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fortdixlover
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 12 May 2004
Posts: 1476
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 Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 5:46 pm Post subject: Expose of Media Matter's defamation of the Swiftvets |
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Be sure to see the wonderful expose of Media Matters' defamation of the Swiftvets:
Ineffective, Even For A Liberal (John Hinderaker, Powerline Blog)
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/017385.php
-- FDL
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"Millions For Defense, Not One Cent For Tribute" - Thomas Jefferson on paying ransom to Muslim corsairs (pirates). |
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Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
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| Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 3:43 pm Post subject: Barone: "Swift Boat Veterans Spoke the Truth" |
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More from Powerline...
| Quote: | A word from the Swift Boat Vets et al.
Michael Barone takes note of John Hinderaker's post "Ineffective, even for a liberal" responding to Eric Boehlert. In his response John recaps the contribution of the Swift Boat Vets to the 2004 campaign. Barone comments: John Hinderaker at Powerline skewers the claim, often made in mainstream media and the left blogosphere, that the charges made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against John Kerry have been "discredited." To the contrary. There can be disagreement about their characterization of Kerry's service, and some factual dispute about the way in which he earned at least one of his decorations, but nothing has been proved false. On the contrary, it was Kerry who had to abandon the claim, "seared, seared in my memory" as he said on the Senate floor, that he was in Cambodia at Christmastime 1968. Barone is the peerless commentator on the American political scene. It doesn't get much better than that.
The indefatigable leader of the Swift Boat Vets was John O'Neill. In February 2004, O'Neill was lying in a hospital bed after contributing a kidney for transplantion to his wife. He answered the call of his former commanding officer Roy Hoffman to serve our country one more time by leading the veterans' effort opposing John Kerry. It was the most dramatic story of the 2004 election campaign, now smothered in a welter of lies foisted on the public by the likes of Eric Boehlert. Bruce Kesler is a Vietnam vet who himself commented on John's post at Democracy Project. John O'Neill wrote Bruce "RE: Your blog and the Powerline blog's summary: Thanks--always be grateful for both of you."
Paul Galanti is the highly decorated naval aviator who served in Vietnam and was captured by the North Vietnamese in 1967. He was held and tortured for six years until his release was secured by President Nixon in 1973. In the most powerful of the Swift Boat Vet ads, Galanti testified to having had John Kerry's standard charges of American war crimes played to him by his Communist captors. In the ad "Sellout," Galanti commented: "John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I and my comrades in the prison camps in North Vietnam took torture to avoid saying." Galanti also discussed his POW experience on Hannity and Colmes in August 2004. Bruce Kesler forwarded Galanti's message about Kesler's post on the Swift Boat Vets:Bruce: Your article about Kerry and the Swiftees was outstanding. Your blog, amplifying comments and whoever compiled all those SwiftVet ads concisely nailed the reason Kerry lost the 2004 election. All of us involved felt immensely satisfied that his phony bravado and traitorous acts were exposed despite the "below the fold" treatment they were accorded in most media quarters.
Of at least equal importance, though, was John O'Neill's Unfit for Command and the internet blogsters - YOU - who spread the word far and wide. So thanks for the reminder and thanks for helping spread the word - big time - during the 2004 campaign.
Take care,
Paul
Paul E. Galanti
Commander, USN (Ret)
Richmond, VA
http://www.nampows.org/pgbio.html Val McMurdie also served in Vietnam and wrote to comment:I've read your blog post and realize your arguments are cogent for the general public to read. I was the Operations Officer and Division Operations Officer for Operation Market Time and directed Swift Boat operations, intercepts, etc. in South Vietnam beginning in November 1969.
For those veterans who served in South Vietnam, numbering approximately 1.5 million, and for at least the nine million veterans who are eligible to vote, Kerry had two instantaneous problems after the Swift Boat Veterans ad came out: 1) all of use knew it is virtually impossible to be awarded three Purple Hearts without ever spending a day in the hospital; 2) his accusations that war crimes were commonly committed by service men, or sailors, which none of us had ever heard of, let alone seen. The phony Purple Hearts killed Kerry as an honest or honorable man to probably 90 percent of veterans. Phony Purple Hearts put him among the most unethical people in the county.
