John Kerry is considering Swift Boat Veterans

[Pacridge]

And as former Navy, you should know that purple hearts and silver stars don't make you a leader. I will salute a Medal of Honor winner with pride and respect, but I'm not going to let him run my country unless I feel comfortable that he is up to the task.

Some sailors thought that he was brilliant in the Mekong, others found him to be a blithering idiot. That's going to be true for anyone in any occupation. The Swift Boat Vets made me look at the records released by the Kerry Camp and I wasn't impressed.

Coupling his military record with his performance at the congressional hearings proved to be a large mark in the "Con" side of voting for him.

I have to admit that his Nam record didn't do a lot for me in convincing me to support Kerry. Though former Green Beret Lt. Jim Rassmann lives down the road from me and I tend to believe his version of the events. Bush's and Cheney's Nam record's, or lack there, of spoke louder to me them then the noise of what the Swift Boat Vets were able to crank out. I found it interesting that a number of them had endorsed him in previous elections. :screwy

 

[LiberalFINGER]

have to admit that his Nam record didn't do a lot for me in convincing me to support Kerry. Though former Green Beret Lt. Jim Rassmann lives down the road from me and I tend to believe his version of the events. Bush's and Cheney's Nam record's, or lack there, of spoke louder to me them then the noise of what the Swift Boat Vets were able to crank out. I found it interesting that a number of them had endorsed him in previous elections.

Having served in Vietnam or not is not a measure of a persons value as a leader. Granted, I feel more comfortable having a CINC who has actually served, but at the same time, I would feel better about having one that hasn't had a significant amount of service then one that accused american soldiers of commiting attrocities.

As a United States Naval Officer, Kerry had a legal and moral responsibility to report any unlawful acts to his superiors. Personal courage is a trait sought out by the Navy and if the allegations he made to congress are true, then I am greatly disapointed in his timing. If he was correct in his observations, then he should have said something immediately.

I am sure, as a Sailor, that you espouse the values of integrity and personal courage. Would you not expect the same from your leaders?

 

[Pacridge]

Having served in Vietnam or not is not a measure of a persons value as a leader. Granted, I feel more comfortable having a CINC who has actually served, but at the same time, I would feel better about having one that hasn't had a significant amount of service then one that accused american soldiers of commiting attrocities.

As a United States Naval Officer, Kerry had a legal and moral responsibility to report any unlawful acts to his superiors. Personal courage is a trait sought out by the Navy and if the allegations he made to congress are true, then I am greatly disapointed in his timing. If he was correct in his observations, then he should have said something immediately.

I am sure, as a Sailor, that you espouse the values of integrity and personal courage. Would you not expect the same from your leaders?

Were you in the military? I was. If you were then you know in what climate you served. I don't know the climate in which Kerry served. I know there are things that went on overseas in peace time that I saw that I wasn't thrilled about, shit happens. It's extremely hard to speak out against actions when they are considered the "norm." If as you say he should have said something "immediately" I can verify this is not always a wise move in a military unit. I have no idea what Kerry's experiences were and I'm not willing to second guess. Just like I'm not willing to second guess the decision of the soilder who recently shot that man in the mosque in Falluja.

As far as my personal courage- I cleaned a lot of toilets.

 

[LiberalFINGER]

There are channels set up to deal with violations of law. As an officer, he was obligated to follow those channels. He was actually part of the process seeing as though he was part of the chain of command. Why did he wait?

btw, the thing about your personal courage and integrity. . .I didn't mean it to sound like I was questioning. I literally meant that I was sure that you had those qualities. I have no reason to believe that you don't.

 

[Pacridge]

There are channels set up to deal with violations of law. As an officer, he was obligated to follow those channels. He was actually part of the process seeing as though he was part of the chain of command. Why did he wait?

btw, the thing about your personal courage and integrity. . .I didn't mean it to sound like I was questioning. I literally meant that I was sure that you had those qualities. I have no reason to believe that you don't.

Yeah, there's channels but I'm sorry it's just not that easy. Sounds good, looks good on paper, not how it really works.

BTW I didn't think you were questioning my integrity, but I really did clean a lot of toilets.

 

[LiberalFINGER]

Score one for the blue-jackets.


No, it's not. But I would expect someone who wants us to make him the leader of the free world to be able to make the tough calls.

 

[Pacridge]

Score one for the blue-jackets.


No, it's not. But I would expect someone who wants us to make him the leader of the free world to be able to make the tough calls.

I see and by tough calls you mean whether to not show up for duty in Texas or to not show up for duty in Alabama?

