Scumbags For Truth Redux

So, professional John Kerry character assassin John O’Neill and his cronies are out there with a new ad, condemned by John McCain, claiming that Kerry didn’t deserve his medals — and conveniently rolling out O’Neill’s new book. (Those Republican marketers sure understand synergy.) John O’Neill has always travelled in high Republican circles as a Kerry specialist. He’s been associated with two of the greatest smear artist presidents in Republican history — Richard Nixon and George W. Bush.

I posted this earlier, but it’s due for a repeat. Here’s O’Neill with his mentors, the convicted felon Charles Colson and the pardoned Tricky Dick back in the day:

Colson was Nixon’s point man against Kerry, and he found a weapon in another veteran: John O’Neill. He was a spokesman for Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace, which backed Nixon administration policy in Vietnam, and in turn was supported by the White House.

Fresh out of the Navy like Kerry, O’Neill was angry at Kerry for saying U.S. servicemen in Vietnam routinely committed war crimes. The weekend before the Washington protests, Kerry made the accusations on NBC’s Meet the Press, saying, “I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed, in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones.” And, Kerry claimed, “I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All this is contrary to the laws of warfare.”

John O’Neill hit back at Kerry with administration-orchestrated press appearances of his own, including a news conference that June. O’Neill asked rhetorically, “Shall Mr. Kerry and his little group of one thousand or twelve thousand embittered men be allowed to represent their views as that of all veterans, because they can appear on every news program? I hope not, for the country’s sake.”

After the news conference, O’Neill met with Charles Colson at the White House, where the attack on Kerry was seen as a public relations coup. In a conversation with the president, Haldeman gave the credit to Charles Colson, and raved about John O’Neill:

Haldeman: — crew cut, real sharp looking guy who is more articulate than Kerry. He’s not as eloquent; he isn’t the ham that Kerry is. But he’s more believable. [edit]

Haldeman: This guy now, is gonna, he’s gonna move on Kerry.

The White House encouraged O’Neill to challenge Kerry to a debate. Kerry agreed and before the event, President Nixon called O’Neill into the Oval Office for a pep talk. “It’s a great service to the country,” declared the president.

Nixon: Give it to him, give it to him. And you can do it, because you have a pleasant manner, too, because you’ve got — and I think it’s a great service to the country. [edit]

Nixon: You fellows have been out there. You’ve got to know, seeing the barbarians that we’re up against, you’ve got to know what we’re doing in that horrible swamp that North Vietnam is. You’ve got to know from all our faults of what we have in this country that, that what we’re doing is right. You’ve got to know too, people are critics. Critics of the war, critics of [unint], run America down. [edit] You’ve gotta know that you’re on the winning s-that, that you’re on the right side.

Two weeks later, the veterans squared off on the popular Dick Cavett show:

O’Neill: Mr. Kerry is the type of person who lives and survives only on the war weariness and fears of the American people. This is the same little man who on nationwide television in April spoke of, quote, crimes committed on a day to day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

Kerry: We believe as veterans who took part in this war we have nothing to gain by coming back here and talking about those things that have happened except to try and point the way to America, to try and say, here is where we went wrong, and we’ve got to change.

Later that year, even as the war continued, Kerry left the increasingly radical Vietnam Veterans Against the War. But the Nixon White House kept after John Kerry. It’s said that when Kerry ran for Congress in 1972, Nixon stayed up late on election night until he knew for sure that Kerry had been defeated.

You can’t have better character references than Haldeman, Colson and Nixon. That association speaks for itself. John O’Neill has done nothing noteworthy in his life except oppose John Kerry. Indeed, he barely exists as a human being being except for his opposition to John Kerry.

And the fact that John Kerry has been keeping Republicans up nights for more than 30 years also speaks for itself. That election Nixon was so worried about was the first and only election John Kerry lost.