Posted on 11/04/2004 5:02:44 AM PST by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
Swift Boat Vets and POWs for Truth achieved its primary goal yesterday with Sen. John Kerry's concession to President Bush, but the deeply divisive issues the group has raised and the activists it has spawned might not fade with the closing of the 2004 election.
"The whole group was oriented to beating Kerry; now that that's been accomplished, there is a formative discussion to say, 'Where do we go from here?'" said Jerome Corsi, co-author of the group's influential New York Times No. 1 best seller "Unfit for Command."
Corsi believes current discussions indicate there will be post-election follow up, whether through some or all of the more than 250 veterans, or through independent investigators and journalists.
"There is a movement to get Kerry to continue to release all of his documents and to press forward on the military discharge issue," Corsi said, referring to discrepancies in Kerry's record suggesting he is hiding a less-than-honorable discharge.
Corsi also notes that the concerns about Kerry's anti-war activism have grown into a movement to restore the honor of veterans who contend they have been besmirched by the conventional, leftist interpretation of the Vietnam War.
"That's going to continue," he said. "So I see Kerry is not going to simply be able to go back peacefully into the Senate and shut the door on the Vietnam chapter of his life."
"It will dog him," Corsi said, "certainly in the next two years and when he attempts to run for re-election."
In a statement issued yesterday, the 527 group's organizer, retired Adm. Roy Hoffman, gave no indication of the group's future, but expressed pleasure at the election result.
"As we have stated since we formed, we believed that John Kerry's actions in Vietnam, coupled with the reprehensible statements he made after he returned, were serious and consequently made him unfit for command," he said.
Hoffman, one of Kerry's commanders during the war, said the group sought to "provide a voice for the courageous and honorable veterans of Vietnam, more than 280 Swift Boat Vets, Coast Guardsmen and POWs who served their country with honor."
He noted the grassroots effort attracted donors from every state, who gave more than $26 million, including more than $7 million in online contributions.
"We were the true embodiment of grassroots citizen action, complied fully with federal election law and had every right to participate in the public discussion of John Kerry's qualifications as commander in chief," Hoffman said.
'Negative, awful ads'
In their assessment of Kerry's campaign, many of the senator's defenders grudgingly point to the swiftboat vets' well-organized effort.
Asked to come up with a key moment in the campaign, analyst Juan Williams told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace "the turning point" was "distortions and caricatures" of Kerry, epitomized by the swiftboat vets.
Just after the Democratic convention, in which Kerry made his Vietnam service the foundation for his argument he is fit to lead the nation in a time of war, the swiftboat vets "came out with such negative, awful ads," Williams said.
"Initially, I think, the Kerry campaign didn't understand the damage that was being done [and] was slow to respond," he recalled.
"And that damage has been incalculable," Williams said. "It has stayed in the voters' minds. It has defined this campaign in such as way as to damage his opportunity to have a say. When he went into the debates, when I do focus groups and talk to people, they're still hearing the image and the echo of Swift Boat Veterans."
Discussing highlights of the campaign Tuesday, National Public Radio's Tavis Smiley told syndicated columnist Clarence Page, "We'll never forget this phrase, either, Clarence: Swiftboat ads.
"There was a flurry of political advertisements on both sides, but John Kerry was hit awfully hard by the Swift Boat Veterans," he said before playing a clip from one of nine advertisements that aired in battleground states from August through the end of the campaign.
Smiley then played a soundbite from an anti-Bush ad with "Fahrenheit 9/11" producer Michael Moore.
"So you get the swiftboat veterans on one side, you got Michael Moore on the other side. This campaign, Clarence, was unparalleled in the level of propaganda."
Page replied, "That's true, and both of those soundbites you have were turning points where you saw the anti-Bush side really began to take shape and get new energy after Michael Moore's movie came out."
Page said the swiftboat vets turned Kerry's "biggest positive into a big negative, or at least a big controversy. It really began to hurt his forward momentum, and as we saw, Kerry began to struggle going into the debates after his polling numbers fell behind those of George Bush."
Kerry campaign senior strategist Tad Devine has admitted the senator's low point was not answering the swiftboat ads right away.
But Douglas Brinkley, author of "Tour of Duty," the account of Kerry's war record that angered the swiftboat vets and prompted their campaign, has a different take on the group's effectiveness, contending they may even have helped him by energizing his base.
