Never Get Out of the Boat

Willard [voice over]:

"...'Never get out of the boat'.

Absolutely goddamn right...

...unless you're going all the way."

Remember this? It's seared in my memory... And, indeed, John F. Kerry seems to be following the script--he hasn't gotten out of the boat in decades and won't until he occupies the White House.

He's pinned a large part of his campaign on his heroic exploits as a SwiftPTgunpatrolboat Cap'n, trolling for Commie Gooks and drunken ARVN zipperheads on the snake-infested Meee-kong back in the Big One, Dubya-dubya Viet-frickin'-NAM, man!

Yet it seems that he's pulled a large part of his exploits and remembrances straight from the script of Apocalypse Now. And then elaborated on them a bit.

Ahh...but he was THERE, man! He ought to know better what went down in th' Nam better than some pansy-assed Hollywood type, right? That's what he told the Boston Herald back in '79 anyway:

"Coppola's vision of Vietnam is pure fantasy--a celluloid acid trip which fails to satisfactorily convey the real craziness or the madness of the war."
"On more than one occasion, I, like Martin Sheen in "Apocalypse Now," took my patrol boat into Cambodia. I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real. But nowhere in "Apocalypse Now" did I sense that kind of absurdity."

(YEAH, man, it was, like, even WORSE than Hollywood could portray it, y'know? And when the Maaaan came down on us and ordered us into the Heart of Darkness, there was all this, like, Jimi Hendrix n'stuff coming off loudspeakers over there...and all these dead, bloated bodies floating in the water (cf para. 4, right side of page) and hanging from trees and B-52s howling overhead (see para. 5).....it like, totally freaked me OUT, man!)

I, however, sensed a touch....just a touch.....of the absurd:
Nixon wasn't President when he and his Band of Brothers (2004 Dem Convention acceptance speech) supposedly went Kurtzing up to Kampuchea--The Maaaaaaaaaaaan at the time was a Democrat.

He wasn't in Cambodia on or about Christmas Eve '68, as his campaign has admitted: "On Christmas Eve he was near Cambodia; he was around fifty miles from the Cambodian border" (Doug Brinkley, author of Tour of Duty).

There are serious questions about the validity of his medal citations (but we can forgive him that--there's a long Democratic tradition of lying about combat citations--see, for instance, Robert McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, on LBJ's Silver Star). He didn't think much of the medals anyway--he threw them away the first chance he got.

Of course, when Kerry got back to The World and found that the political winds had changed, he accused his "Band of Brothers" of having

"raped, cut off ears, cut off heads...cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, [and] razed villages in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan..."

(Complete Testimony of Lt John Kerry to Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pg 5)

And he, like Jane Fonda, felt it necessary to hold private meetings in Paris his good friends, the North Vietnamese, who thanked him for his hard work on their behalf--all while he was still a serving officer in the US Naval Reserve.

The WaPo and the NYT, of course, are fronting free propaganda for the Kerry campaign, telling us how everyone who questions Kerry's memory concerning his LBJ-quick Silver Star and Christmas in Cambodia is a lying-dirty-oily-lying-filthy-treasonous-lying-two-toothed-redneck-lying-loblolly-pineywoods-primitive-Baptist-who-believes-in-God-f'rchiesake-lying-stinking sack of dung. Most of the usual suspects have lined up with Kerry, too (with the admirable exception of Slate). Here's Pat Oliphant, for instance. Yep, that's what the Cognoscenti think of us in Flyover Country.

But what did you expect? For something closer to the truth, as always, you need to go places like this . Seems to me that, back in the TIME, man, the Left used to complain about the media being controlled by, like, the Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. Hmmmm....

Concerning Kerry's memory, there's only one possible explanation. He spent too much time Over There....y'know...in the Heart of Darkness. It affects different men in different ways. In Kerry's case, it only took four months before his soul went mad, man:

Hopper [to Willard in tiger cage]:

"You know something, man? I know something you don't know. That's right, jack! The man is...clear in his mind, but his soul is mad. Oh, yeah. He's dying, I think. He hates all this [gesturing to bodies hanging from trees]. He hates it! But...the man's...uh..... He reads poetry out loud, alright? And a voice! A voice.... He likes you 'cause you're still alive. He's got plans for you. No, no...I'm not gonna help you...you're gonna help him, man. You're gonna help him. I mean, what are they gonna say, man, when he's gone, huh? 'Cause he dies when it dies, man! When it dies, he dies! What are they gonna say about him? What? They gonna say, 'he was a kind man?' 'He was a wise man?' 'He had plans?' 'He had wisdom?' BullSHIT, man! Am I gonna be the one that sets them straight? Look at me! WRONG! [Pointing at Willard]........YOU..."

(For Kurtz, think John Kerry; for Hopper the Photographer, think the Democratic Left; for Willard in the tiger cage, think the American voter)

...And JFK is going all the way...if the Swifties don't sink him first. To contribute to Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, go here

(/screed)

Monk