Kerry’s antiwar protests would not constitute a crime under any of the language you quoted from the Logan Act. He did not carry on “any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States.” If that language is broad enough to encompass anything Kerry did, then the whole antiwar movement was in violation of the Logan Act, which speaks better about the movement than it does about the Act.
No, Sam, it is simply the truth, it is a very, very important truth, and we should be unwilling to vote for any presidential candidate who wouldn’t say it.
Kerry was not running for public office in 1971 and had no reason to expect his testimony would do anything but harm to his future political prospects.
That might or might not be true. But it is undoubtedly true that Jane Fonda has more decency and character than George Bush.
eRiposte documents in excruciating detail the plethora of lies that have been promulgated by the Swiftees. Scarcely a single claim made by them stands up under critical inspection, and those that do are really insignificant.
FactCheck also has a concise overview of the claims and counter-claims.
After the last round of this debate I find it utterly unbelievable that Sam would come out in support of the Swiftees again. I’m disappointed to discover how completely immune to fact and reasoned argument he seems to have become with regard to this topic.
His first post in this thread is misleading hogwash. Don’t listen to him.
You guys keep claiming that the eriposte site is a definitive debunking. It is NOT. It just keeps repeating the counter-claims that fly around without proof. I don’t have much time now (going out with the family), but I’ll go over just their first set of ‘facts’ about the first purple heart incident:
A strawman. The commander who recommended it was someone other than Hibbard. We don’t know exactly what happened, because Kerry won’t release his records. We do know that his first Purple Heart was awarded three months after the incident, which backs up the claim by Kerry’s commanding officer at the time that he refused to submit it. He was gone by the time the claim actually went through.
I just posted the actual Navy regulation, which is quite specific - the severity of the wound DOES matter. It must be a wound that REQUIRES medical attention. Minor bruises and band-aids do not REQUIRE medical attention. Kerry SOUGHT OUT medical attention for the specific purpose of getting a medical report that he could use to justify a PH. How many of you on this forum have gone to the doctor to have a minor bruise on your arm treated?
And the site conventienty overlooks the detail that self-inflicted wounds are only acceptable for a purple heart if they occur while engaged in combat with the enemy.
No cite of this is offered. In any event, the fact that someone else may have tried the same trick as Kerry does not absolve him.
Of course, they accept the word of the two enlisted men on the boat, and ignore the testimony of the other man, simply because they want to believe the first two. Schachte had an impeccable career. He was the freaking Judge Advocate General for the Navy for God’s sake, yet his testimony is dismissed cavalierly. Hey, he knew a Republican! He supports Republicans! He must be a liar!
Schachte says this is not true, and he’s the man who created those missions in the first place. He also has many logical arguments behind him. For example, those missions always went out with two officers and an enlisted engineman. Kerry was an officer in training at the time, and Schachte says it would have been inconceivable for an officer in training and two enlisted men to be sent on a mission like that.
In any event, the FAIR thing to say is that the witnesses dispute what happened, not to claim that one is a liar and the other two are beyond reproach simply because they back up what you want to believe.
They didn’t know about Schacte - he’s not a member of their group. He came forward of his own volition to set the record straight, and once he did the Swifties corrected their version.
NO doctor signed the sheet. It was signed by a Corpsman, who worked for Letson. Letson was the only doctor on that base. He said it was common for routine treatment for the doc to treat the guy and have the Corpsman fill out the paperwork.
OK, folks thanks for the links and commentary. I’ve evaluated as much as I have time for, and here (if anyone cares) is what I think, and at the end, its relevance to the OP.
Based on my reading so far, I’m gonna have to reject most of Sam Stone’s arguments for the time being. In the absence of reading Unfit for Command, which I am unlikely to do anytime soon, I’ve found nothing that solidly backs up the claims he mentions, save for my knowing that the issue of whether or not Kerry’s boat actually did enter Cambodia has long been a subject of controversy. I don’t find this issue anywhere near as important as whether he may have obtained some of his medals fraudulently, and without more compelling testimony than I’ve seen so far, I’m afraid I don’t buy the argument that there WAS fraud involved on Kerry’s part.