Brinkley wrote Tuesday in an article in the Financial Times that, "Nobody in U.S. politics can endure as many body blows without suffering psychological dents" as Kerry.
Brinkley said Kerry's initial silence amid the swiftboat vets' charges was part of his style and strategy.
"Mr. Kerry welcomes abuse," he said. "He goads his opponents to come out in the open and go for his jugular. They always do. They rise to the bait. When a group of Swift Boat vets attacked Mr. Kerry's record in August he said nothing for two weeks. Why not swing back immediately? That is not his style."
Brinkley maintains Kerry waited until the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post "exposed his critics as liars and frauds."
A defensive player by nature, Kerry waited," he said. "Ultimately, the Swift Boat attacks only helped Mr. Kerry solidify his base."
Moral values
On MSNBC's "Hardball" yesterday, reporter Andrea Mitchell tied the swiftboat campaign to the reported impact of moral values on the voting Tuesday.
She said "the way the swiftboat veterans and the other groups define John Kerry early in the campaign, is to make him seem as though he were as not in sync with moral values, because he was, you know, a flip-flopper or whatever. By having defined him that way they really put him in a box. And it was very hard for him to get out of that box.
Corsi sees a clash-of-moral-values angle also, noting parallels to Kerry's first run for Congress in 1972 as an anti-war candidate in the traditional, working-class town of Lowell, Mass.
After a big primary victory, financed by New York and Hollywood luminaries such as George Plimpton and Otto Preminger, Kerry encountered the disdain of what President Nixon termed "the silent majority," Corsi said, the people of traditional religious values who rejected the radicalism of Kerry and Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern.
But Corsi believes Kerry's biggest miscalculation was a lesson he should have learned from Nixon -- thinking he could lie to the American people and get away with it.
Kerry's lie, Corsi contends, was to "exaggerate his four short months of service in Vietnam and his minor wounds into a self-advanced glory of mythic proportions" and to falsely characterize Amerian servicemen as war criminals.
The senator, for example, was forced to backpedal on assertions he had made for decades, such as his presence in Cambodia during the war. And his refusal to release all of his military records amid numerous unanswered questions hurt his credibility, Corsi pointed out.
In his 1971 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry described the U.S. military as the "army of Genghis Kahn, "disgracing" the service of more than 2 million Americans who served with honor, Corsi added.
"All of this the American public might well have accepted and forgiven," he maintained, "if only John Kerry had told the truth and asked for forgiveness."
Remember all the pundits saying "in passing" that the SwiftBoat Vet's "have been discredited" when in fact their allegations were proven true!
Remember Sinclair Broadcasting being threatened not to show Stolen Honor?
Remember Kerry's lawyers threatening bookstores with lawsuits if they sold Unfit for Command?
Remember Regeant Publishing being threatened by Kerry's lawyers to stop publishing Unfit for Command?
Remember Barns & Nobles hiding Unfit for Command in the back storeroom and telling customers that the Publisher had not shipped the book while Clinton's book and Anti-Bush books were prominently displayed at the front door?
GOD BLESS the Swifties!
I say we continue to support efforts to go after Kerry and cram the truth about him down the main stream media's and the Liberal's throats until they choke on it!
Kerry must be unmasked before the American people so that those folks in the 48% will be forced to look at what the unamerican press almost foisted upon us. This is not due to hate for Kerry but concern over never getting this close again to electing such a flawed candidate.
Kerry's current Senate seat is good for four years. How are you going to do anything? As a practical matter -- not as a desire -- there isn't much that anyone can do to Kerry now. You may find that Kerry resigns his seat and slinks away in the night. The dem long knives are out being sharpened.
The Swifties should graciously accept the crown they rightly deserve in doing the deed and turn to helping the Vietnam Vets and POWs get their honor back. A welcome home parade would be nice. The public will see this as what the Vets wanted in the first place -- not a grudge match trophy.
So much good has been done for the Vietnam vets -- there is a much better understanding of what role the media played in lying about Vietnam -- don't squander your new found wealth of goodwill on a vendetta.
My sincere advice -- you will lose support if you continue to attack. You will gain magnificently if you do the right thing.
Is there a link to view all of them?
Life is good.
Does anyone know how much longer we'll have to wait for this to happen?
I'm afraid I'll grow old and die first. ;)
Damn right. Throw a parade for them bigger than Gulf WarI.
