SwiftVets.com

[Wynne]

In today's Raleigh News and Observer Peder Zane wrote the following article -- I've highlighted his comments about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. My letter to the Editor (cc to Peder Zane) follows the article.
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Triangle.com

We know it, but we can't prove it

By J. PEDER ZANE, Staff Writer

Conventional wisdom says we live in the Age of Information. But increasingly it seems that ours is an Era of Misinformation.
In August the mainstream media debunked most of the charges leveled by the Swift Boats Veterans for Truth against John Kerry's service in Vietnam. The group raised some legitimate questions, especially about Kerry's first Purple Heart and his alleged trip to Cambodia. But now it is clear that the Swifties smeared the candidate far more than it shed light on his military record.

Nevertheless, the book containing their charges against Kerry, "Unfit for Command," remains No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction.

During the past two weeks the mainstream media have dissected Kitty Kelley's scurrilous attack on President Bush, "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty." They have shown that her poorly sourced book -- with its unsubstantiated accusations of drug and alcohol abuse, abortions and stubborn cruelty -- is an exercise in character assassination.

Nevertheless, Kelley's book is among the top sellers at Amazon.com (it has not been out long enough to be considered for the Times' list).

Inquiring minds want to know: Why are so many people eager to lay down their hard-earned money for these false and misleading works?

Let's note that "Unfit" and "The Family" are hardly aberrations. From Al Franken ("Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them") and Michael Moore ("Stupid White Men") on the left to Ann Coulter ("Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism") and Sean Hannity ("Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism") on the right, the number of mean and unfair best sellers is proliferating faster than North Korea's nuclear program.

They're all shams. They play fast and loose while claiming to be straight-up. But condemning them, as necessary and satisfying as that may be, sheds little light on the forces behind their success. To understand their popularity we must acknowledge this irony: The Era of Misinformation has arisen from a desire for truth.

These books -- and many Web logs -- express the beliefs of many Americans that are rarely voiced in the traditional source of political information, the mainstream media. Despite a creeping decline of standards, our leading newspapers, magazines and television newscasts remain committed to demonstrable facts. Their stock in trade is what can be shown and proved.

However, facts and numbers and informed opinions do not always tell the whole story. Sometimes, the lack of proper documents or trustworthy sources prevents reporters from connecting the dots. Sometimes what can be shown doesn't begin to demonstrate what many people hold to be true.

This is the void filled by the new breed of political books. Readers glom onto them because they express beliefs that are deeply held but hard to articulate responsibly. A detailed criticism of Bush's judicial nominees may be the proper way to attack the president, but the fiery anger proclaimed in the best-selling books against him do a better job of capturing the mood of his opponents. Their hatred stems not simply from specific objections to his policies but also from innumerable loose impressions and shards of factoids that have coalesced into strong emotional convictions. That is how the mind works, through the heart.

Despite its faults, Kelley's book expresses the feelings of many Americans that the Bushes are sleazy, duplicitous hypocrites. The Swift Boat crew's charges may be riddled with inconsistencies, but they suggest a widespread belief that John Kerry is not the unimpeachable war hero his campaign portrays.
For readers of these books, truth, at least initially, is not in the details. The "facts" presented may be suspect, but the gist of these works seems far closer to the reality they perceive than the one portrayed in responsible news stories. Once readers become convinced that these books are telling a larger "truth," they start engaging in dangerous mental gymnastics. Their minds begin to work backward; they start believing the debunked "facts" because they build toward the truth they have embraced -- and, of course, because they want them to be true..

This seems to be what happened at CBS, where members of the news division became so sure that Bush had shirked his National Guard duties that they convinced themselves that fraudulent documents indicting the president were authentic. The New York Times captured this dynamic in a headline on the CBS scandal: "Memos on Bush are fake but accurate."

That sounds absurd. And to those of us who wish to be guided by reason, it is. But we must recognize that misinformation is an increasingly powerful tool. Sometimes we can't prove what we know. Most of us don't have the time, energy or critical skills to develop PowerPoint presentations detailing precisely why we feel as we do. When the voice of reason fails to speak to us, we are increasingly turning to those who seem to get it right -- even when they are wrong.

Book review editor J. Peder Zane can be reached at 829-4773 or pzane@newsobserver.com.

