NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER Salutes Have Consequences BY ALFRED S. REGNERY RESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS are often remembered for a single issue—usually one that the candidates did not expect would...
...His campaign is largely based on the premise that he will be a better Commander in Chief than George W. Bush, largely because he was a Vietnam war hero, and knows better than Bush what we should be doing in Iraq...
...The American Spectator thus feels compelled to devote considerable space to the controversy, if for no other reason than that it speaks volumes about the character of John Kerry and what kind of President he might be...
...Add to that the fact that his 19-year Senate record of opposing every weapons system, every troop build-up, and every intelligence budget has helped to earn him a 20-point negative gap on fitness for command, and his campaign finds no way to extract him from the tar...
...Kerry's state of mind and his mental attitude about the United States and asks, rhetorically, how somebody who is as suspicious of American power as Mr...
...But that salute may have be remembered for years to as one of those defining moments that turn elections...
...Kerry was a hero to the antiwar movement in 1971...
...As he now tries to resurrect himself as a war hero, Kerry is finding that having it both ways exacts its price...
...NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER Salutes Have Consequences BY ALFRED S. REGNERY RESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS are often remembered for a single issue—usually one that the candidates did not expect would dominate...
...In an interview with The American Spectator, covered more fully in our ace reporter Shawn Macomber's piece, Hoffmann told us that when Kerry testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, testimony which, in Admiral Hoffmann's words, is "90% bulls**t," that he was still on active duty and could thus not speak out...
...Vietnam, the war his generation hated and opposed, has become John Kerry's tar baby...
...But when Kerry raised it again in the presidential campaign, Hoffmann said of Kerry, "you are a target now...
...military...
...In Hoffmann's opinion, Kerry "is a traitor to our country, and has been since day one...
...Retired Admiral Roy Hoffmann, who heads the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and who was Kerry's commanding officer in Vietnam, exemplifies the best attributes of the U.S...
...Our veteran contributing editor Jed Babbin, 4 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2004 who also knows a thing or two about national security, sheds considerably more light on Mr...
...As they say in Washington, what goes around comes around...
...And who could deserve it more...
...Kerry must have forgotten about Admiral Hoffmann...
...When John Kerry stepped forward at his Boston convention, snapped off a salute, and announced to the world that he was reporting for duty, his intent was certainly not to turn his band of brothers against him and put his campaign on the defensive...
...But now a majority of voters knows that most of his claims about Vietnam are fiction, and knows that as soon as he was safely out of Vietnam he accused those who had fought with him of being war criminals and of torturing innocent Vietnamese women and children...
...In Hoffmann's opinion, Kerry "is a traitor to our country, and has been since day one...
...He vows that the Swift boat ads, run so effectively by his organization, will continue to be run, as long as it can afford them, until Election Day...
...there were not many articulate, well-bred Yalies, after all, who were willing to impugn the honor of their comrades-in-arms, and do so very publicly...
...Kerry could possibly be Commander in Chief of the most powerful nation on earth...
Vol. 37 • October 2004 • No. 8
