The Photo Dems Fear Most: Kerry with 'Hanoi Jane'

[acludem]

rtwng you have GOT to be kidding me....we were slaughtering innocents in Vietnam just as much as the Viet Cong, and our soldiers were being slaughtered in a war we could not win and should never have become involved in, that's what was wrong.

Once again, John Kerry wasn't standing next to her on the Viet Cong ship, he was a part of the same protest in the states that she was. Once again, I seriously doubt that anyone under 40 is going to care about John Kerry and Jane Fonda. And many over 40 won't give a crap either. It's a non-issue. All he has to say is this "I was a part of anti-war protest that included Jane Fonda, I didn't share her view of the Viet Cong, but she and I did agree that the war was wrong and should be ended." End of story.

acludem

 

[jimnyc]

Originally posted by acludem
Once again, I seriously doubt that anyone under 40 is going to care about John Kerry and Jane Fonda.

Oh, don't count on that!

MANY people still have a sour taste in their mouths regarding Jane Fonda. ANY connection to her is going to hurt Kerry's campaign.

Furthermore, I'm willing to bet there are quite a few members on this very board that are under the age of 40 that would care about this. For starters, me!

 

[jon_forward]

these boots are made for walking.....all over em.......the old addage...guilty by association....he be guilty.....done finished....when it hits the gen public...wont be a wripple..be more like a tidal wave, Edwards is starting to look the best of the lot of the dem pretenders left...and that aint say much for edwards

 

[Johnney]

Originally posted by acludem Once again, I seriously doubt that anyone under 40 is going to care about John Kerry and Jane Fonda.

there are alot of service people who are under 40 and you can bet your ass they know about that rag

 

[NightTrain]

Originally posted by acludem
Once again, I seriously doubt that anyone under 40 is going to care about John Kerry and Jane Fonda.

Just turned 33, it makes me sick. That dirty hippy.

 

[Annie]

but words are worth something:
SHADES OF SERVICE
By BOB MCMANUS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/17664.htm
February 11, 2004 -- PRESIDENT Bush, whatever else may - or may not - have happened during his controversial tour in the Air National Guard, learned to fly the dangerously cantankerous F-102 Delta Dagger fighter.
This is considerably more than his predecessor, the dexterous draft-dodger William Jefferson Clinton, can claim.

But it is somewhat less than the service rendered to his nation by John F. Kerry.

The debate over who did what, and when, entered a new phase yesterday with the release of records apparently substantiating Bush's claims of honorable National Guard service during the Vietnam War.

That record pales in comparison to Kerry's.

Whatever he may have done after taking the uniform off - and he has a lot for which to answer in that regard - the Democratic frontrunner earned his Silver Star.

And his Purple Hearts.



Politically, this seems to position Kerry somewhere near the high ground on matters of war and peace in the age of global terror.

But to those of us of military age at a time when it really mattered, there is another element at work here: Think of it as the Crispin's Day factor.

In Shakespeare's "Henry V," on the eve of Agincourt, Henry rouses his justifiably anxious lieutenants to battle with the St. Crispin's Day soliloquy, concluding:

"And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

This poses, loosely put, a timeless question:

Can you not fight, can you not serve king and country - and live, forever after, with such terrible knowledge?

Or, in contemporary terms:

When my country called, did I stand tall?

Did I fight?

Did I run?

Did I do something in between?

Am I truly accursed, that I was not there when so many others were?

These are intensely personal questions - but, perhaps, profoundly significant in political terms to millions of greyheads now following the ascension of John Kerry.

And perhaps re-living an extraordinarily difficult period in their lives.

How Bill Clinton looks at himself in a mirror, it is hard to imagine.

The same goes for Howard Dean, with a medical deferment in one hand back then - and a ski-lift ticket in the other.

Or Dick Cheney, who famously had "other priorities in the '60s" - and ducked.

What of President Bush?

Again, no shame attaches to service in the single-seat cockpit of a Delta Dagger.

But did he - or, more to the point, his father - pull strings to secure a National Guard commission?

Then there is Al Gore - the son of a U.S. senator who served an abbreviated tour in Vietnam in cosseted circumstances.

Is four months in-country as an Army journalist - without exposure to combat - the functional St. Crispin's Day equivalent of fighter-pilot's wings earned in Texas and Alabama?

How much does John McCain's five years in the Hanoi Hilton count?

