booo...
Yooo Hooo... I'm over HERE!!!
Posted on 06/22/2008 11:27:28 AM PDT by neverdem
For most people, “Swift boat” has become a political verb, a synonym for the kind of attack that helped destroy the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry in 2004.
But for a group of Vietnam veterans at the center of the attacks, it is still a fresh fight.
On Friday, the group, who served with Mr. Kerry in Vietnam, sent a letter to T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas oilman who helped finance the 2004 attack advertisements, taking him up on a challenge he issued last November: that he would give $1 million to anyone who could disprove a single charge the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made against Mr. Kerry.
The letter-writers served alongside Mr. Kerry during the events that the Swift boat group insisted he had embellished or made up to win his military decorations.
Identifying themselves as “patriotic, concerned veterans” they say the accusations of the Swift boat group damaged their reputations and deeply affected their families, “tarnished the sacrifices we made, called into question the medals we were awarded and challenged the very authenticity of our service.”
The group is working with Mr. Kerry, who himself seized on the challenge soon after Mr. Pickens made it at an American Spectator dinner. In a letter, he offered to meet with Mr. Pickens to rebut the charges. Mr. Pickens wrote back to say that he was good for his money, but that Mr. Kerry would have to provide his military record, the journal he kept in Vietnam and movies and tapes made in his tours there.
Mr. Pickens also qualified his challenge, saying he meant that someone would have to prove false things in the group’s television advertisements — putting aside a best-selling book and extensive news media interviews that attracted the bulk of the attention. He challenged...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
A BCD results from sentence of court martial. Only a General Court Martial has jurisdiction over commissioned officers. The record of trial would be public, it is not a part of the service record. Kerry is hiding something else in his file.
Interesting that this is happening now given that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth formally stopped all operations on May 31, 2008.
Now the anti-swifts can spread their lies without effective rebuttal.....or so it seems....we will see.
It is his original DD-214 we’d like to see. The unrestricted .SF-180 is the means to that end
I am proud of the money I contributed to the swift boat vets.
I am proud of them. They shouldn’t have had to do what they did after giving so much already. Nobody wants to come under that kind attention from the MSM, and put themselves directly in front of the democrat sleaze machine.
But they did.
And they certainly helped save us from a President Kerry.
He certainly would have handed over Iraq to the terrorists long ago by now, and taxed our economy into shambles.
So, no one has reviewed this "evidence" yet - this article is just a one-sided press release.
“Identifying themselves as “patriotic, concerned veterans” they say the accusations of the Swift boat group damaged their reputations and deeply affected their families, “tarnished the sacrifices we made, called into question the medals we were awarded and challenged the very authenticity of our service.”
Give me a break, you spineless whiners!! What about what the Swift Vets went through for telling the truth? Death threats, calls in the middle of the night, excoriations in their hometown papers, etc. etc. They are the true heroes. The only medals called into question were the ones Kerry threw over the fence.
This is all about trying to deflect any 527’s going after Obama in the future. If Kerry can come out of this challenge with any modicum of success, even if he has to lie as before to do it, it will throw the pace off for other groups to go after Barry.
“...how long has it been? Four years, and Kerry has still yet to set the record straight?”
STILL waiting for Kerry to release his military records as he promised.............
And who wrote up his applications for his Purple Hearts?
And who stated that his fellow service members were dope crazed murders in the mold of "Jengas (his pronunciation) Kan"?
And who cut tail and ran when others stayed to fight?
I don't want to have a coronary incident here so I better quit.
The POS is and always will be a most heinous traitor in my educated opinion!!!!!
Supporting a traitor can tend to have that affect.
And Juan MacInsane supports Kerry and vilified the Swift Boat Vets!
booo...Have they offered anything new? Has Kerry opened his full and complete record to the public? Will they produce the records and documentation Pickens requested from Kerry that were never supplied?
One has to ask, why has Kerry been so obtuse about allowing the public access to his records, when he demanded Bush and others to make full release of theirs?
