 |
SwiftVets.com
Service to Country
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Vic Francis
Seaman Recruit
Joined: 19 Aug 2004
Posts: 4
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
|
 Posted: Sun Dec 19, 2004 7:47 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
Vic...
Thanks for posting that article and, for the forum record, I'll reproduce it below.
| Quote: | The revolt of the Vietnam veterans
By Bruce Kesler
San Diego Tribune
December 19, 2004
Post mortems in the liberal press on the role that Vietnam veterans played in presidential candidate John Kerry's defeat mask the key role of the liberal press, which tried to suppress the vets' story and is distorting it now. I was there at the creation of a veterans group and all along, and know better. The American people deserve to know better too.
In 1971 I organized Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace. John O'Neill enlisted to counter the smears of American servicemen in Vietnam. No one else spoke up for us, so we had to. The mainstream press was more diverse than today and we got a spotty but honest hearing.
Kerry's light dimmed then. Americans got the message that a motley crew of exaggerators and frauds didn't speak for Vietnam veterans. We said our piece and went home, back to our diverse, nonpolitical lives.
Meanwhile, anti-Vietnam war protesters of the 1960s marched through academia and the media to claim its power as their own. In 2004, they fought to defend their self-image by defaming that of anti-Kerry Vietnam veterans.
In February 2004, anti-Kerry Vietnam veterans were shocked that he won the Democratic nomination. The mainstream media blessed this coronation. No one except Kerry and his advisers really wanted to revisit Vietnam, but they saw it as a way to appeal to anti and pro-war voters.
Kerry's Vietnam veteran opponents hadn't been in contact for over 30 years, so we searched each other out. Scott Swett, creator of wintersoldier.com that collected research on Kerry's protest activities, was an invaluable connector among us, creating an Internet political network that bound us together.
While we knew all too well about Kerry's anti-Vietnam protest period, we compared notes and surprised ourselves at the extent of deceptions in Kerry's self-hagiography about being a sterling war hero. It was intolerable that John Kerry brazenly glorified this suspect record to centerpiece his few months as a junior officer 35 years ago as qualification to lead the United States in this most challenging time since the Cold War.
The liberal media portrayed anti-Kerry Vietnam veterans as a long-planned, far-right funded conspiracy of liars. That's far, far from the truth. The real story is like the Minutemen, rising from peaceful lives to spontaneously come together to again fight for the America we so deeply love.
There was little or no coordination, just mutual support, with each volunteer shooting from behind his own tree in the same direction. We came to know each other on the field of our revolt against the false image created by Kerry of himself in the media and the false image Kerry was instrumental in painting of us and America.
John O'Neill got off his sickbed. He asked me whether I had the contacts and resources to lead as I did in 1971, which I didn't, and he dug in his own pocket to get the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth started. Vietnam veterans from every service, and Americans from every walk of life, joined in and followed O'Neill into political combat.
Early in the year a friend with access to the Kerry campaign warned me it was digging for any kind of dirt to destroy us. Contrary to the liberal media's story that we surprised Kerry in August, he thought the mainstream media could succeed in ignoring and stifling the Swift Boat veterans, and he had long planned a new smear campaign against us.
The surprise to the Kerry camp and liberal press was that the new media did break through and that Vietnam veterans could not be intimidated. In August, as reported by Newsweek, Kerry operatives fed negative documents and talking points to the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe. Subsequent articles in those newspapers reflected negatively on the Swiftees.
With only one halting exception, the mainstream media refused to investigate the sworn affidavits of 60 credible witnesses to Kerry's behavior, or to follow up on the abundance of additional information given them. The New York Times repeatedly used "unsubstantiated" as its adjective describing the Swift Boat veterans' allegations without ever exerting its considerable power to investigate.
Kerry wasn't pressured by the mainstream media to reveal his full military records to resolve issues, nor questioned as to what he was hiding. The mainstream media's zeal in chasing down every scrap of trivia about Bush's service stands in sharp contrast. That alone strongly suggested a liberal bias.
This behavior by some of the liberal media was purposeful. The survival of their favored candidate was endangered by our truth and facts. As important, the self-image of many reporters was endangered. Their myths of our pervasive evils in defending Vietnamese freedom, and of their valiant memories of mounting school libraries' ramparts, could not take the incongruence of exposure.
In the campaign to discredit anti-Kerry Vietnam veterans, some charged that we were reviving an old vendetta. Actually, we had ignored Kerry until last February. Some charged that we were refighting a cultural war from the '60s. Again, untrue. Many of us smoked marijuana, rocked to the same songs, grew the same long hair. We're Democrats, independents and Republicans.
The true post mortem of Kerry's defeat is simply the last hurrah of simple patriots, amateurishly but fervently rising up and banding together, with few resources, to defeat the mainstream media's boy and juggernaut. Polls and the election show we succeeded.
San Diego Tribune |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
|
| Posted: Mon Dec 20, 2004 2:08 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler will be interviewing Bruce Kesler this afternoon (12/20 2:00 PM ET) on their webcast radio program, "The Inquisition", hosted by Rightalk.com .
From Rightalk.com...
| Quote: | Description: Bruce Kesler Bruce Kesler served as a Sergeant in the Marine Corps, G-2, in Vietnam in 1969-70, enlisting after graduating Brooklyn College, where he led support for the war. Mr. Kesler was one of the organizers of the 1967 Support Our Men In Vietnam parade down New York’s 5th Avenue, the longest parade since WWII. Following his service, Mr. Kesler organized the Vietnam Veterans for A Just Peace to counter Kerry and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War in 1971. Mr. Kesler contributed the feature article "Oh No! Vietnam Again? Shame On Us All' to WinterSoldier.com.
|
You might want to bookmark Scott's Wintersoldier.com update page at
http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/index.php?topic=New |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
|
| Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 2:24 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Update: at 9:30 PM ET the interview is still available for listening. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
1991932
Lance Corporal
Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 381
Location: Massachusetts
|
| Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 7:47 am Post subject: What bias? |
|
|
What a strange coincidence!
I never heard about that pro-war parade in 1967, until now. I wonder why my paper didn't pick up the story?
I'm being sarcastic, of course. But the one thing I've learned in this whole Kerry 04 experience is how badly the MSM stuck a knife in the collective backs of an entire generation of veterans.
Will history ever correct the record? Please don't tell me it did and use Election 2004 as proof. If this country knew the truth about the Loser, he would've gone down by another 40 points.
Thank God for the Swift Boat Vets. At least they got the message to enough people to swing the election. And that's why I keep coming back to this site.
Kerry's not dead yet, and neither am I. I wish him no harm, of course, but won't he please retire?
Just go away.
_________________
Former "War Criminal" |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
