SwiftVets.com

[Mary Ann Parker]

Here you go.
Hot off the press.
Yeah Swiftees!!
Mary Ann Parker
*************************************
MISSION: IMPLAUSIBLE
Swiftvets' cause might live on
Kerry not able 'to go back peacefully into the Senate'


Posted: November 4, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41283
By Art Moore
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Swift Boat Vets and POWs for Truth achieved its primary goal yesterday with Sen. John Kerry's concession to President Bush, but the deeply divisive issues the group has raised and the activists it has spawned might not fade with the closing of the 2004 election.

"The whole group was oriented to beating Kerry; now that that's been accomplished, there is a formative discussion to say, 'Where do we go from here?'" said Jerome Corsi, co-author of the group's influential New York Times No. 1 best seller "Unfit for Command."

Corsi believes current discussions indicate there will be post-election follow up, whether through some or all of the more than 250 veterans, or through independent investigators and journalists.

"There is a movement to get Kerry to continue to release all of his documents and to press forward on the military discharge issue," Corsi said, referring to discrepancies in Kerry's record suggesting he is hiding a less-than-honorable discharge.

Corsi also notes that the concerns about Kerry's anti-war activism have grown into a movement to restore the honor of veterans who contend they have been besmirched by the conventional, leftist interpretation of the Vietnam War.

"That's going to continue," he said. "So I see Kerry is not going to simply be able to go back peacefully into the Senate and shut the door on the Vietnam chapter of his life."

"It will dog him," Corsi said, "certainly in the next two years and when he attempts to run for re-election" in 2008.

In a statement issued yesterday, the 527 group's organizer, retired Adm. Roy Hoffman, gave no indication of the group's future, but expressed pleasure at the election result.

"As we have stated since we formed, we believed that John Kerry's actions in Vietnam, coupled with the reprehensible statements he made after he returned, were serious and consequently made him unfit for command," he said.

Hoffman, one of Kerry's commanders during the war, said the group sought to "provide a voice for the courageous and honorable veterans of Vietnam, more than 280 Swift Boat Vets, Coast Guardsmen and POWs who served their country with honor."

He noted the grassroots effort attracted donors from every state, who gave more than $26 million, including more than $7 million in online contributions.

"We were the true embodiment of grassroots citizen action, complied fully with federal election law and had every right to participate in the public discussion of John Kerry's qualifications as commander in chief," Hoffman said.

'Negative, awful ads'

In their assessment of Kerry's campaign, many of the senator's defenders grudgingly point to the swiftboat vets' well-organized effort.
Asked to come up with a key moment in the campaign, analyst Juan Williams told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace "the turning point" was "distortions and caricatures" of Kerry, epitomized by the swiftboat vets.

Just after the Democratic convention, in which Kerry made his Vietnam service the foundation for his argument he is fit to lead the nation in a time of war, the swiftboat vets "came out with such negative, awful ads," Williams said.

"Initially, I think, the Kerry campaign didn't understand the damage that was being done [and] was slow to respond," he recalled.

"And that damage has been incalculable," Williams said. "It has stayed in the voters' minds. It has defined this campaign in such as way as to damage his opportunity to have a say. When he went into the debates, when I do focus groups and talk to people, they're still hearing the image and the echo of Swift Boat Veterans."

Discussing highlights of the campaign Tuesday, National Public Radio's Tavis Smiley told syndicated columnist Clarence Page, "We'll never forget this phrase, either, Clarence: Swiftboat ads.

"There was a flurry of political advertisements on both sides, but John Kerry was hit awfully hard by the Swift Boat Veterans," he said before playing a clip from one of nine advertisements that aired in battleground states from August through the end of the campaign.

Smiley then played a soundbite from an anti-Bush ad with "Fahrenheit 9/11" producer Michael Moore.

"So you get the swiftboat veterans on one side, you got Michael Moore on the other side. This campaign, Clarence, was unparalleled in the level of propaganda."

Page replied, "That's true, and both of those soundbites you have were turning points where you saw the anti-Bush side really began to take shape and get new energy after Michael Moore's movie came out."
Page said the swiftboat vets turned Kerry's "biggest positive into a big negative, or at least a big controversy. It really began to hurt his forward momentum, and as we saw, Kerry began to struggle going into the debates after his polling numbers fell behind those of George Bush."
Kerry campaign senior strategist Tad Devine has admitted the senator's low point was not answering the swiftboat ads right away.

But Douglas Brinkley, author of "Tour of Duty," the account of Kerry's war record that angered the swiftboat vets and prompted their campaign, has a different take on the group's effectiveness, contending they may even have helped him by energizing his base.

Brinkley wrote Tuesday in an article in the Financial Times that, "Nobody in U.S. politics can endure as many body blows without suffering psychological dents" as Kerry.

Brinkley said Kerry's initial silence amid the swiftboat vets' charges was part of his style and strategy.

"Mr. Kerry welcomes abuse," he said. "He goads his opponents to come out in the open and go for his jugular. They always do. They rise to the bait. When a group of Swift Boat vets attacked Mr. Kerry's record in August he said nothing for two weeks. Why not swing back immediately? That is not his style."

Brinkley maintains Kerry waited until the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post "exposed his critics as liars and frauds."
A defensive player by nature, Kerry waited," he said. "Ultimately, the Swift Boat attacks only helped Mr. Kerry solidify his base."

Moral values

On MSNBC's "Hardball" yesterday, reporter Andrea Mitchell tied the swiftboat campaign to the reported impact of moral values on the voting Tuesday.

She said "the way the swiftboat veterans and the other groups define John Kerry early in the campaign, is to make him seem as though he were as not in sync with moral values, because he was, you know, a flip-flopper or whatever. By having defined him that way they really put him in a box. And it was very hard for him to get out of that box.

