Posted on 09/03/2004 12:13:57 PM PDT by intel_101
COMMENTS PLEASE:
Has anyone thought to look at the way John Kerry and his fellow Democrats are running his campaign as an indication of his fitness for the office of President of the United States? His response to the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth provides a chilling, timely insight into how Kerry IS what Kerry does.
What Swiftboat Veterans for Truth has accomplished with the book, “Unfit for Command,” and their television advertisements is truly amazing. However, their efforts deal with Kerry’s character and credibility in only a limited fashion: What Kerry did then, either things he did when he was “in country,” or after he got home, and what he says now about it. Certainly these are important, and much better than saying nothing. But this narrow emphasis overlooks the vets’ greater contribution: That they have caused Kerry to reveal his true character through his present actions in responding to the vets’ attacks.
Strange, the silence, because it is so easy to “blow Kerry’s boat out of the water,” so to speak. Consider the response of Kerry’s campaign and his supporters. They counterattack on three axes:
It’s lies! All lies! They have no evidence to support their claims. Their stories are inconsistent. We have the DOD papers on Kerry’s medals and his buddies’ stories to support our position.
It is just a political campaign smear tactic. Bush is behind it. O’Neill and his financial backers smeared McCain a few years ago, so the Swiftboat Vets are liars smearing Kerry now.
If the president will not denounce the Swiftboat vets as being liars, we will run ads claiming Bush is pulling the strings on a smear campaign.
Now, the first critical fact to remember in looking at present behavior is that Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, both are former trial lawyers; Kerry a prosecutor and Edwards a tort claims litigator (personal injury lawyer). The second ingredient in the mix is a dictionary definition of a legal term.
Hearsay -- testimony based on the reports of others rather than a witness’ own knowledge, and therefore generally not admissible as evidence.
This is significant for two reasons. First, Kerry’s spotlight-grabbing “testimony” before Congress was not competent evidence, in the proceedings of any deliberative body, to prove anything other than that Kerry had heard some stories. NOT the truth of the stories. And even whether one is to believe Kerry heard the stories he related is subject to evaluation of Kerry’s own credibility. Second, the DOD papers prove only that Kerry was awarded medals. They are hearsay as to the “truth of the facts,” the actual events on which the awards were based.
In contrast, the testimony of the Swiftboat Vets is competent evidence anywhere, because they bring forward their first person accounts of events to which they were eyewitnesses or even participants. The same is true, it must be said, for the ten crewmembers who support Kerry. That’s ten of eleven, plus a lawyer who is running for president, versus 254 or so other Viet Nam War combat veterans.
But numbers are not the end if the search for truth among conflicting testimony as to the facts. If we assume that both groups cannot be telling the truth as they remember it, then more than one someone must be lying. Kerry’s camp points out inconsistencies among the Swiftboat vets’ stories, and some in at least one individual recounting his own story. Inconsistent stories of an event from one witness to the next are not uncommon. Everyone knows this to be true. Instead, one should be more suspicious when all stories tally in every respect.
When a witness contradicts himself, of course, neither of his accounts is very credible when evaluated on his testimony alone. And Kerry has been caught telling inconsistent stories, hasn’t he?
A self-interest motive impacts credibility. Who stands to profit more from shading the truth; 254 mostly anonymous veterans, or ten guys traveling around the country at the Kerry campaign’s expense, helping the unscrupulous spouse of a billionaire heiress in his bid to become president of the United States?
And so “they” must be doing it now to Kerry, his supporters say. There are two dishonest tactics being combined here; guilt by association is being used to disguise the fallacy that A does not imply B.
The McCain argument is a red herring. Even if one were to grant everything alleged to have gone down in regard to former presidential candidate John McCain, even if it involved Swiftboat vet John O’Neill and the same money guys who enabled Swiftboat Vets to get started, even if what is alleged to have been done is totally reprehensible, and even if the motives of O’Neill and the money guys are the same toward Kerry as they are alleged to have been against McCain, none of these has any bearing whatsoever on the truthfulness of the Swiftboat Vets! A does not imply B. Kerry and company are willfully, purposely misleading the American people in saying that it does.
Ordinary people who have important things to say do not have the kind of media access to the public eye as do public figures or campaigns and committees having advertising funds. Freedoms of speech and of the press have little direct, personal meaning to those who have no forum in which to be heard. There is nothing unlawful at work here. That a partisan motive may have led to enabling the vets to be heard is irrelevant to the significance, or to the veracity, of their stories.