In general, I have to reject as well the argument commonly made that Kerry somehow ended up in Viet Nam for no other purpose than to make a political name for himself (I acknowledge that Sam has not repeated that claim here, but it turns up so often elsewhere that it bears comment). This argument seems absurd on its face. IMO, one might as well argue that John McCain got himself thrown into a North Vietnamese prison to make himself a more attractive candidate later.
I’m also struck by the fact that most of the men who actually knew and served under Mr. kerry apparently support him, while many who served at commanders on other boats do not. Clearly Mr. Kerry did something to seriously piss off this latter group. When did this occur? Apparently some time after Mr. Kerry’s tour, as it has been widely reported that he received mostly favorable performance reviews at the time of his command. Does happening to piss off some of one’s peer officers more than 30 years ago render one ‘unfit for command’ as President today? I think not.
Lastly, the most telling thing that strikes me in the litany of allegations against Kerry are the repeated assertions that some of the ex-commanders that vilify Kerry now wrote glowing reports on him at the time he was in-country. This makes it pretty clear to me that much of the anger shown towards him has to do with a sense of betrayal through Kerry’s later anti-war stance. I was against the war at the time myself, I continue to thing it swas a collossal waste, and I have no problem whatsoever with Kerry having stood up to denounce it.
To sum up: are there questions about Kerry’s military record? Yes, but the bulk of these questions seem to either have satisfactory answers or be so ambigous as to be useless to evaluate. Is there enough here to consider Kerry unqualified to be President? No, IMO, definitely not. Could there be a better candidate than Kerry? Unquestionably yes, but unfortunately none better happens to be running this year; certainly not his opponent.
With that out of the way, now I can better evaluate what Razorsharp, after much hemming and hawing, stated was his actual premise:
I would say, at best, in this specific case, CBS’s offense is not even close to that of the SBVfT. Someone would have to show me that CBS, as a corporate policy, determined to bring down the Bush administration and forged the documents in question in an effort to do so, for the two to even be equal. In any event, as many have already said, CBS has admitted its error, failure, lie, or whatever one wishes to call it, and has over the course of the campaign published many stories that may be interpreted as being both in favor of and against the two main candidates, suggesting that there is no such conspiracy to bring down the Bush administration. OTOH, SBVfT seems to exist only to prevent Kerry from being elected President, has clearly employed questionable tactics to that end, and apparently has stubbornly refused to back off from even its least compelling claims.
Doesn’t fuckin’ matter who it was. Has no bearing on Kerry’s character. Next?
And you know the true nature of the injury, at this remove, because, what? The Swifties say-so. Nothing more. Next?
You have exactly zero basis for that statement. Next?
Um, where do you think they were? Out for a day at the beach? Once again, you have zero basis for denouncing the integrity of the contemporaneous documentation. Wishing doesn’t make it true. Next?
Also irrelevant. Next?
No, because they were there. Shacte wasn’t. That isn’t so hard, is it? Next?
What part of “He wasn’t there” don’t you understand? Next?
In any event, the FAIR thing to say is that the two witnesses who were there have more credibility than the one who wasn’t, even if the latter backs up what you want to believe. Next?
You have no basis for knowing his motivation. Next?
Once again, the contemporaneous documentation supports Kerry, not the Swifties. Next?
If that’s what this thread is really all about, then why is it worth discussing at all? The only important decision any of us have to make that has any relevance to all this is whether to vote for Bush-Cheney or Kerry-Edwards. And the question of whether CBS’ journalistic haste and sloppiness is more or less reprehensible than the SBVT’s foul mendacity has no conceivable bearing on that decision. It might be worth discussing in abstract ethical terms – raises interesting questions about the difficulty of comparing the ethical value of decisions made by entirely different kinds of actors, operating under different kinds of standards, to achieve different kinds of ends – but that discussion would belong in a different thread with a very different OP.
