Do You Hear What I Hear?

washingtonpost.com

Do You Hear What I Hear?

By Dana Milbank

Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A15

The 2004 presidential campaign sometimes resembles the children's game of "telephone." Here are some quotations as they came out of Democratic nominee John F. Kerry's mouth -- and how President Bush and Vice President Cheney later recounted them.

"Every performer tonight in their own way, either verbally or through their music, through their lyrics, have conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country." -- Kerry, July 8

"The other day, my opponent said he thought you could find the heart and soul of America in Hollywood." -- Bush, Aug. 18

"My goal, my diplomacy, my statesmanship is to get our troops reduced in number and I believe if you do the statesmanship properly, I believe if you do the kind of alliance building that is available to us, that it's appropriate to have a goal of reducing the troops over that period of time [the first six months of a Kerry administration]. Obviously, we'd have to see how events unfold. . . . It is an appropriate goal to have and I'm going to try to achieve it." -- Kerry, Aug. 9

"I took exception when my opponent said if he's elected, we'll substantially reduce the troops in six months. He shouldn't have said that. See, it sends a mixed signal to the enemy for starters. So the enemy hangs around for six months and one day. . . . It says, maybe America isn't going to keep its word." -- Bush, Aug. 18

"I will fight this war on terror with the lessons I learned in war. I defended this country as a young man, and I will defend it as president of the United States. I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history. I lay out a strategy to strengthen our military, to build and lead strong alliances and reform our intelligence system. I set out a path to win the peace in Iraq and to get the terrorists wherever they may be before they get us." -- Kerry, Aug. 5

"Senator Kerry has also said that if he were in charge he would fight a 'more sensitive' war on terror. America has been in too many wars for any of our wishes, but not a one of them was won by being sensitive. . . . Those who threaten us and kill innocents around the world do not need to be treated more sensitively. They need to be destroyed." -- Cheney, Aug. 12

"Lee Hamilton, the co-chairman of the 9/11 commission, has said this administration is not moving with the urgency necessary to respond to our needs. I believe this administration and its policies is actually encouraging the recruitment of terrorists. We haven't done the work necessary to reach out to other countries. We haven't done the work necessary with the Muslim world. We haven't done the work necessary to protect our own ports, our chemical facilities, our nuclear facilities. There is a long, long list in the 9/11 recommendations that are undone."
-- Kerry, Aug. 2

"My opponent says . . . that going to war with the terrorists is actually improving their recruiting efforts. I think the logic -- I know the logic is upside down. It shows a misunderstanding of the nature of these people. See, during the 1990s, these killers and terrorists were recruiting and training for war with us, long before we went to war with them. They don't need an excuse for their hatred. It's wrong to blame America for anger and the evil of these killers. We don't create terrorists by fighting back. You defeat the terrorists by fighting back." -- Bush, Aug. 18

"Yes, I would have voted for the authority [to use force in Iraq]. I believe it is the right authority for a president to have. But I would have used that authority, as I have said throughout this campaign, effectively. I would have done this very differently from the way President Bush has. My question to President Bush is: Why did he rush to war without a plan to win the peace? Why did he rush to war on faulty intelligence and not do the hard work necessary to give America the truth?" -- Kerry, Aug. 9

"He now agrees it was the right decision to go into Iraq. After months of questioning my motives, and even my credibility, the Massachusetts senator now agrees with me that even though we have not found the stockpiles of weapons we all believed were there, knowing everything we know today, he would have voted to go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power." -- Bush, Aug. 18

Now for an update on the White House's ongoing effort to kill the press corps. The White House travel office signed a contract last week with an airline called Primaris to fly the press corps to Bush events. The two-month-old company has only one airplane. True, media representatives gave their blessing to the deal. But that was before they learned that the company's president twice had his pilot's license revoked related to his flying of an "unairworthy" aircraft, that the chief executive flopped in his last attempt to start an airline and that the 15-year-old plane itself was damaged in a hailstorm a decade ago and spent most of the past two years mothballed in France.

Read More...

Summary only...

The Rambo Coalition

NY TIMES
August 24, 2004

The Rambo Coalition
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Almost a year ago, on the second anniversary of 9/11, I predicted "an ugly, bitter campaign - probably the nastiest of modern American history." The reasons I gave then still apply. President Bush has no positive achievements to run on. Yet his inner circle cannot afford to see him lose: if he does, the shroud of secrecy will be lifted, and the public will learn the truth about cooked intelligence, profiteering, politicization of homeland security and more.

But recent attacks on John Kerry have surpassed even my expectations. There's no mystery why. Mr. Kerry isn't just a Democrat who might win: his life story challenges Mr. Bush's attempts to confuse tough-guy poses with heroism, and bombast with patriotism.

One of the wonders of recent American politics has been the ability of Mr. Bush and his supporters to wrap their partisanship in the flag. Through innuendo and direct attacks by surrogates, men who assiduously avoided service in Vietnam, like Dick Cheney (five deferments), John Ashcroft (seven deferments) and George Bush (a comfy spot in the National Guard, and a mysterious gap in his records), have questioned the patriotism of men who risked their lives and suffered for their country: John McCain, Max Cleland and now John Kerry.

How have they been able to get away with it? The answer is that we have been living in what Roger Ebert calls "an age of Rambo patriotism." As the carnage and moral ambiguities of Vietnam faded from memory, many started to believe in the comforting clichés of action movies, in which the tough-talking hero is always virtuous and the hand-wringing types who see complexities and urge the hero to think before acting are always wrong, if not villains.

After 9/11, Mr. Bush had a choice: he could deal with real threats, or he could play Rambo. He chose Rambo. Not for him the difficult, frustrating task of tracking down elusive terrorists, or the unglamorous work of protecting ports and chemical plants from possible attack: he wanted a dramatic shootout with the bad guy. And if you asked why we were going after this particular bad guy, who hadn't attacked America and wasn't building nuclear weapons - or if you warned that real wars involve costs you never see in the movies - you were being unpatriotic.

As a domestic political strategy, Mr. Bush's posturing worked brilliantly. As a strategy against terrorism, it has played right into Al Qaeda's hands. Thirty years after Vietnam, American soldiers are again dying in a war that was sold on false pretenses and creates more enemies than it kills.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Mr. Bush - who must defend the indefensible - has turned to those who still refuse to face the truth about Vietnam.

All the credible evidence, from military records to the testimony of those who served with Mr. Kerry, confirms his wartime heroism. Why, then, are some veterans willing to join the smear campaign? Because they are angry about his later statements against the war. Yet making those statements was itself a heroic act - and what he said then rings truer than ever.

The young John Kerry spoke of leaders who sent others to their deaths because they wanted to seem tough, then "left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude." Fifteen months after George Bush strutted around in his flight suit, more and more Americans are echoing Gen. Anthony Zinni, who received a standing ovation from an audience of Marine and Navy officers when he talked about the debacle in Iraq and said of those who served in Vietnam: "We heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice. I ask you, is it happening again?"

Mr. Kerry also spoke of the moral cost of an ill-conceived war - of the atrocities soldiers find themselves committing when they can't tell friend from foe. Two words: Abu Ghraib.

Let's hope that this latest campaign of garbage and lies - initially financed by a Texas Republican close to Karl Rove, and running an ad featuring an "independent" veteran who turns out to have served on a Bush campaign committee - leads to a backlash against Mr. Bush. If it doesn't, here's the message we'll be sending to Americans who serve their country: If you tell the truth, your courage and sacrifice count for nothing.

Read More...

Summary only...

On Cable, a Fog of Words About Kerry's War Record

NY TIMES
August 24, 2004

On Cable, a Fog of Words About Kerry's War Record
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

There is the fog of war and then there is the fog of cable.

Over the last few weeks, 24-hour news networks have done little to find out what John Kerry did in Vietnam, but they have provided a different kind of public service: their examination of his war record in Vietnam illustrates once again just how perfunctory and confusing cable news coverage can be. Facts, half-truths and passionately tendentious opinions get tumbled together on screen like laundry in an industrial dryer - without the softeners of fact-checking or reflection.

Somehow, on all-cable news stations - CNN as well as Fox News - a story that rises or falls on basic and mostly verifiable facts blurs into just another developing news sensation alongside the latest Utah kidnapping or the Scott Peterson murder trial. (It is particularly confusing on Fox News, where so many of its blond female anchors look like Amber Frey.)

Fox News, which delivers its news with "Fight Club" ferocity, has relished the controversy the most, seizing hungrily on charges that Mr. Kerry lied to gain his medals. Those accusations, which have not been substantiated, were made in the book "Unfit for Command," co-written by a former Swift boat commander and longtime Kerry critic, John O'Neill. Fox News has pushed the story early, often, and sometimes even late.

Yesterday, President Bush denounced all third-party campaign ads, including the ads by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and called his opponent's war record admirable. Fox anchors made note of that development, then raced back to the disparaging remarks former Senator Bob Dole made to CNN on Sunday about Mr. Kerry's Purple Heart medals. ("Never bled that I know of," said Mr. Dole, who was badly wounded in World War II.)

Fox News showed, again, a clip of Mr. Dole complaining that it was hypocritical of Kerry, a former opponent of the war, to run now as a proud Vietnam veteran. The Fox anchor Laurie Dhue then turned to her liberal guest, Elaine Kamarck, a former Gore campaign adviser.

"I mean, this does make it sound like he speaks from both sides of his mouth on this," Ms. Dhue said. "Could this hurt the Kerry campaign?"

