Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Huh?

Great moments in headlines written with a straight face … or, the never ending decline of CNN. Right now — 5:59 PM — CNN headline: “Bush urges Kerry to condemn attack ads.”

Can you believe it? Not only is that completely ridiculous, but Bush didn’t really even condemn the ad himself. He went off message for a second under the extremely unusual experience of the press putting the tiniest bit of pressure on him. Please. Does this really sound like he’s condemning that ad?

QUESTION: But why won’t you denounce the charges that your supporters are making against Kerry?

BUSH: I’m denouncing all the stuff being on TV, all the 527s. That’s what I’ve said.

I said this kind of unregulated soft money is wrong for the process. And I asked Senator Kerry to join me in getting rid of all that kind of soft money, not only on TV, but to use for other purposes as well.

I, frankly, thought we’d gotten rid of that when I signed the McCain-Feingold bill. I thought we were going to once and for all get rid of a system where people could just pour tons of money in and not be held to account for the advertising.

And so, I’m disappointed with all those kinds of ads.

QUESTION: This doesn’t have anything to do with other 527 ads. You’ve been accused of mounting a smear campaign.

Do you think Senator Kerry lied about his war record?

BUSH: I think Senator Kerry served admirably and he ought to be proud of his record.

But the question is who best to lead the country in the war on terror? Who can handle the responsibilities of the commander in chief? Who’s got a clear vision of the risks that the country faces?

QUESTION: Some Republicans such as Bob Dole and some Republican donors such as Bob Perry have contributed and endorsed the message of those 527 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads.

QUESTION: When you say that you want to stop all…

BUSH: All of them.

QUESTION: So, I mean…

BUSH: That means that ad, every other ad.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

BUSH: Absolutely. I don’t think we ought to have 527s.

I can’t be more plain about it. And I wish — I hope my opponent joins me in saying — condemning these activities of the 527s. It’s — I think they’re bad for the system. That’s why I signed the bill, McCain-Feingold.

I’ve been disappointed that for the first, you know, six months of this year, 527s were just pouring tons of money — billionaires writing checks. And, you know, I spoke out against them early. I tried to get others to speak out against them as well. And I just don’t — I think they’re bad for the system.

Note to press corpse: If you would have tried to get Bush off his robotic message on real issues with even a smidgen of this energy these last three years, we might not have large numbers of people being blown up in Iraq as we speak. Sleep well tonight.

Un Danseur de Chippendales

Christopher Hitchens thinks that John Kerry shouldn’t have released that picture of himself and William Rood in Vietnam because the fact that he is carrying a rocket launcher makes him look like a “complete poseur.” That’s french for phony.

If that was phony, what then could possibly be the french word for this:

Overstimulated

Pierce:

To embroider a phrase from Mr. J, I weep for my profession when I see that God is just.

It has been made abundantly clear — most recently, by Mr. Rood of the Chicago Tribune and by the invaluable Joe Galloway of Knight-Ridder — that these Swift Boat characters are dealing in public lies. The day before, it was the NYT. The day before that, the Washington Post. We’ve had people outed as Republican operatives, disparaging war wounds they never saw, asserting as fact things they never witnessed, and ultimately calumnizing their own heroism. By all standard measures, this story should be over, and these people consigned to that same Phantom Zone where was dispatched that poor guy who wrote “Fortunate Son” in 2000. Can any fair person maintain that John O’Neill and the rest of the Chuck Colson Flotilla have any more credibility at this point than poor Hatfield had?

However, they live.

Why?

Television.

The print media, God love it, has done so thorough a debunking of these guys that you’d expect to hear a couple of them on Art Bell’s program late one night. But because the “issue” and the “controversy” make good television theater, they must be kept alive. Which is why, the next time you see, say, Norah O’Donnell, down by the phony barn on the phony ranch, and she tells you how remarkable it is that the ads are “having an effect” despite the fact that the actual buy was so low, you should feel free to excuse yourself and go vomit in the corner. The original ad contained substantially less truth than the Hitler Diaries, but it was run anyway, over and over again, in news pieces about the “issue” and on argument shows dealing with the “controversy.” In other words, television news gave up a substantial portion of its “news hole” this week to information that the people running the news operations had to know were demonstrable lies.