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Editor, The News and Observer:

We know it, and we can prove it

"In August the mainstream media debunked most of the charges leveled by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against John Kerry’s service in Vietnam," declares Peder Zane in his Sunday column. So I guess we can all breathe a sigh of relief now, knowing that the Swift Vets’ book, ‘Unfit for Command,’ detailing the reasons why they think Kerry is not qualified to be President of the United States and Commander in Chief of our armed forces has been clearly and finally shown to be nothing but a pack of lies.

Thank goodness for the mainstream media, who "remain committed to demonstrable facts. Their stock in trade is what can be shown and proved," Zane reassures us. But "sometimes," Zane admits, "the lack of proper documents or trustworthy sources prevents reporters from connecting the dots."

With this last statement, Zane has come to the heart of the controversy concerning the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and their charges against John Kerry. No one in the mainstream media has taken the time to investigate these charges fully. The mainstream media has dismissed them out of hand, as lies, based on John Kerry’s Navy records that are presently available to the public.

The Associated Press sued the Pentagon for the release of all George W. Bush’s Texas Air National Guard files, which Bush had already ordered released by executive order of the president. When is the Associated Press going to sue for the release of all John Kerry’s Navy files? John Kerry so far has refused to sign Form 180 that would release all his Navy files. He claims that the six pages posted on his website constitute his complete file.

Inquiring minds who have turned to the blogosphere for their daily (sometimes hourly) news have almost given up hope of getting the truth about Kerry's military service via the mainstream media whose credibility is fading faster than Dan Rather's star in the stormy skies over CBS.

We ask: Doesn’t anybody in the mainstream media wonder why Kerry refuses to allow all his Navy files to be released? Doesn't anybody in the mainstream media suspect there is something in those files Kerry wants to keep hidden from the American voter? Doesn't anybody in the mainstream media think the full disclosure of Kerry's military service records has all the earmarks of a STORY?

Newflash: American voters have known the full military service record of the Republican candidate for president, George W. Bush, since the year 2000. It is not news. We have the same right to know the Democratic candidate, Sen. John Kerry's full military service record -- that is the truth yet to be told.

Moderator note: Please include a link to a legitimate source when reproducing content in this forum. Link added. Thanks.
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TRUTH IS ALWAYS THE VICTOR

[blackwatch]

Let us know if and when you get a reply. I doubt you will. I find it very interesting that such emphasis would be paid to the Presidents records but the media skips over Kerry's. Could it be that most of them don't want it to be known whats in those missing records of Kerry's. Then they wonder why the public no longer trusts most of the press and media for honest reporting.

[Wynne]

Here's the answer I got just now. Guess I made a mistake about there being only 6 pages of documents released. My response to him follows his message.
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Hi,

I agree with you that Kerry should sign the 1080 and that the mainstream media has not put the pressure on him that they would on a Republican candidate. On the other hand, you are wrong to say he has released only six pages of documents. Go to his website, johnkerry.com. There are scores of pages of documents.

- peder zane

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Thanks for your quick response, Peder Zane.

Forgive my error! I should have gone to johnkerry.com just before I wrote to you. I do see that there are many more documents there now than the six that were there the last time I looked.

But what I am looking for, in particular, that is not there, not among the service records Senator Kerry has allowed to be released to the public, is something that would explain why he was discharged from the Navy in 1978 but did not receive his honorable discharge until 2001. A question the mainstream (translate: liberal, Democrat, Kerry-supporting) media is not about to go near, apparently.
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TRUTH IS ALWAYS THE VICTOR

[DaveL]

[Wynne]

Thank you, Davel. for supplying the information I was looking for on this website (and for quoting my original post about it... I did edit that when I came back to post my response to Peder Zane in case anybody wonders about the discrepancy.) If he responds a second time, I'll send him this information you have posted but not otherwise.

Zane is Book Editor for The Raleigh N&O and the dialogue I've had with him thus far is outside his 'job description'. I'm surprised he answered my letter at all. Doubt it will be published in the Letters to the Editor Forum as they will likely say his article merely used the Swift Vets as one of many examples and my letter is not pegged to his topic. But we'll see...
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TRUTH IS ALWAYS THE VICTOR

[Hammer2]

Let's debunk the debunkers, shall we?

Debunking a story means that evidence contradicting the story has been found and presented and it passes the reasonable man test. In other words, if any reasonable man is presented with the same facts he will come to the same conclusion.