 

[Pacridge]

Stolen Honor Viewing

On an earlier post, may have been this thread (??), I committed to Vague that I would find and view a copy of the film "Stolen Honor" Mission accomplished. The film paints an awful picture of Kerry and his activities upon returning from Vietnam. After watching this film it would be hard to view Kerry in any favorable light. Well, until you start your fact check. I'll post a couple quick one's here. This goes back to "if you have to lie to prove your point, your point is mute." In some ways this is like the Micheal Moore film Fahrenheit 9/11. His film uses misleading info and dishonestly to paint a negative picture of Bush (and I like Mike, I've met Mike. I wrote him a letter concerning the points I felt he was being dishonest about) Though Mike's film doesn't play as loose with hard facts like these SBV guys do. Mike puts out what's basically fact and then draws conclusions from those facts that are a hard sell and does so in a dishonest way. But techically the facts are basically the facts. I assuming Mike did this for legal reasons. If you produce a film and you out and out lie about the President I'm guessing there's a good chance you'll get sued.

With these SBV you got guy's who claimed they served with Kerry, they didn't. They make claims that the Winter Soilder's Testimony was, in part, given by people who were never in Vietnam, it wasn't (one guy turned out to be a sgt. and was claiming to be a capt. though.) They claim Kerry met in secret in Paris, like he did so attempting to hide something, he didn't it was a public event reported at the time by several major newspapers. I also find it odd that two of the men in SBV, George Elliott and Adrian Lonsdale, supported Kerry during a previous campaign. So his activities in Nam we're good, but now they're awful? How does that work?

It's a damning film, but like most partisan rhetoric, it's just full of damn lies.






SBV CLAIMS ON THE WINTER SOLDIER INVESTIGATION

[via Media Matters]: From Stolen Honor:

SHERWOOD: [Kerry] was the spokesman for the so-called Vietnam Veterans Against the War, many of whom would later be discovered as frauds, men who had never set foot on the battlefield or left the comfort of the states, or ever served in uniform except in mock contempt of the military. Their lurid fantasies of butchery in Vietnam were seized upon by John Kerry to help him organize the so-called Winter Soldiers Investigation, the template he would use to brand all Vietnam veterans. Never mind many of the horror stories seemed made up on the spot.



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[via Media Matters]:

SHERWOOD: ...everything that came from the Winter Soldiers hearing has been utterly discredited through volumes and volumes of books...



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FACT
There is no published evidence (as opposed to unsubstantiated allegations) that the Winter Soldier testimony from the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) has been discredited - except for the case of one witness who stated he was a captain, when he was really a sergeant.

REFERENCES


Media Matters:

In fact, research by Media Matters for America has uncovered no evidence that any witness testifying in the 1971 Winter Soldier Investigation in Detroit has had his story discredited.


Sherwood was disputing claims by VVAW member and Winter Soldier witness Kenneth J. Campbell on the September 9 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews. Campbell said that testimony by him and other Winter Soldier witnesses formed the factual basis for Senator John Kerry's 1971 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. When Sherwood attempted to discredit the Winter Soldier investigation, Campbell defended himself and the other veterans who testified:

SHERWOOD: And as far as what Ken said, everything that came from the Winter Soldiers hearing has been utterly discredited through volumes and volumes of books and not one...


CAMPBELL: That's untrue.

[...]

There was only one person in the Vietnam Vets Against the War that was uncovered as having been a sergeant when he said he was a captain. Otherwise, the rest of the folks, we all brought our DD-214s [a document issued to military members upon separation from active service] that day. I brought mine today, in case you challenged my credibility. And we were not frauds. And we did do or see or participate in what we said we did.


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As MMFA has previously documented, conservative historian Guenter Lewy claimed in his 1978 book, America in Vietnam, that a Naval Investigative Service report into the Winter Soldier allegations had discredited many of the witnesses and accounts, and in some cases impostors had assumed the identities of real veterans who were not present at the investigation. But Naval Criminal Investigative Service public affairs specialist Paul O'Donnell told (registration required) the Chicago Tribune: "We have not been able to confirm the existence of this report, but it's also possible that such records could have been destroyed or misplaced." And Lewy himself admitted to The Baltimore Sun that "he does not recall if he saw a copy of the naval investigative report or was briefed on its contents." Apart from Lewy's allegations, a search by MMFA turned up no other reports of evidence that any Winter Soldier witness was an impostor.



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[Pacridge]

SBV CLAIM THAT KERRY "SECRETLY" MET "in an undisclosed location in Paris with a top enemy diplomat" [FROM VIETNAM]

[via Media Matters]: From Stolen Honor:

SHERWOOD: Little did the American prisoners of war imagine that halfway around the world events were conspiring to make their precarious situation even more desperate: That an American Naval lieutenant, after a four-month tour of duty in Vietnam, was meeting secretly in an undisclosed location in Paris with a top enemy diplomat.



