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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Tuesday, August 31, 2004
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Swiftees Put Ball in Kerry's Court Right where it belongs. In a letter today. + + + + + August 31, 2004
Senator John Kerry Dear Senator Kerry: As you prepare for your address before the American Legion in Nashville, Tennessee, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth encourages you to use this opportunity to clarify your actions in Vietnam and your statements about your fellow Veterans and shipmates when you returned home. Since you have made your four-month tour in Vietnam the centerpiece of your campaign, we respectfully insist that you be truthful. The public is owed a full and honest accounting of your actions. Veterans are owed an apology from you and an acknowledgement that there was no basis in fact for the accusations you made against them. We urge you to: 1. Apologize for your conduct once you returned from Vietnam. Your exaggerated testimony before the US Senate; the blanket indictment of your fellow veterans; throwing away medals and ribbons; all of these actions dishonored America and the armed forces. Your rhetoric and actions were not only wrong, they aided the enemy and brought great pain to POW's, veterans and their families. 2. Clarify the conflicting accounts involving the Bay Hap River incident of March 13, 1969 (Bronze Star and 3rd Purple Heart). You have now described three different versions of this incident. In the first version of this incident presented during the Democrat National Convention, you stated: "No man left behind," suggesting to the American people that you alone stayed on the river to rescue Mr. Rassmann. Later, when forced to acknowledge conflicting eyewitness testimony from fellow swift boat veterans, you said that your boat left the scene to return moments later to retrieve Jim Rassmann from the water. Yet, in another version of the same incident discovered in the Congressional Record, you reported that your boat struck a mine and Rassmann fell off the boat. Mr. Kerry, please explain to your fellow veterans and the American people which version is the truth. 3. Affirm that the injuries for which you received your purple hearts never required any medical treatment beyond perhaps a bandage and that, in all instances, these injuries were self-inflicted and came from your own weapon. Further, that if any of these purple hearts were falsely awarded, that you would not have been eligible to leave Vietnam after serving only four months. 4. Acknowledge what your own biographer is now saying, that the Christmas in Cambodia claim is "obviously wrong,” that you were never in Cambodia over Christmas or any other time during your brief, four-month tour in Vietnam and that your statements before the United States Senate in 1986 were false. If you undertake these steps we will be satisfied that the American public has been sufficiently apprised as to these aspects of your career, and we will discontinue the media advertisements you have sought so fervently to silence. Please know that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are eager to close our own personal chapters on Vietnam and instead focus on the war we're currently fighting — the ongoing war on terrorism. In the absence of full public disclosure and a public apology, we will continue efforts to carry our message to an ever-expanding base of grassroots supporters. Senator Kerry, we want to get Vietnam behind us. But, we can only do so if the truth is told. We respectfully await your reply. Sincerely, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth + + + + + You have now described three different versions of this incident. Three? Only three? Then he's hardly warmed up yet. Lane Core Jr. CIW P Tue. 08/31/04 08:03:40 PM |
"How Reagan Became Reagan" A great essay by Steven Hayward at the Claremont Institute, yesterday (italics and quoted ellipsis in original): .... Reagan would famously say during his political career that "I was a Democrat most of my adult life. I didn't leave my party and we're not suggesting you leave yours. I am telling you that what I felt was that the leadership of the Democratic Party had left me and millions of patriotic Democrats in this country who believed in freedom." If he was too easy on the Democratic Party, he was very clear that conservatism today has inherited the best of the liberal tradition, which is why he felt none of the sectarian's hesitation about quoting Thomas Paine (or admiring Franklin Roosevelt): The classic liberal used to be the man who believed the individual was, and should be forever, the master of his destiny. That is now the conservative position. The liberal used to believe in freedom under law. He now takes the ancient feudal position that power is