Let's review...
Kevin says:
I’m curious…you claim that Kerry’s pretend war hero stories must be true because he’s got the (heavily embellished) paper work to back it up but you won’t concede that Bush also served honorably even though he too has the paper work to back up his record. Why is that?
"I said at the time we have to accept his service in the Guard as honorable in that the National Guard had no issue with his service. The Guard never charged Bush with being AWOL hence he was not. I'm comfortable with what the record states and people who try and bend the truth or change the story decades after for political gain are playing dirty. Nothing states in the official record that Bush was AWOL. If you say he is AWOL you are calling the whole National Guard liars. Nothing states in the official record that John Kerry is not a war hero. If you say he is not you are calling the entire US Navy liars. Not real bright or patriotic in either case." - Reg 8/30/2004
"I don't care about this Bush and the National Guard story personally." - Reg 9/13/2004
"...I can't stand being stuck in nonsense issues while we ignore what's important." - Reg 9/13/2004
Kevin says:
Kerry's was one of three Bronze Stars awarded for actions during this incident. Another went to the commander of a second Swift Boat, Larry Thurlow. Thurlow is now one of the core members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. He has sworn an affidavit saying the Swift Boats were not under hostile fire during the rescue. Thurlow's own Bronze Star citation contradicts this, but Thurlow insists the citation is false and has suggested that Kerry wrote it.
The third Bronze Star was won by one of Thurlow's own launch crew, Robert Eugene Lambert, who was radarman and the senior noncom on Thurlow's boat. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the citation for Lambert's Bronze Star from the National Personnel Records Center in St Louis under a Freedom of Information Act filing. This citation, like the others, says that following a mine explosion that wrecked one of the Swift Boats, the flotilla of five boats "came under small-arms and automatic weapons fire from the river banks." Lambert won his Bronze Star for an action precisely paralleling Kerry's: Lambert picked someone out of the river. In Lambert's case, that someone was his skipper, Thurlow [...]
Lambert's surviving military records do not include the initial recommendation for this medal, so there is no way to know who filled the required role of witness to vouch for Lambert's actions. But the citation contains such detail about the actions of both Thurlow and Lambert--actions that Kerry cannot have known since his launch was on the far side of the river--that it seems implausible Kerry could have written the recommendation.
So, lets see Thurlow claims he was not being shot at now, years after accepting a medal which came with the citation that he was being shot at? Hmm, what the hell is that all about? Why didn't he turn down the medal back then? Oh yeah, Thurlow didn't read the citation until 30 some years later...okay. Or was it this story Thurlow gave:
Thurlow said he lost his Bronze Star citation more than 20 years ago. He said he would not authorize release of his military records because he feared the Kerry campaign would discredit him.
Hmm...didn't want his own records looked at but under freedom of information they found them...oops!
Let's look at these statements:
"As far as I was concerned, the war was won over there in that part for that period. And it was mainly won because of the bravado and the courage of the young officers that ran the boats, the SWIFT boats and the Coast Guard cutters and Senator Kerry was no exception. He was among the finest of those." - Adrian Lonsdale (SBV for truth?) in 1996
"I don't like what he said after the war," said Adrian Lonsdale, who commanded Kerry for three months in 1969. "But he was a good naval officer."
Later Lonsdale appears in a commercial for the SBV and is edited into it saying:
"And, he lacks the capacity to lead."
Hmm...he didn't think so in 1996. What happened?
Here's a very nice two step by Mr. John O'Neill:
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Swift Boat Vets Leader Adds More Lies to His Resume
By WILLIAM D. McTAVISH
Capitol Hill Blue Staff Writer
Aug 19, 2004, 08:00
John E. O'Neill, leader of the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and co-author of the book, Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, lied once again on national television about his partisan political activity on behalf of the Republican party.
O'Neill, appearing on Tuesday's Fox News with Brit Hume, claimed that half of $15,000 in contributions to Republicans listed in Federal Election Commission records actually were made by a law partner with a "similar name."
