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“Swift boating”An otherwise useless Op-Ed by Thomas Friedman in the NYT ($elect) today brought home one of the ways that partisans of the left and right see the world in such profoundly different ways that tales of blind men and elephants comes to mind:
39 comments to “Swift boating” |
 
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Actually, I agree with Freidman.
And as far as manufacturing military records-there are more than a couple of Republican legislators who have also stood on questionable wartime credentials to win elected office-a couple of whom sit on committees dealing with veterans affairs (”Combat service” as a lawyer at Shaw during Desert Storm). The disease affects both parties.
Its not that Kerry was screwed-he should have attacked the Swift Boaters straight on for their immediate leap into the gutter of negative politics, which by the way, was another milestone in the polarization of American politics. Kerry let himself get boxed in by a mean spirited attack by :a) not anticipating it and b) allowing himself to be portrayed as a war hero by people who did not realize the can of worms it would open.
There was enough to attack Kerry on positions without the republicans having to embrace smear politics. It will come back to haunt them if Giuliani is the nominee. He’s meat for a smear campaign.
I guess we will have to wait for him to die to get a good look at his full military record.
There has got to be something good in there. Even better if it is released in an election year.
Eric Boehlert (cont’d):
George Elliott
Kerry’s former commanding officer, Elliott was the third person seen in the first Swift Boat ad. Elliott looked into the camera and said, “John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.”
The problem was Elliott simply could not make up his mind about what actually “happened in Vietnam.” Back in a December 1969 fitness report on Kerry, Elliott wrote, “In a combat environment often requiring independent, decisive action, LTJG Kerry was unsurpassed,” noting Kerry was an “acknowledged leader in his peer group. His bearing and appearance are above reproach.”
Years later when he campaigned for Kerry during the senator’s re-election bid, Elliott told Massachusetts voters that Kerry’s Silver Star was awarded for “an act of courage.” In an April 13, 2004, article, Elliott told USA Today that he had no qualms about Kerry’s actions that earned him the Silver Star. “This was an exemplary action,” he said. “There’s no question about.” For 35 years, Elliott testified to the senator’s bravery — and then, in an instant, changed his story when he signed off on the Swift Boat Veterans’ May 4, 2004, letter delivered to the Kerry campaign documenting their allegations.
In August 2004, just as the first Swift Boat ad was being aired, Elliott experienced another change of heart, confessing to The Boston Globe, “It was a terrible mistake probably for me to sign the affidavit with those words. I’m the one in trouble here. … I knew it was wrong. … In a hurry I signed it and faxed it back. That was a mistake.”
And then, amazingly, Elliott flip-flopped again. After conferring with the Swift Boat leaders, Elliott quickly signed a new affidavit that stood by the first account. Much to the Swift Boat Vets’ relief, Elliott then promptly cut off all press interviews.
Eric Boehlert (cont’d):
Dr. Louis Letson
The fourth person to appear in the first Swift Boat ad, Letson announced, “I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart, because I treated him for that injury.” In another affidavit, Letson claimed Kerry’s wound was too small to justify a medal.
First, Navy guidelines during the Vietnam War for Purple Hearts did not take into account the size of the wound when awarding the honor, which meant Letson’s claim was irrelevant. Second, Kerry’s medical records indicate Letson did not sign off as the “person administering treatment” on December 3, 1968, which raised doubts about whether Letson ever even treated Kerry. (Why, if Kerry’s wounds were so minor, was Letson able to recall the incident so vividly 35 years later?)
Additionally, Letson claimed the reason he knew Kerry was lying about his wound was because that’s what Letson overheard, secondhand, from Kerry’s crewmembers: that there was no enemy fire during their mission when Kerry was injured. But Letson could not name the person who allegedly told him that tale, which was bizarre since, on the night in question, Kerry was in the company of just two other crewmembers.
Swift Boat Vets for the Truth- Doing the job the MSM would not do.
And, at considerable personal sacrifice and risk of retribution by the Dem’s attack machine… just ask GMG3 Steve Gardner.
