Predictably, Judicial Watch gets in on the Scumbags for Truth action. I think there’s an excellent chance that the Navy is going to implicate itself in a massive, systemwide fraud, don’t you?
The only question I have about all this is when the charges of Kerry fucking Vietnamese child hookers comes in? No ginned up GOP smear campaign is worth its salt unless it features some juicy, voyeuristic tittilation so that Ann Coulter and Lucianne Goldberg can cackle and drool, screeching “pervert, pervert” over and over again. C’mon, there just have to be some faded tapes or fuzzy pictures of something somewhere. A bastard child he abandoned in a rice paddy? A non-stop orgy on his swift boat with the band of brothers? Let’s get with it people.
Kevin Drum says, in regard to the catholic advisor who resigned from Bush’s campaign today when it was revealed that he had a little problem in his past with drinking and screwing underage girls:
“It sure sounds like an awful lot of people have known about Hudson’s background for a long time.”
As it happens, one of the commenters to my post on this subject from earlier today had this to say:
I could NOT BE HAPPIER to learn that Deal Hudson has finally been hoist up on the petard of his shady past. He was a visiting professor at NYU while he was at Fordham, and I was one of his students there. He regularly invited his female students out for after-class margaritas. He would get very drunk and sloppy. It was clear to me then that he would have been open for any sexual turn the evening might have taken (although I failed to provide that turn signal). He was irresponsible in the ways that alcoholics are irresponsible: missing deadlines for recommendations, blowing off independent study projects, borrowing things and continually forgetting to return them despite numerous reminders. I heard about the Fordham incident and wasn’t surprised, but boy was I shocked when I saw his elevation to presidential adviser. I figured it would blow up in his face, and I shed no tears to see that it has.
This guy was in charge of Catholic outreach for the Bush campaign. It appears he had quite a history of reaching out … and grabbing young girls.
The next salvo in the cinematic campaign war of 2004 is “The Big Picture,” a documentary film attacking John Kerry sponsored by David Bossie’s Citizens United, the right-wing group that unsuccessfully sued to stop national advertising of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
[…]
An outline of the “The Big Picture” obtained by Salon suggests that the Citizens United documentary will offer not only a staunch defense of Bush but also an aggressive attack on Kerry, including a recitation of various smears having to do with his medal-winning military history put forward lately by the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The outline portrays the Democratic nominee as the preferred candidate of such “foreign leaders” as Osama bin Laden, Kim Jong Il and the Nicaraguan Sandinista Party, and as an “appeaser” of European powers deemed corrupt and hostile to U.S. interests — especially France. Virtually all the world’s other nations are solidly behind Bush and the war in Iraq, according to the outline, which labors to disprove allegations that Bush “lied” about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaida.
This (undoubtedly hilarious) piece of shit is directed by Lionel Chetwynd, the D List director who did that Showtime 9/11 movie starting Timothy Bottoms featuring that unforgettable line: “I’m not gonna let some tinhorn terrorist chase me outta town. Now get me back to Washington!”
Hints of the Citizens United film project first emerged in early July, when Bossie warned what he and his organization would do if the Federal Election Commission dismissed their “Fahrenheit 9/11” complaint. “Citizens United becomes a documentary factory,” he told the New York Post. “We’ll make documentaries and we’ll show ads for them. I’m in the production business … I can put together a documentary very, very quickly.”
The structure of the film, assuming that it follows the outline obtained by Salon, will be a methodical and ham-handed refutation of the “Anybody but Bush” arguments attributed to Moore, from the issue of the “stolen” 2000 election to the debate over the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. The true villains in all those controversies, it claims, are Democrats Bill Clinton, Al Gore and, of course, John Kerry.
Among the familiar personalities mentioned as possibly appearing in the film are Solicitor General Ted Olson and his late wife Barbara; actor and former Sen. Fred Thompson, who has appeared in a previous Citizens United ad; syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer; former CIA director James Woolsey; and Florida Rep. Porter Goss, recently nominated as the next CIA director. (A less familiar interview subject, apparently named Ivan Pedanski, is cited as a source on Iraq’s disappearing weapons of mass destruction; he would say that the “stuff [is] buried in the ground in Syria.”)
