Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Statement by the President of CBS News, Andrew Heyward:



"We established to our satisfaction that the memos were accurate or
we would not have put them on television. There was a great deal of coroborating
[sic] evidence from people in a position to know. Having said that, given all
the questions about them, we believe we should redouble our efforts to answer
those questions, so that's what we are doing."


Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Kerry's Meeting With Communists Broke U.S. Law

The 1970 meeting that John Kerry conducted with North Vietnamese communists violated U.S. law, according to an author and researcher who has studied the issue.
Kerry met with representatives from "both delegations" of the Vietnamese in Paris in 1970, according to Kerry's own testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971. But Kerry's meetings with the Vietnamese delegations were in direct violation of laws forbidding private citizens from negotiating with foreign powers, according to researcher and author Jerry Corsi, who began studying the anti-war movement in the early 1970s.


According to Corsi, Kerry violated U.S. code 18 U.S.C. 953.
"A U.S. citizen cannot go abroad and negotiate with a foreign
power,"
Corsi told CNSNews.com.

By Kerry's own admission, he met in 1970 with delegations from the North Vietnamese communist government and discussed how the Vietnam War should be stopped.

Kerry explained to Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman J. William Fulbright in a question-and-answer session on Capitol Hill a year after his Paris meetings that the war needed to be stopped "immediately and unilaterally." Then Kerry added:
"I have been to Paris. I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks,
that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional
Revolutionary Government."

However, both of the delegations to which Kerry referred were communist. Neither included the U.S. allied, South Vietnamese or any members of the U.S. delegation. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam was the government of the North Vietnamese communists, and the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PVR) was an arm of the North Vietnamese government that included the Vietcong.

Kerry did meet face-to-face with the PVR's negotiator Madam Nguyen Thi Binh, according to his presidential campaign spokesman Michael Meehan. Madam Binh's peace plan was being proposed by the North Vietnamese communists as a way to bring a quick end to the war.

But Corsi alleged that Kerry's meeting with Madam Binh and the government of North Vietnam was a direct violation of U.S. law.

"In [Kerry's] first meeting in 1970, meeting with Madam Binh, Kerry was still a naval reservist - not only a U.S. citizen, but a naval reservist - stepping outside the boundaries to meet with one of the principle figures of our enemy in Vietnam, Madam Binh, and the Viet Cong at the same time. [Former Nixon administration aide Henry] Kissinger was trying to negotiate with them formally," Corsi told CNSNews.com.

Corsi's recent essay, titled "Kerry and the Paris Peace Talks," published on wintersoldier.com, details Kerry's meetings and the possible violations of U.S. law.

Corsi also asserted that by 1971, Kerry might have violated another law by completely adopting the rhetoric and objectives of the North Vietnamese communists.

Definition of Treason

"Article three: Section three [of the U.S. Constitution], which defines treason, says you cannot give support to the enemy in time of war, and here you have Kerry giving a press conference in Washington on July 22, 1971 (a year after his meeting with the communist delegations in Paris) advocating the North Vietnamese peace plan and saying that is what President Nixon ought to accept," Corsi explained.

"If Madam Binh had been there herself at that press conference, she would have said exactly what Kerry said. The only difference is she would not have done it with a Boston accent," Corsi said.

The 7 Point Plan created by the North Vietnamese communists was nothing more than a "surrender" for the U.S., according to Corsi.

"You don't advocate that [7 point] plan unless you are on the communist side. It was seen as surrender. [The U.S.] would have had to pay reparations and agree that we essentially lost the war," Corsi said.

Communist Shill

"Kerry was openly advocating that the communist position was correct and that we
were wrong. He had become a spokesman for the communist party,"
Corsi added.

Kerry's presidential campaign did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment, but campaign spokesman Michael Meehan told the Boston Globe in March, "Kerry had no role whatsoever in the Paris peace talks or negotiations.

"He did not engage in any negotiations and did not attend any session of the talks," Meehan added.


'From Their Point of View'


Kerry "went to Paris on a private trip, where he had one brief meeting with Madam Binh and others. In an effort to find facts, he learned that status of the peace talks from their point of view and about any progress in resolving the conflict, particularly as it related to the fate of the POWs," Meehan added. Kerry was reportedly on his honeymoon with his first wife, Julia Thorne, when he met with the communist delegations.

But Corsi does not accept the Kerry campaign's explanation.

"Meehan made it sound like they were just there on a honeymoon and they got a meeting with Madam Bin, but not every American honeymooner got to meet with Madam Binh. Unless you had a political objective and they identified you as somebody as sympathetic, you were not going to get invited to a meeting with Madam Binh," Corsi said.

