Posted on 08/28/2004 1:00:41 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Campaign '04: The media finally have discovered Swift boat veterans. Not to tell their story, mind you. But to attack them for daring to criticize John Kerry. That's why "Unfit for Command" is such an important book.
To listen to the mainstream media, you'd think nothing of note came from "Unfit for Command," the book written by former Navy commander John O'Neill that sums up the case made by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
In fact, it's full of damning detail about Kerry's career in Vietnam and his anti-war activity afterward. The overall picture that emerges isn't one that should be comforting to Kerry supporters.
Some in the media have tried to discredit the book's author, or to impeach the rock-solid testimony of the dozens of former Navy men who have stepped forward to question Kerry's record, or to even suggest somehow it's all just a plot by President Bush and his evil political hit man, Karl Rove, to steal yet another election.
We've seen supposedly objective media try to deep-six the book by making false claims about its contents and calling on Bush to "repudiate" its message — as if that would make the charges less true.
Bush, for his part, has played the gentleman, giving candidate Kerry a pass. But the charges in "Unfit for Command" are too numerous to ignore. There are literally dozens, all attested to by individuals who served alongside Kerry.
Despite Bush's gracious gesture to a faltering political foe, the allegations deserve a serious hearing by the media — just as they picked apart Bush's National Guard records this year and in 2000.
We've read the book front to back and have been impressed with not only its thoroughness, but also the extraordinary number of people who contributed to it. This is not one man's story, but the accounts of dozens of credible witnesses.
Yes, as with virtually all books, minor inaccuracies have crept in. But the larger message still holds: Kerry appears to have exaggerated his wartime heroism for political gain, distorted his record by filing false reports, and lied repeatedly about his presence in Cambodia in December 1968.
After the war, in his 1971 testimony before the Senate and again in his book "The New Soldier," Kerry lied about atrocities he claims he saw others routinely commit while in Vietnam.
His later actions as an anti-war activist included meeting with North Vietnamese communists and the Viet Cong during the Paris Peace Talks. And after the talks were through, he sided with the enemy.
These aren't mere quibbles, or beer-bar disputes. They go to the very heart of the qualifications of a person who seeks the presidency. It's a question of believability, of integrity, of character.
It would be easier to discount "Unfit for Command" if it were just the work of O'Neill, whom Democrats have portrayed as a kind of GOP stooge set in motion 33 years ago by President Nixon. But O'Neill is merely the most public face of a large group of men — more than 250 — who have mostly verified O'Neill's details.
These men are Democrats and Republicans. They include enlisted men and admirals. They are honorable men, eager to set the record straight. Yet they've had their honor and honesty questioned by journalists eager to exonerate Kerry.
The Kerry campaign can't understand the fuss. Why the sudden anger over things that are, after all, decades old? And why are veterans so angry?
The answer to both is that these issues never got a fair hearing before. And many of the nation's 28 million veterans care less about what Kerry did during the war than how he betrayed them in word and deed afterward.
If Kerry really wants this to go away, he could start with an apology to the vets he slandered 30 years ago. Then he can come clean on what he did, and didn't do, during the war.
A man who would be president can do no less.
My take on the Vietnam war and what it meant then and means now: "WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?"
His anti war activities are part and parcel of the whole man and damning. His senate votes show his anti-strong America, pro-communist beliefs.
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