This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: John Kerry

  • John Kerry reminds us of his Vietnam years

    John Kerry reminds us of his Vietnam years

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    In case you forgot, John Kerry reminds you that he was in Vietnam, briefly, at The Vietnam War Summit held at the LBJ Presidential Library the other day. He was hawking a documentary by Ken Burns which he hopes will redeem his image – that of an ignorant little POS protester.

    Kerry rarely discusses in public his time as an anti-war protester. His pointed remarks suggested that the poised, silver-haired diplomat who negotiates ceasefires and treaties, is just an evolution from the angry, shaggy-maned protester who posed the rhetorical question of how to ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake.

    “In 1971, when I testified against the war in Vietnam,” Kerry said, “I spoke of the determination of veterans to undertake one last mission so that in 30 years, when our brothers went down the street without a leg or an arm and people asked why, we’d be able to say “Vietnam” and not mean a bitter memory ….”

    Then Kerry stopped, seeming to choke back tears and taking a chug from a water bottle before he composed himself and completed the thought.

    “…. a bitter memory,” he continued, “but mean instead the place where America turned and where we helped it in the turning.”

    If, by “rarely”, the Washington Post means “at every opportunity” then they’d be correct. Remember this?

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    He parlayed his three months in Vietnam into a political career, his three minor injuries for which he received three Purple Hearts into his ticket home to besmirch the reputation of every veteran who served honorably in that war with charges of atrocities.

    Early in his speech, Kerry said that a 10-part documentary in the works by filmmaker Ken Burns will vindicate critics of the war.

    There aren’t documentaries enough to vindicate people like John Kerry and Jane Fonda, but that probably won’t stop people like Ken Burns from trying;

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    Kerry also said the blame some Americans placed on U.S. servicemen and women was “tragically misplaced.”

    “I know that well as one of the four founders of the Vietnam Veterans against the War,” he said, citing inadequate benefits for veterans, as well as homelessness and trauma.

    That coming from the guy who compared US troops to the barbarian Genghis Kahn at his appearance in the Senate.

    Kerry said he was one of the lucky ones, who returned from Vietnam whole. “I am now in a position of responsibility, to live my beliefs, to live my lessons,” he said.

    Yeah, lucky, that’s what he was…not a conniving little valor thief who suffered wounds from an exploding bag of rice and manipulated the system to scurry away from his responsibilities and denigrate the folks who stayed and did their jobs.

    Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.

    Here is John Fagmo Kerry’s testimony if you missed it 45 years ago.

  • Obama’s hidden war in Iraq

    Obama’s hidden war in Iraq

    Kerry stuck in Iraq

    Chief Tango sends us a link to the Wall Street Journal, where William McGurn reminds us that it was 45-years ago this month that John Kerry complained to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the troops who were giving their lives up so that the Nixon Administration didn’t have to own up to their mistakes in Vietnam;

    Today, as secretary of state, Mr. Kerry travels about the world rationalizing an Iraq policy designed to keep President Obama from having to admit his mistake: that he has only made worse a war he claimed to have ended….In an interview aired Sunday on Fox News, President Obama declared that his “number one priority right now” is defeating Islamic State. But how does the man who sees himself as the guy who gets America out of its wars deal with the contradiction?

    Part of the answer seems to be fudging the troop numbers. Officially U.S. troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan are capped at 3,870 and 9,800 respectively. But after a Marine in northern Iraq—Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin—was killed in an ISIS rocket attack, the Pentagon was forced to admit there are as many as 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Only then did Americans learn that men such as Staff Sgt. Cardin are not included in the official troop count because they were rotated in on a temporary basis.

    Things won’t change with the next president, either. Obama has only changed the words we use;

    Mrs. Clinton has her own version of the charade. “I will not send American combat troops to Iraq or Syria,” she has declared in more than one primary debate. Instead, she says, “we will continue to use Special Forces.”

    I’m sure Special Forces soldiers in Syria and Iraq will be surprised to learn that they’re not combat troops. I’m sure it would surprise Staff Sergeant Cardin, too. It appears that Obama and Kerry aren’t the only people in the Democrat Party who are pretending that there’s no war in Iraq. Or contingency operations or whatever word they’re using these days to hide the fact that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning President only makes wars worse while he’s pretending to end them. And America’s best and brightest are shedding their blood for weasel words.

  • Kerry sees ISIS genocide

    Kerry sees ISIS genocide

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    The Associated Press reports that John Kerry our Secretary of State is set to announce that which we all know – that ISIS is committing genocide in Syria and Iraq;

    Kerry’s finding, set to be announced Thursday, will not obligate the United States to take additional action against IS militants and does not prejudge any prosecution against its members, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly preview Kerry’s decision.