At least they are willing to uphold our oath to defend the Constitution against “…all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Well done, Swifties!
I hate to spoil your illusion, Skippy, but the Swift Vets WERE NOT a Republican Party group – they were a group of VETERANS who detested the very idea of Kerry as President, regardless of party affiliation. If Kerry had been Republican, their message would have been the same. Only then, Swift Boating would be a term of honor in the MSM. One could not just up and join the Swift Vets as a guy off the street. In order to be a member of the group you had to have served as a Brown Water sailor in Vietnam and have your service record verified.
They did not get out with their message until the Democratic nomination was sewn up by Kerry. And then, and only then, did they let loose with their campaign. Every item that they brought forward had nothing to do with his politics, but everything to do with his service. As a man running on his Vietnam record, they had serious problems with this service, based on personal experience and knowledge. Quite frankly, as a veteran, I am comforted by the fact that they felt so strongly about his suitability as C-in-C, particularly in a time of war, that they exercised their CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to express their opinion. Their message resonated, not because of some Madison Ave. magic, but because it was delivered from people who spoke with the confidence of certainty. The funny thing is that not a single one of their principal charges was ever refuted, not one. The fabulation was entirely on Kerry’s side – remember the magic hat?
A final thought about party affiliation. John O’Neill, one of the founders of the group, voted for Gore in 2000.
So politics has suddenly become tough & nasty. It must be the post-modern water and current history curriculum. Kerry was “swift-boated” because of his conduct and he seems to be the only guy who knows it. If he had a sense of humour (and he appears to take himself much too seriously for that) he’d be chuckling at his legacy in American idioms.
“Integrity John, integrity.” Who among the sentient would proudly relate these words from a dying mother?
…and why, of all things, upon her deathbed, would she feel the need to tell him that?
Skippy,
The money I gave to the Swift Boat vets was the best investment I ever made in politics. I also met some of them..I was impressed with their passion and their committment….That venue was open to ‘em politically (528?) and they used it for what they thought was the right thing to do. Vet=roots sorta. Have you noticed they’ve gone quiet since? On the other hand we have the Soros created moveon-org that is like the clap- the gift that keeps on giving…Have you noticed?
I know you never listen to me but I’m shooting straight here Skip..Kerry was a tinhorn, The Swift Vets are bonafide heroes (at least to 99% of us over 50 Naval Aviators past).. Kerry wasn’t SwiftBoated, he self-immolated! Big ol’French jackass head!
b2
Dammit Bob, please stop beating around the bush and using soft words, how do you really feel?
BTW, I’m no huge student of history, but I think if you look back in to the history of politics of our country, you will see that we are no more “polarized” now than we were 200+ years ago. In fact, I think that there was a bit of a tussle in which we actually SHOT at each other. I’d consider that a fairly Polar event.
Even Jefferson the pacifist was a political pugelist.
N
“Big ol?
tc:
Spectacular example of a very common lawyer trick used to cross-examine witnesses from affidavits that have not been carefully prepared. I’ve done what you’ve tried to do here in these comments myself, in court, many times.
There is no doubt whatsoever that some of the lawyers employed by the publishing company whom O’Neill and Corsi used were sloppy in failing to adapt the boilerplate recitals in their affidavits about personal knowledge. That sloppiness — specifically, a failure to distinguish between what the witnesses did indeed have “personal knowledge” of, and what they didn’t — was used by SwiftVet opponents like Michael Kranish of the Boston Globe to attack people like Capt. George Elliott. I explained exactly how that almost certainly happened at the time here and here, for the truly interested.
But playing lawyer games with boilerplate affidavit language falls far, far short of actually rebutting the SwiftVets’ claims. George Elliott, for example, never meant to say that he was present in person on the occasion when Kerry received the band-aid scratch wound that generated his first Purple Heart. Sloppy work by the publishing company’s lawyers doesn’t mean he did claim that. And what he did have personal knowledge of — what he did see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears, when he was duped by someone (gee, who? not clear, but who benefited?) into processing the paperwork for that first Purple Heart — was an important part of the SwiftVets’ actual claim about that first medal — which was that there was no proper substantiation to show that Kerry’s scratch was the result of enemy action (as opposed, say, to him wounding himself through negligent and improper use of a grenade launcher).
