John DiStaso of the Union Leader wonders why John Kerry changed his mind "on the importance of service in Vietnam as a qualification for being President of the United States".

That's real easy to answer Mr. DiStaso and it has nothing to do with "being relentlessly dogged by non-veteran Howard Dean". John Kerry's military experience and foreign policy matter now, because we are at War! I know New Hampshire is sort of backwards and backwoods, I lived in Newburyport, MA for 33 years, so I am very familiar with the slow, easy going ways of your neck of the woods. I simply can't imagine you folks up there missed that.

We need a strong leader like John Kerry with Military and Foriegn Policy experience to straighten out this mess that GW has created. That's why I am voting for John Kerry.

GRANITE STATUS
John Distaso, Union Leader

Eleven years is a long time, and during that time a man can change his mind about a lot of things.

Is that what has happened to John Kerry?

No one disputes Kerry’s bravery as a decorated Vietnam veteran. But it appears that between 1992 and 2003, he changed his mind on the importance of service in Vietnam as a qualification for being President of the United States.

In 1992, Kerry defended candidate for President Bill Clinton. Then, service in Vietnam didn’t matter, according to Kerry.

Now that Kerry’s running for President and is being relentlessly dogged by non-veteran Howard Dean, service does matter — it matters a lot.

In the final weeks of the ’92 New Hampshire primary campaign and for two weeks following it, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska contrasted his own record of U.S. Navy service in Vietnam to Clinton’s opposition to the war and alleged draft-dodging.

John Kerry, on the Senate floor on Feb. 27, 1992, lamented that Vietnam had been “inserted into the campaign.”

He told his fellow senators, “What saddens me most is that Democrats, above all those who shared the agonies of that generation, should now be re-fighting the many conflicts of Vietnam in order to win the current political conflict of a Presidential primary. . .We do not need to divide America over who served and how. . .”

He said that neither those who served in Vietnam nor those who did not had “cornered the market on virtue or rectitude or love of country.”

In October 1992, with Clinton and President George H.W. Bush in a general election campaign, Kerry, again on the Senate floor, blasted Bush for criticizing Clinton as a draft-dodger and anti-war protester.

“Mr. President,” Kerry said, “you and I know that if support or opposition to the war were to become a litmus test for leadership, America would never have leaders or recover from the divisions created by that war.”

Now, though, times and the world have changed. Kerry is running for President and we’ve had a terrorist attack and a war on terrorism and on Iraq. And Kerry has made his service in Vietnam the litmus test he once shunned.

There are many Kerry campaign trail quotes in which he invokes Vietnam.

The New York Times reported last Sunday that “more than ever, Mr. Kerry is invoking his stature as a Vietnam veteran as he challenges the stature of his Democratic opponents — none of whom, he frequently points out, have ‘worn the uniform of our country’ — to withstand a debate with Mr. Bush on national security.”

The Times reported, “When an Iowan asked if he had the fortitude to endure a nasty campaign, Mr. Kerry responded: ‘Listen, man, I fought in Vietnam and I know how to do mud. I’m ready for them.’”

Asked in May by the Washington Post how his Vietnam experience makes him more qualified than his rivals, Kerry is quoted as saying, “I ask better questions (on national security). I know what I’m looking for. I have a better sense of consequences.”

In April, Kerry bristled when questioned about his famous call for “regime change” in Washington. “When I fought in Vietnam and fought for my country,” he said, “I didn’t give up my right to make quips and participate in the debate.”

State Republican spokesman Julie Teer said she was “not surprised that we have an example of where his rhetoric is inconsistent with past positions he has held or past statements he has made. The people of New Hampshire have been exposed to John Kerry’s inconsistencies on issues such as tax relief, the environment and Iraq.”

Kerry spokesman Robert Gibbs said that, indeed, times have changed.

“I believe everyone understands that the world today is much different than a decade ago,” he said. “In 1992, the Cold War was over. Now, and certainly since Sept. 11 (2001), experience in dealing with national security is extremely important and there is simply no better way to understand the experiences of our soldiers than to have been one. Senator Kerry understands first-hand the experience of war and defending our country.

“Unlike anyone in the current administration,” Gibbs said, jabbing President George W. Bush, “John Kerry doesn’t need to spend time in the Situation Room to know what it’s like to be a soldier on the front lines. And he doesn’t need to borrow an air suit and land on an aircraft carrier to show his military credentials.”


DOESN’T NEED A WIN HERE? There was an interesting take by Kerry on the first-in-the-nation primary on WHDH-TV last Friday. According to the report by the Boston TV station’s political editor, Andy Hiller, Kerry said he can win the White House without winning the New Hampshire primary.

“Sure, absolutely I can,” Kerry tells Hiller.

How, senator?

“If the field is all split and I would have had 60 percent or 40 percent or 50 percent of a vote, but because there are so many candidates still there, you can go on elsewhere if you have a viable candidacy.” Say what?