http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4772030/I like John Kerry of today better than in 2004. I hope I can say this on this forum, because it is how I feel:
MR. RUSSERT: As you well know, this is a 50-50 race between Bush and Kerry, but there is one area where the president has opened up in a significant lead. And in the interest of candor and clarity, I want to give you a chance to answer a question right up top, and I promise we'll talk about the nuance later on. But the American people, I think, would like a yes or no answer: Do you believe the war in Iraq was a mistake?
SEN. KERRY: I think the way the president went to war is a mistake.
Maybe appropriate for the time and period of history in 2004, but damnit all!! NO. The war in Iraq was a mistake.
Much better:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/13/AR2006061301449.html"Let me say it plainly," Kerry said. "It's not enough to argue with the logistics or to argue about the details or the manner of the conflict's execution or the failures of competence, as great as they are. It is essential to acknowledge that the war itself was a mistake, to say the simple words that contain more truth than pride. We were misled. We were given evidence that was not true. It was wrong, and I was wrong to vote for that Iraqi resolution."
This line of question was unfortunate by Tim but I also wasn't completely pleased by some of Kerry's answers. What sucks is that he had to answer the way he did given it was 2004 and he was running for POTUS, but well, 27 year old Kerry probably was pissed at 2004 Kerry for it:
MR. RUSSERT: Before we take a break, I want to talk about Vietnam. You are a decorated war hero of Vietnam, prominently used in your advertising. You first appeared on MEET THE PRESS back in 1971, your first appearance. I want to roll what you told the country then and come back and talk about it:
(Videotape, MEET THE PRESS, April 18, 1971):
MR. KERRY (Vietnam Veterans Against the War): There are all kinds of atrocities and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free-fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: You committed atrocities.
SEN. KERRY: Where did all that dark hair go, Tim? That's a big question for me. You know, I
thought a lot, for a long time, about that period of time, the things we said, and I think the word is a bad word. I think it's an inappropriate word. I mean, if you wanted to ask me have you ever made mistakes in your life, sure. I think some of the language that I used was a language that reflected an anger. It was honest, but it was in anger, it was a little bit excessive.
MR. RUSSERT: You used the word "war criminals."
SEN. KERRY: Well, let me just finish. Let me must finish. It was, I think, a reflection of the kind of times we found ourselves in and I don't like it when I hear it today. I don't like it, but I want you to notice that at the end, I wasn't talking about the soldiers and the soldiers' blame, and my great regret is, I hope no soldier--I mean, I think some soldiers were angry at me for that, and I understand that and I regret that, because I love them. But the words were honest but on the other hand, they were a little bit over the top. And I think that there were breaches of the Geneva Conventions. There were policies in place that were not acceptable according to the laws of warfare, and everybody knows that. I mean, books have chronicled that, so I'm not going to walk away from that. But I wish I had found a way to say it in a less abrasive way.
MR. RUSSERT: But, Senator, when you testified before the Senate, you talked about some of the hearings you had observed at the winter soldiers meeting and you said that people had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and on and on. A lot of those stories have been discredited, and in hindsight was your testimony...
SEN. KERRY: Actually, a lot of them have been documented.
MR. RUSSERT: So you stand by that?
SEN. KERRY: A lot of those stories have been documented. Have some been discredited? Sure, they have, Tim. The problem is that's not where the focus should have been. And, you know, when you're angry about something and you're young, you know, you're perfectly capable of not--I mean, if I had the kind of experience and time behind me that I have today, I'd have framed some of that differently. Needless to say, I'm proud that I stood up. I don't want anybody to think twice about it. I'm proud that I took the position that I took to oppose it. I think we saved lives, and I'm proud that I stood up at a time when it was important to stand up, but I'm not going to quibble, you know, 35 years later that I might not have phrased things more artfully at times.
MR. RUSSERT: The Boston Globe reports that your commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Grant Hibberd has suggested that you perhaps didn't earn your first Purple Heart and question whether you should have left Vietnam after six months. In order to deal with those kinds of issues, when I asked President Bush about his service in the Texas Guard, he agreed to release all his military records, health records, everything. Would you agree to release all your military records?
SEN. KERRY: I have. I've shown them--they're available to you to come and look at. I think that's a very unfair characterization by that person. I mean, politics is politics. The medical records show that I had shrapnel removed from my arm. We were in combat. We were in a very, very--probably one of the most frightening--if you ask anybody who was with me, the two guys who were with me, was probably the most frightening night that they had that they were in Vietnam and we're...
MR. RUSSERT: But you'll make all your records public.
SEN. KERRY: They are. People can come and see them at headquarters and take a look at them. I'm not going to--but I'll tell you this. I'm proud of my service. I'm proud of what we did. I know what happened. And the Navy 35 years ago made a decision and it's the Navy's decision and I think it was the right decision.
MR. RUSSERT: Your wife said recently--a few years ago--that you had bad nightmares, which were very frightening, about Vietnam. Do you still have nightmares?
SEN. KERRY: No, I don't. I don't, but I did for a period of time. You know, movement or sounds might jostle you into a kind of awareness. I don't know a lot of people who were in combat who haven't had them, but, no, I don't anymore, I'm glad to say. I don't even have nightmares about George Bush and this election, Tim.
