Oh, yes, I was already aware of that column. National Review Online, IIRC. Indeed, I Pitted it in a jolly sense of “looky what a piece of shit I found!” We all had a good chuckle about it, and then flushed.
We are invited to take the man at his word, I suppose. Former Rumanian intelligence operative, now sincecured at a right-wing opinion pump, sort of Whitaker Chambers meets Dracula. But you take him at his word, not a question, not a “hmmmmm”, and then offer it to us as evidence. With a straight face.
Its kind of like, I come in here, tell a creaky old “farmers daughter” joke, and six months later you cite it as proof positive that Kerry is undermining rural family values.
Well yes, in fact I have read every post in that thread. I especially like how on page two or so, the claim comes in that there is nothing to see hear, how everything has been refuted. Mostly what I see though in that thread is Sam being reasonably polite and trying to debate while a bunch of people see how close they can come to outright insulting without a mod warning. I will concede that the Rasmussen incident was rather well covered, but the claim that that thread has completely denounced the Swiftvets statements and accusations is rather fatuous and false, especially as I don’t think anybody in the thread had actually read the book except Sam.
Insisting that the Swiftvets claims have been completely and exhaustively discredited, every one of them is about as credible as telling me that you can crap grade A provolone.
I’ve linked one you guys have missed several times in this thread, but no takers so far, you know, the one about Kerry describing the mission of Swiftboats being to show the flag and blast Sampans and villages, but they got so heartsick that General Abrams had to have a meet and give a pep talk so they could go back and feel good about killing innocent people,
Why don’t we just cut to the chase and you tell me how this one has been thoroughly discredited?
Absolutely. That’s why I quote cites like Swiftvets and Wintersoldier. They are dedicated to collecting the information to make responsible judgements. We are talking about 300 or so vets, Kerry’s entire chain of command, POWs, multiple medal winners. Pretty much every one of these guys that wasn’t killed or wounded spent more time on the boats with Kerry. Many of them knew him in a firsthand manner. They have an entire forum devoted to gathering resources and research. They are, in short, a fairly athoritative and credible source for precisely what we are talking about.
One is of course required to examine this source material from the standpoint that these guys hate Kerry. But, if we are going to discuss the case being made against Kerry, it is both disingenuous and patently ridiculous to suggest that we ignore and refuse to view the material by the people making the case.
Have you read the book? Have you examined Wintersoldier.com and the Swiftvets site? If you haven’t, or you’re unwilling to do so, how can you debate the arguments?
I certainly wouldn’t review F911 without having seen the movie.
Don’t need one. Its entirely testimonial, he offers nothing at all beyond his bald statement that it is so. Pretty sure they call that “hearsay.” That’s the word, isn’t it, “hearsay”? Now I’m a scratchin’ my head on this ‘un, just bein’ a country boy and all, but don’t most folks say that as far as evidence goes, thats weaker than Coors on the rocks?
I mean, c’mon Scylla, turn on your humor vectors! OK, how about this: some English guys writing for the Guardian, says he used to work for Harken, and he swears he saw GeeDubya do a line of coke and bragging how he was raping the widow/orphan stockholders, bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha…!
If I laid something like that out in here, with a straight keyboard, like it actually meant something, you be on it like a starving dog on a T-bone! You know you would.
I’d just like to pipe up and say that I want a prize for calling all the arguments Scylla has marshalled here, right down to the “dupes” nonsense, which is fairly typical John Birch society type stuff that’s been used since at least the Palmer Raids. (shortly after WWI, surely you remember?)
When it comes to far-right agitprop, there really isn’t anything new under the sun.
And just to remind everyone, it’s still the case that Osama and Omar, Zarqawi and Zawahiri are free to do their worst, with Zarqawi probably blowing things up in Iraq as I write this. (And just in case anyone’s forgotten, the Bush administration is directly responsible for this: "In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq. The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it. Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam. The United States did attack the camp at Kirma at the beginning of the war, but it was too late - Zarqawi and many of his followers were gone. “Here’s a case where they waited, they waited too long and now we’re suffering as a result inside Iraq,” Cressey added.")
Many of you, myself included, work for companies and institutions directly targetted by these people. Of course, that’s an actual issue actually relevant to the current campaign, so of course that’s not relevant at all to how anyone would actually vote. Heaven forbid.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: ignore these people. The case against the Swifties was already and exhaustively made. This latest is a transparent attempt at keeping the conversation away from where it should be. It’s a trap.
No. In point of fact, “hearsay” is not the word. Hearsay means "so and so told me that Fred said, that Irving heard that John Kerry rapes chickens. “Ion Mihai Pacepa was the acting Chief of Romania’s Espionage Service and the National Security Advisor to Romania’s President. He is the highest ranking intelligence officer ever to defect from the Soviet Bloc.”
He is speaking athoritatively on issues on which he has first hand knowledge and was a key participant. That is by no stretch “hearsay.”