everything. He believes in a stronger and stronger central government, in the philosophy that control is better than freedom. The conservative now quotes Thomas Paine, a long-time refuge of the liberals: 'Government is a necessary evil; let us have as little of it as possible.' During his GE [yes, General Electric] touring days in the 1950s, Reagan said he began to experience "the vindictiveness of the liberal temper.... Sadly I have come to realize that a great many so-called liberals aren't liberal — they will defend to the death your right to agree with them." The AFL-CIO — to which Reagan belonged as a member of the Screen Actors Guild — branded Reagan "a strident voice of the right wing lunatic fringe." Like Churchill, who read Gibbon and the classics on his own while a young officer in India, in the 1950s Reagan undertook a serious self-education in politics through reading Whittaker Chambers's Witness, Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, Fredrich Bastiat's The Law, and F.A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom, among other titles. Yet he adopted neither Chambers's historical pessimism nor a blanket libertarian hatred of government. It is tempting to ascribe this outcome merely to Reagan's irrepressibly optimistic temperament. While this is obviously central to Reagan's character, it seems inadequate to explain his cast of mind entirely. And while his independent reading and speaking tours during his GE years of the 1950s are surely the key period of his self-education, in the end it is not Reagan's thought that was decisive, but his insight, imagination, and moral clarity — none of which can be taught in a classroom or a book..... (Thanks, Big Trunk.) Lane Core Jr. CIW P Tue. 08/31/04 05:59:10 PM |
270 to Win An interactive map and history of the electoral college. (Thanks, G. Thomas.) Lane Core Jr. CIW P Tue. 08/31/04 05:38:48 PM |
"Why James Rassmann Is Honestly Mistaken About John Kerry Saving His Life" Analysis by Grant K. Holcomb at Intellectual Conservative, Aug. 24: I do not doubt the sincerity of Mr. James A. Rassmann regarding his version of events on March 13, 1969. My own experience and review of such part of the record as is available convinces me that then First Lieutenant James A. Rassmann is right about then Lieutenant Junior Grade John F. Kerry helping him out of the water. However, Rassmann is wrong about Kerry heroically saving his life.... (Thanks, Donald.) Lane Core Jr. CIW P Tue. 08/31/04 07:50:45 AM |
Ambushed! Redux Hinderaker & Johnson duke it out again with the woefully overmatched Boyd at the Star-Tribune. Power Line invited thoughts on the latest exchange. Here is what I sent: Here's my (probably unusual) take. I don't know anything at all about the personalities and the internal politics of the editorial staff at Strib. However, my immediate and lasting impression is either (1) the rest of the staff really hates Boyd and/or (2) they hate him now if they didn't before. This is what I mean: his first editorial reply was just simply plain bad. Written in a fit of pique, it should never have seen the light of day. (According to the standards Boyd mentions in his second piece, neither of his should have made it to press.) But it did. So, Boyd has enough clout to get something run that will make both him and the newspaper look bad. Can the rest of them really like that? That wasn't enough, though. His second reply was just simply, plainly much worse. Making both him and the newspaper look much worse. Surely, somebody (everybody?) else on the Strib editorial staff knew that was the case. Right? Either (1) Boyd has been, for a long time, an obnoxious, arrogant ignoramus that the rest of the staff can't stand, so they didn't mind Boyd making himself look bad and/or (2) they didn't hate him before, but they hate him now for not being able to stop him making them all look so bad. Or, they're all short-sighted, blinkered numbnuts. First, Hinderaker & Johnson's reply, Aug. 29 (brackets and ellipses in original): + + + + + Last Sunday, editorial staff member Jim Boyd wrote a column ("Republican smear machine can't stand up to the facts") attacking our Aug. 18 column on John Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia fable as "fraudulent," and attacking us personally as "smear artists" engaged in "immorality." When someone uses language that strong, you'd expect him to have facts to back up his words. Yet Boyd's tirade was remarkably fact-free. First, the basics. We wrote that the Kerry campaign has retracted Kerry's oft-told tale of being in Cambodia on Christmas 1968. Boyd did not dispute this. We wrote that there is no record of John Kerry being in Cambodia in December 1968, or at any other time. Boyd did not dispute this. We wrote that Kerry's commanding officers have denied that he was ever sent into Cambodia. Boyd did not dispute