He shouldn't have distanced himself from those 1971 words. I am so glad he said what he said in 2006:
Thirty-five years ago today, I testified before the Foreign Relations Committee of the United States Senate, and called for an end to the war I had returned from fighting not long before.
It was 1971 twelve years after the first American died in what was then South Vietnam, seven years after Lyndon Johnson seized on a small and contrived incident in the Tonkin Gulf to launch a full-scale war - and three years after Richard Nixon was elected president on the promise of a secret plan for peace. We didn't know it at the time, but four more years of the War in Vietnam still lay ahead. These were years in which the Nixon administration lied and broke the law - and claimed it was prolonging war to protect our troops as they withdrew - years that ultimately ended only when politicians in Washington decided they would settle for a "decent interval" between the departure of our forces and the inevitable fall of Saigon.
I know that some active duty service members, some veterans, and certainly some politicians scorned those of us who spoke out, suggesting our actions failed to "support the troops" - which to them meant continuing to support the war, or at least keeping our mouths shut. Indeed, some of those critics said the same thing just two years ago during the presidential campaign.
I have come here today to reaffirm that it was right to dissent in 1971 from a war that was wrong. And to affirm that it is both a right and an obligation for Americans today to disagree with a President who is wrong, a policy that is wrong, and a war in Iraq that weakens the nation.
I believed then, just as I believe now, that the best way to support the troops is to oppose a course that squanders their lives, dishonors their sacrifice, and disserves our people and our principles. When brave patriots suffer and die on the altar of stubborn pride, because of the incompetence and self-deception of mere politicians, then the only patriotic choice is to reclaim the moral authority misused by those entrusted with high office.
I believed then, just as I believe now, that it is profoundly wrong to think that fighting for your country overseas and fighting for your country's ideals at home are contradictory or even separate duties. They are, in fact, two sides of the very same patriotic coin. And that's certainly what I felt when I came home from Vietnam convinced that our political leaders were waging war simply to avoid responsibility for the mistakes that doomed our mission in the first place. Indeed, one of the architects of the war, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, confessed in a recent book that he knew victory was no longer a possibility far earlier than 1971.
By then, it was clear to me that hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen - disproportionately poor and minority Americans - were being sent into the valley of the shadow of death for an illusion privately abandoned by the very men in Washington who kept sending them there. All the horrors of a jungle war against an invisible enemy indistinguishable from the people we were supposed to be protecting - all the questions associated with quietly sanctioned violence against entire villages and regions - all the confusion and frustration that came from defending a corrupt regime in Saigon that depended on Americans to do too much of the fighting - all that cried out for dissent, demanded truth, and could not be denied by easy slogans like "peace with honor" - or by the politics of fear and smear. It was time for the truth, and time for it all to end, and my only regret in joining the anti-war movement was that it took so long to succeed - for the truth to prevail, and for America to regain confidence in our own deepest values.
The fissures created by Vietnam have long been stubbornly resistant to closure. But I am proud it was the dissenters - and it was our veterans' movement - and people like Judy Droz Keyes - who battled not just to end the war but to combat government secrecy and the willful amnesia of a society that did not want to remember its obligations to the soldiers who fought. We fought the forgetting and pushed our nation to confront the war's surplus of sad legacies - Agent Orange, Amer-Asian orphans, abandoned allies, exiled and imprisoned draft dodgers, doubts about whether all our POWs had come home, and honor at last for those who returned from Vietnam and those who did not. Because we spoke out, the truth was ultimately understood that the faults in Vietnam were those of the war, not the warriors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/opinion/18morris.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&oref=sloginSO why is George W. Bush taking the oath of office this week and not John Kerry? For me, the answer is clear: Mr. Kerry failed because of his inability to tell his own story. John Kerry could have presented to the American people his full biography, but instead he chose to edit who he was. Why?
My guess is that Mr. Kerry and his campaign believed that certain things could not be mentioned. Foremost among these was Mr. Kerry's opposition to the war in Vietnam, which was largely erased from the candidate's life. That was a mistake. People think in narratives - in beginnings, middles and ends. The danger when you edit something too severely is that it no longer makes sense; worse still, it leaves people with the disquieting impression that something is being hidden.
Muting Mr. Kerry's opposition to the Vietnam War had precisely this effect. Remember, this is the man who in 1971 made the following statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
"Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say they we have made a mistake. ... We are asking Americans to think about that, because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
Last year at the Democratic Convention in Boston, the Vietnam War was transformed into a strange version of World War II. Gone was the moral ambiguity, the complexity. Instead, Vietnam veterans appeared with Mr. Kerry as "a band of brothers," testifying to his heroism in battle.
This is what Mr. Kerry said in his acceptance speech: "Our band of brothers doesn't march together because of who we are as veterans, but because of what we learned as soldiers. We fought for this nation because we loved it and we came back with the deep belief that every day is extra. We may be a little older, we may be a little grayer, but we still know how to fight for our country."
Could Mr. Kerry's campaign advisers have forgotten about his role as a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War? Could they have forgotten about his Senate testimony? Did they expect others to forget - particularly longtime anti-Kerry veterans like John E. O'Neill? If so, they were gravely mistaken, and their reticence on the subject merely made Mr. Kerry vulnerable to attack.
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