The sort of collateral attack Kerry is mounting on the credibility of these witnesses is not permitted in judicial proceedings, where the purpose is to ascertain the truth. Kerry and Edwards know this. They are taking unfair advantage of the presumed ignorance of their target audience. It is a blatant effort to defraud those of untrained mind—and those intellectual couch potatoes whose capabilities in recognizing scams have not been getting enough exercise. What does this say about the balance between the Kerry team’s morals and ambition? At the least, that they will try to cheat vulnerable or careless people out of their votes.
“A” does not like what “B” is doing, but “A” cannot reach “B,” so “A” strikes at “C.” Substitute the pertinent names into this verbal algebra.
Kerry doesn’t like what the Swiftboat Vets are doing, but he cannot stop their ads, or even conclusively discredit their statements, so Kerry demands that Bush go beyond saying all 527 committee ads should cease, that Bush instead must say the vets are not telling the truth. Else the Kerry campaign will continue to run ads accusing Bush of using smear tactics. However, President Bush does not have any special knowledge whether Kerry’s detractors are telling the truth! Kerry wants to wrap the president’s credibility around Kerry’s position! These are the acts of a very desperate man.
Does this framework seem familiar? How about substituting another set of names. Hezbolla does not like what the Israeli government is doing in regard to Palestinians. It cannot influence or effectively attack the Israeli government directly, so it blows up Israeli (US) citizens in an attempt (to dissuade the US from supporting Israel or to persuade the US) to pressure Israel to give in to Palestinian demands.
It is the classic definition of terrorism.
Also, Kerry’s campaign lawyers sent threatening letters to television stations to dissuade them from running the vets’ ads. (A copy of one of the letters is posted on the Swiftboat vets’ website, www.swiftvets.com.)
It is a criminal offense in most jurisdictions to convey a threat to injure someone in his person, his property or his reputation to induce him to do that which he otherwise would not do, or to refrain from doing what he otherwise would do. If the purpose is to obtain something of value, and the threat is delivered through the US Mail, or conveyed by wire across state lines, it also is a federal offense.
Such laws have been interpreted by courts to apply to the threat to bring a lawsuit that is without merit. The suit Kerry’s lawyers threaten in this instance is unquestionably without merit because the requirement of “actual malice” in regard to libel (a cause of action for personal injury) against a public figure (as opposed to “reckless disregard for the truth” for someone not otherwise in the public eye) requires that television stations carrying the Swiftboat ads would know that the ads’ statements of the vets are false and that the stations would air them with specific intent to injure Kerry. Former federal prosecutor Kerry and his personal injury lawyer running mate Edwards should be disapproving and disavowing the actions of their own campaign lawyers, yet they are not. Ethics and respect for law, it seems, give way to ambition and expediency.
And what are Kerry and his campaign actually attacking? Nothing less than the First Amendment right of men who served their country, in a real shooting war, under their oaths to defend the Constitution which secures that very right against government deprivation or infringement under color of law!
Kerry’s philosophy is that he and those who agree with him are the only ones who should be heard. Kerry believes he can tout not only his military service in general, but his medals awarded for specific actions, as qualifying him to be commander in chief of the US armed forces. And, in Kerry’s opinion, no one can be permitted to dispute his claims before the same wide audience where he made them.
Finally, Kerry has shown he believes he is so far above the law that with impunity he can threaten those who provide the vets a forum to be heard, and even threaten the president of the United States in an effort to coerce that high government official to abuse his position by exploiting its prestige to make an unfounded attack on these veterans’ credibility and to discriminate against these vets by declaring that they should be singled out for denial of their right to be heard in a manner specifically permitted by law.
How can anyone of sound mind want John Kerry to be president of the United States? His unfitness for the office has been demonstrated conclusively through his recent reprehensible actions in response to the Swiftboat Vets.
Most significant, because of Kerry’s hubris, the proof of Kerry’s unfitness in no way depends any longer on who is telling the truth about what happened thirty years ago. Checkmate.
[This process called "intelligence" is less a matter of obtaining the specific data one would desire than it is acquiring understanding from data already available. What follows is a somewhat lengthy analysis of open source, versus special source, raw intelligence data. A "show your work" approach is taken in an effort to provide a result that is self-evident in its reasoning based on readily available facts, rather than being conclusions urged on the reader as valid because they come from Dr. Egghead of the Ivory Tower Think Tank. Please take a moment to respond whether this is a meaningful contribution to the debate about John Kerry's present fitness to command, and how to get it where it needs to go. Feel free to circulate, report or discuss it, just please say where you got it. Additional, more complex, and more shocking, analysis of Kerry is in the works. Your encouragement and criticism is appreciated.]
