August 23, 2004

Business Week: John Kerry returned a hero. The smears his political enemies are now flinging mark them -- not him -- as beneath contempt

Four more US soldiers have died in Iraq. For what? The
neo-con wet dream of a Three Stooges Reich. Meanwhile,
the "US mainstream news media," which no longers gives
these tragic and *unnecessary* deaths prominent
coverage, has flooded the air waves for days and
nights with the Bush cabal's despicable and deceitful
attacks on the heroic military record of Sen. John F.
Kerry (D-Mekong Delta)...JFK is ahead in Missouri,
Ohio and Fraudida. West Virginia, Virginia, North
Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas are in play. New
Hampshire is already lost to the Bush cabal...Arizona
and Nevada too are in play...There is an Electoral
Uprising coming in November...The Bush cabal will get even more desperate and even more viscious the closer we get to the day of political reckoning...

Thane Peterson, Business Week: The next time the
nation gets into a war, why would any American with an
interest in national service show up to fight? When
did the U.S. come to blithely accept the tarring for
political gain of honorably discharged combat
veterans? Obviously, I'm talking about the attacks on
John Kerry by a bunch of angry, Bush-backing
Vietnam-war vets who claim the Democratic candidate
doesn't deserve all of the medals, which include
Bronze and Silver Stars and three Purple Hearts, that
he won in combat in Vietnam.
But I'm also talking about the attacks on Republican
Senator and former prisoner of war John McCain -- a
genuine hero by anyone's definition -- during his
South Carolina primary battle against George W. Bush
for the 2000 Presidential nomination. And the
relentless assaults on the patriotism of Democrat Max
Cleland by Republican Saxby Chambliss, who defeated
Cleland for one of Georgia's Senate seats in 2002. If
you want proof of Cleland's patriotism, all you need
to know is that he lost three limbs in Vietnam.
It's time for Bush in particular -- and Americans in
general -- to get on the right side of this issue once
and for all. No moral equivalency exists between Kerry
and Bush on the issue of service in Vietnam. Kerry
served in combat. He was shot at. Not Bush. If you
don't think it's important for a President to have
served in combat, fine, make your choice on other
grounds. But if you do, Kerry is your man, at least on
this one issue (see BW Online, 8/23/04, "Why Kerry's
War Record Matters").

Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/aug2004/nf20040823_6115_db045.htm


AUGUST 23, 2004

COMMENTARY
By Thane Peterson


Flinging the Foul Mud of Vietnam: John Kerry returned a hero. The smears his political enemies are now flinging mark them -- not him -- as beneath contempt

The next time the nation gets into a war, why would
any American with an interest in national service show
up to fight? When did the U.S. come to blithely accept
the tarring for political gain of honorably discharged
combat veterans? Obviously, I'm talking about the
attacks on John Kerry by a bunch of angry,
Bush-backing Vietnam-war vets who claim the Democratic
candidate doesn't deserve all of the medals, which
include Bronze and Silver Stars and three Purple
Hearts, that he won in combat in Vietnam.

But I'm also talking about the attacks on Republican
Senator and former prisoner of war John McCain -- a
genuine hero by anyone's definition -- during his
South Carolina primary battle against George W. Bush
for the 2000 Presidential nomination. And the
relentless assaults on the patriotism of Democrat Max
Cleland by Republican Saxby Chambliss, who defeated
Cleland for one of Georgia's Senate seats in 2002. If
you want proof of Cleland's patriotism, all you need
to know is that he lost three limbs in Vietnam.

It's time for Bush in particular -- and Americans in
general -- to get on the right side of this issue once
and for all. No moral equivalency exists between Kerry
and Bush on the issue of service in Vietnam. Kerry
served in combat. He was shot at. Not Bush. If you
don't think it's important for a President to have
served in combat, fine, make your choice on other
grounds. But if you do, Kerry is your man, at least on
this one issue (see BW Online, 8/23/04, "Why Kerry's
War Record Matters").

REPUBLICAN RECOMMENDATION. Nine of the ten Swift-boat
comrades who served on Kerry's boat have showed up at
his side to campaign for him and defend him. They're
the ones with the most direct knowledge of what
happened and they confirm that Kerry deserved the
Bronze Star for his leadership during a skirmish on
March 13, 1969.