    A day after the State Department said Kerry would miss the March 17 deadline, the officials said Kerry had completed his review and determined that Christians, Yazidis and Shiite groups are victims of genocide. The House this week passed a nonbinding resolution by a 393-0 vote condemning IS atrocities as genocide.

    Apparently, Kerry’s report will trigger a tersely-worded letter from the UN. The last tiem this happened was in 2004 when Colin Powell determined that there was genocide being committed in Darfur – that disaster came to a screeching halt, didn’t it? What? It didn’t? Oh, well.

    n that case, the lawyers decided that the 1948 U.N. Convention against genocide did not require countries to prevent genocide from taking place outside their territory. Powell instead called for the U.N. Security Council to appoint a commission to investigate and take appropriate legal action if it agreed with the genocide determination.

    I’m sure this time will be different.

    His determination, however, does not carry the legal implication of a verdict of guilt or conviction on genocide charges, the officials said. Such decisions will be left to international or other tribunals.

    ISIS will immediately recognize that what they’re doing is wrong and stop murdering innocent people so they don’t get on John Kerry’s wrong side.

    Thanks to 3E9 for the link.

  • ROE loosened in regards to ISIS in Afghanistan

    ROE loosened in regards to ISIS in Afghanistan

    kerrypinkbike01

    Fox News and the Wall Street Journal report that the Pentagon has loosened the rules of engagement restrictions formerly placed on US troops in Afghanistan thanks to the State department declaring the “ISIL-K,” or Khorasan as the organization is known, a foreign terrorist organization;

    The new authorization now puts ISIS in the same category as Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

    Previously, the militants could only be targeted if they showed what’s known as hostile intent.

    “Now,” a U.S. official told Fox News, “we can kill ISIS in Afghanistan just for wearing the T-shirt or waving their flag.”

    Well, while this is good news, it shouldn’t be news at all. That’s the way that it should have been from the beginning. ISIS has been operating in Afghanistan for more than a year, and the troops had to wait for bureaucrats to get off their fat asses and write a letter to allow them to kill the enemies of this country. I’m sure that John Kerry entertained the notion that he could negotiate with them before it got to this point.

  • Kerry: remove Syria’s Assad

    Kerry: remove Syria’s Assad

    John Kerry's Munich Moment

    In contradiction to what his stance on Syria’s president Assad during the Bush Administration, John Kerry has told folks that we need to remove Assad from Syria in order to beat ISIS, according to the New York Times;

    Yet while American officials say they want to see Mr. Assad leave office, they clearly do not want to have that transition happen too quickly. An abrupt removal of Mr. Assad could create a vacuum in Damascus that the Islamic State would probably try to exploit. “Just imagine how quickly this scourge could be eliminated — in a matter of literally months — if we were able to secure that kind of political resolution,” Mr. Kerry said.

    The first step in Mr. Kerry’s plan is to negotiate a cease-fire among rebel groups and Mr. Assad’s forces — but one that does not include the Islamic State or terrorist organizations like the Nusra Front, an offshoot of Al Qaeda.

    Ya know what would have really helped in this situation? If Kerry and the Democrats hadn’t cuddled up to the Assad regime during the Bush Administration, if they’d have arrived at this conclusion back before there was an ISIS or before there was a civil war. But, then they would have to be pro-active on the Middle East – they were more concerned with undermining US security and reversing any Bush initiatives in the region.

  • Sinking CNN refloats the swift boats

    Sinking CNN refloats the swift boats

    In the media kerfuffle regarding Donald Trump’s stupid remarks about John McCain’s Vietnam service, the ratings-sinking CNN noted that while Jeb Bush had condemned Trump’s boorishness, he had long ago defended the swift boat veterans’ attacks against John Kerry. Had CNN been content to leave their news article with a passing reference to political history, I wouldn’t be writing this. But no, they just had to follow with a couple of pernicious lies that have long been poisonous serpents in that increasingly fetid swamp called the Democratic Party.

    From the article:

    All of the charges were contradicted by official military records and almost all of the men who served with Kerry came out in defense of their former crewmate, praising his courage. Only one of the swift boat critics served with Kerry.

    Kerry received several medals for his service in Vietnam, including several Purple Heart medals for injuries he sustained in combat.

