Kerry seeks to suppress rather than confront Swift Boat Vets

[dhud37lud]

Swiftboat's Deadly Fire
By Jennifer King
August 30, 2004

The now-three week old controversy has finally hit Pravda - better known as the formerly "mainstream" media. It is beautiful to live in a time when the internet/blog/talk radio/cable buzzsaw continues - slowly but surely, like a winding river through soft clay - to erode the ever shakier foundations which make up the Old Media. True investigative journalism today is being done on the web by "amateur" writers while so-called "trained" journalists have been unmasked as the partisan hacks that they are. Now, it appears that even the last pretense of objectivity is gone - when the "Media Wing" of the Democrat Party finally weighed in on affaire Swiftboat, it was to parrot Kerry talking points in a blatant attempt to save their drowning candidate. With their increasingly waning moral authority, the life ring may have arrived too late.

Candidate Kerry has only himself to blame. Unwilling to run on his ferociously left-of-Ted-Kennedy Senate record, Kerry decided that his service in Viet Nam as a genuine dedicated war hero would do. According to the blockbuster "Unfit For Command," it is a common Kerry strategy - used successfully in many Massachusetts campaigns. Unfortunately for Candidate Kerry, an ambush awaited around the bend.

The Swiftees fire was accurate and deadly, but it was the campaign's response which gave the story its legs. 254 of Kerry's highly decorated "band of brothers", including some of his commanding officers made some serious challenges to Kerry's self-portrait of himself in Viet Nam. Kerry, instead of intrepid Naval hero, suddenly looked very much like an intemperate, self-serving and somewhat cowardly poseur.

Instead of answering the charges or authorizing the Navy to release his records by signing the 180 form, Kerry fired back by ginning up the lawyers - his and the DNC's. The legal beagles immediately issued threatening warnings to television and radio stations, attempting to keep them from airing the ad. Next, a Kerry spokesman and some commentators tried to convince Regnery to stop printing the book, protesting that the company was "retailing a hoax". As the story swelled, the campaign became even more desperate, finally filing a complaint with the FEC in a blatant attempt to shut down the opposition. This week, the Kerry campaign hired a couple of goons to dig up dirt on the Swiftees. The Clinton era is back with a vengeance.

What is Kerry so afraid of? His "Christmas in Cambodia" story with its super secret CIA buddy hat has been thoroughly debunked by now, as has the story of "V.C. the Flying Dog". The campaign also appears to be backing away from the "First Purple Heart" story, cautiously admitting that perhaps the wound was self-inflicted after all, just as "Unfit For Command" alleges. With so much of his credibility shredding away, what else could possibly remain in the records Kerry is so carefully hiding away? The Swiftees might know. They have several other interesting stories, including one in which their boat ended up firing upon a sampan - killing a man and his young son. The boat came upon the sampan suddenly because Lt. Jg John Kerry was sleeping or otherwise inattentive while on radar duty. Swiftee Steve Gardner, who was the gunner on Kerry's boat, says that he shot the man when he saw him reaching for a gun. The child, unfortunately, was killed in the crossfire. The terrified mother and her baby were taken off the sampan and relocated to the Swiftboat base. While investigating this incident, the Swiftees found out that it had morphed, in Kerry's after action report, into a heroic epic in which the intrepid and daring Lt. Kerry had single-handedly killed four heavily armed Viet Cong and taken two more prisoner. Mr. Gardner says that he only saw this report six weeks ago. Form 180 remains unsigned.

The Swiftboat Saga is highly illustrative of who Candidate Kerry is. Rather than discuss the controversy, he unleashed the lawyers. Rather than open his records, he's digging for dirt on his detractors. While the DNC and the Kerry Campaign dance with MoveOn.org, ACT and George Soro's millions, they try to shut down the one 527 that's coming from the right.

The Left is famous for their inerrant projection - doing themselves exactly what they accuse their opponents of. At the DNC Convention, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. called our current government - "fascist". Yet it is they who want to ban the books and silence the opposition.

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[Powerboss]

No fake.

And Democrats accuse Republicans of Burning Books. LOL.

As long as Kerry continues to evade, send out his surrogates, and whine about this being some Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, and refuses to address the issues regarding all this, he will decline further and further.