Debunking does not mean that contradictory evidence, based on an false source, has disproven the story. All facts must be proven true before this claim can be made. This is the heart of the Navy Records prove... argument. A lie repeated accurately is still a lie.

Debunking does not happen when there is a conflicting eyewitness account of the same story. Each witness's story must be equally evaluated for veracity. The testimony of the witness must be checked against the facts. Not all witnesses are equally reliable. If a witness is in a position to receive monetary rewards or employment for his testimony then this must be weighed in evaluating his veracity.

Debunking does not occur when a tenuous connection is asserted between the parties making a claim and members of a particular political party. If a fact is true, it does not matter where it came from or the motivation of the parties involve. Conversley, if a fact is false, the purity of the source is irrelevant.

Debunking does not occur because someone has changed their story. If I have known someone by the representations he has made to me, and I have respected him and given him public praise and if I then find out that the basis of my respect for him is a lie, I have not changed my opinion for any other reason than that new information has come to my attention.

Debunking has not occurred if a person represents that all information pertinent to his claim, has been made available for inspection when the information was released by the source directly to him and there is no independent confirmation of the completeness or accuracy of the information.

Debunking has not occurred because a respected institution has reported it to be so. The respected institution is obligated to prove it's case with facts that pass the reasonable man test. No amount if insinuation, ad-hominem attacks, guilt by association, hyperbole, obfuscation of events, propaganda, taking information out of context, or mis-characterization of facts can be accepted as refutation of a claim. Even if it is done by a respected institution. The institution is only respected because of its reputation for objectivity and fairness. When the institution becomes partisan in its reporting, it is no longer respected, objective, or fair. Therefore the media can only be considered truthful as long as it reports truthfully.

So apply the reasonable man test for yourself.

Whose story bears up to scrutiny and whose does not?

Who is telling the truth and who is hiding from the truth?

Who has been debunked and who is the debunker?
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"The price of freedom is eternal vigilence" - Thomas Jefferson
"An armed society is a polite society" - Thomas Jefferson
"The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it won't be needed until someone tries to take it away." -- Thomas Jefferson

[MKorner]

I emailed _pederzane yesterday with this question:
To: pzane@newsobserver.com
Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2004 1:22 PM
Subject: Unfit for Command
Please sir, exactly WHICH fact or facts have been debunked in Unfit For Command and where do you cite your source(s)?
Sincerely,

He emailed me a response of:
Mam,
You probably do not trust the New York Times, the Dallas Morning News or the Boston Globe, so referring to their work probably won't mean much to you. Nor, I guess, would the op-ed piece written by William Rood of the Chicago Tribune, which supports Kerry and debunks the Swifties. He is the only other man alive who was captaining a boat when Kerry earned his Silver Star.
_ peder zane


I did a google on William Rood, and the first hit I opened was this in the Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/elections/chi-040821rood,0,4945304.story?coll=chi-news-hed

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Chicago Tribune
Published August 22, 2004

Feb. 28, 1969: ON THE DONG CUNG RIVER
`This is what I saw that day'
By William B. Rood


There were three swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago--three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on February 28, 1969.

One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other.

For years, no one asked about those events. But now they are the focus of skirmishing in a presidential election with a group of swift boat veterans and others contending that Kerry didn't deserve the Silver Star for what he did on that day, or the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for other actions.

Many of us wanted to put it all behind us--the rivers, the ambushes, the killing. Ever since that time, I have refused all requests for interviews about Kerry's service--even those from reporters at the Chicago Tribune, where I work.

But Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown. The critics have taken pains to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there.

Even though Kerry's own crew members have backed him, the attacks have continued, and in recent days Kerry has called me and others who were with him in those days, asking that we go public with our accounts.

I can't pretend those calls had no effect on me, but that is not why I am writing this. What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it.

I was part of the operation that led to Kerry's Silver Star. I have no firsthand knowledge of the events that resulted in his winning the Purple Hearts or the Bronze Star.

But on Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of PCF-23, one of three swift boats--including Kerry's PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz's PCF-43--that carried Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep in the area.

The approach of the noisy 50-foot aluminum boats, each driven by two huge 12-cylinder diesels and loaded down with six crew members, troops and gear, was no secret.

Ambushes were a virtual certainty, and that day was no exception.

Instructions from Kerry
The difference was that Kerry, who had tactical command of that particular operation, had talked to Droz and me beforehand about not responding the way the boats usually did to an ambush.