I thought the Navy settled the arguments about whether or not Kerry’s medals were awarded properly.
Are we now going to hear that the Navy is in on some massive conspiracy?
For those who continue to believe the Swifties in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are nothing but a pack of liars-what will it take to convince you they’re lying? Seriously. How much evidence do YOU need?
Hey, beats the hell out of me. I agree that it’s not a very compelling subject, but it’s what Razorsharp said he wanted to discuss. I had a bit of time to spare so I discussed it. That’s all.
Not really. I went through the first half of that cite pretty carefully and wasn’t particularly impressed with the depth of analysis there. FTR, here’s where I stand on the Swiftvets: Nothing they say proves Kerry’s service was dishonorable. Nothing they say convinces me his actions in Vietnam weren’t worthy of praise and weren’t heroic.
I read the Swiftvets book with their motivations in mind. I know that they are both political and also motivated by a 30 year grudge. I have no doubt that they are painting Kerry’s service in the worst possible terms possible.
Still, if you think they are lying, show me what you think is the best proof from either of those cites, and I’ll let you know what I think or can demonstrate.
Have you read the book? I have. I’ve read Kerry’s book, too. Kerry attacked the Swiftees first. Mischaracterized them as war criminals, impugned their honor and service. What Kerry said was a blatant and obvious lie. He’s on the record saying that it was the Swiftboats mission to fire on innocent villages and Sampans, that they had pep talks given to them, so that they’d feel good about killing innocent people.
Just noticed that even Razorsharp has acknowledged that putting the swifters in this discussion was tongue in cheek, that is, that even he doesn’t consider the swifter’s positions to have much merit.
Now if only Sam Stone and Scylla would acknowledge how silly it is to continue prop up the swfters in this thread…
And I will say it again: the fearless leader already said that Kerry served honorably, when I see people like Sam and Scylla continuing to peddle the swifters the less I see Bush as a leader: his followers don’t even care what he says.
However, what the Navy said recently bears repeating, because it seems the swill followers ignore some items:.
I have to conclude here that analysis is not the forte of followers of the swifters, IIRC I heard that the swifters demanded to Kerry to release all documents, but here, it is obvious that we have the group that has access to all of them, they just took a new look: the result: the swifters are even more discredited.
Once again: on the review, they found that they correctly followed the procedures.
The swifters are reheating the cold plate of vengeance, that after 30 years, is cold and rotten, but boy do some followers still love to eat with gusto!
In other words: if the swifters did not come forward then with these allegations, when Kerry was running around during the winter soldier phase, they have really nothing to go on today. This is another big item against the swifters: there was a way to deny Kerry of his medals and to get Kerry as a traitor back stabber. There were and are, procedures to complaint against unfairly obtained medals, the fact that they did not complained then (when the evidence was fresh), speaks volumes to me about the partisan nature of the current attacks, and that there is virtually nothing valid on the allegations the swifters have against Kerry.
When the Bush document affair hit, I thought: “nice if it is confirmed”, suddenly the evidence appeared to go against some of the documents and I began to doubt. Here is the big difference with the swifter item: skeptics found then that virtually all subsequent bits of evidence backed the view that the documents were fake. Finally, the apology of CBS made anyone still believing the documents were true to look like a dunce. But, the “dunces” of the left did recognize the truth, it doesn’t leave Bush standing pretty tough: I thought it was odd that he could not right away say that the documents were false, I think he realized they had found the goods. In the swifter case, the more I investigated, the more I found the swifter allegations unreliable and mendacious, when the truth hits your cherished ideology, one has to dump ideology and accept the results.
When even Fox dumped on the swifters, by now, any followers of the swifters are revealing themselves to be on the fringes of the debate. And I may say: even on the fringes of America.
