The Race May Not Be Always to the Swift
Ubiquitous
veterans who supported John Kerry's presidential campaign and appeared
onstage at the 2004 Democratic National Convention before Kerry's
"reporting for duty" speech.
On the campaign trail, Sanders was one of Kerry's nastiest surrogates.
In August 2004, he likened the president to a "trapped animal." In
September, he compared Karl Rove and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth chief
John O'Neill to Josef Goebbels. He repeatedly referred to the president
and his men as "chicken hawks," an especially nasty term because it is
slang for a child molester as well as a derisive term for a nonveteran
who favors a strong defense.
Sanders, who also served as a deputy assistant Navy secretary during the
Clinton administration, continued his anti-Bush campaign even after
Kerry's defeat. In a December 2004 op-ed for the San Diego
Union-Tribune, he lectured the president on "the heavy responsibility of
command":
Let me, for a moment, address the commander in chief directly:
Sir, with all due respect, you would be well advised to acquaint
yourself with the level of responsibility and accountability
that accompany the title. If you really want to fill those
shoes, if you want to parade about in uniform, if you want
to use our men and women in uniform as your personal props,
then please honor moral and ethical standards that go with
the job.
In 2007, Kerry attempted to use his Senate position to settle a personal
score, scuttling the confirmation of businessman Sam Fox as ambassador
to Belgium because Fox donated money to the Swift Boat Veterans for
Truth. (President Bush gave Fox a recess appointment.) In a March 2007
Washington Times op-ed, Sanders railed righteously against Fox:
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but one of the lessons drilled
into me by the military and preserved through the memory
of friends who were lucky enough to come home from Vietnam
alive, is that truth matters above all else. And as a military
man, it doesn't matter much who is being attacked--John McCain,
Max Cleland, John Kerry, or Jack Murtha--I just don't believe
that assaults on the military records of veterans belong
in our politics. Nor do I believe that those who finance
smears of decorated Vietnam veterans deserve to represent
America on the world stage. . . .
Those of us who are real swift boaters know something about
judgment and responsibility for our decisions.
The following month, in a letter to the editor of the Boston Herald,
Sanders harrumphed:
Yes, I am a member of Kerry's ready reserve of Swift Boat
vets and unlike those who served with the Swift Boat Veterans
for Truth and their ilk, I serve with honor, integrity and
exercise sound judgment. Fox would do well to reacquaint
himself with those qualities.
Sanders is back in the news. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that he
"pleaded guilty yesterday to a federal charge of possessing child
pornography":
The investigation into Sanders began in October 2007,
according to a statement filed in the case by San Diego
FBI agent John Caruthers.
Another FBI agent working undercover signed on to a
file-sharing computer network and entered a search term
that is used for accessing child pornography images.
Among the responses to that search term was one for a
specific computer address that the agents eventually
traced to Sanders' home in South Park in San Diego. The
agent then obtained a list of files that were being shared
on the computer and downloaded 11 files, including at
least two that contained images of child pornography.
On May 2, 2008, agents executed a search warrant at Sanders'
home and seized his computer. During the search, Sanders
admitted he had downloaded child pornography using the
file-sharing program, but said he deleted the files once
he noticed they were downloaded, according to the FBI
statement.
Sanders acknowledged in court that he had "possessed computer files
containing 600 images of minors, including a 21-minute video that
depicted girls engaging in sex acts with an adult man." But don't
worry--his motives were "pure and innocent":
In a telephone interview last night, Sanders said he had
downloaded the files as part of his research for an
article on the sexual exploitation of children in foreign
countries. He said his work for the Clinton administration
had included aiding victims of child sex abuse in the
former Yugoslavia.
"I have no sexual attraction to children whatsoever," Sanders
said. "There was no evil intent."
Sanders, a lawyer, said he didn't realize federal child
pornography laws barred downloading or viewing the material
even by researchers. He said that is why he decided to
plead guilty.
"I thought since my motives were pure and innocent, that
would make a difference," he said. "I'm technically guilty
of the crime."
If this explanation sounds familiar, you probably are thinking of Bernie
Ward, the liberal San Francisco talk-show host who in August was
sentenced to seven years in federal prison after pleading guilty to
distribution of child pornography. As the San Jose Mercury News
reported, he claimed he was working on a book:
[Ward's] lawyer urged [Judge Vaughn] Walker to impose
the lowest possible sentence, saying Ward began downloading
the images as part of journalism research that went awry,
spiralling out of control when he began drinking heavily.
Doron Weinberg, Ward's attorney, told Walker the child
porn downloading "spanned a brief period in an exemplary
life.''
Don'tcha just hate when journalism research goes awry? To ensure that
things don't spiral out of control, we'll give Sanders the last word:
"Those of us who are real swift boaters know something about judgment
and responsibility for our decisions."
