Sen. John Kerry's SWIFT meltdown: Hugh Hewitt on why Dem's campaign, lib pundits are floundering

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Wednesday, August 11, 2004 | Hugh Hewitt

[JohnHuang2]

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

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Kerry's SWIFT meltdown

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Posted: August 11, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Hugh Hewitt

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© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

At this writing, the Kerry campaign has not yet responded to the media meltdown that is occurring around John Kerry's four decades of stories built on his secret, illegal missions into Cambodia during the four months he skippered a SWIFT boat.

It is impossible to stonewall a story that broke out of the blogosphere and into the major media on Monday night and Tuesday morning, so eventually John Kerry is going to have to stand by his wildly implausible tales of cross-border excellent adventures, or he's going to have to apologize for inventing personal history.

Here are the facts. Not long after returning from Vietnam, John Kerry began telling people he had been sent into Cambodia on an illegal patrol on Christmas Eve 1968. He repeated that story on the floor of the Senate in 1986, to an AP reporter in 1992, and as recently as June 2003 was regaling a Washington Post reporter with a story of how he had ferried a CIA man secretly into Cambodia, and how he'd kept the man's hat as a reminder of that journey.

The Christmas-Eve-in-Cambodia story has already been completely shredded by the SWIFT boat vet critics of Kerry, and it is hard to imagine how Kerry is going to defend the CIA man who was never there, given independent testimony from Navy vets that the SWIFT boats never went into Cambodian waters. If Kerry was sent on a secret drop-off mission, he's going to have to come up with some proof, especially with the Christmas Eve narrative now so discredited.

The blogosphere pushed this story forward, with an early flare going up at KerryHaters on May 21, and then a gang tackle of the facts by Instapundit, RogerLSimon, JustOneMinute, Powerline, CaptainsQuarters and, of course, me.

We teed it up after the publisher of "Unfit for Command" released a sample chapter from the new book which brought the Cambodian myth to light. I spent all day Thursday, Friday and Monday on the story on my radio program, and Monday night Carl Cameron ran with a story on "Special Report" with Brit Hume, followed by an "O'Reilly Factor" segment with Steve Gardener, a SWIFT boat vet who served on Kerry's boat. Gardener denied ever having been to Cambodia. The Kerry campaign first denied that Kerry had ever claimed to have been in Cambodia, and then recanted upon being shown the 1986 Congressional record, promising to get back to Fox News with an explanation.

No explanation has shown up more than 12 hours later. In the interim, the New York Post has run a story, as has the London Telegraph, and the Washington Times' editors have produced a powerful editorial on the subject.

Why all the attention? Simply put, if John Kerry can be conclusively demonstrated to have lied about aspects of his Vietnam service, the media has to ask what else has he been lying about. The voters have to ask if he can be trusted. In short: Free fall.

The lefty bloggers and talking heads are stunned into silence, and have gotten no help from the Kerry people. It's hard to spin a story that hasn't been spun by the campaign since Kerry could elect to go in completely different directions. If he hangs tough on the Christmas Eve and CIA man stories, his allies will know to hang tough as well. But they can't do that without a clear signal, because if Kerry comes out and apologizes for a tall tale, the commentators are cut off at the knees.

A nasty dilemma. Perhaps the lefty pundits should try sticking with the truth: It looks very bad for Kerry. It looks like he's been lying and padding his Vietnam resume for decades and that the elite media was so in love with the story they didn't bother to check it out. It looks like Kerry's selective release of his military and health records was smoke, and that the big-time journalists at the New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post fell for it.

Now we get to see if there's any pride left in the newsroom. Do any of these writers, reporters and producers resent getting played by Kerry? If so, payback will be stiff. Too early to tell whether Bush-hatred trumps anger at getting suckered. More to follow ...

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[RasterMaster]

They figure they can muddy the water on the topic rather than debate "Cut & Run" Kerry's record....here's the list they chose to be the focus of the convention and the campaign:

Senate

Lt. Governor

Prosecutor

War Protester

War Record

When the "War Record" is a total fabrication, what is left for the democraps and thier spin machine to push for Kerry now? They can only Kerry the water for LIARS for only so long.

[ForGod'sSake]

"We all assume that exposing the knave will destroy him."

Ordinarily that's be a safe assumption & there'd be a lot of truth in what you've said say 10, 15 or more years ago. When last we lived in a sane world where telling the truth was the name of the game?

Durn good shootin'. The slide began when the Rats realized their base didn't care that they were lied to and manipulated; they would stay on the plantation, come what may. They don't care.

Since the battle is actually being fought for the middle, this is where the propaganda arm of the party is brought to bear. Those 15% to 20% of the electorate who supposedly hold out for the best candidate based on information gleened from, who else, ABCNNBCBS! Our fate(s) lie in the hands of these uncommitted voters.

Apparently the Dims believe that good hair and Botox will win the day. I hope their wrong and that the fence riders are made of better stuff. Our future depends on them. Scary ain't it?

FGS

[bvw]

Hmmm. Well those are food for thought -- or rather beg *investigation*.

