Posted on 09/11/2004 10:53:46 AM PDT by USMCVIETVET
Call your local newspapers, jewish and veterans organizations, and request they demand a public apology from Sanders and from the Kerry campaign. See last 2 paragraphs of article.
Oakland Tribune
Kerry critics draw crowd, ire during speech in S.F. By Josh Richman STAFF WRITER
Saturday, September 11, 2004 - SAN FRANCISCO -- The summer heat grew milder but the rhetoric index was sky-high Friday as two leading critics of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's military service repeated their attacks while protesters picketed their presence.
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth co-founder John O'Neill, author of "Unfit for Command," again aired his claims that Kerry not only conflated his own record in Vietnam for political gain but also smeared other veterans' reputations while speaking out against the war after his return.
"It's simply a fraud on the American people, much of it," he told an audience at the Commonwealth Club of California's Market Street offices.
Also speaking Friday was retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson, a senior aide to President Clinton who since has authored two books taking Clinton and other Democrats to task for what he deems their failings in military wisdom and national security. Antiwar liberals "hijacked" the Democratic party decades ago, he claimed, and Kerry is "ill-equipped to lead our young troops in combat."
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth filed a disclosure report Friday showing it had raised $1.9 million since April 23. O'Neill said Friday the section 527 advocacy group has received thousands of donations averaging $65 to $70, but the report shows $1.19 million was raised from a dozen donors, of whom eight -- including O'Neill himself -- are wealthy Texans.
O'Neill focused Friday on three specific incidents during what he called Kerry's "short and controversial" four-month combat stint. First, he said Kerry's account of a secret mission inside Cambodia on Christmas 1968 was "a total and complete fabrication ... a malicious lie."
Second, O'Neill said a report Kerry filed on a January 1969 incident claims enemy troops were involved, while Kerry's book claims he felt guilt for having accidentally slain civilians. And third, he claimed, Kerry's boat not only wasn't under fire when rescuing an overboard crew member in March 1969 but actually fled the scene during a short firefight.
O'Neill himself never saw Kerry in Vietnam; he took command of the same swift boat Kerry had led several weeks after Kerry left. Taking questions and mild, sporadic heckling from the audience, he said most officers and enlisted men in Kerry's unit -- although not aboard the same boat -- now feel Kerry is unfit to be commander-in-chief.
Outside, a few dozen protesters bore signs declaring "Unfit for Consumption -- Liar go home!" and "Swift Boat Lies for Bush" as the Kerry campaign recruited volunteers and registered voters.
Former Deputy Assistant Navy Secretary Wade Sanders of San Diego, who commanded a swift boat alongside Kerry's and who now leads California Veterans for Kerry, called O'Neill's claims "a pack of lies." "I would go into combat with John Kerry any time, any place -- I wouldn't follow George Bush into an ice cream parlor."
O'Neill "needs to be confronted with the lies he's fomenting," Sanders said. He likened O'Neill and Karl Rove to Nazi propaganda master Joseph Goebbels, saying they "studied at that man's knee."
Contact Josh Richman at jrichman@angnewspapers.com .
Response to this article by Bruce Kesler:
As a proudly Jewish veteran of Vietnam, I take strong exception (and that's more polite than it deserves) at Kerry's California Veterans for Kerry leader, Wade Sanders, using language that likens John O'Neill to Joseph Goebbels. This is the same as when John Kerry said "The only feeling you could have was that you were like the Germans" in being in Vietnam [Dick Cavett show, 1971]. It is because of Kerry's words and actions then and now, and those like Sanders whom Kerry enlists in leading his campaign, that Vietnam veterans are so outraged, as are so many other citizens. Their brand of gutter smear politics reaches its ultimate low with likening Vietnam veterans to Nazis.
Don't delay.
Top of his "TO DO" list
When you have to use Nazi-esque insults in a debate, you have already lost.
I notice the critics of the Swift Boat Veterans always conveniently fail to point out that the Kerry campaign had to admit that there "problems" in Kerry's statements and background: like the Cambodia incident and the first purple heart.
Keep on SBVT. It's working. Big time.
What is with the dnc and their infactuation with all things NAZI?
I'm surpirsed that more Jews aren't furious with the analogies that the Democrats have been making between Bush and Hitler. Not only is it obviously completely false...it is a slap in the face to anyone who suffered under the tyranny and brutality of the Third Reich. When they attack Bush in this way, they marginalize just what it was that Hitler did to these people.
If Sanders thinks he's right, why doesn't he sue O'Neill. O'Neill has said to go ahead and sue him. No one has, including Kerry and the "sue-happy" DNC.
I'ts obvious that Kerry's followers have lost the argument when they start invoking any reference to Nazi's and Hitler.
That should speak volumes to those who care to listen.
And let's not forget this sleazeball picked 9/11 for this outrageous accusation.
I mean, Nazis were National Socialists sort of like how Nancy Pelosi belongs to that National organization for American Socialists. Democrats and Nazis goose step to the same political beat these days it seems. They have even got their own reincarnated version of Goebbels in the abundant form of Michael Moore.
At any rate, whatever the rats seems to come up these days seems to fall into the the old "I'm rubber you're glue" formula. Why do they even bother?
I often wonder that myself.
Apparently Sanders wasn't one of the ones tortured because of Kerry's testimony.
Good one!
I agree. Done.
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