Ms. Kamarck disagreed.

Fred Barnes, the executive editor of The Weekly Standard and a regular Fox commentator, ardently defended the Swift boat critics of Mr. Kerry, saying on Fox that a majority of the senator's Vietnam brethren believed that Mr. Kerry "fabricated or exaggerated his record." Mr. Barnes added that "the entire chain of command above Kerry have said the same thing." He did not mention any notable exceptions in that chain of command, including Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, a former secretary of the Navy who said Mr. Kerry fully merited the Silver Star. Mr. Barnes's hyperbole went unchecked.

CNN showed less relish over the Swift boat clash, but it was not much more helpful in separating fact from friction. Wolf Blitzer's interview with the tart-tongued Mr. Dole made a lot of news on Sunday, but CNN allowed him to make misleading assertions without pointing out where he was in error. Mr. Dole suggested that Mr. Kerry was in a rush to obtain his Purple Hearts to meet a regulation that allowed soldiers to leave the war zone after winning three. "I mean, the first one, whether he ought to have a Purple Heart - he got two in one day, I think. And he was out of there in less than four months, because three Purple Hearts and you're out." ( Mr. Kerry did not receive two Purple Hearts for events of the same day. He received them for the events of Dec. 2, 1968; Feb. 20, 1969; and March 13, 1969.)

Finally, yesterday afternoon, Mr. Blitzer spoke to Mr. Dole by telephone and asked him if he regretted any of his statements. Mr. Dole said he did not.

"I wasn't trying to be mean-spirited," Mr. Dole said. "I was just trying to say all these guys on the other side just can't be Republican liars."

That kind of air-kiss coverage is typical of cable news, where the premium is on speed and spirited banter rather than painstaking accuracy. But it has grown into a lazy habit: anchors do not referee - they act as if their reportage is fair and accurate as long as they have two opposing spokesmen on any issue.

Fox commentators like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are famous for their informal, intemperate manner of speech. But the debate on programs like "Crossfire," on CNN, is often as heated - and as full of hot air. On an Aug. 12 edition about the Swift boat debate, a program regular, Robert Novak, the conservative columnist, called Mr. O'Neill and his fellow anti-Kerry veterans "the real patriots to rise to the surface this election year."

James Carville, Mr. Novak's liberal counterpart, challenged Mr. O'Neill's co-author, Jerome Corsi, charging that Mr. Corsi's blog is "scabrous." When Mr. O'Neill tried to change the subject, Mr. Carville shrieked at him.

At best, cable news programs swing into action when a crisis or major news development occurs, marshaling their resources to give viewers instant, live access. At their worst, they amplify the loudest voices and blur complexities. People can blame the confusion of combat for some of the discrepancies over Mr. Kerry's war record, but cable has done little to clear the air.

Read More...

Summary only...

New FactCheck.org Document: Swift Boat Veterans Anti-Kerry Ad: "He Betrayed Us" With 1971 Anti-War Testimony

August 23, 2004
New FactCheck.org Document: Swift Boat Veterans Anti-Kerry Ad: "He Betrayed Us"
With 1971 Anti-War Testimony

Group quotes Kerry's descriptions of atrocities by US forces. In fact, atrocities did happen.

Summary

"Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" announced a second anti-Kerry ad Aug. 20, using Kerry's own words against him. It features the 27-year-old Kerry in 1971 telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee stories about American troops cutting off heads and ears, razing villages "in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan" and committing "crimes . . . on a day-to-day basis."

The Kerry campaign called it a smear and said his words were "edited" out of context. The ad does indeed fail to mention that Kerry was quoting stories he had heard from others at an anti-war event in Detroit, and not claiming first-hand knowledge. But Kerry passed them on as true stories.

The ad characterizes Kerry as making "accusations . . . against the verterans who served in Vietnam." The Kerry campaign denies that, saying Kerry was placing blame on the country's leaders, not the veterans. But Kerry himself said earlier this year that his words were those of "an angry young man . . . inappropriate . . . a little bit excessive . . . a little bit over the top."

Kerry's critics point to a 1978 history of Vietnam that challenged some of the witnesses Kerry quoted. But other published accounts provide ample evidence that atrocities such as those Kerry described actually were committed.

Analysis

The ad's title is "sellout," and features Vietnam veterans saying Kerry "dishonored his country" and aided the enemy by airing allegations in 1971 of US atrocities in Vietnam.

SBVT Ad "Sellout"

John Kerry (from Senate Testimony in 1971): They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads...

Joe Ponder: The accusations that John Kerry made against the veterans who served in Vietnam was just devastating.

John Kerry: ...randomly shot at civilians...

Joe Ponder: ...and it hurt me more than any physical wounds I had.

John Kerry: ...cut of limbs, blown up bodies...

Ken Cordier: That was part of the torture, to sign a statement that you had committed war crimes.

John Kerry:...razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan...

Paul Galanti: John Kerry gave the enemy for free, what I and many of my comrades, in the North Vietnamese prison camps, took torture to avoid saying. It demoralized us.

John Kerry: ...crimes committed on a day to day basis...

Ken Cordier: He betrayed us in the past, how could we be loyal to him now?

John Kerry: ...ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam...

Paul Galanti: He dishonored his country, and more importantly, the people he served with. He just sold them out.

Out of Context?

On Aug. 20 the Kerry campaign issued a statement calling the ad an a smear and a distortion, saying it "takes Kerry's testimony out of context, editing what he said to distort the facts."

There is some missing context. What's missing from the ad is that Kerry was relating what he had heard at an an event in Detroit a few weeks earlier sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and was not claiming to have witnessed those atrocities personally.

Here is a more complete excerpt of what Kerry said, with the words used in the ad bold-faced so that readers can judge for themselves how much the added context might change their understanding of how Kerry was quoted in the ad:

Kerry Senate Testimony (1971): I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

The record gives no sign that Kerry doubted the stories he was relating.
In fact, he said earlier this year that he still stands by much of what he said 33 years earlier (see below) and that "a lot of them (the atrocity stories) have been documented."

Accusing Veterans? Or US War Policy?

One veteran who appears in the ad says "The accusations that John Kerry made against the veterans who served in Vietnam was just devastating." Kerry's campaign insists his 1971 testimony as "an indictment of America's political leadership-not fellow veterans."

As an example, Kerry aides point to a portion of Kerry's testimony in which he places the blame for the 1968 My Lai massacre not on the troops, but on their superiors: "I think clearly the responsibility for what has happened there lies elsewhere. I think it lies with the men who designed free fire zones. I think it lies with the men who encourage body counts." But that statement came only in response to a direct question, long after Kerry volunteered his description of rapes and mutilations.

Earlier in 1971, during an NBC "Meet the Press" interview, Kerry explicitly spoke of "the men who designed the free-fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas" and said he considered them "war criminals." But he did not draw such a sharp distinction between leaders and followers during the"atrocity" portion of his Senate testimony.


Winter Soldier Event Discredited?

Kerry critics have long disputed that atrocities by US forces were as prevalent as Kerry suggested. And at least some of the testimony at the " Winter Soldier " event was called into question by historian Guenter Lewy in a 1978 book, America in Vietnam. Lewy noted that the event had been staged with financial help from Jane Fonda. He stated that many of the Winter Soldier participants later refused to speak to investigators for the Naval Investigative Service even though they were assured that they wouldn't be questioned about atrocities they might have committed personally. Lewy also suggested that some of the witnesses were imposters:

Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam (1978): But the most damaging finding consisted of the sworn statements of several veterans, corroborated by witnesses, that they had in fact not attended the hearing in Detroit. One of them had never been to Detroit in all his life. He did not know, he stated, who might have used his name.

Kerry's critics point to that as evidence that he was irresponsibly passing on false atrocity stories. However, there's no question that events such as Kerry described did happen, as Lewy himself stated:

Lewy: Incidents similar to some of those described at the VVAW hearing undoubtedly did occur. We know that hamlets were destroyed, prisoners tortured, and corpses mutilated.

Some atrocities by US forces have been documented beyond question. Kerry's 1971 testimony came less than one month after Army Lt. William Calley had been convicted in a highly publicized military trial of the murder of the murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai hamlet on March 16 1968, when upwards of 300 unarmed men, women and children were killed by the inexperienced soldiers of the Americal Division's Charley Company.

And since Kerry testified, ample evidence of other atrocities has come to light:

* Son Thang: In 1998, for example, Marine Corps veteran Gary D. Solis published the book Son Thang: An American War Crime describing the court-martial of four US Marines for the apparently unprovoked killing 16 women and children on the night of February 19, 1970 in a hamlet about 20 miles south of Danang. The four Marines testified that they were under orders by their patrol leader to shoot the villagers. A young Oliver North appeared as a character witness and helped acquit the leader of all charges, but three were convicted.

* Tiger Force: The Toledo Blade won a Pulitzer Prize this year for a series published in October, 2003 reporting that atrocities were committed by an elite US Army "Tiger Force" unit that the Blade said killed unarmed civilians and children during a seven-month rampage in 1967. "Elderly farmers were shot as they toiled in the fields. Prisoners were tortured and executed - their ears and scalps severed for souvenirs. One soldier kicked out the teeth of executed civilians for their gold fillings," the Blade reported. "Investigators concluded that 18 soldiers committed war crimes ranging from murder and assault to dereliction of duty. But no one was charged."

