Bob Kerrey in '08

[Hippo_Tron]

From what I've seen of the guy he's incredibly charismatic and fairly progressive considering his native state of Nebraska. I'm not so keen on his positions on the Iraq War, but I feel the same way about most potential '08 candidates.

Discuss...

[babylonsister]

1. Not even. If you don't like his positions on the Iraq war, what

do you like?

[babylonsister]

9. Was Kerrey involved in the 9/11 investigation also? The one that

withheld so much?

[karynnj]

19. Yes, he was

He, with Clark, was one of the few good surrogates for Kerry

[Rowdyboy]

2. He seems to be trying to occupy the Joe Biden/Joe Lieberman

"anything to criticize my party" wing of Democrats. I have lost a great deal of respect for him since he left the senate.

[Hippo_Tron]

3. That's the problem, he's veered ot the right ever since leaving the Senate

My only guess is that he was hoping to get a job in the Bush administration. I guess I'm talking about him more when he was still a Senator.

[Rowdyboy]

6. I really respected Kerrey in 1992....I was torn between him and Clinton

but Kerrey took some cheap shots at Clinton and I decided to back the "Big Dog". It was a good decision!

[JI7]

5. i think he has always been that way

remember he was pretty critical of Clinton ? that's just the way he is. he is still able to talk about how the Republicans are hypocrites for impeaching Clinton for sex yet let Bush get away with far more serious things.

you can't easily put him in some group either. he is from Nebraska and very much pro gay rights and pro abortion rights and on other social issues similar.

but on economic and foreign policy issues he can go either way.

he is more similar to Biden than Lieberman. with Lieberman you know he is a hawk and consistent with it. while Biden goes back and forth and contradicts himself at times. like Biden he probably likes to hear himself speak. a lot of politicians do, but it's one thing if it's backed up with what they truly believe in and another if they are just doing it to entertain themselves.

[Rowdyboy]

7. I agree that Kerrey had a very liberal approach to social issues and

I respect him for his open-mindedness. I agree that he's far more like Biden than Lieberman, and he isn't nearly as egotistical as Biden (but then, who is?).

I'd vote for Bob Kerrey on a Democratic ticket, but he wouldn't be my candidate of choice. Once he would have been, and I could be persuaded again, but not until he shows me something beyond his current stump speech.

[karynnj]

20. Clinton hit Kerrey pretty hard in the primary too

[meg]

15. I didn't like him when he WAS in the senate (eom)

[LiberalPartisan]

17. There is a lot to criticize

Lieberman and Biden have some valid criticisms.

I keep hoping Dean will show up and start leading. Perhaps this is the year the DNC will begin to promulgate real and viable solutions. 'We're not them!' only goes so far.

[PassingFair]

4. Holy Crap! If you think Kerry was "swiftboated"

wait until they take their shot at "throat-slitter" BOB Kerrey.

Google Kerrey and war crime.

Enjoy!

He is unacceptable.

[lenidog]

8. You beat me to it

I was just thinking the same thing. You are right if you thought the "Swift Boat" deal was a fiasco then Kerrey's deal would end up looking like armageddon.

[BlueIris]

13. WOAH.

I never knew that about him before. AAAAAUUUUHHHH. Horrible.

[_dynamicdems]

10. He was my choice in 1992.

But they would make mincemeat of him if he ran in 2008.

[IndianaGreen]

11. War criminal. Kerrey lied about it at first, then had to admit it.

Troops under his command were involved in a massacre of men, women, and children.

August 2001
The Uncovering and Reburial of a War Crime
Exposé of Kerrey's massacre provokes media backlash
By John L. Hess

The last weekend of April marked a high point in American journalism, when the New York Times Magazine and 60 Minutes II exposed a dreadful war crime. It also marked a low point in American journalism, when the media denied the crime, minimized it, defended it and reburied it.

The story had first been exhumed by Newsweek's Gregory L. Vistica in 1998. He established that in the Mekong Delta one night in 1969, in the village of Thanh Phong, a squad of Navy SEALs led by Bob Kerrey knifed to death an elderly couple and three children, then gunned down a cluster of women and children. Kerrey was cited for killing 21 Vietcong, and awarded a Bronze Star. Confronted by Vistica nearly 30 years later, he acknowledged that the citation was false and said he'd agonized over the killings ever since. A few days later, he withdrew as a candidate for the presidency. On that ground, Newsweek spiked the story as no longer of interest.

Three years later, Vistica finally placed the story with the Times and CBS. Set to appear in the Sunday Magazine on April 29 and on 60 Minutes II on May 1, it was leaked to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post with Kerrey's cooperation. It set off a media storm. Most of the commentary accepted one or another version of Kerrey's often contradictory testimony, and treated him as the agonized victim of what Jonathan Alter of Newsweek (5/7/01) described as "gotcha" journalism. Kerrey told the Associated Press (4/28/01): "The Vietnam government likes to routinely say how terrible Americans were. The Times and CBS are now collaborating in that effort."

Mark Shields on PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer (4/27/01) described the Times' cautious suggestion that the incident deserved a public inquiry as "an act of moral arrogance rarely seen." Brit Hume on Fox News Channel expressed similar outrage (4/29/01). His sometimes liberal panelist Juan Williams concurred: "I mean, this is unbelievable. We have these elite New York press type people…." (Williams is a Washington press type.) Mara Liasson of NPR chimed in: "You didn't see people from the major newspapers or television networks asking those questions." She was mistaken; an ABC reporter put the ironic question to Kerrey at a news conference, "What did you do that was wrong?"

http://www.fair.org/extra/0108/kerrey.html

Fragging Bob:
Bob Kerrey, CIA War Crimes,
And The Need For A War Crimes Trial

by Douglas Valentine

By now everybody knows that former Senator Bob Kerrey led a seven-member team of Navy Seals into Thanh Phong village in February 1969, and murdered in cold blood more than a dozen women and children.

