Swift Boat Vet "Appalled" by McCain Smear (smear from fake Swift Boat group)

TPM ^ | January 16, 2008 | By Paul Kiel

[bd476]

No one has to vote for Senator John McCain, you don't even have to like him, but I sincerely hope that all conservatives on Free Republic will respect Senator McCain's faithful and honorable service to our great nation during the Viet Nam War.

There are untruths being spread about Senator John McCain's time in service and when he was held as a POW in Viet Nam. The lies are being generated by a few people including a Ted Sampley, who has "information" about Senator McCain's service in Viet Nam, and that so-called "information" is ready to be copied and pasted from the Ted Sampley website.

Now you also don't have to like President George H. W. Bush, and you probably won't have another chance to vote for him, but again, I sincerely hope that conservatives on Free Republic will respect President George H. W. Bush's faithful and honorable service to our great nation during World War II.

There are untruths being spread about President George H.W. Bush's time in service during World War II. The lies about President George H.W. Bush are also being generated by a few people including a Ted Sampley, who has "information" about President George H.W. Bush's service in World War II, and that so-called "information" is ready to be copied and pasted from the Ted Sampley website.

I hope that conservatives will ignore the lies and vicious innuendoes which Ted Sampley has on his website about the service records of both Senator John McCain and President George H.W. Bush.

We can elect a conservative President without resorting to the deceptive tricks of the liberals. Again, you don't have to like Senator McCain to understand and respect that McCain faithfully and honorably served his country.

Whispering little lies and spreading falsehoods that he did otherwise is still lying. It was a discovered lie which eventually lead conservatives to seek the impeachment of President Clinton.

We conservatives do not have to sink to deceit to be heard and to elect a conservative President. We cannot afford to be distracted and demoralized by lies told by others, nor those spread amongst ourselves.

FReegards,
bd476

Reference: George Bush Parachutes Again to Exorcise Demons of Past Betrayal By Ted March/April/May 1997

[chaos_5]

There are untruths being spread about Senator John McCain's time in service

Last time I checked we oppose him because of his Congressional record. Not much noise about his war service. I think FReepers are smarter than that. I would even say most criticisms of McCain if prefaced with "I respect him as a war hero, but ... ".

[Red_Devil 232]

I am glad to see you are for electing a conservative candidate. McCain is not one.

[Recovering_Democrat]

I think McCain is class A RINO, but I do not for one second think his service to this nation was anything but heroic.

His endurance under the pain of the VietCong was incredible, and I honor that part of his career.

I criticize him for his stands on the issues, but not his war record.

[newbie2008]

bookmark

[mnehring]

Bogus smears like this just distract from policy differences. When exposed, bogus smears also have a way of backfiring by adding a sympathy factor for the smeared.

[Puppage]

I criticize him for his stands on the issues, but not his war record.

I couldn't agree more!

[bd476]

chaos_5 wrote: "Last time I checked we oppose him because of his Congressional record. Not much noise about his war service. I think FReepers are smarter than that. I would even say most criticisms of McCain if prefaced with "I respect him as a war hero, but ... ".

Oh. I see. Well then this is probably just some new form of respecting a Viet Nam War hero.

[Kimberly GG]

I’m all for the “swiftboating” of John McCain...based on his political record...not his war service, which appears to be happening wrongly by this group.

I resent that there are Americans who refuse to, or are willing to, overlook his political record because of his war service.

[McGruff]

There is no reason I see not to call John McCain a Vietnam War hero but I won’t vote for him to be republican nominee for President of the United States. He’s no republican.

[chaos_5]

Pointing to some hit piece of a post does not prove that FReepers are trying to undercut McCain's war record. All I’m saying is, the fundamental reasons most rational conservatives oppose McCain are rooted in his actions in Governmen not hearsay about Vietnam.

[bd476]

mnehrling wrote: "Bogus smears like this just distract from policy differences. When exposed, bogus smears also have a way of backfiring by adding a sympathy factor for the smeared."

Thank you. Amen.

