Free Republic

BY JOHN REYNOLDS AVALANCHE-JOURNAL The United States lost the war in Vietnam in part because the U.S. people ultimately came to hate the war and hate themselves because of the war. That legacy, according to Cornell University professor Keith Taylor, is important because it continues to permeate how the U.S. public approaches military conflicts 30 years after the fall of Saigon. Taylor was one of several speakers who addressed aspects of the Vietnam War's legacy on the second day of the fifth triennial Vietnam Symposium. The symposium is held by Texas Tech's Vietnam Center, which also maintains the largest non-governmental...

Some credit them with bringing down John Kerry's bid to become president. On Saturday, members of Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, the group formerly known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, will be in Lubbock to talk about how they influenced the 2004 presidential election. They will be just one of the main attractions at the fifth triennial symposium on the Vietnam War held by Texas Tech's Vietnam Center. The symposium, which kicks off today and runs through Saturday, has grown tremendously over the past 12 years, according to Vietnam Center Director James Reckner. For three days, Lubbock will...

One of the most dramatic stories of Election 2004 was the coalescence of a large group of Vietnam veterans dedicated to the idea that John Kerry was not fit to become America's Commander in Chief. Many of those who joined Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had served with Kerry in Vietnam. And his behavior there--and, even more, upon his return--convinced them that Kerry could not be trusted to lead our nation in wartime. To their great surprise, the testimony of the Swift Boat veterans was simply ignored by a hostile media establishment. The veterans were tenacious, however, and eventually captured...

Never mind that Tucson is one of the most staunchly Democratic cities in the one of the most solidly Democratic counties in Arizona. Never mind that independents - not Republicans - are the city's second-largest bloc of voters. And never mind that while President Bush carried Arizona in November, voters in and around the Old Pueblo gave him something less than a mandate. None of that seems to matter. Bush could be on his way to our fair city. But - brace yourselves, Democrats - he's not the only one. As the Arizona Daily Star reported last week, the president...

Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2005 10:55 a.m. EST GOP to Launch 'Stop Hillary' Web site A top political adviser to New York Governor George Pataki is reportedly planning to launch a web site targeting Sen. Hillary Clinton's 2006 reelection bid, in an apparent effort to duplicate the success of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in last year's presidential race. The "Stop Her Now" Web site is the brainchild of Arthur Finkelstein, according to the New York Post. "The site could draw millions of dollars in anti-Clinton campaign cash from across the nation," a state GOP source told the paper. The...

MIDI - HAZY SHADE OF WINTER (scroll to Bangles) Time, time, time, sign the 180 Form It won't go away...can you feel the firestorm John, you know it's the norm Sit right down, take a pen, fill it out Time to do it, Winter Soldier We heard your Band of Brothers crap Most men with whom you served know you got things you don't deserve They won't be your saps...you can't control this flap Sit right down, take a pen, fill it out Time to do it, Winter Soldier Your hopes, John, are going down SwiftVets wouldn't sing your...

Listen While You Freep! All programs are replayed for 24 hours and again on weekends so tune in when it’s convenient for YOU! Call In Number – 866-884-TALK (8255) 1pm EST – BEST OF BUZZ TODAY: The War on Terror: Buzz interviews David Horowitz, author of "Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left." Horowitz is a nationally known author and lifelong civil rights activist. He was one of the founders of the New Left movement in the 1960s. In his new book, Horowitz argues the only way to win the Great War on Terror is to defeat the enemy...

An eternally vigilant press is the hallmark of a democratic society. But too often, the mainstream media won't acknowledge their biases because they elevate ideological crusades above fact-based reporting. Just last Wednesday, ABC News posted a query on its Web site seeking a military family with a funeral "for Iraq war casualties scheduled for Thursday" (Inauguration Day). The network wanted footage it could contrast with the inaugural festivities. When word spread on the blogosphere, the network pulled the page. Still, "World News Tonight" on Thursday aired video of the funeral of Rockville, Texas, Marine reservist Matthew Holloway, who was killed...

FORT WORTH - Vietnam War veterans angry over Sen. John Kerry's protest of the war in the early 1970s met in Fort Worth this weekend to celebrate his loss in the presidential election. John O'Neill, a former Swift boat commander in Vietnam and co-author of an anti-Kerry Book, Unfit for Command, was a special guest at the gathering Saturday night at Billy Bob's Texas of about 100 veterans from throughout the United States. Introduced as "the man who torpedoed John F. Kerry's candidacy," O'Neill said that his group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, raised $28 million to help defeat the...

