SwiftVets.com

[mtboone]

Let us have a poll, what does the rest of the Nation think of us, is it this or is it the truth we spoke?

"R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is a nationally syndicated columnist.

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Tyrrell: Swiftboating has becomes a hate term

WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- As we watch the left of the Democratic Party pressing its case to return to the top of the heap in American politics, or at least evade the fate of the dodo, we have ever more evidence validating an insight on which I stake my reputation as a political seer. To wit: Partisan politics more often falls under the professional expertise of the psychiatrist than that of the political scientist. A learned shrink can often tell us more about a political issue than any other professional, not excluding a swami or a voodoo priest.

Consider the ongoing controversy over Sen. Jean-Francois Kerry's military service in the faraway Vietnam War. You doubt that the controversy is ongoing? Just last Sunday, a front-page story in The New York Times reported that some of Kerry's supporters during his ill-fated 2004 presidential campaign are endeavoring to prove him a war hero with an unblemished record of heroism. Their targets are the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

These Swifties, as they are called, are the Vietnam vets who claimed that when they served with Kerry they found him to be a self-aggrandizing, self-indulgent showoff. All insist he exaggerated his feats of heroism, and some testify that he lied about his wounds and heroics. Many American voters were persuaded.

Now why is this debate being launched? Any innocent observer who watched the showboating senator from Massachusetts bungle his 2004 presidential campaign must know that he is today a self-aggrandizing, self-indulgent showoff. Why would he not have been one as a youth, back in the late 1960s, when he brought camera equipment into the jungles to film himself at war?

After an early exit from military service, he proceeded to follow the fashion of the times and oppose the war, appearing before a Senate committee in 1971 to accuse the American military of systematically committing war crimes. Then, just over three decades later, this strange man chose to make his Vietnam experience a major theme of his presidential candidacy. This is a matter for a seasoned psychiatrist to explain. To the rest of us, it appears as egotism at the outer reaches of sanity.

Yet this attack on the Swift Boat Veterans is not contained to Kerry's supporters. The senator himself has been obsessive about the Swifties since their ads against him did his campaign so much damage. As David Holman reported in the May issue of The American Spectator: "A year and a half after he lost the 2004 presidential election, John Kerry can't get enough of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. No matter the occasion, he (Kerry) doesn't miss an opportunity to parade his campaign wounds however incoherently and obsessively."

Kerry has complained of the "Swift Boat-style Republican attack ads" in fund-raising appeals on behalf of other candidates. He invoked the Swifties in opposing the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel Alito. When asked if he had received contributions from the disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Kerry snapped, "That's another of their Swift Boat-style tactics where they throw up the mud and stick it."

Holman reports that Kerry has resorted to these slurs on the Swifties in eight other fund-raising appeals. Moreover, in the asylum that is the Democratic Party's Angry Left, "Swift Boat" has become a verb and an adjective. The left-wing magazine Mother Jones writes of the Bush administration "Swiftboating their enemies." Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton admonishes against the dread Republicans' employment of "Swift Boat tactics." In the Kultursmog's parlance of hate terms, "Swiftboat" is about to join such terms as McCarthyism and McCarthyite.

Now we read that the campaign against the Swifties is going to gain momentum. The sorehead Kerry supporters have joined together in a group called the Patriot Project. It will seek out the Swifties and scrutinize their complaints against Kerry. It will also support opponents of the war in Iraq and visit editorial offices to make the case for such veterans as Rep. John P. Murtha, a Vietnam War vet who now opposes the Iraq War.

All of this sounds like political harassment to me. But as the shrinks are wont to say, "If it is true for you, it is true for you." For a certitude, the left wing of the Democratic Party believes that whatever it believes is true. Kerry believes he would be president today if he had not been Swiftboated. He has hired a researcher to prove from naval archives that he was in Cambodia three decades ago for a few hours when the Nixon administration said he was not supposed to be there.

What does this prove? I think it proves that beyond being a self-aggrandizing, self-indulgent showoff, this guy is a nut. Yet I leave all this to the professionals.


Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/01/tyrrell.swiftboating/index.html?section=cnn_latest"
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Terry Boone PCF 90
Qui Nhon 68-69

[Me#1You#10]

That was great Terry...thanks.

And yet another Kerry broadside from CNN!

[kate]

what is with CNN lately ... posting that front & center on their politics page from Tyrrell who is the founder of The American Spectator (this 1st appreared there as Not Too Swift )

another related read from TAS, with some reference to Stolen Honor
Kerry Yellow

[LimaCharlie]

When I reported for advisor duty assignment in Saigon in 1970, I was disappointed. The detailer assigned me to swift boats at Qui Nhon. I had never heard of a swift boat and was disappointed that I had not been assigned to river patrol boats (PBRs). Everyone knew about those really cool BPRs. Little did I know that thirty-four years later the swift boats would play a major role in a presidential election. My only question is why would anyone send a large loud metal boat with twin diesel engines to secretly insert either the CIA or SEALs in Cambodia? I would have sent a PBR that was already operating on the border.
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I was going to become an anarchist, but they had too many rules.

[army72]

I think the term swiftboating is an attempt by the detractors to derail the work done by these brave guys. That the MSM does not take them seriously and is quick to attack them shows their bias. They don't even have the brass junk to challenge what is being said. That has to be by design. I think it would be a very newsworthy story to show that these vets are not only trying to prove just what happened back then (many points are painfully obvious.. sKerry links with Hanoi Jane, the meetings..etc.) but they continue to try to point out the dangers of these current power hungry politicos that don't care a bit about our guys facing the war now. It would seem that the question should be asked by the MSM is; What have they to gain by continuing this fight? The answer is obvious... they don't want our guys undercut again... they're not looking for money or power.
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Hillary and Kerry in '08? Something smells!!