We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush, we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats' twin .50-caliber machine guns on the attackers and beaching the boats. We told our crews about the plan.

The Viet Cong in the area had come to expect that the heavily loaded boats would lumber on past an ambush, firing at the entrenched attackers, beaching upstream and putting troops ashore to sweep back down on the ambush site. Often, they were long gone by the time the troops got there.

The first time we took fire--the usual rockets and automatic weapons--Kerry ordered a "turn 90" and the three boats roared in on the ambush. It worked. We routed the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The troops, led by an Army adviser, jumped off the boats and began a sweep, which killed another half dozen VC, wounded or captured others and found weapons, blast masks and other supplies used to stage ambushes.

Meanwhile, Kerry ordered our boat to head upstream with his, leaving Droz's boat at the first site.

It happened again, another ambush. And again, Kerry ordered the turn maneuver, and again it worked. As we headed for the riverbank, I remember seeing a loaded B-40 launcher pointed at the boats. It wasn't fired as two men jumped up from their spider holes.

We called Droz's boat up to assist us, and Kerry, followed by one member of his crew, jumped ashore and chased a VC behind a hooch--a thatched hut--maybe 15 yards inland from the ambush site. Some who were there that day recall the man being wounded as he ran. Neither I nor Jerry Leeds, our boat's leading petty officer with whom I've checked my recollection of all these events, recalls that, which is no surprise. Recollections of those who go through experiences like that frequently differ.

With our troops involved in the sweep of the first ambush site, Richard Lamberson, a member of my crew, and I also went ashore to search the area. I was checking out the inside of the hooch when I heard gunfire nearby.

Not long after that, Kerry returned, reporting that he had killed the man he chased behind the hooch. He also had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, which we took back to our base in An Thoi after the operation.

John O'Neill, author of a highly critical account of Kerry's Vietnam service, describes the man Kerry chased as a "teenager" in a "loincloth." I have no idea how old the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but both Leeds and I recall that he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore.

The man Kerry chased was not the "lone" attacker at that site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who fled. There was also firing from the tree line well behind the spider holes and at one point, from the opposite riverbank as well. It was not the work of just one attacker.

Our initial reports of the day's action caused an immediate response from our task force headquarters in Cam Ranh Bay.

Congratulatory message
Known over radio circuits by the call sign "Latch," then-Capt. and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the task force commander, fired off a message congratulating the three swift boats, saying at one point that the tactic of charging the ambushes was a "shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy" and that it "may be the most efficacious method of dealing with small numbers of ambushers."

Hoffmann has become a leading critic of Kerry's and now says that what the boats did on that day demonstrated Kerry's inclination to be impulsive to a fault.

Our decision to use that tactic under the right circumstances was not impulsive but was the result of discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of all three boat officers.

It was also well within the aggressive tradition that was embraced by the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Vietnam. Months before that day in February, a fellow boat officer, Michael Bernique, was summoned to Saigon to explain to top Navy commanders why he had made an unauthorized run up the Giang Thanh River, which runs along the Vietnam-Cambodia border. Bernique, who speaks French fluently, had been told by a source in Ha Tien at the mouth of the river that a VC tax collector was operating upstream.

Ignoring the prohibition against it, Bernique and his crew went upstream and routed the VC, pursuing and killing several.

Instead of facing disciplinary action as he had expected, Bernique was given the Silver Star, and Zumwalt ordered other swifts, which had largely patrolled coastal waters, into the rivers.

The decision sent a clear message, underscored repeatedly by Hoffmann's congratulatory messages, that aggressive patrolling was expected and that well-timed, if unconventional, tactics like Bernique's were encouraged.

What we did on Feb. 28, 1969, was well in line with the tone set by our top commanders.

Zumwalt made that clear when he flew down to our base at An Thoi off the southern tip of Vietnam to pin the Silver Star on Kerry and assorted Bronze Stars and commendation medals on the rest of us.

Error in citation
My Bronze Star citation, signed by Zumwalt, praised the charge tactic we used that day, saying the VC were "caught completely off guard."

There's at least one mistake in that citation. It incorrectly identifies the river where the main action occurred, a reminder that such documents were often done in haste and sometimes authored for their signers by staffers. It's a cautionary note for those trying to piece it all together. There's no final authority on something that happened so long ago--not the documents and not even the strained recollections of those of us who were there.

