Really Bad Advice For Kerry

Doc K at Titus One Nine provides a helpful diagnosis to Kenneth Baer, writing in TNR.

And oh, my - not only was there a doctor in the house, but a lawyer showed up, too - Beldar the Terrible lays waste to the TNR. Run, you fools!

MORE: Robert Musil waves the yellow "caution" flag, twice.

Matt Welch makes an odd comment (partly rebutted by the InstaPundit here), and provides an interesting link to the JunkYard Blog.

OK, the odd comment from Matt:

What I don't understand is how anyone professes to truly give a flip about what John Kerry and George Bush did 32 or 36 years ago.

...I'm going to vote for the guy who I think will do the best job leading the most powerful country in the world in the war against people who want to blow us up, period. Everything else -- only 32,000 new jobs this month! This one dude acted weird at a Wendy's! -- is an increasingly pointless and unfunny diversion.

Well, yes. I hope to compose a slightly longer repsonse, but the gist would be, we are trying to locate Kerry's heart, and head, on the subject of Iraq (specifically) and the War on Terror generally. Since his constant emphasis of it suggests that Vietnam was a formative experience for Kerry, we need to explore his conduct both during the war, and immediately afterwards.

As a quick example - Kerry probably "hates" Nixon - will Kerry really want to get elected so that he can become Nixon, guiding Iraqi-ization and delivering peace with honor? What, one wonders, does his heart tell him?

Comments

[J_Crater]

I particularly like and agree with this line .. "The answer is: If Kerry does not pull these right-wing weeds now, they may choke his candidacy--and overrun his presidency." But of course, it would help if the facts were on his side.
If Lanny Davis was running ths operation, Kerry would be out saying something that contrite and at least made some sense. Instead, there is a steady diet of DNC and campaign lackeys who know only snippets of the real story and are often battered by the facts.
The risk not to directly address this issue is that it will choke and overrun the campaign and any possible presidency.

[TM]

It is pretty clear (based on the complete confusion over his dates of service, and honorable discharge) that his own staff has never sat down and done the "oppo research" drill on Kerry's war record.

[ed]

Hmmm.

Isn't this what happened to Howard Dean? Not the SwiftVets but rather an incoherent message and chaos in the campaign?

[J_Crater]

Am I the only one who gets the feeling that the Kerry campaign could use some "grownups", not based on age, but based on experience.
If the first team of "grownups" is responible for letting this go on so long that the story has been vetted via weblog to the point that, instead of becoming mush, they look like (fill in the blank), then Kerry is screwed.
This is beginning to look like a rerun of the Dole campaign, with the parties switched, of course.

[Paul Zrimsek]

I followed the link to Beldar's, but all I saw was some yellow police tape and a chalk outline of a "former Gore speechwriter and Democratic consultant" on the pavement. Brutal!

[Cecil Turner]

Man, I take a week's trip and this place goes bananas. (Maybe ought to go more often, eh?)

It's interesting to track back to the earlier "Bush AWOL" conversation and comments about whether it'd open Kerry up to similar scrutiny. Looks like I owe Patrick Sullivan a public apology for doubting--of course, who could know Kerry was going to make Vietnam service the centerpiece of his election bid. (And with his "Band of Brothers" acceptance speech, Kerry not only opened the door, he kicked it off the hinges.)

Beldar was brutal, but nothing Baer didn't deserve . . . talk about self-destructive behavior. Kerry desperately needs this story to go away, and that's not the way to do it.

[Dan]

I believe this is important because we are beginning to see a trend emerge. Was Kerry at the famous meeting where asassination of US Senators was discussed? He says no, he had already resigned from the Vets against the war. As it turned out, he was there and and forcefully opposed the idea. So why did he lie? Did his anti-war activities take place while he was still a member of the Navy? He said no - turns out he lied again. Why, if he was proud of his anti-war activities - this might show his courage of conviction, but instead he lies. Cambodia? Same deal. Does he own an SUV? No. Oh, well yeah, his family does.

Bottom line, any aspect of his life that might require a "nuanced" explanation seems to generate a lie instead.

[TM]

Dan - interestign idea - a "where was John" post.

The Kerry spot has some very current examples. I can't decide if they reinforce the point, or trivialize it.

KERRY, LIES, AND EXAGGERATIONS... [08/12 03:09 PM]
http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/kerryspot.asp

[ed]

Hmmm.

Ok. I got my copy of "Unfit for Command" at the office today but didn't get a chance to read it until 8pm or so. Took me a couple hours to read it and another hour to reread selected portions of it.

HOLY ****!!

Please excuse the language but I've never read anything more damning in my life. If these guys aren't telling the truth then they're in for the libel/slander/defamation suit of the century.

The book is only 200+ pages so it's not a hard read, but it's riveting. You get guided through every aspect of Kerry's Vietnam service and it's unreal. There are several points that should be considered.

1. Nobody liked Kerry or trusted him. Many of the officers in the SWIFT boats requested that they never go on missions with Kerry.

2. Kerry had an intense fantasy life where he was a John Wayne style hero confronting his superior officers about supposed issues. Instead he was a suck-up in real life. He was only the hero in his journals, which is the basis of his many biographies.

3. Kerry was unreliable. He would often "disappear" for long stretches of time from patrol. On one patrol, only 7 miles from Saigon, he actually deserted his post by taking his boat into Saigon for a night of drinking. He was also prone to firing without warning and exercised poor, or non-existant, fire discipline.

4. Kerry lied like a rug. He changed scenarios, times, situations and reports in order to gain medals. The action in which he won the Silver Star was actually completetly contrived. The night before the mission Kerry talked to his crew and the crews of two other boats. The basis of this "talk" was to convince them that, upon recieving fire, they would beach their boats and charge the enemy. The reason for this was to garner medals. What's more interesting is that each boat carried around 10 SVA soldiers who did the bulk of the fighting, and yet they weren't even mentioned in the citation.

5. Kerry didn't just think of the "3 Purple Hearts and you go home" routine himself. He was asked, or told to rather, to use this clause and get the hell out of Vietnam. The other SWIFT boat officers didn't want him anywhere near them anymore because he was such a liability.

6. Kerry, according to this book, was a physical coward who bitched about any level of danger and who either hung back or RAN the moment there was any danger. As an example Kerry spent only a week at An Thoi, a dangerous posting, because he bitched so much nobody wanted him around. So he got transferred to a much less dangerous post.

This literally goes on and on and on.

I didn't serve in the USN but I do a term in the USMC (starting in 1982, medical discharge in 1984) and I think I would have shot Kerry if he had done any of this crap to me or my buddies.

It's one thing to be a glory hound medal hunting bastard. It's another thing to leave wounded comrades to die by running away.

One thing is for certain. Someone is going to pay a heavy price for this book. Either it's the Swiftees, if they're lying. Or it's Kerry, if they aren't lying. Or it's the liberal media, once enough people have read this book.

Sooner or later there's going to be an accounting.

.... reposting this from R.L. Simon's blog. Because I'm a lazy twit. :)