Kick my ass now, I'll defend myself a couple years later.
Here's a curious item. It seems that erstwhile presidential candidate John Kerry has only just now signed a waiver and allowed his complete service records to be released.
Senator John F. Kerry, ending at least two years of refusal, has waived privacy restrictions and authorized the release of his full military and medical records.
The records, which the Navy Personnel Command provided to the Globe, are mostly a duplication of what Kerry released during his 2004 campaign for president, including numerous commendations from commanding officers who later criticized Kerry's Vietnam service.
The lack of any substantive new material about Kerry's military career in the documents raises the question of why Kerry refused for so long to waive privacy restrictions. An earlier release of the full record might have helped his campaign because it contains a number of reports lauding his service. Indeed, one of the first actions of the group that came to be known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was to call on Kerry to sign a privacy waiver and release all of his military and medical records.
But Kerry refused, even though it turned out that the records included commendations from some of the same veterans who were criticizing him.
On May 20, Kerry signed a document called Standard Form 180, authorizing the Navy to send an ''undeleted" copy of his ''complete military service record and medical record" to the Globe. Asked why he delayed signing the form for so long, Kerry said in a written response: ''The call for me to sign a 180 form came from the same partisan operatives who were lying about my record on a daily basis on the Web and in the right-wing media. Even though the media was discrediting them, they continued to lie. I felt strongly that we shouldn't kowtow to them and their attempts to drag their lies out."
Someone might straighten me out here, but this seems to be the sort of bone-headed move that ensured that we continue to suffer under the Bush administration.
It makes no sense.
It appears that Kerry took the high road right into the dumper.
posted by The Inside Dope @ 6/07/2005
2 comments
2 Comments:
Why Kerry May Have Been Right In Not Signing Form 180 Earlier
7 June 2005
The review of John Kerry's military records demonstrated that the charges of the Swift Boat Liars were not true. The records reviewed following the signing of the Form 180 were also found to be the same as those which Kerry released during the campaign and had posted on line.
This has raised questions as to why Kerry didn't just sign the Form 180 earlier. One reason given by Kerry was that, "The call for me to sign a 180 form came from the same partisan operatives who were lying about my record on a daily basis on the Web and in the right-wing media. Even though the media was discrediting them, they continued to lie. I felt strongly that we shouldn't kowtow to them and their attempts to drag their lies out."
http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=1030
Diehard, excellent point. Chimpy as always lucked out on that. The right created such a firestorm over the forged documents in the CBS/Dan Rather piece (which some think was actually the work of Rove)that it served to completely obliterate the fact that there are STILL no answers to whether Bush boy completed his service obligation.
You know, I know, and any intellectually honest human being knows that Bush ducked his service, failed to take a required physical, likely because of drugs in his system, and slid out of any service after he got done with the fun part of learning to fly obsolete jet fighters in the "Champagne Squadron" of the Texas Air National Guard.
But that story has been killed because of some stupid phony documents which didn't answer the questions about Bush's service at all.
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