This is what you get. This is what you get when you get bullied by Mr. Murdoch’s toy network into running an interview in which a woman makes unsubstantiated charges of rape against a sitting president, and this is what you get when you get played like a tin piano by a decades-long dirty-tricks campaign that culminated in an impeachment, and you couldn’t report on the former because you were in the tank to the people bringing the latter. This is what you get when you loan your hard-won credibility to hacks and charlatans. This is what happens when you sell your craft out to celebrity, when being good on television is more important than being good at your job, when unconscionable slander is reckoned as genius because it moves the Nielsen needle. This is what happens when sneering schoolyard invective is reckoned to be actual talent because it comes with a Q rating. (Have a nice day, Tucker.) This is what happens when you run scared. Truth, literally, comes to matter not at all.

And, come Friday, with the Swift Boat ad in tatters in most major newspapers, what did HARDBALL do? It ran a segment attempting to rehabilitate the credibility of Michelle Malkin, a complete fake whose new book on the internment of Japanese-Americans has been stomped into a mudhole by the scholars who have done the real work on her topic, and who had come on the very same program the night before and made an idiot of herself. And who was adjudged to be worthy of being on national television to defend her?

John Fund.

It is to weep.

I don’t know about the print guys either, Charles, but maybe they just act this way when they go on TV:

DANA MILBANK, WASHINGTON POST: Oh, sure. I mean, I think we’ve been completely used in this by both sides. Just a few dollars, really, being spent in terms of the overall campaign war. In one of these cases, we’re talking about an ad that hasn’t even run yet, and then we’re also talking about a response ad that Kerry put out on the Internet, which they basically spent nothing for, but it’s getting attention on all the networks.

So we’re completely allowing this whole issue to dominate the news. I mean, part of that’s just that it’s being August and there’s not a lot else going on before the convention.

Yes. The Kerry people are ruthlessly using the poor media to get out their message rebutting the attacks that the poor media was so willing to shill for the Bush administration.

You know, I think this may not actually be a matter of lack of character or conscience. I think it may be more like a medical problem. They can’t help themselves. They jones for action and the Repubicans know how to give it to them. Blood in the water makes them high. They aren’t journalists, they just pretend to be. They are junkies, hooked on trivia, stimulation and scandal. They enable these tabloid smear tactics because the corporations provide them with their works and the Republicans give them their fix. They cover for their addiction to GOP nasty by finding false comparisons between the two parties so that the public won’t cut them off from their source.

The press desperately needs an intervention.

It’s Self-defense

The swift boat veterans who hate John Kerry have all come forward to tell the story of his Machiavelian ability to fraudulently, and in concert with large numbers of naval officers all the way up the chain of command, gain for himself a spotless record of heroism and valor during Vietnam.

John Kerry claims that this is a dirty trick on behalf of the Bush administration. But, what he fails to mention is that this was merely justifiable retaliation for a sickening smear set forth by some very ugly undercover Democrat operatives who some months ago went on the shadowy National Public Radio to call into question president Bush’s heroism in Operation Blount during his valorous stint in the National Guard.

Those days were frought with stress and pain for all concerned. Who knew who was the enemy and who was not? People had taken to the streets in Washington DC, while the battle raged in far flug locales. It was men like Lt. George W Bush who manned the front lines, taking the heat to protect democracy. Why should his supreme sacrifice for his country be fair game for those who would stoop to destroy the reputation of an American hero for mere political gain? Is nothing sacred?