* "Hundreds" of others: In December 2003 The New York Times quoted Nicholas Turse, a doctoral candidate at Columbia University who has been studying government archives, as saying the records are filled with accounts of atrocities similar to those described by the Toledo Blade series. "I stumbled across the incidents The Blade reported," Turse was quoted as saying. "I read through that case a year, year and a half ago, and it really didn't stand out. There was nothing that made it stand out from anything else. That's the scary thing. It was just one of hundreds."

* "Exact Same Stories": Keith Nolan, author of 10 published books on Vietnam, says he's heard many veterans describe atrocities just like those Kerry recounted from the Winter Soldier event. Nolan told FactCheck.org that since 1978 he's interviewed roughly 1,000 veterans in depth for his books, and spoken to thousands of others. "I have heard the exact same stories dozens if not hundreds of times over," he said. "Wars produce atrocities. Frustrating guerrilla wars produce a particularly horrific number of atrocities. That some individual soldiers and certain units responded with excessive brutality in Vietnam shouldn't really surprise anyone."

"A Little Bit Excessive"

Aside from his Senate testimony, the young Kerry spoke publicly in 1971 of "war crimes," and said in his April 18, 1971 NBC "Meet the Press" interview that he had personally engaged in "atrocities" like "thousands of others" who engaged in shootings in free-fire zones. He said then that he considered the officials who set such war policies to be "war criminals." But 30 years later, anticipating a run for the White House, Kerry took a more conciliatory tone when confronted by NBC's Tim Russert, again on NBC News' "Meet the Press" program:

Kerry (May 6, 2001; Meet the Press): I don't stand by the genocide I think those were the words of an angry young man. We did not try to do that. But I do stand by the description--I don't even believe there is a purpose served in the word "war criminal." I really don't. But I stand by the rest of what happened over there, Tim.

. . . (We) misjudged history. We misjudged our own country. We misjudged our strategy. And we fell into a dark place. All of us. And I think we learned that over time. And I hope the contribution that some of us made as veterans was to come back and help people understand that.

I think our soldiers served as nobly, on the whole, as in any war, and people need to understand that.

And earlier this year, Kerry was again pressed on his 1971 antiwar views, and responded to some of the same points now being raised anew in the Swift Boat Veterans ad. He said his 1971 words were "honest" but "a little bit over the top." Q: You committed atrocities?

Kerry (Meet the Press Apr. 18, 2004:) Where did all that dark hair go, Tim? That's a big question for me. You know, I thought a lot, for a long time, about that period of time, the things we said, and I think the word is a bad word. I think it's an inappropriate word. I mean, if you wanted to ask me have you ever made mistakes in your life, sure. I think some of the language that I used was a language that reflected an anger. It was honest, but it was in anger, it was a little bit excessive.

Q:You used the word "war criminals."

Kerry: Well, let me just finish. Let me must finish. It was, I think, a reflection of the kind of times we found ourselves in and I don't like it when I hear it today. I don't like it, but I want you to notice that at the end, I wasn't talking about the soldiers and the soldiers' blame, and my great regret is, I hope no soldier--I mean, I think some soldiers were angry at me for that, and I understand that and I regret that, because I love them. But the words were honest but on the other hand, they were a little bit over the top. And I think that there were breaches of the Geneva Conventions. There were policies in place that were not acceptable according to the laws of warfare, and everybody knows that. I mean, books have chronicled that, so I'm not going to walk away from that. But I wish I had found a way to say it in a less abrasive way.

Q: But, Senator, when you testified before the Senate, you talked about some of the hearings you had observed at the winter soldiers meeting and you said that people had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and on and on. A lot of those stories have been discredited, and in hindsight was your testimony...

Kerry: Actually, a lot of them have been documented.

Q: So you stand by that?

Kerry: A lot of those stories have been documented. Have some been discredited? Sure, they have, Tim. The problem is that's not where the focus should have been. And, you know, when you're angry about something and you're young, you know, you're perfectly capable of not--I mean, if I had the kind of experience and time behind me that I have today, I'd have framed some of that differently. Needless to say, I'm proud that I stood up. I don't want anybody to think twice about it. I'm proud that I took the position that I took to oppose it. I think we saved lives, and I'm proud that I stood up at a time when it was important to stand up, but I'm not going to quibble, you know, 35 years later that I might not have phrased things more artfully at times.

Sources

"Kerry Campaign Statement on New Swift Boat Veterans for Bush Ad," Kerry-Edwards 2004, 20 Aug 2004.

Testimony of John Kerry, "Legislative Proposals Relating to the War in Southeast Asia," US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations 22 April 1971.

Guenter Lewy, "America in Vietnam" Oxford University Press NY 1978 "Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths: The Series; Elite unit savaged civilians in Vietnam ," Toledo Blade 22 Oct 2003.

Michael D. Sallah and Mitch Weiss, " Rogue GIs unleashed wave of terror in Central Highlands ," Toledo Blade 22 Oct 2003.

Joe Mahr, " Tiger Force answers still elusive ; Washington slow in responding to calls for Army prosecution," Toledo Blade, 12 May Jo2004.

John Kifner, "Report on Brutal Vietnam Campaign Stirs Memories," New York Times, 28 Dec 2003: A24.

Interview with Keith Nolan, 23 Aug 2004.

John F. Kerry, "Meet the Press" NBC News 18 April 1991.

John F. Kerry, "Meet the Press" NBC News 6 May 2001.

John F. Kerry, " Meet the Press " NBC News 18 April 2004.

Read More...

Summary only...

Kerry Team Lines Up Vietnam Witnesses; Bush Again Declines To Condemn Attack Ad

washingtonpost.com

Kerry Team Lines Up Vietnam Witnesses
Bush Again Declines To Condemn Attack Ad

By Lois Romano and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A01

The Kerry campaign ratcheted up its defense of the Democrat's military record yesterday, producing three veterans to attest to John F. Kerry's valor in Vietnam while pointing reporters to other veterans who expressed disgust at the attacks on the presidential nominee.

In a conference call with reporters arranged by the campaign, three Navy Swift boat officers who served with Kerry 35 years ago but who said they have not been in touch with him for years defended his service and his bravery. Rich McCann, Jim Russell and Rich Baker said Kerry served honorably and took issue with questions raised by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth about his commendations.

"He was the most aggressive officer in charge of Swift boats," Baker said. "With no disrespect to anyone out there, the whole Swift boat operation took courage and guts every time you stepped on those boats. But John Kerry was one step above the rest of us."

The conference call was part of a Kerry offensive aimed at regaining control of an issue that has been the centerpiece of his presidential bid -- his Vietnam service. The campaign has been roiled by an ad that questions Kerry's valor and accuses him of misrepresenting the facts that led to some of his commendations.

President Bush yesterday repeated his condemnation of unregulated money that he said was "pouring" into the political process. But he stopped short of denouncing the ad by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which is being aired in three battleground states and is funded largely by Republicans.

Bush praised Kerry's military service in Vietnam. "I think Senator Kerry served admirably, and he ought to be proud of his record," he said.

But, pressed several times by reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., about whether he would specifically condemn the ad, Bush would only say: "That means that ad and every other ad. I'm denouncing all the stuff."

In Oshkosh, Wis., Kerry's running mate, John Edwards, blasted Bush for not being more critical of the ad and the claims by the group. "Today, George Bush faced his moment of truth and he failed," said Edwards, who has repeatedly called on the president to denounce the veterans group's ad. "He failed to condemn the specific attacks on John Kerry's military record. We didn't need to hear a politician's answer, but unfortunately that's what we got."

Adm. Roy Hoffmann, a founder of the anti-Kerry group, issued a statement in response to Bush's comment: "It would make no difference if John Kerry were a Republican, Democrat or an Independent, Swift Boat Veterans would still be speaking the truth concerning John Kerry's military service record in Vietnam, his actions after returning home and his lack of qualifications to be the next Commander in Chief."

While getting off to a slow start in responding to the ad, Kerry's campaign is frantically trying to mobilize veterans to speak out. Former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.), who lost three limbs in Vietnam, spent the weekend in Wisconsin denouncing the Swift boat ads and attacks, and Kerry's crewmates have been fanning out across the country to defend him.

In Pennsylvania, crewmate Del Sandusky said at a news conference that he witnessed the combat missions for which Kerry received Silver and Bronze stars and two of his three Purple Hearts. "He deserved every one of his medals," Sandusky said.

William L. Sweidel, a decorated Korean War veteran who appeared with Sandusky, said later that he voted for both Bushes for president but will support Kerry because of these attacks. "I called the campaign to express outrage. I was disappointed. I was diminished," Sweidel said. "Nobody was talking about how it was hurting all veterans to have them criticize Kerry's medals. The whole system is now suspect based on what these people are saying. It's pernicious."

Phil Butler, who spent eight years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, took issue with second ad by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which suggested that Kerry's antiwar protests caused the POWs to be treated badly. "I lived with two of the POWs who are now in that group -- Mr. [Ken] Courdier and Mr. [Paul] Gallanti -- and I am telling you, they are full of it. We never heard a blooming thing about John Kerry while we were there," said Butler, who contacted the campaign months ago to support Kerry and only recently heard back from Kerry's veterans coordinator, John Hurley.

Butler said that while he was tortured and mistreated until 1969, by the time Kerry was protesting the war and speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1971, the POWs were better treated.

