John Kerry, the real...... deal?

[Matt]

Second of a two part article. Part one is interesting as well.

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11940

Cash-and-Kerry, Part Two
By Lowell Ponte
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 28, 2004


PONTEFICATIONS

“AN AMERICA THAT BELONGS NOT TO THE PRIVILEGED, not to the few, but to all Americans.” That was what the winner of the New Hampshire Primary promised Tuesday night in his victory speech.

But, paradoxically, if Senator John Kerry becomes the Democratic nominee and is elected this November, the White House for the next four or eight years will belong to a man born to enormous wealth and privilege.

Kerry as a boy was raised and educated mostly in Europe. He fluently speaks, and thinks in, French. He preferred to marry wealthy women of foreign orientation. He believes that the United Nations and its permanent Security Council members such as France should have veto power over what actions the United States may take to defend its national security.

A Kerry presidency could therefore be tantamount to putting a quasi-European aristocrat in control of the United States and relinquishing to the United Nations a large measure of American sovereignty.

In Kerry-merica, patrician privilege would rule, and ordinary Americans and our Constitution would have less and less sovereign power.

Is he the “Real Deal,” as Kerry calls himself, or would a John Kerry presidency be a Dirty Deal, a Steal Deal for most Americans?

To glimpse this alternative future, we need to look deeper into John Kerry’s double-dealing past.

Both Bill Clinton and John Kerry modeled their personal ambitions on John F. Kennedy. Clinton imitated the womanizing, playboy JFK. Kerry imitated the young JFK, born to privilege, who volunteered to seek military glory in a PT boat.

Kerry grew up in a world of luxury boats and had gone yachting with John F. Kennedy. But his father had been a test pilot as well as a sailor. He cut his young son’s teeth on flying, and Kerry loved to pilot small airplanes. Despite this, when Vietnam beckoned Kerry signed up not for the Air Force but for the Navy to command small “swift boats” that resembled PT-109 in the Mekong Delta.

It was dangerous duty, bringing Kerry three wounds and three Purple Hearts. For risking his life to rescue a Green Beret who had been swept overboard amid enemy fire, Kerry was awarded the Bronze Star for Valor (“for personal bravery”). Days before the 2004 Iowa Caucuses, that now-Republican Special Forces soldier Jim Rassman traveled from Oregon to Iowa to thank Kerry for saving his life.

For single-handedly going ashore after and killing an enemy soldier who was armed with a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, Kerry was awarded the Silver Star (“for gallantry”). Boston Globe reporter David Warsh adduced evidence suggesting that this Viet Cong was alone, already wounded, and might have been shot in the back by Kerry. Soldiers serving under Lt. (Junior Grade) Kerry said Warsh was incorrect.

“I committed the same kinds of atrocities as thousands of others,” said Kerry as an anti-war activist guest on NBC’s Meet the Press (quoted in Brinkley’s book, page 362) after he returned stateside, “in that I shot in free fire zones, fired .50-caliber machine [gun] bullets, used harass-and-interdiction fire, joined in search-and-destroy missions, and burned villages. All of these acts are contrary to the laws of the Geneva Convention, and all were ordered as written, established policies from the top down, and the men who ordered this are war criminals.”

But Kerry was an officer in Vietnam who gave such orders to his men. Kerry has therefore confessed to being a war criminal himself. Was he saying that he was “merely following orders” from above, like a good German? Or does he accept his share of legal and moral responsibility for the illegal orders he said he gave? Either way, this is proof that John Kerry is, by his own yardstick, unfit ever to be President of the United States.

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 23, 1971, Kerry claimed under oath that American soldiers had “raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam.”

He dramatically told reporters that such atrocities were the norm, not rare exceptions, for U.S. soldier behavior. This Kerry false blood libel against honorable soldiers gave protestors a kind of license to protestors to attack, belittle and ridicule soldiers returning to America.

But when Kerry became a Senator, using fame as his ladder to this political office, he would do something far worse to our soldiers, especially those held as prisoners of war.

For the record, some in the media recently echoed a website story claiming that Kerry had killed 21 unarmed Vietnamese civilians during the war. The author apparently confused Senator John Kerry with now-retired war hero and Senator Bob Kerrey (D-Nebraska).

