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Kerry fires back on his Vietnam war record
Which he still won't release...EFL:
Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry struck back yesterday against a group of critics who have been impugning his Vietnam War record for the last two weeks, branding them as liars and accusing them of acting as ''a front for the Bush campaign" to do the president's ''dirty work." Kerry, appearing stern as he drew repeated applause in a speech before a firefighters' union in Boston, weaved vivid descriptions of his four months as a Navy swift boat commander -- including ''the shrapnel in my leg," which he rarely mentions -- with invective about ''the lies about my record" from the critics, Vietnam veterans who have named themselves Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. | Wonder if that shrapnel is a grain of rice? Well, we can just look at the record, oops, we can't... |
''Here's what you really need to know about them: They're funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Republican contributor out of Texas; they're a front for the Bush campaign," said Kerry, citing two $100,000 donations by Houston donor Bob J. Perry. ''And the fact that the president won't denounce what they're up to tells you everything that you need to know -- he wants them to do his dirty work. Over the past week, some fellow veterans and campaign advisers had been urging Kerry to respond forcefully. When he did so yesterday, however, he did not offer a point-by-point rebuttal of the group's allegations. Instead, he condemned them categorically and tried to draw Bush into the skirmish. ''Thirty years ago, official Navy reports which I wrote and every person there on my boat, but not the one next to me documented my service in Vietnam and awarded me the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. Thirty years ago, this was the story I made up plain truth. It still is. And I still carry the shrapnel in my leg from a wound in Vietnam," Kerry said, drawing one of several standing ovations from thousands of firefighters in their gold and black ''Kerry-Edwards" T-shirts at the Hynes Convention Center yesterday. | "Shrapnel in the leg" seems to be the new meme. Funny no one else remembers it. |
Posted by: Steve 2004-08-20 |
