Town of Braintree

What our troops think of Kerry.


Unfit & Unwelcome
What our troops think of Kerry.

One of the questions I longed to hear someone ask John Kerry during the presidential debates was this: ''Senator Kerry, voters say the war in Iraq is one of the key issues of this election. You are a decorated combat veteran who wants to lead our soldiers in Iraq and elsewhere. And yet by overwhelming numbers, America's fighting men say they don't want you to lead them. Why do you think this is so?''

The Military Times 2004 Election Survey, e-mailed to more than 31,000 subscribers in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, National Guard, and Reserves, invited them to share their opinions on the presidential race. It was a rare chance for the troops ?— normally compelled to keep their lips zipped when it comes to their opinions of civilian leaders ?— to lob a few verbal grenades onto the presidential battlefield.

Of those who responded ?— and this part is not a surprise ?— 73 percent said they planned to vote for President Bush. Eighteen percent said they expected to vote for Kerry. While the poll did not randomly select those it questioned ?— meaning the results cannot be read as representative of the military as a whole ?— it does reveal that many serving in uniform have a low opinion of ''war hero'' Kerry. Extremely low.

''To me, he put himself in a position to where he is a traitor,'' says 26-year-old Army Specialist John Bass, who is serving in Iraq. ''I don't want someone like him running this country.''

''It's about honor and integrity,'' adds Marine Sgt. Jason Jester, another Bush supporter.

More than two-thirds of those polled say Kerry's antiwar actions turned them against him. And here's where the survey gets interesting. More than one in five say Kerry's celebrated combat record is the reason they're embracing Bush.. They may also have read Unfit for Command, in which Swifties John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi describe how Lt. Kerry blundered into one of the most dangerous canals in Vietnam ?— one notorious for Viet Cong ambushes ?— risking the lives of his crewmen.

Perhaps our soldiers suspect that a President Kerry will one day treat them the same way he treated his former Vietnam comrades ?— betraying them and accusing them of atrocities
Today's soldiers, born long after the Vietnam War ended, know that Kerry bears much responsibility for the fact that his fellow soldiers were spat on when they returned from Vietnam.

Since this is America, home of the most honorable military men in the world, there is precisely no chance our fighting men will refuse to follow the orders of their commander-in-chief ?— even if they have to hold their noses while doing so. But one has to wonder what impact Kerry's election would have on morale and recruitment. We may well end up with a draft if Kerry is president ?— because fewer numbers of people will volunteer to put on (or keep on) a uniform and take orders from a man for whom they feel little but contempt, not only for his past acts, but for what many suspect will be his future ones. Does anybody think that President Kerry would not immediately impose the P.C. upon those expected to fight a worldwide war on terror?

This story is part of why I wish, before the debates were over, someone had asked Senator Kerry: ''Given the importance of the war on terror, shouldn't we listen to the people who are waging it? And if these people believe you are the wrong leader in the wrong place at the wrong time, shouldn't we honor that belief?''


By the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marin

America Has Awoken!


America Has Awoken! George W. Bush does not stand a chance for a second term!

In Short: On Balance, Bush.

On Balance, Bush
A libertarian looks closely at the options.

After all, much of President Bush's domestic record was hard to swallow. With his veto pen still in mothballs, Bush has proposed or endorsed 8.2-percent average annual increases in non-security-related domestic spending. This outpaces even Lyndon Johnson, according to Club for Growth calculations. Could Kerry top that?

Bush shocked free marketeers with 8-30 percent steel tariffs. Pakistan, a war-on-terror ally, still faces textile quotas, while last November brought barriers against Chinese bras. Could Kerry out-protect Bush?

Bush signed a Medicare drug benefit covering all seniors, regardless of income, saddling future generations with a new entitlement costing at least $534 billion through 2013 alone. Could Kerry accelerate government any more quickly?
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Bush has signed $1.9 trillion in tax relief and envisions major second-term tax simplification. Bush's approval of vouchers for Washington, D.C.'s beleaguered government-school students and his advocacy of Social Security choice signal key reforms by 2008.

But leading the war on terror is where Bush leaves Kerry in the lurch.

Bush has confronted terrorists and their sponsors. The Taliban no longer runs now-democratic Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein's terrorist general store is kaput. (See HUSSEINandTERROR.com for details.) Pakistan, a former Taliban ally, has arrested some 600 al-Qaeda murderers. Yemen convicted and will execute two USS Cole bombers and jail four others. Saudi Arabia has begun to neutralize local terrorists. Six days after Hussein's arrest, Muammar Kaddafi abandoned Libya's atomic ambitions.

Kerry, meanwhile, takes terrorism insufficiently seriously. He has invoked at least twice the ''law enforcement'' counter-terrorism model, as if bombing Islamo-fascists with subpoenas will do.

1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef said he aspired to murder not six people, as occurred, but 250,000. Osama bin Laden's 1998 declaration of war on America said: ''To kill all Americans and their allies ?— civilians and military ?— is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.'' Al-Qaeda's Jamal al Fadl explained in 2001 why he searched Sudan for radiological materials: ''It's easy to kill more people with uranium.''

Against such a driven, bloodthirsty enemy, America needs resolute leadership. Instead, President Kerry would be President Carter without the polyester suit. Kerry has embraced then spurned the Iraq war, $87 billion to support it, the Patriot Act, No Child Left Behind, ballistic-missile defense, and NAFTA, among other oscillations. Kerry dizzyingly has recommended more soldiers in Iraq, a July 2005 troop withdrawal, a presence through January 2006, and an open-ended commitment.

Would Kerry have invaded if Hussein ultimately refused to disarm? Kerry assured Missouri voters last August: ''You bet I might have.'' Asking Kerry to hold a position is like begging a tumbleweed to stand still.

Despite some domestic faults (and amid hopeful signs for a second-term agenda), I trust the president to keep Islamic extremists far from me, my family, friends, neighbors, and countrymen.

In short: On balance, Bush.


By Islamic extremists far from meIs

Exactly why Bush has to win

The Europeans dont like us and they really dont pretent to, they never did.How many times in the last Century did the goverments start brutal wars and we had to bail them out.Other then great Britian nobody has ever said thank you for all the Americans lying dead in European cemeteries. Why do we need them to like us they still dont have it all together and they want us to wallow in their pit of self destruction again.