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Troop redeployment ill-advised: Kerry

With repeated references to his own service in Vietnam, Senator John Kerry told fellow members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars here on Wednesday that President George W. Bush's plan to move 70,000 troops out of Europe and Asia is vague and ill-advised amid the North Korean nuclear threat.

"Nobody wants to bring troops home more than those of us who have fought in foreign wars," Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, told some 6,000 veterans gathered for the VFW's annual convention, where Bush announced the plan on Monday. "But it needs to be done at the right time and in a sensible way. This is not that time or that way."

As he outlined his differences with the incumbent on national security and veterans' domestic concerns alike, Kerry's personal pitch highlighted how his complicated history participating in and then protesting the Vietnam War both helps and haunts him with a critical constituency in a wartime election.

While some of the graying men whose hats are covered with pins commemorating their combat tours slapped "Veterans for Kerry" stickers on their shirts, others bitterly recalled the candidate's 1971 Senate testimony, in which he described atrocities by soldiers. About half the veterans in the front part of the auditorium kept their seats during ovations after Kerry's introduction and conclusion, a contrast to the warm reception Bush received in the same hall two days before.

A heckler shouted "Liar" several times, and some of Kerry's best lines received only polite applause.

"He won his Bronze Star when he was 23 years old, I won my Bronze Star when I was 19 -- I know what that takes, he's a hero," said Raymond Hackett, 54, an Air Force veteran from Old Lyme, Connecticut. "But he said for 35 years he stood with us -- he hasn't. There's a lack of sincerity here."

Hackett and several other veterans interviewed were particularly peeved at a section of the speech Kerry added at the last minute that described the Vietnam era as "a time when the war and the warriors became confused." Unlike a television interview four months ago in which he said his use of the word "atrocities" back then was "a little over the top," Kerry offered no hint of an apology on Wednesday.

But as some denounced his demonstrations against the war, others in the audience saluted his service during it, responding well to Kerry's repeated reminders that he had worn the same uniform as they did. Even Kerry's mixed reception as he criticized the Iraq war was notable because the VFW typically tilts Republican and tends to stand behind an incumbent commander in chief.

"Kerry went and served his country, that means so much to me," said a 70-year-old Korean War veteran, George Cox of Spencerville, Ohio, drawing a contrast with Vice President Dick Cheney's draft deferments.

"He's an American first. He served his country. These other people just talk about it," Cox said.

In his 35-minute speech here, Kerry made at least two-dozen references to his military service, promising that "as president, I will wage war with the lessons that I learned in war."

He mocked Bush's refrain, during his speech here, that the administration is "getting the job done" on veterans' issues like health care and housing.

"Just saying that the job is getting done doesn't make it so," Kerry said, promising to end the practice of deducting disability pay from military pensions.

"The job will be done when 500,000 veterans are not excluded from the VA health-care system. The job will be done when we're not closing VA hospitals. The job will be done when there are no homeless veterans on the streets of America," he said.

Kerry said he was worried that the withdrawal of 12,000 troops would destabilize the Korean peninsula "at the very time we are negotiating with North Korea -- a country that really has nuclear weapons."
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