It’s a classic Karl Rove tactic – when you want something to do X, you name it not-X so it deflects criticism. That’s why the USA PATRIOT Act isn’t about patriotism, Bush’s “Clear Skies” act doesn’t make the air clearer, “Swift Boat Veterans For Truth” don’t dispense the truth…
minty green:
Fair enough.
By the way, just to be precise, I agree with you that Kerry’s congressional testimony, i.e., his accusations of war crimes on the part of the US military, is not a disavowal of his service. Rather, I’m hung up on the fact that he threw away his medals (only not). Those same medals that he supposedly threw away then, because they were dishonorable, he now exploits as evidence of his honor. Or let us say that he “disavowed” their meaning and value when he threw them away; now he’s doing the exact opposite. This seems frankly hypocritical to me; its as if the act of throwing them away, all those years ago, was just “political theater,” and didn’t really mean anything.
At the risk of getting involved in a major digression, I’ll just say that basically I agree with you; that was my intention when I wrote “participation” in a free-fire zone. The problem, of course, is that if I start indiscriminately shooting into a free-fire zone, I have no way of knowing whether the people I kill are enemy combatants or civilians.
Here’s a brief review of the status of free-fire zones in relations to internationally accepted rules of war.
Sam:
Sam, if I wanted to accuse you of lying, I would have called you a liar. You should know by this point that I don’t play it that way.
What I was trying to point out was that you seem to be employing any possible argument, no matter how weak, to support your assertions. You’ve never hesitated to call my arguments “lame,” at least when they were so, and – to my recollection – I’ve never hesitated to admit you were right, at least when I thought you were. So I honestly wasn’t trying to rub your nose in it; I was just trying to point out the bias I see underlying your position in this thread. If I had made such a string of unfounded assertions about Bush in a debate with you, you’d have handed me my ass on a plate, and you damn well know it.
Perhaps, in making assertions about the state of the border between Cambodia and Vietnam during the war, you should consider referencing more than one source, or at least consider the possibility that your single source – Gardner – is a prominent member of the “We-despise-Kerry” gang, before introducing his assertions as fact in this debate.
Sorry, I took this statement made by you (among others) to imply that you thought Swifts were too large to traverse the canals (taken from post #250 at the bottom of page 5):
I’m not the only one who thought you were implying this, by the way; Hentor even gave you the dimensions of a Swift Boat and asked you point blank if you thought they too large for the canals (post #255). In post #264 you replied to sevastapol:
The above exchanges certainly led me to believe that you were first arguing that Swifts couldn’t travel up shallow canals, but gradually changed your mind in the face of the evidence.
Come, come now, Mr. Stone. I’ve not accused you of lying. At worst I’ve accused you of poor fact-checking.
It’s also wrong for you to accuse me of “spinning” your arguments into “categorical statements.” You may fully intend your posts to come off as carefully-worded, heavily-caveated assertions of a speculative nature, but most of us who read them experience them as quite categorical.
For example, this:
…might have been meant as a caveat by you, but comparing a Swift boat to a ”column of battle tanks” seems awfully categorical to my eye. YMMV.
Finally, I’m really disappointed that failed to address my point regarding Kerry vs. Bush. You know that if it turns out that Kerry is lying, you will find me right there beside you in pointing this out. But I honestly cannot, for the life of me, understand why you go to such great lengths to expose any flaw in Kerry’s character – even to the point of employing obviously spurious arguments – while simultaneously defending Bush for committing equally egregious, if not worse, offenses.
It’s not really that hard to figure out, is it?
I’ve been watching this thread and have been trying to decide whether I am about to meet the Tin Man, The Scarecrow and The Cowardly Lion, or whether I should join the Mad Hatter for tea.
In the thread on whether or not polling by statistical sample could replace general elections, a poster stated that selecting our representatives should be left to those people who take time to look into the issues. Reading this thread makes me think that the most important issue facing the US right now is whether or not John Kerry was in Cambodia 35 years ago or whether or not Vietnamese and Cambodian rivers are deep enough to float a Swift boat.
This despite the fact that we are engaged in a war in Iraq that was started on a flimsy pretext. Started on intelligence that was rock solid when presented as justification and which disolved into a part of that class of “intelligence in general is far from perfect” when it turned out to have been exacggerated.
This despite the fact that the conduct of the post-active combat phase was lurched into without a clue as to how it would be conducted. And the fact that the interim Iraqi government (read “puppet”) is busily alienating even more people with the present offensive in a “holy city.”
