TOTAL INFORMATION ANALYSIS

Monday, February 23, 2004

Boston Globe has reported on John Forbes Kerry's collegiate Presidential ambitions:

Kerry also had political ambitions -- and was aware of how much military service had served John Kennedy's career. "John would clearly say, 'If I could make my dream come true, it would be running for president of the United States,' ''recalled William Stanberry, Kerry's debate team partner for three years. "It was not a casual interest. It was a serious, stated interest. His lifetime ambition was to be in political office.''

Why? What drove Kerry? "I don't think there was any one specific issue, such as 'I am going to spend my life working for racial integration or world peace.' '' Stanberry said. "I don't think he had pet issues as much as he simply said, `The life of a politician is the life I want.
[...]
What fellow "bonesmen'' most remember is how Kerry steered the talk toward Vietnam.

"You had this group of the elite of the elite selected out of the Yale senior class who probably were most adept at gazing at their own navels and probably thought the world rotated around them,'' said one of Kerry's fellow bonesmen, Dr. Alan Cross. "You had this one among us who saw this growing quagmire in Vietnam we were heading into with good intention and certain results. His statements were really a clarion: 'Hey, guys, this is happening, this is going to define our generation.' ''
[...]
The National Archives provided the Globe with a Navy "instruction" document that formed the basis for Kerry's request. The instruction, titled 1300.39, says that a Naval officer who requires hospitalization on two separate occasions, or who receives three wounds "regardless of the nature of the wounds," can ask a superior officer to request a reassignment. The instruction makes clear the reassignment is not automatic. It says that the reassignment "will be determined after consideration of his physical classification for duty and on an individual basis." Because Kerry's wounds were not considered

Hm, so he was obsessed with becoming President, and he knew that the division over Vietnam would define his generation. Which side should an ambitious young man take? Why not both?

More from Boston Globe:

[Kerry] requested and was granted a transfer out of Vietnam six months before his combat tour was slated to end on the grounds that he had earned three Purple Hearts. None of his wounds was disabling; he said one cost him two days of service and the other two did not lead to any absence.
[...]
Kerry served two tours. For a relatively uneventful six months, from December 1967 to June 1968, he served in the electrical department aboard the USS Gridley, a guided-missile frigate that supported aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin and was far removed from combat.
[...]
Kerry initially hoped to continue his service at a relatively safe distance from most fighting, securing an assignment as "swift boat" skipper. While the 50-foot swift boats cruised the Vietnamese coast a little closer to the action than the Gridley had come, they were still considered relatively safe.

"I didn't really want to get involved in the war," Kerry said in a little-noticed contribution to a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling
[...]
The swift boat crew typically consisted of a college-educated skipper, such as Kerry, and five blue-collar sailors averaging 19 years old.
[...]
Kerry declined a request from the Globe to sign a waiver authorizing the release of military documents that are covered under the Privacy Act and that might shed more light on the extent of the treatment Kerry needed as a result of the wounds.

Author B.G. Burkett has pointed out that Lt. Kerry, as the only officer on his swift boat, had no one to dispute his tales of injury.

Kerry, then of course went on to become a leading activist in Vietnam Veterans against the war, even testifying before the U.S. Senate, accusing soldiers in Vietnam of routinely committing war crimes. (See enhanced 'photo illustration' above.)

Furtehermore, as William Fielder explains:

[Kerry] returned from the Vietnam war to lead protests, denigrate our flag, mock anticommunists, and call his fellow veterans "criminals" before a 1971 congressional committee. In his book, “Stolen Valor,” author B. G. Burkett relates how Kerry used untrue examples of atrocities committed by US servicemen to back up his charges. He was infamous for wearing tattered fatigues that mocked the uniform, carrying an upside-down US flag that dishonored Old Glory, and disposing of his medals by throwing them over the White House fence. He helped launch an antiwar veteran’s group funded by Jane Fonda, and is pictured in his mocking attire on the cover of this book, "The New Soldier."

Does this not seem an ineffective and deceitful way for a "veteran's group" to protest the war?

What could become of such a protest vehicle? headmap.org explains:

In May 1972, Bill Lemmer, Southern Regional Coordinator of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), a key group in the convention protest coalition, surfaced as an undercover FBI operative. Lemmer's false testimony enabled the Bureau to haul the VVAW's national leadership before a grand jury hundreds of miles away during the week of the convention.

But somehow the golden boy Kerry, who testified for VVAW before Congress, wasn't caught up in this dragnet.

Playing both sides against the middle and coming out so clean is a delicate pursuit. Perhaps Kerry sought to get by with a little help from his friends? As MSNBC.com and NBC's Today Show reported, (archived by Propaganda Matrix) 2002 09 04:

There is a Bones cell in the CIA, which uses the society as a recruiting ground because the members are so obviously adept at keeping secrets.

It certianly wouldn't be a first. Former National Security Council official suring the Nixon and LBJ administrations, Roger Denton, wrote in his book Partners in Power, that Rhodes Scholar Bill Clinton was spying on antiwar activists at Oxford for the CIA.

Kerry went on during his Senatorial career to not only cover for the intelligence agencies in the matter of POWs during Vietnam, but also CIA drugrunning through Arkansas connected to both Clinton and Poppy Bush.

| Posted at 04:58 | PERMA-LINK |

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