Junto Boys

SWIFT BOAT VETERANS

Most of the guys on Kerry's boat like him. Most of his contemporaries on other boats do not. Add them together and a larger group disapproves of him.

John McCain cries foul and asks that Bush do the same thing. But nobody was so very upset when people were speculating that Bush was AWOL in the National Guard, least of all McCain.

Political campaigns are about distinguishing yourself from your opponent. Since Kerry had a war record compared to Bush's National Guard record, Kerry has made that a very big issue in this campaign.

Kerry has removed Vietnam from an air tight container and used it all through his life in order to achieve certain goals. In the early 1970s, he used the experience to prove that he was a peacenik and that the horrors of war were far worse than the American people knew. In 1992, he used his Vietnam experience to say loudly that Bill Clinton's draft dodging record was unimportant. He's also used his Vietnam experience to be a leader in the normalization of relations with Vietnam and to give the Vietnamese a pass on the number of POWs that they never released.
Kerry's Vietnam experience before this election was used to attack fellow soldiers, go soft on cowards and play nice to the enemy.

Now, Vietnam leaves the airtight container to tell us that Kerry is a warrior. Kerry told us at the Democrat Convention that he was a better warrior than Bush. It's our job as voters to decide if he’s indeed the better warrior. We don't know what happened in Vietnam and Americans were more than willing to ignore his service there, especially since he begged us to ignore Clinton's past service. But since he decided to make Vietnam the centerpiece, it's perfectly fair that some people tell a different story. We've gone through the politicizing of the 911 commission hearings. Michael Moore has made 100 million dollars calling Bush a war criminal. Kerry wanted Vietnam to be an issue not Bush.

I once heard that the inventor of the Guillotine was later executed with it during the harshest period of the French Revolution. Kerry was a leading spokesman for Vietnam atrocities, and the fact that he is now accused of the same atrocities is interesting. The American people will get to decide if the Swift Boat Veterans are more or less trustworthy than Michael Moore.

I think it will matter little to people whether he torched huts and did those other things. Conservatives already don't trust him and Liberals will look the other way. The important thing that transpired here is a reminder that Kerry is anti-military. He did serve when his country called, but he has never stood up for the thousands of veterans that served with him nor the military personnel who came after him. He can't expect those people to pat him on the back now.

BLANKLEY READS THE BOOK.