Swift Boat Lies: Did anyone else see Nightline?

[sanTho27]

What Happened in Kerry's Vietnam Battles?

Nightline traveled to Vietnam and found a number of witnesses who have never been heard from before, and who have no particular ax to grind for or against Kerry. Only one of them, in fact, even knew who Kerry is. The witnesses, all Vietnamese, are still living in the same villages where the fighting took place more than 35 years ago. A Nightline producer visited them and recorded their accounts of that day. The accounts were subsequently translated by a team of ABC News translators….

Less than a kilometer upriver is Nha Vi, a small hamlet. Vo Van Tam, now 54, was a local Viet Cong commander during the war. According to him, the area was a hotbed of guerrilla activity. They had recently been reinforced by a 12-man unit, supplied with small arms and one B-40 rocket launcher. He said the reinforcements had been dispatched from provincial headquarters specifically to target the Swift boats.

So, they are going to get the account from the Viet Cong commander himself who was there.

According to Vo, there were at least 20 Viet Cong soldiers at Nha Vi there that day. “There were 12 soldiers from the provincial level and eight from the district level,” he said.

Bbbbut didn’t the Swifties say there was only one child and Kerry shot him as he was running away?

His wife, Vo Thi Vi, 54, said Feb. 28, 1969, is a day that the villagers of Nha Vi hamlet will never forget. “Everything was destroyed,” she said. “There’s no houses left. They leveled everything. There was no leaves left. The fighting was very fierce.”

Sounds like some fierce fighting that Kerry took part in.

According to the citation for Kerry’s Silver Star, when the boats approached the hamlet, “a B-40 rocket exploded close aboard PCF 94” — Kerry’s boat. He “personally led a landing party ashore in pursuit of the enemy,” the citation says, before commending Kerry’s “extraordinary daring and personal courage” for “attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire.”

But of course we know that isn’t true because som republicans have told us so. Still, the account says that were 20 Viet Cong soldiers. How many were on the
boat w/ Kerry?

That account is disputed by Swift boat veteran John O’Neill, author of “Unfit for Command,” who maintains in his book that the statement “is simply false. There was little or no fire.”

According to the after-action report, after beaching the Swift boat, Kerry “chased VC inland, behind hooch, and shot him while he fled, capturing one B-40 rocket launcher, with round in chamber.”

None of the villagers seems to be able to say for a fact that they saw an American chase the man who fired the B-40 into the woods and shoot him. Nobody seems to remember that. But they have no problem remembering Ba Thang, the man who has been dismissed by Kerry’s detractors as “a lone, wounded, fleeing, young Vietcong in a loincloth.” (The description comes from “Unfit for Command,” by Swift boat veteran John O’Neill.)

“No, this is not correct,” Nguyen Thi Tuoi, 77, told ABC News. “He wore a black pajama. He was strong. He was big and strong. He was about 26 or 27…”

Oh, my, what’s this? An eyewitness who is saying in effect that O’NEILL IS LYING THROUGH HIS TEETH!!

Back in Tran Thoi, villager Nguyen Van Khoai said that about six months ago he was visited by an American who described himself as a Swift boat veteran and told him another American from the Swift boats was running for president of the United States. Nguyen said the man was accompanied by a cameraman.

“They say he didn’t do anything to deserve the medal,” Nguyen said. “The other day, they came and asked me the questions and I said that the recognition for the medal is up to the U.S.A.”

He said that, after they met, the Swift Boat veteran and the cameraman turned around and went back down the river. Nightline has not been able to identify the men.

So the SWwifties went to Viet Nam and actually tried REINVENT what happened in the mind of these villagers.

John O’Neill, the officer who took over command of Kerry’s swift boat after Kerry left Vietnam, raised some specific questions about the incident for which Kerry received his most significant award, the Silver Star:

“In the Silver Star incident, John Kerry’s citation reflects that he charged into a numerically superior force, and into intense fire,” O’Neill told ABC News in an August 2004 interview. “But the actual facts are that there was a single kid there who had fired a rocket, who popped up, and John Kerry with his gunboat, with or without a number of troops, depending on who you talk to, plopped in front of the kid. The kid was wounded in the legs by machine gun fire, and as he ran off, John Kerry jumped off the boat and shot the kid in the back.”

Sounds to me like John O’Neill is a big liar

What Happened in Kerry's Vietnam Battles?

[elucidator]

Opened a Pit thread on this, you have a more optimistic view of the civility of us Dopers when it comes to this wee nugget o’ crap.

I’ll pledge to do my best, but good luck anyway.

[rjung]

Video here (requires Windows Media Player).

Highly slanted but amusing play-by-play here. John O’Neill gets spanked by Ted Koppel.

[Rashak_Mani]

I wish this story had a chance of getting national wide attention and be seriously taken… but I doubt it. One more victory for smear attacks.