--
"You know, education--if you make the most of it, you study hard, you
do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do
well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
John "I support the troops!" Kerry
Ubiquitous
pornography, was sentenced Monday, and he got off relatively easy. The
San Diego Union-Tribune reports that Judge Thomas Whelan sentenced
Sanders to just 37 months in prison--barely a third of the 10-year
maximum, and more than two years less than the 63 months prosecutors had
asked for.
Sanders had argued that he deserved only probation, claiming that what
the paper calls "his compulsion to research the world of child
pornography" was "a symptom of his post-traumatic stress disorder that
stemmed from his combat service"--that is, he was depraved on account of
he was deployed.
The Union-Tribune describes Sanders as a "war hero," but he is best
known for his service to John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential
nominee. Kerry's central campaign claim was that he deserved to be
president because his so-called band of brothers, veterans who had
served alongside him on Navy Swift boats in Vietnam, vouched for his
heroism and his impeccable character.
Kerry did not know that one of his fiercest defenders was a future
child-porn criminal. Even so, his "band of brothers" argument flopped
because it turned out that the men who served alongside Kerry were far
from unanimous in their admiration and support for him. A group of his
detractors formed an organization called the Swift Boat Veterans for
Truth. They noted, among other things, that Kerry had begun his
political career by slandering fellow veterans as war criminals. They
also claimed that he had exaggerated his own heroism and acquired some
of his medals fraudulently, although these allegations were not proved.
Before his sentencing, Sanders filed a "personal statement" with the
court. It is a remarkable document:
Both the US. Attorney and the Probation Officer have been
unable to understand combat stress (PTSD) and how it
contributed to my current circumstance. That is a huge
challenge for anyone who hasn't been in sustained and
intense combat. However, my concern is that if the Federal
criminal justice fails to do so, the same disgraceful
abandonment of those who have returned from other wars
will continue and affect the thousands of afflicted men
and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Be not afraid, heroes of Afghanistan and Iraq. Wade Sanders has your
back. Then again, maybe you should ask for your back back, since Sanders
also had, as we noted in December, "computer files containing 600 images
of minors, including a 21-minute video that depicted girls engaging in
sex acts with an adult man."
After page after page of war stories and personal tales of woe, Sanders
links his use of child pornography to the Kerry campaign. It is worth
quoting at length this passage, which begins on page 9 of the statement,
page 10 of the PDF:
I continued to find escape by obsessively playing video
games. I had no successful relationships, only the games
and my work. Then came 2004, and the presidential campaign
of John Kerry.
As a supporter of Senator Kerry, I was identified by the
so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as a target. Like
Senator Kerry, I was investigated by a retired FBI agent
partly financed by T. Boone Pickens. Naturally nothing
negative was discovered, but it infuriated me. I had a
hard time believing that fellow combat veterans could put
be [sic] so politically motivated to attack fellow Swift
Boat veterans.
That experience caused a serious resurgence of the PTSD
symptoms and for the next few years, I lived with increased
levels of rage and personal pain. To attack a veterans [sic]
service record, especially his military decorations is to
go to the heart of his honor. To have this done by so-called
friends was even more painful.
From 2004 through most of 2007, I recovered from that
episode of PTSD, although I still had interior negative
feelings which I had to deal with on a daily basis. I
worked hard at getting all of them back into their little
box. Although I don't recall exactly, it was about this
time that I discovered the distraction and escape available
through obsessive surfing of the internet. The fateful
link was Limewire, a legal peer to peer file sharing program
which my nephew introduced for downloading music and comedy
videos. This gradually replaced my compulsive playing of
video games.
Limeware [sic] was the vehicle that first exposed me to
child pornography. I encountered it while accidentally
downloading what I thought was a comedy video. The sight
of the abused children angered me and triggered the memory
of a brief I received during a government visit to the
former Yugoslavia. I was briefed by the United Nations
Force Commander on a number of subjects, including the
exploitation of children in war zones and other devastated
areas.
I am an established and fairly well known writer and
commentator on contemporary social issues so I decided
to research the material to write either an extended
article or a book. How my PTSD played into this has been
explained to me through testing and therapy. The gist
of it is that my PTSD related obsessive-compulsive driven
need for information and distraction from my pain and
anger was triggered by the images I encountered. According
to the therapists I have an overprotective nature towards
children, especially young girls.
In any event, I was on another mission. Whenever I
discovered a video that appeared to originate from an
area of war, and many appeared to from [sic] the former
Soviet Union or the former Yugoslavia, I studied it and
searched for indications of location, signs of malnutrition,
physical abuse, and drug or alcohol involvement. I found
all of these things and I took notes. What I saw angered,
sickened, and saddened me and I saw it as extension of a
relatively recent trend: using children as soldiers.
Through therapy I have learned that my need to protect
children also fueled my research and my mission.
Since Limeware was a legal process and I was not aware
what I was doing was illegal, I began my research. It
was only after I began that the statute I violated came
into effect but I did not notice it. I continued my mission.
We phoned prosecutor Alessandra Serano and asked her about Sanders's
statement that "it was only after I began that the statute I violated
came into effect." She told us that Congress enacted the statute in
1978, although it was amended in 2006 to increase the penalties.
