George Bush, Karl Rove exploit John Kerry's PTSD in 2004 election. Having read John Kerry's medical file, Karl Rove knew that he wouldn't respond immediately to the Swift Boating smears due to the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder he sustained while serving in Vietnam.
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MSNBC's Morning Joe welcomed Paul Alexander, the author of Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove, to dig through Rove's legacy of scandal...Asked by Pat Buchanan whether Rove had "a hand in the Swiftboat thing," Alexander replied, "Sure, absolutely. He helped arrange the sort of message, arranged the funding. ... That was probably the key smear in the 2004 campaign."
Alexander said that Rove almost certainly knew Kerry suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, which makes it very difficult for him to talk about his Vietnam experiences. "They attacked him in such a way that they knew he couldn't respond in an effective manner. ... He went 30 days without responding. ... He didn't know what to say or what to do."
http://rawstory.com/news08/2008/06/20/author-rove-helped-manage-swift-boat-at...
John Kerry wanted to hit back. It had been a miserable August as he took incoming fire about his military service from a gang of hostile Vietnam vets. But no, campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill and other staffers argued, the Swift Boat ads would blow over. Finally, Kerry had had enough. For three or four days, as he campaigned across the country, Kerry ripped into Cahill, furious that the mostly baseless attacks on his valor were driving his numbers down. "He was very angry," one old friend says. "The calculation had been made that this wasn't going to hurt him." Kerry's solution was to reach for an old ally. "Get Vallely," he screamed.The return of the old warriors marked a turning point in the Swift Boat controversy, and a rare moment when Kerry stamped his authority on a drifting campaign. "OK, time to break out the fatigues. We've been there, done that. Time to do it again," Kerry finally struck hard at his opponents' record during Vietnam. "I will not have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have, and who misled America into Iraq," Kerry told a crowd of several thousand supporters at a midnight rally in Springfield. The Bush team, as usual, responded rapidly to Kerry's decidedly unrapid response. Karen Hughes, the president's longtime message maven, accused Kerry of being "consumed" by Vietnam, saying he had "diminished himself" with the attack.
http://brothersjuddblog.com/archives/2004/09/ptsd_follies_1.html
What follows, aides to Kerry say, is one of the most comprehensive conglomerations of evidence disputing the SBVT attacks. Taking on the argument that, somehow, Kerry didn't deserve his Silver Star, the signatories dispute ten "falsehoods," including the claim that Kerry chased and killed a "young Viet Cong in loincloth" (it was an actually a "man of normal military age" carrying a B-40 rocket); that he only was in combat with this one individual (there were "multiple VC scrambling to get away"); and that Kerry made a tactical error in captaining his boat that day ("there was no 'plan' to charge the bank"). The letter concludes with perhaps the most poignant and currently relevant point.
"Finally, the continued insistence that Kerry has not released his full military record is refuted by the Navy, which has publicly certified he has, and by three newspapers which have independently received signed releases and reviewed those records."
Indeed, it is important to remember that in 2004, Kerry posted military records on his campaign's website and allowed selected reporters access to his military medical records. After the campaign, he signed a 180 waiver, authorizing the release of his complete file to three publications.
At the time, the SBVT claimed they couldn't trust that this was the entire cache. No such protests were aired about President Bush's refusal to overturn Vietnam related documents. Currently, Sen. John McCain has released 19 pages of his Nave file to the Associated Press. But, as documented by Jeffrey Klein, there could be upwards of 600 pages that have not been made public.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/20/kerrys-vietnam-allies-go_n_108286.html
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they are all a means to an end... and the end does not have our best interests at heart... so if obama wears tighty whities, mccain wears boxers and bush loves free balling... to me they're still the same.
librano 3 years ago
mccain, obama or whoever comes in... i hope its not the dick cheney... they're all the same...
librano 3 years ago
A bit off topic, BUT...
CIRCULATE!
impeachforpeace. org/ImpeachNow.html
The "Do-It-Yourself Impeachment" IS a legitimate procedure. I called several representatives offices and asked.
Please visit my profile for more information.
"In previous waves, over 500,000 downloads of the document represented over 1.7 million mailings".
Given Bush's DIS-approval rating and the well over 225 million citizens old enough to vote...
WE CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT!
Copy and paste this everywhere.
paddedshell 3 years ago 2