caught via Real Clear Politics link
Sen. John Kerry's appearance last Sunday on "Face the Nation" suggests he's mastered the nuanced finesse of betraying his contempt for American soldiers without accusing them of behaving in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.
The Massachusetts Democrat has come a long way since 1971.
Back then, Mr. Kerry had the starring role as the principled and decorated Vietnam War veteran testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about supposed war atrocities committed not by the Viet Cong but by his fellow vets.
Kerry earnestly testified that other American soldiers said they had raped, cut off ears and heads, randomly shot at civilians and razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of the marauding mass murderer of Mongolia. They must have been remarkably discreet; Kerry never actually saw any of it.
Speaking with host Bob Schieffer about Iraq, Kerry said, "There is no reason ... that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the ... of ... the historical customs, religious customs."
Kerry has not come such a long way from 1971 after all.
Chief Petty Officer Greg Frazho at the Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad told me he had no idea what Kerry was talking about. "I don't know without more specificity to a specific operation or mission," Mr. Frazho said.
Even after sending the press center an e-mail with Kerry's comments, Frazho wrote back: "We've got nothing to release on this issue. We simply can't and won't get involved in political matters, sir. We're not going to comment any further than that."
So how did Kerry know that bands of brothers in Iraq were terrorizing kids, children and women in the dead of night?
David Wade, Kerry's communications director, responded promptly after we spoke.
Mr. Wade's e-mail message attempted to summarize the information in the four attachments. It also referenced an accusation by the virulent anti-American scold the International Committee of the Red Cross, which demands terrorists be treated as prisoners of war.
Three attachments were very old newspaper stories from The Sun of Baltimore (June 18, 2003), The New York Times (Aug. 7, 2003) and The Washington Post (Jan. 23, 2005). The fourth, a U.S. Institute of Peace report, stated that even creating a profile of the "insurgents" is "a daunting task."
The Sun story states "someone or something" struck a retired Iraqi high school teacher who walked into the street and died, and "Just who or what caused his death is a mystery." Then the story all but blames our soldiers.
The Times wrote that "The American military ... has decided to limit the scope of its raids in Iraq after receiving warnings from Iraqi leaders that the raids were alienating the public." That was just a few months after the invasion.
The Post article "is the story of how the U.S. military made an enemy of one man during a 20-minute encounter" -- a man who hates Jews and felt so violated when his stash of girlie magazines was discovered that he started to slap his own mother.
And Genghis Khan thought he knew how to terrorize kids and children, and, you know, women, in the dead of night.