More Swiftness

[khaosworks]

From the New York Times:

Friendly Fire: The Birth of an Anti-Kerry Ad

Not quoted here because the article is worth reading in full.

The links between Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the Bush campaign aside - that really shouldn't surprise anyone; that 527 groups have common financial or communal links to the politicians they support also shouldn't surprise anyone; and connection does not equate coordination - what's interesting is the section a bit further down on the Times's checking into Larry Thurlow's story surrounding his and Kerry's Bronze Star and a neat summary of the problems with SBVT's allegations.

Comments

[thespian.livejournal.com]

what kills me is how people are still saying "we should hear what they have to say!" and such. We heard it. And as soon as it was poked at, it collapsed. End of story. Or at least, it should be.

[billroper]

That's not exactly true. Kerry's story of spending Christmas in Cambodia has been retracted by his biographer, Douglas Brinkley. There's some research that suggests that Alston did not serve on Kerry's boat for long at all (about one week is the current best guess) and apparently not at the time that Alston received his serious wounds.

I think that it's important to separate truth from fiction and to understand what may not be proveable by either side, given the time that has elapsed since the events occurred.

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

We should also note that Kerry is documented, as far as I know, to have said that he was in Cambodia at Christmas only twice - once in that 1979 Boston Globe article, and once on the senate floor in 1986. It's just that these two instances have been quoted and requoted over and over again.

By 1994, he was already saying that he was "near" Cambodia. So it's not really a recent retraction, such as it is.

[billroper]

Here's a pointer to a 1992 article. (Scroll down to the second item on the page.)

I have seen claims that he said he was in Cambodia for Christmas "numerous" times during the 70s and 80s, but can't document this. That wouldn't change your point that he stopped saying it by 1994.

[billroper]

I have some later quotes from a source that you're welcome to consider as suspect. :) However, they're probably not too hard to check, so I'm going to guess that they're not fabricated.

"We were told, 'Just go up there and do your patrol,'" Kerry told Diamond. "Everybody was over there [in Cambodia]. Nobody thought twice about it." Five years later, in a September 4, 1997, Senate subcommittee hearing on Cambodian politics, Kerry began his remarks by saying, "I first was introduced to Cambodia when I spent Christmas Eve of 1968 in a river in Cambodia during the Vietnam conflict." Kerry was impressed with what he saw. "I found it to be a rather remarkable and very beautiful country which had an allure to me, and to many others," he told his fellow lawmakers, "which has been sustained through those years."

In June 2003, Kerry repeated his story to Boston Globe reporter Michael Kranish, who later included it in John F. Kerry, the biography he wrote with coauthors Brian Mooney and Nina Easton. Kerry told Kranish that his adventures on December 24, 1968, began "near Cambodia," when his Swift boat was ambushed by Viet Cong. But later, Kerry said, "he had gone several miles inside Cambodia, which theoretically was off limits." Kerry's incursion put him in a cynical mood. He told Kranish he had sent a "sarcastic message" to his superiors from the Navy's "most inland" unit.

The complete article is in The Weekly Standard.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but it really is true. I didn't say "It's all lies!" I said that the story they set up really has collapsed. The stuff they tried to set up about how he didn't deserve his bronze star and such (which if you look back at their ad and press releases was what they were concentrating on for political purposes) has collapsed. The Cambodian Christmas stuff was not mentioned by them until after their other statements started to fall apart, and is one of the more minor issues. The documents at the time, and statements by a number of these people over 30 years say different from what they've started saying in the last 6 months, and there is the evidence that the affidavits were collected a little deceitfully.

If it's not provable, they shouldn't have started yammering about it to begin with, considering what's been on the record for 35 years. Coming up with this now, when he's running for President (and contradicting their own public statements at other times), those are smear tactics.

[acrobatty.livejournal.com]

Thurlow's story is the funniest - "I have so much respect and love for the Navy that I never checked why I got a medal and lost my citation record."

Van whatshis is almost as good: "Kerry ran away and came back and fished Rassman out of the water a few yards away from me . . . while I sat on my thumb and watched him drown." Yeah, that one makes sense too.

Schmucks.

OTOH, I am peeved at Kerry for claiming that by not violating McCain-Feingold, Bush is condoning the message. Noncoordination menas noncoordination. This is a sleazy tactic.

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

You know what's really sad about Kerry's claim? It'll probably make him a bit more popular. What with Bush's camp attacking all the time, Kerry needs to show some teeth or he'll impress swing voters as a wuss, or that the allegations are true.

Rationally, you know the 527s are legal, and there's no real evidence to show SBVT is coordinating with the Bush campaign, save for a few financial and communal connections. But in the mind of the average swing voter, legalities are irrelevant and the whole Bush camp is one hulking monolith. Rationalism plays little part in this kind of thinking. This says a lot more about the state of informed enfranchisement in America than it does about Kerry or Bush.