OPINION & EDITORIAL
When Republicans can’t do, they choose to smear
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Also by Rob Deters:
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- Lawlessness reigns in halls of Congress (April 6, 2005)
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by Rob Deters
Wednesday, September 1, 2004
The current spat over John Kerry’s medals taking place on television and in the press is a classic example of dirty politics.
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is a partisan political group running ads here in Wisconsin and a handful of other states in which they lob a heck of a defamatory hand grenade into the Kerry camp.
These fellow Vietnam vets claim that Kerry doesn’t deserve his medals and that his conduct in Vietnam was not deserving of the credit he received.
The ad that is airing is devastatingly effective if viewed in a vacuum. If you knew nothing about Kerry, or the group assaulting his honor, you’d think Kerry was a disingenuous grandstander.
What a close examination of the record shows is that it is the marshaled Swift Boat veterans who are dishonest, unsubstantiated and dishonoring the memory of Vietnam veterans.
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is a classic political hatchet job funded and organized by wealthy Republican backers of questionable reputations.
First off, the group had been corralled by private investigators who used questionable tactics in gathering affidavits from the participants they interviewed. A few of the veterans have since recanted their official statements and claim the investigators who interviewed them changed the affidavits the veterans signed.
Also, the veterans themselves have had problems in their own consistency.
One of the group members, Larry Thurlow, received a Bronze Star for events that took place on the very same day Kerry’s did. He claims that the report that described his actions that day in Vietnam is no longer accurate and without any shred of documentary evidence, claims Kerry fabricated the report that gave both Kerry and Thurlow their medals.
A DA in Oregon who signed the Swift Boat petition later admitted he didn’t actually witness anything his affidavit claimed and outraged local vets are asking for his resignation.
You’ll find the term, “complete lack of documentary evidence” a reoccurring theme in the Swift Boat veteran attacks.
The commanding officer, Lt. Commander George Elliot, who says in the ad “John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam,” said in 1969, “In a combat environment often requiring independent decisive action Lt. j.g. Kerry was unsurpassed.”
The medic who claims in the ad that Kerry lied about his wounds doesn’t have his name appear on a single record of Kerry’s medical treatment.
The two authors of the book Unfit for Command, in which the Swift Boat veterans complaints are compiled, are also of questionable background.
John O’Neill, co-author, was a creation of the Nixon administration in response to the devastating testimony of a returning decorated Vietnam vet. That vet was John Kerry.
When Kerry testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee and made comments that still sting the Vietnam veteran community, the Nixon administration decided it had to produce a young decorated soldier to contradict Kerry’s powerful denunciation of the Vietnam War.
Ever since, O’Neill has been attacking Kerry like, well, it’s his job.
O’Neill’s co-author, Jerome Corsi, is even easier to detest. His comments on the chat boards of FreeRepublic.com have compared Muslims to Satanists, made fun of Chelsea Clinton for being fat and called all Muslims gay child molesters.
Not a single one of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were ever on Kerry’s boat and all of the men, with one exception, who did serve under Kerry fully support him.
Of course this all is avoiding the big elephant in the room for the Republican Party. While Kerry was in Vietnam, their own candidate was dodging his responsibilities in Alabama, blowing millions of dollars in training to fly an airplane by not taking his required physical and avoiding real danger.
Since the Swift Boat veterans are smearing by innuendo, what can we make of this little fact? The year that Bush “forgot” to take his physical, which grounded him as a pilot, the National Guard began random drug testing of pilots.
The military historian S.L.A. Marshall wrote a seminal book after WWII. In it he made the bold (and true) claim that fewer than 25 percent of soldiers in action in WWII ever fired their weapon. Marshall learned to take the stories of many men to put them together and find the truth. He knew that no one could ever claim to know what really happened in combat because it is inherently too chaotic.
Today there is no doubt Marshall would find this debate over Kerry’s medals a ridiculous exercise in second-guessing by people who can’t possibly lay claim to the truth.
This debate, taking place 30 years later and begun by people paid or coerced by ideologues (Karl Rove is close friends with the primary backer of the veterans) is what Republicans do best.
But it’s great to talk about for Bush because then we don’t talk about the war we’re dealing with right now, the failing economy, the ailing schools and the host of problems Bush has created or ignored.
Better to hash out the past and tarnish Kerry than deal with current events.
Rob Deters (rvdeters@wisc.edu) is a third-year law student.
Lizzy Lanche (September 1, 2004 @ 4:16pm):
Deters once again demonstrates that he has no talent, aside from his ability to regurgitate the DNC/NYT line on command.
After tarring the Swiftvets because some of them have associated with Republicans, he has the gall to claim that the SwiftVets are "smearing by innuendo". It's not clear that Deters understands what "innuendo" means, but when the SwiftVets challenge Kerry's version of history, they don't hint obliquely. They state forthrightly what they believe to be the truth. That's the exact opposite of how Deters operates; he is the one who insinuates that O'Neill made up his claims in order to receive a paycheck from the nefarious Nixon administration.
The rest of this innuendo-laden column also comes straight from DNC talking points. For example, Deters says that "Not a single one of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were ever on Kerry's boat and all of the men, with one exception, who did serve under Kerry fully support him." What he wants you to believe is that nobody could really know Kerry (or what happened on his boat) unless they were on the same boat. But the Swift Boats almost always operated in groups, usually within sight of each other. The crewmen also knew each other because they bunked together, trained together, and debriefed together. The the Democratic convention, Kerry showed off a picture of his fellow officers, his "band of brothers", who presumably knew him best. What he didn't tell you is that the surviving brothers in that picture agree with the Swift Boat Vets, by an overwhelming margin.
It goes on and on. Deters finds a SwiftVet doctor's claim suspicious, since the doctor's name is not on the official report. What Deters doesn't tell you is that the doctor claims to have treated the wound with a bandaid. If that is the case, there would have been absolutely no reason to file any report. There is no consistency problem here, except in Deters' fevered imagination.
The irony of the whole column is that it wraps up by quoting S.L.A. Marshall, who fabricated or exaggerated the research for which he is most famous. John F. Kerry would have found a kindred spirit there.
Anonymous (September 1, 2004 @ 6:44pm):
There is knew evidence that has surfaced confirming that Rob's parents were both doing crack around the time of his conception
