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Me#1You#10
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Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
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 Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2004 1:31 pm Post subject: Rocky Mountain News - Talk Back To The Media |
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Cambodia spin, version 1.0....Note to self...find Kopel article and read
| Quote: | Rocky Mountain News
Talk Back To The Media
September 11, 2004
Media critic Kopel hardly disinterested
News media critic Dave Kopel's column of Aug. 14, "Kerry's Cambodia troubles ignored," is a cynical attempt to validate the outlandish claims made by the "Swift Boat Veterans for Bush." Far from being a disinterested observer, Kopel is the director of research at the Independence Institute, a right-wing propaganda mill, whose alumni list reads like a Who's Who of prominent Colorado Republicans: names such as Gale Norton, Donald Hodel and Rep. Tom Tancredo, to name a few. The institute receives annual grants from the Castle Rock Foundation, a Coors family foundation that lists Pete Coors as its vice president.
Kopel relates a story from Unfit for Command of John Kerry's passionate account on the Senate floor of a Christmas he spent, in December 1968, on an illegal incursion into Cambodia. After stating that some of the details of the story don't add up, Kopel makes a great leap to the loaded conclusion that Kerry is lying.
There are many reasons that Kerry might have been inaccurate in his Cambodian account, and the most likely explanation is simply the inexactness of memory. Who among us can remember back 15 years or more with crystal clarity? Far from being an objective recording device, events and images in memory blend to form something more akin to an impressionistic painting than a photograph.
Kopel focuses on the Cambodia story instead of more farfetched claims made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for one reason - with this seed of doubt, he wants to plant a credibility problem for Kerry.
Kopel hopes that once his readers accept his bogus assessment that Kerry is lying about Cambodia, by extension, they will also believe that there is at least a grain of truth in the other things that the Swift Boat Veterans are claiming.
Daniel Morgan
Evergreen
Rocky Mountain News
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bhlewis
Ensign
Joined: 05 Sep 2004
Posts: 63
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| Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2004 1:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Didn't the Kerry compaign already admit that they didn't go into Cambodia? |
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Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
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| Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2004 1:36 pm Post subject: |
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And here it is.....
| Quote: | Kopel: Kerry's Cambodia troubles ignored
Denver dailies assail candidate's foes but cold-shoulder the issues they raise
August 14, 2004
According to Newsweek's assistant managing editor Evan Thomas, "There's one other base here, the media. Let's talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win and I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards . . . as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there's going to be this glow about them . . ." (Inside Washington television show, July 10).
Thomas' prediction is amply supported by the (non)coverage which the Denver dailies, like most of the rest of the media, have given to this week's meltdown of the Kerry campaign.
As reported in The Congressional Record, on March 27, 1986, Sen. John Kerry spoke on the Senate floor against U.S. support for the anti-communist contras in Nicaragua:
"I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared - seared - in me . . ."
Likewise, Kerry wrote an Oct. 14, 1979, letter to the editor of the Boston Herald: "I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real."
He repeated the Cambodia Christmas story in Senate committee hearings in June 1992 and September 1997.
Actually, in December 1968, the president of the United States was Lyndon Johnson, not Richard Nixon. Nixon's statement that there were "no American combat troops in Cambodia" was made in November 1971.
All available evidence indicates that Kerry was lying about Christmas in Cambodia.
As detailed in the new book Unfit for Command, every officer in Kerry's chain of command denies that Kerry's Swift boat came within 50 miles of Cambodia. Three crewmen on Kerry's boat have denied that they ever went into Cambodia. (The other two refused to be interviewed.)
In Douglas Brinkley's Kerry biography, Tour of Duty, Kerry told Brinkley that he spent Christmas Eve 1968 "near the Cambodian border" in the town of Sa Dec. Sa Dec is in the center of South Vietnam and 50 miles from Cambodia.
The New York Daily News, the New York Post, The Washington Times, and the London Telegraph all covered the Christmas in Cambodia story early this week, but Colorado's Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post have failed to do so.
In Colorado, the Cambodia fraud has been covered in depth on the Hugh Hewitt Show, a national radio program broadcast on KNUS-AM (710) from 4-7 p.m. weekdays. Hewitt interviewed Steve Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat for two of the four months that Kerry spent in Vietnam, from November 1968 through January 1969. Gardner maintains that the boat never came within 50 miles of Cambodia. You can read the interview at: hughhewitt.com/index.htm# postid766.
The Denver dailies have covered the story exclusively by attacking Swift Boat Veterans for Truth through:
• An Associated Press article in both papers reporting that John McCain denounced the attacks on Kerry (without providing any evidence that the attacks are factually wrong);
• News columnist Mike Litt- win criticizing Bush for not criticizing the Swift boat veterans (Aug. 7);
• The Post's Jim Spencer defending Kerry's Purple Hearts (a July 30 column with more substance than other Kerry defenses); and
• An AP article pointing out that John Corsi, the co-author of Unfit for Command has made disparaging remarks about Islam and Catholicism (News, Aug. 11).
