Bush Flew Fighter Jets During Vietnam

"Billy Preston" ) writes:
"Bill Shatzer" wrote

Kerry's views may have been mistaken - though, in retrospect, it
seems he was more correct than not about the war - but I see no
indication that they were anything other than honestly held beliefs.

He didn't even write the "baby killer" speech before Congress.

The phrase "baby killer" nor any approximation there of was not
used in his senate testimony. The text is available on line and
that can be readily confirmed.

http://www.pbs.org/greatspeeches/tim...j_kerry_s.html

Kerry obtained most of his "evidence" of supposed atrocities from
the Winter Soldier project which collected the testimony of a number
of veterans. It later turned out that many of the incidents testified
to were exaggerated or could not be confirmed. In some cases, it turned
out that the veterans had not even been in Vietnam.

OTOH, some of the testimony was essentially accurate.

If Kerry was guilty of any thing, it was being overly naive and trusting.
Perhaps the stories related during the Winter Soldier project should have
be subject to greater scepticism and better investigation and cross-
checks.

But, I can understand why that did not occur. VVAW had limited resources
for conducting any investigation and it seems unlikely the US military
would have cooperated with any information request from them in any event.
And, I would think, there would have been an inherent bias to -believe-
the word of fellow veterans - both because the basic bias of folks who
have served is to -want- to believe our "comrades in arms" and because
their stories conformed to Kerry's "mind-set" about the war.

Perhaps he was overly credulous but then that is not an uncommon vice
of the young. I find it difficult to find anything more sinister than
that in his activities and testimony.



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