Looking back on the Harken debate, had you brought something like that, it would have been the very best piece of evidence you had. At any rate, this is a false analogy. A better one might be if you had Bush’s secretary or a corporate officer making such testimony. That would have been something deal with. Kind of like Mr. Pacepa
So what’s with Eugene McCarthy? Did some slap dash googling, dont see anything directly relevent. Thing is, in the statement quoted above, which you seem to think is a confession written in blood, he makes reference to Eugene McCarthy, as in “…had been set by Senator [Eugene] McCarthy and others…”
Seems to be saying that he had considered his action in the light of similar actions, suggesting some sort of precedent had been set. As if to say “I looked at what he/they did, and if they were cool, then so was I”
Dim memory suggests there were other such “meetings, contacts and whatevers”, but can’t nail anything down. Anybody know? Is there a Googlebeast in the house?
Or it could be “Hey, I know it’s illegal, but… what the hell. I’ll do it anyway. I’m already a self-confessed war criminal that burns villages and shoots innocents with my granted .50 caliber machine guns, so let’s see, I’ve got turncoat, war criminal, violating park’s department camping violations (Y’know he’s guilty of that, too!)… check, check, check. Hey! Here’s one I’ve missed! Negotiating with foreign powers, and treason! Yup! It’s illegal! Got lot’s of precedent, McCarthy prosecuted on specifically these grounds. Damn I’ll have to get to that right away!”
I have no idea what he’s referring to either.
Oh, chill. That was an entirely respectful question. Besides, it wouldn’t totally make or break the case either way, necessarily. You could still harbor dark suspicions that no matter how many times he says he wasn’t negotiating, you know he’s lying. Of course, if you were as burdened with proof as you are with suspicion, your case would already be made.
You see, Scylla, its a Googlebeast trap. I want to know, but I suck at that stuff. So you set the trap, the bait “Gosh, sure wish I knew somebody smart enough to do this…”. Its like a pheromone or something, irresistable imperative, they just got to do it, and do first, God love 'em!
I marched on Washington. I had, at that time, NO idea who John Kerry was. I had little interest in the Vietnam Vets agains the War. I knew little about them. I had my own ideas about why Vietnam was a toilet that I didn’t want the US to go down.
Perhaps I wasn’t representative of the group that you’re so freely generalizing about.
But I think your’re incorrect. You have nothing to back up that assertion that I"ve seen.
This list is far more comprehensive than anything you’ll find here. Read. Ponder. Compare. And, while you’re doing that, consider the difficulty involved in convincing anyone that a group is telling the truth when your only source of substantiation is that same group. If all you have is “I *know * they’re telling the truth because they *say * they are”, you might as well go back to FreeRepublic and tell an audience that buys that kind of shit, ya know?
I apologize Sam for I my talk of speaking carefully and diligently, I generalized poorly and irresponsibly and gave offense where none was meant.
Well, I do have some stuff. I have Pacepa as a primary source and two second hand references to North Vietnamese generals basically saying that the anti-war demonstrators were cultivated as part of their strategy.
More along the lines of what I might mean by “dupe” or patsy" is something like this guy:
Who was basically coerced by Kerry and Vietnam imposters against the war into giving false testimony. He’s signed an afidavit to that effect which is more than Kerry bothered to get while collecting his evidence.
This guy’s a patsy, or a dupe. Al Hubbard, Chuck Onan, Michael Schneider, and Michael Harbet among others who impersonated combat veterans or outright fabricated their credentials to give false testimony concerning their war crimes, along with John Kerry merit the appellation “traitor” in my book.
You’re absolutely right, and that is a fantastic site. I would encourage anybody who is interested in exploring this to read Tour of Duty and Unfit for Command study the swiftvet and wintersoldier cites and study the cite Elvis has just produced, which is indeed very comprehensive.
I haven’t had time to study the cite in detail, Elvis. Though clearly set up with a partisan goal (and who doesn’t have a partisan goal?) the cite does an excellent job in making it’s rebuttals, providing firsthand information and analysis in an organized format.
My only complaint with the cite is that it’s focussing almost exclusively on the Vietnam service indictment of the Swiftvets. As I’ve said before, after reading the material the Swiftvets have put forth, I have no complaint against Kerry’s service.
My emphasis is more on what Kerry did when he came back from Vietnam.
While a good source, I don’t consider that cite any more authoritative than Wintersoldier, but if you have something in there that you think particularly condemns the Swiftvets, I’ll be glad to discuss it with you.
If you care to reexamine the article, I believe that you’ll see you’re mistaken:
“As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements throughout Europe.”
This is neither witnessing something, nor quoting a third party. He is describing his personal experiences as a key participant.
For much of the rest of the article he describes policy and events which we has in a position to know as a spy chief, as well as his own participation in these events.
