 TRAITOR!
Be on the outlook for an outpouring of this meme if Kerry comes out of today's New Hampshire primary looking strong. It's already putting in a strong appearance at places like Men's News Daily and NewsMax.
The visual centerpiece of this meme is the cover of a book written by Kerry and other vets. A book that has mysteriously disappeared. No wait. A book that has been not so mysteriously suppressed by the duplicitous Kerry. No wait. I'm not sure, although I am positive that I haven't seen it referred to as a 'book which sold mysteriously few copies and mysteriously went out of print thirty-two mysterious years ago.
This line of commentary (it can't really be called a story, can it, since it's simply old facts with a new spin) popped up as long ago as last May, when The New American posted 'Kerry Postures as a War Hero' by John F. McManus. This is really the granddaddy of the Kerry as traitor pieces, and most rabidly effective as well, avoiding, as it does, gratuitous (and chuckle inducing) references to the likes of 'Hanoi Jane'. McManus goes for the serious meat:
In 1971, the Communist Daily World delightedly published photos of him speaking to demonstrators as a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). The April 23, 1971 Daily World boasted that the marchers displayed a banner depicting a portrait of Communist Party leader Angela Davis, who was on record stating: "I am dedicated to the overthrow of your system of government and your society."
Got that? Prose such as this from Major Rick Erickson at MND are just starting to float a kinder, gentler version of this. With (WTF) a superfluous Clinton name-check.
The tact of Kerry for President looks a lot like Clinton-Gore’s approach to deceiving voters that such an obvious liability is really the opposite. When Kerry marched in the Veteran’s Day parade in Phoenix last year, in tow behind him were a few people carrying “Veterans for Kerry” placards. Some placard carriers looked like the ragtag types on the cover of The New Solider in that they were unshaven, wearing circa 1971 clothes and appeared disoriented.
Back to McManus, to fit Kerry into his proper milieu. (Note that in this account, Kerry not only suppresses his book, he even suppresses the cover photo).
Seeking election to the U.S. House in 1972, Kerry found it necessary to suppress reproduction of the cover picture appearing on his own book, The New Soldier. His political opponent pointed out that it depicted several unkempt youths crudely handling an American flag to mock the famous photo of the U.S. Marines at Iwo Jima. Suddenly, copies of the book became unavailable and even disappeared from libraries. But the Lowell (Mass.) Sun said of the type of person shown on its cover: "These people spit on the flag, they burn the flag, they carry the flag upside down, [and] they all but wipe their noses with it in their efforts to show their contempt for everything it still stands for."
So. Get ready. Just like with Howard Dean and his Righteous Anger, the idea is to take one of the candidates strengths and turn it into a crippling weakness. You might want to bookmark this site: Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry.
On a final note, as I am sitting here on this fine, snowed in day, I have the fox new channel on and they are running dual scandal stories on Clark and Kerry. The Kerry segment is following this quote to Congress from testimony in 1972.
[U.S. soldiers had] "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."
"Can you believe," asks the blonde newsFox Linda Vestor, "that he would say these things about his own countrymen?"
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