From an
Atlantic Monthly article.
Most famously, he said: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
These were questions that fanned out across the republic like ripples in a tidal pool, stunning the folks on Main Street and chilling the senators to whom they were posed. And Main Street was stunned anew the next day, when roughly eight hundred vets many openly weeping others bellowing in rage flung their combat medals, grenadelike, over a six-foot-high fence at the foot of the Capital steps. For Kerry, who was already laying the groundwork for a political career, the decision whether to scatter his medals on the Capital steps was an agonizing one; in the end, he tossed his ribbons over the fence, along with some medals entrusted to him by two other vets who couldn't be there but kept his medals. Since 1984, when The Wall Street Journal first reported his ribbons-not-medals hedge, critics have painted Kerry's compromise as evidence of an opportunistic streak scheming, calculated, and wishy-washy during a time that was none of those things. Kerry has been bristling at the charge for eighteen years now. "I mean, I led that march, I stood up at the g**d*** thing, and I took my ribbons off my chest and I threw them over the fence," he said in 1996. "I was the last person there, the leader of the event."
There is NO question John Kerry is a patriot.
Does he love his country? YES.
Did he volunteer for the most dangerous duty in the Navy? YES.
Was he deep in the ****? YES.
Did he kill VC face to face? YES.
Did he risk his own life to save fellow American servicemen? YES.
Did he disagree with the War in Vietnam? YES.
Did he anguish over seeing his friends killed in a war we had no business being in? YES.
Did he do everything within his LEGAL RIGHTS to protest that war after discharge? YES.
Did the majority of the nation agree with his opinion of the War? YES.
Does John McCain (R) agree with Kerry on Vietman? YES.
Did he kill women and children as accussed by The Nixon Administration? NO.
Did he burn a flag? NO.
Did he pose with Jane Fonda? NO.
Did he spit on soldiers? NO.
Did he pull any strings to avoid going to Vietnam? NO.