An earlier version of the script outline, titled “Initial Notes,” promised a more vicious and possibly more comical film. Among the anti-Bush canards mentioned there but omitted from the later outline is that “Bush is a moron.” It argues that the president cannot be both a moron and a “devious mastermind attempting to spread US hegemony worldwide” — and claims that “Bush did well at Yale.”
That version of the script indicated the film’s second half would be devoted to “deconstructing John Kerry” — beginning with the character assault mounted by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and mocking him as the “Knight of the Woeful Countenance.” It also makes the false assertion that Kerry “never went on to post-grad work” after Yale. (Researchers hired by Bossie presumably will discover that Kerry graduated from Boston College law school in 1976.)
This makes me feel happy. Aside from all the possible legal problems that Conason mentions in the piece, this is simply pathetic. Say what you will about Michael Moore, but he is a professional documentary filmmaker with a very unique and very succesful directorial style. His film has done extremely well, not just because it’s a liberal polemic, but because it’s extremely entertaining and well structured.
Bossie’s good at low life bottom feeding, but Oscar level filmmaking may just be a bit above his touch. (It certainly is above Chetwynd’s touch.) I have a feeling that this is going to be hilariously embarrassing.
It is a sick culture that would think nothing of medical personnel who would design, implement and enable torture, especially in a country we were ostensibly liberating from exactly that kind of treatment. That not one came forward to report any of it says something very troubling about how we define morality and ethics in this country. Let’s not forget that these people are from the same nation that spent more than a year and tens of millions of dollars in the pursuit of a leader who allegedly lied about an extramarital affair.
I don’t want to hear another word from the religious zealots on the right, including their mascot, our God anointed president, about good and evil until they stand up and explain why they aren’t screaming bloody murder about American doctors reviving prisoners who’ve been beaten unconscious so that they can be beaten again.
I have a good idea what Jesus would think of such a disguisting act, but I’m not so sure about our self-appointed morality police here in the US of A.
Doctors working for the U.S. military in Iraq collaborated with interrogators in the abuse of detainees at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, profoundly breaching medical ethics and human rights, a bioethicist charges in The Lancet medical journal.
In a scathing analysis of the behavior of military doctors, nurses and medics, University of Minnesota professor Steven Miles calls for a reform of military medicine and an official investigation into the role played by physicians and other medical staff in the torture scandal.
He cites evidence that doctors or medics falsified death certificates to cover up homicides, hid evidence of beatings and revived a prisoner so he could be further tortured. No reports of abuses were initiated by medical personnel until the official investigation into Abu Ghraib began, he found.
“The medical system collaborated with designing and implementing psychologically and physically coercive interrogations,” Miles said in this week’s edition of Lancet. “Army officials stated that a physician and a psychiatrist helped design, approve and monitor interrogations at Abu Ghraib.”
The analysis does not shed light on how many doctors were involved or how widespread the problem of medical complicity was, aspects that Miles said he is now investigating.
A U.S. military spokesman said the incidents recounted by Miles came primarily from the Pentagon’s own investigation of the abuses.
It’s clear that nobody but the grunts in the pictures will suffer any consequences, not even for the systematic depraved indifference to the suffering of those prisoners. We’re giving a fine lesson in western justice to the Iraqis. No wonder they are so happy to have us there.
I like this. Kerry’s campaign is going after Regnery, saying that they should withdraw the book because it is a hoax.
The Kerry campaign has told Salon that the publisher of “Unfit for Command,” the book that is at the center of the attack on Kerry’s military record by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is retailing a hoax and should consider withdrawing it from bookstores. “No publisher should want to be selling a book with proven falsehoods in them, especially falsehoods that are meant to smear the military service of an American veteran,” said Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton. “If I were them, I’d be ducking under my desk wondering what to do. This is a serious problem.”
Now, Regnery will do no such thing, of course. But, the frame is obvious.
Bush supporters insisted that James Hatfield’s book Fortunate Son, be pulled because of what they claimed were false assertions ofGeorge W. Bush’s alleged cocaine use. The editor in chief of St. Martin’s Press, Robert B. Wallace, resigned over the controversy. Surely, this swift boat book, based upon one proven lie after another, should be dealt with the same way.
