John Kerry's Million Dollar Pain in the Ass
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Kerry's Lies and Spin
Just when you think you've gotten to the bottom of John Kerry's self-promotion and flat-out lying in order to create a heroic background for himself, the ooze gives way and you find an even lower level -

Read this op-ed piece for even more insight into Senator John Kerry:

"Grandstanding draws spotlight on Kerry's military record," Phil Valentine, Williamson County Review Appeal, Friday, August 13th, 2004

Some interesting quotes from Mr. Valentine's article:

"By now, you've certainly heard of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. This is a group of Vietnam vets who served with Kerry during his four months in Vietnam and they don't have too many kind words for their former comrade-in-arms.

Before you discount these veterans as partisan hacks, as the Democratic spin-control machine would have you believe, understand that 16 of the 23 surviving officers who served with Kerry in swift boats in Vietnam have joined this group."

In other words, 2 out of 3 surviving swift boat officers who were in Vietnam with Kerry (including two of his former commanding officers) feel strongly enough about John Kerry's bullshit about his service there that they got together to protest it publicly.

Valentine's article goes on to state what I mentioned in an earlier entry - quoting Kerry's former CO Cmdr. Grant Hibbard about Kerry's attempt to brazenly get a Purple Heart for an accidentally (and incompetently) self-inflicted shrapnel scratch which happened outside of combat; and his eventual going around his CO to get that medal fradulently despite Cmdr. Hibbard's refusal to sign off on it.

Here's the new stuff -

"The third Purple Heart in question, the one that was Kerry's ticket home after just over four months in combat, occurred on March 13, 1969. The wounds sustained included a small bruise on his right arm and a minor injury to his buttocks. Again, Kerry insists he was wounded by enemy fire, but those who were there tell a different story. Kerry says he was wounded by an underwater mine. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth say Kerry was wounded as a result of his not-so-bright decision to toss a grenade into a nearby rice cache. The "shrapnel" actually plucked from Kerry's fanny was rice pellets."

So not only WAS Kerry a pain in the ass (according to two of his commanding officers in Vietnam) but he apparently got a Purple Heart for GIVING HIMSELF ONE, too - for two self-inflicted wounds (through incompetence and extremely poor judgment about when and where to use antipersonnel grenades, not to mention using them outside of actual combat or even confirmed contact with the enemy of any other sort), incurred outside of combat as required for the award of a Purple Heart or points toward early rotation out of theater, Lt.(j.g.) John Kerry was sent home from Vietnam after only four months in theater, not the year he would have ordinarily served.

So John Kerry appears:
a) to have lied to get TWO of his Purple Hearts
b) thus to have lied on two occasions in order to be sent home from Vietnam after four months, instead of the usual year-long tour;
c) to have not corrected or clarified either item (a) or item (b) when folding them into his new patriot-hero persona;
d) by all of the above to have an abiding disrespect for true heroism as evidenced by not seeking combat wound decorations for non-combat wounds; and finally
e) to have shown willingness over a period of over thirty years to swear to the truth of lies when they are convenient to his goals.

Some of you would like to know why I call John Kerry "Zippo John," and Mr. Valentine's article throws light on that, as well:

"Interestingly enough, Kerry characterized himself as a war criminal in 1971, saying that he had taken part in the torching of villages and the killing of innocent civilians in violation of the Geneva Conventions."

The activity Kerry admitted to before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is what was known as a "Zippo raid," after the brand of cigarette lighter allegedly used by rogue American troops to burn the thatch huts of Vietnamese villagers down.

Taking Senator Kerry at his word, I started calling him "Zippo John" to commemorate his self-admitted acts of arson against civilians while allegedly serving his country.

I still want to know why John Kerry didn't do jail time - either for perjury before the Senate or for war crimes. One way or another, he either lied under oath or told the truth about having done worse things.

P.J. O'Rourke's two cents on the matter....
Topic: Kerry's Lies and Spin

Another Kerry CO speaks out - was one of those million-dollar wounds FAKE?
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Kerry's Lies and Spin
Commander Grant Hibbard, USN (ret.) was Lt.(jg). John Kerry's commanding officer when Kerry was training to serve on Swift Boats, and when Kerry supposedly got one of the three combat wounds (thus Purple Hearts) that allowed him to return to duty outside Vietnam after only four-months.

Cmdr. Hibbard's version:

"While in Cam Rahn Bay, he trained on several 24-hour indoctrination missions, and one special skimmer operation with my most senior and trusted Lieutenant.

The briefing from some members of that crew the morning after revealed that they had not received any enemy fire, and yet Lt.(jg) Kerry informed me of a wound -- he showed me a scratch on his arm and a piece of shrapnel in his hand that appeared to be from one of our own M-79s. It was later reported to me that Lt.(jg) Kerry had fired an M-79, and it had exploded off the adjacent shoreline. I do not recall being advised of any medical treatment, and probably said something like 'Forget it.'

He later received a Purple Heart for that scratch, and I have no information as to how or whom.