this. We wrote that not a single crewman who ever served with Kerry has supported Kerry's claim to have been in Cambodia, and several crewmen have denied that their boat was ever in Cambodia. Boyd did not dispute this. We wrote that there is no record of Swift boats being used for clandestine missions as claimed by Kerry. Boyd did not dispute this. We wrote that Swift boats were unsuited for such secret missions, given their large size and noise. Boyd did not dispute this. Gosh, for fraudulent smear artists, we seem to be doing pretty well. Given that he didn't deny any of our main points, what did Boyd have to say? Most importantly, he alleged that Kerry was in Cambodia, but it was in January 1969, not December 1968. Thus, Boyd wrote, ours is an "accurate but niggling criticism." Of course, there is no more evidence for Kerry being in Cambodia in January 1969 than in December 1968. But when Kerry told his famous story to the Senate in 1986 the story that he says was "seared seared" into his memory, he was very specific about the timing of his life-altering experience. It was Christmas 1968, and he heard President Richard Nixon denying that we had troops in Cambodia while he himself had been sent there. It was this experience, he said, that caused him to lose his faith in the American government. We pointed out that Kerry's account was obviously false, since Nixon was not president in December 1968. Boyd responded that Nixon was then president-elect, so Kerry's "discrepancy" was "understandable." Obviously, however, a president-elect was in no position to assure the American people that there were no troops in Cambodia. We made the relatively minor point that Kerry's claim to have been shot at by the Khmer Rouge is implausible, since they did not take the field until 1972. Boyd said, with no attribution, that "the Khmer Rouge ... began its armed combat against the government of Prince Norhodom Sihanouk in 1967." We based our statement on the testimony of Andrew Antippas, "the Cambodia Man" at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon between 1968 and 1970, who wrote: "[C]oncerning the assertion that Mr. Kerry was shot at by the Khmer Rouge during his Christmas 1968 visit to Cambodia, it should be noted that the Khmer Rouge didn't take the field until the Easter Offensive of 1972." Different sources assign different dates to the beginning of military action by the Khmer Rouge, but we've seen no support for the proposition that the Khmer Rouge were in the field (as opposed to existing as a political organization) in January 1969. Boyd next wandered into the thicket of geography. He wrote: "[T]here was no established border. Both Vietnam and Cambodia claimed parts of the Mekong River delta, a watery area of rivers, tributaries and canals. It was quite easy to slip across, especially by boat (whether inadvertently or with a purpose perhaps both)." The notion that Kerry wandered into Cambodia "inadvertently" contradicts the story Kerry told. If he wandered there by accident, he would have had no reason to be disillusioned with the U.S. government. The whole point of Kerry's story was that he was ordered into Cambodia, contrary to President Nixon's assurance that there were no U.S. troops there. Boyd did not attempt to dispute the heart of our column. He simply assumed as true Kerry's revised version of the Christmas in Cambodia fable without acknowledging the contradictions among the versions of the story, and without noting the lack of evidence for the proposition that Kerry was ever in Cambodia. Where he challenged us on specific facts, we believe Boyd was wrong. Boyd's response to our column was stronger on epithets than on evidence. He provided a mighty weak basis on which to call us smear artists. Has word reached Boyd that the Kerry campaign has given up trying to sell the story that Kerry undertook secret missions on his Swift boat to Cambodia? Like the Japanese soldiers who continued fighting World War II on remote Pacific islands after the emperor had surrendered, Boyd keeps up the fight for a story that his own emperor has abandoned. John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson are Minneapolis attorneys and proprietors of the Web log "Power Line" (www.powerlineblog.com), one of 15 sites given credentials to cover the Republican convention in New York this week. + + + + + Now, Boyd's second mistake, Aug. 29. + + + + + We are in the middle of an important national event: the real-time confrontation of a political smear. In previous elections, the examination has almost always been in retrospect. Now the smear, against John Kerry's military service, is being critically examined as it happens. Vigilance is required, and a little courage. I see the recent commentary by John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson ("Unwrapping Kerry's story of Christmas in