News Editorials Weigh in on Kerry Furor

[RedEarth]

With a mix of passion and dismay, newspaper editorials are weighing in on the furor over John Kerry (news - web sites)'s service in Vietnam, with many coming to his defense, a few standing behind his critics and others bemoaning the attention to a 30-year-old war rather than today's problems.

Many newspapers used strong language — smear, deceit-ridden, odious — to condemn accusations by a group of Vietnam veterans that Kerry did not deserve his medals, that he mischaracterized a mission to Cambodia and that he maligned all the troops with his anti-war comments.


"No informed person can seriously believe that Kerry fabricated evidence to win his military medals in Vietnam," the Los Angeles Times wrote, arguing that the tactic of using others to fling mud was "perfected" by President Bush (news - web sites)'s father.


Others just as passionately defended the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. "Kerry can't very well insist in one breath that his Vietnam record is the linchpin of his claim to become commander in chief and in the next denounce his opponents for inspecting that record with the attention it supposedly deserves," the Rocky Mountain News wrote.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1963&e=21&u=/ap/20040826/ap_on_el_pr/war_service_editorials_3&sid=96378798

[still_one]

1. They have succeeded in getting Iraq off the front page

The census report came out today, and no one talks about the increase in people at the poverty level

[ixion]

2. ah, the media reporting on itself... how avant garde

:eyes:

[goforit]

3. And now all they need to do is POUND Bob Dole for his character-assas

sination.

Bush's total intent through Swift-boat is diplayed
totally through Bob Dole!!!

[rocktivity]

4. The Smear-Boaters "inspected" Kerry's record? They LIED about it!

And doesn't Bush's military record deserve similar scrutiny?

:headbang:
rocknation

[jkbsun]

5. It is about to get the scrutiny just ask Walt Starr? hahahaha n/t

[krkaufman]

8. Exactly, Rock. No "inspection" was done.

The *RECORD* clearly records Kerry's heroism and injuries. The Swift liars are asking everyone to ignore *ALL* the evidence and to listen only to their 35-years-later recollections (which contradict earlier statements and testimony from themselves).

[The_Casual_Observer]

6. "inspecting that record with the attention it supposedly deserves"

Ok, we may as well open up the file on EVERY SINGLE award officially approved, signed off and presented by the government. In my view they are questioning the entire process then, not just Kerry.

[chromotone]

7. To paraphrase Adlai Stevenson...

No informed person can seriously believe...

But we still need a majority to win.

[realFedUp]

9. L.A. Times editorial today

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-kerry26aug26,1,5174178.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

Kerry's Testimony

August 26, 2004

It turns out that the attack on John Kerry's war record was just Act 1. Now the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (and, miraculously, all the right-wing media) have turned to Kerry's antiwar record. After returning from Vietnam, Kerry became a spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a major force in the antiwar movement. In 1971, he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This famous testimony launched Kerry's political career and the talk of him as a future president. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger can be heard fretting about it on the Watergate tapes.

snip-
Many of those who condemn Kerry for opposing the Vietnam War are too young to have been politically aware during that period. The rest are fighting very old battles. But the fact is that the argument over Vietnam was settled long ago, and a majority of Americans decided that Kerry was right.

Members of the Swift boat group and like-minded Americans are free to try to re-litigate the basic Vietnam question. They say, from the comfortable perspective of 2004, that the antiwar movement emboldened the enemy and thus lengthened the war. That's their premise: We could have won the war by 1971 if not for Kerry and his ilk. Of course, after continuing the war for three more years, we still didn't win it. So even accepting the dubious premises of these Hindsight Hawks, blame for the lives lost after Kerry's testimony goes primarily to the leaders in Washington who kept the war going needlessly.

The late 1960s were a moral obstacle course for young Americans, especially young men. Kerry is one of the few who got it right. He served, and served bravely as even President Bush now concedes. Then he came back home and worked to stop the killing and the dying.

George W. Bush, by the way, dodged the second part too.