Senator Kerry, Prepare for your Moment of Truth

[Larkspur]

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0830-06.htm

Memo to Senator John Kerry: whether you like it or not, the moment of truth in this campaign has arrived.

You chose a flawed, phony script in Boston and beforehand. You left a glaring omission in the biography you presented to the electorate. Treating it as ballot-box poison, you forbade all of your champions on the Fleet Center podium to mention it, much less sing your praises for it.

Now your worst enemies are forcing the issue to the limelight. This time you duck it only at your peril. You cannot obfuscate or equivocate any longer. It is time for you to admit, once and for all, that you were, and are, a Vietnam veteran who turned against the war. If you're worth the faith that we the people long to invest in you, you'll say it proudly, and remind us why that war was such a colossal crime.

It is obvious to any person who has a passing regard for facts that those fellow Swift boat veterans who oppose you politically do not stand "for truth." We know the charges they have so far brought are scurrilous, specious and cruel, and their tactics straight from the Karl Rove playbook of dirty tricks. Yet the painful reality is, they have exploited the very large opening your efforts to bury your anti-war record created.
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[Richard D]

1. Just forwared this

To the Kerry site.

[Larkspur]

3. Let us know if you get a response

[mike_c]

2. hear, hear!

Bush, pathetic little turd that he is, wants to define himself as a "war president." Why doesn't Kerry display the courage of the convictions he expressed after returning from Vietnam and define himself as an "anti-war president" rather than trying so hard to bury his past strength of character? He'd get my vote if he did!

[Larkspur]

4. The author of this article says...

Iraq is the reason you are afraid to answer the "Hanoi John" charges; Iraq is the reason you have tried to expunge 1971 from your biography. You know that the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, while far from absolute, are considerable. You know we should not have gone into Iraq, and you know how hard it will be to get us out. And you know that ninety percent of the delegates in Boston, and the majority of the American public, now oppose this war. Yet you will not denounce it, you defend your vote to authorize it, and you promise only to try to persuade more allies to come aboard this sinking ship. You know these choices have alienated a crucial part of your base and done yourself out of what should be your strongest campaign issue.

Your own personal Iraq quagmire is, in microcosm, the quagmire facing the nation as a whole. And we need you to steer yourself and all of us out of it in as swift a boat as you can command. It so happens that the way out of Iraq leads, once again, through Vietnam. That is the unenviable duty for which you have actually reported. It's also why you could be, should be, exactly the right leader for this historical moment - if only you would rise to the occasion and be the anti-war veteran that you are.
And I believe that is true. Sad that it has to be this way.

[MISSDem]

5. You are so correct. Why does John Kerry distance himself,

no disavow what really makes him a hero - his anti-way activities? This is why I am so proud of him and he should shout it.