Lt.(jg) Kerry was allowed to return to the good old USA after 4 months and a few days in-country, and then he proceeded to betray his former shipmates, calling them criminals who were committing atrocities.

Today we are here to tell you that just the opposite is true. Our rules of engagement were quite strict, and the officers and men of Swift often did not even return fire when they were under fire if there was a possibility that innocent people -- fishermen, in a lot of cases -- might be hurt or injured. The rules and the good intentions of the men increased the possibility that we might take friendly casualties." -- Commander Grant Hibbard, USN (retired)

One of John Kerry's COs speaks!
Mood:  irritated
Resume inflation is everywhere, so when I saw this statement from Captain Charles Plumly, USN (ret.), one of John Kerry's commanding officers in Vietnam, I decided to pass it on as a public service:

"During Lt.(jg) Kerry's tour, he was under my command for two or three specific operations, before his rapid exit...

...His turncoat performance in 1971 in his grubby shirt and his medal-tossing escapade, coupled with his slanderous lines in the recent book portraying us that served, including all POWs and MIAs, as murderous war criminals, I believe, will have a lasting effect on all military veterans and their families. Kerry would be described as devious, self-absorbing, manipulative, disdain for authority, disruptive, but the most common phrase that you'd hear is 'requires constant supervision.'" -

- Captain Charles Plumly, USN (retired)

Zippo John's Band is breaking up... (that didn't take long... )
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: Kerry's Lies and Spin

Mood:  don't ask
Topic: Kerry's Lies and Spin

John Kerry in dire straits?
Mood:  happy
Topic: Kerry's Lies and Spin

Slate's Fred Kaplan drops a clinker for Kerry....
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Kerry's Lies and Spin

Kerry on Defense - what if Kerry had gotten his way? (pt 2 of 2)
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Kerry's Lies and Spin
Let's say that John Kerry, and not Michael Dukakis, had run against Bush the Elder in 1988 - and won.

Let's also stipulate that unassailable Democratic majorities existed in the House and Senate, capable of supporting any move Kerry wanted to make, and endlessly willing to do it, even at the expense of their constituencies.

In this hypothetical alternate 2004, we're in deep trouble - "we" meaning "the whole world, even the French and Germans." Why? It's all John Kerry's fault.

In 1990, instead of going to the aid of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia when Saddam Hussein attacked, President Kerry declined to act. Saddam was able to seize the oil fields and refineries in northeast Saudi Arabia before a coalition of Britain, France, the Saudis, Egyptians, Syrians and the Gulf Cooperation Council stopped his forces short of Mecca.

However, this coalition was not powerful enough to throw Saddam out of either Kuwait or the land he occupied (and continues to occupy) in Saudi Arabia. Saddam was able to pay Iraq's massive debts from the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s with the profits from oil production in the captured lands.

Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf states eventually made an uneasy peace with Saddam Hussein, who is now well on his way to his long-term goal of politically and militarily dominating the Arab world by a mixture of overt threats and covert subversion and support for international terror.

President Kerry's inaction during the Iraq-Kuwait Crisis allowed Saddam Hussein's program to acquire weapons of mass destruction to proceed unimpeded.

By the fall of 1992, the nuclear weapons program headed by Saddam's son-in-law Hussein Kamel was able to leapfrog past the construction of fission-only weapons, purchasing plans from the Chinese of the technology behind compact hydrogen bombs of the type used in American nuclear artillery shells which was stolen by the Chinese from Los Alamos National Laboratories - an event which was soft-pedaled by the national press, as was the multi-million dollar series of campaign donations made at roughly the same time by the Chinese Army through several intermediaries to Vice-President Al Gore's office.

By 1994, mass-production lines were established in Iraq both for the compact nuclear artillery shells and for strategic hydrogen bombs roughly equal in yield and design sophistication to those on Minuteman III ICBMs. By then, no hope existed of curtailing any of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction acquisition programs - so he soon became the possessor of the fourth largest nuclear arsenal on Earth, and the second largest chemical and biological arsenals, after the Soviet Union.

Of course, the Iranians were not sitting on their hands during all of this - their program to acquire nuclear weapons instantly went into overdrive, and received crucial assistance from the nuclear arms bazaar run by Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan. The 1990s were a busy decade for Dr. Khan, who sold nuclear weapons and plutonium manufacturing technology to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt and Libya as well, mostly with Saudi financing.

In 2000 Hosni Mubarrak, the strongman ruler of Egypt, was killed by the Muslim Brotherhood, and a junta of radical Muslim army and air force officers took control of the country. Encouraged by their covert possession of nuclear weapons and strengthened by the military might conferred by Mubarrak's military partnership with the United States, the Egyptian junta overran the Sinai buffer zone in August 2004 with a massive armored force while bombing Israeli positions indiscriminately.

The Syrians, forewarned of the attack, seized the opportunity to recover the Golan Heights from Israel. Syrian-assisted Hezbollah guerillas invade northern Israel before being bombed and destroyed by fighters from Ramat David Air Base.

