The TruthorFiction article doesn't mention either the rice or the 180.

I wonder if that type of site can properly deal with an issue like this. Their value lies in careful objectivlty, but the election requires each of us to decide between three options; Bush, Kerry, Nothing/Nobody who can win.
So if they are citizens they are not unbiased on Nov 2. Prentending to not be in a camp, as many journalists do, fools nobody

The truth or fiction link was incomplete, but it was the fairest one out of the supposedly non-partisan factcheck, wilkepedia, snopes, etc.

Even the factcheckers can't (or don't) want to do a thorough treatment on the story. It's bizarre.

This is one of the reasons why I think the Swift Vets shot themselves in the foot by getting too complex with their claims against Kerry.

OK, let's try this... Get any network to dedicate a time block (2+ hours) to a moot court review of the SwiftVets charges. O'Neill can act as either prosecutor or defense attorney, someone from Kerry's side can represent him. (Must be an attorney.) Rules of evidence apply.

Both sides can call and cross examine witnesses. Both sides can present their facts. Both sides can argue their case.

We can decide. I'm not holding by breath.

Bill -

The truthorfiction.com report shows fairly well that the only people who dispute the stories - first the Rassmann rescue, then the landing of boats, are people from the Swiftboatveterans group. When you have competing stories, you need to look at who is more trustworthy. To me, when the one side makes their claims in partisan attack ads, I have trouble putting much trust in that. O'Neil clearly has a financial stake in keeping these lies going, as he has written his book based on them.

Sorry, but the "MSM" should be skeptical of these attack ads, and are right to call them "discredited."

The Washington Post also has a relevant story by Michael Dobbs. Notice the wording of the subheading that says "Critics Fail to Disprove Kerry's Version of Vietnam War Episode."

I actually had the August 22nd edition of the Washington Post in which that article ran next to me at my desk when I read that. The item is on the front page, at the absolute top, and spans the whole width of the page. I'm saving it in my file to remind me of how partisan the WaPo can be. Right next to the April 11 2004 edition with the headline (again, at the absolute top of A1) "Bush gave no sign of worry in August 2001", with a picture of Bush sitting in a golf cart.

Rollins -

Your assertion of financial motivation is widely off the mark.

Your assertion of partisanship is only true if by partisanship, you mean anti-Kerry partisanship. They took Republican money after the MSM ignored their press conference. Who else is going to fund them?

Most of the ads do not even deal with the disputed details of his Vietnam service (2/6).

Some of John Kerry's claims have been proven wrong with irrefutable evidence. In contrast, some of the Swift Vets claims have "not been disproven," and the equation relies on naval records contradicting Swift Vet claims, followed by he said-he said, with the Swift Vets having numerically superior sworn witnesses.

Those muddy elements I've been willing to throw out, but for some reason, by your own logic ...

... you still don't complain about the MSM not labeling everything that comes out of John Kerry's mouth as being discredited, given the fact that he's been forced to recant several stories.

You can't claim invalidation for pure partisanship, unless you're speaking of your sweeping judgment. O'Neill voted for Clinton in 92, Perot in '96, Gore in 2000, and has referred to George Bush as an "empty suit." He also planned on voting for John Edwards.

I'd venture to say that he may be less motivated by partisanship than you this election season.

I have a five years old with more self disipline and control than ODonnell displayed last night. Bloody disgraceful display!

"O'Neil clearly has a financial stake in keeping these lies going, as he has written his book based on them. "

I am pretty certain tht O'Neill is not keeping any of the proceeds from the book.

Also, I think it is a lot to say that all 200 or so Swiftvets are liars. I think one problem with the Vietnam/medal stuff is the whole fog of war thing, and I know Rassmussen actually contradicts some of the known facts in his defense of Kerry (believe it was from an NRO article that compared known facts and his story).