What makes McCain singular is that there is nothing at all ambiguous about his service.

Nor about his understanding of why it was important.

The son and grandson of naval officers, John McCain was in the family business: His country called, he answered and what happened then speaks for itself now.

John Kerry's post-Navy angst will be studied closely in the weeks and months ahead.

It is interesting that he is so far getting a free pass on his 1971 assertion that he and others committed what amounted to war crimes - "atrocities," to use the senator's word - while in Vietnam.

But that's politics, and it will play out in due time.

Right now, the nation is forming its impression of the Democratic pace-setter.

Should John Kerry worry that a couple of million now-not-so-young Americans - fellows who went to Vietnam, served with honor, came back and got on with their lives - may come to view him just as the fellow who threw away his Silver Star?

[He] fought with us upon St. Crispin's Day . . .

And then he mocked us.

Kerry and the Democrats would do well not to push this one too hard.

Bob McManus served in the U.S. Navy's submarine service in the '60s.

E-mail: Mcmanus@nypost.com

NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc. NYPOST.COM, NYPOSTONLINE.COM, and NEWYORKPOST.COM
are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc.
Copyright 2003 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

 

[Annie]

Kerry won't scare any of the big beasts
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 10/02/2004)


Among my Christmas presents was a copy of Survive, a recent collection by Sports Afield magazine of helpful tips for the great outdoors. Most of the stuff was familiar - rub a raw potato on poison ivy, roast a wood bug before you eat it - but on page 70 I was surprised by this novel approach to mountain lions: "Do not approach one, especially if it is feeding or with its young. Most will avoid confrontation, so provide an escape. Do all you can to appear larger. Raise your anus, and open your jacket if you have one on." I can't say I did that the last time I saw a mountain lion, but maybe I had a lucky escape. And then I realised it's meant to be "raise your arms" and that the item is a cautionary tale in the pitfalls of computer "scanning".

One hopes the misprint doesn't lead the less seasoned hiker into an awkward situation, and that any mountain lion confronted by city folks dutifully adopting the prescribed position will think "What the hell do they mean by that?" and wander off shaking his head rather than flying into a carnivorous rage.

I thought of the advice when I caught Presidential candidate John Kerry, the Default Democrat, at one of his final campaign stops in New Hampshire. Unlike the noisily anti-war Howard Dean, Kerry has taken a different tack. The thinking seems to be that, on the war, George W Bush is the mountain lion and the Dems need to "do all you can to appear larger". When I first encountered him on the hustings last summer, Kerry was austere and patrician and all too obviously found electioneering a distasteful chore. He mentioned his service in Vietnam a lot, but only as biography. Now he implicitly contrasts his military record with George W Bush's, and thereby to the war on terror. Mostly he does this through meaningless slogans. Everywhere he goes he intones portentously: "I know something about aircraft carriers for real." What does this mean? Does he own one? He's certainly rich enough to afford one and, unlike the French, one that works.

But, of course, it doesn't have to mean anything. It's like the other catchphrases in his stump speech: "We band of brothers," he says, indicating his fellow veterans. "We're a little older, we're a little greyer, but we still know how to fight for this country." These lines are the equivalent of the guy in the woods raising his arms and opening his jacket: it's a way of making a dull politician with no legislative accomplishments and two decades of shifty, flip-flop weathervane votes appear larger than he is. The Dems reckon that Bush is a single-issue candidate - he's the war guy - and that, if Kerry can make himself appear larger on the national-security front, Bush's single issue will cease to be an issue and the election will be fought on Democratic turf - healthcare, education, and so forth.

So far the strategy's working. Kerry won three purple hearts in Vietnam, while Bush was either in the National Guard or, according to Michael Moore, a "deserter". This charge is easily rebutted, but once you start having to explain things the other guy's won. What counts is not the fine print but the meta-narrative: Kerry was in South-East Asia, Bush was in the South-West United States. That makes Kerry seem "larger", which may be why the Bushies are waddling away from a fight on the issue.

But the idea that this puffs up Kerry to be the President's equal on the new war is a more tortuous stretch. The only relevant lesson from Vietnam is this: then, as now, it was not possible for the enemy to achieve military victory over the US; their only hope was that America would, in effect, defeat itself. And few men can claim as large a role in the loss of national will that led to that defeat as John Kerry. A brave man in Vietnam, he returned home to appear before Congress and not merely denounce the war but damn his "band of brothers" as a gang of rapists, torturers and murderers led by officers happy to license them to commit war crimes with impunity. He spent the Seventies playing Jane Fonda and he now wants to run as John Wayne.