Last year when Pickens issued the challenge, Kerry said, "It's beyond me; it's important for all the vets who served with me, who cared about it, whose own records were lied about. The problem is, it's the way they operate on the other side, and we have to end swift-boating forever. The way to do that is to have this public accounting."
Kerry lied about 2.5 million Veterans and we still wait for his "public accounting." Instead, we see concern over what, maybe 10 guys?
BS
2004
• August 20 — “The Times Attacks the Swift Vets”
The Times finally devotes a front-page story to the Swift Boat veterans challenging John Kerry’s Vietnam war record—but it follows a pattern reminiscent of the Clinton scandal days in focusing on the subjects making the attack instead of the actual anti-Democratic charges raised, an angle clear from the headline, “Friendly Fire: The Birth of an Attack on Kerry.”
August 24 — More Anti-Swift Bias from a Paper “Calling Itself” Objective
Elisabeth Bumiller and Kate Zernike’s front-page story on Bush denouncing outside political ads includes a dismissive description of the Swift Boat Vets. Also: What about the “web of ties” between the left-wing Moveon.org and the Kerry campaign?
• September 7 — Reviving an Anti-Bush Sr. Urban Legend
Kate Zernike revives an anti-Bush Sr. urban legend, the myth that during the 1992 campaign, George H.W. Bush marveled at a grocery-store scanner as if he’d never seen one before.
******
2003
The Times’ white alleged reporter who dramatically botched a story, was Kate Zernike; the story was on the reaction, or lack thereof, to the June, 2000 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the Boys Scouts of America’s ban on gay scout leaders. Kate Zernike’s August 29, 2000 front page story, reported that “corporate and governmental support for the organization had slipped markedly,” citing the withdrawal of monetary support by Chase Manhattan, Merill Lynch and Textron. As William McGowan chronicles in Coloring the News, Zernike was found to have written one falsehood after another, including her suggestion that many parents of boy scouts were opposed to the policy, and that, as McGowan put it, “a grassroots rebellion … could be in the offing.”
“Not a week later, though, the Times was forced to run a mortifying, five-paragraph correction undercutting almost every one of Zernike’s contentions.”
Was Kate Zernike fired? Not at all. Was she reprimanded? Of course not. On the contrary, if anything, in supporting the campaign against Boy Scouts of America led by the mainstream media’s “gay mafia,” Zernike’s lies enhanced her standing at the Times.
******
January 24, 2007
Kate Zernike’s front-page profile of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (featuring a large picture of Pelosi shaking Bush’s hand at last night’s State of the Union address) opened with a celebration of Pelosi’s femaleness and ends with “poignant commentary” by the left’s new favorite Bush fighter, Democrat Sen. James Webb of Virginia.
******
May 29, 2006
Kate Zernike Reporting For Duty
The New York Times’ reporter of things John Kerry saluted Kerry’s latest version of his service in Vietnam in her lengthy, uncritical and uninformed recitation of Kerry’s “evidence” that he was wronged by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Ms. Zernike’s crack, or should I say cracked, reporting skills apparently do not include even including the few facts she does know.
Her latest piece of puffery begins:
John Kerry starts by showing the entry in a log he kept from 1969: “Feb 12: 0800 run to Cambodia.”
He moves on to the photographs: his boat leaving the base at Ha Tien, Vietnam; the harbor; the mountains fading frame by frame as the boat heads north; the special operations team the boat was ferrying across the border; the men reading maps and setting off flares.
“They gave me a hat,” Mr. Kerry says. “I have the hat to this day,” he declares, rising to pull it from his briefcase. “I have the hat.”
Omitted from Ms. Zernike’s story is any mention of what she said when interviewed by CNN’s Aaron Brown on August 23, 2004:
BROWN: …The one issue the Senator has some problems on I think is this Cambodia, fair?
ZERNIKE: Right. Right.
BROWN: He says he was there on Christmas and the record doesn’t seem to support that.
ZERNIKE: No, in fact, if you look in “Tour of Duty” by Douglas Brinkley, which is his biography, or a biography of the Senator, he’s somewhere else on December 25th, on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day. Brinkley himself says there’s some question Kerry may have been in Cambodia later.