What hardly anyone knows, and what no one in the press is talking about (although many of them know), is that Kerrey was on a CIA mission, and its specific purpose was to kill those women and children. It was illegal, premeditated mass murder and it was a war crime.

And it's time to hold the CIA responsible. It's time for a war crimes tribunal to examine the CIA's illegal activities during and since the Vietnam War.

War Crimes As Policy

War crimes were a central was part of a CIA strategy for fighting the Vietnam War. The strategy was known as Contre Coup, and it was the manifestation of a belief that the war was essentially political, not military, in nature. The CIA theorized that it was being fought by opposing ideological factions, each one amounting to about five percent of the total population, while the remaining ninety percent was uncommitted and wanted the war to go away.

http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine.html

[karynnj]

26. For those who question John Kerry's brave testimony,

They should consider that one of the people who gave Bob Kerrey orders was Admiral Hoffman. Hoffman was the one who brought out all the SBV against Kerry.

In Tour of Duty another LT spoke of how he and Kerry avoided a similar situation. While patrolling, they saw someone run into an earthen mound on a piece of land in the free fire zone. Kerry who was in charge, left his boat to check it out, rather than ordering fire on the mound. He found 40+ women, children and elderly people. After checking there were no weapons, he radioed the larger boat that controlled the area that he had 40+ civilains who needed medical care and out of the area. The response asked how many enemy killed. He repeated what he said twice and got the same answer. He cut off communication. The 2 officers loaded the people on the boats and took them in anyway. They were treated, fed and re-located. Per the other guy, Kerry was given hell for doing it.

Kerry's testimony was that men were doing these things beacause that was what they were being asked to do. He also spoke of the toll on the men who did these things.

[Leilani]

12. As a person, I love Bob Kerrey

He's honest, outspoken, cynical,& funny.

He's also the winner of the Medal Of Honor, losing a leg in Vietnam & was a Navy Seal.

For those very same reasons, he will never be President.

Dems consider him a "war criminal" & his honesty caused him to call Clinton "an exceptionally good liar."

He reminds me of John McCain, who drives everybody nuts. Interestingly enough, it was McCain's father, CINCPAC, who awarded Kerrey that medal.

[IndianaGreen]

16. Commanding troops that liquidated a Vietnamese village is enough reason

to make Kerrey unsuitable for anything other than as a defendant in a war crimes trial.

Kerrey may have lost a leg in Vietnam, but the innocent men, women, and children that troops under his command slaughtered lost a lot more.

[Neil Lisst]

14. He doesn't have a leg to stand on ...

I've always liked Bob, but he has no constituency, and there are some nasty stories on what he and his crew did in Nam.

[IndianaGreen]

18. Robert Kerrey and the bloody legacy of Vietnam (Thanh Phong massacre)

Everyone has heard of the My Lai massacre, but there was also a massacre at the hamlet of Thanh Phong by US Navy SEALS under the command of Bob Kerrey.

Robert Kerrey and the bloody legacy of Vietnam
By Patrick Martin and David North
4 May 2001

Former US Senator Robert Kerrey, newly inaugurated as the president of the New School University, one of the most prestigious positions in American academia, has admitted participating in a death squad attack on a Vietnamese village 32 years ago, in which he and six soldiers under his command killed 21 women, children and elderly men.

Kerrey held a press conference April 26 in New York City, after the text of an upcoming article in the New York Times magazine was made public and widely distributed over the Internet. The article, written by Gregory Vistica, became the cover story of the April 29 issue of the magazine. The issue was explored as well in the Sixty Minutes II program broadcast on CBS television the night of May 1. CBS and the Times jointly backed the investigation, which Vistica initially began for Newsweek magazine in 1998.

There is little dispute about the main lines of the events of February 25, 1969 in the tiny Mekong Delta hamlet of Thanh Phong. Kerrey's seven-man unit of Navy SEALS entered Thanh Phong for the purpose of murdering the mayor of the village, who was targeted by the US command because he was believed to be an active supporter of the National Liberation Front (“Viet Cong”). The village was in the heart of an NLF-controlled region where neither US forces nor those of the Saigon puppet government normally ventured except in daylight and in overwhelming force.

In the course of the nighttime assault, the American raiders killed every Vietnamese they encountered—men, women, children. They used every weapon in their arsenal, from knives to rifles and grenades to light anti-tank weapons, expending more than 1,200 rounds of ammunition on a village where only a few dozen people lived.

The after-action report filed by Kerrey and rubber-stamped by his superiors listed the results of the raid as “21 VC KIA” (21 Viet Cong killed in action). There was no mention of women and children killed, although Kerrey and all other members of the unit saw the bodies of at least 14, including several babies. The 21 bodies were added to the official US count which supposedly demonstrated the progress being made in the war. Kerrey subsequently received a Bronze Star for his conduct in Thanh Phong—a month before a second raid in which he was severely wounded, losing part of his leg, and eventually receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/may2001/kerr-m04.shtml

[ScreamingMeemie]

24. Excellent post....It would be party suicide.

It kind of makes me sick on most days that he's even a Democratic senator.

[win_in_06]

21. He already tried and failed to get the nomination. He is less known now.

[Kahuna]

22. That's just crazy. He's almost a republican as far as I'm concerned..

He also supports the IWR. No thanks.

[EndElectoral]

23. I'd like to see someone like Bill Moyers run in 08...vote for him is a sec

[radio4progressives]

25. I don't like him - I watched him during in Committee and I don't like him.

He pushed the war propaganda to the extreme.

misinformation, disinformation and plain bullshit.

sorry.