[BobLibDem]

It would be interesting to know if Sinclair-owned ABC stations were permitted to air this show.

[ElvisL1ves]

Sam? Scylla? Where y’all at?

[Rashak_Mani]

The interview of the guy from Swift Veterans for Untruth was SO FUNNY ! The guy refused to answer anything ! He kept pushing his book ! He didn’t answer who was the other american that showed up in Vietnam ! How can anyone take Swift boat people seriously ?

[BrainGlutton]

@Rashak Mani

How can anyone take Swift boat people seriously ?

We’ll find out when Sinclair broadcasts their “documentary” Stolen Honors to a mass audience in every swing state. But I think if the Sinclair execs expect that to cost Kerry any votes, they will be unpleasantly surprised. Most Americans – about 2/3, according to Gallup polls – believe the Vietnam War was both immoral and a mistake, and that has been the case pretty consistently ever since 1968. From “Long Division,” by Michael Tomasky, in The American Prospect, October 2004 – http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=8539:

The Gallup Organization has taken care to track American public opinion on this question every few years since the Vietnam War ended. The results are beyond dispute. By overwhelming margins, Americans have always believed – and continue to believe – that the Vietnamese conflict was wrong. Gallup has asked two questions over the years. First, did the United States make “a mistake in sending troops to fight in Vietnam, or not”? Second, was the war (and were other wars in U.S. history) “just” or “unjust”? In both cases, the pro-war position comes up very short. Gallup began asking a version of the “mistake” question in 1965. The first majority calling the war a mistake appeared in August 1968, after the Tet Offensive and Walter Cronkite’s famous anti-war editorial at the end of his newscast on the night of February 27 of that year. After the war’s 1975 conclusion, Gallup has asked the question five times, in 1985, 1990, 1993, 1995, and 2000. And all five times – over that 15-year period that saw vast social change, the raging of the culture wars, and dramatic shifts to the right in American public opinion on several issues – respondents were consistent in calling the war a mistake by a margin of more than 2 to 1: by 74 percent to 22 percent in 1990, for example, and by 69 percent to 24 percent in 2000.

Similarly, vast majorities continue to call the war “unjust.” While substantial majorities retrospectively support World War II (90 percent), the Korean War (61 percent), and the Gulf War (66 percent), fully 68 percent of Gallup respondents in 1990 considered the Vietnam War unjust, and 25 percent thought it just. Four years later, the numbers were 71 percent to 23 percent. Only in 2004 – after September 11, with American soldiers engaged in combat on two fronts, and with martial rhetoric from the incumbent administration a daily feature of national life – did the numbers change. But even then, they changed just a little: 62 percent still consider Vietnam unjust, while 33 percent defend it.

It’s at least very interesting and at most rather remarkable that Americans, who tend to forgive their country pretty much everything on the matter of how it conducts its global affairs, have settled so firmly into the conviction that their nation was so wrong about something so important. Another 1995 Gallup question even found a majority of 52 percent agreeing with the assertion that the war was “fundamentally wrong and immoral,” as opposed to the 43 percent who called it a “well-intentioned mistake.” And while it can be argued that the 33 percent of pro-Vietnam respondents in the 2004 poll still represents a decent chunk of the population, it’s also the case than in electoral terms, 33 percent constitutes a fractional minority. The similar percentage of Americans that opposed the Iraq War in the early months of 2003 was uniformly written off by the media as marginal, disgruntled, and unimportant. So public opinion on this question couldn’t be clearer. There is no great Vietnam divide. Americans are more divided over carbohydrates than they are over Vietnam.

And the one-third who think the war was a good idea are probably already committed to voting for Bush. This movie won’t make a bit of difference.

[Scylla]

I’m really not sure what’s being argued here, what’s subject to debate. According to page 81 of UFC, this was an incident where Kerry displayed proper conduct and demonstrated courage.

The version of events with the single man who Kerry chased and killed, is reported by Michael Medeiros, pro-kerry Swiftvet Doug Reese. At this point, all accounts including the account in UFC say there was a firefight. A “number of Vietcong were killed.” Doug Reese received an Army Commendation medal for the battle.

While the firefight was going on, Kerry’s boat was struck by a rocket propelled grenade. The person firing the grenade is identified as follows “A young Viet Cong in a loincloth popped out of a hole clutching a grenade launcher which may or may not have been loaded, depending on whose account one credits” This is footnoted, and credited to Fred Short a Kerry crewman. Belodreau who was a gunner on Kerry’s boat claims to have wounded this man. Kerry and Medeiros took off after the man with the launcher, and Kerry dispatched the man.

This story told by the Swiftvets is in agreement with Tour of Duty, the Boston Globe Biography, Kerry’s journals, the medal citation, and pretty much everybody except Nightline which seems to be claiming that the book says something different.