Early in the week, the Kerry campaign denied that Kerry had ever claimed to have spent Christmas in Cambodia. Confronted with evidence, the campaign refused to answer questions. On Wednesday, the campaign abandoned the Christmas-in-Cambodia story that had been "seared" in Kerry's memory. The campaign told Fox News that Kerry was in Cambodia sometime, but would not specify when. The campaign told ABC News that Kerry was in the Mekong Delta, which "consists of the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, so on Christmas Eve in 1968, he was in fact on patrol."
To the contrary, the Mekong River flows from Cambodia into Vietnam and does not border the two countries; the Mekong Delta is adjacent to the Pacific Ocean, and is nowhere near Cambodia.
The News ignored the story of Kerry retracting three decades of Christmas-in-Cambodia tales. The Post also ignored the story, and instead ran the attack on John Corsi which had appeared the day before in the News.
It is as if the media had covered the Bush National Guard story only by impugning Bush's critics, while barely acknowledging the substance of the charges. Evan Thomas was right.
Dave Kopel is research director at the Independence Institute, an attorney and author of 10 books. He can be reached at davekopel@RockyMountainNews.com.
Rocky Mountain News
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Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
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| Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2004 1:38 pm Post subject: |
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| bhlewis wrote: | | Didn't the Kerry compaign already admit that they didn't go into Cambodia? |
That salient fact apparently slipped under Mr. Morgan's radar. |
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Tom Poole
Vice Admiral
Joined: 07 Aug 2004
Posts: 914
Location: America
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| Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2004 1:52 pm Post subject: Rocky Mountain... |
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| Daniel Morgan wrote: | | ...Independence Institute, a right-wing propaganda mill, whose alumni list reads like a Who's Who of prominent Colorado Republicans: names such as...and Rep. Tom Tancredo... |
How dare this little unknown pipsqueak disparage Tom Tancredo! He's one of the few politicians with a clear vision and true to his convictions. Is tarring and feathering legal?
_________________
'58 Airedale HMR(L)-261 VMO-2 |
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Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
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| Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2004 1:57 pm Post subject: Re: Rocky Mountain... |
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| Tom Poole wrote: | | How dare this little unknown pipsqueak disparage Tom Tancredo! He's one of the few politicians with a clear vision and true to his convictions. Is tarring and feathering legal? |
Mr. Morgan is well within his rights to pillory any public figure he deems appropriate. That right is not in question, just his myopia.
P.S. Please note it is a letter to the editor. I just thought it atypical of a kill the messenger/ignore the fact Kerry defense.
Last edited by Me#1You#10 on Sat Sep 11, 2004 2:42 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Tom Poole
Vice Admiral
Joined: 07 Aug 2004
Posts: 914
Location: America
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| Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2004 2:00 pm Post subject: Rocky Mountain... |
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Thanks for teaching an old journalism graduate the law. But you didn't answer the question.
_________________
'58 Airedale HMR(L)-261 VMO-2 |
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jwb7605
Rear Admiral
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 690
Location: Colorado
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| Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2004 2:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Me#1You#10 wrote: | | bhlewis wrote: | | Didn't the Kerry compaign already admit that they didn't go into Cambodia? |
That salient fact apparently slipped under Mr. Morgan's radar. |
Maybe.
It's becoming more and more apparent, in "news" articles that Kerry didn't go into Cambodia before he did go into Cambodia. And since this was such a long time ago, when he went into Cambodia is unimportant, because he does remember going into Cambodia, and has a hat to prove it. Just get back on topic ... GW is lying. You see, we have documents that clearly show Bush disobeyed a direct order. Even the White House has distributed them. The White House got them from CBS, which is a reliable source. These documents have been analyzed by the same guy who analyzed the Vince Foster documents, and we all know about those conspiracy theories. So if you question that, you're a conspiracy theorist. Why are you making all these lies up about John Kerry?
Sheesh. The logic here is clear and unassailable. 
<EDIT> ... oh, I forgot to add: The Rocky Mountain News is the more conservative of the two Denver Papers! |
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curtis
Seaman Recruit
Joined: 20 Aug 2004
Posts: 29
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| Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2004 12:51 am Post subject: |
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Mr. Morgan is clearly one of the head-in-the-sand left-wingers that aren't worth wasting time trying to get them to pull their heads out.
Curtis |
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BrianC
PO2
Joined: 02 Jun 2004
Posts: 364
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| Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2004 1:07 am Post subject: |
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The Lamestream Media's "BIG LIE":
That the Swifty's claims have been "widely discredited". |
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