However, I do NOT think Rassman was there for anything but a joyride, and he was "hanging" with Kerry -- they were barfly pals, and that Rassman was "playful" -- the kind of playful kids are when they blow up muskrat holes with an M-80, or blow out all the neighborhood windows by blowing up a stick of dynamite hung three foot off the ground.

[SpinyNorman]

"They can't, not without revealing their true identify as Dr. Goebbels propoganda ministry."

From the Russert interview with the President, 2/8/04:
MSNBC transcript: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4179618/

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Russert: And we are back in the Oval Office talking to the President of the United States.

Mr. President, this campaign is fully engaged. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terence McAuliffe, said this last week: "I look forward to that debate when John Kerry, a war hero with a chest full of medals, is standing next to George Bush, a man who was AWOL in the Alabama National Guard. He didn't show up when he should have showed up…"

President Bush: Yeah.

Russert: How do you respond?

President Bush: Political season is here. I was — I served in the National Guard. I flew F-102 aircraft. I got an honorable discharge. I've heard this — I've heard this ever since I started running for office. I — I put in my time, proudly so.

I would be careful to not denigrate the Guard. It's fine to go after me, which I expect the other side will do. I wouldn't denigrate service to the Guard, though, and the reason I wouldn't, is because there are a lot of really fine people who have served in the National Guard and who are serving in the National Guard today in Iraq.

Russert: The Boston Globe and the Associated Press have gone through some of the records and said there’s no evidence that you reported to duty in Alabama during the summer and fall of 1972.

President Bush: Yeah, they’re — they're just wrong. There may be no evidence, but I did report; otherwise, I wouldn't have been honorably discharged. In other words, you don't just say "I did something" without there being verification. Military doesn't work that way. I got an honorable discharge, and I did show up in Alabama.

Russert: You did — were allowed to leave eight months before your term expired. Was there a reason?

President Bush: Right. Well, I was going to Harvard Business School and worked it out with the military.

Russert: When allegations were made about John McCain or Wesley Clark on their military records, they opened up their entire files. Would you agree to do that?

President Bush: Yeah. Listen, these files — I mean, people have been looking for these files for a long period of time, trust me, and starting in the 1994 campaign for governor. And I can assure you in the year 2000 people were looking for those files as well. Probably you were. And — absolutely. I mean, I —

Russert: But you would allow pay stubs, tax records, anything to show that you were serving during that period?

President Bush: Yeah. If we still have them, but I — you know, the records are kept in Colorado, as I understand, and they scoured the records.

And I'm just telling you, I did my duty, and it's politics, you know, to kind of ascribe all kinds of motives to me. But I have been through it before. I'm used to it. What I don't like is when people say serving in the Guard is — is — may not be a true service.

Russert: But you authorize the release of everything to settle this?

President Bush: Yes, absolutely.

We did so in 2000, by the way.

Russert: Were you favor of the war in Vietnam?

President Bush: I supported my government. I did. And would have gone had my unit been called up, by the way.

Russert: But you didn't volunteer or enlist to go.

President Bush: No, I didn't. You're right. I served. I flew fighters and enjoyed it, and provided a service to our country. In those days we had what was called "air defense command," and it was a part of the air defense command system.

The thing about the Vietnam War that troubles me as I look back was it was a political war. We had politicians making military decisions, and it is lessons that any president must learn, and that is to the set the goal and the objective and allow the military to come up with the plans to achieve that objective. And those are essential lessons to be learned from the Vietnam War.

Russert: Let me turn to the economy........

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Now Russert thought the bogus National Guard story was important enough to ask the President about in an exclusive interview at the White House.

Let's see if Russert has the journalistic balls to get O'Neill on, with Kerry if possible, and give them an hour in the cage, winner take all, fight to the death.

I am writing a letter to Russert now about that very thing.

[SpinyNorman]

Message to Russert:

Done. To wit:

Dear Mr. Russert,

After your primetime, one on one interview with the President (2/8/04), you asked him about the allegations made about his National Guard service.

I would like to know when you will interview John O'Neill of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth regarding his and 250+ Swiftboat veteran's charges regarding John Kerry's service in Vietnam.

If you can manage O'Neill and Kerry in a matchup reminiscent of their original one on the Dick Cavett show, I will tape that show to show my grandchildren.

If you don't, and participate in the blatant media blackout regarding the Swiftboat Vets, I will never be able to view your show again, as you will have demonstrated yourself to be a partisan hack and member of the "liberal press." I want to believe that you are a fair, but tough, journalist.

Your interview with the President regarding questions and allegations about his National Guard service set the precedent. Now, to establish balance, it behooves you to pay comparable attention to the hundreds of Vietnam veterans that consider John Kerry to be a fraud and unfit to be Commander in Chief.

Sincerely,

SpinyNorman

[Casloy]

Actually, you may be right. Now Kerry is rushing a "correction" into print that it was not Christmas in Cambodia, but sometime in January. We all know he wasn't in Cambodia at all, and if this new and improved story can also be challenged, he is toast.