I’m looking at the book right now. They do denigrate Kerry’s actions here, but by saying that they are simply a case where Kerry did his duty as did others, and that Kerry campaigned for unusual recognition for this usual reaction. I disagree with their viewpoint here.

I see no real contradiction with the medal account, and the contradictions Nightline seems to have found contradict all the other accounts both pro and anti-kerry. For once both sides seem to be in pretty equal agreement as to the substance of the facts.

So, if Nightline’s interviews are correct, than yes, the Swiftvet account is wrong, as is Kerry as are his crewmates and participants both pro and anti-kerry, and the citation, as all these latter tell essentially the same story.

[elucidator]

It is good that this should get your attention, Scylla, we should all hope to receive such generous consideration. But Mr. O’Neill presents a bit more of a problem, in that his interview, quoted above, makes very specific statements denigrating Sen Kerry. Statements one simply cannot make about a fellow veteran unless one has insured that no doubt can exist. We have your own word on this: O’Neill is entirely responsible to make certain the charges he relates are the whole, unvarnished truth. Just as you hold Kerry responsible for the statements of the Winter Soldier investigation. Even more so, since Kerry specificly stated that he was passing along hearsay, testimony he had heard but not witnessed.

It is all very well for you to calmly declare that the UFC book is not substantially at odds with the scenario presented by the ABC investigation. Nonetheless, the author of that book has some problems with his credibility. (The co-author of the book has some problems with his sanity!)

And if the book relates the events correctly, why is it then that the author of said book can give such a radically *different * account in the above cited interview? Unless one of the versions given is…how to put this delicately?..a crock of shit.

[Scylla]

@elucidator

And if the book relates the events correctly, why is it then that the author of said book can give such a radically *different * account in the above cited interview? Unless one of the versions given is…how to put this delicately?..a crock of shit.

He’s not. You haven’t read the book, have you? You do a lot of debating on a subject in which you are ignorant. I don’t debate the Moore moview because I haven’t seen it, and therefore I cannot discuss it intelligently.

You can’t discuss O’neill’s comments in good faith by picking sentences out of context and then trying to find a different context in which they are false.

I’ll explain this sequence to you:

1. THe boats took an ambush

2. They turned to shore.

3. Reese disembarked from Kerry’s boat with a number of troops, joined with a number of troops from Medeiros’ boat and engaged the Vietcong

4. A lone Vietcong fired on the boats from a place he was hiding with a rocket-propelled grenade.

5.Tom Belodreau hit him in the legs with the guns from Kerry’s boat

6.Medeiros and Kerry charged after him.

7.Kerry dispatched him.

That’s the scenario described in the medal citation, by Pro-Kerry veteran Reese, by Medieros, by Kerry in his journals, and his two biographies.
Kerry does not claim to have engaged the main body of the Vietcong. He engaged the grenadier.

O’neil’s comments I beleive are unkind and depict Kerry in an unflattering light. They are not a lie, unless you take them out of context and insert them into a context in which they were not intended.

[elucidator]

Indeed, context is crucial. Failure to recognize context is a severe weakness, to be sure, and I am properly abashed by your criticism of my failure in that regards. Regretably, in your haste to protect us from the scoundrel and blackguard, Kerry, you have neglected to provide said context.

Clearly, if I had your intellectual courage and willingness to consider opposing views, I would have read the book, and would then have the crucial element of context. The wide variety of input you bring to these discussions…including the opinions of both Swiftvets.com and the widely admired Free Republic…provides you with such context as escapes me.

No doubt, if I had such crucial context, I would see immediatly that “numerically superior force” and “lone kid” are not, in fact, contradictory. Alas, to my intellectually weak mind, these still seem to be flatly at variance.

Be so kind, won’t you, to limn the context that makes these seeming contradictions to be in accord? Is there some definition of “numericaly superior force” and “lone kid” too subtle for my feeble lights? Something I could only understand if I had the advantages you so generously share?

[GIGObuster]

Did someone (besides elucidator) say context?

The whole thing was orchestrated to discredit someone for partisan purposes; it failed then because the attackers were supporting a stupid war.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/US/2004/08/25/601797-ap.html

Kerry has denounced the assertions from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as lies made as part of a Republican smear campaign. Most of the group’s members and early financial backers are Republicans and one member who appeared in an ad, Ken Cordier, was a volunteer member of the Bush campaign. The campaign cut its ties with Cordier last week.

Bush has said his campaign had nothing to do with the veterans group and said all such advertising by outside groups should cease.

Now, this attack might succeed only into preventing a better man than Bush to be president, there is no other good reason to come now later with lame and now getting discredited hypothesis on what happened more than 30 years ago.

And there you goes Scylla again with his circular citing, basing his research from investigations done by freepers from freepers, and on a book by a freeper, that just doesn’t get you to the truth.

