Swift Boat Swine for Truth

[Peter_Puget]

Same report is on a couple of other sites as well best line I've read yet:

 

Kerry-Edwards is now a prototype of a Presidential campaign adrift and without any momentum whatsoever at a time they should be in full throttle. Kerry-Edwards has become a campaign for the students at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government to study, the way students at the medical school across the river study donated cadavers.

[Peter_Puget]

Here is the source (I think) counterpunch

 

Heck Alex is certainly no right winger.

Edited August 24, 2004 by Peter_Puget

[b-rock]

Meanwhile, the latest Zogby poll by WSJ has Kerry ahead in 14 of 16 battelground states.

[Peter_Puget]

As someone once said:

Zogby is always to be taken solely as comic relief - but then, its low numbers for the incumbent leave room for the bigger and MORE MEDIA ATTENTION GETTING post convention "bounce!"

 

[b-rock]

Some historical precedents?

 

- The average winning incumbent has had a job approval rating of 60%. Indeed, every incumbent who has won reelection has had his job approval in the mid-50's or higher at this point. In recent polling, Bush's average approval rating has been 48%. President Bush must emerge from his convention having dramatically altered public perception of his performance in office.

 

- In recent years, when incumbents have gone on to victory, 52% of voters, on average, said the country was on the right track. Now, just 37% think things are moving in the right direction. Thus, President Bush must convince the electorate that the nation is in much better shape than voters now believe to be the case.

 

- Every incumbent who has gone on to be reelected has had a double-digit lead at this point.

 

- Following their conventions, the average elected incumbent has held a 16-point lead, while winning incumbents have led by an average of 27 points. Bush will need a very substantial bounce to reach the mark set by his successful predecessors.

 

- Incumbents have enjoyed an average bounce in the vote margin of 8 points.

 

- On average, incumbents' share of the two-party vote has declined by 4 points between their convention and Election Day.

 

'Adrift and without momentum'? Either way Bush is going down.

[chucK]

Same report is on a couple of other sites as well

 

The argument that multiple observations confirm the evidence is based on the assumption of independent observations.

 

Think "50,000,000 Elvis Fans can't be wrong!"

 

That is, four republican shills repeating the same "information" doesn't really hold much more evidence than one.

[iain]

In related news, water is still wet.

[Peter_Puget]

BRock -Shouldn't yoru post be here

 

The claim was quite specific

[b-rock]

I was commenting on 'adrift and without momentum'. What did I post that was off topic?

[Off_White]

[RuMR]

The guy I'm pretty sure you're voting for doesn't have a combat record. He has a criminal record... is that the kind of thing you admire? Kerry volunteered for combat when the frat boy you're going to vote for was probably AWOL.

 

Why don't you just be honest and say, "George W. is a miserable excuse for a leader, probably a poorer choice than Kerry, but I'm going to vote for him because of what his party represents." That would be refreshingly honest.

 

[TBay]

Kerry can exonerate himself by simply signing the release for his 100+ page military record held confidential at the pentagon!

 

Whats he hiding?

 

Mark Twain once said, "He who tells the truth will has less to say."

[johndavidjr]

No incumbent president with four letters in his last name was ever re-elected. (according to Barron's.)

[RuMR]

...so why are bush's driving records sealed???

 

sounds kinda criminal, don't it?

[cj001f]

Kerry can exonerate himself by simply signing the release for his 100+ page military record held confidential at the pentagon!

 

Whats he hiding?

 

Stuff that isn't nearly as bad as what W was able to destroy before release.

[Jim]

Kerry can exonerate himself by simply signing the release for his 100+ page military record held confidential at the pentagon!

 

Whats he hiding?

 

 

Stuff that isn't nearly as bad as what W was able to destroy before release.

 

Except his National Guard records that are required by law to be held in the Texas State Archives. He can release these to the public via a signature.

[mr.radon]

I think Kerry did a great service going to VN. However, everything he did after he came back makes me think he is the bigest slim ball in the universe. He did everything but rub crap in the veteran's faces. Now that he want to get elected he wants their support because he fought over their. My beef is with what he did when he came back. At least Bush wasn't out there calling them baby killers and war criminals.