“FTR, here’s where I stand on the Swiftvets: Nothing they say proves Kerry’s service was dishonorable. Nothing they say convinces me his actions in Vietnam weren’t worthy of praise and weren’t heroic.”
Please try not to mischaracterize my stance. It is well researched and thought out, and, I beleive, rational.
The Navy deciding not to investigate Kerry’s medals hardly equates to a release of all documents. I am on record stating that this investigation was a poor idea. In fact, it was not instigated by the Swiftvets, but rather by Judicialwatch.
Well sure. This is pretty much the first thing the Swiftees address in their book. Kerry at the convention chose to make his service in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. Edwards said to know Kerry you have to talk to the people that served with him.
These people are responding to Kerry on the terms he has chosen.
They did. O’neil debated Kerry on this very subject in the midst of the Wintersoldier thing on the Dick Cavett show, making many of the same points he does today. He sought entrance into the Fulbright hearing so that he could counter Kerry’s charges, but was denied.
I don’t care where my position places me as long as the position is correct.
For a whole bunch of consecutive threads I’ve been trying to get one of you guys who insist the Swiftees are full of it, to get down to brass tacks on the subject.
Pick your spot. Pick what you think demonstrates the falsity of these guys, and I’ll meet there, point for point.
If however, you’re unwilling to back it up, it’s a worthless stance you hold.
Scylla, that was already done! you really disappoint me, I am beginning to think you are really the one that is mischaracterizing, or I should say that you forget on purpose? Here is a hint: on that thread, Gardner had at best a good “hypothesis” on Kerry’s medals. So, in the end, you had to admit at last that:
Well yeah! That’s part of the reason why I don’t beleive Kerry served dishonorably. The Swiftvets didn’t prove their case on this.
Failing to prove their case on this does not prove them liars, or discredited, or dismissable.
While they did not prove Kerry to be dishonorable in his service, they did prove that Kerry exagerrated his claims, and fabricated several stories about his service after the fact: Christmas in Cambodia, No man left behind, 1st purple heart, mine blowing up Kerry’s boat, shrapnel in the ass. Kerry’s campaign representatives and biographer have backed off of earlier claims and conceded much.
There is still much that is unaddressed, and the lie in the characterization of the Swiftboat mission and the meeting with Abrams that I’ve linked to several times has yet to be addresses either.
Not at all. He makes a point that you evade with the deftness of a matador. But it wouldn’t occur to a whippersnapper like yourself, because you don’t remember the times like an Ancient of Daze.
Yes, the Swifties hate John Kerry. They hated him then, as well. So did Richard Nixon. Dick Nixon wanted John Kerry exposed for the vile rascal that he was, Dick Nixon sicced John Warner, Sec. of Navy, on that traitorous scoundrel, John Kerry. And what did he find? Bupkis, that’s what he found. Zip, zero, zilch, nada damn thing! The cunning Kerry conspiracy was so deeply entrenched, so adept at changing tesimony and documents, that all Mr. Warner could find would lead one to the conclusion that Lt. (j.g.) Kerry served honarably, even heroicly. Imagine that!
Kind of sticks out, doesn’t it? If the Sec of the Navy, with Dick Nixon breathing down his neck, couldn’t find any of this stuff when it was fresh…what makes you believe that after thirty years a wholly different set of facts, entirely contrary, is more valid? What investigative power have the Swifties got that should trump their opinion?
John Kerry told the truth, when silence would have served him well, as it served others. They hated him then, and if they could have brought him down, they would have done it then, when memories and documents were still fresh, when they had the President and the Sec. Navy behind them. If all of this Swiftie crap is true, it would have been a “slam dunk”, I believe the expression is.
CBS was “self-correcting” when they called Burkett their “unimpeachable source?” Really? CBS was “self-correcting” when they ignored their experts - their own experts that questioned the reality of the documents? Do you really believe what you just said? The problem, Evil Captor, is that you got the premise all wrong. CBS didn’t “do the right thing when confronted with evidence.”