On Friday, a company called First Run Features is slated to debut a documentary about Kerry and his Swift boat crewmates, "Brothers in Arms," in a New York theater. Director Paul Alexander, who calls it "a very sympathetic portrait," said that no one was interested when he finished it last Christmas but that the recent controversy has given it a boost. He said the film will be sold as a DVD and could reach theaters around the country.

In the conference call, Rich Baker said he thought that former senator Robert J. Dole's critical comments Sunday about Kerry's medals were inappropriate and that Dole had no "business" judging the injuries for which Kerry received three Purple Hearts. "John Kerry is lucky to be alive today," Baker said. "The fourth Purple Heart could have been an AK-47 through his heart."

McCann said that he tried to stay out of politics but that when he saw that the Swift boat group had identified him on its Web site as being "neutral" on Kerry without asking him, he was furious. Kerry's commendation record "has stood for 35 years and suddenly you've got people coming forward saying, 'Well, I've had second thoughts about this,' " McCann said. "That is dishonoring not only JK, it is dishonoring all veterans."

In anticipation of the airing of the group's ad attacking Kerry's antiwar efforts, the Kerry campaign has launched a new ad, calling the Swift boat commercials "smears and lies" and accusing the Bush operation of using the same tactic it used against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the 2000 GOP primaries.

In response, the Bush campaign yesterday sent letters to 27 television stations in 11 cities in the battleground states of Ohio, Wisconsin and West Virginia that called the Kerry campaign ad "false and libelous" for its contention that Bush was illegally coordinating with the Swift boat group. The letter did not ask the stations to ban the ad.

Rick Lipps, general manager of WNWO-TV, the NBC affiliate in Toledo, said TV stations were caught in the crossfire between the campaigns. Although he had not seen the Bush campaign's complaint as of late yesterday, Lipps said his station "tries to do its homework" by asking all political advertisers to verify advertising claims. "There isn't much way to take it further than that," he said.

The president's comments yesterday were similar to those he made on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Aug. 12, when King asked him if he would denounce the anti-Kerry ad. "Well, I haven't seen the ad, but what I do condemn is these unregulated soft-money expenditures by very wealthy people," Bush said.

Privately, Bush aides said they felt under no pressure to change their position on the Swift boat ads because the controversy seems to be hurting Kerry more than Bush. But they are irritated that the press has been taking seriously the Kerry complaint to the Federal Election Commission. The complaint, filed yesterday, accuses the Bush campaign of breaking election law by coordinating the ads with the independent group. The Bush aides are determined not to give Kerry an opening by criticizing Swift Boat Veterans for Truth directly.

Read More...

Summary only...

A Chill in Florida

NY TIMES
August 23, 2004

A Chill in Florida
By BOB HERBERT

The state police investigation into get-out-the-vote activities by blacks in Orlando, Fla., fits perfectly with the political aims of Gov. Jeb Bush and the Republican Party.

The Republicans were stung in the 2000 presidential election when Al Gore became the first Democrat since 1948 to carry Orange County, of which Orlando is the hub. He could not have carried the county without the strong support of black voters, many of whom cast absentee ballots.

The G.O.P. was stung again in 2003 when Buddy Dyer, a Democrat, was elected mayor of Orlando. He won a special election to succeed Glenda Hood, a three-term Republican who was appointed Florida secretary of state by Governor Bush. Mr. Dyer was re-elected last March. As with Mr. Gore, the black vote was an important factor.

These two election reverses have upset Republicans in Orange County and statewide. Moreover, the anxiety over Democratic gains in Orange County is entwined with the very real fear among party stalwarts that Florida might go for John Kerry in this year's presidential election.

It is in this context that two of the ugliest developments of the current campaign season should be viewed.

"A Democrat can't win a statewide election in Florida without a high voter turnout - both at the polls and with absentee ballots - of African-Americans," said a man who is close to the Republican establishment in Florida but asked not to be identified. "It's no secret that the name of the game for Republicans is to restrain that turnout as much as possible. Black votes are Democratic votes, and there are a lot of them in Florida."

The two ugly developments - both focused on race - were the heavy-handed investigation by Florida state troopers of black get-out-the-vote efforts in Orlando, and the state's blatant attempt to purge blacks from voter rolls through the use of a flawed list of supposed felons that contained the names of thousands of African-Americans and, conveniently, very few Hispanics.

Florida is one of only a handful of states that bar convicted felons from voting, unless they successfully petition to have their voting rights restored. The state's "felon purge" list had to be abandoned by Glenda Hood, the secretary of state (and, yes, former mayor of Orlando), after it became known that the flawed list would target blacks but not Hispanics, who are more likely in Florida to vote Republican. The list also contained the names of thousands of people, most of them black, who should not have been on the list at all.

Ms. Hood, handpicked by Governor Bush to succeed the notorious Katherine Harris as secretary of state, was forced to admit that the felons list was a mess. She said the problems were unintentional. What clearly was intentional was the desire of Ms. Hood and Governor Bush to keep the list secret. It was disclosed only as a result of lawsuits filed under Florida's admirable sunshine law.

Meanwhile, the sending of state troopers into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando was said by officials to be a response to allegations of voter fraud in last March's mayoral election. But the investigation went forward despite findings in the spring that appeared to show that the allegations were unfounded.

Why go forward anyway? Well, consider that the prolonged investigation dovetails exquisitely with that crucial but unspoken mission of the G.O.P. in Florida: to keep black voter turnout as low as possible. The interrogation of elderly black men and women in their homes has already frightened many voters and intimidated elderly get-out-the-vote volunteers.

The use of state troopers to zero in on voter turnout efforts is highly unusual, if not unprecedented, in Florida. But the head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Guy Tunnell, who was also handpicked by Governor Bush, has been unfazed by the mounting criticism of this use of the state police. His spokesmen have said a "person of interest" in the investigation is Ezzie Thomas, a 73-year-old black man who just happens to have done very well in turning out the African-American vote.

From the G.O.P. perspective, it doesn't really matter whether anyone is arrested in the Orlando investigation, or even if a crime was committed. The idea, in Orange County and elsewhere, is to send a chill through the democratic process, suppressing opposing votes by whatever means are available.

Read More...

Summary only...

6 Million Could Lose Overtime Pay, effective today

People identified as generally exempt from overtime pay include financial services industry workers, journalists, physician assistants, accountants, computer system analysts, programmers and software engineers. More jobs included in this group stated below.

Highlights of New Overtime Regulations
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: August 22, 2004

Highlights of the Labor Department's new overtime regulations taking effect Monday:

--Workers earning $23,660 annually or less are eligible for overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week. The department says about 1.3 million workers will be newly eligible.

--White-collar workers earning $100,000 or more a year are newly exempt from overtime pay.

--Changes to duties that determine whether an employee is a professional, executive or administrative and exempt from overtime will result in ``very few, if any'' workers losing overtime, the Labor Department says. Critics disagree, saying 6 million could lose overtime.

--Union workers covered by contracts will not be affected by the change. Critics say changes will hurt future contract negotiations.

--Blue-collar workers are not affected.

--Police officers, firefighters and other public safety officers are not affected.

--People identified as generally exempt from overtime pay include pharmacists, funeral directors, embalmers, journalists, financial services industry workers, insurance claims adjusters, human resource managers, management consultants, executive and administrative assistants, purchasing agents, registered or certified medical technologists, dental hygienists, physician assistants, accountants, chefs, athletic trainers with degrees or specialized training, computer system analysts, programmers and software engineers.

Department officials say employers should determine eligibility on a case-by-case basis.

^------

Source: Labor Department

Read More...

Summary only...

Oregon prosecutor lies in anti-Kerry in ad

This prosecutor should immediately be disbarred.

Oregon prosecutor accuses Kerry in ad
Oregonlive.com
August 20, 2004
NOELLE CROMBIE

A Clackamas County prosecutor and decorated Vietnam veteran who appears in an ad attacking Democratic presidential contender John F. Kerry's war record said he did not witness the events in question and is relying on the accounts of his friends who served with the senator.

The 60-second ad, which aired for seven days this month in Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin, features 13 Vietnam veterans, including Alfred French, 58, a senior deputy district attorney in Clackamas County.

In the ad, French says: "I served with John Kerry. . . . He is lying about his record."

The ad was paid for by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group of 300 Vietnam veterans who served in Swift boats and say Kerry has lied about his war record and disgraced his fellow veterans by publicly opposing the conflict upon his return home. The group said the ad will be aired again, though it has not decided where it will be shown.

French, in an interview Thursday, said Kerry lied about the circumstances that led to one of his Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. Kerry received a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts commanding a Swift boat in Vietnam.

French said he is relying on the accounts of three other veterans who were friends of his at the time. A fourth veteran with whom French was acquainted corroborated their accounts.

"I was not a witness to these events but my friends were," said French, who was awarded two Bronze Stars during the war. "I believe these people. These are people I served with."

One of the men is Larry Thurlow, a leader of the veterans group and one of Kerry's most vocal critics. Thurlow, who served alongside Kerry, has disputed Kerry's claim that the senator's boat was under fire in March 1969 when he pulled Lt. Jim Rassmann out of the water.

But according to Thurlow's military records, obtained this week by The Washington Post, the five-boat flotilla was under enemy fire that day.

French -- relying on friends' accounts -- said Rassmann would have been picked up by another boat if Kerry had not helped. And French said any shots that were fired came from U.S. soldiers providing cover as Rassmann and two others were rescued.

"It's not like he wouldn't have been saved if Kerry had not been there," French said. "I don't believe they were under any fire when that happened. None of the other boats were damaged."