Has any media asked him, directly, about the Swiftboat claims?
Over Nam, the debate is little hero vs. big hero. Once we get to his treasonous testimony, his consorting with the Cong in Paris and his involvement with a murder plot, we shift to a discussion of why Kerry in Congress and not in prison. If there is anything that makes him unfit, it is his actions when he left Nam. That needs examination and explanation.<pEvery discussion of Kerry medals is a victory for Kerry. We need to talk about his betrayal of those he left behind and his treason!!
Wounded Vet Buys Full Page Of Army Times Sep 6 Edition
This gentleman felt so strongly about this that he paid for a full page ad in the Sept 6th Edition of the Army Times.
By Dexter Lehtinen, an Army paratrooper and Ranger, severely wounded in 1971 while a reconnaissance platoon leader in Vietnam. He later graduated first in his class from Stanford Law School and later served as a Florida State Senator and the United States' Attorney in Miami.
Here is his Full Page Advertisement:
John Kerry & Vietnam THE WOUNDS THAT NEVER HEAL
In 1971, I awakened after three days of unconsciousness aboard a hospital ship off the coast of Vietnam. I could not see, my jaws were wired shut, and my left cheekbone was missing, a gaping hole in its place.
Later, while still in that condition at St Albans Naval Hospital, one of my earliest recollections was hearing of John Kerry's testimony before Congress.
I remember lying there, in disbelief, as I learned how Kerry told the world that I served in an Army reminiscent of Genghis Khan's; that officers like me routinely let their men plunder villages and rape villagers at will; that "war crimes" committed in Vietnam by my fellow soldiers "were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."
Then Kerry went to Paris, meeting with the North Vietnamese enemy officials, all while our soldiers still fought in the field. The pain and disbelief I felt listening to his words went deeper than the pain I felt from the enemy fire which seriously wounded my face.
Eighteen months later I was discharged from the hospital, the wounds inflicted by the enemy fully healed. But more than 30 years later, the wounds inflicted by John Kerry continue to bring pain to scores of Vietnam veterans. Those wounds--the bearing of false witness against me and a generation of courageous young Americans who fought and died in Vietnam--are much more serious than any wound warranting a Purple Heart. Those wounds go to the heart and soul. Those wounds never go away.
Today, my son is a Marine Corps weapons officer, flying the F/A 18 Hornet. He belongs to the same Marine Corps Kerry ridiculed with his 1971 book cover showing protestors simulating the Iwo Jima Memorial, raising an upside-down American flag. He flies the same F/A 18 fighter jet that Kerry voted against in the U.S. Senate. And today, Kerry's picture hangs in an honored place in Saigon's war museum, as a hero to the Vietnamese Communists.
Yet, John Kerry shamelessly drapes himself in the imagery of Vietnam, military service and the support of veteran's devoid of any media scrutiny. Meanwhile, the criticism and disapproval of Kerry by scores of veterans continues to fall on deaf ears. Worse yet, any legitimate criticism of Kerry's post-war record is discredited as a "personal" attack or an attack against his service.
John Kerry is quick to surround himself with a handful of veterans and claims overwhelming support from the veteran community. He ignores, however, the wounds he inflicted on millions of veterans, and he refuses to sign a waiver to release his military personal records and medical records. This is the portrait of a man who has failed to comes to terms with his treacherous past.
I, Dexter Lehtinen, paid for this ad personally, without any connection to other individuals or groups, because I want the public to know what John Kerry did to our Vietnam veterans.
Dexter Lehtinen
7700 S.W. 88th St., Ste. 303 Miami, FL 33156
Join the rally on Sunday, September 12th to Expose John Kerry's Lies About Vietnam Vets. Hear from Vietnam Vets, POWs, B.G. Burkett (author of Stolen Valor), and others. 2:00 pm, Senate side of the Capitol, Washington D.C.
Wow! Unquestionable that the effect of Kerry's past on so many honorable men endures. But what is the best means of persuading voters not to elect him? Veterans will not like what he did, if they believe Swiftboat vets, but what of those to whom he promises anything and everything?
Oh, did I mention that by that time, a month and seven minutes had gone by?
Jo9hn F'n Kerry: "If attacked while reading a book to a bunch of kindergarten children, I would calmly and politely tell the children that the President had something important to do, leave the room and start crying for my mommy."
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