So does Jim Rassmann, the retired Los Angeles County
cop who introduced Kerry at the Democratic Convention.
Rassmann is a Republican, for gosh sakes. He came
forward on his own and offered to campaign for Kerry,
whom he credits with saving his life that day. Rassman
also recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, one of the
nation's highest honors for bravery under fire and the
highest medal Kerry won.

Crewmen on the three Swift boats involved in an attack
Kerry led on Feb. 28, 1969, also support Kerry's
version of events. That's the day Kerry won the Silver
Star, one of the nation's highest honors for bravery
under fire and the highest medal Kerry was awarded.

The latest to come forward is Willam R. Rood, a
Chicago Tribune editor who commanded one of the other
boats, broke a 35-year silence when he published a
first-person account on Aug. 22 supporting Kerry's
version. "What matters most to me," Rood wrote, "is
that this is hurting crewmen who are not public
figures and who deserved to be honored for what they
did."

"FOG OF WAR"? Contrast that with George Bush, who few
witnesses can recall having seen during a long stretch
of his National Guard duty during the Vietnam War.
News organizations have done plenty of digging into
the past to determine whether Bush used personal
influence to get himself into that National Guard
assignment. It's hard to say for certain. But no poor
people were in that unit. The only ones in it were
people with pull.

Why the so-called called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth
-- only one of whom served on the same vessel with
Kerry -- have decided to attack their fellow vet is a
bit hard to decipher, too. I suppose it could partly
be an honest difference of opinion. Maybe the "fog of
war" led vets to have different memories of the same
events.

But the critics' main motivation is clear from
statements they themselves have repeatedly made: They
remain angry that Kerry protested the war when he
returned the U.S. and, specifically, that he accused
his fellow soldiers of having committed atrocities in
Vietnam.

MUDDYING THE WATER. Unfortunately, soldiers --
including American soldiers -- commit atrocities in
all wars. That was true even of the so-called Greatest
Generation in World War II, it was true in Korea and
Vietnam, and it's undoubtedly true in the current
conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Denying that is to
deny the reality of war. And failing to face the harsh
realities of war is what makes it so easy for the U.S.
to slide into nasty, unnecessary conflicts -- like
Vietnam and the Iraq War now.

Americans should never go to war except in the full
knowledge that it's going to wreak terrible pain on
the enemy, the civilian populations involved, and our
own troops. That doesn't make the service of those who
served honorably any less honorable. But anyone who
denies that some American soldiers committed
atrocities in Vietnam is kidding themselves. You can
quibble over the exact words Kerry used and whether he
should have said them when he did, but in broad terms
he spoke the truth.

The purpose of the attacks against Kerry, however,
isn't to get at the truth. It's a media campaign, with
TV ads intended to create a vague, negative impression
where none existed. The people behind the ads know
that by any realistic assessment of the facts, Kerry
has a major advantage over Bush when it comes to their
respective military records. They want to muddy the
waters to reduce Kerry's advantage. It's amazing that
such bald-faced tactics can gain any traction with
voters.

NO EQUIVALENCY. The critics know that if they can
just manufacture the appearance of controversy, most
reporters -- in the name of "balancing" their stories
-- will play along. Attacks on Bush, such as an ad
funded by the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org that
questioned Bush's military record, have been given
equal weight with the vets' attack ads in some
stories.

The Bush campaign and editorial writers are calling on
Kerry to distance himself from the MoveOn ads in the
same breath that the Kerry campaign and editorialists
are asking Bush to renounce the Swift-boat vets' ads.
Kerry has repudiated the MoveOn ad (after some
prodding from McCain).

But sorry, my fellow journalists, there's no
equivalency here. MoveOn is an avowedly partisan group
that openly opposes Bush. The Swift-boat vets tried to
cover their political tracks while claiming inside
knowledge about Kerry most of them clearly don't have.
And several of them have flip-flopped from publicly
praising Kerry to attacking him.

A nation has to honor its war veterans whatever their
political party, while remaining realistic about the
horrors of war. If some Americans do otherwise, all
Americans are shamed. McCain has also called on Bush
to denounce the attacks on Kerry and condemn that kind
of low-life negative campaigning. It's time the
President complied in no uncertain terms, and it's
time he meant it.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peterson is a contributing editor at BusinessWeek
Online. Follow his State of the Arts column, only on
BusinessWeek Online
Edited by Douglas Harbrecht


Copyright 2000-2004, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
All rights reserved.
Terms of Use Privacy Notice

Posted by richard at August 23, 2004 02:09 PM