Vietnam was a "war of choice". But, once you chose to go in, there was no choice but to win. America's failure of will had terrible consequences. The Seventies - the Kerry decade - was the only point in the Cold War in which the eventual result seemed in doubt. The Communists seized real estate all over the globe, in part because they calculated that the post-Vietnam, Kerrified America would never respond. In the final indignity, when the proto-Islamist regime in Teheran seized the embassy hostages, they too shrewdly understood how thoroughly Kerrified America was. It took Mrs Thatcher's Falklands war and Reagan's liberation of Grenada to reverse the demoralisation of the West that Kerry did so much to advance.

Senator Kerry has done a good job of enlarging himself but the reality is simple: George W Bush's America has won two swift wars and overthrown two enemy regimes; John Kerry was heroic in a war that America lost and whose loss he celebrated. Since then he's been a model lack-of-conviction politician. The question for anyone who thinks Kerry has "credibility" on national security is a simple one: who do you think Iran, North Korea, Syria, al-Qa'eda's Saudi paymasters and the rogue elements in Pakistan's ISI would prefer to see elected this November?

Those guys are the real dangerous beasts and you can bet that, unlike Democratic primary voters, they don't think Kerry looms so large, with his endless deference to the UN and the French, and his view that the war on terror should be more a matter of "law enforcement" - subpoenas, the Hague, plea bargains. That's as profound a mis-understanding as the fellow on page 70 of my book, raising his butt to the mountain lion. And that's not a position most Americans will want to take.

Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright

 

[tim_duncan2000]

rtwng you have GOT to be kidding me....we were slaughtering innocents in Vietnam just as much as the Viet Cong

Bullshit. You hear about the so-called widespread atrocities, but it really wasn't like that. Sure, it wasn't happening the way Kerry said it was.

All he has to say is this "I was a part of anti-war protest that included Jane Fonda, I didn't share her view of the Viet Cong, but she and I did agree that the war was wrong and should be ended."

But maybe he did share her views.

 

[Lefty Wilbury]

heres one pic

 

[Fletch]

Let's see Fonda married Ted Turner and Kerry Married Theresa Heinz.


Ya, I am sure they don't think alike. I am sure that is just a coincedence.

 

[Jmarie]

I'm going to turn 27 and I really care about what happen back than. Hell history repeats it's self. I don't want to see someone in office who don't support his fellow troops in the battle field. My god he was over there and he just turned his back on them what kind of AMERICAN can just do that. As I said I'm turning 27 and I didn't live through it, but I did have a dad and two uncles who were over that. Do you think they turned their backs on them. I Don't think so. So for Kerry He can just kiss my sweet white AMERICAN ass God knows I'm not voting for him.

 

[acludem]

I wouldn't call coming home after being in the war and asking your government to bring your fellow soldiers home before any more were killed for no reason turning your back on your friends. No one who doesn't already hate Kerry will give a crap whether or not he and Jane Fonda marched in the same protest 35 years ago. At least Kerry served, Bush was AWOL campaigning for one his daddy's friends while Kerry was risking his life for our country.

acludem

 

[jimnyc]

Originally posted by acludem
I wouldn't call coming home after being in the war and asking your government to bring your fellow soldiers home before any more were killed for no reason turning your back on your friends. No one who doesn't already hate Kerry will give a crap whether or not he and Jane Fonda marched in the same protest 35 years ago. At least Kerry served, Bush was AWOL campaigning for one his daddy's friends while Kerry was risking his life for our country.

acludem

Stop repeating crap you read on the propoganda sites and try to be original for once.

How about some proof that he was AWOL. You know, facts, the things that appear to have been omitted from your post.

 

[tim_duncan2000]

He left out the stuff about Kerry accusing soldiers of widespread atrocities and mocking the Iwo Jima monument on the cover of some anti-war/anti-veteran book. As well as the stuff about him wanting relations with Vietnam normalized at a time when many POW/MIAs were thought to still be there.

 

[jimnyc]

Originally posted by acludem
No one who doesn't already hate Kerry will give a crap whether or not he and Jane Fonda marched in the same protest 35 years ago.