Via Brad DeLong

This campaign season, there have been questions about whether George W. Bush fulfilled his obligations to the National Guard as a young lieutenant in the early 1970s. For weeks, reporters scoured Alabama in search of pilots or anyone who might have remembered seeing Mr. Bush at the time he was serving in the National Guard there. There is one place in Alabama where Mr. Bush was present nearly every day: the headquarters in Montgomery of US Senate candidate Winton “Red” Blount. President Bush has always said that working for Blount was the reason he transferred to the Alabama Air National Guard. NPR’s Wade Goodwyn has this report about Mr. Bush’s time on that campaign.

WADE GOODWYN reporting:

In 1972, Baba Groom was a smart, funny young woman smack-dab in the middle of an exciting US Senate campaign. Groom was Republican Red Blount’s scheduler, and in that job, she was the hub in the campaign wheel. Ask her about the handsome young man from Texas, and she remembers him 32 years later like it was yesterday.

Ms. BABA GROOM (Former Campaign Worker): He would wear khaki trousers and some old jacket. He was always ready to go out on the road. On the phone, you could hear his accent. It was a Texas accent. But he just melded with everybody.

GOODWYN: The candidate Mr. Bush was working for, Red Blount, had gotten rich in Alabama in the construction business. Prominent Southern Republicans were something of a rare breed in those days. Blount’s support of the party led him to be appointed Richard Nixon’s postmaster general. In Washington, Blount became friends and tennis partners with Mr. Bush’s father, then Congressman Bush. That was how 26-year-old Lieutenant Bush came to Montgomery, at his father’s urging . . . It was Mr. Bush’s job to organize the Republican county chairpersons in the 67 Alabama counties. Back in 1972 in the Deep South, many rural counties didn’t have much in the way of official Republican Party apparatus. But throughout Alabama, there were Republicans and Democrats who wanted to help Red Blount. It was the young Texan’s job to find out what each county leader needed in the way of campaign supplies and get those supplies to them. Groom says this job helped Mr. Bush understand how even in a statewide Senate campaign, politics are local.

. . . Murph Archibald is Red Blount’s nephew by marriage, and in 1972, he was coming off a 15-month tour in Vietnam in the infantry. Archibald says that in a campaign full of dedicated workers, Mr. Bush was not one of them.

Mr. MURPH ARCHIBALD (Nephew of Red Blount): Well, I was coming in early in the morning and leaving in mid-evenings. Ordinarily, George would come in around noon; he would ordinarily leave around 5:30 or 6:00 in the evening.

GOODWYN: Archibald says that two months before the election, in September of ’72, Red Blount’s campaign manager came to him and asked that he quietly take over Mr. Bush’s job because the campaign materials were not getting out to the counties.

Mr. ARCHIBALD: George certainly didn’t seem to have any concerns about my taking over this work with the campaign workers there. My overall impression was that he didn’t seem as interested in the campaign as the other people who were working at the state headquarters.

GOODWYN: Murph Archibald says that at first, he didn’t know that Mr. Bush was serving in the Air National Guard. After he found out from somebody else, Archibald attempted to talk to Mr. Bush about it. The president was a lieutenant and Archibald had been a lieutenant, too; he figured they had something to talk about.

Mr. ARCHIBALD: George didn’t have any interest at all in talking about the military. In fact, when I broached the subject with him, he simply changed the subject. He wasn’t unpleasant about it, but he just changed the subject and wouldn’t talk about it.

GOODWYN: Far from Texas and Washington, DC, Mr. Bush enjoyed his freedom. He dated a beautiful young woman working on the campaign. He went out in the evenings and had a good time. In fact, he left the house he rented in such disrepair–with damage to the walls and a chandelier destroyed–that the Montgomery family who owned it still grumble about the unpaid repair bill. Archibald says Mr. Bush would come into the office and, in a friendly way, offer up stories about the drinking he’d done the night before, kind of as a conversation starter.

Mr. ARCHIBALD: People have different ways of starting the days in any office. They’re going to talk about their kids, they’re going to talk about football, they’re going to talk about the weather. And this was simply his opening gambit; he would start talking about that he had been out late the night before drinking.

GOODWYN: Archibald says the frequency with which Mr. Bush discussed the subject was off-putting to him.