I think that have also descredited Kerry in several areas-the Christmas in Cambodia story has been shot to pieces. Also, I think they make good points about what happened after he got home. I also admit that while Kerry got his three purple hearts, taking the third one and getting a ticket home after 4 months does not come across to me as the mark of a real leader, especially when other men and officers took passes on purple hearts in order to stay with their men. He may have been convinced the war was wrong at that point, but I just don't think a good leader leaves his men behind after three minor wounds.

Rollins,

I'm sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about. Rassmann and Kerry have changed their story several times about what happend that day that led to his Bronze Star - including a version that is not supported by the official records either. THEIR STORY NOW is aligned with official navy records, but those records do not coincide with the physical evidence or the story they told as recently as the DNC convention.

I repeat, the official Navy records do not coincide with the physical evidence as documented by official Navy records, or the story they told as recently as the DNC convention.

There are some things that are still disputed, but that means just that: some things are disputed. And they are not facts that are material to the matter at hand (Such as the fact that Kerry time and time again about his experience in Vietnam.

Remember, the only thing in dispute on the Bronze Star incident is whether there was hostile fire that day. Even if there was hostile fire that day, Kerry and Rasmussen stil lied time and time again about who fled and "leaving no man behind", as well as his purple heart which Navy Records and Rasmussen combined show was self-inflicted.

The Swift Boat Vets have not had a single charge discredited. Not one. Yet, Kerry has been forced to change his story because of the navy records he claims support him now, and the MSM focuses on the one thing in disbute (not discredited) instead of the facts that have been firmly established.

People have a strange ability to discard and frame this argument according to conclusions that coinciently fall in line with the political allegiance. Strange.

The real strength of their case has always been found in their painful recollection of John Kerry's cynical anti-war testimony.

Did you know that Kerry's testimony was based on videotaped firsthand accounts by soldiers who said they had done exactly what Kerry was referring to? Watch Frontline's The Choice 2004 if you want to see what I mean. Also in that same show, there's a videotape of Kerry ripping apart John O'Neill in a nationally televised debate... I mean, just making him look like a total ass. For O'Neill at least, I think this is almost purely a personal vendetta. As for the rest of the Swifties, do you really think they could ever be objective toward Kerry, even if his testimony were proven to be completely true? I'm not saying that necessarily makes them "liars", but I think it definitely calls into question the veracity of their accounts.

That said, Larry O'Donnell went waaay overboard, and probably did more to harm his case than help it. To me, though, that says he's sick and tired of hearing something said that he believes is untrue, and finally just snapped. It's no excuse, but it's also not definitive proof that he's trying to Hide The Truth From The American People™.

A very key fact in the whole Swift Boat debate is that John Kerry had deliberately not released over 100 pages of his service records. If he had only released these records either the Swift Boat veterans would have been vindicated, or they would have been blown out of the water.

Why hasn't Kerry released these records?

Bush has ordered all his records to be released (yes, some are still being found - an artifact of the disorganization of TANG records).

By the way, are you sure the guy in that video was Larry O'Donnell and not California Rep David Dreier?

"Did you know that Kerry's testimony was based on videotaped firsthand accounts by soldiers who said they had done exactly what Kerry was referring to?"

You mean the Winter Soldier hearings? The same Winter Soldier hearings where the testimony was nearly 100% fraud? The Winter Soldier hearings where John Kerry convinced Steve Pitkin to LIE about atrocities that were never witnessed or even committed?

Right.

Bottom line, I believe 250+ veterans who came home and got on with their lives over one Vietnam veteran who rallied under the Viet Cong flag when he got home.

BTW, I have a direct quote from a Medal of Honor winner. He refuses to talk about Vietnam at all, but he will say this:

"Kerry is a scumbag."

Don't nominate a traitor in 2008.

Walter -

Did you know that Kerry's testimony was based on videotaped firsthand accounts by soldiers who said they had done exactly what Kerry was referring to?

Yes and no.

Are you aware that 90% of that testimony was later discredited, as the majority of the people that provided it weren't actually even veterans?

http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/staticpages/index.php?page=YesterdaysLies1

So essentially, John Kerry repeated hyperbolic lies that damaged a generation of veterans for political gain and effect. The exact type of lies that were forced out of POW's with torture in North Vietnam.