So, now, Kerry reveals one line from his journal – which he refuses to share with the public — to say he was, according even to the New York Times’ display of the supposed evidence, “35 miles from the border.” No mention by Zernike of Kerry’s previous false claims to have been in Cambodia on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.
The expose in Unfit For Command of Kerry’s exaggerations and lies in his staged Brinkley bio relied upon Kerry’s own words and the differing eyewitness and knowledgeable accounts of those who also served in the same unit.
Sorry, Ms. Zernike, your salute to John Kerry rings as hollow as his at his nomination.
GIVE THE LADY A KEWPIE DOLL!!! This is EXACTLY what is at play here! I read this editorial a couple of days ago.....
It’s just political smut
You’ve probably heard a few of these claims and perhaps even forwarded an e-mail or two.
Barack Obama uses illicit drugs.
He’s a closet Muslim who was sworn in to the U.S. Senate on a Quran.
He doesn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance.
His wife uttered a racially charged epithet from a church pulpit.
Never mind that none of this is true, or that we’ve missed a slander or two. Shhhh, his children are black and so is his wife. Pass it on.
Dirty tricks aren’t new to American politics — 19th-century campaigns were laced with accusations of infidelity, substance abuse, cross-dressing and treason. But that doesn’t justify the vile cyber-assaults on Obama. These attacks are more than political mischief, or even legitimate hardball opposition research to detect flip-flops. These outrageous and disgusting fabrications exploit the worst instincts about race and religion in America at a time when this nation is trying hard to transcend those differences. To his credit, Obama, who is perhaps the most Internet-savvy presidential candidate ever, has started Fight the Smears, a Web site to directly confront the rumors and whispers.
Today, a single button on a computer can propel a lie worldwide. Unchallenged accusations can quickly be accepted as fact because information passed from friend to friend carries an imprimatur of truth.That makes a distortion politically damaging even if it is blatantly untrue. Remember the Swift Boat allegations against Sen. John Kerry four years ago and racial whispers during the 2000 South Carolina primary suggesting that Sen. John McCain had fathered a black child?
Some of this filth now passes for legitimate discussion. Fox News recently apologized for inadvertently portraying Michelle Obama’s onstage greeting with her husband as one half of a “terrorist fist jab,” a characterization that originated on the Web. Later, Fox News labeled her “Obama’s baby mama” in a graphic, a tacky reference suggesting she’s an unwed mother. And yes, another apology.
We live in the Information Age. Unfortunately, information isn’t the same as truth.
— The Dallas Morning News.
| This is all about trying to deflect any 527’s going after Obama in the future.
|
Remember when that asshat jaunted around the bay with 2 or 3 of his swift boat buddys posing as heros and then the salute at convention and the “REPORTING FOR DOODEY”?
LoL! L0L!
what a jerk
KATE ZERNIKE
June 05, 2006
Someone else noticed Kate Zernike's failure to report
At Real Clear Politics, Thomas Lipscomb complains that New York Times reporter Kate Zernike showed no journalistic curiosity at all in her May 28 report on Sen. John Kerry's long-delayed "response" to some of the questions about his Vietnam War experience.
Lipscomb reminds us that The Times did its best during the 2004 presidential campaign not to report on the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," who alleged that Kerry did not earn his Purple Hearts and Bronze Star in the manner he claimed, was not in Cambodia on Christmas 1968 as he claimed, and unfairly smeared all U.S. troops in Vietnam as Genghis Khan-like barbarians.
With no effort or investigation, The Times repeatedly referred to the claims of Kerry's Swift Boat antagonists as "unsubstantiated." Lipscomb says:
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
Really? I thought it was about returning 'Vietnam' and 'heroism' to center stage so that people will be reminded what a metrosexual weenie Obama is compared to McCain. I don't understand why any Democrat would want to do this, and I certainly don't understand why The New York Times would want to help. But hey, it's their money. Go Times!