"Kerry has skirted with the issue of violating these laws," Corsi added. Sen.
Kerry's presidential campaign is "trying to fudge on the issue because they
don't want to come clean on it entirely."







Convention "Con Games"

It was a sign of the venom that was set to drip from the fangs of the liberal media in New York during the Republican convention last week. On the eve of the GOP gathering, Tom Brokaw ended his special Sunday night anchoring duties with a little commentary charging that the Republicans’ decision to feature "middle of the road" speakers, in contrast to the party’s "hard right" positions, was "the political equivalent of a popular con game in this tough town, three-card monte."



by L. Brent Bozell III
,



But the real convention "con game" was the media’s attempt to present themselves as "moderate" analysts when in fact they are hard-core liberals dedicated to the electoral overthrow of George W. Bush.


The networks made a mockery of fairness and balance, behaving like eager publicists in Boston only to pose as outraged debunkers in New York.


Reporters did not snicker when the Democrats trotted out a handful of generals and admirals, and the networks did not call it a ‘con game’ when the Democrats showcased John Kerry as tough on national security when he’s voted against an alphabet soup of crucial weapons systems and proposed cuts for our nation’s intelligence agencies, even after September 11 unfolded.


The same network journalists who never found a reason to discuss abortion or the foisting of "gay marriage" on America during the Democratic convention felt the pressing need to remind, remind, remind the viewers of the ridiculous sham before their eyes: "hard right" social conservatives were being hidden behind Rudy, Arnold, and John McCain. When Brokaw called it a con game, he was stating publicly what his colleagues insinuated all week long.


But Brokaw grew even stronger in denouncing Republican social stands. In his afternoon convention gig on MSNBC, Brokaw declared to Senator Susan Collins of Maine: "You have no place in this convention. The platform does not seem to speak to a lot of women in this country. It's anti-abortion, it does not expand stem-cell research, on other social issues in which women have some interest, for example, gay unions, is formally opposed to that."


In the liberal brain of Tom Brokaw, "women" as a group are uniformly pro-abortion, uniformly in favor of government-subsidized embryo-destroying stem cell research, and uniformly in favor of so-called gay marriage. Only a liberal views the ultraliberal social agenda just described as a set of "moderate" stands.


Why didn’t these cultural stands come up in Boston? Why didn’t these "reporters" point out that the Democrats didn’t offer a single big speaker who was pro-life? Where was their convention speaker who supported the Federal Marriage Amendment? Which party has "room" for disagreement, and which one does not?


Consider the reality of the Democratic party outside their convention halls. They are divided on abortion. Here’s the list of Senate Democrats who voted for a partial-birth abortion ban last year. Let’s start with Tom Daschle and Harry Reid, the two leaders of the Senate minority no less, and then add the names Evan Bayh, John Breaux, Robert Byrd, Tom Carper, Kent Conrad, Ernest Hollings, Tim Johnson, Mary Landrieu, Patrick Leahy, Blanche Lincoln, Zell Miller, Ben Nelson, and Mark Pryor – that’s 15 Democrats. On the recent vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment, three Democrats voted for it – Byrd, Miller, and Nelson. Is there "room" in the Democratic Party for these politicians? Brokaw never asked.


In Boston one afternoon, he did politely wonder to Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius if the Kerry-Edwards ticket should "pay more attention to the cultural issues" in Kansas, where "poor counties...care deeply about their faith and about guns and about the flag, and they are in opposition to same-sex marriages, which is a big issue in this state?" Good, but not enough. Brokaw did not tell her that the Democrats had "no room" for conservatives, even moderates, just as he had alleged in reverse about Republicans.


Now consider the reality of public opinion. On partial-birth abortion, Gallup reports that 68 percent of Americans oppose it, and only 25 percent favor abortion in every grotesque manifestation. In the crucial swing state of Missouri, 71 percent voted for an amendment to protect traditional marriage. But to the media, these issues are a unique political headache for...Republicans? Tom Brokaw didn’t find time to mention how Democrats have scrambled to prevent marriage-protection votes in states like Michigan, fearing the issue will kill Democratic chances at the polls.


There is only one question for the Brokaws at convention’s end. Does your network have any room for disagreement on the necessity of abortion on demand or the correctness of the gay agenda? From their fantasy-world projections on the social issues, it would seem the network newsrooms could use a little more viewpoint diversity before they’re truly prepared to cover party conventions with any semblance of fairness or accuracy.