What a choice we have this year....

[JosephH]

I think Kerry did a great service going to VN. However, everything he did after he came back makes me think he is the bigest slim ball in the universe. He did everything but rub crap in the veteran's faces. Now that he want to get elected he wants their support because he fought over their. My beef is with what he did when he came back. At least Bush wasn't out there calling them baby killers and war criminals.

 

Excuse me, if you bothered to summon the initiative to learn about:

 

- the history of Vietnam

- the botched ending of French Colonialism in Vietnam

- the prelude to the war (us subverting democracy)

- the use of Vietnam as a pawn in a global struggle between US/Russia/China (by all sides)

- the corruption of the South Vietnamese government

- our endless duplicity with that government

- the endless corruption involved with $8 billion in US construction contracts in Vietnam

- the ugly behavior and war crimes of a minority of our troops

- what John Kerry and other vets actually said on their return (not the spin)

 

In short if you were there, or if you bothered to read a transcript of what John Kerry and others of us that came back from Vietnam actually said you would find that we told the truth - and that your government lied again and again, just as they are now.

 

Given you weren't there, rather than the naively repeating scurrilous right-wing lies such as the one you just did - how about taking on just a shred of responsibility for looking into the facts and history yourself instead of mindlessly parroting trash - then at least you could spray with a degree of credibility you lack now.

 

Kerry and others stood up and spoke for us while we were still over there and couldn't - it will be interesting to see who ends up speaking up for this generation of men and women serving in Iraq. You can be sure in the end though it won't be lying posers like W. & Co. who send our troops to Iraq without armor plate or hardened vehicles. It will be men and women who served in combat operations in Iraq and are in a position to know the whole story. It will be men like Marine General Anthony Zinni. Both he and Kerry were discussed recently by Paul Krugman:

 

All the credible evidence, from military records to the testimony of those who served with Kerry, confirms his wartime heroism. Why, then, are some veterans willing to join the smear campaign? Because they are angry about his later statements against the war. Yet making those statements was itself a heroic act - and what he said then rings truer than ever.

 

The young John Kerry spoke of leaders who sent others to their deaths because they wanted to seem tough, then "left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude." Fifteen months after George Bush strutted around in his flight suit, more and more Americans are echoing Anthony Zinni, the retired general who received a standing ovation from an audience of Marine and Navy officers when he talked about the debacle in Iraq and said of those who served in Vietnam: "We heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice. I ask you, is it happening again?"

 

Kerry also spoke of the moral cost of an ill-conceived war - of the atrocities soldiers find themselves committing when they can't tell friend from foe. Two words: Abu Ghraib.

 

Let's hope that this latest campaign of garbage and lies - initially financed by a Texas Republican close to Karl Rove, and running an ad featuring an "independent" veteran who turns out to have served on a Bush campaign committee - leads to a backlash against Bush. If it doesn't, here's the message we'll be sending to Americans who serve their country: If you tell the truth, your courage and sacrifice count for nothing.

 

 

[willstrickland]

More drama:

 

John O'Neill -- Mr. uber-Swift, he wrote the book, etc. -- has been going on all the shows for weeks saying that John Kerry never could have been in Cambodia on a black mission. It was impossible because there were all sorts of precautions in place to prevent any border crossings and that he would have been "court-martialed" had he done so (see this column for excerpts from his book and his appearance on ABC's This Week program last Sunday.)

 

Now CNN has come up with tapes of O'Neill telling Richard Nixon in 1971 that he himself had been on missions inside Cambodia. From last night's Aaron Brown show ...

 

O'Neill said no one could cross the border by river and he claimed in an audio tape that his publicist played to CNN that he, himself, had never been to Cambodia either. But in 1971, O'Neill said precisely the opposite to then President Richard Nixon.

 

O'NEILL: I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water.

 

NIXON: In a swift boat?

 

O'NEILL: Yes, sir.

 

(END VIDEOTAPE)

 

JOHNS: Now, O'Neill may have an explanation for this but he has not returned CNN's calls. What does seem clear is that a top member of the swift boat group is now being held to the same standard of literal accuracy they've tried to impose on John Kerry -- Aaron.

