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 ...
Come on Bill....
We need to see how he received his first PH. There was no after action report and the "wound," caused by a piece of metal the size of a rose thorn was self-inflicted from an M-79 grenade launcher on a training mission.
I could really care less who you vote for in November. That is, once again, entirely your right and your privilage and none of my business.
Conversely, whom I support and/or vote for is none of yours.
If the facts concerning John McCain bother you, don't charge the messenger of "Bull Shit". Accept them as what did happen and be a man and say, it doesn't matter to you that you will still support and vote for John McCain.
Again, I really could care less.
But I am not going to sit idly by and let you get away with calling me a liar!
Greg Adams
Brownsville, TX
McCain served HONORABLY
He shows that he is a true officer in that he wont partake in criticizing other soldiers.
He knows what that could lead to.
He’s full off air on a lot of things but this aint one of them
The name is Greg, but you can call me Mr. Adams or sir! I believe I have earned it.
yessir
Thank you for your service. And I mean that.
I simply stated the fact - John McCain "attacked" the Swift Boat Vets for Truth and John McCain did defend John Kerry's War Record!
My skin is thin on this son. Don't change the subject to now infer that I am attacking McCain's record.
Had you served your country in that ignoble "war" to come home and have John Kerry call you a dope headed murderer and then watch and listen to John McCain attack honorable veterans shedding the light of truth about John Kerry's record you might not have been so predisposed to continue impugning my integrity concerning the matter!
McCain DID come to Kerry’s rescue when he was being challenged by the SBVFT — McCain even asked the White House to rebut and condemn the SBVFT which the White House would not do...
It is a sad state of affairs - especially to see McCain come to the rescue of a POS like Kerry who insulted everything I hold dear and for McCain to insult the honorable men of his own Navy of being out of line.
One of the more informative articles is attached:
KEEP IN MIND- THIS IS FROM MSNBC long time McCain pimps, until he is now facing Obama...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5612836/
MSNBC.com
McCain deplores anti-Kerry ad
White House declines to repudiate it
The Associated Press
updated 10:51 a.m. PT, Thurs., Aug. 5, 2004
WASHINGTON - Republican Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, called an ad criticizing John Kerry’s military service “dishonest and dishonorable” and urged the White House on Thursday to condemn it as well.
The White House declined.
“It was the same kind of deal that was pulled on me,” McCain said in an interview with The Associated Press, comparing the anti-Kerry ad to tactics in his bitter Republican primary fight with President Bush.
The 60-second ad features Vietnam veterans who accuse the Democratic presidential nominee of lying about his decorated Vietnam War record and betraying his fellow veterans by later opposing the conflict.
“When the chips were down, you could not count on John Kerry,” one of the veterans, Larry Thurlow, says in the ad. Thurlow didn’t serve on Kerry’s swiftboat, but says he witnessed the events that led to Kerry winning a Bronze Star and the last of his three Purple Hearts. Kerry’s crewmates support the candidate and call him a hero.
The ad, scheduled to air in a few markets in Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin, was produced by Stevens, Reed, Curcio and Potham, the same team that produced McCain’s ads in 2000.
“I wish they hadn’t done it,” McCain said of his former advisers. “I don’t know if they knew all the facts.”
A call for condemnation
Asked if the White House knew about the ad or helped find financing for it, McCain said, “I hope not, but I don’t know. But I think the Bush campaign should specifically condemn the ad.”
McCain, chairman of Bush’s campaign in Arizona, later said the Bush campaign has denied any involvement and added, “I can’t believe the president would pull such a cheap stunt.”
White House spokesman Scott McClellan declined to condemn the ad. He did denounce the proliferation of spending by independent groups, such as the anti-Kerry veterans organization, that are playing on both sides of the political fence.
“The president thought he got rid of this unregulated soft money when he signed the bipartisan campaign finance reform into law,” McClellan said. A chief sponsor of that bill, which Bush initially opposed, was McCain.
In 2000, Bush’s supporters sponsored a rumor campaign against McCain in the South Carolina primary, helping Bush win the primary and the nomination. McCain’s supporters have never forgiven the Bush team.
McCain said that’s all in the past to him, but he’s speaking out against the anti-Kerry ad because “it reopens all the old wounds of the Vietnam War, which I spent the last 35 years trying to heal.”
‘I deplore this kind of politics’
“I deplore this kind of politics,” McCain said. “I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable. As it is, none of these individuals served on the boat (Kerry) commanded. Many of his crew have testified to his courage under fire. I think John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam. I think George Bush served honorably in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.”
Retired Adm. Roy Hoffmann, head of the Swift Boat group, said they respected McCain’s “right to express his opinion and we hope he extends to us the same respect and courtesy, particularly since we served with John Kerry, we knew him well and Sen. McCain did not.”
McCain himself spent more than five years in a Vietnam prisoner of war camp. A bona fide war hero, McCain, like Kerry, used his war record as the foundation of his presidential campaign.
The Kerry campaign has denounced the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, saying none of the men in the ad served on the boat that Kerry commanded. Three veterans on Kerry’s boat that day — Jim Rassmann, who says Kerry saved his life, Gene Thorson and Del Sandusky, the driver on Kerry’s boat, said the group was lying.
They say Kerry was injured, and Rassmann called the group’s account “pure fabrication.”
Hoffmann said none of the 13 veterans in the commercial served on Kerry’s boat but rather were in other swiftboats within 50 yards of Kerry’s. The group claims that there was no gunfire on the day Kerry pulled Rassmann from a muddy river in the Mekong Delta and that Kerry’s arm was not wounded, as he has claimed.
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5612836/
Aside from Adm. Schachte, we have Kerry's own testimony in his authorized biography: After completing training, he left the harbor on his first deployment "never having faced enemy fire".
Moreover, I believe that this particular Purple Heart, while being his first in terms of chronology, was actually the third he was awarded. This was the Purple Heart, applied for well after the fact, that got him his ticket home.
I aint gonna swiftboat McCain
My voluntary service was meant for all fellow citizens, but more so for "our principles" as established by our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
Oaths meant something to many of us who served. Unfortunately it meant nothing to the likes of John Kerry!
You see the pragmatism Admiral Hoffman uses?
I am not attacking your Character, I dont know you.
I just don’t think swift boating McCain is in our interest.
Kerry contacted McCain about being his VP in 2004 and McCain considered it. 'Nuff said.
When John Kerry's Courage Went M.I.A. Senator covered up evidence of P.O.W.'s left behind. McCain worked with Kerry on this. From the linked article:
"A number of staffers became increasingly upset about Kerry's close relationship with the Department of Defense, which was supposed to be under examination. (Dick Cheney was then defense secretary.) It had become clear that Kerry, Zwenig, and others close to the chairman, such as Senator John McCain of Arizona, a dominant committee member, had gotten cozy with the officials and agencies supposedly being probed for obscuring P.O.W. information over the years. Committee hearings, for example, were being orchestrated to suit the examinees, who were receiving lists of potential questions in advance. Another internal memo from the period, by a staffer who requested anonymity, said: "Speaking for the other investigators, I can say we are sick and tired of this investigation being controlled by those we are supposedly investigating."
God Bless,
Greg Adams
Brownsville, TX
LoL!
As someone who has gone over all of the publicly released records, this is probably Kerry's most vulnerable area. The other two PHs were also self-inflicted, but they were covered over with official paperwork.
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