This despite the fact that the present administrations seems determined to open up all forests and all nature preserves to exploitation.
This despite the fact that the Congressional Budget Office just released a report stating that the recent income tax changes have shifted a greater part of the tax burden from the upper 20% to the middle 60% of the population. And the fact that there is a proposal floating around for a sales tax which will shift the burden even more.
And, finally, this despite the fact that the main agitator bringing up Cambodia and Swift boats is from somewhere else.
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And this thread is in Great Debates? There should be a category for things that are even more trivial than MPSIMS.
If the book you are talking about is the one by Jerome Corsi, he sounds like kind of a nutjob himself. Here is a link to several statements he has made, some Kerry-related and some not. Taking his word for it sounds about as risky as taking a conservative talk show host’s word for it.
The book is NOT by Jerome Corsi. It is by John O’Neill and Jerome Corsi. O’Neill is really the main man behind this.
And dragging up threads off of FreeRepublic was done by a Kerry’s attack machine, which then sent out copies to everyone as ‘talking points’.
There’s no doubt Corsi said those things. The problem is, it has absoutely nothing to with the charges in the book. And the reason they had to go after Corsi, who is a minor player in all this, is because John O’Neill has proven to have absolutely impeccable credentials and an unimpeachable character.
And by the way, O’Neill voted for Al Gore in 2000, and Ross Perot in 1996. And he supported a Democrat for mayor of Houston. Some Republican attack dog.
He was also decorated in Vietnam after taking over Kerry’s boat (bronze star). He graduated first in his law school and clerked for the Supreme Court before starting his own law practice, which now has 32 lawyers.
So them dems skirt past O’Neill and his uncomfortably excellent record, and dig up some slime on his co-author (who, by the way, has a Ph.D in history). That closes the case, huh?
Not at all. God forbid we should somehow inhibit the first amendment right of some vicious bigot, simply because we disapprove of vicious bigots. Reprinting Mr. Corsi’s remarks merely lends some background to the sort of people we’re dealing with. But we mustn’t make to much of the fact that Mr. Corsi has equal authorship credit, he probably just made coffee, kept paper in the copier, that sort of thing.
And we mustn’t overestimate the importance of any number of actors in previous Republican smear campaigns, there may be no connection at all, they could be indulging in recreational malice, without any direct political intent.
And our own Fearless Misleader, called upon to condemn this “dishonest and disgraceful” campaign, issued what might very well be construed as a “tsk tsk!”, if you see it in the right light, and squint a little.
We are grateful to friend Sam for pointing out Mr. Corsi’s educational achievements, we can now be assured we are reading erudite and scholarly venemous drivel.
In Poli Sci, I think, and from Harvard, no less. Anyway, I believe the preposition you’re looking for is “by” not “on.”
You have a cite for this Sam?
Look for the Hardball transcript from a few nights ago.
For those who want to read it…he does say it.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5694561/
Damn…I thought I was reading the script to Smackdown!
He got the crap kicked out of him by Matthews didn’t he [Sam**.
Make sure you read my link above [Sam**.
All that talk by O’Neill about what Kerry said about his medals…You do know that you can’t put yourself in for a medal don’t you?
Just asking.
Actually, he got ambushed by Matthews. He didn’t even get a chance to make his case - the conversation degraded almost immediately into O’Neill’s character, who was funding the group, whether he was a Republican, what his voting record was, etc. I have both read the transcript and I saw it live when it was first on, and I thought Matthews was horrible - especially towards the end when he basically started shouting at him. When O’neill pointed out that he hasn’t been given much of a chance to state his points without being interrupted, Matthews accused him of dirty tricks and said it was a ‘conservative tactic’. Which was just a cheap shot.
I’ve said this a few times now, but I suggest we all just wait until the actual book is available, and debate the evidence rather than the sideshow surrounding it.
Well, that’s totally unfair! How can GeeDubya get any of the medals he deserves, just because no one can remember seeing him!
And so is Corsi, the racist nutjob. You can’t just throw him overboard becuaes he’s been exposed as a whacko.
Also, John O’Neil did not serve with Joghn Kerry in any capacity and has been a professional Kerry basher since he was a hired thug for Nixon. Neither one of these guys has the slightest credibility and they’re being heavily funded by texas Reublicans.
So what?
You can’t ‘put yourself in for a medal’, but you can certainly submit after-action reports that embellish things enough to warrant a medal.