[rockinqsranch]

I was cruising around the net trying to find something, anything to tell me what the Swift Boat Vets had to say about McPain and ran across this article which is I realize dubious as it is “THE NATION”, but seemed to have some interesting details about contributions to McPain vs Romney.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080107/hayes

I found it interesting that some SBV’s have given to the tune of $61,650.00 to McPain, and others to Romney totalling $70,550.00 as of January 2, 2008.

Wondering how much has been given to either of them since. I think it interesting.

[bd476]

Ping.

[stuartcr]

See earlier thread...Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain

[Leisler]

check.

[exit82]

John McCain was not the only prisoner of war in Vietnam, and that was forty years ago.

When he had the power and the opportunity to remove the veil of secrecy over the hundreds of men we KNEW we left behind in 1973, he worked with John F’n Kerry to browbeat the POW/MIA FAMILIES to remove any roadblocks to normalization with Vietnam. This is spite of thousands of sightings, call signs being seen from the air, others with info seeing the Americans moved from place to place years after the war ended.

In my mind, he betrayed the very men he was a prisoner with. And for what price?

Only 591 POWs were repatriated in the spring of 1973—we were shocked-we expected more than a thousand to be returned because we had active intelligence on so many more known to be alive and in captivity.

Nixon and Kissinger negotiated a sum close to $ 4 billion to be given to North Vietnam for “rebuilding” as a part of the release negotiations. When Congress balked at that, well, they just kept the remainder of POWS for bargaining chips.

Imagine these men keeping faith until they died, one by one, in the vain hope someone would come to rescue them or secure their release.

Manchurian Candidate McCain can go to hell.

[spacejunkie]

Let me must ask a broad based question. I don’t know one way or the other whether McCain fabricated his time in any way in Vietnam, but, let me ask; if he’s turned on his party like he has, and turned on the president like he did, why wouldn’t he turn on his country to endear himself to the VC? I’m just curious what others have to say about this because as far as I’m concerned he’s a complete traitor to the conservative movement in particular and republicans in general.

[iopscusa]

If Swftboating means getting to the truth then what applies to Kerry applies to McCain. The seed of distrust is the way McCain refused to open his records and fought viciously against the POW/MIA families and the prisoners left behind in Vietnam....a smaller number of former POWs, MIA families and veterans have suggested there is something especially damning about McCain that the senator wants to keep hidden. Without release of the files, such accusations must be viewed as unsubstantiated speculation. The main reason, however, for seeking these files is to find out if there is any information in the debriefings, or in other MIA documents that McCain and the Pentagon have kept sealed, about how many prisoners were held back by North Vietnam after the Paris peace treaty was signed in January 1973. The defense and intelligence establishment has long resisted the declassification of critical records on this subject. McCain has been the main congressional force behind this effort.
The prisoner return in 1973 saw 591 Americans repatriated by North Vietnam. The problem was that the U.S. intelligence list of men believed to be alive at that time in captivity — in Vietnam, Laos and possibly across the border in southern China and in the Soviet Union — was much larger.Possibly hundreds of men larger.
The State Department stated publicly in 1973 that intelligence data showed the prisoner list to be starkly incomplete. For example, only nine of the 591 returnees came out of Laos, though experts in U.S. military intelligence listed 311 men as missing in that Hanoi-run country alone, and their field reports indicated that many of those men were probably still alive. Hanoi said it was returning all the prisoners it had. President Nixon, on March 29, 1973, seconded that claim, telling the nation on television: “All of our American POWs are on their way home.” This discrepancy has never been acknowledged or explained by official Washington. Over the years in Washington, McCain, at times almost single-handedly, has pushed through Pentagon-desired legislation to make it impossible or much harder for the public to acquire POW/MIA information and much easier for the defense bureaucracy to keep it hidden.

[highball]

Last time I checked we oppose him because of his Congressional record. Not much noise about his war service. I think FReepers are smarter than that.

Unfortunately, that's not always the case. I've read some really vile stuff about McCain's time in VN on other threads.

Agreed. There are so many substantive reasons to oppose McCain, we don't need to give any credence to this cowardly, sleazy group's charges.