Liberal Bloggers Try to Tie NY Slimes Piece to Stolen Honor
Oh my, just when you thought that the fantasies couldn't get any more fantastic:
For the moment, though, I'm more interested in the 2004 election--the one McCain didn't run in. You see, I find it a mighty curious coincidence that two of the companies for which Iseman was lobbying John McCain in 1999 and 2000--the time of their potentially inappropriate relationship--also happen to be the two television companies that championed the Kerry smear, "Stolen Honor," in 2004.
Stolen Honor
Stolen Honor, you'll recall, was a 45-long propaganda piece, repeating the allegations the Swift Boaters made against John Kerry. It came out in September 2004 (as Republicans have promised a smear against Hillary or Obama will come out at precisely the same time this cycle). Shortly thereafter, Sinclair Broadcasting ordered its stations to pre-empt normal broadcasting to play the "documentary." Sinclair also fired one employee who complained about the order.
Bzzzzt! Wrong! Stolen Honor was not about the Swift Boat Veterans' allegations at all. There was no discussion of Kerry's Purple Hearts or Christmas in Cambodia. Instead the focus was on POWs held in North Vietnam, and how Kerry's staged "Winter Soldier" hearings in the early 1970s created this false image of our soldiers in Vietnam as acting in a fashion reminiscent of Jenjhis Khan. It was about how the North Vietnamese used Kerry's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when interrogating the POWs, to say, look, here's a naval officer who admits he committed war crimes. Why don't you admit your war crimes as well?
The only real connection between Stolen Honor and the Swiftees is that the POWs and the Swift Boat Vets combined forces. But there really was no overlap in the charges made against Kerry by the two groups.
But the post does us one big favor; it reminds us of John McCain's reaction to Sinclair's later decision not to air Stolen Honor:
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., blasted Sinclair's decision: "There is no valid reason for Sinclair to shirk its responsibility in what I assume is a very misguided attempt to prevent your viewers from completely appreciating the extraordinary sacrifices made on their behalf by Americans serving in Iraq."
Something for us conservatives to remember when considering John McCain's initial negative reaction to the Swiftees is that he supported Stolen Honor. McCain opposed the focus on the medals, but felt the focus on Kerry's antiwar activities was legitimate.
"As a veteran, it disgusts me that the Swift Boats we [presumably the editorial "we"] loved while we were in uniform on the Mekong Delta have been rendered, in Karl Rove's twisted politics, an ugly verb meaning to lie about someone's character just to win an election," Kerry said in the email, supposedly emailed to 3 million "supporters." (I'm not a supporter, but it also showed up in my email.)
"But as someone who cares about winning this election and changing the country I love, I know it's not enough to complain about a past we can't change when our challenge is to win the future--which is why we must stop the Swiftboating, stop the push-polling, stop the front groups, and stop the email chain smears."
Why should we stop Swiftboating? It's just pointing out the lies that a candidate tells about his past.
How the Swiftees, POWs and other Vietnam veterans circumvented the media and reached out to the public is a story that has profound implications for future political campaigns and news reporting….
…Honor, Loyalty and Patriotism…These values were able to rouse hundreds of Swifties and millions of other veterans from their deep political sleep of 35 years. The blindness of our opponents can be accounted for only because such values are rare and often considered laughable among Kerry’s operatives and media allies. These values are neither rare nor a subject of amusement among most Americans. In 2004, they changed the course of history.
I am looking forward to this one; as part of the blogging team that originally broke the Christmas in Cambodia story, we were thrilled when the Swiftees publicizing that issue resulted in a paralyzed John Kerry campaign for a full two weeks after the DNC. We know that the Swiftees will always be "discredited" to the media, but those who followed things closely know that it was Le Fraude who was discredited, not the SBVfTs!
Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign moved quickly yesterday to blunt what it sees as a sensationalist Swift Boat-style attack by a firefighters’ union.
Seeking to avoid the mistake of delay that so hurt the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004, the former New York City mayor’s campaign went on the offensive before the attack was even formally released, dismissing the union as politically motivated.
