John Kerry Is A Scaredycat! By Edward L. Daley (8/20/04)

(Mr. Daley is the Owner of the Daley Times-Post.  To view more of Mr, Daley's writings please visit his site)

Books of Interest

John Kerry is a scaredycat. There's no better word to describe him at this point in time. How dare I write such a thing about a decorated war veteran? Well, the folks who will surely ask that question upon reading this article assume that Mr. Kerry is what he claims to be. I do not make that assumption, just as I do not assume that the people currently accusing him of deliberate acts of deceit and treachery are correct in all their assertions, although I suspect that most of them honestly believe him to be a despicable character.

When it comes to the question of whether or not John Kerry is what he says he is, I'll just let the facts, as they slowly come to light, speak for themselves. My justification for using such a scandalous word as scaredycat to describe him has more to do with is the fact that Mr. Kerry has failed utterly to address the many serious allegations leveled at him by scores of swift boat veterans than it does with what he
actually did or didn't do in Vietnam. It's Kerry's blatant ducking of their specific charges which leads me to label him what I have.

After all, it would be easy enough for him to refute at least some of their claims by simply releasing ALL of his war records and facing these men in public, but he has chosen to hide from them. That is a cowardly act, especially when one considers that he is perfectly willing to allow his attack dogs to lambaste these veterans with vicious ad hominem attacks at every turn.

The liberal media, as well, has predictably gone out of it's way to make excuses for his behavior while simultaneously defaming those individuals who laid their lives on the line for our country over three decades ago, most to a far greater degree than John Kerry ever did. They're just all liars and he's just the innocent victim of their slander... case closed! Never mind that many of them, including all the officers who were in his immediate chain of command, have maintained for years that Kerry is an untrustworthy individual who was more interested in his future political career than the safety of the men he commanded.

This is nothing new, of course. Liberals, by and large, admit that they are far more concerned with unseating George Bush in November than considering if their own candidate is an honorable man or not. Moreover, they have never exhibited any love or respect for most Vietnam vets, which makes their sudden support for the junior Bay State Senator so bewildering to so many of us who aren't mindlessly goose-stepping behind him.

Since the beginning of his campaign for president, Kerry has focussed heavily on his four and a half months of experience fighting in Vietnam, never once mentioning his escapades immediately following the war, which many of his contemporaries considered to be treasonous at the time. Anyone who saw the finale of the Democrat National Convention cannot, while maintaining any intellectual honesty at all, refute the fact that John Kerry is playing up his assumed "war hero" status, nor can his supporters deny that they emphatically endorse this strategy.

The anti-war party is propping up a man who has openly confessed to having committed war crimes, and defamed his former comrades in arms as fellow war criminals. Yet he now behaves as if his military service is something he has always been proud of, and every sign-waving, teeth-gnashing, peacenik from Maine to Montana gleefully cheers him on while he shamefully extols himself as the gallant warrior/candidate. Furthermore, they want everyone to believe they are outraged by the fact that the very soldiers he denigrated before Congress upon returning home from Vietnam would now dare treat him with disrespect or question the contention that he's a genuine hero.

At this point I can only ask this: WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE EXPECT? This man did nothing but spew Communist-backed propaganda about how wicked and corrupt the fighting men of our armed forces were during the Vietnam era, illustrating his disdain for everything the military stands for when he, with a fair amount of theatrical flair, tossed his (or at least what he wanted us to believe were his) war decorations over the White House fence during an anti-war demonstration in 1971.

But that incident aside, I have yet to conclude which is more odious, the Senator's avoidance of the highly significant issues raised by people like retired Naval Commander John O'Neill (who has consistently charged that John Kerry is not only an unconscionable liar, but a perpetrator of criminal fraud) or the sycophantic, pro-Kerry rhetoric of most television news commentators, who shriek like pin-pricked infants whenever perfectly reasonable questions are raised about his brief tour
of duty in the late 60s.

They, likewise, are cowards because they've intentionally framed the debate regarding Senator Kerry's military record in such a way as to completely evade the substantive aspects of what the swift boat veterans are claiming. They are also as un-American as all get out, because they would rather the people of this country remain ignorant about all this than risk losing another national election. That's not how responsible, fair-minded journalists act, but these partisan weasels are perfectly willing to sacrifice whatever integrity they may have had for the sole purpose of putting a Democrat in the White House.

Back in January, John Kerry challenged his opponents to "Bring it on!".  Well, now it's being brought, and the hero from Massachusetts is running for cover behind a wall of name-calling toadies and their vitriolic comrades in the national media. Such behavior only lends credibility to Commander O'Neill's assertions and those of all the other swift boat vets who are taking on the whole Democrat political machine at the expense of being labeled crackpots, right-wing fanatics and worse.

If Mr. Kerry has a problem with what they're saying, or my own characterizations of him, all he has to do is prove us wrong. Just speak up and lay your cards on the table, Senator. Until you do that, I won't hesitate to call you what I think you are, and you can count on your former "brothers in arms" expressing their contempt for you to anyone who will listen.