    The CNN writer, perhaps a student at the time, apparently has no real knowledge of those records, or he would know that John Kerry cherry-picked for release those parts of his military records that were supportive of his heroic fairy tales, while refusing to open his entire records for media examination. When called out on that by the many men of the swift boat veterans organization who actually did serve with him – not the one man claimed by CNN – Kerry repeatedly promised to sign an authorization form allowing the Navy to release his full records. The operative words there are repeatedly promised. And then he promised again. And again, and again, and again and again, but guess what! It never happened throughout the course of the campaign, because John Kerry knew that what was in those records would torpedo his prospects as a presidential candidate.

    And what might that torpedo be? Most likely it was a dishonorable or other form of unfavorable discharge given to Lieutenant Kerry for his traitorous behaviors in treating with the enemy. Kerry was still a commissioned junior naval officer when he met with North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris in May 1970, an action that could have brought charges of treason and a lengthy prison sentence. During the 2004 campaign, there was speculation by those investigating Kerry’s discharge that Jimmy Carter had reversed Kerry’s bad discharge in 1977 and issued an honorable version. That would have been an unusually long time between an officer’s separation from service, 1970, and the issuance of his discharge in 1977.

    The fact that John Kerry to this day has never released his military records is quite telling when one considers the fact that upon losing the 2004 campaign, he vowed to sue the members of the swift boat veterans organization for defamation. After all, those sailors who had served with him in Vietnam had publicly challenged virtually every claim to valor and wounds that Kerry had made and ballyhooed during the campaign, effectively calling him a liar and a fraud, a candidate for president who had committed the later to come crime of stolen valor. Those were serious charges, and they were made quite prominently and quite publicly. Most importantly, they likely cost John Kerry the presidency of the United States of America.

    If those swift boat charges were untrue, then John Kerry had himself the biggest, most publicly and financially damaging case of defamation the world has ever seen. There were of course the lost prestige and the need for vindication of character and valor, but more importantly, think of the financial losses. Kerry’s lawyers could point to the tens, maybe hundreds of millions made by Slick Willie since he left office, using that as a template for determining monetary damages. John Kerry could have won the largest defamation lawsuit in history, except for one thing: discovery. In any defamation suit against the swift boat veterans, John Kerry knew full well that first among the documents subpoenaed by the lawyers for the swifties would be his full and entire military records.

    The primary defense against defamation, libel, or slander, any of those torts against demeaning and damaging a person’s character or performance, is truth. If what they say about you is true, then you can’t sue them successfully for saying so. John Kerry knew that not only was truth on the side of the swift boat veterans, but there might also be further disclosures in those records that he did not want to see made public. That has to be the only reason that John Kerry’s long-promised and repeatedly threatened lawsuit against the swift boat veterans never came to be.

    John Kerry is and was a phony hero. Of course, the fact that he lied about his military service and caused truly good and faithful sailors to be demonized by the liberal media actually qualifies him for heroic status in the Democrat party’s pantheon.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Surprised? Nah, Me Neither.

    Well, our good SECSTATE has been at it again.

    It seems that the good John Forbes Kerry has been running his yap again – this time about “global climate change”. And here’s what he had to say:

    “Climate change is an issue that is personal to me, and it has been since the 1980s, when we were organizing the very first climate hearings in the Senate…. Al Gore, Tim Wirth, and a group of us organized the first hearings in the Senate on this, 1988. We heard Jim Hansen sit in front of us and tell us it’s happening now, 1988.”

    –Secretary of State John F. Kerry, remarks to the Atlantic Council, March 12, 2015

    Yep – Kerry claims he was right there with Gore, helping to organize the “first” hearings on the matter.

    He’s made very similar claims on multiple previous occasions. And, finally, someone decided to fact-check him on it.

    Specifically, Glenn Kessler – the guy who write’s the Washington Post “Fact Checker” column – fact checked the SECSTATE’s claim. And here’s what Kessler had to say about that claim:

    Yeah, that means what you think it does: Kerry lied. Through his teeth. With a straight face.

    Raise your hand if this caught you by surprise. Yeah, didn’t think so.

    Kessler’s WaPo article on the subject is well-worth reading. If you have about 5 minutes, it’s worth taking the time to look it over. It documents a multi-year pattern of Kerry telling this particular lie.

    If you “love” the man as much as I do, I think you’ll find it a very enjoyable 5 minutes.

  • Our foreign policy is a joke, a very bad joke

    Yeah, John Kerry took James Taylor to Paris with him to sing “You’ve got a friend” because that’s how we roll;

    All’s better now. Take that, ISIS. That’s what happens when 60s stank-ass hippies run our halls of government.