You're John Kerry, and this is the worst weekend of your life. This is the moment when you should be preparing to take the oath of office, trying to figure out how to say, ``So help me God,'' without choking on that last word the way all good Massachusetts liberals do. You've been globe-trotting for weeks now, bad-mouthing your own country in Third World hellholes, but now you know Joe Louis was right. You can run but you can't hide. As Hosni Mubarak told you in Cairo, ``You don't have to go home, Senator, but you can't stay here.'' You're...

Thanks to Mudboy Slim I met a FReeper with musical talent, something of which I have none. I cannot write music, sing music, play an instrument, or sing. Heck, I haven't listened to music for a long time --- I listen to talk radio. Uncleshag got my version of ONE TIN SOLDIER, and here is an effort he put together for your enjoyment. Click on ONE FINE SOLDIER to download MP3 One Fine SoldierUncleshagLyrics by doug from uplandMusic Composers:Lambert-Potter Listen, people, to the story of the man who won the day We had really dodged a bullet...with his men he...

As the special report on the scandal at CBS and "60 Minutes" was circulating around town, I was at a long-scheduled editorial dinner with the leader of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, John O'Neill. Among the guests at the table was Jerry Corsi, co-author, with Mr. O'Neill, of the book that halted Senator Kerry's surge in the polls, "Unfit for Command." The Swiftboat Veterans for Truth is the 527 group that ran the advertisements on television and the Internet that so startled the American people and, many believe, did as much as any other single factor in delivering a second...

The CBS Report ignores the heart of the controversy, refuses to draw conclusions, and strengthens the hand of Mary Mapes and Dan Rather. by Jonathan V. Last 01/10/2005 10:07:00 PM MARY MAPES is right. In a response to her firing from CBS News, the former star producer accuses CBS of "scape-goating" her and says that her dismissal is the result of "corporate and political considerations." The key to Mapes's defense is her insistence that the documents she provided CBS were authentic. "It is noteworthy the panel did not conclude that these documents are false," she says. She could not be...

<p>Let's see where to start. Please move on. We have a protest area set up. (Sorry, we are on private property and have permission to be here. The owner later showed up and stayed for the protest) Next, You can't get on the sidewalk. (Why not, as long as you don't impede traffic?) Roanoke Virginia has more Constitution breaking laws and rules than Washington, D.C.</p>

David beat Goliath repeatedly in 2004, as a ragtag crowd of commentators on political Weblogs, most of them unpaid, hastened the retirement of a media icon and derailed a $300 million presidential campaign. Political bloggers shoved Dan Rather toward the door and brought John Kerry's political biography back to Earth. Not bad for a bunch of amateurs. Yet 2004 was no fluke. Blogs are neither a fad, nor a creation of the vast, right-wing conspiracy. They're a cyberspace version of the 18th-century pamphleteers who defied the British crown and championed American independence - an online truth squad spanning the political...

When it comes to choosing leaders, integrity comes first--and no man showed more integrity in 2004 than John O'Neill, the 2004 HUMAN EVENTS Man of the Year. He helped to teach us the truth about John Kerry and counter the lies Kerry spread about the image of the Vietnam veteran, whom Kerry maligned three decades ago when, as an anti-war agitator, he presented slanderous testimony in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Kerry wanted voters to see him as a war hero who stood by his "band of brothers." But John O'Neill and the Swift Boat veterans had a different view--of...

When it comes to choosing leaders, integrity comes first--and no man showed more integrity in 2004 than John O'Neill, the 2004 HUMAN EVENTS Man of the Year. He helped to teach us the truth about John Kerry and counter the lies Kerry spread about the image of the Vietnam veteran, whom Kerry maligned three decades ago when, as an anti-war agitator, he presented slanderous testimony in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Kerry wanted voters to see him as a war hero who stood by his "band of brothers." But John O'Neill and the Swift Boat veterans had a different view--of...

WASHINGTON - The end of the 2004 presidential election campaign doesn't spell the end of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the well-funded alliance of former servicemen that remains dedicated to preventing Sen. John Kerry from becoming president. The group, which recently changed its name to Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth, plans to convene next month to celebrate its successes and to consider speaking out further about Kerry's military service, his anti-war activities afterward, and other issues, says William E. Franke, who ran the organization's day-to-day operations. In his first interview about his role in the anti-Kerry group, Franke,...

Post mortems in the liberal press on the role that Vietnam veterans played in presidential candidate John Kerry's defeat mask the key role of the liberal press, which tried to suppress the vets' story and is distorting it now. I was there at the creation of a veterans group and all along, and know better. The American people deserve to know better too. In 1971 I organized Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace. John O'Neill enlisted to counter the smears of American servicemen in Vietnam. No one else spoke up for us, so we had to. The mainstream press was...