I am well aware of the exact nature of his testimony, and have elucidated it several times on this blog.

It doesn't mean a damn thing.

Recall too, that Bush was hounded relentlessly by the MSM to release ALL of his Texas Air National Guards records. And so he did, via, I believe, an executive order.

The fact that Kerry has not authorized the release of all of his Navy records, and only has place selected records on his web site, had rarely -- if ever -- been mentioned by the MSM.

My guess is that the hidden records indicate unfavorable discharge status or perhaps a request for transfer out of the Swift Boats when their mission changed from coastal watch to river patrol.

Bill, Tom - You are going to offer more than allegations.

"Rassmann and Kerry have changed their story several times about what happend that day that led to his Bronze Star - including a version that is not supported by the official records either."

"... you still don't complain about the MSM not labeling everything that comes out of John Kerry's mouth as being discredited, given the fact that he's been forced to recant several stories."

Steve Pitkin:

"the fact is I lied my ass off, and I'm not proud of it."

So he lied then, but now he's telling the truth? And there's no possibility that he's been pressured in the last 30 years by people who don't want to be viewed as war criminals-by-association? Or that he doesn't like Kerry for whatever reason, and has therefore decided to retract his testimony?

Or wait, let's turn it around for a second: are you trying to say that you believe none of what Kerry said was true, that American soldiers never committed atrocities, that free-fire zones in and of themselves did not constitute an egregious violation of the Geneva Convention? I'm just not sure what you're saying the "true" version is. In order to believe that Kerry and the anti-war movement constructed his testimony out of whole cloth, you'd have to essentially believe that they were just about the most politically inept and yet shrewdly calculating people in the entire world. The way I see it, you're saying, more or less, that Kerry consciously decided to invent (or get other people to invent) these stories as part of a 30-year master plan to get to the White House, and that despite the total lack of any truthful basis for those stories, they have managed to hold up and be disseminated by the war-hating liberal media during that selfsame 30-year period. I'm sorry if that strikes me as just a bit farfetched. If that's not what you mean, then can you please describe or point me to a description of a plausible scenario which would yield the current state of affairs?

Rollins -

Bill, Tom - You are going to offer more than allegations.

I don't understand what you're talking about, I provided you very specific information.

Walter -

Are you going to make me dig up more links? the etstimony was discredited. I'm sorry that wasn't comprehensive enough. Go. Google. The testimony from the Winter Soldiers conference was largely discredited.

No one is arguing that atrocities didn't take place, but Kerry projected that atrocities of the sort that were mentioned at that conference (cut off ears, blown up bodies, electrocution, etc.) were ubiquitous and approved "at every level of command." This is a lie about Vietnam. A lie. Free fire zones are another story - I'm talking about disgusting torture and disregard for innocent life.

The rest of your post is paranoid:

The way I see it, you're saying, more or less, that Kerry consciously decided to invent (or get other people to invent) these stories as part of a 30-year master plan to get to the White House

This is an ass-backwards interpretation of what I'm saying.

Kerry was a political opportunist, no doubts. Everyone from the Nixon Admin, to the Veterans Against the Vietnam War to freaking Doonesbury was very clear about this fact. It's theorized that this spurred him into the antiwar movement as a political calculation. What was in the man's heart? I don't know, so I can't say.

But the testimony -

Kerry may have believed the testimony or may not have - it's almost irrelevant, because it was ridiculous, hyperbolic and untrue. There is no way that he should have repeated such accusations at a rally that's whole purpose was political calculation, by a bunch of hippies that never set foot in Vietnam.

But how could he know? EXACTLY.

Why did he give the testimony?

1. He could have been anti-war and used the false testimony to sway the course of the war. Using false information that painted the US Military as war criminals is a disturbingly unethical way to go about accomplishing his goals.

