This quote if from John Kerry's book The New Soldier (via Betsy's Page) which is out of print and Kerry will not allow to be republlished (I wonder why???)
Though Kerry would later retrieve the medals he pretended to throw at the White House, he emphasized in The New Soldier that the Vietnam veteran should not be honored. Purple hearts and bronze stars mean nothing to the new soldier, for he knows they are just a sham: "We will not quickly join those who march on Veterans' Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the ‘greater glory of the United States.' We will not accept the rhetoric. We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars…We will not take solace from the creation of monuments or the naming of parks after a select few of the thousands of dead Americans and Vietnamese. We will not uphold traditions which decorously memorialize that which was base and grim."
If, after reading this passage, you can with a straight face say that Kerry's four months in Vietnam have prepared him to lead the U.S. in the War on Terror (or any other war for that matter) then you are beyond hope.
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