Yesterday, I said Kerry probably didn’t intend to insult the troops because he didn’t intend anything. But today there’s new evidence that, even if he didn’t mean to say it, Kerry probably thinks what he said. In other words, in the great tradition of "fake but accurate," Kerry’s "botched joke" may have been "misspoken but honest." John Solomon of the Associated Press (can you believe it?) reported that Kerry’s comments in a candidate questionnaire from his 1972 congressional campaign "mirror" the statement that he now claims was an inadvertent gaffe (emphasis added):
After Kerry caused a firestorm this week with what he termed a botched campaign joke that Republicans said insulted current soldiers, The Associated Press was alerted to the historical comments by a former law enforcement official who monitored 1970s anti-war activities
Kerry apologized Wednesday for the 2006 campaign trail gaffe that some took as suggesting U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq were undereducated. He contended the remark was aimed at Bush, not the soldiers.
In 1972, as he ran for the House, he was less apologetic in his comments about the merits of a volunteer army. He declared in the questionnaire that he opposed the draft but considered a volunteer army "a greater anathema."
"I am convinced a volunteer army would be an army of the poor and the black and the brown," Kerry wrote. "We must not repeat the travesty of the inequities present during Vietnam. I also fear having a professional army that views the perpetuation of war crimes as simply ‘doing its job.’
Couple that with his organizing of the 1971 "Winter Soldier" hearings (full of liars and frauds, many of whom were never in Vietnam, and some of whom subsequently testified that Kerry pressured them into saying they committed war crimes) and his subsequent Senate committee testimony. Then add his accusations against U.S. troops in Iraq, such as this statement on ABC’s Face the Nation less than a year ago:
"And there is no reason, Bob, 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 said Sunday.
The record strongly suggests that John Effin’ Kerry has for more than three decades consistently viewed the men and women of the U.S. armed forces with disdain, suspicion, and contempt. He may or may not have intended to speak the words he spoke this week, but they express what’s in his heart — misspoken but honest.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention: Kerry’s view was and is dead wrong — it’s not poor, uneducated, black and brown people with no alternatives who are fighting this war. According to a study I reported on last December, enlistees in the military are wealthier, better educated, and more rural than the average 18- to 24-year-old, and their ethnic makeup is just about representative of the general population.