He said Rassmann's rescue did not merit a special honor.

"Somebody fell off your boat and you go back and pick him up," French said. "It's not worthy of a Bronze Star in my opinion."

Rassmann, who lives in Florence and is campaigning for Kerry, said the ad is motivated in part by some veterans' anger over Kerry's antiwar stance upon returning home -- a charge French acknowledges. Rassmann said the group's claims are completely false.

"To come back 35 years later and conjure up fabricated stories is the lowest form of politics," said Rassmann, who said he does not know French.

"I honor these guys for their service," Rassmann said. "I know they were very courageous, along with John Kerry, and it saddens me that they are all at one another's throats."

French, a registered Republican, said he was reluctant at first to take part in the ad but ultimately "decided it was something I needed to do."

French said his one-year tour of duty in Vietnam overlapped Kerry's by two months. He said they served together in the same unit in January and February 1969. He said he did not know Kerry well during that time.

A married father of three, French is a well-regarded prosecutor who has spent most of his career in the Clackamas County district attorney's office.

Known for his reserved and steady manner, he is one of the prosecutors assigned to the double-murder case against accused child killer Ward Weaver.

Clackamas County District Attorney John Foote said French didn't need approval from him to appear in the ad.

"He has a right to his own personal opinions," Foote said.

And he isn't worried that French's public stand on the presidential race will affect his work.

"I have a lot of confidence in Al French and in his ability to do his job fairly," Foote said.

Read More...

Summary only...

Officer From Another Swift Boat Breaks Silence and Defends Kerry

NY TIMES
August 22, 2004
THE MILITARY RECORD
Officer From Another Swift Boat Breaks Silence and Defends Kerry
By JIM RUTENBERG

A Vietnam veteran who served with Senator John Kerry on a Swift boat mission broke a 35-year silence this weekend to support Mr. Kerry's version of events from one of their operations together and to chastise veterans critical of the senator as having "splashed doubt on all of us."

The veteran, William B. Rood, is now an editor at The Chicago Tribune, which ran on its Web site yesterday and in Sunday's paper a 1,750-word first-person article in which Mr. Rood recounted the mission. [Article posted below.] His account added to a growing debate over the most serious claims from the group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. And it ensured that questions swirling around the veracity of the group's claims, and the Kerry campaign's accusations that the group was connected to the Bush campaign, would dominate the contest for yet another day.

Mr. Rood stepped forward after Mr. Kerry called him and another veteran on Mr. Rood's boat as members of the Swift boat group blanketed cable television and radio talk shows to repeat their claim, also made in a book and a television advertisement, that Mr. Kerry had fabricated his military accomplishments to win medals.

Mr. Kerry's phone calls were part of his campaign's first concerted push to address the group's claims, which surfaced weeks ago. That push also included the release of a new Internet advertisement on Saturday highlighting accusations made about Senator John McCain by military supporters of Mr. Bush in 2000 and a public call by Mr. Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, for Mr. Bush to tell the group to cease running advertisements against Mr. Kerry.

The Swift boat group, which garnered much of its initial financing from men who have supported Mr. Bush's and his father's political endeavors, has been ready to defend itself and quickly provided a statement Saturday saying Mr. Rood's article was politically motivated. The group continues to raise money and on Friday introduced an advertisement with former prisoners of war recounting the pain Mr. Kerry's 1971 antiwar comments caused them when they were being held by the Vietcong.

Mr. Bush's campaign confirmed on Saturday an accusation by the Kerry campaign that one of the veterans in the that advertisement was a member the Bush campaign's veterans' advisory committee. The Bush campaign said in a statement that it did not know that the man, retired Col. Kenneth Cordier, was going to appear in the advertisement and because of that he was no longer a volunteer.

The Bush campaign denies involvement with the Swift boat group and on Saturday released a statement to the Federal Election Commission saying that the Kerry campaign's accusations of coordination were untrue. The Bush camp has declined to tell the group to stop running advertisements, but aides said Mr. Kerry should join Mr. Bush in calling for all outside groups to stop advertising.

In his article Mr. Rood disputed a claim the Swift boat group made in its book, "Unfit for Command," that Mr. Kerry had received his Silver Star for chasing down a lone Vietcong teenager "in a loincloth" who may or may not have been armed on Feb. 28, 1969.

Mr. Rood was the skipper of one of three boats involved in the mission with Mr. Kerry, conducting a sweep for the enemy through a tributary of the Bay Hap River. "I have no idea how old the gunner Kerry chased that day was," Mr. Rood wrote, but "he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore." He also wrote that Mr. Kerry had devised a plan to face into enemy fire, a breach of typical procedure.

He added, referring to John O'Neill, a co-author of "Unfit for Command" and a leader of the Swift boat group: "The man Kerry chased was not the 'lone' attacker at that site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who fled. There was also firing from the tree line well behind the spider holes and at one point, from the opposite riverbank as well."

Mr. Rood also noted that Roy F. Hoffmann, a retired rear admiral who was the Swift boat group's commander, lauded the operation at the time in glowing terms. Mr. Hoffmann is, with Mr. O'Neill, one of the main engineers of the anti-Kerry group's effort.

The Swift boat group released a statement yesterday from Mr. O'Neill saying he stood by its account. He said the account was consistent with those of two biographies of Mr. Kerry, "Tour of Duty" and "John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography By The Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best," and that of Larry Lee, a crewman on Mr. Rood's boat. Mr. O'Neill said he had tried to contact Mr. Rood for his book and that Mr. Rood's decision to come forward now was "an obvious political move."

The biographies do say that Mr. Kerry was running after the man he shot, but the books do not describe him as a teenager and they say he was armed with a rocket launcher. The Globe account that the group cites says the man had begun to run away, but also quotes Mr. Kerry saying that he had not shot him in the back and that he believed the man would fire again.

Mr. Rood said he confirmed the details of his recollection with the leading petty officer on his boat, Jerry Leeds. Mr. Leeds, who lives in Kansas, said in a brief interview that he had not read The Tribune and could not comment on it. But he said the boats were under significant enemy fire and at great risk.

Mr. Leeds said Mr. Kerry had phoned him, too, last week. He said Mr. Kerry did not ask for his support or for any statements on his behalf. "Mostly we just visited about that day," Mr. Leeds said.

Mr. Rood acknowledged in his article that Mr. Kerry's calls did affect his decision to write it but also wrote, "What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did." He added, "My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it."

The idea to contact Mr. Rood came from Mr. Kerry himself, aides said.

The candidate called Thomas Vallely, a longtime Kerry supporter, a former Massachusetts state legislator and a marine who now runs the Vietnam program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. "He said 'We've got to find Billy Rood,"' Mr. Vallely said in an interview on Saturday. "John said, 'He's a reporter in Chicago,' that's all he knew."

Mr. Rood had been watching the dispute unfold and considering what to do. He wrote in his article that he had long been reluctant to talk about his experience and had even refused to grant an interview to his own newspaper. But watching Mr. O'Neill on TV incensed Mr. Rood, Mr. Vallely said.

"He was very, very angry, he was on his feet," Mr. Vallely recalled. "I said, 'Would you talk to John?"' Mr. Rood agreed to a phone call.

Mr. Vallely also called Mr. Leeds, the leading petty officer on Mr. Rood's boat, and asked both men if they would speak with a reporter from The New York Times last week. The two men said they wanted to think about it for a few days, and the result was two stories in The Tribune, a news account and Mr. Rood's first-person article. "They wanted to do it their way," Mr. Vallely said.

Meanwhile on Saturday, Mr. Kerry's campaign continued on the offensive.

It sent out a new Internet advertisement to supporters highlighting an exchange between Mr. McCain, of Arizona, and Mr. Bush during a debate in 2000. In that debate Mr. McCain confronted Mr. Bush for playing host at an event where the leader of a veterans group that Mr. McCain characterized as "fringe" questioned his commitment to veterans.

The spot includes an on-screen heading that says, "George Bush is up to his old tricks."

Steve Schmidt, a Bush campaign spokesman, said, "The president has made clear that he regards John Kerry's service as noble service." And he chastised Mr. Kerry for statements from campaign surrogates last week questioning Mr. Bush's National Guard service. He also criticized Mr. Kerry for failing to call on liberal groups who have run $63 million worth of advertisements against Mr. Bush to stop. Some of the liberal groups have connections to Mr. Kerry's campaign and political party.

On Saturday night, at a fund-raiser in East Hampton, N.Y., Mr. Kerry suggested that his political opponents were trying to undercut his military record because he had been persuading voters he would make an effective commander in chief. "In the past month, they've seen me climbing in America's understanding that I know how to fight a smarter, more effective war," Mr. Kerry said. "That's why they're attacking my credibility. That's why they're personally going after me."

Read More...

Summary only...

FEB. 28, 1969: ON THE DONG CUNG RIVER: "This is what I saw that day"

John Kerry (left) and William Rood on a barracks barge with a rocket launcher and an automatic rifle seized in a raid on Feb. 28, 1969, in southern Vietnam in which swift boats charged ambush sites. (Photo courtesy of William B. Rood)

FEB. 28, 1969: ON THE DONG CUNG RIVER

"This is what I saw that day"

By William B. Rood
Chicago Tribune
Published August 22, 2004

There were three swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago--three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on February 28, 1969.

One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other.

For years, no one asked about those events. But now they are the focus of skirmishing in a presidential election with a group of swift boat veterans and others contending that Kerry didn't deserve the Silver Star for what he did on that day, or the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for other actions.

