Marines have a name they use for despicable people: pukes. Pukes came in a variety of flavors. Some are wimps. Some are liars. Some aren't stand-up guys. Some are dishonorable or self serving. Some are phony-baloney mouth warriors. Most are cowards. Pukes can't be trusted. You know the type. You can probably add a few flavors to the puke list yourself. You can often find some of these pukes manipulating others to do dangerous or illegal things while they themselves run and hide and keep their hands clean. You've probably known pukes since your days on your school playground. Pukes were the kids who always egged on other kids to do things that were against the rules, but who always avoided any consequences if anyone was caught. They were also the kids who would tell others to fight, but they'd never get in a fight themselves and would try to be on both sides at the same time. When these pukes grow up, they sometimes worm themselves into important positions of authority over others. Pukes, of the phony-baloney mouth warrior variety, are a particularly disgusting stain on our society right now.

These days, I'm hearing a lot of these pukes on so-called conservative talk radio and seeing them on one cable TV network in particular, and I'm seeing a lot of their pukewords in the so-called conservative press. Most of these pukes are attacking John Kerry over his service in Vietnam. These phony pukes would make me puke except they're not worth a used barf bag.

Some of these pukes are apparently upset that Kerry, after serving honorably in Vietnam, got sick of what he had seen and came back to tell people that the war was wrong and that Americans were committing atrocities. Many of us who served in the military know that Kerry was right. We've seen enough similar things with our own eyes to know the general truth without ever having to see his specific truths. Vietnam was a war pushed by political pukes back in D.C. And, it wasn't the D.C. pukes or their kids who died for no reason.

Kerry came to realize the truth and had the courage to speak the truth. That got some of the pukes who did serve upset. My guess is that some of these pukes are living in phony gingerbread lies about what brave Rambos they were in Vietnam and their psyches can't stand the truth about Vietnam because it undercuts their false images of themselves. I don't know the specific details of what Kerry and many others were involved in, other than what I've read or heard, but my common sense and my own experiences tell me that Kerry, who volunteered for the military when many pukes were ducking service, was brave in war and he was even braver in pointing out the lies of war. Kerry went and did while many pukes went and hid.

How many of the big mouth so-called conservative talk show pukes were ever in the military? Hmmmm? Yet, these pasty faced phony bags of wind in their expensive suits are the loudest in attacking Kerry. When they attack Kerry, they attack every one of us who has ever been in the military and especially those who understand how cynical politicians often bring on wars for phony reasons, and that these politicians send young people to kill and be killed while the politicians and their relatives live high on the hog and pose for photos and mumble the expected clichés about supporting our troops. These talk show pukes are also insulting the intelligence of real conservatives and real rightists ith their transparent lies and Bush propaganda.

One thing that some of the pukes and their pals, the neocon elites (a subspecies of pukes), are trying to use to hurt Kerry is the fact that Kerry often speaks with nuances and in speculative terms. Kerry's problem is that he sometimes wears his lawyer's hat and speaks with his lawyer's mouth. His attempt to be precise with words while arguing both sides of an issue is right out of the book on how to answer Bar Exams. This often confuses lesser lights who don't think in such terms. Thus, Kerry, or others who think in terms of nuances, might first say something like: "If the evidence convinced me that Iraq was a danger to the U.S. I, too, would have invaded that nation." The important word and the qualifier in that sentence is "if." Then, Kerry or those who think this way, might later say something like: "I wouldn't have attacked Iraq as George Bush did." The important words and qualifiers in this last sentence are "as George Bush did." Hearing both statements, the neocon elites around Bush, who know how easily suggestible the Stepford people are, then claim that statements like this are flip-flops, when in fact they're not.

I read a couple of pukey articles the other day by a couple of pukes who claim that Kerry is some sort of coward because he gunned his swift boat when there was an explosion or gunfire. Neither of the two pukes who wrote the two articles ever served in the military. They've probably never even been in a fist fight or even a girly hair pulling fight. Their innate pukiness drips off the page.

Let me tell those pukes and other pukes how it works. When you're in a vessel or a vehicle in a dangerous place and you hear gunfire or an explosion, the first thing you should do is get away from the immediate area of the gunfire or the explosion so you can assess the situation. This is also taught to most cops. If you're a cop and you're driving down the street and a bullet hits your police car, you don't just stop and let the shooter get another shot at you. That's not bravery, pukes. Instead, you duck low and gun your car to get out of gunshot range so you can assess the situation and figure out where the bullet came from and how to best get the shooter. It's the same way in combat. Had I been a swift boat captain, and had I heard gunfire coming my way or if there had been an explosion, I would have done the same thing that Kerry is reported to have done. I would have gunned the hell out of my boat to get out of the hot situation so I could intelligently consider what was really going on. It's said that one of the swift boats with Kerry "just" hit a mine and that's when Kerry gunned his boat. Okay. That sounds nice and neat many years later. But, when it happened, none of the others probably knew what had happened. They just heard an explosion. Was it a mine? Was it a mortar from the shore? Was it a tank from the shore? Was it a rocket? Was it an RPG? Was it a bomb from a plane? Was it something on the boat itself that had exploded? Was it a signal from an enemy on the shore to open fire with machine guns? The point is, at such a moment, you don't know what's going on and you need to get the hell out of there to make an assessment. That's what I figure Kerry did. He then made his assessment and quickly returned to pick up a guy in the water. He showed coolness and presence of mind for doing what he did.

