Well, yes, he was, but only by rat-bastard idiots.
Here is the complete text of Kerry’s statement in the Fulbright Hearings reporting the results of the Winter Soldier Investigation. By all means, point out the lies.
Ugh. I heard something about a Kennedy and pedophilia from Al Franken’s book, but I wasn’t quite sure how serious to take it.
Wait, really? You’re going to claim that a false claim which nobody bought into from day one (no, seriously - Harry Reid was seen as a jackass from both sides of the political spectrum for that one, and he was pretty much the only person espousing that view) which would have painted an out-of-touch rich white guy as a slightly more out-of-touch rich white guy as equivalent to a pack of lies which paint a decorated Vietnam war veteran as a coward and a fraud? Dude. Take off the partisan blinders for about 5 seconds and you’ll see how dumb that sounds. This was not “the highest levels of the Democratic Party”. This was Harry Reid being an ass.
The Swiftboat veterans served honorably and they had a right to make their feelings about his service known. They were not the ones who decided to make a his service an issue, he did. I don’t see anything wrong with what they did.
There was never a John McCain illegitimate child push poll. That was an chain email. The only push poll was criticizing McCain for comparing Bush to Clinton.
Well no, but he’s the father of one of Romney’s rivals so hardly the most reliable of sources.
As for Kerry, yeah he pretty clearly lied about his military record with his “Christmas in Cambodia story” and his racist story of being fired on by a bunch of drunken South Vietnamese soldiers celebrating Christmas(highly unlikely for Buddhist soldiers).
I remember lots of people being shocked to find out after the inordinate amount of time he spent promoting his war record it turning out he only served three-and-a-half months and legitimate questions over whether he’d “earned” his medals or not(particularly one of the Purple Hearts).
That said, I think the issue there was more “medal inflation” where the military started throwing around huge amounts of medals for relatively pedestrian actions that they hadn’t done in previous wars to try and enhance morale.
I still voted for him.
By the time of Reid’s statement, both Huntsmans were Romney supporters.
Your claim that “nobody” bought into the claim is nonsense and counterfactual. (FWIW, either the Obama campaign or some affiliated group - I don’t recall which - actually ran ads in battleground states based on this theme.) And dismissing the Senate Majority leader as some nobody while playing up obscure pushpolls and other outside groups is ridiculous.
The other part of your claim - essentially that the false claim about Romney nonetheless captured an essential truth about him - is what might be described as the result of “partisan blinders”. Though it’a fairly common phenomenon on this board. “Our lies don’t count and yours do, because ours are essentially true as to the broader picture and yours are not”. Comes up a lot, e.g. WRT to the Rathergate scandal and other stories of this sort.
Not even their lying?
South Vietnam had a large Christian minority, especially prevalent in government and the military. Even today, Christians are a significant minority in the unified country.
Wait, you mean you don’t see anything wrong with extensively lying about the record to intentionally slander a political candidate because he brought up the subject? Surely then, if you were running for president and one of your large previous endeavors had been a major charity organization, then you wouldn’t object to people lying about you embezzling money and funding hate groups - after all, you made it an issue. :rolleyes: Come on man. If you’re going to play apologist for some of the dirtiest campaigning in a long time, then at least pretend to know what you’re talking about.
Citation needed on that ad campaign. Obviously, some particularly thick people bought it. But it never had much thrust behind it. It was a statement made by one congressman that primarily got traction among those on the right - as something to point to and say, “Look, look, liberals say incredibly stupid things too”.
Compare the impact the swift boat vets had on the 2004 election to the impact Reid’s claims about Romney’s tax returns had on the 2012 election. Yeah. There is a ridiculous comparison in here. It’s just that you’re the one being ridiculous by comparing the two in the first place!
“Rathergate”? Really? :rolleyes: Look, the fact of the matter is that Bush got help from various political connections and ended up in the Texas Air National Guard instead of on the draft rolls. This is morally equivalent to, if not worse, than straight-up leaving the country, burning your draft card, or going into hiding; functionally, he had zero chance of seeing any actual wartime action, and both him and his daddy knew it. That the specific claims reported by Rather about him going AWOL were false were widely acknowledged, and Rather was sacked as a result after a lot of hand-wringing apologies and retractions. Nobody is claiming that that didn’t count as a false statement. A lie? Hard to say; Rather is almost certainly guilty of nothing more than overly credulous reporting and not backing down from his story.
Oh, by the way, for those paying attention: the latter is the worse part here.
Indeed, it could fairly be said that the very source of the National Liberation Front was Buddhist protest against the leadership of a Catholic minority, installed under the auspices of a colonial France. The monks blazing in the streets of Saigon were not protesting the injustice of the ruling class on the proletariat.
Yes and no. Christians were a wealthy elite, that accounted for about 10% of the population and were grossly over represented amongst the officers, but grossly underrepresented amongst the enlisted personnel who’d have been doing the drinking and the shooting.
Anyway it was part of his whole “Christmas in Cambodia” story that even his supporters run away from because of its obvious falseness.
Anyway I voted for him and didn’t care about some minor lies(though I can see why others felt they were major).
You know, Christmas is a very popular holiday in Japan despite Christians being a small minority there.
The events the swiftboat veterans took part in happened 30 years before in very stressful circumstances. It only makes sense that there are various memories of what happened over there. If it is verboten to question the word of a war hero then that should go both ways as they were war heros too. I read the various desciptions of what happened during that time and people seem confused about what happened, but I don’t think anyone was deliberately lying. If you look at the ads the Swift Boat veterans ran, most of what they said was about the actions taken after he got back from Vietnam. The one ad had actual audio from his testimony in congress. All that stuff was true and not in dispute.
It’s also big in Vietnam. There is nothing hard to believe about soldiers firing guns in celebration on Christmas.
And not objectionable, either.
Perhaps you might favor us with a link to what you claim his story was?
You’ll have to cite that he was asked for heresay evidence from other people by Congress for me to believe you. And regardless, it’s dishonorable in the eyes of many of those who fought in Vietnam to report heresay evidence against fellow soldiers. If you don’t feel that way that’s fine but I know a lot of vets who do feel that way. And your opinion doesn’t mean fuck to them and never will. They had a right to be heard and they were heard.