Kerrey, to quote the liberal magazine The American Prospect (TAP), “had evidently ordered the wanton slaughter of 21 Vietnamese civilians, including babies, at point-blank range,” then filed a report claiming that all were Viet Cong. “That report,” wrote TAP reporter Robert Dreyfuss, “was enough to win Kerrey a Bronze Star, which he did not refuse.”

By contrast, John Kerry has told audiences that he “once refused a direct order from a far-away commander to open fire on a group of Vietnamese civilians standing alongside a riverbank in the Mekong,” wrote unabashed Kerry supporter Joe Shea in the January 21, 2004, issue of The American Reporter.

“When [Kerry] got back to base, facing the threat of a court martial,” writes Shea, “he defended himself with a tattered copy of the Rules of Engagement he kept handy in his hip pocket. He knew the rules, and he won the day."

Put aside the fact that these Rules of Engagement were always changing, and that many believe these often-bizarre and arbitrary bureaucratic restrictions on where, when and how our troops could fight were the reason America lost in Vietnam.

If we take Kerry’s story as true, we then face questions Shea neglected to raise. Did not these rules that Kerry knew by heart also require a soldier to report war crimes, or attempted war crimes, by others? Did Kerry report this officer’s illegal order to kill civilians to superiors? Or did Kerry remain silent, thereby becoming this officer’s ally and enabler, if not accomplice?

If this story is true, then I hereby ask Senator Kerry to name the officer who issued this illegal order and the officers before whom he defended with that tattered rule book his refusal to obey it. Surely a memory so indelible as to play a role in young Kerry’s anti-war speeches can also recall the name of this officer who ordered him to slaughter innocent civilians. (If 60-year-old Kerry’s memory is now failing, of course, this is evidence that he may have lost the mental acuity to be President.)


The same questions could be asked about all the other routine atrocities young Kerry alleged before a Senate committee. If he had firsthand knowledge from witnessing who did these illegal things, why did Kerry fail to turn in the criminals in accord with the Rules of Engagement? If he shielded those whose war crimes he witnessed, Kerry is an accomplice after the fact to these atrocities.

On the other hand, if his knowledge was only secondhand gossip, rumor or intoxicated tales told by bored soldiers around jungle campfires – what the law calls hearsay evidence – then Kerry was reckless, irresponsible and almost treasonous to make such outrageous claims under oath before the Senate, the press and the American people.

A paradox worth remembering is that Kerry modeled himself on President John F. Kennedy, the Commander-in-Chief who committed the first 17,000 armed troops into Vietnam. (Republican President Dwight Eisenhower sent only unarmed advisors.) So when Kerry criticizes what happened in Vietnam, and when on victory night in Iowa he embraced Ted Kennedy, Kerry has been wrapped up in the legacy of the very Democratic President who created the morass in Vietnam. Psychoanalysts have words for such mental aberrations.

Like most Leftist Democrats, Cleopatra Kerry has a Queen of Denial fixation with blaming Vietnam not on Democratic Presidents JFK or LBJ but on Republican Richard Nixon, who did not become President until 1969 when JFK’s war had been entrenched for seven years.

Coming home, decorated Vietnam veteran John Kerry quickly pushed himself into the spotlight of two anti-war activities funded by Jane Fonda – Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the so-called Winter Soldier Investigations.

If TV cameras were present, Kerry could be found staging events with other veterans – such as throwing medals away in protest on the steps of the Capitol. “This Administration forced us to return our medals,” Kerry told reporters at this event. (It later turned out that Kerry was throwing other peoples’ medals while keeping his own, an act of deceit and phoniness typical of Kerry.)

Cartoonist Gary Trudeau caught Kerry’s inner essence perfectly in two Doonesbury cartoons. “If you care about this country at all, you better go listen to that John Kerry fellow,” a stranger lectures Mike Doonesbury and B.D. in the October 21, 1971, strip. “He speaks with rare eloquence and astonishing conviction. If you see no one else this year, you must see John Kerry!”

The stranger departs, and B.D. asks “Who was that?” Mike responds: “John Kerry.”

In the next day’s Doonesbury, we see Kerry giving a crowd-rousing anti-war speech, at the end of which bubbles above his head reveal his inner thoughts: “You’re really clicking tonight, you gorgeous preppie.”

Back then Kerry apparently believed that being anti-war was his ticket to fame, wealth and power. He expected to enter the holy city of Washington, D.C., riding a Democratic donkey while the adoring masses threw down palm branches before him.

