A Leftist Too Far

As I've been noting for some time now, Kerry's comments are not simply some random joke that went awry, but one that fits his pattern of speech on the subject for the past 30+ years. It's also a pattern that the leftists and anti-American crowd have been honing all these years as well. However, the veil drops more and more. Indeed, Kerry said much the same thing back in 1972.

During a Vietnam-era run for Congress three decades ago, John Kerry said he opposed a volunteer Army because it would be dominated by the underprivileged, be less accountable and be more prone to "the perpetuation of war crimes."

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran who turned against the war, made the observations in answers to a 1972 candidate questionnaire from a Massachusetts peace group.

After Kerry caused a firestorm this week with what he termed a botched campaign joke that Republicans said insulted current soldiers, The Associated Press was alerted to the historical comments by a former law enforcement official who monitored 1970s anti-war activities

Kerry apologized Wednesday for the 2006 campaign trail gaffe that some took as suggesting U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq were undereducated. He contended the remark was aimed at Bush, not the soldiers.

In 1972, as he ran for the House, he was less apologetic in his comments about the merits of a volunteer army. He declared in the questionnaire that he opposed the draft but considered a volunteer army "a greater anathema."

"I am convinced a volunteer army would be an army of the poor and the black and the brown," Kerry wrote. "We must not repeat the travesty of the inequities present during Vietnam. I also fear having a professional army that views the perpetuation of war crimes as simply 'doing its job.'

His views on the military have not changed in the intervening years, though he's done a good job of masking his true feelings, until the 'joke' went wrong.

Some in the military offered a stinging rebuke of their own.

But lest you think that Kerry is the only one who thinks ill of the military, along comes the detestable Sy Hersch.

“Three U.S. armed vehicles, eight soldiers in each, are driving through a village, passing candy out to kids,” he began. “Suddenly the first vehicle explodes, and there are soldiers screaming. Sixteen soldiers come out of the other vehicles, and they do what they’re told to do, which is look for running people.”

“Never mind that the bomb was detonated by remote control,” Hersh continued. “[The soldiers] open up fire; [the] cameras show it was a soccer game.”

“About ten minutes later, [the soldiers] begin dragging bodies together, and they drop weapons there. It was reported as 20 or 30 insurgents killed that day,” he said.

If Americans knew the full extent of U.S. criminal conduct, they would receive returning Iraqi veterans as they did Vietnam veterans, Hersh said.

“In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation,” he said. “It isn’t happening now, but I will tell you – there has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq.”

So, not only is Hersch claiming the US military perpetuates war crimes, that it instill such behavior in the soldiers, but wants Americans to treat our soldiers the same way they did following their return home from Vietnam.

Like I said; detestable.

UPDATE:
Patterico read the NYT article today about the Kerry kerfuffle and his finds are quite troubling. Who needs Kerry to make yet another excuse, when the New York Times can simply rewrite what he said initially and then pull it off to anyone who wasn't paying attention.

The Times is lying on Kerry's behalf, and I doubt that the paper will have the guts to run the correction in a prominent place. Like the front page where it belongs.

The writer of the story, Kate Zernike, claims Kerry said the following:

Mr. Kerry’s prepared remarks to California students on Monday called for him to say, “Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.” In his delivery, he dropped the word “us.”

Well, if that was what he said, then anyone paying attention would have noted that this was meant as a jab at Bush, not the troops. Yet, all the videos and transcripts from his appearance show a completely different statement:

You know, education — if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.

That's quite a bit different. Not only is Zernike lying out of her teeth (and word processor), but no one at the Times fact checked to make sure that the quotes which are widely available and accessible from Google or YouTube (for you video fiends). The editors are as much to blame for letting this slip through as Zernike is for writing such nonsense.

UPDATE:
QandO (ht: Soccer Dad) takes Hersch to task for his statements. But never question his patriotism - even as he smears all of our troops. Soccer Dad also notes that Ocean Guy takes on Kerry's statements.

Also commenting on Kerry's kerfuffle: AJ Strata, Big Lizards, and The Anchoress.

UPDATE:
From there to here. This is how one would have to reedit Kerry's remarks to make them jibe with what the Kerry camp is claiming. Let's just say that a rewrite is in order.

Technorati: john kerry, support the troops, democrat, politics.