"My law partner has almost the same name, Edward J. O'Neill," claims O'Neill, who practices law in Houston. In an earlier interview with newspaper reporters, O'Neill claimed the contributions were made by his firm, not him, but federal law prohibits corporate contributions to federal candidates and he changed the story before appearing on Fox.
Asked by Fox News correspondent Brit Hume to explain nearly $15,000 in donations to Republicans, O'Neill said, "about half of them were mine. Those are actually funds, as nearly as I can tell, that were given my -- by some -- my law partner who has almost the same name, Edward J. O'Neill. I simply didn't give them. I would have been happy to give them. I just didn't."
But Federal Election Commission Records clearly identify "John E. O'Neill" as the individual contributor of $14.650 to candidates -- all Republicans -- since 1990. FEC Records also list contributions by Edward J. O'Neill but they are different from the contributions listed for John E. O'Neill.
Edward J. O'Neill donated $1,000 to then-Texas Governor George W. Bush's campaign in 1999, $250 to former Democratic presidential candidate General Wesley K. Clark's primary campaign in 2003, and other contributions to both Democrats and Republicans.
"I've given more to Democrats than Republicans," John O'Neill claimed on Fox but FEC records do not show a single contribution from John E. O'Neill to any Democratic candidates. When pressed, he said he gave to Democrats "at the local level" and Republicans "at the national level."
However, a search of records with the Texas Ethics Commission, keeper of contribution records, finds no contributions listed for John E. O'Neill. Houston City Council Records show a $10,000 contribution to at large council candidate Ronald Green, a Democrat.
"I'm not a Republican or a Democrat," O'Neill told Hume, but he was first recruited into politics by President Richard M. Nixon's chief counsel, Charles Colson, and set up with a veterans front group to challenge then anti-war activist John Kerry's activities.
"We found a vet named John O'Neill and formed a group called Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace. We had O'Neill meet the President, and we did everything we could do to boost his group," Colson told reporter Joe Klein in a January 5 interview published in The New Yorker magazine.
O'Neill later clerked for Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, a Nixon appointee, and worked in Republican politics in Harris County, Texas. His political activities for the GOP got him on the short list for a federal judge appointment under former President George H.W. Bush, according to Texas Lawyer magazine and Harris County voter registration records show he votes in GOP primaries.
FEC records compiled by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics show O'Neill's political contributions go only to Republicans and include:
- 2004: $2,000 to Duane Sand (ND)
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1999: $1,000 to Peter Staub Wareing (TX)
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1998: $250 to Rudy Izzard (TX)
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1996: $1,000 to Brent Perry (TX)
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1994: $2,500 to Texas Republican Congressional Committee
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1993: $2,500 to Texas Republican Congressional Committee
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1992: $1,000 to Texas Republican Congressional Committee
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1992: $1,000 George H.W. Bush
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1992: $1,000 to Clark Kent Ervin (TX)
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1991: $1,000 to Clark Kent Ervin (TX)
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1990: $400 to Hugh Dunham Shine (TX)
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1990: $1,000 to A Tribute To Ronald Reagan
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I bolded the part in the middle because you ask this:
Would you care to back up the claim that these guys have been hired to go after Kerry?
It's a matter of public record that O'Neill was a Nixon administration stooge recruited to attack John Kerry. You ignore that I guess. The New York Times (I know liberal liars right!) did an article detailing the ties between the SBVs and the the Bush administration as well. I also posted a detailed accounting of ties between Bush/Rove and these guys if you search the archives. Let us not forget that Rove worked for the Nixon administration as well. Remember too that retired Admiral Roy Hoffman has given conflicting statements in newspaper interviews and former Lt. Cmdr. George Elliott recanted his statements in the book and then recanted his recant. Several of the supposed 200 SBV's have said their signatures have been forged and names used without authorization on the orginal SBV letter (they now say more than 25% of the signatures are fake) and some have reported that the statements they gave were edited to make Kerry look bad. You can find plenty of accounts of what happened if you look Kevin. They hired private detectives to find Vets and take statements and then edited the statements later.