The end of the 2004 presidential election campaign doesn't spell the end of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the well-funded alliance of former servicemen that remains dedicated to preventing John Kerry from becoming president. The group, which recently changed its name to Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth, plans to convene next month to celebrate its successes and to consider speaking out further about Kerry's military service, his anti-war activities afterward, and other issues, says William Franke, who ran the organization's day-to-day operations. In his first interview about his role in the anti-Kerry group, the Navy veteran said his...

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that John Kerry's campaign mismanager blames/thanks for the Democrat presidential nominee's defeat, promises that it won't go away. Recently enlarged and renamed Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth, it is keeping an eye on Kerry, who has thrilled Republicans by saying he might run for president again in 2008. William E. Franke, who runs the organization's day-to-day operations, pointed out to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the group was need because the media establishment failed to report adequately and accurately on the admitted war criminal Kerry's past. "They have called us rag...

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WASHINGTON - For one night only, it'll be spitballs and Swift Boats together on the same stage — a who's who of Sen. John Kerry bashing. The American Conservative Union on Thursday announced it has tapped Sen. Zell Miller D-Ga., to present the "Courage Under Fire" award to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth at the Conservative Political Action Conference's Feb. 18 banquet. Miller and the group of Vietnam veterans were behind perhaps the campaign's two fiercest and most memorable attacks on Kerry's unsuccessful presidential bid. Miller, who is retiring next month, scorched Kerry in a Republican National Convention keynote...

WASHINGTON — Jerome R. Corsi, a leader of the Swift Boat Vets and POWs for Truth campaign against former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kerry, is hard at work on his next political project: preparing American public opinion for what he sees as a likely war with Iran. "The world cannot tolerate the potential that these mad mullahs would have a deliverable nuclear weapon, even one, secretly developed," Corsi said in a recent interview. "They might just launch on Tel Aviv. The moment the world intelligence community becomes convinced that could happen, either the U.S. alone or the U.S....

NOVEMBER 30--A New York woman who briefly worked as a nanny for Don Imus has sued the radio host for wrongful termination, claiming she was canned for bringing a harmless cap gun and pocketknife with her during a trip last Thanksgiving to the family's sprawling New Mexico ranch. Nichole Mallette, 24, also claimed in her New York State Supreme Court lawsuit, a copy of which you'll find below, that she was defamed when Imus later announced on his program that he had been forced to "disarm" his nanny, whom he labeled as dangerous and a "terrorist." In her complaint, filed...

George W. Bush ran the most negative presidential campaign in history, and the media never covered the story, an aide to Sen. John Kerry's campaign said last Monday at the journalism department. Marco Trbovich, a United Steelworkers of America employee who advised Kerry on labor policy, told the 20 students gathered at Carter Hall that about 80 percent of Bush's campaign money was spent on negative advertising. "If you can think of a few positive commercials that you saw, you saw all of them that were there," he said. Bush's campaign played upon fear, using patriotic and religious fervor to...

NEW YORK Feeling a bit lost lately? You should, at least according to a compendium posted today at Jay Rosen’s popular PressThink Web log, because the biggest loser on Election Day was not John Kerry but the mainstream media. Daniel Henninger, writing in The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal, put it this way: "It is often said that the only sure winner in American politics is the media. Amid GOP victory parties or the ruined dreams of the Kerry candidacy, the one constant is that the media marches on. Maybe not this time. Big Media lost big." "I was interested...

Thanks to all of our readers who have written offering to make contributions to Steve Gardner or otherwise expressing interest in helping him. We tracked down Mary Laney, the freelance reporter who wrote the Chicago Sun-Times story that Deacon linked to earlier today. Here's her message: I'm glad you picked up my column on Steve Gardner. He certainly deserves better than he's gotten for speaking up about what happened on that Swiftboat those years ago. I'm not at liberty to give out his address or phone number, but he has allowed me to give you his email address: sgardner5@carolina.rr.com. I...

Alexandria, VA, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- The Conservative Political Action Conference said Monday its 2004 Courage Under Fire award would go to the 527 group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. . . . The Swift Boat veterans, most of whom served in Vietnam with Kerry, "could have remained silent, comfortably out of the public eye and the line of fire," Keene said. "But they put the good of their country ahead of their own personal interests." During the 2004 presidential campaign, the Swift Boat organization argued Kerry had fabricated accounts of his combat exploits to get undeserved medals and a...