Many of us wanted to put it all behind us--the rivers, the ambushes, the killing. Ever since that time, I have refused all requests for interviews about Kerry's service--even those from reporters at the Chicago Tribune, where I work.

But Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown. The critics have taken pains to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there.

Even though Kerry's own crew members have backed him, the attacks have continued, and in recent days Kerry has called me and others who were with him in those days, asking that we go public with our accounts.

I can't pretend those calls had no effect on me, but that is not why I am writing this. What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it.

I was part of the operation that led to Kerry's Silver Star. I have no firsthand knowledge of the events that resulted in his winning the Purple Hearts or the Bronze Star.

But on Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of PCF-23, one of three swift boats--including Kerry's PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz's PCF-43--that carried Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep in the area.

The approach of the noisy 50-foot aluminum boats, each driven by two huge 12-cylinder diesels and loaded down with six crew members, troops and gear, was no secret.

Ambushes were a virtual certainty, and that day was no exception.

Instructions from Kerry

The difference was that Kerry, who had tactical command of that particular operation, had talked to Droz and me beforehand about not responding the way the boats usually did to an ambush.

We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush, we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats' twin .50-caliber machine guns on the attackers and beaching the boats. We told our crews about the plan.

The Viet Cong in the area had come to expect that the heavily loaded boats would lumber on past an ambush, firing at the entrenched attackers, beaching upstream and putting troops ashore to sweep back down on the ambush site. Often, they were long gone by the time the troops got there.

The first time we took fire--the usual rockets and automatic weapons--Kerry ordered a "turn 90" and the three boats roared in on the ambush. It worked. We routed the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The troops, led by an Army adviser, jumped off the boats and began a sweep, which killed another half dozen VC, wounded or captured others and found weapons, blast masks and other supplies used to stage ambushes.

Meanwhile, Kerry ordered our boat to head upstream with his, leaving Droz's boat at the first site.

It happened again, another ambush. And again, Kerry ordered the turn maneuver, and again it worked. As we headed for the riverbank, I remember seeing a loaded B-40 launcher pointed at the boats. It wasn't fired as two men jumped up from their spider holes.

We called Droz's boat up to assist us, and Kerry, followed by one member of his crew, jumped ashore and chased a VC behind a hooch--a thatched hut--maybe 15 yards inland from the ambush site. Some who were there that day recall the man being wounded as he ran. Neither I nor Jerry Leeds, our boat's leading petty officer with whom I've checked my recollection of all these events, recalls that, which is no surprise. Recollections of those who go through experiences like that frequently differ.

With our troops involved in the sweep of the first ambush site, Richard Lamberson, a member of my crew, and I also went ashore to search the area. I was checking out the inside of the hooch when I heard gunfire nearby.

Not long after that, Kerry returned, reporting that he had killed the man he chased behind the hooch. He also had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, which we took back to our base in An Thoi after the operation.

John O'Neill, author of a highly critical account of Kerry's Vietnam service, describes the man Kerry chased as a "teenager" in a "loincloth." I have no idea how old the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but both Leeds and I recall that he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore.

The man Kerry chased was not the "lone" attacker at that site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who fled. There was also firing from the tree line well behind the spider holes and at one point, from the opposite riverbank as well. It was not the work of just one attacker.

Our initial reports of the day's action caused an immediate response from our task force headquarters in Cam Ranh Bay.

Congratulatory message

Known over radio circuits by the call sign "Latch," then-Capt. and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the task force commander, fired off a message congratulating the three swift boats, saying at one point that the tactic of charging the ambushes was a "shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy" and that it "may be the most efficacious method of dealing with small numbers of ambushers."

Hoffmann has become a leading critic of Kerry's and now says that what the boats did on that day demonstrated Kerry's inclination to be impulsive to a fault.

Our decision to use that tactic under the right circumstances was not impulsive but was the result of discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of all three boat officers.

It was also well within the aggressive tradition that was embraced by the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Vietnam. Months before that day in February, a fellow boat officer, Michael Bernique, was summoned to Saigon to explain to top Navy commanders why he had made an unauthorized run up the Giang Thanh River, which runs along the Vietnam-Cambodia border. Bernique, who speaks French fluently, had been told by a source in Ha Tien at the mouth of the river that a VC tax collector was operating upstream.

Ignoring the prohibition against it, Bernique and his crew went upstream and routed the VC, pursuing and killing several.

Instead of facing disciplinary action as he had expected, Bernique was given the Silver Star, and Zumwalt ordered other swifts, which had largely patrolled coastal waters, into the rivers.

The decision sent a clear message, underscored repeatedly by Hoffmann's congratulatory messages, that aggressive patrolling was expected and that well-timed, if unconventional, tactics like Bernique's were encouraged.

What we did on Feb. 28, 1969, was well in line with the tone set by our top commanders.

Zumwalt made that clear when he flew down to our base at An Thoi off the southern tip of Vietnam to pin the Silver Star on Kerry and assorted Bronze Stars and commendation medals on the rest of us.

Error in citation

My Bronze Star citation, signed by Zumwalt, praised the charge tactic we used that day, saying the VC were "caught completely off guard."

There's at least one mistake in that citation. It incorrectly identifies the river where the main action occurred, a reminder that such documents were often done in haste and sometimes authored for their signers by staffers. It's a cautionary note for those trying to piece it all together. There's no final authority on something that happened so long ago--not the documents and not even the strained recollections of those of us who were there.

But I know that what some people are saying now is wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're saying impugns others who are not in the public eye.

Men like Larry Lee, who was on our bow with an M-60 machine gun as we charged the riverbank, Kenneth Martin, who was in the .50-caliber gun tub atop our boat, and Benjamin Cueva, our engineman, who was at our aft gun mount suppressing the fire from the opposite bank.

Wayne Langhoffer and the other crewmen on Droz's boat went through even worse on April 12, 1969, when they saw Droz killed in a brutal ambush that left PCF-43 an abandoned pile of wreckage on the banks of the Duong Keo River. That was just a few months after the birth of his only child, Tracy.

The survivors of all these events are scattered across the country now.

Jerry Leeds lives in a tiny Kansas town where he built and sold a successful printing business. He owns a beautiful home with a lawn that sweeps to the edge of a small lake, which he also owns. Every year, flights of purple martins return to the stately birdhouses on the tall poles in his back yard.

Cueva, recently retired, has raised three daughters and is beloved by his neighbors for all the years he spent keeping their cars running. Lee is a senior computer programmer in Kentucky, and Lamberson finished a second military career in the Army.

With the debate over that long-ago day in February, they're all living that war another time.

Read More...

Summary only...

Kerry: Slo-Mo on Swifties

NY TIMES
August 22, 2004
Kerry: Slo-Mo on Swifties
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON — It's easy for the Bushes to stay gallant. They delegate the gutter.

There are always third-party political assassins, ostensibly independent, to do the dynasty wet work.

W.'s old pal and running partner, Lee Atwater, set up the Bush modus operandi: Lay in the weeds while craftily planting plausibly deniable surrogates to slice up your rival.

The New Yorker editor David Remnick, writing in Esquire in 1986, limned the 1980 Congressional race in South Carolina's Second District "between Atwater's man, Republican Floyd Spence, and a Faulknerian figure named Tom Turnipseed At one press briefing, Atwater planted a reporter who rose and said, 'We understand Turnipseed has had psychotic treatment.' Atwater played it cool and refused to comment, but later told the reporters off the record, 'In college I understand he got hooked up to jumper cables.' "

Karl Rove is Atwater's protégé on jumper cable politics.

The weird thing is, given how transparently the Bushes play the game of staying above the fray even as their creepy-crawly surrogates do dishonorable and undignified things, their rivals always seem caught off guard when the third parties show up to rip their throats out.

The phlegmatic Michael Dukakis never knew what hit him with Mr. Atwater's Frankenstein monster Willie Horton coming at him in a third party scare ad and G.O.P. smear leaflets and letters.

John McCain should have known what was coming in South Carolina, but he acted stunned and hurt when he was hit with the Atwater/Rove mud treatment by shadowy Bush supporters.

Just as the Bush campaign dragged out fringe veteran surrogates in South Carolina to slime the former P.O.W. for being antiveteran, now the stomach-turning Swift boat attackers are sliming a war hero as a war criminal.

They started their vengeful and brazen campaign in May, after plotting since winter. But John Kerry is only now forcefully responding - though he should have had a response ready, since the Nixon tool John O'Neill has dogged him since '71.

Charging on Thursday that Mr. Bush wants the Swift boat sleazoids "to do his dirty work," Mr. Kerry reached for yet another Vietnam reference and water metaphor: "When you're under attack, the best thing to do is turn your boat into the attack."

The Skipper would do well to get a swifter boat. How pathetic is it that he's playing defense on Vietnam when W. didn't even serve?

Bill Clinton implied two weeks ago that Mr. Kerry was acting sluggish. "Whenever they hit me, I hit 'em back," he told Jon Stewart. "And whenever they came up with a charge I didn't believe was true, I answered back."

Reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post last week made it clear that the vile Swift boaters have told wildly varying accounts, sometimes supportive of Mr. Kerry.

The Times revealed that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth - is that like the administration's Clear Skies Act for spewing pollution? - has a trellis of ties to Karl Rove, the Bush family and Bush supporters. "A Texas publicist who once helped prepare Mr. Bush's father for his debate when he was running for vice president provided them with strategic advice," Kate Zernike and Jim Rutenberg wrote. Indeed, it was the same woman who worked for a third party group that slimed Mr. McCain on the environment in the 2000 primaries.

