SwiftVets.com

MiltonThrasher

Nightline Daily E-Mail
August 9, 2004

TONIGHT'S FOCUS: Service in the Vietnam War, or lack of service, has become an issue in this election. John Kerry is running on his service record, the President is still dogged by questions about his service in the National Guard. Now there are veterans for Kerry, and veterans against him.
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I am amazed at how angry people are these days. There is a group out there called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. They have launched an ad attacking John Kerry's service in Vietnam. They have paid to run the ad in only three states, figuring, quite correctly, that they would get lots of free coverage on news shows. Now there are some interesting things about this group. There are connections to the Republican Party, one of the veterans who had written a glowing assessment of Kerry back in Vietnam signed an affidavit attacking him, then sort of retracted that in a newspaper interview, and then apparently retracted the retraction.

Now I say people are angry because we have gotten a number of e-mails, starting the day the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began their campaign, accusing us of all sorts of bias and worse for not investigating their claims. Whatever happened to patience? We wanted to investigate, but that takes a little time, but these days, unless there is some sort of instant response, it's clearly evidence of a conspiracy, or bias, or worse. Not sure what the "worse" is, but it seemed like a good way to end the sentence. I am increasingly convinced that we have lost something important in this country, and that's the capacity for honest disagreement. These days it's not enough that you have to prove the other person is wrong, you have to attack them and prove that they are a bad person for being wrong.

In any case, we're going to take a look at all this tonight. Correspondent Jake Tapper will take a look at the dispute, the dueling groups of swift boat veterans, and the political connections on both sides. He'll also try to sort out the accuracy of the claims on both sides, although, as I said above, I don't expect that to satisfy anyone. And I don't say that with any happiness. Correspondent Mike Cerre, himself a veteran of Vietnam, will look at the split within the Vietnam veteran community as a whole. And does this dispute matter to other voters?

Michel Martin will anchor tonight. Will we answer people's questions about this? That's certainly our intention. Will we bring back civility to this debate, or any other? I'm not that naïve.

Leroy Sievers and the Nightline Staff
Nightline Offices
ABC News Washington Bureau
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I have a great distrust of John Kerry and
want him to answer the Swift Boat Vets for
Truth's challenge to his statements appearing
in his books and speeches. Vote for Bush/Cheney '04. Korean War vet.

d19thdoc · Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2004 8:24 pm Post subject:

Also note on Fox News cable tonight: Steve Gardner on O'Reilly (8:00 EDT) and John O'Neill on Hannity and Colmes (9:00 EDT) immediately following O'Reilly.
_________________
For The Honor of the Fifty-Eight Thousand.
"He Can Lose, But He Can Not Hide"

d19thdoc

Navy_Navy_Navy · Admin Joined: 07 May 2004 Posts: 5777

Hey, d19thdoc! Great to see you back!

I will NOT watch Nightline. I'll have to hear it second-hand because my gag reflex is JUST not that strong. Wink

_________________
~ Echo Juliet ~
Altering course to starboard - On Fire, Keep Clear
Navy woman, Navy wife, Navy mother

minnie presley · Commander Joined: 13 Jul 2004 Posts: 307

just watched oreilly interview gardner, he was so rude and angry to gardner, kept interrupting, and said gardner was the only one who served with kerry, I was so mad I sent off an e-mail to oreilly, guess we know who he is backing certainly not the vets

GoophyDog · Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2004 7:19 am Post subject: Re: oreilly

MiltonThrasher

Re: Nightline for 8/9/2004 -
At no time were any of the specifics of Kerry's actions in question
discussed. When Unfit for Command Chapter 3 which has the
events that make the case against Kerry are out there, we may be
able to get the commentators to delve into the actual claims of
exaggerationo and fraud but don't count on it.

John O'Neil will be on Joe Scarborough's MSNBC program tonight 10:30 EST. I hope he can steer the conversation to the examples such as
Kerry's selfcontradiction as to where he was on Christmas Eve and
Christmas Day 1968. I think that is one topic that has been in
the media and shows to the average person who has no dog in this
fight just how devious John Kerry is and will be if elected. He
will make Slick Willy look straight!
_________________
I have a great distrust of John Kerry and
want him to answer the Swift Boat Vets for
Truth's challenge to his statements appearing
in his books and speeches. Vote for Bush/Cheney '04. Korean War vet.

dmroyer · Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2004 9:47 pm Post subject:

Night line made a mistake and had an honest reporter from the Christian Science Monitor (I Believe) she answered one of the central questions in a concise and accurate manner, Why are we talking about Viet Nam, a war that was over 30 years ago? Her reply, “because John Kerry has made it the central issue of his campaign and has implied that he has a better character than President Bush because he had served”. They didn’t let her say much after that, the truth really hurts.

Other than this highllight it was pretty much what you would expect from the main line media, one sided.