Some on the other side will point out that Hatfield’s book was eventually withdrawn not because of its allegations that George W. Bush had used cocaine but because the author had been convicted of hiring a hit man on his boss. But if the character of the author is the prevailing question, then it cannot be ignored that one of the authors of Unfit For Duty has recentlyadmittedto writing a long litany of noxious swill including references to the pope and little boys, Islam as a satanic religion and Katie Couric as “Little Katie Communist of the NBC Today Show” Indeed, it seems that this author believes that many in the media are communists. Is that the kind of author a publisher should stand behind when the facts in the book are called into question?
St. Martin’s Press withdrew their controversial book when the character of its author was revealed to be suspect and the charges of George W. Bush’s cocaine use in 1972 were refuted by a man in Texas. Now, we have a similar situation in which the character of the author ofUnfit For Dutyhas been called into question and numerous facts contained within the book have been fully exposed as false, most recently in an article today in the Washington Post. Regnery Publishing, despite its Republican ties, should do the right thing and withdraw this book.
Isn’t this gilding the lily just a little bit? I’m not sure that those elusive swing voters are going to be all that impressed with a guy who is openly and obviously stabbing his own party in the back with singular relish. It’s not the way stand up guys behave. You quit your party before you go this far.
I think they just overplayed the “Zell” card, but it depends on how the media play it. I’m fairly sure they’ll present it some sort of metaphor for the deep discontent within the Democratic party and the “loss” of the south. Demo talking heads had better be prepared with some zippy zingers about good ole Zig Zag Zell.
I know that bashing the Democratic establishment is good fun, but I think today we should show them some love. Their hardball approach to the Nader problem has been excellent. They are working on the ground in all these states making it tremendously difficult for the Republicans to get Nader on the ballot.
It isn’t pretty and I’m sorry it came to this, but the stakes are too high and it had to be done. The Democratic party deserves some praise for learning from the past and getting people all over the country to do the tiresome, nitty gritty work involved in fighting this covert GOP operation.
May I just say how comforting it is to know that this man has been advising George W. Bush on how to court Catholic voters. Who says that having ever more religion in public life won’t improve the moral climate?
I love Dahlia Lithwick (really) and I’m greatly looking forward to her next column in which she takes the right wing to task for calling Kerry a delicate, effete “frenchman” who isn’t a Real Man. I imagine she’ll agree that’s bad because it makes them look like crude barbarians who think that all Democrats who might vote for him are cowardly and effeminate. I’m sure it will be excellent.
Update: I think Yglesias has the right of it. Just because it might not be a good strategy to run against Bush the moron, doesn’t mean that Bush is not a moron. (Stirling Newberry also has an interesting riff on pundits dumbing down arguments.)
John Kerry is not running his campaign saying that Bush is too stupid to be president. But that does not make it wrong that vast hoardes of average Americans know that what they are seeing on their television screens is a dullard of the highest order. It is simple reality. The man speaks in gibberish. He behaves with emotional immaturity. He betrays a sophomoric insensitivity (“please don’t kill me”) and a lack of gravitas that is frightening (“History? Who knows, we’ll all be dead.”)
Lithwick seems to be tut-tutting the regular folks like those who sent ads to MoveOn or fans of Michael Moore who have the bad manners to point out the turd in the punchbowl — or bloggers like me. But, what she is really doing is speaking out in favor of the sort of cognitive dissonence that has become the hallmark of the other side. “You can believe me or you can believe your lying eyes.”
Perhaps Bush isn’t really a puerile dumbshit but merely a great actor. But, what I see is what I see. And standing before me as president of the United States appears to be an intellectually deficient and childish man by any standard, much less that which we would normally hold for a president.
Maybe John Kerry can’t say it because some idiot swing voter thinks voting means he gets to drink beer with president and he’d prefer to be towel snapped by Bush than Kerry. I understand that. But, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
You’ve got to hand it to the Scumbags for Truth. They smear Kerry’s war record because they don’t like his VVAW activity, then they smear the navy because it’s the only explanation as to how all these glowing fitness reports and commendations could be given to a coward and now they are even smearing themselves. These guys will do anything, even sully their own war records, in their quest to get Kerry.
And, like the good Republicans they are, they then sniffle like little girls about how unfair it is that they are getting the same treatment they so enthusiastically mete out to to others.