As an officer, and medical officer for the North coast, since the Swift Boats had no MD, I can tell you that it would have been easy for me to ask the "Doc" corpsman to write me up for a Purple Heart for every scratch I received on any one of dozens of operations. I could have had five Purple Hearts had I wished to dishonor myself and wounded and dead sailors. I have none. I rate John Kerry among criminals, and despicable, on this point alone.
It is difficult for civilians to understand the responsibility and authority of junior naval officers serving in Operation Market Time. Any junior officer, Ensign or jg could have obtained several Purple Hearts had he wished to by simply asking the corpsman to write up any scratch in his medical record. It would have been that easy. Without having been there, you may not realize these real world realities. Thanks to all for their comments.
Powerline |
Last edited by Me#1You#10 on Fri Apr 20, 2007 5:15 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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Me#1You#10
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| Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 4:34 pm Post subject: |
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Every so often often I have the occasion to read interesting and informative commentary illuminating aspects of Kerry's "Winter Soldier" political theatre. The Powerline Forum, in discussion of the recent Boehlert commentary, produced some commentary which I found worthy of note and archiving here. With kudos to NamDoc67, the following 2 exchanges...
| Quote: | | cembry wrote: | | Quote: | JIMV - 19 April 2007 03:06 PM
Sorry, many of those folk he ‘quoted’ were found to have never served in Vietnam and, in some cases, to have never served at all. |
A single author, Guenter Lewy, claims that a Naval Investigative Service report found that some of those testifying had never served. Strangely, though, no one in the government knows anything about this report and Lewy later said he does not remember if he ever actually saw this report.
You can choose to disbelieve what the vets said, and I’ll agree that none of us can know what really happened, but there are no credible claims that these men were not really Vietnam vets. |
| NamDoc67 wrote: | Unfortunately, this is not quite true. And you make it sound like something it is not. No one has yet been able to locate the NIS/NCIS investigation files at all; and the investigation of the Winter Soldier Marines did certainly take place. The best estimate of the state of the records is that they were destroyed after 25 years in accordance with disposal regulations - all of them. Thousands of pages. And the statement Lewy quotes is not that a couple of alleged Marine witnesses never served, but that when located, several who served in Vietnam denied ever having testified at Winter Soldier - that their identities had been stolen by persons unknown who impersonated them.
The VVAW will not or cannot produce the authenticating military documents for the witnesses. And, although the organizers always have claimed otherwise, a careful reading of the transcript you posted, from the Congressional Record transcript of the Winter Soldier testimony, reveals that a number of witnesses (both Marine and Army) did not give enough personal or military identifying information to make it possible to verify their identity or location in any way, let alone as soldiers.
However, the Army investigative files on the Winter Soldiers are partly public. And they show at least 10 of the 77 Army witnesses, based on official documents that have been located, upon investigation by the Army CID, backtracked on their “allegations” made in Winter Soldier testimony, or disavowed them altogether. And numerous other allegations were refuted in the CID investigation by other soldiers who served in Vietnam with the Winter Soldier witnesses. Other allegations made there, if anyone would actually read them, are clearly not credible. And a lot of the testimony is commie-speak whining about the evil American “system” and “racism” - tripe that never amounted to allegations of criminal activity at all, but reveals a lot about the purposes and tactics of the Winter Soldier Investigation.
As far as anyone has been able to demonstrate, of all the criminal cases brought against soldiers by the Army and Marines, during or consequent to the Vietnam War, only one was a case described at Winter Soldier.
What Kerry did was wholesale and apply to everyone who served the actually relatively isolated cases of criminality engaged in by a tiny percentage among nearly three million young men who served over 12 years under awful conditions of insurgency warfare. Though you claim he did not apply moral culpability to all, he did definitely accuse all of complicity and active participation. That was his case. That was his only case. If it was not so widespread, he had no case. So he lied by generalizing and exaggerating. Millions of honorable veterans have suffered for it for generations. Our military suffered for it. I suffered for it. Our country suffered for it then and still. It mainstreamed the delegitimization of the United States of America. In a real sense, our country has never recovered from that.
