SwiftVets.com

[FlyLow]

By Paul M. Weyrich
http://www.aim.org/guest_column_print/1882_0_6_0/


If they really made these charges a burning issue, Kerry would go down in flames.

I am blessed by having two associates who daily comb the Internet and provide me with the best information out there. Alex Mulkern, who seems to never sleep, provides me, beginning at 4 a.m., with dozens of the best stories and columns not only from the major newspapers but also from the best websites as well. The lady is incredible. She even surfs the London papers. Frequently, she will provide an article from a smaller paper such as the Scranton Times in Pennsylvania. I asked her how she knew to look there and she replied that in listening to talk radio overnight, a caller had mentioned the piece. It would be far more difficult to be on top of things without Alex and she knows how profoundly grateful I am to her for her seven-days-a-week service which she does as her contribution to the cause.

My other associate is Jim Hyde. Jim is a veteran of Vietnam and despite failing eyesight, he continues to provide me with every possible story on the military, on foreign policy and occasionally on politics. Of late, Jim has also been finding priceless political cartoons that I would never see otherwise. Between the two of them I have eighty to a hundred items waiting for me every morning with more items supplied throughout the day and into the evening.

Recently Jim and I have had a running argument. It is one I want to lose. Jim is convinced that questions raised by Vietnam vets about Senator Kerry's service in Vietnam and his anti-war efforts afterwards will be enough to cause many Americans to conclude that Kerry is unfit to be commander in chief. Jim thinks that the record and the contradictions are so troubling that even though a lot of voters apparently want to make a change, they will think twice about trading their current commander in chief for someone whose views seem to change with the time of day and the group to which he is speaking.

Jim and I have gone back and forth about this for the past month or more. He knew the allegations against Kerry were coming before it became a public issue. He has a lot of military connections to this day. His father was a prominent military figure.

Anyway, I have told Jim over and over that these charges won't be an issue because the so-called mainstream media refuse to pursue them. They have an agenda. The agenda is to bring down George Bush. If they really made these charges a burning issue, Kerry would go down in flames. Because they refuse to make these matters an issue, they won't be. Ah, says Jim, but the book, Unfit For Command, which details the charges and other allegations is all over talk radio and the Internet. There it is truly a burning issue. But the sum total of talk radio audiences and the Internet reach about 40% of the electorate. Many of those are already in the President's corner. Rush Limbaugh, the king of talk radio, has a cumulative audience of over 20 million. Don't get me wrong. We have never had anything like it. The EIB (Excellence in Broadcasting) network has something like 615 stations so that it is possible to drive from one end of the country to the other and still hear Rush if you know where to look. And Rush does reach new people all the time...and in many cases wins them over. I am not in any way downgrading the impact he has had. Were it not the case, there wouldn't be the attempt to shut him down as there is ongoing in the liberal community. Without talk radio and the Internet we wouldn't even be competitive.

Like it or not, however, it is a fact that the major media, especially television, still is where a majority of Americans gets their news. I have argued otherwise only to have been shot down by reality. When I got into broadcasting 44 years ago 70% of Americans got their news about politics and government from daily newspapers and news magazines. Today 75% of Americans get news of government and politics from talk radio and television. The Fox News Channel is outpolling its competitors by a long shot. Still, it is only reaching a fraction of the electorate.

Even though NBC, CBS and ABC's share of the audience declines as each rating book is issued the truth is that at this moment in time the combination of the three still reaches a majority of the electorate.

It does matter what they do. While the veterans' story has received a great deal of coverage from print media, the networks have all but ignored it. What little they have covered it, has largely been from the Kerry perspective, which is to say that only the veterans who were actually in Kerry's boat are telling the truth. The other 250 veterans, many of whom were right along side Kerry in another boat (they traveled with four or more boats together) are all lying or have a political agenda.

The fellow who gets most of the coverage is named Rassman. He was rescued by Kerry. Although he says he had not been in touch with Kerry for 30 years, he called up and volunteered to campaign in Iowa, where Kerry seemed about to go down the drain. It turns out he knew Kerry for only one day over there. The media was afraid of Howard Dean, even though they agreed with much of his platform. Dean was unpredictable. He said things that got him into trouble. So the media, which had built him up as the savior of the Democrat Party and eventually the nation, did a number on Dean using his own words and he sunk big time and fast. They quickly built up Kerry as someone who projected stability. Without the push the media gave to Kerry in the week before the Iowa vote it is doubtful that he would have pulled it off. He was the "Comeback Kerry."

Things have gone along well now for the media's agenda. They continue to present a highly negative view of the President while presenting a positive view of his challenger.