Tell that to these veterans:

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040211-123002-8027r.htm

 

[Fletch]

Originally posted by tim_duncan2000
He left out the stuff about Kerry accusing soldiers of widespread atrocities and mocking the Iwo Jima monument on the cover of some anti-war/anti-veteran book. As well as the stuff about him wanting relations with Vietnam normalized at a time when many POW/MIAs were thought to still be there.

Don't forget the part about how his cousin got a multi million dollar contract once relations with Vietnam were normalized.

See Colliers International.

 

[tim_duncan2000]

Oh yeah, I meant to put that.

 

[kcmcdonald]

John kerry is touting his war record. Showing that he served valently and that he is a true patriot.
FUCK OFF!!!
This man does more than anything to spit in the face of every man or women to every wear the colours of our country. To March in protest with such people as Fonda and to breed hate and animosity to troops who did there duty is disgusting. John Kerry has no shame. He is running a vetrans campaign. Yet he was more than willing to label the soldiers"Babby killers" he was problally with the group that spat on soldiers when they returned. These 60's liberals have no shame.
John Kerry need's to do the right thing and drop out. A coward has no right to led our country.

 

[DKSuddeth]

This is interesting

http://www.newsday.com/ny-kerry0215,0,1445946,print.story?coll=ny-top-headlines

1971 Photo of Kerry Doctored


By Michael Rothfeld
Staff Writer

As a 20-year-old photographer documenting the country's struggle over the Vietnam War, Ken Light snapped the picture of John Kerry at a peace rally in Mineola. It captured the future senator alone at a podium, squinting into the sun.

Light did not photograph Jane Fonda on that warm June Sunday in 1971. The actress, who is reviled by many Vietnam veterans for her vocal stance against the war, did not even attend.

But when opponents of the Democratic presidential hopeful began e-mailing Light's picture to one another four days ago, it depicted Fonda standing by Kerry's side. The photo had been doctored.

"I'm horrified," said Light, 52, who grew up in East Meadow and now heads the graduate photojournalism program at the University of California at Berkeley. "I think this kind of alteration is probably one of the scariest forms of trickery, particularly when it's done against a political candidate."

Dag Vega, a spokesman for Kerry's campaign, said, "The smear tactics have started already."

Kerry, who co-founded Vietnam Veterans Against the War, spoke at the Register for Peace Rally on June 13, 1971, when thousands gathered for "the largest anti-war demonstration ever held on Long Island," according to a story in Newsday the next day. Light recalled Long Islanders of all ages sprawled across the State Supreme Court mall in Mineola, with American flags and peace symbols. Former members of Congress who attended included Bella Abzug, Allard Lowenstein and Lester Wolff. Folk singer Peter Yarrow entertained, and the rally ended with a burst of thunder and lightning.

Light, a student in Ohio at the time, took the picture of Kerry but never published it, and it sat in his files until two weeks ago when he shipped it to Corbis, his Seattle-based agent, which placed it in its online archives.

That is apparently where someone found it, and attempted to capitalize on the attention garnered by an authentic photo of Kerry and Fonda at a Vietnam-era rally -- seated some distance apart -- posted early this month on a Web site called www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnkerry.com. The Web site's creator, Ted Sampley, a Vietnam veteran from North Carolina, said he received the doctored photo by e-mail on Wednesday from a woman in Richmond, Va.

"Thought you might want to include this pic on your site," said the note from Loree Siemek, with an attachment called "HanoiJohn.jpg," a takeoff on "Hanoi Jane," the derisive nickname given to Fonda by her critics during the Vietnam era. It is made to look like a newspaper clipping, headlined "Fonda Speaks to Vietnam Veterans at Anti- War Rally," with an Associated Press photo credit. Sampley said he was immediately skeptical, and e-mailed it to some friends who concluded it was faked. He did not post it.

"I looked at it and it didn't feel right," Sampley said in an interview. "It just looked too good."

Siemek, 34, reached by phone, said she found the picture on a conservative Internet message board and had no idea it was phony.

"This thing has spiraled out of control," Siemek said. "If I had any thought that photo was not real, I would never have forwarded it to the veterans' group."

 

[jimnyc]

Originally posted by DKSuddeth
This is interesting

Interesting, but not very suprising.

I don't need to see a picture of him with Fonda to know the facts of what happened. This, in my eyes, isn't a Kerry/Fonda thing. This is a Kerry thing. His words and actions back then were despicable. Whether he was arm in arm with Fonda or not means little.