The whole swifter shifter charade is based on pumped up hypothesis (and that was the most charitable thing to give to the swifters) that were discredited by admiral reports and even the doctor’s; and now, even testimony from the former enemy.

Those records include the official after-action report, citations for Bronze Stars awarded for heroism that day and now the Task Force 115 report.

The weekly report cites the incident twice, referring to its code name of Sea Lords 358. The first reference says the boats “encountered an enemy initiated firefight with water mines and automatic weapons fire.” The second reference also mentions “an enemy initiated firefight . . . with water mines and automatic weapons.”

And one of those reports was signed by the admiral.

The conclusion of all this is clear even to the Navy, when they reviewed and concluded that the record supported Kerry:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/09/17/politics1909EDT0685.DTL

“Our review (made on September 2004!) also considered the fact that Senator Kerry’s post-active duty activities were public and that military and civilian officials were aware of his actions at the time. For these reasons, I have determined that Senator Kerry’s awards were properly approved and will take no further action in this matter.”

But then, I see further actions to continue (Sinclair) disregarding what even Bush and the Navy concluded: Kerry served honorably, dishonor now falls on the current mud slinger partisan hacks that just happens that they were good soldiers before, but that let partisanship and old wounds* guide their attacks, nothing more.

• the sad thing is that they are self inflicted wounds: the swifters, like before, are barking at the wrong tree: the organizers of the war were the real traitors.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Scylla

He’s not. You haven’t read the book, have you? You do a lot of debating on a subject in which you are ignorant. I don’t debate the Moore moview because I haven’t seen it, and therefore I cannot discuss it intelligently.

You can’t discuss O’neill’s comments in good faith by picking sentences out of context and then trying to find a different context in which they are false.

I’ll explain this sequence to you:

1. THe boats took an ambush

2. They turned to shore.

3. Reese disembarked from Kerry’s boat with a number of troops, joined with a number of troops from Medeiros’ boat and engaged the Vietcong

4. A lone Vietcong fired on the boats from a place he was hiding with a rocket-propelled grenade.

5.Tom Belodreau hit him in the legs with the guns from Kerry’s boat

6.Medeiros and Kerry charged after him.

7.Kerry dispatched him.

That’s the scenario described in the medal citation, by Pro-Kerry veteran Reese, by Medieros, by Kerry in his journals, and his two biographies.
Kerry does not claim to have engaged the main body of the Vietcong. He engaged the grenadier.

O’neil’s comments I beleive are unkind and depict Kerry in an unflattering light. They are not a lie, unless you take them out of context and insert them into a context in which they were not intended.

There were TWO VC with rocket launchers, not one. The grenade that hit Kerry’s boat came from a different VC, not from the one that Kerry killed.

There was also small arms from from both shores.

Your “lone Vietcong” description is complete bullshit.

[Scylla]

@GIGObuster

And there you goes Scylla again with his circular citing, basing his research from investigations done by freepers from freepers, and on a book by a freeper, that just doesn’t get you to the truth.

Either you have failed to read my post completely, or you are willfully ignorant. In any event, this is a negligent lie on your part.

I am citing O’neil’s book, for what he said in the book. That is a primary source. Ted Koppel, and those such as yourself who are falsifying the context of Mr. O’neil’s comments by conflating the general and the specific are engaging in a dishonest tactic.

There is no circular citing here of Freepers and Swiftvets, since I also cite a pro-kerry veteran, The medal citation, and Kerry himself through his two biographies. They all give the same version of events.

I do not like being lied about. If you are going to lie, at least lie well. My citing of events is on record a few posts ago.

[Scylla]

@Diogenes the Cynic

There were TWO VC with rocket launchers, not one. The grenade that hit Kerry’s boat came from a different VC, not from the one that Kerry killed.

Not necessarily true, but you do bring up a good point. Nobody is sure where the first grenade came from. What is agreed upon is that a man stood up afterwards and pointed a grenade launcher at the boat. Depending on who’s version you’re reading the launcher may or may not have been loaded, but really nobody was in a position to know for certain.

There was also small arms from from both shores.

So? My seven point reiteration was hardly comprehensive. How is this material?

Your “lone Vietcong” description is complete bullshit.

Really? Can you cite me a version saying otherwise?

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

The VC shot by Kerry was holding an armed rocket launcher. Since those things only carried one round, the first round could not have come from his weapon. That means that there had to have been at least one more VC with a rocket launcher. There is no disputing it.

[Brutus]

You can reload the B-40/RPG-2 pretty quickly.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Brutus

You can reload the B-40/RPG-2 pretty quickly.

Not when you’re running.

[Brutus]

@Diogenes the Cynic

Not when you’re running.

Sure you can. It’s not exactly threading a needle, you know. Not to mention, assuming Charlie had another rocket out and ready, it takes only a few seconds to reload a RPG while stationary.