(Kerry was dropped from Al Gore’s 2000 short list for Vice President mostly because Kerry had voted against the successful Gulf War in 1991, a war Gore cut a political deal to support. But in 2004 Kerry has been criticized by Democrats for voting, as Senators Hillary Clinton and John Edwards did, to give President George W. Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq.)

In 2004, ironically, an older Kerry with a fake patina of maturity is trying to seize the White House by depicting himself as a war hero on horseback who says we need more troops for Iraq and comes wearing the Bronze and Silver Stars he once pretended to throw away.

This is worse than schizophrenia. The reality is that Kerry apparently did fight bravely in Vietnam, but he then betrayed his fellow soldiers in several ways. By supplying anti-war-propaganda ammunition to the enemy, Kerry encouraged the North Vietnamese to keep fighting and helped prolong the war.

Only God knows how many more Americans and Vietnamese died because of Kerry’s ego-trip activism. Every time you visit that black memorial with nearly 70,000 names in Washington, D.C., remember that some of them died because John Kerry gave aid and comfort to the enemy in order to advance his own celebrity, wealth and power.

Whenever Kerry now prates that the first duty of a Commander-in-Chief is to protect the lives of our soldiers, this hypocrite should be spit on by everyone present in remembrance of all the American soldiers Kerry helped our enemies to kill.

Kerry apparently fancies himself a bridge between America and Vietnam, between those who fought the war and those who fought against it, and between the opposed worlds of Communism and Capitalism.

During the Clinton era, Kerry received an $8,000 campaign contribution from notorious Democratic brown bag man Johnny Chung at a 1996 fundraiser. That same year the Senator took $10,000, in exchange for which Kerry arranged a high level meeting between Communist Chinese intelligence operative Lieutenant Colonel Liu Chaoying, Johnny Chung and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

From Red China’s point of view, this SEC meeting apparently had multiple purposes – including money to be made from creating Chinese “front” companies on American stock exchanges, and the potential use of such companies to transfer militarily-useful technologies and hardware to Beijing.

Seen as a friend and ally by the Communist regime in Vietnam, Senator Kerry knew that a huge lucrative prize might be within his grasp. As they are today over Iran, giant multinational corporations have been eager to sell goods and purchase resources in Vietnam. The Marxist Vietnamese dictatorship has been eager to re-enter the world marketplace, especially with its chief ally the Soviet Union gone. A politician who restored links between Vietnam and America could gain huge amounts of money in campaign contributions and other benefits.

What stood in the way of such a profitable thaw in U.S.-Vietnam relations, Kerry knew, were the lack of human rights in Vietnam and its apparent continued holding of many American prisoners of war (POWs) and soldiers missing in action (MIAs) from the war.

To make these stumbling blocks disappear, Kerry in 1991 conjured a new Senate Select Committee for POW/MIA Affairs with himself as chairman and his legislative assistant Ms. Francis Zwenig as the committee’s Chief of Staff. She would act as liaison to interested corporations through their umbrella organization, the U.S./Vietnam Trade Council (that she would later leave the committee to run).

“Zwenig, according to documents, coached the North Vietnamese to concoct plausible stories on the fate of POW/MIAs in order to show that Hanoi was cooperating to resolve the POW/MIA issue, a hurdle in the diplomatic dance to lift the trade embargo and renew relations with Vietnam,” writes Anthony Nguyen at the anti-communist website VietPage.com.

“Senator Kerry,” Nguyen continues, “was caught on camera making a promise to the North Vietnamese communists that he would ensure that they weren’t embarrassed by their concocted stories.”

Senator Kerry also prevented a vote on the Vietnam Human Rights Act (HR2833), which would have made lifting trade restrictions contingent on Communist Vietnam restoring basic human rights. By stopping this measure from becoming law, Kerry protected Marxist Vietnam from pressure to free its slave society.

Through much manipulation and arm-twisting, Kerry persuaded his now-defunct committee to vote unanimously that no POWs existed in Vietnam. And with the disappearance of this and the proposed human rights legislation, Kerry gave Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party the pretext they needed to begin re-opening trade that could help keep the Marxist Vietnamese dictatorship afloat. Those given first place in line for such trade opportunities, of course, were the biggest contributors to Democrats such as Senator Kerry and Bill Clinton.