But actually Giuliani's team got it right:
Howard Safir, former New York City Fire Department commissioner, said firefighters across the country “are very supportive of Rudy and what he did.”
He added, “Firefighter unions are not firefighters. This is bogus stuff. This is not Swift Boat.”
Get it? This is bogus stuff, unlike the Swift Boat Vets. Kudos to Safir!
This is hilarious. Eric Boehlert tries one last time to resuscitate the "discredited Swift Boat Vets" claim. But in doing so, Boehlert makes two fatal mistakes: He ignores the places where the Swiftees were right and Kerry was plainly wrong, and he attributes any conflict between stories to the Swiftees lying.
Here's an example of the second:
The fourth person to appear in the first Swift Boat ad, Letson announced, "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart, because I treated him for that injury." In another affidavit, Letson claimed Kerry's wound was too small to justify a medal.
First, Navy guidelines during the Vietnam War for Purple Hearts did not take into account the size of the wound when awarding the honor, which meant Letson's claim was irrelevant. Second, Kerry's medical records indicate Letson did not sign off as the "person administering treatment" on December 3, 1968, which raised doubts about whether Letson ever even treated Kerry. (Why, if Kerry's wounds were so minor, was Letson able to recall the incident so vividly 35 years later?)
First, regardless of whether the size of the wound matters technically, I am sure that no grunt who scratched himself while crawling through the underbrush would claim this entitled him to a Purple Heart. And second, Letson explained that the orderly signed the treatment form. The bottom line is that we don't know what happened; there is a conflict between stories. Maybe we say that given there's a conflict we'll give Kerry the benefit of the doubt. But to jump from that to saying that Letson's discredited is ridiculous.
But the major point here is that Boehlert completely ignores the places where Kerry was found to have lied, or where his supporters among the Swiftees were found to have lied, and there are several instances of this:
Christmas in Cambodia. Kerry reportedly told this story on many, many occasions, including on the floor of the Senate. But his own biographer, faced with conclusive evidence that Kerry did not spend Christmas (actually Christmas Eve) 1968 in Cambodia, did not include this story in an otherwise fairly exhaustive account of Kerry's second tour of duty in Vietnam. The Swiftees highlighted this:
Somehow Boehlert completely forgets about this story. Wonder why? Maybe because it discredits John Kerry and shows that the Swiftees hit their target?
Third, we come to David Alston, a crewmember briefly on Kerry's second Swift Boat. Alston famously mentioned two incidents where John Kerry showed heroism under fire:
"Manning the deck guns, most of us got wounded sooner or later, including Lieutenant Kerry. It would have been easiest, in an ambush, to simply rake the shore with return fire and roar on down the river to safety. But Lieutenant Kerry was known for taking the fight straight to the enemy. I can still see him now, standing in the doorway of the pilothouse, firing his M-16, shouting orders through the smoke and chaos.
Once, he even directed the helmsman to beach the boat, right into the teeth of an ambush, and pursued our attackers on foot, into the jungle. In the toughest of situations, Lieutenant Kerry showed judgment, loyalty and courage. Even wounded, or confronting sights no man should ever have to see, he never lost his cool."
Now the funny thing about those two events is that Kerry was not present at the first, and Alston was not present at the second. Kerry claimed the first incident as his own in 2002, but the actual man in the door of the pilothouse was Tedd Peck, as even Brinkley admitted (Page 264-265):
... suddenly there was a booming explosion that literally lifted PCF-94 right out of the water. Peck was standing in the pilothouse doorway with an M-16 at the ready to start strafing the jungle. Just as he pulled the trigger he was hit by two machine-gun bullets, one in his arm and one in his chest... [a]lthough bleeding profusely, Peck managed to continue firing back...
Alston himself was wounded in that engagement, and was not present for Kerry's beach the boat incident.
Another Kerry supporter among the Swift Boat vets was also found to have lied. From a Washington Post account of the Bay Hap River incident:
In his book, Brinkley writes that a skipper who remains friendly to Kerry, Skip Barker, took part in the March 13 raid. But there is no documentary evidence of Barker's participation. Barker could not be reached for comment.
So maybe that's what Boehlert means by "discredited Swift Boat vets"?