Possession of child pornography is also a crime in California and every
other state. When Sanders, self-described as "an established and fairly
well known writer and commentator on contemporary social issues," claims
he was unaware that what he was doing was illegal, this does not pass
the laugh test.
Sanders's chronology, in which his crimes resulted from mental sickness
triggered by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's criticism of Kerry,
elides a crucial fact: He downloaded his first known kid-porn image in
November 2003. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth did not exist until May
2004.
In addition, Sanders expects us to believe that he thought that first
image was actually a "comedy video," that his obsessive acquisition of
child pornography reflected his "overprotective nature towards
children," and that all of this was done in the interest of
"research"--a bizarrely frequent (and seldom successful) defense for
child pornography defendants.
According to the prosecutor's sentencing memorandum, however, during
Sanders's initial 20-minute interview with investigators, he "_never_
mentioned, or suggested in anyway [sic], that he possessed child
pornography for research purposes despite being asked why he might have
child pornography saved on his computer." (Note: The San Diego
Union-Tribune story atop this item has a link to the sentencing memo.
We've elected not to publish it here because it contains explicit and
revolting descriptions of the porn in question--crucial information for
the judge, but unnecessary for our journalistic purposes.)
Judge Whelan seems to have been unpersuaded by Sanders's defense--as
well as by a personal testimonial from John Kerry:
I've known Wade since we were young officers in the
Navy and never once--not in any fashion--have I ever
witnessed or had any intimation of any proclivity
towards the behavior of which he's accused. It is a
complete aberration in forty three years of public
service and public concern for veterans and veteran-related
issues. I've seen Wade in his relationships with friends
and his own significant others and am completely baffled
by the circumstances which lead [sic] to this difficult
day of sentencing. . . .
The Wade Sanders I know is someone who has always put
love of country first. He's been an advocate for his
friends, his fellow veterans, his state and his country.
I know you will measure the facts of this case against
Wade's lifetime of service, respect for the law, and
devotion to his community and fellow veterans.
In 2009, Kerry vouched for Sanders's character despite Sanders's
admission to obsessively collecting child pornography. In 2004, Sanders
vouched for Kerry's character despite . . .
Reader, we'll leave it to you to decide which of the myriad facts and
allegations about Kerry are sufficiently relevant and credible to
include in the preceding sentence. For our part, suffice it to say that
this grotesque bit of logrolling does not leave us thinking that Kerry
might have been fit to command after all.
Ubiquitous
haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat and known forceful advocate for
a child-porn criminal, who by the way served in Vietnam:
The Bay State senator was telling a group of business and
civic leaders in town at his invitation about the "bizarre"
tale of how South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford had "disappeared
for four days" and claimed to be hiking along the Appalachian
Trail, but no one was really certain of his whereabouts.
"Too bad," Kerry said, "if a governor had to go missing it
couldn't have been the governor of Alaska. You know, Sarah
Palin."
Of course, the Herald's report doesn't quite do justice to Kerry's mastery of
timing, but you can just imagine the scene: He dramatically pauses after "the
governor of Alaska," and audience members start scratching their heads.
_Alaska_, they think. _Who's the governor of Alaska?_ Then Kerry delivers the
payoff:
"You know, Sarah Palin."
If the ensuing laughs were less than cathartic, it only proves that liberals
are humorless.
But wait. The Anchorage Daily News reports that the governor _is_ missing:
"Palin is on her way to an undisclosed 'overseas' location to visit deployed
Alaska National Guard troops." Our guess is she's really going to Cambodia for
a Christmas party.
You know, like John Kerry.
SgtMinor
> The Boston Herald reports on the latest comic stylings of John Kerry, the
> haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat and known forceful advocate for
> a child-porn criminal, who by the way served in Vietnam:
>
> The Bay State senator was telling a group of business and
> civic leaders in town at his invitation about the "bizarre"
> tale of how South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford had "disappeared
> for four days" and claimed to be hiking along the Appalachian
> Trail, but no one was really certain of his whereabouts.
>
> "Too bad," Kerry said, "if a governor had to go missing it
> couldn't have been the governor of Alaska. You know, Sarah
> Palin."
>
> Of course, the Herald's report doesn't quite do justice to Kerry's mastery of
> timing, but you can just imagine the scene: He dramatically pauses after "the
> governor of Alaska," and audience members start scratching their heads.
> _Alaska_, they think. _Who's the governor of Alaska?_ Then Kerry delivers the
> payoff:
>
> "You know, Sarah Palin."
>
> If the ensuing laughs were less than cathartic, it only proves that liberals
> are humorless.
By that same "logic," Governor Sanford's dalliance "proves" that
conservatives are cheaters.
abe
"SgtMinor" <Sa...@the.old.folks.home.invalid> wrote in message
news:5Y2dnTKSJOvUcNnX...@giganews.com...
And Cheney proves that they are criminally corrupt.
And Bush W proves they are stupid.