For example, here’s the commonly accepted account of what happened the day Kerry got his Silver Star: A convoy of PCF boats was travelling along the river. They had earlier agreed on a new tactic: if they were attacked from the river bank, rather than running they would turn into their attackers, beach their boats, go ashore and fight back. These boats were loaded with soldiers for precisely that purpose. There were something like 30 soldiers on those boats who were there precisely to go ashore and rout ambush positions.
They came under attack, and the boats headed into heavy fire, beached, and engaged the enemy, killing a number of them and capturing weapons, etc. As far as I know, no medals were awarded to anyone for this action.
Kerry and another boat then continued upriver eight hundred yards, when they saw a lone Vietcong in a loincloth stand up and aim his B-40 rocket at them. However, he didn’t fire. He turned and started to run away instead. One of Kerry’s gunners then shot him in the leg, wounding him. They beached their boat, and Kerry and two other men jumped ashore and chased the guy on foot. Kerry took aim, shot him in the back and killed him. There were no other enemy, and the engagement ended.
This is what John Kerry’s own autobiography says happened. You can read Kerry’s own account of the action on pages 290 and 291 of “Tour of Duty”, his official biography. If you’re interested, you can even read it online at Amazon.com. Just look up “Tour of Duty” and use the “Find in the Book” feature.
Now here’s the actual silver star citation:
Note that no other boats are mentioned in the citation. From reading it, it sounds like Kerry alone made the snap decision to turn into the ambush and beach the boat, then charged ashore into the face of withering fire. BUt in fact, several boats did, and they were loaded with soldiers along precisely for this tactic. And there never was a ‘numerically superior’ force, according to the Swiftees, because there were over 30 armed soldiers on their boats.
Now, I’m not passing judgement on any medals here. I’m just trying to explain the case the Swiftees are making. Basically, they’ve said that it took courage for Kerry to jump onto the beach and chase that guy down, but it wasn’t a ‘Silver Star’ level of courage. It wasn’t any kind of medal level of courage. They think Kerry embellished the after-action reports to make it sound like it was a snap decision on his part, rather than a strategy adopted by the group. He conflated the two separate attacks together into one account to make it sound like he was the one who charged into a numerically superior force, when in fact he just chased down a running, wounded man and killed him. The other men who DID attack the numerically superior force got no mention, and no medals.
Kerry, by the way, put in his entire crew for medals over that incident, and they all got them. None of the other crews who also beached their boats got medals for their action, as far as I know. I could be wrong, but I haven’t found anything to that effect.
Anyway, that’s the argument. Not that Kerry completely made up an incident or ‘put himself in’ for a medal, but that he twisted around the actual events to shift the credit onto himself and his crew.
But I don’t want to go on about this any more, because I haven’t got the book yet, so I don’t know what evidence they have for their assertions. The Swiftvets could be full of crap, or again it could be a legitimate differing of opinion over what happened in the fog of war. We’ll have to wait and see.
A) O’Neill took over Kerry’s boat. He was in a position to talk to all of the other people that were there who DID serve with John Kerry. 17 of those people who knew Kerry well are part of SBVFT.
B) The notion that he was a ‘hired Nixon thug’ is more Democratic attack-machine talking points. John O’Neill met Nixon AFTER he was trying to get Kerry to debate him. Nixon basically called him in to give him an attaboy and see if he could help. One of the first things O’Neill told him was that he was a Democrat who voted for Humphrey in '68. Nixon didn’t much like that.
But hey, Nixon’s a hated figure in American politics, so the guilt-by-association smear works well.
C) They are not being ‘heavily funded’ by Texas Republicans. In fact, they got $100,000 from a Texas real estate developer, but they had raised some $300,000 on their own, including $25,000 from O’Neill’s own pocket. Since then, they have raised another $500,000 at a purely grassroots level through their website.
Frankly, I’m getting sick of this tactic, that these guys don’t have a right to be heard because those evil Republicans financed them. If that’s the standard, then why aren’t you screaming about Vietnam Veterans for Kerry, or MoveOn, or any number of supposedly “non-aligned” 527 groups that are being heavily funded by big-time Democrats like George Soros? Or is the money only tainting and poisonous when it comes from Republicans?
Of course not. I’ve never seen a more even-handed and disinterested commentator.
Well, shame on the other boat commanders and their superiors.
Or maybe they just thought they were doing their jobs, and weren’t in Vietnam to collect medals.