The year after his committee’s vote to give Communist Vietnam a clean bill of health, the strangest thing happened. In December 1992 Vietnam signed its first huge commercial deal worth at least $905 million to develop a deep-sea commercial port at Vung Tau to accommodate all the trade that was to come. It signed the deal with a company called Colliers International. At the time, the Chief Executive Officer of this company was C. Stewart Forbes. Name sound familiar? It should. He is Senator John F. Kerry’s cousin. What a coincidence!

Less widely noticed, when the Democratic Party decided to give Kerry a leg up towards its presidential nomination by holding its 2004 National Convention in Boston, certain big corporations rushed to pony up money for the Democratic event. One of the first of these rushing to fill Democratic coffers was Spaulding & Slye Colliers, the current corporate partnership involving Colliers International, which anted up $100,000.

The Boston press sniffed at how this and other companies with business pending before the Democrat-dominated city might be trying to curry favor or satisfy politician demands for money.

But perhaps a more global agenda is at work behind the scenes. Money is fungible, and part of the Vietnam millions channeled to Colliers International can easily be inferred to be co-mingled in this $100,000 donation to the Democratic National Convention.

This July as you watch the red, white and blue balloons fall from that Boston convention ceiling to celebrate the newly-selected Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry, think of the red ones as being purchased and used to seduce you by Communist Vietnam.

And if Kerry surprises the world by naming as his running mate Arizona Republican John McCain, former POW and Kerry’s close friend and ally in re-opening trade with Vietnam, remember on election day the prisoners of war still in Vietnam who will never come home to their families because they were betrayed by the politics of cash and Kerry.

[lukpac]

Cash-and-Kerry, Part Two

But, paradoxically, if Senator John Kerry becomes the Democratic nominee and is elected this November, the White House for the next four or eight years will belong to a man born to enormous wealth and privilege.

Er...last I checked Bush was "born to enormous wealth and privilege" too. So it's a problem with Kerry but not Bush?

He fluently speaks, and thinks in, French.

What's wrong with that?

He preferred to marry wealthy women of foreign orientation.

And...?

He believes that the United Nations and its permanent Security Council members such as France should have veto power over what actions the United States may take to defend its national security.

As this seems to be in reference to Iraq, how did the war help our national security? Or world security, for that matter?

In Kerry-merica, patrician privilege would rule, and ordinary Americans and our Constitution would have less and less sovereign power.

Didn't *Bush* push the Patriot Act?

But Kerry was an officer in Vietnam who gave such orders to his men. Kerry has therefore confessed to being a war criminal himself. Was he saying that he was “merely following orders” from above, like a good German? Or does he accept his share of legal and moral responsibility for the illegal orders he said he gave? Either way, this is proof that John Kerry is, by his own yardstick, unfit ever to be President of the United States.

As unfit as someone who goes AWOL?

[Rspaight]

This July as you watch the red, white and blue balloons fall from that Boston convention ceiling to celebrate the newly-selected Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry, think of the red ones as being purchased and used to seduce you by Communist Vietnam.

So Kerry's bad because he's a filthy rich guy (who speaks French -- oooooh!) who makes shady capitalist deals and also... pushes Communism? Erm.

The reality is that Kerry apparently did fight bravely in Vietnam, but he then betrayed his fellow soldiers in several ways. By supplying anti-war-propaganda ammunition to the enemy, Kerry encouraged the North Vietnamese to keep fighting and helped prolong the war.

Only God knows how many more Americans and Vietnamese died because of Kerry’s ego-trip activism. Every time you visit that black memorial with nearly 70,000 names in Washington, D.C., remember that some of them died because John Kerry gave aid and comfort to the enemy in order to advance his own celebrity, wealth and power.

He's bad because he served his country but had a conscience about it? (Unlike Bush who went AWOL and apparently has no conscience about *that.*)

That crap about opposing war giving "aid and comfort" to the enemy is so tiresome. By that logic, you're never allowed to disagree with war, ever. Sounds like a nice, convenient way to ensure your foreign policy never gets questioned -- manufacture a "never-ending" war and anyone who opposes it is "betraying" America. Hmmmmm. That sounds familiar.

“Zwenig, according to documents, coached the North Vietnamese to concoct plausible stories on the fate of POW/MIAs in order to show that Hanoi was cooperating to resolve the POW/MIA issue, a hurdle in the diplomatic dance to lift the trade embargo and renew relations with Vietnam,” writes Anthony Nguyen at the anti-communist website VietPage.com.

“Senator Kerry,” Nguyen continues, “was caught on camera making a promise to the North Vietnamese communists that he would ensure that they weren’t embarrassed by their concocted stories.”