And the group's ad was produced by the Dukakis tank ad wizards.

The Kerry camp knows the Swift boat snipers are hurting the Democrat and fears the Bush oppo campaign will soon move from tarnishing Mr. Kerry's war record to dwell on his days as a shaggy-haired antiwar spokesman. The White House must tear down his heroism before it can tear down his patriotism.

Meanwhile, the Bush crew is shamelessly doing to Mr. Kerry what it once did to Mr. McCain: suggesting that the decorated Vietnam vet has snakes in his head and a temperament problem. "Senator Kerry appears to have lost his cool," Scott McClellan told reporters in Crawford on Friday. And the Bush campaign chairman, Marc Racicot, said on CNN that Mr. Kerry looked "wild-eyed" responding to Swift boat muck.

It makes sense for W. to use surrogates to do his fighting, just as he did when he slid out of Vietnam and just as he did when he sent our troops to fight his administration's misbegotten vanity war in Iraq.

Read More...

Summary only...

Connections and Contradictions

Swift Boat Veterans For Truth has a web of connections to the Bush family, to high profile Texas political figures, and to President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove.

The NY Times has put this together in a graph.

Read More...

Summary only...

Abu Ghraib Probe Points to Top Brass

Washington Post

An Army investigation into the role of military intelligence personnel in the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison reports that the scandal was not just caused by a small circle of rogue military police soldiers but resulted from failures of leadership rising to the highest levels of the U.S. command in Iraq, senior defense officials said.

Full article at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17092-2004Aug19.html

Read More...

Summary only...

Voting While Black

NY TIMES
August 20, 2004

By BOB HERBERT

The smell of voter suppression coming out of Florida is getting stronger. It turns out that a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation, in which state troopers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando in a bizarre hunt for evidence of election fraud, is being conducted despite a finding by the department last May "that there was no basis to support the allegations of election fraud."

State officials have said that the investigation, which has already frightened many voters and intimidated elderly volunteers, is in response to allegations of voter fraud involving absentee ballots that came up during the Orlando mayoral election in March. But the department considered that matter closed last spring, according to a letter from the office of Guy Tunnell, the department's commissioner, to Lawson Lamar, the state attorney in Orlando, who would be responsible for any criminal prosecutions.

The letter, dated May 13, said:

"We received your package related to the allegations of voter fraud during the 2004 mayoral election. This dealt with the manner in which absentee ballots were either handled or collected by campaign staffers for Mayor Buddy Dyer. Since this matter involved an elected official, the allegations were forwarded to F.D.L.E.'s Executive Investigations in Tallahassee, Florida.

"The documents were reviewed by F.D.L.E., as well as the Florida Division of Elections. It was determined that there was no basis to support the allegations of election fraud concerning these absentee ballots. Since there is no evidence of criminal misconduct involving Mayor Dyer, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement considers this matter closed."

Well, it's not closed. And department officials said yesterday that the letter sent out in May was never meant to indicate that the "entire" investigation was closed. Since the letter went out, state troopers have gone into the homes of 40 or 50 black voters, most of them elderly, in what the department describes as a criminal investigation. Many longtime Florida observers have said the use of state troopers for this type of investigation is extremely unusual, and it has caused a storm of controversy.

The officers were armed and in plain clothes. For elderly African-American voters, who remember the terrible torment inflicted on blacks who tried to vote in the South in the 1950's and 60's, the sight of armed police officers coming into their homes to interrogate them about voting is chilling indeed.

One woman, who is in her mid-70's and was visited by two officers in June, said in an affidavit: "After entering my house, they asked me if they could take their jackets off, to which I answered yes. When they removed their jackets, I noticed they were wearing side arms. ... And I noticed an ankle holster on one of them when they sat down."

Though apprehensive, she answered all of their questions. But for a lot of voters, the emotional response to the investigation has gone beyond apprehension to outright fear.

"These guys are using these intimidating methods to try and get these folks to stay away from the polls in the future,'' said Eugene Poole, president of the Florida Voters League, which tries to increase black voter participation throughout the state. "And you know what? It's working. One woman said, 'My God, they're going to put us in jail for nothing.' I said, 'That's not true.' "

State officials deny that their intent was to intimidate black voters. Mr. Tunnell, who was handpicked by Gov. Jeb Bush to head the Department of Law Enforcement, said in a statement yesterday: "Instead of having them come to the F.D.L.E. office, which may seem quite imposing, our agents felt it would be a more relaxed atmosphere if they visited the witnesses at their homes.''

When I asked a spokesman for Mr. Tunnell, Tom Berlinger, about the letter in May indicating that the allegations were without merit, he replied that the intent of the letter had not been made clear by Joyce Dawley, a regional director who drafted and signed the letter for Mr. Tunnell.

"The letter was poorly worded,'' said Mr. Berlinger. He said he spoke to Ms. Dawley about the letter a few weeks ago and she told him, "God, I wish I would have made that more clear." What Ms. Dawley meant to say, said Mr. Berlinger, was that it did not appear that Mayor Dyer himself was criminally involved.

Read More...

Summary only...

How Dick Cheney Got Away With $35 Million Right Before the Government Launched a Probe into Halliburton

Read the article by Jason Leopold, the former Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires, here:

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug04/Leopold0820.htm

Read More...

Summary only...

The S-word applies to Bush and Cheney, too

From HoustonChronicle.com
Aug. 19, 2004

By CLARENCE PAGE

A "more sensitive" war on terror? That's a joke, except when Team Bush wants to have one.

Such is the not-so-subtle message in Vice President Dick Cheney's ridicule of John Kerry's call for a "more sensitive" war on terror.

"America has been in too many wars for any of our wishes, but not a one of them was won by being sensitive," Cheney told supporters in Dayton, Ohio, last Thursday. "A sensitive war will not destroy the evil men who killed 3,000 Americans. ... The men who beheaded (U.S. citizens) Daniel Pearl and Paul Johnson will not be impressed by our sensitivity."

Cheney's implied message to a crowd heavy with men and women who, unlike Cheney, are military veterans was that war vet Kerry sounds like a wussy compared to the manly men and women of Team Bush. Was Cheney right about Kerry? Or, astonishing as it may be to comprehend, was he quoting Kerry out of context? I report; you decide:

Cheney was referring to Kerry's statement a week earlier at the UNITY Convention for journalists of color in Washington, D.C. In context, the Democratic presidential nominee said: "I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history."

Got that? Kerry called for a "more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive" war on terror, as well as more "sensitive," the adjective upon which Cheney chose to wail away.

"Those who threaten us and kill innocents around the world do not need to be treated more sensitively," Cheney also said, triggering applause. "They need to be destroyed." Sage words from a man who said on national television that triumphant American troops would be greeted with flowers in the streets of Iraq. Our troops are still waiting for those flowers.

"As our opponents see it," Cheney said, "the problem isn't the thugs and murderers that we face, but our attitude. We, the American people, know better."

But Cheney's own superior doesn't seem to agree with him on the matter of sensitivity.

President Bush just happened to speak to the same UNITY Convention a day after Kerry and in answer to a question there, Bush said, "Now, in terms of, you know, the balance between running down intelligence and bringing people to justice, obviously we need to be very sensitive on that," emphasizing the S-word.

Does Cheney not pay much attention to what his boss actually says about foreign policy?

Or, for that matter, does Cheney pay much attention to what Cheney says about foreign policy? I raise that question because Cheney himself spoke on conservative Hugh Hewitt's syndicated radio show regarding the siege of the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, declaring that the shrine "is a sensitive area and we are very much aware of its sensitivity."

That's reassuring. As Kerry was trying to say, a little sensitivity goes a long way. In its hasty run-up to war with Iraq, U.S. missteps show a need for this nation to be more "sensitive," not to its enemies, but to its allies. Instead of throwing American might, money, men and women into battle alone or nearly alone against all threats, America needs the sort of leadership that brings other nations along with us as effective partners. That's how George Bush built a truly strong coalition to chase Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.

As candidate Bush said during a debate with Vice President Al Gore in 2000, "If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us, if we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us. And our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power and that's why we've got to be humble, and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom."

I can hardly improve on that. America does not need to seek a "permission slip," as Bush more recently put it, from anyone, but we should seek the cooperation of everyone. Whether Bush or Kerry wins the November contest, it is not enough simply to show our neighbors, enemy and allies alike, how tough we are. Our neighbors have received that message, but we should not always expect them to love us for it.

Read More...

Summary only...

The Bushmanian Candidate

Cartoon by Ted Rall

Read More...

Summary only...

Official Records Show SWVFT Ad Is A Lie

From the Washington Post

Records Counter a Critic of Kerry
Fellow Skipper's Citation Refers To Enemy Fire

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page A01

Newly obtained military records of one of Sen. John F. Kerry's most vocal critics, who has accused the Democratic presidential candidate of lying about his wartime record to win medals, contradict his own version of events.

In newspaper interviews and a best-selling book, Larry Thurlow, who commanded a Navy Swift boat alongside Kerry in Vietnam, has strongly disputed Kerry's claim that the Massachusetts Democrat's boat came under fire during a mission in Viet Cong-controlled territory on March 13, 1969. Kerry won a Bronze Star for his actions that day.

