John Kerry Reporting for Duty
by Barbara Branden
For the past year, I have thought that John Kerry was both weak and a hypocrite. Recently, since information about his Vietnam "service" has come out, I realized that he also was a liar. Today, I am beginning to think that the man is demented. Either that, or he thinks that his audiences are of subnormal intelligence and have no memories. Or both.
His speech to the American Legion was on television today, and I listened to it from beginning to end. Somebody had to; from the sparseness of the applause and the absence of hisses, it appeared that most members of the Legion were not listening.
Oh, of course he outlined some of his spending plans, which would require massive new expenses - while insisting that under his presidency the government would live within a budget and the deficit would be cut in half within four years. But this was trivial in the light of his comments about war and peace.
He began by speaking of the importance of supporting our troops in wartime, and then stressed the equal importance of supporting them when the war is over. The question, he insisted, is: What do we do for them when they come home? Do we keep faith with them?
If there were a God, He would have struck Kerry with a thunderbolt on the spot. This was true obscenity from the man who, in 1971 - in televised proceedings which the Viet Cong piped into its prisoner-of-war camps so American soldiers would have to hear them - denounced our soldiers in Viet Nam as war criminals who cut off ears and heads, tortured prisoners, and set fire to villages. This was John Kerry’s way of keeping faith with veterans.
He made a promise to the American Legion, whom he called his brother veterans. As president, he would see to it that every man and woman in harm’s way had the best equipment in the world, the best body armor and weapons that science and technology could devise. This from the man who, as a senator, voted against an appropriations bill that would have provided, among other things, body armor and other equipment for the troops in Iraq.
He announced that in order to properly fight the War on Terror, America must have the best intelligence services in the world. Long ago, he said, we should have strengthened our intelligence. This from the man who voted again and again to reduce the funding of intelligence agencies.
It was an incredible performance – incredible in the literal meaning of the word. He deserves to be soundly defeated if for nothing else than for so insultingly underestimating the intelligence of the American Legion and the American public.
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