SwiftVets.com

[Mary Ann Parker]

You are becoming LEGEND Swiftees
Make it a Swiftee day.
Mary Ann Parker
***********************************
Bush vs. Kerry - the Turning Point

November 7, 2004
by Arlen Williams

http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/w/williams/2004/williams110704.htm

George W. Bush has won the Presidency over John F. Kerry -- a personal victory. It is also an ideological victory, for America's founding vision of the Creator endowed covenants, virtues and rights of a very special and sovereign nation, over licentious, socialist and globalist revisionism.

But as to how this election was won, it was very much a media victory. On John Kerry's side were bigger money, PAC attacks, media power plays and corrupt media collusion on a scale never seen before in the free world. They focused much more upon tearing down the current President, than demonstrating why we should elect the offered replacement.

On the side of President Bush was the more effective testimony: truth telling, vision presenting, fact checking, spin correcting, and validating. This was accomplished through big media too, but also through old fashioned word of mouth, including an effective neighbor-to-neighbor ground game -- and through self-empowered new media

Some of it, the "527 group" Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, represented a very maverick media.

What was the turning point?

It occurred just before the Republican National Convention, on August 20.

The Swift Vets had already been shelling the Kerry Campaign since the 4th. Their first television advertisement had softened the battlefield a bit, disputing most of Kerry's claims of heroism in Vietnam. The implied threats in memos sent to TV stations by Democrat lawyers should they air these ads, drew the reverse effect of additional scrutiny by new media and begrudging attention by the old.

The Swifties had backed up their disputes of Kerry's account of his conflicted Vietnam efforts with many signed affidavits and documentation on their Web site. The book, Unfit for Command had been released on August 15, chronicling their story. Conservative radio was on it. But it was their second ad, "Sellout," released on the 20th, that sunk Kerry's boat permanently in the polls, before the good ship Bush-43.

In addition to the paid ads in battleground states and cable news networks, TV news couldn't keep from airing this direct hit. It delivered the testimony of POW's and focused America upon the knife to the heart of American morale that were Lt. John F. Kerry's 1971 allegations to Congress of rampant Vietnam war crimes. America was shown how Kerry had planned and strategized, and stabbed his band of brothers in the back --even those suffering with excruciating severity from actual war wounds, or from torture laced with the quotes of anti-war Americans, in the horrific "Hanoi Hilton."

Against a backdrop of Kerry's recorded litany of accusations, we were presented this personal testimony:
Joe Ponder, wounded Nov. 1968, "The accusations that John Kerry made against the veterans who served in Vietnam was just devastating, and it hurt me more than any physical wounds I had."

Ken Cordier, POW, Dec. 1966 - Mar. 1973, "That was part of the torture, was to sign a statement that you had committed war crimes."
Then came the deepest thrust of the sword into Kerry's presidential campaign and the bleeding was never stopped. The Democratic nominee for President never recovered in the scrutiny the American people:
Navy pilot, Paul Galanti, POW, Jan. 1966 - Feb. 1973, "John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I and many of my comrades in the North Vietnam prison camps took torture to avoid saying. It demoralized us."
Viewers' eyes across America began to moisten; hearts began to ache. The testimony went on.
Cordier, "He betrayed us in the past. How could we be loyal to him, now?"

Galanti again, "He dishonored his country and more importantly, the people whom he served with. He just sold them out."
Poetic, that the political ambition John Kerry took to Vietnam and back, then to this naval lieutenant's conference with an enemy North Vietnamese psychological operative and to Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and even to his condemnation of America's military men before Congress, was halted just so, on its way to the White House.

How so? By a much less fortunate officer that had just recently understood who it was he heard selling him out, allegations before Congress played over Hanoi Hilton loudspeakers when in the torturing hands of the enemy. In interviews after August 20, Galanti related it wasn't until hearing Kerry's peculiar 1971 mispronunciation of "Genghis Kahn," when aired earlier this year, that he recognized his American betrayer, his one and only Vietnam flashback.

Margin of error

After August 20, only an infrequent poll showed Kerry tied or +1 against President Bush; never pulling out of the margin of error.

The treacherous moral error of Lt. Kerry thirty three years prior, provided Vietnamese Communists their pivot point in weakening American morale. This culminated in America's pull-out and a failure of the Ford Administration to abide by America's agreements to back up South Vietnam with resumed bombing, if they were re-invaded. The lack of a disciplining influence in the region lead to the murders of over two million Southeast Asians.

What would be the margin of error, had that same man been elected President, during our global war against Islamofascist terrorism? What would happen in our currently critical times in Iraq?

Just after August 20, President Bush gained approximately 3% in the polls and after further ups and downs he was elected, by a 3% margin. It was a profound margin of correction, for a generation and for history.


(The ads of Swift Boat Vets and POWs for Truth remain viewable and downloadable through their Web site, www.swiftvets.com.)