Everything the Kerry campaign is doing to try and get at the Swift Boat Vets is turning into nothing but a HUGE PR campaign for the Swifties.
Honest, sincere, seekers of the truth look at both sides in order to see what the big uproar is about. Those that do contrast Kerry and his attack dogs and their rabid attempts to smear the Swifties with the detailed, documented and reasonably presented information of the Swifties.
This is a big time loser for Kerry...as well it should be.
In essence, the Kerry campaign is funding the PR for the swifties. The best thing Kerry could have done was to ignore it and mitigate the damage to what the Swifites could afford themselves.
But Kerry and his ilk love a lie and so they must attack...and thereby bring more and more attention to the issue...and to the truth.
I'm dreaming of the Khmer Rouge .....
We couldn't make this stuff up if we tried..
I was on guard over some C-rations somewhere in Deutschland (Old West German part of that country), and there was this guy and his date in a car. The brakelights kept coming on, and going off, and coming on, and going off.
Next thing you know somebody tossed a round into one of the lights.
Guy didn't miss a lick.
Then we had to find a round somewhere so this guy could switch his guardpost later on.
He offered about a pound and a half of what he called "hashish" in trade to someone. He had this stuff on his person. One of the Namvets tested it and pronounced it fake stuff. So, next deal was to have the guy fall through a hole in the roof of the C-rations dump (which was more like a cave with a big door on the front, and a concrete roof with ventilation holes). Then he could lose his rifle in the fall, along with the bullets.
He didn't like that idea. I didn't follow up on what happened after that, but he did score some dope one day and ended up in Landstuhl hospital agitated about spiders all over his body.
Kerry's Christmas sounded terribly contemplative ~ not at all like mine that year. We had half the Red Army sitting about 10 miles away, busy occupying Czechoslovakia at the time, and the threat of nuclear anihilation was real. Guess when you are just out there making the beerruns for the guys patroling the Mekong you can dwell on deep thoughts.
One thing for sure, I knew Nixon wasn't yet President, but I certainly looked forward to it.
Since the Kerry camp came out so publicly and forcibly against the Swifties, the contributions they are receieving has gone WAY up. Chris Wallace asked the one guy about the money from the guy in Texas, and the Swifty guy said, no, most of our money comes from the public. I think he said they were getting like 10-20K before, and like 100-200k after all the bashing by Kerry. I'm not sure what the daily figures were. Wallace was obviously not expecting that answer.
This reminds me of Billy Dale. The Clintons were so desperate to avoid all criticism, to be the greatest and cleanest administration in history, that, rather than take at most 2 days of mild criticism, they had to tear someone down. Kerry should just pack it in, admit that he remembers these things imprecisely. But he can't. Not anymore.