This is the story of a military veteran whistleblower. He spoke out against someone he thought was dangerous for the nation, talked to local newspapers, and appeared on talk shows. In return, he was vilified by reporters, threatened by a political operative, fired by his company, and now he's broke.His name is Steve Gardner. He's also known as "The 10th Brother," as in Band of Brothers. He's one of two members of Sen. John Kerry's 12 Vietnam swift boat crew members who refused to stand with Kerry at the Democratic Convention. The other man remained silent. "They said I had...

The controversial veterans group that trashed the war record of Democratic Sen. John Kerry during the presidential campaign and helped hand President Bush a second term will remain a potent force, according to an associate of the group. Chris LaCivita, who was a paid political consultant to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the campaign but said he is no longer on the payroll, asserted that the organization, with 280 members nationwide, is pondering its next step. patrick g. ryan An associate of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth says the group, known for attacking Sen. John Kerry’s war record,...

The election is over but the bickering never stopped. Some voters are suffering from "post election stress disorder." Pundits and partisans are stepping up to next face-off: judicial appointments. Yet the country has united on one issue: Vietnam. Ernest Lefever described the American attitude toward Vietnam: "The two diametrically opposed interpretations of Vietnam continue to vie for the American psyche. Until the issue is resolved, we will suffer from a kind of historical schizophrenia." The parade of Vietnam Veterans across the stage at the Democrats National Convention received a standing ovation, the first of its kind from the protesting class....

They Served Twice: the return of the Vietnam Vets ---------- John Kerry's campaign managers could hardly have foreseen the explosion of veteran resentment that would torpedo his cruise to the White House. No comparable opposition had materialized in his previous races, and a sympathetic establishment media could be trusted to spotlight Kerry’s small group of veteran supporters, presumably leaving anti-Kerry vets little opportunity to reach the public. Kerry had ridden his personal mythology of battlefield heroics to victory before, unleashing his "band of brothers" to attack any Senate opponent who dared question his patriotism. When Kerry greeted the Democratic National...

Failed presidential candidate John Kerry is considering filing a libel suit against the leader of the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, John O'Neill, whose book "Unfit for Command" is credited with capsizing Kerry's Vietnam War-based campaign. "I don't know if they will actually go forward," a member of Kerry's inner circle told New York Post's Page Six column, edited by Richard Johnson. "But consideration is serious. If Kerry plans on running again in 2008 — and I'm hearing he will — it would make sense that he'd file the suit." Co-written by Jerry Corsi, "Unfit" sold more than 800,000...

KERRY FIT TO SUE 'UNFIT' AUTHOR November 18, 2004 -- LIBERAL loser John Kerry might be planning to strike back at John O'Neill, the "Unfit for Command" author who claims some of the credit for Kerry's defeat, sources say. In the book, published by Regnery not long before the election, O'Neill — who, like Kerry, commanded swift boats in Vietnam — attacked Kerry's war record and branded him a traitor. O'Neill sold over 800,000 copies and his group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, raised $25 million to battle the Kerry campaign and ran TV ads trashing the candidate. Former Sen....

Of all the targets of vitriol and attempted ambushes during the presidential campaign, I most admired John O'Neill of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for his calm determination to stand his ground on his charges against John Kerry's Vietnam service in Unfit for Command, the book he co-authored. O'Neill was called a ''liar'' to his face on a number of TV appearances, and, on an Oct. 14 ''Nightline,'' ABC-TV's Ted Koppel actually sent a crew to Vietnam to film alleged eyewitnesses in order to disprove one of the accounts -- how Kerry won his Silver Star -- in Unfit...

I've just returned from the annual Restoration Weekend I put on, this year at the Boca Resort in Boca Raton. The highlight of the event was the Saturday night banquet where we gave our Annie Taylor Award to the men who defeated the party of defeatism and the saboteurs of the war on terror in this last election. Annie Taylor was the first woman to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survive. It is a fitting award for American heroes who were slandered and defamed while they were being tortured in Communist prisons by an American traitor who...

To The Citizens Of Free Republic: We will never ever forget your support and help. Your threads not only encouraged us but kept the truth alive in a period when Big Media sought to suppress the story. Your e-mails and phone calls to Big Media at least shamed them. The thousands of contributions we got from you helped us to organize our website, produce our earliest ads, and keep the light flickering in the darkest of times. The English at Agincourt would have executed Kerry for meeting with the enemy and betraying them. In contrast, we found a true band...