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A Swift Boat Vets attack ad released in September also claimed that Kerry "secretly met with enemy leaders in Paris."



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FACT
Kerry's meeting was as a private citizen and was NO SECRET - he spoke about it PUBLICLY in his Senate testimony in 1971. He went to Paris to attend the peace talks aimed at ending the war and to see if there was some way to get American POWs released.

REFERENCES


Media Matters:

But as MMFA and The Washington Post noted at the time, the meeting was not a secret. Kerry spoke about his meeting with Nguyen Thi Binh (then-foreign minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government and a top negotiator at the Paris Peace talks) in his 1971 public testimony before the Senate.



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Media Matters:

On September 22, the discredited anti-Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth released for television a spurious new attack ad. FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes (on September 21) and FOX & Friends First (on September 22) both aired the ad, but neither show reported on the ad's inaccuracies. The new ad claims that Senator John Kerry "secretly met with enemy leaders in Paris," and it repeats the group's previous false charge that Kerry "accused American troops of committing war crimes on a daily basis."


While the ad claims that Kerry "secretly met with enemy leaders," the Paris meeting to which the ad refers was not a secret, as The Washington Post noted on September 22 and as text in the ad indicates (words at bottom of screen: "John Kerry's Senate Testimony: United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, April 22, 1971"). The ad is referring to the meeting that Kerry described in his 1971 public testimony before the Senate: "I have been to Paris. I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government."

Kerry's visit to Paris was not to formally participate in negotiations with Communist leaders. According to the Post, the Kerry-Edwards '04 campaign said earlier this year that Kerry met with Nguyen Thi Binh, who was then foreign minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government and a top negotiator at the talks. The Post went on to say that, "Kerry acknowledged ... that even going to the peace talks as a private citizen was at the 'borderline' of what was permissible under U.S. law, which forbids citizens from negotiating treaties with foreign governments. But the campaign said he never engaged in negotiations or attended any formal sessions of the talks." And as the Los Angeles Times reported on March 22, Kerry never supported formal meetings between North Vietnamese officials and American anti-war protesters: "Kerry recalled his opposition to VVAW [Vietnam Veterans Against the War] leaders meeting with North Vietnamese officials. 'I thought that would be disastrous to the credibility of the organization,' he said, 'to the people we were trying to convince about the war.'"

While FOX News Channel gave the ad free airtime without mentioning that its claims were false, CNN had not aired the ad in its entirety as of this writing. On the September 22 edition of CNN's American Morning, scenes from the ad were shown without audio while co-host Kelly Wallace reported that the "ad claims Kerry met with 'enemy leaders' during a 1970 trip to Paris." Wallace reported that the Kerry-Edwards '04 campaign responded to the new ad by pointing to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's lack of credibility and by stating that Kerry "went to Paris on a mission to get American prisoners of war released and to end the war." As of noon on September 22, MSNBC had neither aired nor reported on the ad.
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[Schweddy]

With these SBV you got guy's who claimed they served with Kerry, they didn't.

Hrmm... if I remember correctly one 1 said he knew Kerry. Another said they saw him outside while he was imprisoned. Yet another said that because of Kerry AND Jane Fonda he was abused as a POW.

What abuot the scene where you see guys that were making up stories for Kerry's Congressional Hearing?
"Dude, don't forget X villiage - didn't you burn that down?"
"Oh yeah man - almost forgot - hahah - was there and forgot."

 

[Pacridge]

Hrmm... if I remember correctly one 1 said he knew Kerry. Another said they saw him outside while he was imprisoned. Yet another said that because of Kerry AND Jane Fonda he was abused as a POW.

What abuot the scene where you see guys that were making up stories for Kerry's Congressional Hearing?
"Dude, don't forget X villiage - didn't you burn that down?"
"Oh yeah man - almost forgot - hahah - was there and forgot."

One guy said he knew Kerry, maybe he did. All of the guy's on Kerry boat however back his story of events. Several other claimed they served with Kerry. Which turns out they were basically in the same war at the same time. We had a DA here in Oregon who was on those SBV ads and he stated "I served with John Kerry and I know he's lying" Later when it was pointed out that he wasn't even in that unit he admitted "I never actually met Kerry, but I talked to a guy who told me he was lying." Well as long as somebody told you he was lying. It's this type of tactic's and that type of dishonestly that cause me to hold them without creditablitiy. If what you're saying is true- why do you need to lie to prove it?

As for the congressional hearing footage. I honestly must have missed it. I'm in no way saying that didn't happend. You mentioned it before, I'd forgotten it, after reading your post I've tried to find a response on-line regarding it and couldn't. Usually then one side of an issue makes a claim and the other makes no attempt to rebutt it, it been my experience that there's a good chance the reason they're not rebutting it is because they can't. So it might be completely accurate. I honestly have no idea.

