Bush endorses Kerry on Military Record

“So what's the big deal then?

This should now be put to bed. Bush endorses Kerry's war record.

Bush backs Kerry's version, but won't condemn vets' ad

By DAVID E. SANGER and ELISABETH BUMILLER

NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE


FARMINGTON, N.M. - President Bush said Thursday that he did not believe Sen. John Kerry lied about his war record, but he declined to condemn the television commercial paid for by a veterans' group alleging Kerry came by his war medals dishonestly.

Bush's comments, in a half-hour interview with The New York Times, undercut one of the central accusations leveled by the veterans' group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose unproven attacks on Kerry have dominated the political debate for more than two weeks.

In the interview, which ranged from his preparations for the Republican National Convention to the reconstruction of Iraq and the twin nuclear threats of North Korea and Iran, Bush portrayed himself as a victim of the same type of political interest groups, called 527 committees for the section of the tax code that created them, that are attacking Kerry.

"I understand how Sen. Kerry feels - I've been attacked by 527s too," Bush said.

He added that he had spoken earlier in the day to Sen. John McCain and had agreed to join him in a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission to bar the groups.

Bush also acknowledged for the first time that he made a "miscalculation of what the conditions would be" in post-war Iraq.

But he insisted that the 17-month-long insurgency that has upended the administration's plans for the country was the unintended by-product of a "swift victory" against Saddam Hussein's military, which fled and then disappeared into the cities, enabling them to mount a rebellion against the U.S. forces far faster than Bush and his aides had anticipated.

He insisted that his strategy had been "flexible enough" to respond, and said even now "we're adjusting to our conditions" in places like Najaf, where U.S. forces have been battling one of the most militant of the Shiite groups opposing the U.S.-installed government”

“It doesn't matter! Moronic Americans will re-elect Bush.”

“Published on Friday, August 27, 2004 by the Seattle Times
Vietnam-Era 'Chickenhawks' Deserve a Swift Kick
by Gordon Livingston

Among the human attributes that excite the most contempt, hypocrisy occupies a special place. Those who say one thing and do another or who criticize others for moral deficiencies they themselves exhibit are deservedly the objects of public derision.

So it is with the "chickenhawks" of the Vietnam War generation currently providing what passes for leadership in this administration. They include Vice President Dick Cheney, who discovered he had "other priorities" during Vietnam, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who graduated from Cornell University in 1965 but decided to forgo military service during the war.

We recently have had a renewed opportunity to observe hypocrisy in action in President Bush's reluctance to disavow the contemptible attacks by a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

This collection of veterans, angry at John Kerry's antiwar activism after he returned home from Vietnam, continues to run TV ads attacking Kerry's war record. One of the group's leaders, John O'Neill, has published a book, "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry."

The New York Times reports that "some people behind the ads had connections to the Bush family, to prominent Texas politicians and to President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove."

The Times also says that "the accounts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth prove to be riddled with inconsistencies. In many cases, material offered as proof by these veterans is undercut by official Navy records and the men's own statements."

Whether this strategy will work is still a question. Redirecting public attention to the Vietnam War may prove unwise, considering the facts of Bush's own choice to avoid service in a war he purported to support.

According to The Washington Post, "A review of Bush's military records shows that Bush enjoyed preferential treatment as the son of a then-congressman, when he walked into a Texas Guard unit in Houston two weeks before his 1968 graduation from Yale and was moved to the top of a long waiting list."

Safely spared the prospect of combat service, he then virtually disappeared between May 1972 and May 1973. There are few records to indicate his whereabouts during that time.

The Associated Press noted that a full release of Bush's records would clarify "allegations that potentially embarrassing material was removed in 1997 from Bush's military file when he was running for re-election as Texas governor."

Perhaps it's not important who chose to serve and who did not in that misbegotten war. After all, Bush and prominent members of his administration simply made the same decision to find some way to avoid service that was made by many of the privileged young men of his generation, including Bill Clinton.

What smacks of hypocrisy, however, is to attack the service of Kerry, who lived an equally advantaged life yet made the choice to expose himself to the considerable risks of combat.

That he was intelligent enough to learn something from this experience and came home to oppose the war appears to be the real sin in the minds of many Republican hawks. They still argue that Vietnam was, in the words of Ronald Reagan, "a noble cause." To change one's mind as the result of experience is, of course, to "flip-flop."

The issue here, in a presidential campaign, is not courage vs. cowardice. People go to war for many reasons. For young men of my generation, the system created a situation in which the largest proportion of those engaged in combat were those who lacked the education or connections to avoid it. It was a war fought largely by working-class and poor kids. (The majority of our soldiers in Iraq, despite an all-volunteer military, come from similar backgrounds.) Little sacrifice was asked of the society at large, particularly its most-fortunate members.