For Republican ad-man Rick Reed, the inaugural press conference of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was less a professional opportunity than a chance to catch up with kin. His uncle, Adrian Lonsdale, had been one of John Kerry's superior officers in Vietnam. The retired Coast Guard captain and more than a dozen other veterans were gathering in public for the first time to challenge various claims Kerry had made about his four-month tour of duty. "I thought those guys had a great story that needed to get out," says Reed. He returned to his office that afternoon, sent out...

Without the information revolution spawned by talk radio and the role it played in this year's election, John Kerry would likely be taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2005. That's the assertion from longtime broadcast veteran Mike Siegel, whose new book "Power Talk!" chronicles his own exploits behind the microphone as perhaps the most pro-active radio host in America. "The Swiftboat veterans would have never gotten the time of day without talk radio," Siegel told NewsMax, citing accounts by the Vietnam vets who served with Kerry as the turning point of the presidential campaign. While elite media venues...

John Forbes Kerry should have easily won the presidential election. Not because he is a good Senator, but because he had everything going for him.I still cannot see how he lost. He had the advice of his dying mother's last words: "Integrity, integrity, integrity."He had backing of The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, Washington Post and a heap of other so-called mainstream newspapers.He had the alphabet networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, supporting him. Dan Rather even offered forged documents to get him elected.He had the billionaires and multi-millionaires throwing money at him. George Soros handed over $26,530,105. Peter...

. Though the election is over, the Swift Boat Vets fight continues. Their primary target had been Sen. John Kerry, but all along there was a secondary fight going on with many elements of the mainstream media, which continually presented their case as “discredited,” though the Vets thought at most their accounts were “disputed” by the Kerry campaign. In their post-election coverage, Newsweek wrote, “When the Swift Boat vets made ads attacking Kerry with images from his 1971 testimony, they used a voice-over, an actor reading Kerry’s words.” Today, Rick Reed, a partner in the Stevens, Reed, Curcio and Potholm...

A special salute to John O'Neill and The SwiftVets

Today's radio guests include Arlen Specter & John O'Neill!!!!!!!

WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 - The McCain-Feingold law, which did more to change how American political campaigns are financed than any legislation since the 1970's, got its first real-world test in this year's election. And now its critics are more emphatic than ever in arguing that the law has fallen short of its goals, and even some supporters are calling for revisions. The 2002 law demolished the system that for more than a decade had allowed political parties to feed on unlimited soft-money contributions from companies, labor unions and donors. But what rose in its place remains the subject of fierce...

'John Kerry will never call us terrorists and war criminals again," crowed John O'Neill, the Vietnam war Swift Boat captain who led the fiercest attack of the campaign against the Democratic candidate. With his brothers-in-arms from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Mr O'Neill was celebrating President George W Bush's victory with fervour. For the Swift Boat captains and crew who fought to destroy Sen Kerry's credibility as a Vietnam war hero, it was a victorious end to a vendetta that began more than 30 years ago. "I will leave it to the professionals to decide whether we played a...

WASHINGTON - Though unregulated money primarily fueled liberal causes during the first half of the presidential campaign, 527 groups supporting Republicans outspent those backing Democrats 3-to-1 in the final three weeks, campaign-watchdog groups said. In the decisive weeks of a neck-and-neck race, 527 organizations funded in part by wealthy Texans unleashed a nearly $30 million television ad blitz against Sen. John Kerry while Democrat-friendly groups spent $10.3 million in attack ads on President Bush during the same period, according to the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity. Though GOP analysts suggested the ad push in key swing states such as Ohio...

In the final three weeks of the campaign, independent "527" groups backing President Bush bought nearly $30 million worth of television and radio ads, three times what their Democratic counterparts spent, according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity. This was a reversal of the pattern during the spring and summer months when such pro-Democratic 527s as the Media Fund, MoveOn.org and organized labor spent more than $60 million, matching the Bush campaign at a time when no Republican 527 groups were on the air. "At the end, Republican 527s reversed the trend from earlier in the year...

MIDI - ONE TIN SOLDIER Listen, people, to the story of the man who won the day We had really dodged a bullet...with his men he would lead the way When he learned that John Forbes Kerry had been working on a plan He could never let that happen...that man's unfit for command DemocRATS would launch their salvos...he stood up to every blow They used every dirty tactic...but they could not make him go He risked his life once for his country...and stepped up again John O'Neill and the SwiftVets...you will never know finer men All the lefties got...

With all the justified giddiness over Dubya's re-election, we nevertheless need to keep pressure on the unfinished business surrounding issues that dusted up during the campaign, such as...