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DRUDGE --"EMPIRE STRIKES BACK AGAINST ANTI-KERRY VETS".
Hugh Hewitt: "Tomorrow's New York Times will carry a hit piece on the Swift Boat Vets against Kerry. I am betting that it will not mention Kerry's recanting of his Christmas- Eve- in- Cambodia lie, or press for details on all the other tales Kerry has been telling about his cross border derring-do for the past three decades. The fact of conflicting stories that cannot be reconciled is out there. Let's see if the "paper of record" deals with the most obvious hole in the Kerry Vietnam legend (after the Christmas-Eve-in-Cambodia whopper, that is.)
UPDATE: And here it is -- the NEW LEFT TIMES, "Friendly Fire: The Birth of an Anti-Kerry Ad." And here is their coverage of "Kerry in Cambodia":
This week, as its leaders spoke with reporters, they have focused primarily on the one allegation in the book that Mr. Kerry's campaign has not been able to put to rest: that he was not in Cambodia at Christmas in 1968, as he declared in a statement to the Senate in 1986. Even Mr. Brinkley, who has emerged as a defender of Mr. Kerry, said in an interview that it was unlikely that Mr. Kerry's Swift boat ventured into Cambodia on Christmas, though he said he believed that Mr. Kerry was probably there shortly afterward.The NEW DEMOCRAT TIMES also has this, "Kerry Calls Ad Group a 'Front for the Bush Campaign'." Quotable:
A new CBS News polls shows that Mr. Kerry's support among veterans has slipped since the Democratic convention. Shortly after he accepted the nomination, he was tied with Mr. Bush among veterans at 46 percent, but the poll shows Mr. Bush well ahead, 55 percent to 37 percent.The CBS News poll is here.
UPDATE II. THE BLOGOSPHERE REACTS.
Well, here is the New York Times hit piece on the SBVT. Basically, they spend a lot of time looking at who contributed to the group and how they were organized. Oh, what a surprise, Republicans are funding the ads. Why is that a big deal? Aren't Democrats funding the ads against Bush? Do you think it would be vice versa? .. You have to wait almost to the end to get to the Cambodia story and they don't give the full background on how Kerry has talked about Cambodia over and over and said it was "seared" into his memory. As Drudge said, "The Empire Strikes Back." Can the other major media outlets be much behind?Roger Simon:
Who can be shocked anymore by the oddly defensive partisanship of The New York Times? When the accusations by the Swift Boat Veterans were first made several weeks ago, one issue above all stood out, not just with the blogosphere, but with large numbers of concerned citizens from both parties, that is John Kerry's statment before the US Senate -- "seared" in his memory, as he said -- that he had spent Christmas Eve of 1968 under fire in Cambodia. He made this assertion during an important policy debate on War in Nicaragua -- a serious matter indeed. It wasn't a question of mere medals (who cares?). It was national security, life and death. (He also made similar statements in print, as we know.) But The New York Times, writing for the first time on this scandal they have so assiduously avoided, buries what surely deserves to be the lede in the fourth to last paragraph of a 3500 word article!Captain Ed:
The expected broadside to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth came this evening, as the New York Times advances the campaign strategy John Kerry launched this afternoon -- ad hominem attacks and screeching about funding sources while paying little factual attention to the well-documented allegations from the Swiftvets.BeldarBlog:
The same day Kerry holds a press conference in which he finally acknowledges the SwiftVets controversy out of his own mouth, the New York Times discovers there's a story there!Patterico:
Tomorrow, the New York Times will publish its expected hit piece on the Swift Boat Vets. The article accomplishes something that I would have thought impossible just two days ago. It makes the L.A. Times's coverage of the Swift Boat Vets look (almost) like responsible journalism. To be sure, the New York Times takes a page from the L.A. Times playbook: prejudice the reader against the Vets before breathing a word of their actual accusations. But the New York paper takes this strategy to a new level. I don't think I have ever seen such a partisan hit piece in my life.More reactions at Memeorandum here and here.
UPDATE: And here is how the networks covered the Swift Boat story:
None of the broadcast evening networks stories, nor CNN's NewsNight mentioned, as did FNC's Carl Cameron on Special Report with Brit Hume, that as a result of John O'Neill and his Unfit for Command book, the Kerry campaign has had to back off Kerry's claim to have been in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968.You can find the full Media Research Center report here later in the day. Posted by Greg RansomThree weeks after Peter Jennings acknowledged that "there are a few who served with him who dispute his record and question his leadership" and promised that "we'll hear from them in the weeks ahead," World News Tonight on Thursday finally got around to the Kerry detractors, though like Jennings ("a few"), reporter Brian Rooney minimized their number as he described Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as "a small organization with members still angry over Kerry's anti-war protests after he left the Navy." In fact, compared to the mere dozen or so Kerry colleagues from Vietnam who are part of his "band of brothers," the anti-Kerry group of veterans of the swift boat service, at over 250 members, is far larger. ABC devoted the most time Thursday night to the controversy with Jake Tapper (who also contributed a long piece to Nightline later) outlining one of the specific charges. But anchor Vargas couldn't resist pleading: "But even Republican Senator John McCain has called on the President to condemn this ad. Why hasn't he done so?"
Picking up on a Washington Post story, NBC's Carl Quintanilla stressed how "today a new report said military records contradict one of Kerry's most vocal critics." But ABC's Jake Tapper provided that critic time for a retort: "This comes from John Kerry's report that day, which said we were under this extreme fire. We were not." Even though Kerry was the one who hurled an unsubstantiated charge about how Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is "a front for the Bush campaign" which is doing Bush's "dirty work," CBS and NBC treated Kerry as the aggrieved party. NBC's Quintanilla saw "a political push back planned just last night. Kerry, arriving home in Boston, was said to be frustrated by the attacks and had his staff up until 3am, cutting this political ad debuting today:" Narrator from Kerry ad: "The people attacking John Kerry's war record are funded by Bush's big-money supporters."
CBS's Byron Pitts similarly framed the issue: "Kerry, who's made his tour of duty in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign, realized today he could no longer let the ad go unanswered and took aim at President Bush for not condemning it." Pitts didn't hesitate to try to discredit a Kerry detractor by bringing up Nixon: "The men behind the Swift Boat Veterans ad refused to back off. Their leader, John O'Neill, was also Richard Nixon's point man in attacks on John Kerry's protest of the Vietnam War 30 years ago." Pitts launched the same attack on May 4, the night of the group's press conference which CBS, unlike ABC and NBC, covered, sort of. Pitts went back to 1971 as he recalled how John O'Neill, who debated Kerry about Vietnam on ABC's Dick Cavett Show, "was handpicked by the Nixon administration to discredit Kerry." Pitts added, without any explanation, that "the press conference was set up by the same people who," in 2000, "tried to discredit John McCain's reputation in Vietnam service." Then Pitts connected the anti-Kerry veterans to a presumed nefarious "strategy" they had nothing to do with implementing: "It's the same strategy used to go after Georgia Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in Vietnam."
