And it went from there to not being able to challenge Kerry on anything, including his lackluster Senate record.
Posted on 11/02/2004 1:14:30 AM PST by The Great Yazoo
Men who have been in combat together often form a bond that lasts long after the war is over. It is hard to think of a single example of men who faced enemy fire side by side and who later publicly denounced each other. The glaring exceptions are the men who served alongside John Kerry in Vietnam.
When Vietnam veteran John O'Neill contacted men who had served with Lt. Kerry in Vietnam, he was overwhelmed by their readiness to publicly condemn the Senator. Retired Navy Commander John Kipp was quoted as saying: "If there is anything I can do to unmask this charlatan, please let me know."
John O'Neill reports that more than 90 percent of the Swift Boat veterans contacted signed a letter publicly condemning Kerry, well over a hundred men in all. Moreover, he points out, most of the still living commanding officers under whom Kerry served in combat likewise came out against him.
Steve Gardner, a machine-gunner on Lt. Kerry's own Swift Boat, was on talk radio this past summer, denouncing as a fraud Kerry's report of an incident that won Kerry a medal, but which Gardner says would have led to an official inquiry by Navy brass if it had been reported accurately as it happened.
On the very day when Gardner was saying this, Senator Kerry was saying that none of the members of his crew was among the critics denouncing him. No one in the mainstream media even questioned Kerry about the obvious falseness of that statement.
Those of us who were not there do not know whether John Kerry was a charlatan and a fraud in all the various incidents he reported -- except for one. On a number of occasions over the years, Kerry has discussed an incident that he says was a "memory which is seared -- seared -- in me."
That memory was of being in Cambodia on Christmas eve in 1968 while President Nixon was assuring the world that there were no American forces in Cambodia. It was a great story, like so many stories that Kerry has told, but we know that it was not true because Richard Nixon was not yet President in December 1968. He was elected a month earlier but he took office in January 1969.
Does it matter what John Kerry did in Vietnam more than 30 years ago? It mattered enough for Senator Kerry and his supporters to trumpet it in his campaign and to use it to deflect criticism of Kerry's many Senate votes against military preparedness over the years.
Senator Kerry's spinmeisters turned any criticism of his many votes to cut military spending and cut spending on the intelligence agencies into "an attack on his patriotism" -- for which critics should be ashamed, they said, since he was a combat hero wounded in Vietnam. The mainstream media echoed the same party line.
If John Kerry had left the past in the past, there would have been little reason for anyone else to challenge his version of what happened. But he ran shamelessly on his Vietnam record, or at least his version of it. Now that those who served alongside Kerry in the same unit tell a radically different story about the same episodes, it is considered dirty politics.
Media people who went ballistic for months with unsubstantiated charges about George W. Bush's National Guard service -- climaxed by forged documents used on "60 Minutes" -- have never demanded that Kerry sign the same official form that President Bush signed, releasing all his military records.
If Kerry's military record was important enough for him to beat the drums about it at every turn this election year, then it is important enough for the truth to come out. But the mainstream media make no such demands on Kerry as they made incessantly on President Bush.
What Senator Kerry has done in the three decades since he was in Vietnam seems much more consistent with the picture of him painted by those who served in his unit than with the very different picture presented today by the Senator and his campaign.
After voting against gun owners in the Senate, John Kerry has repeatedly gotten himself photographed carrying guns this election year. After being for a weak foreign policy for decades, his speeches now ring out loudly with words like "strong," "strength," and "tough." It looks an awful lot like what a charlatan and a fraud would do.
And it went from there to not being able to challenge Kerry on anything, including his lackluster Senate record.
But what does this say about the USA that just shy of 50% of the population will vote for this lunatic?
MY opinion? The MSM still is extremely powerful in lying and distorting, powerful enough to repackage a steaming mess of of month-old fish and feces, and convince enough brain-dead Americans they are buying sirloin steak.
One would hope this election cycle will trigger some soul-searching among the MSM. But don't expect it.
Mr. Sowell says it about as well as it can be said in this article.
Correct my ignorance. I forget what the 10th Amendment is.
You make excellent points.
The sad reality is that the Internet and (to a lesser degree) Fox News are part of a tiny group of honest news reporting in this nation. And these still reach only a small fraction of people who watch/read the news.
The rest of the media seems to distort, deceive, and (as you point out) completely shield corrupt politicians like Kerry and Edwards from their records.
Thanks!
Whether it's the Internet, the MSM, or any other source, it makes good sense to be skeptical. Blind reliance on any source of news and information is unwise. That has probably always been the case, but it is more true today than before. At least now there are means to cross check almost any claim.
The Internet allows multiple sources of the news. See-BS and the NY Slimes have big Internet presences, but there is plenty of pajama blogs to carefully dissect their lies.
You have said it all. The media is incredibly powerful. They spawned and feted this candidate and carried his water at every opportunity. They can tell one half the country the most brazen lie and have it believed. Repetition, and their ruthless technique of unity of message, which puts it everywhere uniformly is the main propaganda technique. They take up all the figurative air in the communications room..They are still as dangerous as a pit full of rattlesnakes and their power isn't receding in the least. If it was, Dan Rather would be out and apologies would be made for their many brazen attempts to lie and influence the election for Kerry.
We now have an impact on their power because of blogs, talk radio, and this site, but don't let our small amount of influence fool you. The leftist media remains the most dangerous and subversive force in this country. They have unity of voice, a shrill, loud, communist voice.
I asked that same question. In a world governed by reality, facts, and sanity, Kerry shouldn't get more than the far-left nut vote and a few Dem kool-aid drinkers. But the fact that he has a chance shows how far this country has swung to the left and how ignorant we've become. The sad fact is that there is far more ignorati than there are intelligent adults. We just have to hope that most of the ignorati can't find their way to the polls...or know how to operate the voting machine.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Consitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
This was an amendment that was supposed to limit the power of the federal government by saying, in effect, it is the federal government which is to have LIMITED power, not the states or the people.
Wicked men, with the help of tyrant judges, have turned this on its head. They have made the federal government a MONSTER fulfilling the fears of our nations founders.
nations = nation's
You nailed it perfectly.
Thanks.
That about sums up the press' role in this campaign, cheerleader for Kerry. The MSM has turned into "Whores for Kerry" and I can't figure out what we should do about it. If they declared themselves as 527's that'd be accurate since their bias is undeniable, by any standard.
The "free press" is now owned by a handful of rabid ideologues with particular agendas they feel are right for America. We need gay rights, gay marriage, hate crimes (as opposed to love crimes?) stem cell research, abortion on demand, environmental extremism, a legislating judicial branch and cowardice in world leadership. Now I see that CBS and the NYT are collaborating on their partisan attacks on Bush and shameless promotion of Kerry.
We have entered the all spin zone and it sucks!
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