Yes, I’ve seen the reports the WaPo put together claiming victory over he Swift Boat vets. OTB seems to have the best coverage on the matter so far, and links to others around blogdom who are on ths as well.
My own reaction? It strikes me as interesting that the the Times Corp can come up with records for the Swiftees but can’t, within that same timeframe, come up with John Kerry’s records. we’re still just taking Kerry’s word that what he’s released is the whole story.
As for Thurlow, it sounds to me like a lot of what was going on was recorded creatively.
And, in both cases, given Kerry’s propensity to lie, it seems based on the record that it becomes a matter of he said/he said, and thus Kerry, whose word we cannot trust, loses.
Joyner seems to think that the official record of the event should end the discussion, just as Mr. Bush’s honorable discharge should end that discussion. James, there’s a major difference you’re missing, here. Bush didn’t make his military service the central part of his qualifications for the office. Kerry did. That, by it’s nature opens the subject up to serious scrutiny.
Too bad WaPo doesn’t agree.
But as Greyhawk over at Muddville mentions:
But President Bush, of course, didn’t reach down into a river and pull Mr Rassman onto an Iowa stage, thus making his military record the centerpiece of his campaign. Bush’s record, like Kerry’s, was brought into play by Democrats. (And poured over by the press.)
The Swiftee’s anger with Mr. Kerry is at least in part due to his turning his back on them upon returning home. But it seems to me that this is a central concern to those being asked to elect Mr. Kerry to the highest office this country has to offer, in that it brings up character issues which cannot be avoided if one is to make a proper choice about who is to be President.
What kind of issues? Well, for example, is Mr. Kerry one to keep faith with the American people? Not if we judge him by his record. Consider him speaking before the VFW the other day. He stood there, speaking glibly about “not breaking faith with those who are serving or had served in the past”, all the while apparently ignoring, or at least not mentioning, the way he’d broken faith with his fellows once he came back here. To Wit:
“They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.”
Mr. Kerry has similar flipflops all thoughout his history. His on again/off again support for the Iraq action being only the most recent. (I’ve documented many of these, and won’t bother chewing up bandwidth here.)
All of these, he passes off as Nuance. The American people, including vets, have other words. “Liar”, “Opportunist” “Back stabber”
IN truth, it is apparent that the only thing Mr. Kerry ever learned well in the Military was “About Face”
Tags: BitsBlog