2. He could have bee an opportunist that wanted to make a splash - his star turn.

Likely? Some combo of the two. I'm even willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and say it was mostly because he was anti-war and wanted the conflict ended. Hell, I'll even give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he didnt know the info was BS.

BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER.

He recited gross anti-war propaganda that alleged systemic, inhuman atrocities taking place at all levels of command in a time of war. And HAS NEVER APOLOGIZED to the men he slandered.

He is a large part of the reason that Vietnam vets were viewed with contempt for so long.

And I cannot respect any man that would employ such tactics. Many people on the left, perhaps yourself, don't believe in romantic constructs, but I do, Goddamnit. And men and women that fight for this country do not deserve what John Kerry did to their name.

Go watch the Swift Vet video and look into Bud Day's eyes, and tell me that him or men like him deserved to be tortured by the N Vietnamese as they told them to admit to what John Kerry asserted to the world. Tell me they deserved to hear audio of his words in captivity.

Go ahead. He's the guy with the big blue medal around his neck.

Bill,

I am talking about the charge that Kerry changed his story about the events that led to his medals. The only thing I see are differing reports, but nothing about him changing his story. The WashPost article you cite points to more evidence that supports Kerry's version.

But O'Neill has made many charges, some that are very weak (as you acknowledge) and others that can never be verified. So O’Neill complains that his group has been described as discredited - is a more fair description: "the group that has made many allegations, most of which are based on evidence that has been heavily contradicted, yet still believed by some" ?

I would like to know how Lawrence stays so fresh-looking while he's freaking out. Not a hair out of place; no red tide rising up the side of his neck. I need lessons - where do I sign up!

The thought that came to mind after a few minutes was - if O'Neill is a liar? - Mr. O'Donnell would have had to go to the lengths he did last night.

Holy smoke!

I am talking about the charge that Kerry changed his story about the events that led to his medals.

He was forced to admit that his biography was incorrect, and that he was not in Cambodia on X-mas Eve, and it's been proven that there was no hostile fire during the incident that led to his first purple heart. How? Kerry's own diary made the admission, as well as relevant eyewitness accounts and no naval record.

Those are the irrefutable facts of the Swift Vets' Vietnam angles, that I am aware of. The silver star and bronze star incidents, as well as the third purple heart, are the muddy water incidents.

You can vote "against Bush," "for Kerry," whatever, but Kerry has a bizarre tendency not to mislead (as all politicians do), or tell clever mistruths (as all politicians do), but to make up stories out of whole cloth.

Some of it's stupid (I shot a 16 point buck in Massachussets), some of it's not ("I was in Cambodia waging illegal war" in a speech to the Seante), but it's second nature for him to do it, it's usually verifably incorrect, and it's just ... bizarre.

Likely? Some combo of the two. I'm even willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and say it was mostly because he was anti-war and wanted the conflict ended. Hell, I'll even give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he didnt know the info was BS.

BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER.

It doesn't? Actually, I would say that's the absolute heart of the matter. The question here isn't whether John Kerry is capable of saying something that's not true; it's whether he knowingly made false statements. If you were to accept that Kerry believed what he was saying and that he was giving his testimony for what he considered a "good cause" (ending a brutal, aggressive war etc), then how can you fault him for that? And if you do fault him, then you would also have to fault Bush for making false statements about WMDs in Iraq, even though he believed them and believed that he was making those statements for a good cause (fighting terrorism, spreading democracy and freedom, etc).

As for the little aside about whether I think POWs deserved to be tortured: you know very well that that's nothing but an inflammatory statement. My grandfather was a Japanese POW in WWII who survived and made it back, a full-grown man, weighing 87 pounds. I just learned the other day that his language ability and bargaining skills were essentially what kept him and the men he was imprisoned with alive, by getting them medicine and, I assume, what little food could be gotten. So no, of course I don't fucking think they deserved to be tortured at all, but I also don't believe for even a second that John Kerry gave his testimony with the belief in mind that it would lead to soldiers being tortured. I think he believed that what he was doing might actually prevent further suffering, and probably lives with the guilt of having made a bad situation worse. But if anything, I would imagine that mostly reinforced his anti-war views.