This is what makes Kerry's decision to go to war all the more remarkable, whatever the complicated motives behind it. Whether he deserved his medals, whether he bled enough to justify three Purple Hearts, is irrelevant. That he went, in contrast to our current bellicose commander in chief, is enough, one would think, to earn the respect of those who chose not to. We have all, especially veterans, had enough of this contrived issue.

My Bronze Star citation contains some exaggerations written into it by the officer in my unit who submitted it. It was apparently felt that the award reflected well on my regiment and the Army and helped fill a national need for heroism in a decidedly unheroic conflict.

I, too, opposed the war when I got home, based on what I had seen there. I am prouder of that than anything I did with a rifle in my hands. Like Kerry, I believed I had earned the right to speak out. I would prefer not to be criticized by those who didn't go at all.

Gordon Livingston, a West Point graduate who served with the 11th Armored Cavalry in Vietnam, is a psychiatrist who lives in Columbia, Md.”

“This is for the right to spin on Monday mornin`. Now, if you still back the Swifties, you are against the President. Talk about being painted into another corner.....

Endorsements of gay's, affirmations of Kerry's service.....and whose th flip-floppers here? Hell, the President evenb admits Kerry is more of a man than himself. What a yutz!

Bush: Kerry Vietnam Service More Heroic

Sunday, August 29, 2004


TROY, Ohio — President Bush said opponent John Kerry's (search) service was "more heroic" than his during Vietnam, in an interview shown Saturday on NBC News.

"I think him going to Vietnam was more heroic than my flying fighter jets," said Bush, who served in the Texas Air National Guard (search). "He was in harm's way and I wasn't. On the other hand, I served my country. Had my unit been called up, I would have gone."

Busing through western Ohio, where jobs have been slow to come back in the economic recovery, Bush told rural audiences on Saturday that he would work to open foreign markets to U.S. crops and factory goods.

"In order to make sure jobs stay here in Ohio and America, we're going to make sure countries treat us the way we treat them," the president said. "When it comes to trade, our markets are open; they need to open up their markets."

Bush also said he would push Congress to make his first term's tax cuts permanent and said his economic policies were working. The economy has been slow to recover in parts of Ohio, but Bush was welcomed enthusiastically at the town square in Troy and later at a high school in Lima.

In Lima, which has lost 1,600 jobs since Bush became president, more than 1,000 of them in manufacturing, he said, "This economy of ours has recovered from recession, corporate scandal and attacks, and yet there are parts of your state that are running behind the national economy."

"I understand that," he said. "I understand that, which means you better get somebody in office who has a plan to continue economic growth."

Bush, who was making his 22nd trip to Ohio as president, won the county encompassing Troy by more than 10,000 votes over Al Gore in 2000 and won the Lima area by a 2-1 margin. At the side of a country road near the small town of Columbus Grove, laid-off worker Larry J. Rayburn said he planned to vote for Bush and didn't blame him for being out of work.

"He's doing a great job," Rayburn, 59, said of the president. Rayburn said he lost his job at a military tank factory in Lima, a plant that Bush visited last year.

Bush finished the day in Perrysburg near Toledo in northern Ohio, where he told a mostly friendly audience, "I fully understand there are places here in Ohio where people are still looking for work, and so long as anybody is looking for work, this administration will create the conditions for job growth. We need to keep your taxes low."

As the motorcade pulled into Perrysburg, a man threw what appeared to be a balloon filled with a purplish-reddish liquid, striking the windshield of a bus carrying the White House press corps traveling with Bush.

The Toledo area, where Bush lost by 35,000 votes four years ago, has suffered heavy manufacturing job losses during his term in office.

He won Ohio by 4 percentage points four years ago, and the race is close this year.

Wayne Baker, 57, who raises corn and soybeans near New Madison in Darke County, said he supported Bush's efforts to increase overseas markets but wanted to see more done.

"Anything we can do to keep the price up," Baker said. "There aren't any farmers in this part of the country I know getting very rich."

In Lima, Bush said, it would be a mistake to fight unfair trade practices of other countries by isolating the United States.

"One reason the farm economy around the country is strong is because we're selling soybeans to China, we're selling corn around the world. We've opened up markets. We can compete with anybody, any time, any place as long as the rules are fair."

Bush won cheers from most of the people who came out to see him, though about 75 protested outside the Troy town square.

Joe Napier, a 53-year-old electrician from Dayton, said he had been able to work only four weeks so far this year. "It's time for a change," Napier said. "We need somebody to get us some jobs."

As he does at every stop, Bush also spoke optimistically of U.S. military and other operations in Iraq.

"We have a clear goal" for bringing peace to Iraq and Afghanistan so that U.S. troops can come home, he said. "By helping to train Afghans and Iraqis ... we will complete this mission as quickly as possible so our troops do not stay a day longer than necessary."”