That's pretty strong stuff, but I couldn't persuade vietpage.com to appear in my browser -- came back "cannot find server." Anything from the mainstream press on that? (An "anti-communist" site surely has reason to parrot any weird tales they can find to support their view.)

It is pleasantly nostalgic to see the right trying to paint Kerry as a Communist sympathizer, though. Feels like the good old days.

Ryan

[Matt]

Easy guys, nothing is wrong with Kerry being rich or speaking french. Maybe if elected he could become friends with Jacques Chirac and discuss military strategies in French. Due to his wealth, I wonder if he will appear "Out of touch" to voters?

Can you please tell me about Bush going AWOL? I had not heard about this.

I find the POW stuff hard to belive myself.

Are you guys really behind Kerry?

[lukpac]

Easy guys, nothing is wrong with Kerry being rich or speaking french.

Well, that wasn't what was implied by the article.

Maybe if elected he could become friends with Jacques Chirac and discuss military strategies in French. Due to his wealth, I wonder if he will appear "Out of touch" to voters?

Again, why is that an issue for Kerry but not Bush?

Can you please tell me about Bush going AWOL? I had not heard about this.

Google works well...

http://www.awolbush.com/
http://awol.gq.nu/AWOL_Globe%20series.htm
http://www.kings.edu/twsawyer/awol/awol-bush.html
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030411.html

Are you guys really behind Kerry?

I'm not behind any particular candidate at the moment, but I'm not *against* Kerry (as I am with, say, Lieberman).

[Patrick M]

Can you please tell me about Bush going AWOL? I had not heard about this.

Are you sure you didn't read this thread? What about this one?

[Matt]

I did use google initially, but found some sights that were..well not mainstream.

[Matt]

Luke, I would think the wealth would be more of an issue for Kerry getting minority votes.

[lukpac]

And that wealth would be a bigger deal to minority voters than Bush's wealth (and voting record, for that matter)?

[Rspaight]

Are you guys really behind Kerry?

He's not my first choice in the field, but if he gets the nomination, I'll vote for him. I'd even vote for Lieberman if it came down to it, though I'd have to take a long shower afterward.

To be honest, if the Dems nominated a 4x8 sheet of plywood, I'd vote plywood. I find it hard to conceive of a candidate more unappealing than Bush, outside of cranks like LaRouche.

Ryan

[Xenu]

God, I hate Lieberman.

When I was in...what, 3rd grade or something? Lieberman was the bastard who ruined Mortal Kombat for the SNES. I swore then that he would pay. He's essentially a religious right candidate who happens to get lots of Jewish votes. His politics--and his views on the intelligence of your average American--are disgusting.

[Ron]

God, I hate Lieberman.
His politics--and his views on the intelligence of your average American--are disgusting.

All that aside, Lieberman is simply one of the geekiest looking guys to ever run for president. Sort of makes Ross Perot look like Rambo by comparison.

[MK]

Eh, that article does a pretty poor job of making the case against Kerry over Bush (unless all it wants to do is preach to Bush's choir), but I think that's been covered pretty well by the other posters.

I don't recall hearing about Bush going AWOL; during the last election, to my understanding, like a lot of Americans with the connections, Bush was able to avoid combat in Vietnam when his father got him stationed in Texas, test flying planes. Gore, on the other hand, was sent to Vietnam; I think his father, who had just lost re-election, did try to get him out of the service or at least Vietnam. Fortunately for Gore, he didn't have to stay that long in Vietnam and was also able to avoid combat, I think he was stationed in radio or something (again, connections). The same can't be said for John Kerry, John McCain, Wesley Clark, Bob Kerrey (sp?), among others, who actually were in combat. Any four of those guys, I'd vote for, no question about it. I have a serious problem about people who haven't seen real military action talking about courage and sending people to war when those who have seen it urge for far more caution.

As for the whole argument of rich politicians, seriously, how many poor or even middle-class politicians are there in high office? Not too many. Yeah, you can make jokes that they got rich through corruption, but seriously, a person who can get close to the White House is probably the kind of person who knows how to make a shitload of money, without resorting to corruption. Out of touch? Not unless you haven't done your own shopping in 12 years (there were things I liked about Bush, Sr., but seriously, not recognizing a supermarket scanner in 1992 was seriously out of touch).