Stout Israeli resistance to the Egyptian/Syrian attack placed the success of the operation in doubt, and poor command and control is blamed later for an Egyptian brigade commander's decision to destroy a large concentration of Israeli armor with a nuclear-armed and range-enhanced Nodong-2 tactical missile (bought secretly from North Korea).

The Israelis responded with tactical nuclear strikes on Egyptian and Syrian troop formations and air defense sites. Tel Aviv, Damascus and Cairo were destroyed in retaliatory strikes before the respective armies' command and control was totally disrupted and the remnants of the warring forces withdrew to their countries to help restore order.

Saudi Arabia soon announced its possession of nuclear weapons, followed by Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria, all threatening to finish the destruction of Israel if the West Bank settlements were not evacuated forthwith.

Meanwhile, President Gore was left totally without options. Then-President Kerry's refusal to stop the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in 1990 largely destroyed any credibility or diplomatic clout the United States had built up in the Persian Gulf under Reagan.

When Kerry stopped production of the M1 Abrams tank and Bradley fighting vehicle, most US Army and National Guard units were left with M60A3 main battle tanks, based on an obsolete design dating from the Korean War, and M113A3 armored personnel carriers whose comparatively thin armor won't even stop heavy machine gun fire.

The complete lack of a credible equipment base for modern manuever warfare causes the US Armed Forces to abandon the AirLand Battle concept which might have given American forces a decisive and vastly disproportionate edge in combat effectiveness over Iraqi and other potential Middle Eastern adversaries. (Note: and which actually did do so during Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom in the real world)

Even if Gore had wanted to intervene in the rapidly evolving 2004 bloodbath in the Middle East, he couldn't have gotten enough troops and tanks to the area in to make a difference before the worst damage had been done, because Kerry had also halted purchase of enough C-5B Galaxy military transport planes to move a division's worth of troops and supplies in a timely fashion.

Meanwhile, Kerry's massive drawdown of US defense capabilities, his precipitous and unilateral cancellation of the "Star Wars" missile defense program and cancellation of advanced infantry and armor weapons systems in the pipeline removed much of the pressure on the Soviet economy and restored the Communist Party's prestige and power, assuring its survival through the 1990s.

Demonstrators against a new wave of oppression were mowed down by internal security troops throughout Russia, and the Soviets' secret biological warfare program went on as usual, while Kerry's science advisor Matthew Meselson poured scorn on the idea that the Soviets had a secret bioweapons program.

The epidemic in the US and Britain of an odd strain of Legionnaire's Disease that killed its victims by making their immune systems attack the myelin coating of their nervous systems came as a complete surprise to Gore administration officials and all of the major press organizations except the Weekly Standard, National Review, and Fox News. (Note: such an agent was actually developed by Dr. Sergei Popov of the Soviet Biopreparat biological weapons agency, according to the New York Times)

Encouraged by the Soviets' political resurrection, the Chinese Politburo ordered a crackdown of dissent and democratic political activity, culminating in the murder or imprisonment of two million politically unreliable citizens, and signed a 20-year nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union.

Chinese and Soviet naval units began a series of joint exercises in the Pacific, at times harassing fishing boats and freighters running under the US flag and those of her allies.

Osama bin Laden, on his return from Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia, gained a loyal following among all classes of Saudi society. His plan to have hijackers commandeer passenger planes and crash them into targets in New York and Washington DC was discarded when some of his followers in the Saudi National Guard use their positions of trust to steal two nuclear weapons from the Saudi arsenal and give them to bin Laden's organizations.

Six weeks later, just before the Egyptian/Syrian attack on Israel, the city centers of New York and Washington DC were incinerated by nuclear blasts.

But President Gore (away on a state visit to Beijing) was in no position to respond to these atrocities, because one of predecessor John Kerry's first acts in office was to cancel the Peacekeeper missile program and remove existing Peacekeepers from service, and to drastically curtail American intelligence activities throughout the world in order to assuage the concerns of his friends in the French and German governments.

Thus, there was no way to identify where the bombs came from (the plutonium was made in secret Pakistani nuclear reactors whose design and characteristics are unknown to the IAEA and CIA), and retaliation against the responsible parties (in the unlikely event they were ever identified by the post-Kerry CIA) with obsolete missile and aircraft delivery systems and old, unserviced nuclear warheads was chancy enough that Gore was unwilling to risk that option.

Occasionally, a city in Europe or the United States disappears under a mushroom cloud. Europe and the United States are united - in their inability to do a damn thing about it.

Copyright Vance P. Frickey, 2004

Kerry admits to being a left-winger from birth...
Mood:  mischievious
Topic: Unintentional truths
John Kerry, speaking before the Democratic Convention at Boston tonight (Thursday, July 29th, 2004) made a nice little joke about being born in the West Wing (get it?) of Fitzsimons Army Hospital here in Denver. What's REALLY funny is that when you drive into the main entrance to the old Fitzsimons Army Hospital grounds, the west wing is also the LEFT wing. I've heard of prenatal (or in this case "perinatal") influence being powerful, but DAMN....