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Me#1You#10
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 Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 3:26 pm Post subject: "Swift Boats Are Back And Lipscomb's Got 'Em" |
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Tom Maguire of "Just One Minute" makes note of developments. Oddly enough, JOM commentary generally draws Kerry cohorts into the "comments". For some reason, they're MIA in this go-round. Perhaps they're still trying to digest Lipscomb's article...
| Quote: | June 30, 2008
Swift Boats Are Back And Lipscomb's Got 'Em
Kate Zernike of the Times gets a front-pager deploring the use of the term "swiftboating" to mean "the nastiest of campaign smears". Thomas Lipscomb, who covered the Swift controversies in depth back in 2004, trounces her.
To which I will add my one original contribution to this stew: The latest response by Kerry's defenders (ed. Link Redacted) mentions Kerry's controversial first Purple Heart on p. 12 (of 15):The attempt to denigrate the circumstances of Kerry’s first Purple Heart, for example, is disproved by the two enlisted men, Pat Runyon and Bill Zaladonis, together with Kerry, who state categorically your so-called eyewitness, William Schachte, was not on the skimmer in the action that night. (Responding to this lie, Zaladonis has quipped: “me and Pat aren’t the smartest, but we can count to three.”8) Should William Schachte ever consent to sit in a room with them, which he has thus far refused to do, or to be interviewed publicly with them present, which he has also avoided, they will offer further proof of his lie. I would be curious to see what proof they could produce. What has struck me is that Zaladonis was interviewed repeatedly by Douglas Brinkley prior to 2004 for Brinkley's "Tour of Duty" hagiography, and was also interviewed by the Boston Globe for their 2003 Kerry profiles. Yet neither the Globe nor Brinkley elicited from Zaladonis that he first met Kerry during this incident that resulted in Kerry's first combat, Kerry's first medal, and was later described by Zaladonis as "one of the scariest nights I've had in my life". Instead, Zaladonis meets Kerry a few days later as a crew member on Kerry's first PCF.
Deficient interview technique, twice over? Or did Zaladonis only later decide that his story was even more impressive if he put himself in the boat with Kerry? Zaladonis first appears with Kerry on the skimmer when the Purple Heart story was being criticized in early 2004.
Neither Brinkley nor the Globe will be following up on this, and Kerry's War Notes (aka his journal) have not been made available so that we could see his contemporaneous account of his first combat and first medal incident. And a Bonus Note - although it was his first medal incident, the medal was actually awarded later than some of the others (IIRC); the presumption is that Kerry pushed through the paperwork after some other officers had gone Stateside.
Thomas Lipscomb had more on Kerry's first Purple Heart (and my thoughts).
Just One Minute |
Last edited by Me#1You#10 on Tue Jul 01, 2008 3:50 pm; edited 7 times in total |
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TEWSPilot
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Joined: 26 Aug 2004
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