Corsi sees a clash-of-moral-values angle also, noting parallels to Kerry's first run for Congress in 1972 as an anti-war candidate in the traditional, working-class town of Lowell, Mass.

After a big primary victory, financed by New York and Hollywood luminaries such as George Plimpton and Otto Preminger, Kerry encountered the disdain of what President Nixon termed "the silent majority," Corsi said, the people of traditional religious values who rejected the radicalism of Kerry and Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern.

But Corsi believes Kerry's biggest miscalculation was a lesson he should have learned from Nixon -- thinking he could lie to the American people and get away with it.

Kerry's lie, Corsi contends, was to "exaggerate his four short months of service in Vietnam and his minor wounds into a self-advanced glory of mythic proportions" and to falsely characterize Amerian servicemen as war criminals.

The senator, for example, was forced to backpedal on assertions he had made for decades, such as his presence in Cambodia during the war. And his refusal to release all of his military records amid numerous unanswered questions hurt his credibility, Corsi pointed out.

In his 1971 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry described the U.S. military as the "army of Genghis Kahn, "disgracing" the service of more than 2 million Americans who served with honor, Corsi added.

"All of this the American public might well have accepted and forgiven," he maintained, "if only John Kerry had told the truth and asked for forgiveness."

[jwb7605]

[ocsparky101]

We can all talk about Kerry'd record about his 1971 and 1972 attacks on the heroes that served in Vietnam. We can talk about his 1986 Senate testamony which was basically an attack on former President Nixon. What though is not getting any discussion though is his 1992 PWO, MIA committee in which it is claimed he ignored and even shredded First Hand accounts of MIA sightings. The results of this Committee was to abandon these military heroes so that Bill Clinton could make the claim that he finally normalized relations with Vietnam. I ask you of all the sins of John Kerry which is the worst?

[ghiapaul]

I think we should continue to go after Kerry for all of these things including the 1992 POW-MIA committee. I never knew anything about this until it was brought up during this campaign, and I still can't believe Kerry and McCain did this. In fact, telling people about this, converted three of my relatives who were against Bush. Therefore, I think this should be brought out to the major media so more people can find out what a lowlife he has continued to be.
_________________
Aviation Ordnanceman 2nd Class
G Division
U.S.S. Kearsarge CVS-33
1966 - 1969

[Digger]

I agree. It's time to take him down. Him and the liberal media with him
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Hey swifty, I'm with you, Just watch you don't get "Kerry'd away in the propwash

Sgt. Maj. Seamus D.D. MacNemi R.M.C. Ret.

[Wing Wiper]

The POW/MIA questions are what I want to see addressed. How anyone could sell out our POWs is beyond me. From the info I've seen from Navy Chief, that's exactly waht happened, and I want answers. I hope for McCain's sake he's not part of this, but if he is, I want him crushed, too. There can be NO excuse good enough to pardon people that would do that.

[FreeFall]

McCain was on Leno last night and he talked about Kerry and himself working on the pow/mia issue back in the early 90's. McCain made a comment that they had resolved the MIA issue to "most everyone's" satisfaction. I remember reading info on the McCreary memo and almost gagged when I heard that remark.

The MIA issue does need to get reopened til it gets resolved to everyone's satisfaction, not just most everyone's.

[Digger]

sKerrys' whole scheme depends upon us having a very narrow focus and limited attention span. It's obvious he's no hunter and certainly no combat experienced soldier. If he was one of either, he would know better than to underestimate us.
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Hey swifty, I'm with you, Just watch you don't get "Kerry'd away in the propwash

Sgt. Maj. Seamus D.D. MacNemi R.M.C. Ret.

[gmez2001]

1992 Pow/Mia,Collier International and discharge issue should be foremost in this effort.


John ''Forbes" Kerry's cousin is CEO of Colliers International and currently developing Vietnam real estate.

http://www.donbendell.com/

John Kerry, you personally derailed the Vietnam Human Rights Bill, HR2883, in 2001, after it had passed the House by a 411 to 1 vote, and thousands of pro-American Montagnard tribespeople in Vietnam died since then who could have been saved, by you. Earlier, as Chair of the Senate Select Committee on MIA/POW Affairs, you personally quashed the efforts of any and all veterans to report sightings of living POW’s, when you held those reins in Congress. You have fought tooth and nail to push for the US to normalize relations with Vietnam for years. Why, Mr. Kerry? Simple, your first cousin C. Stewart Forbes, CEO, of Colliers International, recently signed a contract with Hanoi, worth BILLIONS of dollars for Collier’s International to become the exclusive real estate representative for the country of Vietnam.



Recently Forbes has been taken off of the Colliers Intl website.
I heard a few years ago that John 'Forbes' Kerry sold out the MIA/POW's by normalizing relations between the US and Vietnam. Isn't it a coincidence that his cousin C.Stewart Forbes ,who is CEO of Colliers International, has been selected the prime real estate developer in Vietnam.

http://www.vnsfvetakerry.com/kerry_&_pows.htm mid page

http://ngothelinh.web1000.com/The_Betrayer.htm

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1256168/posts mid page

http://www.chainedeagles.com/johnkerry01.htm

http://www.chainedeagles.com/johnkerry05.htm

http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/wkeryhy.htm

http://www.bop2004.org/bop2004/candidate.aspx?cid=4 end of page

http://www.powmiafamiliesagainstjohnkerry.com/sellout.htm

http://www.juiceenewsdaily.com/1004/news/pow_mia.html

http://mydamascusroad.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_mydamascusroad_archive.html
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Tin Can Gunline Vietnam
2nd generation Navy