Kerry Role in Antiwar Veterans Is Delicate Issue in His Campaign

[kskiska]

When questions were raised last month about whether a 27-year-old John Kerry had attended a Kansas City meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War where the assassination of senators was discussed, the Kerry presidential campaign went into action.

It accepted the resignation of a campaign volunteer in Florida, Scott Camil, the member of the antiwar group who raised the idea in November 1971 of killing politicians who backed the war. The campaign pressed other veterans who were in Kansas City, Mo., 33 years ago to re-examine their hazy memories while assuring them that Mr. Kerry was sure he had not been there.

John Musgrave, a disabled ex-marine from Baldwin City, Kan., who told The Kansas City Star that Mr. Kerry was at the meeting, said he got a call from John Hurley, the Kerry campaign's veterans coordinator.

"He said, `I'd like you to refresh your memory,' " Mr. Musgrave, 55, recounted in an interview, confirming an account he had given to The New York Sun. "He said it twice. `And call that reporter back and say you were mistaken about John Kerry being there.' "

Such little-noticed moments in Mr. Kerry's past — including his decision at age 26 to meet the Vietcong emissaries to the Paris peace talks — are coming under new scrutiny now, as Mr. Kerry finally makes the presidential run that his comrades in arms, and in the antiwar movement, half-mockingly predicted decades ago.

more…
http://nytimes.com/2004/04/24/politics/campaign/24VET.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

[David Dunham]

1. Kerry will do okay with this.

[Maat]

2. He sure will. Whether or not he was at the meeting.

Kerry should just come out with it. I heard he shut up the guy that suggested this anyway. Kerry should proudly talk about all the things he did to halt that immoral war. Obviously, he did not participate in any conspiracies ... or he'd likely have been prosecuted for it. Pleeeeez -- can't the righties abandon this nonsense?

[Robbien]

3. Just more campaigning

Where's the news?

[brainshrub]

4. I think I know Scot Camil

I think he lives in Gainesville, Florida.

He is a great man who has done alot for this country & the peace movement. When I was in college I had the honor of meeting him & talking with him in house. He taught me about what life was like in the Peacve Movement, stuff that you don't read in the history books.

[blm]

5. Geez, the "article" is just dripping with accusatory language.

Did the press go after the ONE guy who claimed Bush served in Alabama with one-tenth the ferocity, especially knowing full well he was lying through his teeth and coached by the Bush campaign?

[murielm99]

6. Now they are going to write an article about all the "delicate issues"

in shrubbie's campaign. His AWOL, DUI, his lies, the stolen election, etc, etc. They are going to write that article tomorrow.

Yeah, right.

[Cocoa]

7. they give the Kerry stories legs

I read this article looking for some new development that justified another story about this, but couldn't find it.

Will the NYTimes be reviving the Bush AWOL story next, should I hold my breath?

[agillis]

8. Brought about by his recent "Meet the Press" appearance?

This article is just a tidy summary of how Kerry first got into politics--sandwiched between paragraphs about the Kansas City VVAW resignation.

"And when Mr. Kerry appeared on 'Meet the Press' last weekend, he disavowed his own remarks on the same program in April 1971, when he said he and thousands of other soldiers had committed 'atrocities.'"

During his recent "Meet the Press" appearance, Kerry side-stepped a question about his 1971 MTP appearance, and instead pined about good ol' days when he had darker hair.

I'd prefer that he talk about those formative events with pride. But I can understand why he'd rather not. He did (at the time) confess to having taken part in war crimes while in Vietnam. And maybe we don't wanna go back there... especially when we have a full, rich and sucessful political career to point at.

I expect to see more and more of this type of "old news" as the election gets closer. My hope is that Kerry changes his current mindset, and says "Bring it on" to those who want to discuss his formative years.

[Snellius]

9. This is an absolute non-story smear piece by Bill Keller's Times

There is no news here. Since when did anyone take seriously anything in the NY Sun, a loss-leader conservative vanity press, about as unbiased a "newspaper" as the Washington Times. Kerry was obviously NOT at that meeting and had nothing to do with it but what does the NY Times choose as its story: not a contradiction of the story in the Sun but the fact that a Kerry aide called the guy who was spreading these lies to get him to correct the record. Just goes to prove: Just when you think the Times is on your side, never turn your back.

[bleedingheart]

10. versus Bush playing soldier but not being one???

this story on Kerry is nonsense...

[ldoolin]

11. VVAW

The story I have on VVAW is that the group was plagued after their big April 1971 demonstration in D.C. with two things:

* takeover attempts from two rival ultraleftist Maoist sects, one of which was (and is) known for violent rhetoric.

and

* FBI infiltrators and provocateurs. FBI agents infiltrating a group commonly use violent rhetoric to either try and entrap a few people or to stir up public indignation against the entire group.

Guilt by association is a very common propaganda technique, so if a lot of genuine VVAWs were at a meeting where one FBI infiltrator or Maoist revolutionary infiltrator made a suggestion that Nixon be assassinated, it can easily be used to smear everyone who was at that meeting, and, indeed, the entire group. The American people really need to be taught a lot better how to read through this kind of thing. It's obvious the schools aren't doing a good job of it.

See:
http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/hassna/vvaw.html

[Spazito]

12. I admire Kerry all the more for what he did...

He signed up, served with courage and then came back and spoke up on what he had seen and what he believed was wrong. In a way, it is like his vote for the war, he believed,rightly or wrongly, in what he was told and, now, knowing that what he was told was false, is speaking against what is happening in Iraq. It shows consistency, imo, not the flip-flop the repubs keep trying to pin on him.

[Snellius]

13. Part of my letter to Times:

I live in NY and read the Times -- the folding version -- religiously every morning, and nothing is quite as disturbing, over my wake-up coffee and bagel, on a beautiful Spring morning like today, to see this piece of crap plopped down to stink up my whole day. Here it is, the same Times that was so "shocked" at Clinton's indiscretions and so "scandalized" at Gore's "serial lies" now turning back, like Jekyll to Hyde, to the same kind of equal-opportunity smearing, just to prove how "liberal" they really are. I sent this to the editor. It was the best rant I could come up with, given the early hour and the state of my head:

Having finished reading this morning's sensational piece in the Times, "Kerry Role in Antiwar Veterans Is Delicate Issue in His Campaign", I'm wondering what "news" actually justified running this story so prominently above the fold, other than to help to give legs to the very smears and rumors which it purports to clear up. Since when does a loss-leader polemical vanity press like the NY Sun, which is about as much a "newspaper" as the Washington Times, become a valid source for the NY Times and why, instead of trying to get to the bottom of the story of whether or not John Kerry was at the Kansas City meeting, why does the Times choose to lead with the story that one of Kerry's aides, in an attempt to correct what was obviously a false claim, was attempting to influence a witness, like a shady henchman in some criminal racket, when all he was trying to do was to set the record straight. The answer here is not in response to the question but in why the question is being asked in the first place.