Larry Thurlow in an anti-John Kerry ad (by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth). Thurlow said he would consider his own Bronze Star "fraudulent" if coming under enemy fire was the basis for it. (AP)

But Thurlow's military records, portions of which were released yesterday to The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act, contain several references to "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire" directed at "all units" of the five-boat flotilla. Thurlow won his own Bronze Star that day, and the citation praises him for providing assistance to a damaged Swift boat "despite enemy bullets flying about him."

Full article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13267-2004Aug18.html

Read More...

Summary only...

Our Government Allowed Civilians to Breathe Contaminated Air After 9/11

On August 21, 2003, the Inspector General for the federal Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") released a disturbing 165-page report documenting the fact that the White House Council on Environmental Quality blocked health risk information that EPA wanted to release to the public following the September 11, 2001 attack. That, however, is only part of the story.

This report picks up where the EPA Inspector General's report left off. It identifies how not only EPA but also the Federal Emergency Management Agency ("FEMA") and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration ("OSHA") failed the Ground Zero community, misinforming them about hazards and failing to take proper action to prevent exposures. It explains how the "know-nothing" tone of the federal government in this emergency had disastrous consequences for the people who serve on the "front line" of terror response. While news stories emerged as early as October 2001 about firefighters suffering from something called "World Trade Center Cough," most people outside New York are unaware of the wide range of workers and community people who have been afflicted by Ground Zero pollution. This report describes these people, their unmet needs and some continuing exposure risks.

This report documents why the federal government's failures cannot be excused by ignorance, surprise or emergency conditions, or by blaming workers who didn't wear protective masks. It warns that the Bush administration intends to make some of these failures into standard procedure for national emergencies. Finally, it recommends specific steps that the federal administration must take to change course, limit the harm from its failed approach to Ground Zero pollution, and promote better safety for the public in future national emergencies.

Details and the full report available at:
http://sierraclub.org/groundzero/

Read More...

Summary only...

Bush's Withdrawal From the World

washingtonpost.com

Bush's Withdrawal From the World

By Ronald D. Asmus

Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A19

Harry Truman must be turning over in his grave.

The planned withdrawal of U.S. troops from Europe and Asia that President Bush announced this week, if allowed to stand, could lead to the demise of the United States' key alliances across the globe, including the one that Truman considered his greatest foreign policy accomplishment: NATO.

The president proposes something that generations of U.S. diplomats and soldiers fought to prevent and that our adversaries sought unsuccessfully to achieve: radical reduction of U.S. political and military influence on the European and Asian continents. The Bush message, delivered at a campaign rally, also smells of political opportunism. Under pressure but unable to withdraw troops from Iraq, the president has instead reached for what his advisers hope is the next best thing politically -- a pledge to bring the boys home from Europe and Asia.

Whether this is good or bad politics remains to be seen. But there is little doubt that it is bad strategy and bad diplomacy, for which the United States is likely to pay a heavy price. The reasons are fairly simple. In Europe after the Cold War, the United States decided to significantly reduce its former troop levels but to leave sufficient military forces on the ground to accomplish three objectives: help ensure that peace and stability on the continent would endure; have the capacity to support NATO and European Union expansion and project the communities of democracies eastward; and provide the political and military glue to enable our allies to reorient themselves militarily and prepare, together with the United States, to address new conflicts beyond the continent's borders.

Each of these goals remains important. Each will be undercut by the president's plan. With transatlantic relations badly frayed, Russia turning away from democracy and the United States facing the challenge of projecting stability from the Balkans to the Black Sea, Washington should be putting forward a plan to repair the transatlantic alliance, not ruin it.

In Asia the stakes are just as high and the challenges perhaps greater. There the United States faces the long-term challenge of managing the rise of China as a great power. North Korea's eventual collapse and the unification of Korea will raise the question of that country's future geopolitical orientation. And such seismic events will undoubtedly have a considerable impact on the evolution of Japan's role and orientation as well.

U.S. diplomats will have their hands full over the next decade or two trying to win the war on terrorism and help manage these multiple strategic transitions -- and will need every ounce of U.S. political and military leverage and muscle if they are to get it right. In an act of diplomatic hara-kiri, the president proposes to destroy one of the key pillars of U.S. influence just when this kind of leverage and influence is likely to be needed the most.

The president's plan is unfortunately further evidence of the strategic myopia that has afflicted this administration and is undercutting the United States' standing in the world. At a time when we should be mobilizing and reinvigorating our alliances in Europe and Asia, we are dismantling them. Instead of creating multilateral structures to mobilize the world in a common struggle against terrorism and new anti-Western ideologies and movements, we opt for a unilateral course that leaves us with fewer friends. As opposed to balancing the political and military requirements of a new era and coming up with a new troop deployment plan that meets both needs, the administration allows the Pentagon to ride roughshod over broader U.S. strategy and diplomacy and destroy the work of generations of diplomats and soldiers.

Is there room for reconfiguring the U.S. military deployment plan overseas and modernizing it for a new era? Of course, there is. But such a review must also be part of a new strategic approach to alliance-building to confront the new threats we face. It must take into account our political and military requirements and the views of our allies. The president should have given a speech in Ohio on how he planned to repair the United States' alliances for the future -- and our new global military posture should reflect that goal as well. Why has no administration official come forward with any ideas on repairing the United States' alliance relationships?

Sen. John Kerry has recognized that the lesson of Sept. 11 is that the U.S. need for allies is going up, not down. He has pledged to make the reinvigoration of U.S. alliances a foreign policy priority. He has claimed that his election would allow for a "fresh start" and close a remarkably divisive chapter in relations with many of our close allies. There is little doubt that Kerry's election would be enthusiastically welcomed in both Europe and Asia. But it is time for the senator to take the next step and lay out a concrete plan for how his administration would reverse the damage done by President Bush and reinvigorate the United States' alliances to meet the dangers we face. Part of that plan should be to freeze and review the ill-conceived plan the president put forth this week in Ohio.

Read More...

Summary only...

Army flip flops again regarding Halliburton

NY TIMES
August 18, 2004

Army, in Shift, Will Pay Halliburton
By REUTERS

WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 (Reuters) - The Army reversed a decision late Tuesday to withhold payment on 15 percent of future payments to the Halliburton Company on its contracts in Iraq and Kuwait, giving the company more time to resolve a billing dispute.

The Army had said earlier Tuesday that it had decided that starting Wednesday it would withhold 15 percent of payments on future bills from the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root because it had not issued paperwork justifying its costs. But the Army later indicated it would continue to reimburse the company in full.

Government contractors normally cannot be paid more than 85 percent of their invoices until they fully account for their costs. Twice this year, the Army set this rule aside for Halliburton as the company cataloged its costs and explained how it was billing the government. The most recent reprieve expired Sunday.

The waivers granted to Halliburton have annoyed several members of Congress, who say the company has had undue privileges because of its former ties to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Cheney led the company from 1995 until he became the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2000. (Note: Cheney still has a vested interest in the firm being profitable -- he collects $150,000 a year from Halliburton.)

Halliburton, an oil services and construction company that has more than $8 billion in Iraq-related contracts, said shifting needs and the intricacies of providing logistical support to American troops made it difficult to account for its many costs quickly.

"Because of the size and scope of the tasks in Iraq and the fact that the process is complex and constantly changing," the Army Matériel Command and Kellogg Brown & Root "have agreed to work closely together to produce the final results," Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said Monday in an e-mail message.

There have been confusing signals from both the military and the company in recent days over the billing dispute and whether the Army would take any action.

The company put out a statement on Monday that money would not be withheld, but then announced Tuesday along with the Army that it had been told payment of 15 percent of future invoices would be withheld starting Wednesday.

So far, Halliburton has been paid more than $4.3 billion under its logistics contract in Iraq.

Read More...

Summary only...

Many Children Left Behind

NY TIMES
August 18, 2004
Bad News on the Charter Front

The Bush administration's education program received a devastating setback this week when long-awaited federal data showed that children in charter schools were performing worse on math and reading tests than their counterparts in regular public schools. Among other things, the data casts doubt on a central provision of the No Child Left Behind Act that encourages the states to hand over failing schools to commercial companies and nonprofit community groups that want to run them as charter schools.

Such schools can circumvent some union rules and customary management methods while operating outside the influence of school boards and state authorities.

The new data is consistent with what states like Michigan and California have already learned about the pitfalls of the charter process. There have been individual success stories among the charter schools, but no one seems to have found the key to replicating them on a wider basis. And eliminating the much-criticized educational bureaucracy seems to have created at least as many problems as it has solved.

In addition to poor academic performance, there have been many cases of financial and administrative failures. Some charter schools have been forced to close after being cited for financial irregularities that resulted from a lack of oversight by the states and the local school boards. In some cases, charter schools that boasted about high student achievement have been unwilling to share test data that would support their claims. Others have been accused of generating better scores by screening out the disabled and dumping weaker students back into the public system.

The new data that came to public attention this week was unearthed from a mound of federal reports, where it seemed to have been buried. While government officials denied that they were trying to hide the report, there's no denying that it casts a cloud on the gospel of privatization pushed by the Bush administration.

The report shows that there is nothing magical about the charter system when it comes to rebuilding failing schools. Instead of encouraging the states to set up thousands of unsupervised charter schools, the education secretary, Rod Paige, and his associates should concentrate on the No Child Left Behind provisions that require the states to place a qualified teacher in every classroom and make sure that all of the country's children are being held to the same high standards. That means more oversight and more scrutiny by the states, not less.

Read More...

Summary only...