Posted on 10/14/2004 1:55:15 PM PDT by areafiftyone
The Swift Boat Controversy: New Witnesses
October 14, 2004
John Kerry's service in Vietnam has become a campaign issue. The group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth alleges that Kerry has distorted the truth about what happened during the war and questions whether he deserved the medals he received. Tonight, you'll hear from eyewitnesses who have not spoken before: the Vietnamese who fought against him.
We've had the debates and the race is a virtual dead-heat. This is the part of a campaign when there are daily fires--issues that rise, flare, and then go away, only to be replaced by a new one the next day. But for a while, this campaign was dominated by Vietnam, a war that ended, at least the fighting, thirty years ago. John Kerry made his service in Vietnam a major part of his campaign. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth fired back. They have alleged that Kerry was not truthful about his actions in Vietnam. Then questions were raised about the group's connections to people linked to the GOP. And so the story just kept spiraling in different directions. But the polls clearly showed that Kerry was hurt by allegations that he was not candid about his actions in Vietnam.
Which brings us to an old expression: the fog of war. People, in general, are not always great eyewitnesses. Memories fade, especially as the years go by. Two people standing next to each other may have very different recollections of something that happened right in front of them. But in the whole Swift Boat controversy, there is one group that hasn't been heard from at length: the Vietnamese. Producer Andrew Morse went to Vietnam, to the coordinates taken from the U.S. military after-action report from Kerry's battle for which he won the Silver Star. And there Andrew found several people who had either witnessed the events of that day, or in some cases, had actually fought against the swift boats. And it is their accounts that you will hear tonight. Do their accounts favor one version or the other? Can these questions be definitively settled? You'll have to judge. One of the surprising stories we were told? One of the Vietnamese men in the area says he was visited by a man claiming to be a swift boat veteran and a cameraman. He says the veteran was disparaging towards Kerry's conduct in the war, and asked him in an interview about the events of that day. We do not know who that man is, or whatever happened to that tape.
Ted will be anchoring tonight, and he will be joined by John O'Neill, a leader of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the author of Unfit for Command, a book critical of Kerry. I hope you'll join us.
Leroy Sievers and the Nightline Staff,br> Washington D.C.
He sympathizes with them anyway.....
ABC came out saying that the VC had some big force in the bush that Kerry missed... they stole and hid arms in this old womans garden and they are still there .. and ran raids? c'mon - everything they were told there is rubbish.
O'Neill did fine. Koppel got a major league whipping tonight.
AMEN !!!
You nailed that one precisely, Federal
Yes. Koppel, with a straight face, implied that former VC are more credible than over 200 American veterans.
Did John O'Neill lose his cool, or did he hold it together?
Koppel went on air with false information from some NV gooks and got outed.
How do we know the firefight they are remembering is the same one Kerry wrote of? It could have been at a different time with a different crew? Surely there were many engagements at such a major weapons depot (so they claimed). How do we even know this is the right one?
"It's bizarre that the email address spelling of "niteline@abc.com" isn't consistent with the title of the show: "Nightline"."
It is weird, but I found it earlier on the Nightline page.
It's legit.
Ted lying is not new. But blatantly using the VC as if we were all mind-numbed robots? That stuns even me.
Koppel cut him off when he raised the copy of the original citation. The numerically superior wording was added when his citations were re-issued (probably when he overturned his dis-honorable discharge).
O'Neill should have pressed it instead of repeating himself...
although on balance O'Neill still kicked butt.
Essentially, Ted was saying he believed the viet cong version over Kerry's version. So, I guess tonight's story is that ABC considers Kerry a liar (and the Boston Globe).
I'm sitting here shaking my head in disbelief
Ted and Niteline are more stupid then I ever gave them credit for .. LOL
Both he was obviously baited on the show told he was going to talk about something different and told he was only going to discuss this incident. He lost his cool and SMOKED Teddy Boy
I am simply giving my opinion on the way "I" personally saw it. He started really weak with waving the books around and could have made the same point more eloquently....
ROTFLOL
I don't have a problem with Koppel going to Vietnam & interviewing the peasants but he certainly should have recognized that O'Neill did not pull the contradictions out of thin air.
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