Mr. ARCHIBALD: I mean, at that time, I was 28; George would have been 25 or 26. And I thought it was really unusual that someone in their mid-20s would initiate conversations, particularly in the context of something as serious as a US senatorial campaign, by talking about their drinking the night before. I thought it unusual and, frankly, inappropriate.

GOODWYN: According to Archibald, Mr. Bush would also sometimes tell stories about his days at Yale in New Haven, and how whenever he got pulled over for erratic driving, he was let go after the officers discovered he was the grandson of a Connecticut US senator. Archibald, a middle-class Alabama boy–who, by the way, is now a registered Democrat–didn’t like that story.

Mr. ARCHIBALD: He told us whenever he was stopped, as soon as the law enforcement found out that he was the grandson of Prescott Bush, they would let him go. And he would always laugh about that. “

The Action Is The Juice

Lambert’s got a barn burning post up today that’s well worth reading. But I take issue with one of the central points of his thesis which basically comes down to the a belief that the Democrats only have themsleves to blame for the political situation we are now in. I disagree. It’s not because of self-inflicted wounds — it’s because we are dealing with a particular brand of thuggish assassin that is difficult to reconcile with democracy.

Clinton was being hounded about all kinds of trumped up garbage long before Monica came into the picture. He would have been tarred as the corrupt whitewater, chinese espionage, lincoln bedroom hippie whether he gave himself that “self-inflicted” blowjob or not. And he fought back like a champ but it doesn’t matter when you are dealing with people who have no use for truth or reality. You don’t have to actually do anything with these people. They’ll just make shit up. Smear tactics, which are by definition untrue, are the most lethal tool in the character assassins’ arsenal and the Republicans are worse than the Borgias when it comes to using them.

I don’t mean to be too critical, but I think it is a serious misreading of the challenge we face to put the blame for the state of our politics on the alleged shortcomings of our own leaders. We are at a big disadvantage in this game because we have at least a modicum of decency and while I agree that we very likely are going to have to give that up, I don’t think it’s a failure of nerve to at least have tried to keep our political system from totally turning into a sewer. The path on which we are now forced to go is one that is bound to taint all of us. I’m not sorry we have taken it reluctantly.

But, I am very nervous that if this attitude remains, and it is quite widespread, we are going to see Democrats once again making the Republican case for them when Kerry gets in office by joining the chorus and calling him “french” for trying to govern in an extremely hostile environment.

This is where we go wrong. If Bush has proven anything, it’s that we are in an era in which actual ideology and policy, even power — even winning — isn’t the point to the Republicans. They are about the fight. It’s the game, the argument, the battle. They get off on the political combat. For them, the action is the juice, win or lose. (And one of the reasons they’ve been so successful at co-opting the media is because the media thrives on the same juice.)

Just fighting back isn’t going to solve that problem. Indeed, over the long haul, it’s likely to result in failure if that’s all we do. They love fighting a lot more than we do. And losing doesn’t dull their bloodlust, it engages it. We need to think of a more sophisticated battle plan.

Off the top of my head, the first one to come to mind is divide and conquer. Perhaps it’s time we formed a religious group that is anti-abortion and for school prayer, but is adamantly against corporate materialism. Or a libertarian GOP front group that wants to purge the party of the religious right. Perhaps if we could set off a civil war among the Republicans we could cure them of their love of political battle. Civil wars often do. But, that’s just an idea. Whatever we do, I think hand to hand combat and bomb throwing is a loser for us over time. It just feeds them.

I don’t dispute that appeals to reason have been exhausted. And I don’t say that Kerry shouldn’t fight by any means necessary in this election. It’s vitally important that we get institutional power out of their hands. (Indeed, many may secretly want us to. The fight is not as satisfying when you hold all the power and we have become quite adept at cleaning up their messes.)

But, blaming ourselves for the state of play or deluding ourselves into thinking it’s just a matter of “being tough” is to misunderstand what we are facing. It’s a primitive force with post-modern tools in its hands and we’d better start looking at this thing for what it is instead of seeing ourselves as simply inept. Winning won’t change anything. As long as the fight continues, they are getting exactly what they want.

