Swift Boat Veterans and the Obligation of the Media

I was just passing through the room a couple of nights ago, and Fox News was on, and there was Lannie Davis, literally screaming ad hominems against John O'Neill, the principal author of Unfit for Command - Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry.

It was in October 2002 when a former top government official with close contacts at the highest levels of the Democratic Party first suggested to me that Democrat leaders were thinking John Kerry might be their ideal 2004 candidate, specifically because of his war record.

John Kerry, I asked? I knew that Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey had a notable war record, but hadn't ever bothered to pay much attention to the Massachusetts Kerry. I was assured that it was John my friend was talking about, and that he had served with great distinction, with purple hearts and medals for valor.

The point is that for a couple of years now, Kerry's principal recommendation for the presidency - in the minds of his supporters - has been his service in Vietnam. After Kerry got into the race, his campaign floundered around for months and looked like a stone loser until, just before the Iowa caucuses, a guy named Jim Rassmann showed up at a Kerry event and told a stunned crowd the dramatic story of how Kerry had saved his life back in 1969 in the Bay Hap River. Observers credit that moment with energizing Kerry's campaign, and placing him in position to be the benefactor from frontrunner Howard Dean's imminent Iowa meltdown. Absent the Rassmann event, it is highly likely that John Edwards would be leading the Democrats this fall, instead of playing second banana to Kerry.

In short, without his Vietnam record, John Kerry would be nowhere as a presidential candidate. And since he made his first entry into public life back in the early 1970's as a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and parlayed that prominence into his Senate seat, it's arguable his whole political career (not to mention the opportunity to marry into the Heinz billions) is entirely dependent on what he did during the four months he spent in Southeast Asia.

So it's not surprising that Kerry turned the Democratic National Convention into a celebration of his tour of duty, to the virtual exclusion of his twenty-year Senate record and, Bush-bashing aside, the vital issues facing America today.

And it's hard to believe, even for me, that the whole thing could have been a lie, as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth claim.

But if the Swift Boat Veterans are wrong, why does the Kerry campaign have no better answers for their charges than they have so far displayed? Why have they resorted to nothing more than ad hominem attacks?

If the veterans are wrong about the trivial nature of Kerry's Purple Heart qualifying wounds, why won't Kerry release his medical records and discredit the charge?

It can't be that they haven't had time to think through and develop a strategy. The Swift Boat Veterans group has been building up to the release of its commercials and O'Neill's book for many weeks now - with information all over the web and elsewhere. So the Kerry campaign knew this was coming. Why don't they have better answers?

Rassmann published an article in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, under the headline, "Shame on the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush," an interesting alteration of the group's actual title. In the article, which bears all the signs of having been written by a campaign staffer rather than an orchid-loving ex-policeman, Rassmann retells the story of his rescue from drowning by Kerry's boat, pulled aboard by Kerry himself, and concludes by accusing the veterans of "lying", being "hate-filled," and conducting a "smear campaign." But he offers not a word of refutation of what they are saying.

Moreover, the Kerry campaign has already been forced to capitulate on one key assertion - that his boat was ordered, illegally, into Cambodia in December 1968. Kerry has made this claim in print at least three times, once, in 1979, blaming it all on President Nixon, who was, of course, not even president yet. Again, in 1986, Kerry told the story, and said, "I have that memory which is seared - seared - in me."

Those dashes, with the word inside them repeated for emphasis, make the point unmistakably assertive. Yet it is now clear that Kerry and his boat were never in Cambodia, never closer than fifty miles to the border. The campaign offered Fox the explanation that Kerry might have "thought" he was in Cambodia, and that anyway, who cares, because the rest of his war record is what's important.

It is time - way past time, really - for the mainstream media to do its job on this issue. They must demand that Kerry provide a point-by-point refutation of the Swift Boat Veterans allegations, including the release of his medical records. They must not let spokesmen - either the Lannie Davis type or the Jim Rassmann type - get away with ad hominems.

The Swift Boat Veterans have issued the challenge. If they are right, then Kerry is truly unfit for command. If they are wrong, they deserve the strongest possible censure. Either way, the American people have a powerful and urgent need to know. The major newspapers and television networks in this country must follow this story wherever it leads. If they refuse, they will have written a new and frightening chapter in the history of news media bias.

If they refuse, they will have written a new and frightening chapter in the history of news media bias.

It's too late to use the word "will." They "have" written a new and frightening chapter in the history of news media bias.

The Swift Vets held a news conference at the National Press Club. In May. They could not have made it easier for Washington reporters to familiarize themselves with the charges. The major figures from SBVT, including Admiral Hoffman, were all in the room, ready to answer questions.

The whole thing was totally ignored.

That was not unforseen. The author himself asks, "the Kerry campaign knew this was coming. Why don't they have better answers?"

They don't have better answers because they were 100% confident that the media would not allow one word of the Swift Vets' charges to reach the public. The reporters covering the campaign are so dedicated, personally, to assisting the Democratic Party to win the election that they would literally spike credible, documented evidence of Bad News About Kerry from every living officer in his chain of command.

We have since learned that reporters covering the Kerry campaign are so dedicated to helping him win that they played the role of "customers" in a photo op, when no actual customers were in a restaurant where The Johns wanted to play "glad hand the locals."

This absolutely sycophantic devotion to the Democratic Party by reporters does have a downside, and we see it here. Democrats have come to rely on this biased media, to the point that they no longer bother to worry about underfunded critics like SBVT. These veterans could have held 50 press conferences, and Kerry's buddies in the media would still not have written one word about it.

What Kerry did not see coming was the $100,000 donation from the "Republican fat cat." While that amount pales in comparison with the tens of millions provided to Democrat 527's like MoveOn.org by the likes of George Soros, it was enough to produce one television ad and a modest media buy in a few states.

Kerry's campaign was totally unprepared when the Swift Boat Veterans "broke containment" and got their message out by going around the media partisans who had been protecting Kerry.

It was obvious to this author, and it is obvious to everyone, that the Kerry campaign was stunned. Kerry himself still has not said one word about it. He and his campaign staff remain huddled in the "sensitive war room" trying to figure out what to do. In the meantime, they've send out battle-hardened retreads from the Clinton Spin Machine, people like James Carville and Susan Estrich, to blow Godzilla-breath at decorated war heroes while Kerry tries to figure out how to handle this.

It has been three months since the press conference, and we're going on two weeks since the TV ad broke. And the mainstream media is still acting like its job is to protect the Democratic candidate, instead of looking into the charges to see if there is anything to them.

Scenes of White House reporters badgering President Bush about his dental records are still fresh in the public's mind. People are watching in disbelief as the entire media establishment goes into the tank for John Kerry, even though practically everyone now knows about the Swift Vets, and the main points that they have raised.

The Kerry campaign's responses to "Christmas in Cambodia" are so ludicrous that people are laughing at it. Christmas, you know? Santa Claus. Trees. Ornaments. Now you say it must have been January instead? Nobody is going to buy that. If Johnny Mathis was on the AFR, it was Christmas. Otherwise not. Nobody screws that up.

Many people have likened this "Swift Boat" episode to one of those punches that a boxer doesn't feel, but which has separated his spleen and his liver from the plumbing. He's going down. He just doesn't know it yet.

And after thirty years of rooting for Democrats and calling it "objectivity," the media is going down with him. The media's handling of the Iraq War was a wake-up call to the public. The media circling the wagons around John Kerry to protect him from serious, credible charges that go to the heart of whether he is even an honest man, is the Petty Officer flipping on the lights and yelling, "Time to hit those BOARDS!"

The public is awake now, and they are watching.

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