If indeed he did believe statements made by others that are, 30 years after the fact, provably false, then that reveals his unfortunate fallibility as a human being; one might even say he was misled by "faulty intelligence". The only way Kerry's testimony should have any bearing at all on the current presidential election is if you can somehow demonstrate that he knew what he was saying was false, or at least that he should have known by any reasonable standard. Again, though, if you want it to be considered as part of the decision calculus for the presidential race, you have to apply the same reasonable standard to Bush. In fact, considering the vast gulf between Kerry's position in 1971 and Bush's position in 2003, I'd say you have to apply and even tighter standard to Bush.

I know you'll come back with the argument that Bush's overarching goal was not just removing the supposedly immediate threat of Iraqi nukes, but rather to provide a catalyst for change, etc., and so in any evaluation of whether Bush was serving the best interests of the country, that should trump any "mistakes" made along the way. So fine then: apply that same logic to Kerry's actions in 1971. In terms of intent alone, I really don't see how the two are any different. Am I wrong?

Walter -

I don't have the energy to argue. Suffice it to say that the President trusting the assessment of the CIA is an entirely different proposition than trusting cooked up stories about murderous, ubiquities, horrendous atrocities at all levels of command by some fucking lying hippies at a drug-addled anti-war gathering, and then repeating that "questionable intelligence" to the world while men were being tortured to give up the same hyperbolic propaganda.

Compounded immeasurably by the fact that 35 years later, he still hasn't apologized to these men and has built a political career on his calculation and the backs of their shame.

I have nothing more to say, because if you choose to equivocate and you still don't understand, you probably never will. That's all.

John Kerry was right to testify to the atrocities we were comitting during Vietnam, and maybe if we had listened, many of our young men would be old men now. By pissing on whistleblowers simply because of partisanship, you guys are encouraging coverups, encouraging war crimes, etc. If some soldiers hadn't spoken up, we would never have learned about Abu Ghraib - and I bet there are worse things happening inside Iraq right now.

As far as the Swift Boat vets go, they are liars and duped. Many of them have been proven to have no idea what they were signing. O'Neil was hired by Nixon in the '70s and has MEDIA MATTERS IS PROPAGANDA recently to Republican candidates -- making his claims about who he voted for extremely suspicious to say the least. Shachte I DO NOT PROMOTE LINKS TO MEDIA MATTERS on the Swift Boat site after MMFA exposed his inconsistency, and has received defense contracts from the Bush administration.

These guys are a dirty operation, from start to finish.

Oliver -

I'm not dignifying anything you say with a detailed response. You and your site are a joke to me - a hotbed of dishonesty and diseased spin.

You've destroyed ALL of your credibility by consistently running with misinformation, daily pettiness, distracting arguments and shameless propaganda. If I recall correctly, your initial tactic was to dismiss ALL the Swift Vets because one of them made a racist comment somewhere along the line.

Now guess what? You're banned. And when you whine into the darkness and try to pick a petulant slap fight with me like the ridiculous shit you pull with Glenn Reynolds, I want you to know that despite your protestatitions that I'm trying to "censor the truth" the real reason I've shunned all contact is ...

... this.

You are a sick man - depraved propagandist, Oliver, pure and simple. I searched for pictures of dead Iraqi children on your site prior to the invasion of Iraq, but couldn't find any. It seems you only care about dead kids when you can blow up a painful truth into a misleading, universal piece of wisdom that hurts your country.

Perhaps you and John Kerry aren't so different.

John Kerry and VVAW did not save lives--American or others in Viet Nam. Some of the other war protestors have matured enough to understand the role the anti-war movement played in the genocides that took place after we abandoned our allies in the area. Not John Kerry. He favored stabbing allies in the back then and will do so again and again until we are destroyed.

I have nothing more to say, because if you choose to equivocate and you still don't understand, you probably never will.

