evidence swift boats participated in those?
Did you even read the article? It specifically addresses that factual point. If you're going to take issue with somebody's factual analysis, you should at least read it, or skim it, or, at a minimum, guess correctly as to what it likely is. Or, perhaps you read it and are intentionally ignoring it. You've proven time and time again that you have no intention of approaching this in any but the most disingenuous, slanted and ridiculous way. Go back and read it, or don't, I don't care. I'm done discussing this with you. ALthough to call it a discussion is far too generous. I put the article up for the benefit of others, not so that the peanut gallery could hurl insults about the treasonous, cowardly, bloodthirsty, criminal, gloryhound, fabricated, p***y military career of master criminal and antichrist John Kerry, which is all he ever talks about, ever. Being a practicing bin Ladenist, that's what I do.
Uh, no Sam it does not. Just give up this silly game that you are playing here. Give it up. Kerry lied, plain and simple. His own campaign admits as much!
Sam, Kaplan's account is based soley on excerpts from Brinkley's book, a highly questionable account. there is ample evidence, and in a tactic you often employ i suggest you google a bit to find it, to suggest Brinkley's book is full of holes.