If you and I were in court, you’d try your trick — and I’d destroy you with the jury when I exposed it for the shoddy gamesmanship that it is.
That’s why I’d be delighted for John Kerry to sue me. With the tools of the justice system at my disposal, I’d expose his frauds in the proverbial New York minute. And I’d dearly love for him to bring someone like you as his lawyer, because in context, in a fair fight, your frauds and tricks would just add to his.
Gents, now we’re taking about my war. For any man to have spent so little time in RVN and collect such an impressive array of chest candy was just unheard of. There’s something about the “war hero” from Massachusetts, (cough, cough, bullshite), that stinks to the high heavens. I attended the rally north of the capitol on 12Sep04 and had the opportunity to meet John O’Neill and a few others of the Swifties. A finer and more honorable group of men would be hard to find. When the men with whom he served saw fit to risk what they did to tell us how unfit for high (or low?)office Jean Francois is, I for one am perfectly capable of meeting the men in question as I did and forming my own opinion. However much this CINC has screwed it up, we should thank our lucky stars that we did not have a (gag) President Kerry at the helm lo these last three years.
I wasn’t in Swift Boats, but I saw John Kerry declare on TV that he had “served two tours in Viet Nam”.
In fact he served a quarter tour.
The ‘2 tours’ claim alone proves that Kerry is a liar trying to steal the valor of other, better men.
John Kerry was a medal-hunter, a fortune-hunting serial heiress marrying, betrayer of his fellows. In short he is by anyone’s measure a man of low character. That a few pledged their reputations, and many a portion of their fortunes speaks well for the Republic. It was the second-best hundred dollars I ever spent.
I do not believe politics has become less civil. I believe the mass media make the uncivil more widely known. There’s no story in a policy debate. There is a story, which will garner headlines for weeks, in a dispute on character.
But Lex brings up a more salient point on the right-vs-left points of view. My friends on the left cannot refer to Bush as the President. He’s the Chimpenfuhrer, the Idiot In Chief, the Idiot Son… The man flew the F-102, which of the century fighters is generally considered a handfull, graduated from Yale and Harvard, made a pot of money while in Texas, and most importantly in politics he defeated Ann Richards in Texas then Gore and Kerry in his runs for President. Clearly there is some evidence that the man has some intelligence. These are not the accomplishments of a functional illiterate.
In sports there is a term for a team that loses to opponents that are by all accounts inferior. That term is “losers.” I can’t decide which annoys me more, the disparaging of his intelligence by the very folks who lost in competition against him, or the refusal to learn from a failure and adapt. If you lost to an idiot, and you blame the American people for being too stupid to see the truth, you’re essentially saying out of 300 million people only you have the intelligence to see things properly.
Fine. If it’s not too much inconvenience, once you’re done picking up that Nobel prize for being the smartest person in the hemisphere, care to share your superior vision with the voters? And if 300 million don’t see things the same way you do, what are the odds 300 million people are wrong and only you are right?
– Max
Jim: Kerry did serve two years on the U.S.S. Gridley, a guided missile cruiser that patrolled the Vietnamese coast, which is what he counts as one of his tours. I’ll grant him that, as did Unfit for Command. It’s not like there were surface fleet battles going on a la Ironbottom Sound off Guadalcanal in WW2, but nevertheless, service aboard a Navy vessel in wartime is hazardous by its nature, and it’s certainly honorable. (His former shipmates on the Gridley thought he was a bit full of himself, and they accused him during the 2004 campaign of exaggerating his responsibilities while there, but they were mostly hacked, justifiably so, that he deliberately blurred his service on their fine ship with his later, much briefer, service in the Swift Boats.)