Combat usually isn't like some movies with nice neat lines of good guys and bad guys. It's usually mass chaos and pandemonium. Everyone is yelling and shooting all at the same time and often in all directions. You often hear gunfire and explosions and you don't always know where the hell anything is coming from, or whether it's your own guys firing or the other side.

Some of these guys who are badmouthing Kerry reek of the stench of young Republican dirty tricksterism. As already mentioned, most are probably pissed off because Kerry told the truth about the Vietnam war which was a phony waste of life. Do you doubt such an assessment of Vietnam? If so, tell me what we gained. We gained nothing except the loss of precious human life. It wasn't a noble or a just or a good cause. The communists are now in charge of all of Vietnam and they are now our new best friends. What about all those Americans who died there? Their lives were wasted. We could have just let the Communists reunify the country as they wanted, and as they now have, and we would have saved a lot of blood and grief.

And, what about the rap coming from some radio pukes that Kerry was lying about being in Cambodia on this or that day because we weren't in Cambodia? "Why, gosh, June Clever, we're Americans and we wouldn't have done anything illegal such as sneaking into Cambodia."

Sorry, folks. We lie about these things all the time. Again, I don't know the specifics about Kerry and Cambodia. I wasn't there, but I do know that I once answered an ad soliciting recent ex-military types to do some special work. Lo and behold, a few weeks after I laid out my qualifications, a suit, presumably from some intelligence branch of the government, showed up at my door and wanted to talk to me about going someplace near Vietnam (my assumption was that it was Laos, Thailand or Cambodia, but he didn't say). As fate would have it, his recruitment timing was off. A couple of days before he showed up I had met an attractive girl who actually was giving me the time of day (a rare occurrence). Anyway, I had a hard choice to make. Stay with the girl who I had just met, or jump out of a plane in a black parachute into a jungle near a bunch of people who wanted to kill me. It was a tough decision, but I chose the girl. In hindsight, I probably should have taken the black parachute, but that's another story. Actually, there was no mention of black parachutes, that's just what I imagined at the time. Maybe what the guy really had in mind was sending me and others up a river in a swift boat to Cambodia.

I'm not a John Kerry fan, but when I weigh the good and bad between Bush and Kerry, my scales indicate that Kerry is the better choice of the two. As a registered Republican I wish it weren't so, but it is. I'd prefer someone like Pat Buchanan as president, but that isn't going to happen so I'll take just about anyone who I think will be more careful about spilling the blood of others than Bush has been. In my eyes, Bush also fails on immigration, in keeping government smaller, in fiscal responsibility, in keeping jobs here in the U.S., in healthcare and in other areas. And, while I'm not hearing what I really want to hear from Kerry on most of these things, it seems, at least to me, that the devil we don't know may be better than the devil we do know.

And what about Kerry's statement about being in Cambodia on a certain day and maybe being wrong about it? When I was far from the U.S. I often didn't know what day it was either. From my own small experiences I think that Kerry's claim that he was in Cambodia, maybe dropping off some spooks, has the ring of truth to it. As I've looked at Bush and Kerry, I've asked myself whether I'd feel safer if Bush had my back or if Kerry had it. Bush loses.

Wrong is wrong and right is right. It doesn't matter if you're a Republican or a Democrat. The smears against Kerry are wrong, and Bush is wrong to let them continue. And, have no doubt about this, even though Bush says he has nothing to do with the smears, all he has to do is raise his little finger and the smears would stop. But, he's not doing that, and that speaks volumes about pukiness.

#  #  #

2. THE OUTSIDER - (ISBN: 0-595-19424-9)
H. Millard’s underground classic story of alienation is
available at Amazon.com by clicking on the this link or by calling 1-877-823-9235:
"Millard is an important writer" New Nation News
"Millard is an original. His books aren't like your typical fiction.
If you don't know where to put his books, try the same shelf with Kerouac, Kafka, Sartre and Nietzsche"
- a reader.

Recommend this page to a friend

• References: (Note: links may expire and content not necessary endorsed by H. Millard
  or New Nation News but presented for further study for those interested in the topic by the NNN editor.)
• War Is A Racket - By Major General Smedley Butler
• Image credit: Pukemon - Puke Stuff