Winter Soldier was one of dozens of similar exercises held all over the Western world over years. It is the one we still talk about because there is a transcript and Kerry became a famous politician. But it was a concerted psy-ops exercise, a piece of propaganda warfare executed by people who did not have the best interests of our military and our nation at heart. And Kerry was no dupe. He knew what he was doing. I’m not sure he believed in it, but it served his own interests. And that is even worse than if he was an outright communist “agent of influence.”
It’s not about what happened - or not - in Vietnam. It’s about what happened in Detroit in 1971 at the Winter Soldier Investigation - and what Kerry did with it. |
| cembry wrote: | Like I said, you can choose to believe the veterans or not. But many actual atrocities have been documented that are consistent with what the vets were saying. The Pentagon itself recently released documentation on 320 incidents of intentional killing of civilians including women and children, tortures, rapes, and other incidents.
Link |
| NamDoc67 wrote: | First of all, the Pentagon did not release anything. The documents were at the National Archives, and Nicholas Turse found them there.
Second, your parroting of the despicably inaccurate LA Times story refers to 320 incidents as if they were anything other than 320 allegations of incidents, most of which never resulted in indictments or prosecutions. If you want to understand this propaganda job, read this excellent take-down of the Times work. It might also be illuminating for you to know that Turse either never told the Times, or the Times simply left out, several facts revealed in the documents which might create an impression contrary to their propaganda “narrative”: 1) that at least 10 of the Winter Soldiers recanted their testimony in whole or in part when questioned by the Army investigators; and 2) others had their testimony refuted by other soldiers who served with them; and 3) at least 30 of the Winter Soldiers were never even approached by the Army investigators, because they didn’t actually allege anything of substance; and 4) three of them could not be located by the Army at all, leaving me to wonder who they actually were.
Third, Kerry was referring to the testimony given at the Winter Soldier Investigation, in which he was a major actor; not to military criminal investigations to which he had no access. And among all the allegations at Winter Soldier, only one ever resulted in a prosecution - or in any kind of validation at all, for that matter - the case alleged by Jamie Henry.
The recanter the other poster refers to was Steve Pitkin. He publicly admitted in 2004 that his testimony was bunk, and he said it was actually coerced bunk. But he was one of many Winter Soldiers who were careful to not say much of anything of substance. |
| NamDoc67 wrote: | cembry
Your LA Times link does not work. I believe THIS is the propaganda job you were trying to link to. |
Powerline |
Last edited by Me#1You#10 on Fri Apr 20, 2007 11:44 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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fortdixlover
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 12 May 2004
Posts: 1476
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| Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 8:10 pm Post subject: |
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I should add that the Powerline poster "Cembry" is a dilettante at argumentation. His/her writings speak for themselves.
-- FDL
_________________
"Millions For Defense, Not One Cent For Tribute" - Thomas Jefferson on paying ransom to Muslim corsairs (pirates). |
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PC
PO3
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Location: Southern California
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Schadow
Vice Admiral
Joined: 30 Sep 2004
Posts: 936
Location: Huntsville, Alabama
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| Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 2:03 am Post subject: |
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| fortdixlover wrote: | I should add that the Powerline poster "Cembry" is a dilettante at argumentation. His/her writings speak for themselves.
-- FDL |
I joined PowerLine Forums at the outset, last October I think (handle: KoreaVet). For a while, the forums were fairly reflective of the viewpoint of the founders but in no way was an "echo chamber." Then, liberals with particularly obnoxious styles of - as you say above - argumentation moved in. Some are regulars at Kos and Huffington and Move-On. The majority of the participants are conservative.
The moderation (principally John Hinderaker) is patient beyond belief and has banned only a couple of people, mainly for unacceptable language. The viewpoints of some of the libs are indescribable and, what's worse, they seem to actually believe what they say.
It's an interesting forum particularly if one enjoys confrontation with certifiable idiots, which I don't, really.
Schadow
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Capt, 8th U.S. Army, Korea '53 - '54 |
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