Republican Slime, Again. In an editorial that “went to bed” sometime last nite, the New York Post today said, in regard to the controversy over the Vietnam-era military records — or lack thereof — of John Kerry and George Bush:

The question of who did what 30-plus years ago should never have gotten the kind of prominence it has in this debate; other issues are far more pressing.

But of course the Post then went on to continue talking about this idiotic non-issue, claiming that:

... Kerry's commanding officer at the time charged last spring that the Massachusetts senator essentially awarded himself a Purple Heart after receiving a superficial scratch.

How very interesting! You can award yourself a military medal! As Ed McMahon, in his days as Johnny Carson’s sidekick on the Tonight Show, might have said, in staccato cadence, “I did-not-know-that.”
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Well, you did-not-know-that because it’s not true. Nobody awards himself a United States military medal. The U.S. military awards those medals, no one else. Any assertion to the contrary is bullshit.
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This morning, at 9:58 a.m., CNN.com uploaded an AP report that found:

The Navy's chief investigator concluded Friday that procedures were followed properly in the approval of Sen. John Kerry's Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals * * *

[Hoping to pre-empt suggestions of a whitewash, which of course the scumbags at Judicial Watch did charge, the report says] "Our review also considered the fact that Senator Kerry's post-active duty [antiwar] activities were public and that military and civilian officials were aware of his actions at the time. For these reasons, I have determined that Senator Kerry's awards were properly approved and will take no further action in this matter."

Returning to the Post ‘s editorial written last nite:

Meanwhile, the legal watchdog group Judicial Watch made a ... request for unreleased files about John Kerry's military service. * * *

31 pages of documents remain closed to public inspection.

Why?

Because under the law, the documents can't be disclosed without John Kerry's authorization.

And John Kerry refuses to grant that authorization.

Trying to seem even-handed and fair, the Post said:

if Americans are going to see a release of documents, they should see a release of all documents.

Not just those about George Bush and the Guard, but also those still-secret 31 pages, and especially the medical records on John Kerry's Purple Hearts.

When all the information is out, then voters can decide.

That sounds fair and reasonable, and one does have to wonder why Kerry would hesitate to have those “still-secret 31 pages” released. But how much do “the people” have the right to know about anybody’s military records, employment records, private life? And what exactly do we HAVE to know as against what is just plain busybody poking around in other people’s lives?
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Let’s review the SIGNIFICANT basics. John Kerry served in Vietnam. George Bush EVADED service in Vietnam. Kerry’s service was brief but valiant, and he could have been KILLED many times during that service. He was in fact WOUNDED three times! and received three properly awarded Purple Hearts as well as two other medals, for valor. George Bush got NO medals.
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George Bush is the “war president” who never went to war — except with other people’s lives. All else is distraction.
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Will this end the tempest in a teapot initiated by those slimy “Swift boat veterans” ads to distract Americans from the fact that George Bush was a war-EVADER and Kerry was a war HERO? — who saw that war corrupts and can turn decent people into monsters? Of course not, because Republicans are slime.
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Republicans deny that ANY signifcant number of Americans committed war crimes in Vietnam. We’d like to believe that. We’d like to believe that My Lai was an aberration. The website of the University of Missouri at Kansas City’s Law School has a page devoted to My Lai, which opens thus:

The My Lai courts-martial are the stories of two tragedies growing out of American involvement in Viet Nam. One was the massacre by United States soldiers of as many as 500 unarmed civilians -- old men, women, children--in My Lai on the morning of March 16, 1968. The other was the cover-up of that massacre.

Plainly the U.S. military has been hugely more disciplined and decent in the treatment of conquered peoples than virtually any other military force of comparable size and advantage, but a few bad apples did commit atrocities, in Vietnam, in the Revolutionary War, in World War II, in every conflict we’ve ever been involved in, including the Iraq war. Because war does things to people.
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Given a license to kill, some people literally lose their minds in an orgy of perversion and sado-masochistic violence against helpless victims.
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I’m certain that it was not routine for American soldiers to commit rapes, cut off people’s ears as trophies, etc., in Vietnam. I am equally certain that some American soldiers did commit such crimes, just as I am absolutely certain that some Americans did commit loathsome crimes against Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. We have souvenir fotos of Abu Ghraib. We don’t have souvenir fotos of atrocities in Vietnam. But that might only be due to technology. If Vietnam servicemen had had cheap digital cameras so thought their fotos would remain private to them, they might well have documented their crimes the way present-day sado-masochists in the military documented their crimes in Abu Ghraib.
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War does things to people. There are World War II veterans who had vivid, chronic nitemares for 50 and 60 years after their service. We have a psychological term for it today: post-traumatic stress disorder. But that’s just the latest in a long line of terms: shell shock, battle fatigue, combat neurosis. War does things to people, and sometimes the things it does are so terrible that you don’t want those people back walking the streets of your cities. Mental-health professionals are a lot better at analyzing problems than curing them.
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Vietnam vets went thru particular stress in that when they came home from what they felt was honorable service in the defense of their country, some people actually spat on them, and much of society turned against them as war criminals. Today’s “heroes” in Iraq might someday return to the same reception, if this illegal war, started thru lies and filled with violence against helpless Third World peoples who never did anything to us, goes on long enuf.
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John Kerry knows what war can do to people. George Bush doesn’t. John Kerry knows that war is the LAST resort, not the first thing you jump to. John Kerry will be very reticent to start a war he can’t finish. George Bush? Well, we’re in the middle of his war. If you see a way out, you’re a long way ahead of him.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:39 PM