Good Day

Everybody should feel a tiny bit better about the swift boat smear — for this morning, at least. Here are the headlines as of this morning on the Google News site.

Bush campaign fires adviser on veterans issues

Bush Campaign Aide Resigns Amid Controversy Over Campaign Ads

Kerry returns fire over Vietnam

Bush drops adviser tied to group

Swift Boat member skips rally over fliers at Bush campaign office

Kerry Camp Tries to Thwart Negative Swift Boat Ads

Kerry, Dodging Charges Over Vietnam, Returns Fire

Veteran backs Kerry on Vietnam

First-Hand Account Backs Up Kerry on Vietnam War Controversy

Vietnam vet backs Kerry’s war deeds

Hatred drives anti-Kerry claims

Big Backing For Kerry In Ad Wars

Kerry: Slo-Mo on Swifties

Ad Fight Bogs Down White House Race

Tribune editor says critics got it wrong

Kerry calls on Bush to stop personal attacks

Swift boat vet goes public to back Kerry

Another war veteran backs Kerry’s story

Kerry fires back over Vietnam charges

Bush Campaign Drops Swift Boat Ad Figure

Witness confirms that Kerry rescued soldier under fire

Participant in mission, documents support Kerry’s war claim

Vietnam veteran comes to Kerry’s defence

Bronze Star battle stokes hot tempers

Anti-Kerry ads have GOP links

For today at least, it’s advantage Kerry. But, it’s just a tiny skirmish in a bigger battle.

It is possible that we are seeing a little ropa-a-dope here in which Kerry takes some blows throughout the dog days of August when he has little money to spend on his own. He appears to be building a case against Bush’s dirty campaign tactics. Over and over again for the next week heading into the convention, I suspect he will step up the calls for Bush to stop the madness. They’ll refuse. The bored and predictable media will hopefully be asking all these GOP conventioneers if they disavow the ads, so the issue of dirty tricks and Republican funding stays on the front burner. Then on September 1st as they head out of their NYC lovefest,and the country is really paying attention, Kerry hits them right between the eyes.

He explains to the press that he tried and tried to be reasonable. He asked them politely to stop the smears and the dirty tricks. They wouldn’t listen. The Bush campaign has no one to blame but themselves. He had no choice.

It’s a metaphor for mature leadership.

But who the hell knows? A presidential campaign is a seat of the pants operation that has to be able to change from day to day as circumstances require. They calibrate this stuff carefully according to polling and focus groups in important regions. They may find that Bush is falling behind in which case there is no reason to nuclear. If, however, this smear operation really erodes Kery’s support among undecideds (the base is with him no matter what) then I think we’ll see some ads directly attacking Bush on his leadership.

I would love to see that, but only if it helps the cause. Emotional satisfaction is nice but ultimately irrelevant. Fighting back does not mean flailing about aimlessly, it means landing blows. And sometimes that means waiting for the right opening.

But, if it comes down to showing Junior reading “My Pet Goat” then I say let-er-rip. That’s the essense of the choice in this election and it’s at the bottom of Rove’s plan to tear down Kerry’s war record and his senate career and the snotty asides about “frenchness.” This election is really about the underlying discomfort many people feel with Bush’s leadership. If it ends up that Kerry has to spell this out to the idiot swing voters in Ohio in no uncertain terms then that’s what he’ll do.

Combatting smears is very, very difficult. It is almost impossible, as a matter of fact, when you have a compliant media that wants to be “fair and balanced” to the point where they would give Hitler equal time to make his case against the jews.

Everybody acts like there is some magic formula and there just isn’t. You slog through it by the the force of your own strength and talent like Clinton did, you try to change the subject or you go completely nuclear on the other guy. That’s it. All three strategies have big risks attached. There is no easy way out and even if it works, people rarely appreciate you for it.

