The Truth Behind The Lies

Bob Newman

Sitting in the “green room” (where guests hang out before going on the air) of the FOX News Channel’s Denver bureau last week, I watched John Kerry make a speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Kerry, a one-time junior officer and four-month veteran (most Vietnam vets served 12-13 months “in country”) of Vietnam who applied for and got an early discharge from the Navy because he wanted to protest America’s attempt to prevent North Vietnam from sacking South Vietnam, did not disappoint.

Called a “loose cannon” by his former Navy boss, Rear Admiral Roy Hoffman, and with numerous officers who served with Kerry saying Kerry has lied and exaggerated about his brief tour of duty and saying Kerry is unfit for the presidency, Kerry used his speech in Philadelphia to tell another lie, this time about Iraq. Naturally, it was cheered by the leftist crowd.

The most extreme liberal (by Senate voting record) in the United States Senate said, with a straight face, that President Bush led us into Iraq with no foreign support. Of course, in reality (a mystical land where Kerry seldom treads for fear of his being exposed as a charlatan, albeit a billionaire charlatan), there are currently 32 nations other than the United States with forces in Iraq totaling 22,000 troops.

Kerry’s bald-faced lie before the hateful likes of NAACP chairman Julian Bond, who recently said conservatives are akin to the “Taliban” and want to see the “Confederate swastika” flying beside the American flag, again reveals a man who has a serious problem when it comes to telling the truth.

Kerry, who wants blacks to believe he is and always has been deeply committed to bettering race relations, even though some say his Boston blue-blood family had little if anything to do with blacks beyond the domestic servant level, said elsewhere in his pandering speech that he will work hard to bring American blacks and whites closer together. However, Jesse Jackson questioned that commitment in May when he said, referring to the Kerry campaign’s extreme shortage of African Americans, “We obviously need more diversity at every level of the Kerry campaign.” Shortly after this assessment from Jackson, and under great pressure from other prominent African Americans and the Democratic National Committee, Kerry began adding numerous African Americans to his campaign staff.

Finally, Kerry said in his NAACP speech that he was serving his country in Vietnam and implied he did so proudly. That’s odd, because up until his campaign for the presidency was launched, Kerry repeatedly said he was ashamed of his conduct in Vietnam and that he and his fellow sailors were war criminals. He was so upset with his actions that he later publicly supported the government of North Vietnam, which now has a section devoted to Kerry in a war museum in Ho Chi Minh City.

At a time in the life of our nation when we are at war with a fanatical enemy in at least 60 countries that has sworn itself to killing every American man, woman and child on the planet, we need a commander-in-chief who is steady, focused and forthright. Kerry’s record clearly demonstrates he possesses none of those requirements.

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Bob Newman, a retired, decorated US Marine, is co-host of "Redmond & Newman" on 630 KHOW in Denver, and is the military science and terrorism columnist for The Denver Daily News.

bobnewman@clearchannel.com