Last month, Thurlow swore in an affidavit that Kerry was “not under fire” when he fished Lt. James Rassmann out of the water. He described Kerry’s Bronze Star citation, which says that all units involved came under “small arms and automatic weapons fire,” as “totally fabricated.”
“I never heard a shot,” Thurlow said in his affidavit, which was released by Swift Boats Veterans for Truth. The group claims the backing of more than 250 Vietnam veterans, including a majority of Kerry’s fellow boat commanders.
A document recommending Thurlow for the Bronze Star noted that all his actions “took place under constant enemy small arms fire which LTJG THURLOW completely ignored in providing immediate assistance” to the disabled boat and its crew. The citation states that all other units in the flotilla also came under fire.
“It’s like a Hollywood presentation here, which wasn’t the case,” Thurlow said last night after being read the full text of his Bronze Star citation. “My personal feeling was always that I got the award for coming to the rescue of the boat that was mined. This casts doubt on anybody’s awards. It is sickening and disgusting.”
Thurlow said he would consider his award “fraudulent” if coming under enemy fire was the basis for it. “I am here to state that we weren’t under fire,” he said. He speculated that Kerry could have been the source of at least some of the language used in the citation.
In a telephone interview Tuesday evening after he attended a Swift Boat Veterans strategy session in an Arlington hotel, Thurlow said he lost his Bronze Star citation more than 20 years ago. He said he was unwilling to authorize release of his military records because he feared attempts by the Kerry campaign to discredit him and other anti-Kerry veterans.
The Post filed an independent request for the documents with the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, which is the central repository for veterans’ records. The documents were faxed to The Post by officials at the records center.
So this idiot is actually saying now that his own bronze star for the same action that Kerry received his, unbeknownst to him, was given to him fraudulently and Kerry is probably the guy who perpetrated the fraud. This guy is one step away from the mentality of a suicide bomber — right down to the whining victimhood.
Let’s add up the discredited Scumbags, shall we?
Nixon hatchetman O’Neill gets caught in serveral lies about his recent Republican ties — makes complete fool of himself trying to claim that half of the money he gave to the GOP was actually given by someone with a similar name.
Jerome Corsi is revealed as an insane Freeper bigot.
George Elliott can’t decide from day to day which affidavit about Kerry’s silver star is correct and makes the strong point that his own documentary evidence of 30 years ago was likely wrong because he can’t think of a reason why these guys would lie 30 years later.
Now we have Thurlow.
These guys are a joke and the mainstream press needs to do its job and hammer on this. The campaigns are caught in a he said/she said that cannot properly put this to bed. Good for the Post for following up this story.
One little note about the Deborah Orin’s New York Post story today about the success of the Scumbags for Truth ad. This “study” she and the mediatools like Scarborough are crowing about was a national on-line poll. It did not survey the voters in the 3 battleground states who saw the ad, but rather asked a group of pre-selected voters to view the ad and register their response. If you go to the web-site it appears to be part of an on-line political survey experiment.
According to Orin:
The Swift Vets study used 1,275 participants, including 371 independents, who watched ads and registered their reaction at every second using technology normally used to rate product ads. Half viewed the Swift Vets ad and the other half saw a pro-Kerry ad based on his convention speech, which was rated less persuasive.
[…]
The ad planted doubts in the minds of 27 percent of independent voters who planned to vote for Kerry or leaned pro-Kerry. After seeing it, they were no longer sure they’d back him, the study found.
It could be significant that the ad has the potential to affect 27% of pro Kerry independents. But,the ad only had a 500K buy in three swing states so it’s unlikely that that many people have actually seen it in its entirety. If people have seen the ad on the news, they have also heard at least something of the other side of the story.
The bottom line is that in the future, it’s possible that if a lot of independent voters who are leaning for Kerry see this ad, and never watch the news, a third of them might develop doubts right after seeing it. That’s assuming that this online survey measures anything valid in the first place.
I think the endless mediawhore flogging is the real threat. But, I doubt there’s much anyone can do about it. It’s now a war of attrition. Kerry’s reputation will always be scarred but the funny thing is that this little campaign is taking down his critics reputations too. John Kerry is not only a Vietnam veteran, he’s a political veteran too. Whoever is left standing on election day will win this last chapter of the Vietnam saga and I’d put money on him. He’s got a lot thicker skin than these guys.