Then we have this shifting tale:
Retired admiral William Schachte renewed the Vietnam controversy on Aug. 27 when he told journalists that Kerry's first Purple Heart was the unearned result of a self-inflicted scratch during a nighttime mission that received no enemy fire. Contradicting the word of two veterans of that December 1968 mission -- both of whom said Schachte wasn't there -- Schachte charged that Kerry had misfired a grenade launcher and suffered a minor scratch. (Schachte's account also conflicted with the Swift Boat Veterans' own Web site, which was quickly altered to match his tale.)
I love that last bit about how the SBVs quickly jumped to cover their tracks after Admiral Bill's story turned out to conflict with what they had on their website. These guys are such a joke.
Here's a bit on Hoffman another one of these SBV baboons:
Rear Admiral Roy Hoffman and Kerry had few direct dealings in Vietnam. A Los Angeles Times examination of Navy archives found that Hoffman praised Kerry's performance in cabled messages after several river skirmishes.
Ol' Roy must have forgot those little messages. So who is Roy Hoffman:
Until now, Hoffmann has been best known as the commanding officer whose obsession with body counts and "scorekeeping" may have provoked the February 1969 massacre of Vietnamese civilians at Thanh Phong by a unit led by Bob Kerrey -- the Medal of Honor winner who lost a leg in Nam, became a U.S. senator from Nebraska and now sits on the 9/11 commission.
After journalist Gregory Vistica exposed the Thanh Phong massacre and the surrounding circumstances in the New York Times magazine three years ago, conservative columnist Christopher Caldwell took particular note of the cameo role played by Kerrey's C.O., who had warned his men not to return from missions without enough kills. "One of the myths due to die as a result of Vistica's article is that which holds the war could have been won sensibly and cleanly if the 'suits' back in Washington had merely left the military men to their own devices," Caldwell wrote. "In this light, one of the great merits of Vistica's article is its portrait of the Kurtz-like psychopath who commanded Kerrey's Navy task force, Capt. Roy Hoffmann."
And here's Bushie himself on this whole SBV nonsense:
"I think Senator Kerry served admirably and he ought to be proud of his record."
causing some to note:
This poses a quandary for those who both support Bush and the Swift Boat Vets. Either President Bush is telling the truth (and he has the entire intelligence and Dep't. of Defense at his command to make that determination) and Kerry's record is honorable, or, President Bush is either lying or ignorant on this now very important issue to millions of Americans.
This leave me to wonder are you serious when you say:
The SBV claims are newsworthy
Nothing about them seems newsworthy to me. Try reading the article at this link. It's a very good look at this whole situation in the media:
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/19665/
And then you say:
In case you haven’t done the research let me help you…Dan Rather does not have actual documents.
So what are the documents CBS has been showing off? I don't think we have any confirmation they are fake...do you have something new on this to offer Kevin? You seem to know something because you say this:
The documents aren’t important because they’re bogus.
and you know this how? Where did you find that info? So far I haven't seen anything that says this. I've only heard people speculate about what they are or may be but nobody has said they know for sure...except you. Bushie isn't out there saying they are fake.
Your defense of 60 Minutes is also weak.
That may be because I did not defend them in my reply to you nor will I. I won't defend Dan Rather either...honestly I don't care for him much and I always thought he seemed like sort of a boob. So I don't have any interest in defending him.
The reason I don't think this story matters is because I don't give a shit what Bush did 30 years ago. I care mostly about what he's done as president...and it's been a disaster. I don't think the country cares about what Bush did 30 years ago but I think the Republicans want to keep talking about Viet Nam so we don't talk about Iraq or the economy, or education, or healthcare, or the way Bushco spends money like they own the mint. Oops...maybe they do.
Now are you gonna keep making me talk about this SBV, National Guard, Viet Nam nonsense or can we move on to what's important?