But I know that what some people are saying now is wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're saying impugns others who are not in the public eye.

Men like Larry Lee, who was on our bow with an M-60 machine gun as we charged the riverbank, Kenneth Martin, who was in the .50-caliber gun tub atop our boat, and Benjamin Cueva, our engineman, who was at our aft gun mount suppressing the fire from the opposite bank.

Wayne Langhoffer and the other crewmen on Droz's boat went through even worse on April 12, 1969, when they saw Droz killed in a brutal ambush that left PCF-43 an abandoned pile of wreckage on the banks of the Duong Keo River. That was just a few months after the birth of his only child, Tracy.

The survivors of all these events are scattered across the country now.

Jerry Leeds lives in a tiny Kansas town where he built and sold a successful printing business. He owns a beautiful home with a lawn that sweeps to the edge of a small lake, which he also owns. Every year, flights of purple martins return to the stately birdhouses on the tall poles in his back yard.

Cueva, recently retired, has raised three daughters and is beloved by his neighbors for all the years he spent keeping their cars running. Lee is a senior computer programmer in Kentucky, and Lamberson finished a second military career in the Army.

With the debate over that long-ago day in February, they're all living that war another time.
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My copy of Unfit for Command is soon to arrive at my house. I can't wait to read it. I'm sure I'll have a much better grasp as soon as I do. In the meantime, _peder zane considers William Rood as at least one of his sources that UFC is not accurate. Would someone please educate him? -
MKorner

[FireDog53]

There is still about 100 pages from Hanoi Johnny's record that have not been released.
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Viet Nam vet and PROUD!

[fortdixlover]

[cipher]

[cipher]

A newspaper reporter that reports on what other reporters have reported on, is little more than a rumormonger.

Seems to me there was a reporter at the New York Times that was plagiarizing all sorts of stuff not too long ago. Is this the same New York Times you cite as a source?

The Boston Globe? Is this the same Boston Globe that has the reporter who was employed by the Kerry campaign as a writer?

Dallas Morning News. Well, at least that paper doesn't have the taint of the liberal Northeast about it. Got a link to a specific article? Or is it just regurgitated AP wire copy taken from the DNC Talking Points?

No, I don't trust those sources, you got that right on the first guess.

What else you got?
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USMC 69-72, 7th Comm, 3rd MarDiv, FMFPAC
US Army 75-79, 97th Sig, SHAPE, NATO
Arkansas National Guard 79
Defense contractor for US Navy, SSPO, SP-20, SP-24, OP-12 84-92

[cipher]

Further, there is NO inconsistency in Rood's account of the actions of 28 Feb 69 and those events as described in UFC, other that the relatively minor detail of the age of the attacker armed with the B-40 and what he was wearing at the time.

There is not much discrepancy between the Rood account and the actual SPOT report for the actions of that day.

Where the DISCREPANCY exists is solely in Kerry's Silver Star citations. Yes, that's a PLURAL. Not one citation. Not TWO citations, but THREE separate and DIFFERENT citations for the SAME award for the SAME action. And ALL of them are inconsistent with BOTH Rood's account and the SPOT report.

So let's take Rood's Op-Ed off the table as "debunking". It has not debunked ANYTHING, all it has done is basically corroborate the existing documentation. Well, all of the documentation excepting Kerry's Silver Star citations (plural).

THAT is the bone of contention, and THAT is what needs to be debunked.
_________________
USMC 69-72, 7th Comm, 3rd MarDiv, FMFPAC
US Army 75-79, 97th Sig, SHAPE, NATO
Arkansas National Guard 79
Defense contractor for US Navy, SSPO, SP-20, SP-24, OP-12 84-92

[Billman]

Cipher's right, and the Rood article was well-discussed when it came out, do a Search. Although it begins with Rood expressing displeasure with the Swiftees, his account is consistent with the Swiftees and does not contradict or debunk any major point beyond VC fashion choices.

The real issue is that Kerry did nothing to remotely deserve a Silver Star, with its citation(s) based on a claim not supported by ANY documents or witnesses: that he faced a "numerically superior force". Even Rood cites at most a handful of VC. Those two Swift boats had 70+ well-armed good guys aboard at the time, per the after-action report.
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-- Bill in Seattle

[cipher]

[cipher]