[Intolerant in NJ]

I've always liked Brit, but he disappointed me last week. He disappointed a number of people that wrote E-mails in defense of these Vets to Fox. That could be partial reason why Fox is changing its tune on this story...Absolutely right - here's a sampling from last week - O'Reilly: "Swiftvets are immoral"; Smith: "Swiftvets are liars"; Krauthammer: "ad is stupid"; Angle: "Swiftvet recants his testimony according to 'Boston Globe'" - Hume was only lukewarm on the whole issue; in the roundtable on his Special Report, he, Kondracke and Krauthammer seemed to think the whole Swiftvets issue was unimportant, with only Barnes saying it should be investigated further. I didn't see Hume on Sunday, but someone posted here that he said, approximately, "Kerry volunteered to serve, that should be the end of it".

Fox was in the tank last week - I sent them an angry e-mail over the weekend, as did my daughter, and apparently a lot of other Freepers - it would be nice to think that made the difference, but whateve happened Fox made an obvious U-turn between even Sunday and yesterday - that O'Reilly had an "immoral" Swiftvet on his show last night and showed him a bit of courtesy was a victory of sorts. Tonight, in addition to asking the right questions of Cowen, Brit on his own followed up on Carl Cameron's story on Christmas in Cambodia from last night, asking Cameron if there had yet been any reply from the Kerry campaign ("not very much of one", said Carl) - Fox was off the track for some reason, but they're chugging along nicely now......

[Political Junkie Too]

...only Barnes saying it should be investigated further. I didn't see Hume on Sunday, but someone posted here that he said, approximately, "Kerry volunteered to serve, that should be the end of it".

That seems to be the crux of the argument. Barnes is saying that the swift boat veterans are also decorated, and also served, and yet nobody is giving them the same benefit of doubt. If Kerry is attacked over his activities in Vietnam, he's defended on the basis that he served honorably, but that same honor is not being shown to the swift boat veterans.

It may be that the next mantra is that Kerry "volunteered to serve" while others only served when drafted.

-PJ