Kerry volunteered to switch to a command in the Swift Boats at a time before they were doing the kind of intense interior river-traffic search and interdiction that became very, very dangerous — no doubt because he thought it would be a neat, low-risk way to emulate John F. Kennedy on the PT-109. The Swift Boats’ mission change came, if I remember what I’ve read correctly, while Kerry was stateside re-training for his new assignment — from which a three-and-out PH routine suddenly looked a lot more appealing than riding out another entire tour.
If Kerry had been honest — if he had not pretended to be a war hero, but instead had behaved with modesty, frankly acknowledging that he took his three-and-out after no more than a few weeks in the Swift Boats — then he would only be a scumbag for meeting with the enemy while still a commissioned office in the Naval Reserve and fabricating testimony about war crimes before Congress and elsewhere. The people like tc (who commented above) will never, of course, give the SwiftVets the credit for the honest recognition they gave to the portions of Kerry’s military service that are worthy of praise. Instead, they insist on overstating the SwiftVets’ arguments, as part of the classic debating tactic of setting up straw men that you can then knock down. They miss the irony that, of course, such conduct makes them just like John Kerry — not 100% liars 100% of the time, but only liars about what’s most important.
Remind me now, what was George W.’s war record? Signed up for the Texas Air National Guard, went AWOL for eight months to a year, still somehow got an “honorable discharge”? And yet he’s still fighting the Vietnam War? in his own way, of course.
My problem with 527’s and the like is that they are the vehicle by which both parties are being hijacked by their lunatic fringe leaving the great mass of Americans stuck in the middle.
Now I do agree that Kerry let the Swift Boat guys get to him and he could have crushed their attack early on and moved on. He let the story gain traction.
Nose, Jefferson may have screwed Adams in 1800 but he regretted it in the end. And he realized that Adams was a friend.
John Q:
You have no experience with the guard or reserve do you.
Need to Know 8.24.2007 – Weekend Roundup…
Need to Know is a short roundup of key stories that shouldn’t be missed on your cruise through the blogosphere. The number of links in the roundup may vary but if you find it here you can trust that it’s must-read material.
Israpundit
Homel…
Web Reconnaissance for 08/27/2007…
A short recon of what?ǂ
Skip said,”…..attacked the Swift Boaters straight on for their immediate leap into the gutter of negative politics, which by the way, was another milestone in the polarization of American politics.”
Skippy, let’s not forget the polarization that appeared long before the Swift Boaters showed up on the scene. Hillary and Bill, started all of that with their “politics of personal destruction”….. Travelgate, Twana Brawley, etc….. were perhaps the begginning. They wrote the book on smear tactics.
Lex, this even pre-dates the Republicans attack on Clinton.
You’re forgetting another name to add to the list of people who did quite their fair share to smear opponents during elections, prior to the Clintons– Lee Atwater.
What about LBJ and Coke Stevenson? Nevermind what he did to Goldwater. Then of course there was, “Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine.”
Re: #5 & #15
Beldar, perhaps it might be best to reserve judgement on the expertise of the Swiftvets legal representation until you’ve been apprised of the following…
In his April 18, 2007 commentary, “Can conservative bloggers tell the truth? ( http://mediamatters.org/columns/200704180002 ), Boehlert offers the following observation on his perspective versus John Hinderaker…
Really?
Let’s take a close look at Mr. Boehlert’s level of “familiarity with the details”…
In his first commentary on Al French, Boehlert states…
In fact, Here’s what French’s affidavit ACTUALLY said…
Boehlert has either maliciously or ignorantly MISQUOTED French’s affidavit relegating his entire “Al French” analysis into abject smear territory.
So much for Boehlert’s self-proclaimed “familiarity with the details”.
This information was posted in the “comments” to Boehlert’s article but, to my knowledge, Boehlert has yet to issue either a retraction or a correction to the bogus “facts” he published.
Let the smackdown commence.
(also posted this to Beldar’s blog)
To be fair ProwlerGuy, Beldar is not one of those who, upon closer reading, could be considered a Kerry apologist.