I hope that they continue with their efforts. The best way to finish the post-Vietnam War healing process is to enable us to understand exactly how the war was undermined by lies, and who was behind them.
Now that newly-found documents have been released implying an extreme level of cooperation between the antiwar movement in the US and the Viet Cong, this link has to be analyzed.
In my opinion, this is the real reason that Kerry lost. It was all about his personal character (well, it was a lot about the war on terror and voting against gay marriage as well, but he may have pulled it off if he weren't such a coldly ambitious lying opportunist).
My opinion (for whatever it may be worth):
The Swiftvets should not spend any more time or money on Kerry right now. The time will come. He will go back into his cave for awhile, but he'll never be able to avoid public scrutiny again the way he has in the past.
Just keep an eye on him, Swifites; eventually the right moment will appear when you can push on the discharge issue again. For now, hold on to the good will you have earned. Play the part of good winners. Kerry will eventually give you a good justification to expose him once and for all.
In the meantime, I'd like to see the Swiftvets organization shift its focus to the lies, distortions, and institutionalized bias of the MainScream Media.
Maybe they could change their name to "Veterans for Truth" (or something like that), and broaden their membership. After all, even conservatives who have never been in the service are in a sense veterans of the "Truth Wars" with the MainScream Media. The more people we have monitoring the media, the better.
The media have taken some good blows this year, but they are still on their same old path. We must maintain a steady pressure on them and slap their hands hard whenever they try any of their customary monkey business.
People in the media (and I once was one) are only human, and will naturally have personal biases. But if they make the effort, they can be objective and fair in their reporting. It's not impossible.
The media used to be more fair than they now are, and they can be that way again. But they won't make the effort unless we keep the pressure on them.
The battlefield has changed now, but the war continues.
The first stage is complete. Now to get Kerry out of the Senate.
To do this we need to let MA know that they should change; how the hell do we do that?
Dittos on contributing more. As for Brinkley, he has a vested interest in Kerry, Brinkley being Kerry's biographer; and, his partisan nature needs more exposure.
Brinkley has become a joke. He has no chance at all to redeem his credibility, if he ever had any.
BUMP!
Great points!
There is an issue everyone seems to have missed. One that could be more important, more far-reaching than these.
John Kerry was CHAIRMAN of the SENATE COMMITTEE ON POW/MIA's.
He ALONE, went to Vietnam, and other countries where POW's were reportedly still being held, long after the war.
He was escorted around by the leaders of these countries, shown empty cells, and was told there were no POW's being held. (with a 'wink')
One can imagine that this gave Kerry an opportunity to do what he has done all his life. SCHMOOZE UP to POWERFUL LEADERS and the WEALTHY. Offer to go along with their plan today, if they would keep in mind concessions for the future. Like his brother. VIETNAM REAL ESTATE SALES locked in to one person.
Kerry gave the POW issue a half-hearted effort. Accepted the word of these foreign leaders, had them scrawl their signatures on a document stating there were NO POW or MIA's left.
He came back to the US, waving these papers in the air, declaring the issue was RESOLVED, and the AMERICAN PUBLIC could go back to worrying about the weather and such.
IT WAS A BIG LIE. Kerry made himself look good for resolving the issue so quickly, and nobody gave a damn about the POW/MIA's except their family members. Kerry had already assured that US citizens hated the Vietnam VETS.
HE COULDN'T LOSE, on this one.
And guess who was also on that committee? John McCain.
John McCain, veteran, injured, medals and decorations.
AND A TRAITOR TO THE VIETNAM VETS AS WELL.
Why? Because, when KERRY held those signatures and the document UP at a PRESS CONFERENCE, John McCain, standing on the same stage, behind Kerry, LOOKED AWAY. DROPPED HIS HEAD IN SHAME, and TURNED AWAY.
BECAUSE he knew it was a lie. But he couldn't prove it. And he couldn't do anything about it. He was on the committee, so he couldn't complain about it's findings.
Kerry has been on several committee's, and each one gave him a chance to garner influence with foreign officials, and each time he later used that to benefit members of his family, at the EXPENSE of US CITIZENS and OUR ARMED FORCES.
The swiftvet site says they raised $26 million.
I wish pre-election contributors could buy an official "SwiftVet Support Brigade" hat or T-shirt or patch.
I still want him to sign form 180.
Now that the campaign is over, can't he come clean?
Not to beat a dead horse, but he's never had credibility with me.
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