While the article does in fact contain an instance or two of something which might be construed as hearsay, It’s obvious that “hearsay” is an incorrect characterization for the article.
I am impressed. When it comes to nuance, to the sotto voce accusation not even whispered, you got no peer. I swear, you could read Kerry’s laundry list, report on it, and it would be a damning indictment of high crimes and misdemeanors. It’s a kind of poetry, or sorts. More spin than an electron, all the charm of a quark.
I love the wording on that! “Coerced”, was he? Poor lamb, poor lamb.
“One of the other leaders leaned in and whispered, “It’s a long walk back to Baltimore.”…
(A phrase to strike terror, to be sure.)
I found that interesting, since the article makes such a point about his personal bravado in dealing with the swarms of phony vets at the VVAW gatherings. Hundreds of them, apparently. Not saying that all the VVAW were imposters, or even most of them. Just saying, is all.
Exquisitely done! What a mountain of slander is achieved with zen-like economy. This is classic stuff. It was Kerry and Vietnam imposters, you see. The article doesn’t specificly say that, of course, but friend Scylla corrects the oversight. Kinda fills in the gaps.
But its all about liars, isn’t it? This guy Popea is a professional liar, and purveyor of disinformation, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? We wouldn’t be listening to him otherwise, right? Now it appears he makes his living writing pieces (*opinion * pieces, yes?) to please a new audience, NR Online. He was lying then, and he’s telling the truth now. Its that simple.
Now, you know, Scylla, a suspicious mind, like yours and mine, might take a pause at that, don’t you think? Is there some reason to believe this man, besides that it pleases you to think so? Beyond his flat word, anything? Anything at all?
This fellow Pitkin frankly sounds like a sad case, his picture looks familiar, but maybe its just the type, he looks like someone broken and glued back together almost perfectly.
He told all these wild lies because he was coerced and threatened, but free of their pernicious threats of long walks, now he can tell the truth. And what a truth it is, too….
Boy, you’d think somebody would have done somebody to stop entirely unauthorized feces flinging on an Air Force Base. At least the Air Police at the gate should have casually glanced over the arriving anti-war protestors, checking for small arms and big shit, before issuing them their On-Base Returning Troop Vilification Pass. (Form 12NM/221 (b).
Believing either of these men is a leap of faith, they were lying then but are telling the truth now, and we have their word for it. If that’s good enough for you, well, then its good enough for you.
Highest ranking Soviet Bloc defector, Romanian spy chief… Y’now. He’s got credentials! You seem to believe the VVAW witnesses and they didn’t even have that. Why so selectively credulous?
Ad hominem, but yeah, I know what you mean about that.
Well, if you thought these guys were credible while they were making the accusations, what criteria do you use to selectively discredit the things they say that you don’t like?
You wanted me to back up the “Lying and irresponsible Wintersoldier testimony” meme. We got about 300 Swiftvets saying he lied his ass off. We got four out and out imposters (including the cofounder of VVAW,) we got this poor unfortunate soul threatened with the long walk, but most importantly we have Kerry himself with his on the record boners claiming his mission was to blow away hapless villagers and slaughter innocents with the only weapon he was given, .50 caliber machine guns, saying that 60-80% of Vietnam soldiers were stoned on narcotics all day, that all the officers were in on it, and that it wasn’t really Christmas in Cambodia but secret missions up the river to take out Colonel Kurtz.
I mean come on Elucidator, you’re saying that you can’t take these guys seriously, but you beleive that pile of crap.
Just between you and me, as people that have been shooting shit back at each other for a couple of years…
In all the threads that you brought up against Bush, if you’d have had anything like the stuff that’s coming out on Kerry, I’d have shit a brick. I mean this is some bad stuff.
I mean… All these fucking guys with all these medals… all these guys who were POWS for like 6-7 years blowing this guy up… His entire chain of command coming out against him! Negotiating with the North Vietnamese… Twice! Holding a press conference about it, and then blabbing it to the Senate!
And there’s more. Mere details really. Do you remember how up in arms you were about Bush supposedly missing Guard drills? Apparently Kerry was supposed to drill while in the Ready reserves, but there appears to be no record he ever did so! Personally, I don’t care. But I know how important fulfilling the drills are to you, so I expect that should get your back hairs up.
Then of course is the next real biggee. The Navy’s investigating his medals. It seems the Navy has never issued a Silver Star with a V. Never. It’s not done. Since the Silver Star is reserved for unusual bravery, a V for valor would be redundant.
But Kerry has one.
Perhaps you think the Swiftvets are discredited, but Judicialwatch doesn’t think so.
In looking over your link, I note that two of the imposters I’ve named, Onan and Schneider did not actually participate in the Wintersoldier investigation but appear to have been attributed to it in error. Not that they’re not imposters mind you, just that Kerry has nothing to do with their egregious lies, and could not have used what they said in his testimony.