When Howard Dean said to a shocked and appalled Candy Crowley at the Democratic convention that this wa going to be the dirtiest campaign in history, he was right. But, there’s more to fighting a smear than simply fighting dirty. You have to fight better and smarter. That’s the challenge. Over these next two months we’re going to see if Kerry has the right stuff. This is where the game really begins.

One More Thing:

There are two sites that are tracking the swift boat story very thoroughly and in different ways:

Bookmark eriposte and Daily Beast for the full compendium. And I think we can continue to help by sending this stuff to the media and getting it disseminated through the big message boards like DU, Smirking Chimp, Bartcop etc.

Dole-ful Loser

That despicable old fuck Bob Dole is on Blitzer complaining about Kerry’s purple hearts and backing up the Swift Boat liars.

What gall:

IMAGINE IF supporters of Bill Clinton had tried in 1996 to besmirch the military record of his opponent, Bob Dole. After all, Dole was given a Purple Heart for a leg scratch probably caused, according to one biographer, when a hand grenade thrown by one of his own men bounced off a tree. And while the serious injuries Dole sustained later surely came from German fire, did the episode demonstrate heroism on Dole’s part or a reckless move that ended up killing his radioman and endangering the sergeant who dragged Dole off the field?

I had developed a ittle fondness for the scumbag over the past few years because he seemed kind of a doddering anachronism that reminded me of the old school Republican assholes. But, I stupidly forgot that he was one of the original hatchet men, the Prince of Fucking Darkness during the 70’s and he’s still in form today.

Damn, every single time I get the least bit sentimental and let down my guard on one of these wingnuts they remind me that none of them have any goddamned shame.

Drop A Dime On LuLu

Can Michele Malkin be any more stupid? I don’t actually think it’s possible:

Blogger Rusty Shackleford highlights American hackers who took down a website apparently owned and operated by Abu al Zarqawi.

Rusty comments:

The CIA/FBI are making a major mistake allowing these sites to be kept up. The reason? This is war. In a war you take away propaganda outlets from the enemy. Yes, they may help us track down al Qaeda elements, but that is just the point. Tracking down and arresting al Qaeda is a police function. Treating the War on Terror as a police matter is Clintonesque and is what got us 9/11. We need to shut all these sites down. They are valuable tools for the enemy…

He adds that the hackers, who identified themselves as “TeaMz UsA,” missed a page on Zarqawi’s site:

Unfortunately the crew at ‘TeaMz UsA’ missed a page. I have the URL and am more than glad to share it with any hacker who thinks they can take down the page. Just e-mail me anonymously at mypetjawa-at-yahoo-dot-com. Calling all hackers with a little free time this Sunday afternoon…

Yeah. I want to trust Malkin and the 101st keyboarders to take charge of counter terrorism.

I don’t suppose it occurred to any of these morons that the CIA and the FBI may have had a reason for leaving these web sites up and running? I think they might expect a little visit. Malkin should get one too. You are supposed to report terrorist activities to the authorities, not take the law in your own hands. In fact, it’s a crime and a big one.

Via Catch

Compelled To Speak Out

As with Mr. Rood yesterday, via Susie, I see we have another eyewitness coming forward and disputing the swift boat lies.

Dear Editor,

This letter is in response to the new attacks on John Kerry’s war record by a group calling itself the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.” As for most veterans of any war and as people who know me will testify, it is not easy for me to talk about my experiences in Vietnam. However, because of these new ads and, I understand, a new book recently published by an old Charles Colson “Enemies List” hit man, I feel compelled to speak out. Unfortunately, the veterans featured in these attacks are being used by extreme right wing Bush supporters to spread their lies and malign John Kerry.

I feel that most of these veterans who are joining this attack are against Kerry for what he did after he was home from the war than for what he did in the war. If they are against him for his stance against the Vietnam War, that certainly is their right, but to spread lies and malicious innuendos about his time on the rivers of Vietnam is not morally right and does a disservice not only to Kerry, but to all those who served and were wounded or died in that war. The people who are using these veterans for their own means obviously do not care about that. They did the same thing to Senator John McCain and Congressman Max Cleland in 2000 with no remorse or care for the consequences.

