|
I don't know about the truth or falsehood of the claims that not all records were released. As far as I knew, as of this day all his records are public. Perhaps that is not correct, and if it isn't, then if I were Kerry, I would agree to release whatever remaining records I have at the exact same time when the president agrees to release all the remaining records and information he has refused to disclose dealing with his absent, possibly more correctly called AWOL status during Vietnam. Nothing frustrates me more than the fact that a man who actually served in Vietnam is taking more flak and criticism than a man who acted like a full blown coward and deserter during Vietnam. A man who set aside privilege to sever vs. a man who hid behind his family's money to avoid serving and then neglected even those duties - its disgusting that media coverage is so one sided.
As I said I don't know if there are some special documents that are not public or not. I really don't feel bad about it if that was true, because I continue to believe in rights to privacy, even for public servants. I don't believe a person who have to lay naked every private document in their lives to defend against spurious claims that are full of demonstrateable lies right from the start. The burden of proof shouldn't be on the accused. Right now I don't trust a work that comes out of Swift Boat Vets' mouth. Here's a mind exercise:
Think of Swift Boat Vets for Truth as a witness in a Criminal Trial - put on your Law and Order hat. As a jury member, I would have no choice but to discount the testimony of this witness after the witness was caught in multiple counts of purgery, as well as having a clearly established motive to lie.
Now, it might be possible that the witness is capable of saying something that is true, but after lying multiple times about multiple facts, and after establishing clear conflict of interests and obviously motives to lie, I would have no choice, as an impartial juror, but to dismiss the witness's testimony and totally incredible. I would not be able to bring back a guilty verdict against a defendant based on a purging, biased witness, even there might be a seed of truth buried someone deep amidst all the other lies. I'd have no way to ever know that or get at any possible truth, because the credibility of the source is totally gone. And the defendant is innocent until proven guilty. Otherwise, we're not using logic - we're just using prejudice, the fact that maybe we just don't personally like the defendant, so we tend to believe certain things are true without any credible evidence to support it.
It's only in the media where the burden of proof is on the accused rather than the accuser. And that's a sad shame.
I'll leave you with an article from media matters:
Swift Boat Vets Update: They're Still Liars
The ironically-named Swift Boat Veterans for Truth haven't gone away yet, and they haven't stopped lying.
In light of SBVT's complete lack of credibility, and recent reports in the Washington Post and New York Times that eviscerate their claims, MMFA has sent a letter to three of the nation's largest booksellers, asking that they take reasonable measures to alert their customers that Unfit for Command is a paid political hatchet job, full of false allegations and lies.
It's worth keeping in mind the way the media and others reacted to another campaign-season attack book: Fortunate Son, James Hatfield's 1999 biography of George W. Bush. Fortunate Son, like Unfit for Command, contained questionable, false, and unverifiable claims about a presidential candidate. Fortunate Son's author, like Unfit for Command's co-authors John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi, had serious credibility problems.
But unlike Unfit for Command, Fortunate Son received scant media coverage - other than coverage of Hatfield's history. Fortunate Son's publisher ultimately pulled the book after an avalanche of criticism - a decision the Bush campaign applauded. In stark contrast to the media's treatment of the allegations in Fortunate Son, the Swift Boat Vets' allegations have gotten heavy media coverage this year. New polling by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey has found that more than half of the country has "heard about or seen" the Swift Boat Vets' ad. "The influence of this ad is a function not of paid exposure but of the ad's treatment in free media," Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the survey and of The Annenberg Public Policy Center explained. "The advertisement has received extensive coverage, particularly on conse rvative talk radio and cable news channels and has been the subject of some attention in broadcast news as well."
As for the Swift Boat Vets themselves, SBVT co-founder John O'Neill again took the lead in the group's smear campaign, and again made claims that are clearly rebutted by government records. Last week, O'Neill claimed he has "had no serious involvement in politics of any kind in over 32 years." When MMFA showed that O'Neill has made nearly $15,000 in federal contributions to Republican candidates and causes since 1990 - and none to Democrats - O'Neill claimed on August 17 that $7,000 of that was actually made by his "law partner who has almost the same name, Edward J. O'Neil." But that's not what Federal Election Commission records say.
O'Neill also recently made the bizarre claim on Hardball that John Kerry didn't serve two tours in Vietnam, because "The USS Gridley was not a tour in Vietnam." But that's not true; Hardball host Chris Matthews got O'Neill to concede that Kerry's service of the USS Gridley was "recorded as combat theater duty" and that during that service Kerry was "given credit by the Navy for serving in Vietnam."
O'Neill wasn't the only Swift Boat Vet doing the heavy lying - er, "lifting" - though; he was joined by Steven Gardner, the only one of Senator John Kerry's swift boat crewmates from the Vietnam War who has come out in opposition to Kerry's presidential campaign. Gardner claimed on August 16 that three of Kerry's other crewmates "felt the same way that I felt about John Kerry" before they joined the Kerry campaign. But comments made months ago by one of the men he named contradict his claims. While Gardner now claims that Jim Wasser agreed with him, historian Douglas Brinkley wrote in March that Wasser told him Gardner "has developed a strange, negative assessment of Lieutenant Kerry. It shocked me. His memory is dead wrong. He remembers things so differently. ... He has some kind of weird grudge against Lieutenant Kerry."
On August 19, The Washington Post dealt a devastating blow to the credibility of yet another Swift Boater, Larry Thurlow. "Newly obtained military records of one of Sen. John F. Kerry's most vocal critics, who has accused the Democratic presidential candidate of lying about his wartime record to win medals, contradict his own version of events. ... Thurlow ... has strongly disputed Kerry's claim that the Massachusetts Democrat's boat came under fire during a mission in Viet Cong-controlled territory on March 13, 1969. Kerry won a Bronze Star for his actions that day. But Thurlow's military records, portions of which were released yesterday to The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act, contain several references to 'enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire' directed at 'all units' of the five-boat flotilla. Thurlow won his own Bronze Star that day, and the cit ation praises him for providing assistance to a damaged Swift boat 'despite enemy bullets flying about him.'"
But while the Swift Boat Vets' credibility sinks lower and lower each passing day, right-wing commentators haven't stopped shilling for them. On August 16, conservative radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin and pundit Ann Coulter all falsely accused Kerry of refusing to release his military records; Levin claimed Kerry's release of his records would "clear it all up." But Kerry has already released his military records (they're hidden in plain sight on his web site) and they have already "cleared it all up" - to everyone but blind partisans like Coulter, who referred to Kerry's "alleged Purple Hearts."
Finally, FOX host Brit Hume complained on August 16 that "except for FOX News here, no major news organization has reported on the specifics of Unfit for Command. Granting for a moment Hume's odd premise that it's a bad thing that news organizations would ignore the "specifics" of a fraudulent pack of lies like Unfit for Command, Hume is just plain wrong about media coverage of the book. Co-author John O'Neill made several appearances on cable news networks in the weeks leading up to the book's release - and, as Media Matters for America has documented, many of O'Neill's demonstrably false allegations went unchallenged during his appearances on MSNBC's Scarborough Country and CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports. In addition to O'Neill's appearances, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC have all run stories reporting on the allegations by O'Neill and his group.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
