Refuting Sen. Kerry’s distortions
November 2, 2006| By Nathaniel Ward
On Tuesday, I reported that a recent Heritage Foundation paper directly refutes Sen. John Kerry’s assertion that those who do not succeed academically will end up “stuck in Iraq.” The media have certainly noticed Tim Kane’s study on military demographics, and have used it to point out the Massachusetts liberal’s distortions about the troops.
Here’s just a sampling of how the media are covering Kane’s paper:
- Columnist Michael Barone on USNews.com: “The Heritage report refutes utterly the statement made by John Kerry yesterday at a rally for California Democratic gubernatorial nominee Phil Angelides.”
- The Charlotte Observer: “The bottom line, according to Dr. Kane: The men and women now joining our armed forces are mostly white, middle class and better educated than their peers. For every two recruits coming from the nation’s poorest neighborhoods, there are three from the richest neighborhoods. It is by no means a poor, dumb fighting force.”
- The Oregonian: “The sad fact is that many people think there’s truth in Kerry's unintended or intended insult of our troops. The truth is the opposite, according to a recent Heritage Foundation study.”
- Air Force Times: “[Media] reports, the study says, indicate that there is a disproportionate representation of minorities and lower-income people serving in the military, while others ‘accuse’ the Army of accepting unqualified enlistees. Not so, says Tim Kane, an analyst at The Heritage Foundation.”
Other citations have appeared in The New York Sun, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Post, The Washington Times¸ The Boston Herald, the Harrisonburg, VA Daily News-Record, NewsMax.com and National Review, while columnists like Michelle Malkin have picked up the story as well.
Senator Kerry apologized for his remarks yesterday, adding that “I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform.”
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.
