Sunday, November 18, 2007

Swift Boat Liars Backtracking


A short time ago, Texas's own T. Boone Pickens at a wealthy conservative get-together said he would give $1 million if anyone demonstrated the Swift Boat Veteran's allegations were untrue. Never one to pass up an easy million dollars Senator John Kerry said I'll take that offer.

Furiously backtracking, T. Boone is now attaching contingencies to the offer. To illustrate the extent of his ignorance about this subject among other new demands is that Kerry release all of his service records from 1971-1978. Kerry honorably served in the Navy from 1966-1970.

Continuing their record of enthusiastically applauding ignorance, the rightwingnut blogs are blasting the media for ignoring the challenge until Kerry accepted it.

PS, can I have a chunk of that million? Or at least get eRiposte a piece?

Kerry's medals and the real witnesses. More on the Swift Boat Liars.

From an Op-Ed by Veterans:
As was shamefully done previously against decorated veterans like John McCain and Max Cleland, extreme right-wing groups such as the so-called 'Swift-Boat Veterans for Truth' are again spreading lies meant to discredit a decorated veteran. A veteran who volunteered for combat, who was brave enough not only to withstand the rigors of battle but then the equally difficult struggle to speak the truth about wars inevitable dark side: savagery, stupidity, recklessness, maiming, and death. These are the truths of every war -- those necessary and those avoidable; those just and those unjust.

"The slander about John Kerry's Purple Hearts and courage in command is fallacious at best and spuriously shameful. More, the attacks against Kerry's post-discharge protest of Vietnam represent a concerted attempt to prevent others from speaking the necessary truth of their experience by those too cowardly to admit their own share in our flawed humanity...
Houstonian John O'Neil gets tapped to often do the Republican dirty work against Kerry, first for the Nixon White House, later for the Bush. Another Houstonian, Perry of Perry Homes, paid to set up the Swift Boat Liars and provided millions of their funding.
When voters go to the polls in November, McMahon said, they won't be choosing between John Kerry and "Unfit for Command" author John O'Neill; they'll be choosing between Kerry and Bush. "The choice is between a guy who volunteered to serve, went to war, fought on the front line, took enemy fire, was highly decorated, and saved the life of at least one of the troops -- and a guy who did everything he could to avoid service, jumped over 500 people to get into the National Guard, didn't show up for service in Alabama, and can't prove he was there."

Like many other Democrats, McMahon is incredulous that -- in light of Bush's record -- Vietnam service is even an issue in the campaign. "It seems to me that the president has an awful lot of explaining to do, particularly because he can't produce a single person, he can't remember where he lived, he can't remember who he hug out with, the folks he went drinking with, the bars he hung out in, and we're expected to take seriously their allegations about how many bullets were flying one day in Vietnam?"

Wayne Slater isn't surprised at all. Slater, the veteran Dallas Morning News reporter who coauthored "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential," said Tuesday that the Swift Boat Veterans attack was entirely predictable. Slater has watched Karl Rove work for nearly two decades, and he said the "mark of Rove" in a campaign is always the same: Aim nasty attacks right at your opponent's strength, but keep your own fingerprints off them.
John Kerry was first a hero in Vietnam, where he volunteered to go instead of a safe birth at sea, and then taking on Nixon and the Republicans at home. How many people who believe the Swift Boat Liars even realize that all of the people who served on the Swift Boats during the disputed battles support Kerry?

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