Moron Kerry's Form 180--UpdatesThe AmSpec reports that
Kerry's staff is still blowing smoke:
Only one problem: according to several sources who formerly worked on the Kerry campaign, the senator expects that little to nothing new will be in the files that are released. "He's fairly confident that there is nothing in there that would be considered embarrassing or controversial," says a former adviser of Kerry.They report that the NY Sun covered the story from the standpoint of Kerry's application for admission to law school:
Mr. Kerry has said, "I applied to Harvard, Boston University, and Boston College. I was extremely late. Only BC would entertain a late application."
It is hard to see why Mr. Kerry had to file an "extremely late" application since he lost the congressional race in Lowell, Mass., the first week of November 1972 and was basically doing nothing until he entered law school the following September of 1973. A member of the Harvard Law School admissions committee recalled that the real reason Mr. Kerry was not admitted was because the committee was concerned that because Mr. Kerry had received a less than honorable discharge they were not sure he could be admitted to any state bar.That's pretty interesting. I don't remember the Sun piece and I certainly followed the Kerry stories very closely. We'll see if Kerry has submitted the signed Form 180; the Globe story was published over two weeks ago.
Update: Via
Polipundit we learn that the
Globe now has Kerry's records.
The lack of any substantive new material about Kerry's military career in the documents raises the question of why Kerry refused for so long to waive privacy restrictions. An earlier release of the full record might have helped his campaign because it contains a number of reports lauding his service. Indeed, one of the first actions of the group that came to be known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was to call on Kerry to sign a privacy waiver and release all of his military and medical records.
But Kerry refused, even though it turned out that the records included commendations from some of the same veterans who were criticizing him.Questions for Discussion:
1. Will the Globe now release the documents to the public?
2. Why was Kerry separated from the Navy in 1978 and not 1972?
3. If Kerry had been dishonorably discharged and subsequently got that changed, would his file have been scrubbed to remove any mention of the prior discharge?
USS Neverdock notes a
critical portion of the discussion between Kerry and Tim Russert where Kerry made his promise to sign the Form 180:
"I'm going to sit down with them and make sure that they are clear and I am clear as to what is in the record and what isn't in the record and we'll put it out," he told "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert.Sure sounds like some scrubbing was planned.
This story isn't over yet, as
Mark in Mexico points out:
There is something there. There has to be. It has either been cleverly hidden or erased or expunged or redacted or camouflaged or modified beyond recognition, but it's there.Michelle Malkin
has more here. Also be sure to
check Captain Ed, who notes some additional mysteries that have not been cleared up by the Globe column.
Columnist Jack Kelly says there are
four possibilities. Number two will definitely get a horselaugh.
Tom Maguire
notes that the explanation that no after action report could be found for Kerry's first Purple Heart incident does not jibe with what the Navy said last year.
In the Right Place
rounds things up and points us to this post at
Blogs for Bush where John O'Neill notes the problems:
We called for Kerry to execute a form which would permit anyone to examine his full and unexpulgated military records at the Navy Department and the National Personnel Records Center. Instead he executed a form permitting his hometown paper to obtain the records currently at the Navy Department. The Navy Department previously indicated its records did not include various materials.Meanwhile,
Ankle-Biting Pundits has a report on Kerry's grades at Yale:
We may have a new nickname for John "Crushed" Kerry. From here on in he'll be called "Pinto" a/k/a Larry Kroger from the movie Animal House. Especially if you recall the scene where Dean Wormer has all the Deltas in his office telling them their grades. He says to Pinto "Mr. Kroger, 2 Cs, 2 Ds and an F. That’s a 1.2 grade point average. Congratulations son, you’re at the top of Delta’s pledge class."Howell Raines (remember him?)
will be disappointed to learn this:
One highly imperfect but salient way to do so is at the level of campaign tactics. Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than Bush? I'm sure the candidates' SATs and college transcripts would put Kerry far ahead. Yet, at this point in the campaign, Bush deserves an A or a high B -- instead of a gentleman's C -- when it comes to neutralizing Kerry's knowledge advantage.As I pointed out at the time:
It never fails. The Republican candidate is a dope, while the Democrat is a genius of staggering intellect. As it was with Eisenhower-Stevenson, Ford-Carter, Reagan-Carter, Reagan-Mondale, Bush-Dukakis, Dole-Clinton, and Bush-Gore, we again hear the refrain about Bush-Kerry being a matchup of intellectual unequals.