[Rspaight]

I don't recall hearing about Bush going AWOL; during the last election, to my understanding, like a lot of Americans with the connections, Bush was able to avoid combat in Vietnam when his father got him stationed in Texas, test flying planes.

Pretty much, but there's more. The "AWOL" part comes in because he vanished from Guard duty for anywhere from several months to over a year, depending on who's story you believe. I think we're to the point where getting out of combat due to connections is no longer fatal politically, but getting into the Guard due to connections and then blowing off the Guard duty is something else again. Even Dan Quayle did his Guard duty.

The current line from the White House is that Bush may have missed some duty, but that he made it up at a later time. Huh. Wonder if someone called up to Iraq could just not show up, then reappear after their unit is back home to "make up" that time.

From today's Boston Globe:

Bush's Guard service: What the record shows
By Walter V. Robinson, Globe Staff, 2/5/2004

Michael Moore, the documentary filmmaker, started it, labeling President Bush a military "deserter" during an appearance last month with Democratic presidential candidate Wesley K. Clark.

Less incendiary was Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, who charged Sunday that Bush had been AWOL, absent without leave, while a fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

False, outrageous, and baseless, said the White House. Terry Holt, the spokesman for Bush's reelection campaign, insisted in an interview yesterday that Democrats are recklessly trying to "impugn the character of the commander-in-chief."

As with much of the partisan back and forth in presidential politics, the truth lies elsewhere -- in this case in Bush's military records. Those records contain evidence that a lackadaisical Bush did not report for required Guard duty for a full year during his six-year National Guard enlistment.

A detailed Globe examination of the records in 2000 unearthed official reports by Bush's Guard commanders that they had not seen him for a year. There was also no evidence that Bush had done part of his Guard service in Alabama, as he has claimed. Bush's Guard appointment, made possible by family connections, was cut short when Bush was allowed to leave his Houston Guard unit eight months early to attend Harvard Business School.

Bush received an honorable discharge in 1973. The records contain no indication that Bush's commanding officers, one of them a friend, ever accused him of shirking his duty.

In an interview yesterday, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, asserted that Bush "fulfilled his military requirements." Bartlett acknowledged that Bush's "irregular civilian work schedule could have put strains on when he served, when he performed his duty."

Before the Globe report in May 2000, Bush's official biography reported erroneously that he flew fighter-interceptor jets for the Houston Guard unit from 1968 to 1973. In a 1999 interview with a military publication, Bush said that among the values he learned as a pilot included "the responsibility to show up and do your job."

Most Democrats consider Moore's accusation of desertion unsupportable.

Still, according to the records and interviews in 2000, Bush's attendance record in the Guard was highly unusual:

Although he was trained as a fighter pilot, Bush ceased flying in April 1972, little more than two years after he finished flight school and two years before his six-year enlistment was to end, when he was allowed to transfer to an Alabama Air Guard unit. The records contain no evidence that Bush performed any military duty in Alabama. His Alabama unit commander, in an interview, said Bush never appeared for duty.

In August 1972, Bush was suspended from flight status for failing to take his annual flight physical.

In May 1973, Bush's two superior officers in Houston wrote that they could not perform his annual evaluation, because he had "not been observed at this unit" during the preceding 12 months. The two officers, one of them a friend of Bush and both now dead, wrote that they believed Bush had been fulfilling his commitment at the Alabama unit.

Two other officers, in interviews, offered a similar account of Bush's absence, saying they had assumed Bush completed his service in Alabama.

Bush's official record of service, which is supposed to contain an account of his duty attendance for each year of service, shows no such attendance after May 1972. In unit records, however, there are documents showing that Bush was ordered to a flurry of drills -- over 36 days -- in the late spring and summer of 1973. He was discharged Oct. 1, 1973, eight months before his six-year commitment ended.

Through Bartlett, Bush insisted in 2000 that he had indeed attended military drills while he was in Alabama during 1972 and in 1973 after returning to his Houston base. At the time, Bartlett said Bush did not recall what duties he performed during that period.

Albert Lloyd Jr., a retired colonel who was the personnel officer for the Texas Air National Guard at the time, said in an interview four years ago that the records suggested to him that Bush "had a bad year. He might have lost interest, since he knew he was getting out."

Lloyd said he believed that after Bush's long attendance drought, the drills that were crammed into the months before Bush's early release gave him enough "points" to satisfy the minimal requirements to earn his discharge. At the time, Lloyd speculated that after the evaluation of Bush could not be done, his superiors told him, `George, you're in a pickle. Get your ass down here and perform some duty.' And he did."