Huh? I don't get it. I mean, if you don't want to argue anymore about this, fine. But I'm not "choosing to equivocate". I said in terms of intent. You don't think that's an important part of the discussion? Again, if not, then fine. But don't assume I'm just nit-picking. As I said, I think intent is the heart of the issue here.

I have nothing more to say, because if you choose to equivocate and you still don't understand, you probably never will.

Poor, hyperbolic choice of words on my part.

I think that what John kerry did was very wrong, period. I thought that it was wrong to use that false testimony, whether he was duped or not. I would not have trusted it, and the use of such nasty hyperbolic language for political effect in front of the world, was false, hurtful propaganda in a time of war.

I can't assume that he knew it was false - but John Kerry's not a dumb man, and you'd have to be naive to trust the source.

That's it. There's not much more for me to discuss ... shrug.

The mine/Rassman incident:

Kerry claimed all boats fled after the mine explosion. The Washington Post article agreed with the Swift Vet version that only the Kerry boat fled while the others went to the aid of the stricken crew.

The fact that kerry could not be counted on in a fight was in the first commercial. The question of hostile fire after the mine explosion was not.

The Swift vet book account on hostile fire differs from official records, and in fact not all swift vets agree on that point. What no one disputes is that they rescued the crew, patched up and towed the mined boat without taking damage or injury or mounting any sort of counter attack. If there was any hostile fire, it could not have been much.

That they remained on site for over an hour to patch and tow the mined boat is the better argument against heavy fire because it's not the kind of activity sane individuals would take time to do while they're being shot at.

Walter,

I read with interest your debate with Bill in this post.

You're wrong. And I believe you know it deep, deep down, but you just cannot bring yourself to admit it. No amount of rationalization of the kind I've read over your name in this post is going to make you right.

If I were basing my decision regarding Kerry, the Swift Vets, Bush, etc. from your arguments and Bill(INDC)'s arguments (plus related links), I would have to tell you that I would go with Bill. Bill can back his arugment up with historical and current facts, and some very shrewd commentary.

Love ya.

P. S. Please forgive any spelling errors.

You're wrong. And I believe you know it deep, deep down

Absolutely. I'm merely entertaining myself by intentionally questioning what I know to be Bill's rock-solid, objectively unassailable case, because that's the kind of guy I am. I also like to shoot puppies and kick people when they're down. What I should do, of course, is follow your example and base my arguments on total conjecture and a five-second psychoanalysis of my opponent. That would take a lot of the headache out of political debate.

Oh, and fuck you.

I understand that there is an eagle and ostrich advertisement that supposedly is meant to represent Kerry and Bush, respectively. How can anyone in good faith not say that the liberals, MSM, DNC, Kerry campaign, et al. have stuck their heads in the sand re the charges brought by the Swifties. The people of this country are entitled to having available to them balanced news coverage on all issues, and the charges by the Swifties have not been discredited; instead they have buried, ignored, and passed over through such statements as, “You’re a liar.” The MSM has become nothing less than the Key Stone Kops of Journalism - and I fear the consequences. One simple question that no liberal seems to want to answer: if the Swifties are lying, then why hasn’t John Kerry allowed his military records to be made public to clear up this matter? We are on the threshold of electing a man who has been absolutely proven to be a liar and one who quite possibly engaged in acts that could be considered treasonous. Yet, despite these charges having been carefully laid out, instead of coverage and serious discussion we get screaming liberals shouting down any conversation and such childish responses as that by one Walter Sobchak above. I believe that the liberals don’t simply have their head’s in the sand. In the words of my drill sergeant of many years ago, they have their heads stuck up their duffle bags.

Hey Walter.

I also enjoyed your debate with Bill, and you decidedly did choose to equivocate - multiple times.

Similar to how Kerry chose to use unsubstantiated 'testimony' (not under oath, uncorroberated)) to make political hay.

I must admit, though, you did choose a really classy way to exit the discussion.

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