"Everybody likes quiet heroes"

"I haven't spent one dime attacking President Bush," protested a defensive John Kerry yesterday, in a word parsing worthy of Bill Clinton's "I am not having sexual relations with that woman." Kerry had dialed up World War II disabled veteran Bob Dole to complain about the retired senator's "demand a day earlier that he apologize to Vietnam veterans for protesting the war," reports News Max. Dole revealed details of the phone conversation on Sean Hannity's radio show yesterday afternoon:

But the Republican war hero shot back, "You don't have to. You've got all the so-called mainstream media, plus you've got MoveOn.org and all these other groups that have spent millions and millions of dollars trying to tarnish Bush's image."

"Don't tell me you don't know what some of these people are doing," he told Kerry.

"Everybody likes quiet heroes," Dole added, saying he told Kerry, "John, everybody knows you were in Vietnam, and the less you say about it, the better."

Dole told Kerry, "I'm not trying to stir anything up, but I don't believe every one of these people who have talked about what happened are Republican liars.

"And very frankly, Bush is my guy, and I'm tired of people on your side calling him everything from a coward to a traitor to everything -- a deserter."

Dole said he urged Kerry, "Why don't you call George Bush today and say, 'Mr. President, let's stop all this stuff about the National Guard and Vietnam -- and let's talk about the issues."

We love Bob Dole when he's feisty -- our imail correspondent thinks he may have OD'd on his Viagra. His usual kissy-kissy with Democrats rubs us the wrong way, though -- makes us feel like an outsider peering through the gates of the Old Boys' Club -- and we think he's dead wrong about "the issues." Character IS the issue. Roger L. Simon, who cites the Dole/Kerry phone conversation as "Another indication to me why this election is about character," has further insight:

I just watched Paul Galanti* on Hannity & Colmes. Galanti is the ex-POW (six years in a North Vietnamese prison) who worked on the McCain Campaign and now finds Kerry dishonest and "unfit to command." What interested me about Galanti, who seemed entirely credible whether you agree with him or not, is that he recognized the Senator from hearing the young Kerry's testimony in Congress broadcast inside Galanti's Vietnamese prison. Kerry was the only person Galanti ever heard pronounce Ghengis Khan with the pretentious locution Djenn-jus Khan. I haven't heard this elsewhere either. It made me think of the old marxist term "Class Privilege." That's what Kerry carries with him. It may be why he was able to forget about all the POWs and swallow the Winter Soldiers' rhetoric whole while testifying.

We caught that Hannity & Colmes segment, too -- in the wee-hours reruns just an hour or two ago -- and were equally struck with Galanti's credibility -- and re-reminded of Kerry's ghoulish, off-putting Brahmanesque speaking persona. Like something out of an old Vincent Price horror flic, it's even creepier than the presidential wannabe's waffling pronouncements of today to hear, seance-like, a youthful Kerry's voice-from-the-dead recorded testimony coming back to haunt us in the latest Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad, available here.

[via Donald Sensing at One Hand Clapping]

*Paul Galanti [script of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad]: “John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I, and many of my, uh, comrades in North Vietnam, in the prison camps, uh, took torture to avoid saying. It demoralized us . . . He dishonored his country, and, uh, more, more importantly the people he served with. He just sold them out.”

Comments

[goomp]

Thanks for clarifying the picture of the Swift Boat cotroversy.