In the last election, Vice President Al Gore declined to make an issue of Bush's military service, perhaps because Gore's credibility could have been an issue. That includes a claim by Gore that turned out not to be true, that he had been "under fire" during his service in Vietnam.

In the current presidential campaign, echoes of the Vietnam War remain. Senator John F. Kerry, who was decorated for gallantry in action and wounded in Vietnam, is now the favorite to become the Democratic nominee.

Kerry has left direct criticisms of Bush's military record to surrogates, such as former US senator Max Cleland of Georgia. Cleland said in an interview yesterday that Bush as president "has been wrapping himself falsely in the flag."

But Kerry, at least implicitly, has sought to turn attention to Bush's military record. In an interview Tuesday night on Fox News, Kerry said: "I've never made any judgments about any choice somebody made about avoiding the draft, about going to Canada, being a conscientious objector, going into the National Guard."

On that issue, Holt, the Bush spokesman, cried foul. Holt pointed to Kerry's statements in 1992 defending Bill Clinton against criticism that Clinton actively avoided the military draft in the late 1960s. Cleland, who is a triple amputee as a result of the wounds he suffered in Vietnam, said of Clinton: "Bill Clinton evaded and avoided the draft. We know that."

Whether the distinction between the decisions that Kerry and Bush made a generation ago will matter with the electorate remains to be seen. Clinton, despite criticism of how he sidestepped military service, defeated Bush's father, who was a Navy torpedo bomber pilot during World War II.

The percentage of voters who are military veterans has been dwindling for a generation, due to the end to the military draft and the deaths of veterans of World War II and Korea. US government statistics show that even service in the National Guard, like Bush's, was hardly the norm. Of 27 million men who were potentially eligible for military service between 1964 and 1975, about 9 million served on active duty. Another 2 million were in the Reserves or National Guard.

In mid-1966, there were more fathers of draft age, 3.5 million, deferred from service than the total number of men and women, 2.6 million, who served in Vietnam during the entire conflict.

Todd Gitlin, a sociologist at Columbia University and a 1960s historian who authored the book, "The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage," said yesterday that Bush was one of a type -- young men like former vice president Dan Quayle who supported the war but sought refuge in National Guard units that were not used in Vietnam.

Gitlin, who was once president of the antiwar group Students for a Democratic Society, said former Vermont governor Howard Dean is more typical of the generation, those who opposed the war and found a way out of service. Dean received a medical deferment in 1971 for a bad back. His condition did not prevent him from skiing in Colorado in the months following.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania and a specialist in political campaigns, said that she believes the White House reaction to the issue is evidence that Bush's advisers fear that Kerry might be able to turn it into a vulnerability for the president.

Cleland agreed. If Kerry is the Democrats' nominee, he said, the combination of Kerry's service and Bush's spotty attendance in a Guard unit will make it difficult for the GOP to hold the high ground on national security issues, in an election where such issues will probably be paramount to many voters.

Jamieson said that if Democrats want to, they may use Bush's military records to raise further doubts about his credibility when voters have concerns about whether the administration was truthful in making its case for the invasion of Iraq.

Gitlin agreed with Jamieson. In 2000, he noted, Gore would have been hampered in his ability to raise the issue of Bush's military service. This time, he said, the Democratic nominee may focus on it as one more way to prove the case to voters that Bush has deceived them.

Holt, the GOP spokesman, said he doubts the Democrats can turn Bush's military service into a campaign issue. The attacks by Kerry and surrogates like Cleland, he said, are reprehensible. Given Kerry's past defense of Clinton on the issue, he added, "Senator Kerry is being, at the very least, hypocritical."

Gore, on the other hand, was sent to Vietnam; I think his father, who had just lost re-election, did try to get him out of the service or at least Vietnam. Fortunately for Gore, he didn't have to stay that long in Vietnam and was also able to avoid combat, I think he was stationed in radio or something (again, connections).

Gore volunteered, but was indeed assigned as a journalist with an engineering group away from the front lines. He was only in country five months compared to the typical one year tour of duty.

Ryan

[Rspaight]

Just saw this:

From Yahoo:

"The president was honorably discharged from the National Guard. He served his time," Gillespie told CNN television. "And he fought -- he served in a very dangerous area, which is fighter jets."

Huh? Fought? Where?

Ryan