Bottom line, for me, is these guys story doesn't hold water due to fact they have repeatly used lies to try and prove their point. I didn't like it when Moore did it and don't find it creditable when these guys do it.

Here's a site that breaks a lot of their lies down.
http://swiftvets.eriposte.com/kerryother.htm#KERRYOTHER3

 

[Schweddy]

The statement that I mentioned brought the whole thing to head (for me) when I saw it. There was a guy sitting on a sofa with others walking around - the narrator was speaking. Then they cut to a guy with a beard at a table writing and a guy leaning looking at what was written down.

That is when those words above were said. (they may not be verbatum, as they are from memory.) I might watch it again as well.

Maybe it was Fehrenhype 911...?

 

[Pacridge]

It's completely possible there were people lying during those hearings. The War, then as now, caused people's emotions to get the best of them. You end up having an ends justifies the means mentality. You've got that happening today (Fahrenheit 9/11 ring any bells) people believe strongly that they're right about an issue and what ever you do to help that issue succeed is acceptable. I think that's what happend with the SBV's. They believed Kerry was wrong with what he said after he got back from Nam. From that point on any and everything they could through at him was an acceptable attack. Lies included. And while you contend that this point or that point in the film or of their arguement may in fact be true- then why enter lace it with the lies? Why not just say "stuff during the hearings was falsified" and here's the proof. Why gather up these people to claim they served with him when they didn't? Why claim he went to Paris in secret? Why claim there was no enemy fire coming from the beach, when several other guys were awarded medals for the same action on the same day? So all those guys are cowards and liars too?

And I find it completely bizzare that two of these guy now attacking him once supported him. I thought you partisan right wingers hated flip-floppers?

 

[LiberalFINGER]

I see and by tough calls you mean whether to not show up for duty in Texas or to not show up for duty in Alabama?

I don't see how drill weekends compare to allegations of murdering women and children.

 

[Pacridge]

I don't see how drill weekends compare to allegations of murdering women and children.

They don't. Drill weekends don't compare to much of anything especailly if you fail to show up for them.

 

[LiberalFINGER]

They don't. Drill weekends don't compare to much of anything especailly if you fail to show up for them.

Ok, so are you saying that you agree that Bush missing drill isn't as drastic as not reporting atrocities?

 

[Pacridge]

Ok, so are you saying that you agree that Bush missing drill isn't as drastic as not reporting atrocities?

Well which is it, Kerry reported atrocities that didn't happend so you don't like that, or didn't report them or just didn't report them in the timely manner you think you would have if you were in his situation? I'm saying I don't know what Kerry experiences we're but they damn sure had to be more combat related and more honorable then signing up for the Air National Guard to aviod going to combat and then failing to even follow through with that. Thats what I'm saying.

 

[LiberalFINGER]

Well which is it, Kerry reported atrocities that didn't happend so you don't like that, or didn't report them or just didn't report them in the timely manner you think you would have if you were in his situation?

That's exactly the question I have. Did he report atrocities that didn't really happen? If the attrocities did indeed happen, why didn't he use proper channels?

Honestly, imagine how much more effective his testimony would have been if he had submitted his complaints to his superiors in writing and then took the results before congress. It would have been more credible.

 

[Pacridge]

That's exactly the question I have. Did he report atrocities that didn't really happen? If the attrocities did indeed happen, why didn't he use proper channels?

Honestly, imagine how much more effective his testimony would have been if he had submitted his complaints to his superiors in writing and then took the results before congress. It would have been more credible.

I'm not interested in second guessing at this point. The men who actually did serve with him back his version of events. As for the attrocites, I have no doubt they occured, Kerry's not the only combat soilder to return with reports of this nature. Several media outlets also covered such occurences. Did they occur on the level the group Kerry was with reported? I have no idea. I do know that the idea of reporting things through "proper channels" can be a complete joke. I had a friend who wife was sexually attacked my a senior enlisted noncom while he was out to sea. She was in the Hospital for a day and half. They tried to go through proper channels and the Navy brass turned the whole thing around on them. Suddenly they were being investigated, they were the criminals. Nothing ever did happend to the Senior Chief. Well something did happend to him, two years later he made Master Chief. Everything my freind did from that point on was "not up to standards." He left the service with a general discharge a year and half early. Kerry may have been wise not to attempt to go through proper channels.

 

[Fantasea]

I hope that J. F. Kerry sues the Swiftboat Veterans. Win or lose, it will seal his fate.

Can you imagine the fun as he tries to defend himself against charges of trashing the first amendment if he seeks the presidential nomination in 2008?

Instead of 'reporting for duty', he'll be, as the acronym goes, 'DOA'.