hahahah, MikeAI, leader my ass!

[sarettah]

Leadership eh ?? I will not attack Bush's leadership because that would be counter productive. So, instead I will highlight some stuff about Kerry, some of which you may be aware of, some of it probably not.

1. When Kerry came back from Nam he joined the Viet Nam Vets againast the war (notice the plural there, in other words, he was far from the only Vet to come home realizing that we were in the war for the wrong reasons) He also testified before Congress and spoke about atrocities and so forth. Fact is that there were attrocities being committed in Vietnam. They were right there on the front page of Life magazine. They were being reported by the press. For anyone to claim that there were no atrocities going on is to ignore the historical record completely. The US was fighting a dirty war, for the wrong reasons (reference the Pentagon Papers, remember those) and killing many innocent people. Did Kerry see or participate in the "atrocities" ? I have no idea because that kind of stuff does not end up in any official records if it can be helped. Was the statement that the US was committing atrocities true ? Absolutely.

2. By 1971, when Kerry returned, the majorty of Americans were against the war and wanted the US troops out. In the Nixon/McGovern race of 1972, the War was one of the main isssues early on. Nixon stole most of McGovern's steam from him when he stole the war issue from the democrats. http://www.NixonEra.com/media/video/vietnam.ram Nixon ran for reelection stating that he was getting us out and would get us out of Vietnam. So Kerry's viewpoint of the war was far from a minority position.

3. In 1986, it was a Kerry Staff report that help bring to light the entire Iran-Contra scandal. He continues his inquiry which also led to a 1989 Kerry report attacking the Reagan administration for their dealings in Central America and Latin America. In particular, the dealings with Noriega in Panama. Later in 1989, the Bush (the 1st) administration took out Noriega. Now, at the time, his reports were dismissed as "crackpot" and "conspiracy theory" but were 10 years later confirmed by CIA reports.

4. During the Nicaragua/Latin America investigation, Kerry exposed the now infamous BCCI. He and republican Hank Brown released the report "The BCCI Affair" that exposed the bank and their ties to known terrorist and blasted whole sections of the government for their tacit approval of BCCI'a actions On this he received criticism from members of his own party for going after not only republicans but also democrats that were involved.


So, I don't know about other folks, but I look at stuff like this and see someone who is not afrad to buck his own party, not afraid to buck the other party and not afraid to stand up for what he believes is right even when it is unpopular. Add to that his (undisputed by any of the ads or anything else) willingness to turn his boat INTO enemy fire when it was necessary and I see a leader.

anyone want references to this stuff, start from wikopedia and go from there.