JOHN KERRY & VIETNAM --
a four count indictment against the mainstream press corp. Verdict? Guilty. The crime?
. Quotable:
The central points presented by John Kerry and his supporters, then, at the outset of his campaign, and repeated since, are several .. When credible and well-documented contrary evidence to these .. points emerged during the campaign, the mainstream press failed almost utterly to correct those Kerry contentions.
1. He volunteered to serve in Vietnam (and, thus, would defend America now)
It was revealed that Kerry actually sought a deferment after graduating college, to go to Paris for a year. Only after that deferment was denied, Kerry enlisted in the Navy. It was revealed that when Kerry volunteered for the Swift Boats, they were an offshore patrol operation, not in combat. The mainstream press avoided these revelations ..
2. He served more than ably, indeed valiantly, witness his medals (and, thus, would be a worthy commander-in-chief today)
The weight of evidence presented by the fellow sworn witnessing 60-plus Swift Boat veterans was not conclusive .. But it was very weighty, and moreso than Kerry's supporters' counters. Only the conservative media presented it. Kerry's Cambodia fable was conclusively disproven, but the mainstream media if mentioning it at all only mentioned it very briefly at the end of long articles. When, several weeks ago, it was proven that Kerry's Bronze Star was based on his own misleading after-action report, there was silence in the mainstream media. There is much enough for the mainstream media to investigate, but with one exception it hasn't. Michael Dobbs in The Washington Post tried to investigate one of the incidents, ably, but admitted coming up against a wall of Kerry's refusal to release his private journals and his full military records. Dobbs has since been fed much more evidence, with which to continue his investigation, but hasn't returned to the subject.
When I provided extensive documentation to the ombudsman public editor of The New York Times of the Times' failure to investigate, and of its reporters repeatedly parroting unsubstantiated before every mention of the Swiftees while presenting no facts to support that charge, Mr. Okrent has continued to avoid mention in his column ..
After a month of the conservative media highlighting the Swiftee charges, the Kerry camp finally replied, with screams of "lies" and with private investigators dredging up 10-year old affairs. However, Kerry still refused to release his documents to the press for resolving the issues. An attorney who publishes one of the most widely read blogs, Beldarblog, challenged the entire internet to disprove a single Swiftee charge. There were no winners.
3. He nobly spoke out against mistakes in Vietnam (and, thus, would be honest with the voters now, and the public in the future if elected president)
John Kerry may have sincerely believed his charges against Vietnam veterans and America's conduct in the Vietnam War. But he crossed the line into charging that all us Vietnam veterans were war criminals conducting a criminal war by the U.S., and publicly supporting the communist proposals to capitulate. Mainstream-media defenders of Kerry say that he just repeated what others told him. But Kerry said he witnessed these things, and evidence emerged in the conservative media that Kerry knew that his charge of prevalent atrocities was false and that most of those in Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) who said otherwise were fraudulent.
When it was revealed that Kerry stayed in VVAW after he said he had, and that he attended a VVAW meeting that discussed assassinating pro-Vietnam war U.S. senators, without reporting this terrorism conspiracy to any authorities, the mainstream press ignored again ..
There was little if anything noble about John Kerry's antiwar activities, as the POWs tortured by their interrogators with Kerry's words know.
4. He would be honest with the American people (and, thus, be reliable to be trusted as president)
John Kerry has repeated his disproven scurrilous charges against Vietnam veterans and America in Vietnam to the present. John Kerry has continued to refuse to release his journals and full military records. John Kerry has not been honest with the American people, and thus cannot be trusted to be president. It's as simple as that. It's not so much what Kerry did 35 years ago. It's what he's done now. That's not the character or integrity that can be relied upon.
And where is the mainstream press? You know and can decide for yourself. By a four-to-one margin, veterans have decided. During August, when some of this came out through the conservative media, the public polls shifted heavily away from Kerry.
Now, other issues predominate in the media, and there are many other issues to predominate, and the polls are more neck-and-neck now. But, veterans have not forgotten. Only the mainstream media has forgotten or, more properly said, continued to ignore the facts, and what the facts say about Kerry's core points of qualification to be commander-in-chief and president.
