SwiftVets.com

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The young opportunist’s handbook
August 19th, 2004


The big story currently in the media (those that aren’t in the practice of turning big stories that aren’t their stories into little stories and then dead stories) is the controversy surrounding presidential nominee John Kerry and the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. With Senator Kerry making his military service the centerpiece of his campaign, the 254 ex-servicemen this group comprises have come forward to contradict many of his claims in the book Unfit for Command, by Paul O’Neill and John Corsi. With accusations flying as much as Air Force One and the propaganda as thick as Heinz ketchup, some may not know whom to believe. So, let’s see if we can winnow out the nonsense and get at the truth.

First, there are those who would like to stifle this debate altogether. Theirs is the argument -- embraced by erstwhile no-spin doctor Bill O'Reilly, who is spinning himself so much that he must be dizzy -- that the Senator's war record should be sacrosanct. The implication is that it's sacrilege to even question someone's war record because that person made great sacrifices for each and every one of us.

While this argument is rhetorically effective, it's silly.

-S-

This is no small matter, as Senator Kerry was among the voices that branded American soldiers “baby-killers.” To level such charges without hard evidence is not only wrong, it’s unconscionable. In our courts of law a man is innocent until proven guilty. But when it’s a matter of accusations against our own soldiers, accusations that we know can lead to more American deaths in the field, the accusers should be held to an even higher standard.

John ‘O’Neill believes, and I concur, that Kerry’s anti-war activities were not motivated by the inklings of his conscience, but were simply the next chapter in his quest for national recognition. This, of course, sheds light on why he might have fabricated stories about American transgressions.

7. John Kerry edited a book titled The New Soldier, in which he once again impugned his fellow servicemen. The cover of the book features bearded renegades in uniform holding an American flag upside-down. Obviously, however, Kerry determined at some point that he had gotten as much mileage out of libeling American soldiers as he was going to and that the book no longer served his ends, because he decided to prohibit its reprinting.

It’s instructive to note that Unfit for Command is not some hastily compiled hatchet book. On the contrary, Tony Blankley, who wrote an op/ed piece about the book for the Washington Times, has read the work cover to cover and writes that it

appears to be meticulously researched and reported. It is replete with copious footnotes, a detailed index and two appendices. First-hand witnesses are named and quoted verbatim to support each specific, shocking charge.

And what I have enumerated in this piece are only a small percentage of those shocking charges.

So, what is one to make of John Kerry and his supporters and detractors?

To be sure, a few of those supporters are Vietnam Veterans who have supported the Senator publicly and whom he has placed front and center in an effort to negate the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. But when you juxtapose these two groups, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that the preponderance of the evidence weighs heavily against Kerry. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth comprises 254 men, all of whom have been honorably discharged and sixty of whom have won Purple Hearts. Moreover, this number includes virtually all of Kerry’s fellow officers and the higher chain of command in his division. If we are to believe the Senator is not lying, we must believe that the majority of these honorably discharged fighting men are lying.

What also strikes me about these events is how unprecedented they are. Normally, there is no group that will stand by you, through thick and thin, like men who fought with you in battle. Normally, there is no group that will be more loathe to utter a harsh word about you than the men who bled with you, the men who risked their lives with you. And we’ve had former military men run for president before, but I do not know of even one case where the former comrades of such a man have organized with a sense of urgency to sound the alarm about him.

But it has happened here and now -- for what could be the very first time. And I think that speaks volumes.

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American Conservative