 

It really seems like O'Neill has been going on all these shows lying right through his teeth. Not misremembering some date, not having a conflicting recollection of some battle action, but telling everyone that none of the Swift Boats crossed into Cambodia when, in fact, he himself appears to have done so routinely.

 

Source: talkingpointsmemo.com

 

 

And even more drama:

 

The Kerry campaign is sending Max Cleland and Jim Rassman down to the president's 'ranch' to hand deliver a letter signed by seven veterans serving in the United States Senate asking Bush to "recognize this blatant attempt at character assassination, and publicly condemn it."

 

[mr.radon]

You can F off. First off my dad was there and these are his feelings too. His VN veteran friends all think this guy is a back stabbing traitor for what he did after he came back. As for history a good friend of mine and co-worker is from VN. He lived in the North and fled for his life with his family when the good 'ol commis started killing people who didn't want that form of government (North VN not South). He worked for the CIA before leaving the country just before the collapse. He has many interesting stories about the war and VN history. I'm sure you've learned all your history from reading books but not talking with a single person who is actually from VN and lived through it. Arrogant POS that thinks you know so much more then everyone else.

All the left wingers were so off base, just like Kerry. Throw crap on the honorable men that served over there. The left wing anti-war nuts should have been protesting against the government officials that ordered the guys over there instead of calling the poor old soldiers baby killers when they got off the plane in San Francisco. And Yes I have a copy of what Kerry read. None of the allegations were ever proven, 100% lies. Nothing better then to repeat hearsay from something someone else told you. Quick way to say well he told me that. They chased his stories and none proved out. No one stepped up to the plate and said yes I did those things on this date in this area to this person. Kerry told lies against the very men he fought with to further his agenda. He’s a big ol POS!

My dad killed a lot of people over there and all of them were trying their best to kill him. He didn't rape, pillage, torture. Sure there are war crimes in all conflicts but for Kerry to lie like he did to the Senate and participate in the activities he did is disgusting.

Your living in a dream world. Why not bring up our killing raping and pillaging of the native Americans? The VN war was started after WWII when nations wanted to throw off the yokes from Europe. Sure 20/20 hind sight makes what happened look pretty dumb now. I draw the conclusion, different from you.

Back in 1962 we should have made a choice:

1) invaded the North and exterminated the commies

2) never have entered in the first place. Typical political BS, do it half assed.

[Jim]

With all the pressing issues in this country what is the press spending its time with - a debate over one candidates's war record from 30 years ago. Ya gotta hand it to Rove, he is a great manipulator. It's a great way to ignore the substantial issues. Let's focus on gay marriage, character assisination, and scaring the public with TERROR! George Orwell would be amused.

 

"All that was required of them was a primitive patrotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations (or incompetent leaders)." - G.O.

[slothrop]

mr. radon, I believe JosephH is saying that he was, in fact, there. Kerry was there, too. For two tours.

 

My dad was in Vietnam, too, commanding a LRRP platoon. He has no problem with John Kerry's activism against the war. Somehow he takes no offense to the idea that the Vietnam war was a mistake and that there were atrocities committed by US troops, probably because the truth of both statements has been proven by documented historical fact.

 

Reporting that Americans committed atrocities is not the same as calling every American servicemember a baby killer. I don't get why this is so hard to understand. You can say that America has the highest per capita murder rate without implying that every American is a murderer. Just because Jeffrey Dahmer is American doesn't mean every American is a serial killer.

 

It's not the truth-tellers who impugned the honor of America in Vietnam, it's the dishonorable troops who committed the atrocities or allowed them to go unpunished.

Edited August 25, 2004 by slothrop

[Dru]

Re: Loyalty to your comrades or doing the right thing

 

People are saying Kerry sold out his soldier brothers-in-arms by coming home and criticizing the war. Isn't that a good quality for a President, not being loyal to a flawed idea just because your close friends are, but having the candour to stand up for what you believe is right even if it means alienating your friends?

 

Compare to Bush stacking the deck with his ex-oil business cronies?

[j_b]

I heard John Kerry was behind the recent theft of "The Scream"

 

don't bring it up! theft of public art pisses me off like nothing else

[Dru]

whereas if had been stolen from a private collection....