It is working. The Kerry campaign believes it has the election in the bag. Oh, sure there are those debates and yes, something could happen which would cause people to rally around the President, but the Kerry people are right according to a panel of campaign experts assembled by the Free Congress Foundation last week. Across the political spectrum from Bob Novak to Anna Greenberg and several in between, these experts agreed that the President is in trouble and if the election were held today Kerry would win. So with things going this well, the major media will not make the questions about Kerry's claims while in Vietnam an issue. The President can't really do so himself. Other Republicans fear a backlash so they won't touch the issue. Jim Hyde is convinced that these questions are so serious and so troubling that the media will, in the end be forced to give them attention. I think that by saying that the guys who were on the boat with him are all supporting Kerry, and the rest just don't know what they are talking about gives them the cover they need to ignore the story. As I said, this is an argument I want to lose. I surely hope that the majority of Americans who rely on the "mainstream media" for their political information will be given a true picture of John Kerry and his service to his country and not a picture manufactured for the moment. If they do get a true picture, I have little doubt as to what they will do. If they don't, then their actions will be totally predictable.
_________________
EX-Helicopter driver & accomplished liar.
Wars fought, revolutions started, uprisings quelled, revivals organized,
assassinations plotted, governments overthrown, lead gospel singing,
tigers tamed, bars emptied, virgins converted, orgies organized.

[Dimsdale]

"I think that by saying that the guys who were on the boat with him are all supporting Kerry, and the rest just don't know what they are talking about gives them the cover they need to ignore the story. "

I agree, but look at the fervor generated by the allegations of "desertion" etc. against Bush. The press had nothing to go on, yet pressed hard to make a story where there wasn't one. Now, with sworn statements of true heroes, all honorable and decorated veterans, they have all the material they need to initiate some investigative reporting, but they now press to make no story where there is one.

The longer Kerry refused to address these allegations by the SBVT (unlike the President, who got out in front of this almost immediately), and the longer he hides his complete service record, the harder the shoe is going to drop when it does. Even the most complacent, disinterested potential voter is going to start wondering why Kerry won't address the allegations if they are so "proveably" a lie. After demanding the President release his records of his NG service, they cannot simply refuse to release theirs against a constant clamor for them. It makes him look like the liar he is. He cannot plead the Fifth Amendment here, although that is exactly what he is effectively doing. And anyone who pleads the Fifth absolutely has something to hide.

Additionally, the extreme reactions of his worshippers is testimony to the fact that he is hiding something. Defaming the SBVT as "liar" and "Republican hitmen" etc. simply flies in the face of the facts. O'Neill is doing a superb job of facing these unfounded smears (when they let him talk, that is) as both a practiced lawyer and a man that has truth on his side.

Kerry has run for office time and time again hiding behind what I call his "Vietnam camouflage" which is designed to hide the real John Kerry. He sure did it againt Weld. This time, the proof is in his acceptance speech at the DNC convention. His record in the Senate is, to be charitable, the most dovish, liberal and unnaccomplished on record. How can he stand on this record?

Why do you think Senators rarely win Presidential elections? Because they are part of a 100 person committee, and usually have long records to haunt them. Kerry's voting record, spotty attendance record on the Senate Intelligence committee, and consistent record of doing everything in his power to weaken this country's defense and intelligence capabilities can be justifiably pointed at as a major contributor to the attacks of 9/11 and others.

I will let the vets directly affected by his seditious actions with the VVAW speak for themselves, but, a politically motivated John McCain notwithstanding, the stories abound about how Kerry's words and actions were used to torture and demoralize POWs. VC General Giap is on the record as saying so, and Kerry is honored in the Vietnam war museum in Vietnam itself!

If someone had sent in a story about the President in the NG that was analogous to the SBVT story, the media would have printed it as an Extra, normal television programming would have been interrupted, and the Emergency Broadcast System would have been activated on the radio!! Well, okay the latter is a bit extreme, but how many of you were nodding in agreement? It isn't that farfetched, is it?

Calling "Unfit for Duty" a "hit piece" and "full of lies" (before even reading it no less!) while praising Michael Moore's fabrications in the same breath, even honoring him at the DNC convention, just puts the "LIAR" label on the so called "mainstream" media. Even Andrea Mitchell said it was full of misrepresentations and untruths, yet none of them dare condemn it, including Kerry.

The rather effective media blackout of the SBVT is egregious and shameful, or as McCain would say "dishonest and dishonorable." The contrasts with the all too recent NG story just makes it all the more obvious and blatant.

I say, leave the Vietnam issue to the SBVT, and let the President handle Kerry on his Senate record. Both are producing wonderful, thought provoking (and laugh provoking in some cases) commercials that are deadly effective, and for which Kerry has only the lamest responses, the kind even a child could see through. That won't help the deluded, child like extremist Bush hater, but they are fewer than they appear.

Phew!! That was a real rant, eh?

[Dimsdale]

I forgot to mention two things: With respect to Kerry running on his Senate experience, the only training for the presidency is a governorship of a state, not the Senate, or the presidency itself. And in the words of John Kerry (against his now Vice Presidential candidate), "the presidency is not a place for on the job training"

I wrote a rather polite, yet critical letter to Mike Barnicle after his ignorant rant against the SBVT on the Imus show last week. I asked him for proof of his accusations, and he offered the lamest, and demonstrably incorrect, response while attempting to insult me. I sent another letter effectively re-asking him to back up his claims, and he has been silent.

Silence is clearly his answer, as it is of other SBVT critics, including John Kerry.