Posted on 08/20/2004 2:41:43 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
After being cast as liars by John Kerry, the veterans group challenging the presidential candidate's war record charges he is resorting to personal attacks because "he can't deal with the truth."
Houston attorney and former swiftboat commander John O'Neill, a spokesman for Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, was responding to Kerry's condemnation yesterday of the group as "a front for the Bush campaign."
"He wants them to do his dirty work," Kerry told a firefighters convention in Boston.
"This group isn't interested in the truth and they're not telling the truth," the senator said. "They're funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Republican contributor out of Texas," Bush's home state.
"The fact that the president won't denounce what they're up to tells you everything that you need to know."
O'Neill, co-author of the group's newly released best-seller, "Unfit for Command," insists he and his colleagues have no ties to the Bush administration, stating, "The Navy did not send Republicans or Democrats to the island of An Thoi," where Kerry served for four months beginning in late 1968.
"We are responding and dealing with something that is deeply personal – our own record and the record of our unit in Vietnam," O'Neill said. "These are issues Senator Kerry raised and we regret that he uses ad hominem attacks instead of dealing with the actual facts.
"He is doing that because he can't deal with the truth," O'Neill asserted.
As an example, O'Neill pointed out Kerry last week was forced to revise his decades-long contention he was on a secret mission in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968.
Douglas Brinkley, author of approved war biography "Tour of Duty," is reported to be writing a piece for the New Yorker saying it actually was January 1969 when Kerry was sent into Cambodia, not December 1968.
As WND reported, the authors of "Unfit for Command" claim that despite the senator's many public references to spending Christmas Eve in Cambodia – including a 1986 speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate – the candidate was never in Vietnam's neighboring country. Rather, they say he was more than 50 miles from the Cambodian border at Sa Dec.
Also, said O'Neill, Kerry closed the Democratic National Convention with a story in which he claimed that five swiftboats fled on March 13, 1969, after a mine explosion and only he came back to rescue Lt. James Rassman. His campaign now is admitting that he fled and the rest stayed, before he later returned for Rassman.
"Attacking our organization does not respond to the facts that occurred in Vietnam," O'Neill said. "Senator Kerry says that he has learned to charge into an ambush in connection with this, instead he is fleeing down the river from the facts."
Yesterday, a member of O'Neill's group responded to a Washington Post article that questioned the veteran's veracity.
The paper reported that newly obtained military records of Larry Thurlow, who commanded a Navy swiftboat alongside Kerry, contradict Thurlow's claim that Kerry was not under enemy fire when he pulled Rassman out of the Bay Hap River after the mine explosion.
Thurlow insists military records cited in the story are based on a fraudulent after-action report by Kerry himself.
WorldNetDaily reported Tuesday a previously unnoticed passage in Kerry's approved war biography, citing his own journals, appears to contradict the senator's claim he won his first Purple Heart as a result of an injury sustained under enemy fire.
And the beat goes on...but this time it's OUR drums!
O'Neill was HOT in his 1971 debate with John Kerry.
His eyes were on Fire knowing he was looking
a Traitor in the face.
Kerry was and is a Slime Dog.
Back then, the enemy debated.
Now, they just throw Slime.
I guess they learned that TRUTH is a
strong opponent, so now they fight dirty.
Kerry, Clinton... All the SAME.
Traitors... Playing a Game.
This is absolutely devastating. I don't see, even with most of the media on his side, how Monsieur Kerry can stay alive in this race.
This is absolutely devastating. I don't see, even with most of the media on his side, how Monsieur Kerry can stay alive in this race.
Bump
By the time this thing is done, people are going to wonder why that sucker isn't just finishing up a 30 year sentence instead of running for Pres.
John Kerry is reaping the whirlwind he started with his lies about these guys committing war atrocities. If anywhere along the way, he had told the truth, this wouldn't be happening.
Bingo.
Nail on the head...
I cannot wait for "Bring it on."
Next SwiftBoatVet commercial.
Words on a page..... John Kerry, the history the media does not want YOU to see.
Womans Voice: "While Kerry's military records are questionable, one thing that isn't questionable is what Kerry did after the war."
"In John Kerry's own words, he told congress that veterans were baby killers, that he himself burned down villages, shot unarmed kids, raped and pillaged, then met with the North Vietnamese."
"Next up, John Kerry's Senate record."
If I was the Bush campaign, my commercials will be a chronological history of John Kerry's record.
buh bye commieboy....
Amen to that...
but somehow by gosh he is.
the hate from them is so intense that the sheeple are maddingly blind. just last night in the club house of the golf course i play in (public and inexpensive) a well known hater sat down at my table as a commercial for GWB came on as bush was saying his "i approve this message" and this guy mocks "hello, i'm g.w.bush and i am as dumb as a box of rocks" i looked at him and said," do you know that george bush is the only potus to have earned an m.b.a. and from harvard no less? this idiot looked dumfounded, then after a moment to think of a "biteing retort he said , " aint it amazing what money can buy" i said yes it is it takes a lot of money to get into harvard, and oh yeah you need to be accepted also, then the rest is up to you. this loser then got up and left. so much for a thoughtful debate.
CAN'T HE COME CLEAN? Apparently to the Democrats, its too high a standard to meet.
I agree with the position of Mr. O'Neill and his colleagues. However, is he correct that Kerry himself mentioned the story of the "fleeing boats." I looked at the speech at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3938393.stm and saw no mention of it. Is this account from WND correct?
The times is reporting this a.m. that there were bullet holes in one os the swiftboats....
The Empire Strikes Back. However, in the long, tenditious article that does its best to link Bush to the swifties, the bulletholes are the only thing that I see as damaging.
I have been EXTREMELY pleased with how these guys have cut the balls off the press so far. Lets see how this one plays.
Does anyone remember Gary Hart and Donna Rice, McGovern and his vice president who had shock therapy, or even Ferraros shady husband? All those are soooo similar to what is going on here. Kerry has to be seeing his chances at the presidency slipping slowly out of his grasp.
That dork should catch a ball upside his head, next time he is on the driving range! ;-)
LLS
Volt for Eagleton!
Kerry will NEVER put himself in a position to have to answer direct questions about Vietnam. We won't see him on FOX before the election and the rest of the media won't push him on this. If he is questioned about it during the debates he will probably say something like "I volunteered to serve my country...blah blah blah..I released my records and I urge President Bush to release all of his records...blah blah blah..." We FReepers know EVERYTHING about his service b/c we watch FOX, we are reading the book UNFIT TO COMMAND, and we carefully comb through the news to get the full story. People who don't watch FOX will probably never read the book and may not even know it's an issue or will assume it's a smear campaign against Kerry. The media has been hijacked by the radical left and the TRUTH is being stifiled. Folks, we just gotta win in November. Things are getting pretty scary.
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