To me what is worse is that by their silence, the current administration has not, with any real meaning, disavowed itself or distanced itself in anyway from any of these scurrilous attacks, past or present. I feel that this truly shows the Bush administration for what they really are and ultimately, who is truly responsible for these attacks.

Since I happened to be along on one of the “excursions” where the boats that we were on were attacked and after which Lt. Kerry was cited for valor, I thought it appropriate to give my recollection of that event. This happened on March 13, 1969. I was assigned as Psychological Operation Officer for the Swift Boat group out of An Thoi, Vietnam, from January 1969 to October 1969. As such, I was on No. 43 boat, skippered by Don Droz who was later that year killed by enemy fire. We were second in line while exiting the river and going through the opening in a fish trap when a mine blew up under the No. 3 boat directly in front of us and we started taking small arms fire from the beach. Almost immediately, another mine went off somewhere behind us. All boats, except the one hit, immediately wheeled toward the beach that most of the fire came from (a tactic devised by Lt. Kerry, I later learned) and commenced showering the beaches with so much lead, that it could probably be now mined there. The noise was of course, deafening.

Three things that are forever pictured in my mind since that day over 30 years ago are: (1) The No. 3, 50-foot long, Swift boat getting huge, huge air; John Kerry thought it was about two feet. (He was farther away from it than I). I think it was at least four feet and probably closer to six feet; (2) All the boats turning left and letting loose at the same time like a deadly, choreographed dance and; (3) A few minutes later, John Kerry bending over his boat picking up one of the rangers that we were ferrying from out of the water. All the time we were taking small arms fire from the beach; although because of our fusillade into the jungle, I don’t think it was very accurate, thank God. Anyone who doesn’t think that we were being fired upon must have been on a different river.

The picture I have in my mind of Kerry bending over from his boat picking some hapless guy out of the river while all hell was breaking loose around us, is a picture based on fact and it cannot be disputed or changed. It’s a piece of history drawn in my mind that cannot be redrawn. Sorry, “Swift Boats Veterans for the Truth”- that is the truth.

To say that John Kerry or any of us were on that river to intentionally collect Purple Hearts really does every soldier and sailor, past and present, a disservice. We were going up those rivers (with an ongoing casualty rate of 86 percent at the time) on the orders of the same people who approved of Kerry’s medals and who are now joining in the attacks against Kerry. Unbelievable.

I would hope that the American public sees these evil extreme right wing attacks for what they really are and also pray that the veterans being used by these unpatriotic right wing extremist political operatives will divorce themselves immediately from them and speak to the real issues as to why they oppose John Kerry. I just don’t understand how anyone can align themselves with those who intentionally and gleefully painted a decorated triple amputee (Max Cleland) from Vietnam as unpatriotic. I think that this is the most disastrous, un-American thing that can be done to our servicemen and women, especially now with another unending war going on. Your ends cannot possibly justify these means. Come on!

Jim Russell

Vietnam veteran,

USN (1966-71)

I forwarded this to the usual suspects in the media and Michael Dodd at the Washington Post.

The thing about this testimony, and that of Rood yesterday, is that these people were on the scene. One of the most underreported aspect of this whole slime has been that the only “eye witnesses” have been discredited by their own past statements and every piece of the record. All the other testimony is “I believe my buddies” hearsay.

Shifting the Debate

Blitzer led with the Cordier resignation (whom he calls an “advisor”) this morning on Late Edition which means that the controversy seems to have shifted a bit to Bush’s dirty tricks and the FEC complaint and away from Kerry’s alleged Machiavellian ability to get the Navy to corrupt itself at every level. Russert was all over the dirty campaigning angle this morning.

If Kerry can get the debate on to that turf he will have accomplished what he needed to do. So far today, it’s working. I’m not seeing the POW ad and I’m hearing an awful lot about rich Texas donors and McCain in 2000 and patterns of deceit.

One day at a time.