Cambodia," Aug. 18) as part of that smear. It did not meet what I believe should be the standards of the Star Tribune's editorial pages. Such pieces should not appear here, and that one does so for the second time in 10 days pains me greatly. We have a responsibility to separate legitimate political opinion and the latitude is great from deliberate smear. That responsibility is especially important in this campaign. Sometimes it's difficult to tell whether a piece crosses that line; to me, this is not one of those times. A legitimate piece might have raised hard questions about Kerry in Cambodia; theirs wasn't that piece. Colleagues wanted to print today's Hinderaker and Johnson piece to be "fair" to them. But these are folks who take unfair advantage of that concern. And what about fairness for John Kerry? These authors take great umbrage at my use of the word "fraudulent" to describe their writing. That word choice was quite deliberate: They hurled it at Kerry; I merely hurled it back. Here is some of what I've seen during this presidential campaign: About six weeks ago, former Sen. Rudy Boschwitz submitted a piece that took on former counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke. The piece contained demonstrably false statements. I required that they be stripped from the piece, and they were. The piece ran. Days later, Sen. Norm Coleman submitted a piece on Joe Wilson, who made the famous trip to Niger to investigate the yellowcake episode. The Coleman piece contained demonstrably false statements against Wilson. I asked that they be stripped out. One was not. It claimed that Wilson had "repeatedly" accused President Bush of deliberately lying to the American people about Iraq. Wilson is on the record, including in the Star Tribune, denying he ever said such a thing. I insisted that Coleman provide at least one quote in which Wilson accused the president of deliberately lying to the American people. His office either could not or would not do that. The piece did not run. Then along came the Hinderaker-Johnson piece on Kerry. It should have set off all kinds of alarms. As one of the editors responsible for these pages, I regret that it did not and that I was not here to weigh in on the decision. Now comes their second piece. I could do extensive line-by-line analysis, but I will not. It would take space I do not have. For the fair-minded, two examples should suffice. The top of their piece is devoted to negatives: No record of this, no record of that, etc. This proves nothing. There generally are no public records of clandestine activities. The burden of proof here is on Hinderaker and Johnson, not on Kerry and not on me. On the relatively minor point of the Khmer Rouge, Hinderaker and Johnson rely on someone named Andrew Antippas. What they don't say is that he has just popped up, in an op-ed on the subject published in the Washington Times, the Moonie paper that has been a veritable fountain of attacks on Kerry. I have no idea if Antippas is who H & J say he is, and I suspect they simply appropriated his Washington Times op-ed as truth. I do know that all kinds of scholarly works on the Khmer Rouge date the beginning of its armed struggle to 1967 at the earliest and 1970 at the latest. For starters, you might try "Brother Number One" by David Chandler. Or you might check the numerous New York Times articles in 1968 about the armed Communist insurgency and Prince Norhodom Sihanouk's worries over it. What do I think about Kerry in Cambodia? I have now read his biography and a number of other things, and I believe there is ample evidence that he was at least very near Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968 (see pages 209-219 of his biography, "Tour of Duty," plus the history of the SEALORDS campaign) and at other times as well. I can't prove he actually was ever there, and that wasn't my purpose; I do know that Hinderaker and Johnson failed to prove he wasn't. I have no idea why, 25 years ago in a review of "Apocalypse Now," Kerry mentioned President Nixon. Was it an act of hubris, a mistake, a conflation of memories? Perhaps it was a factor not yet explained. In December 1968, Sihanouk and the United States were at odds over cross-border incursions; that's beyond dispute. Sihanouk held 11 crewmen from a landing craft that ventured into Cambodia, plus another American. It took a personal letter from President Lyndon Johnson in late December to win their release. Contemporaneous press accounts suggest Johnson promised Sihanouk that the United States would try to avoid violating Cambodian territory. Perhaps that triggered Kerry's remarks. I do know that this shouldn't matter. John Kerry served with distinction in Vietnam, in very dangerous duty. Lots of folks chose not to serve in Vietnam at all. This is not about who is elected, but about how we allow this campaign to unfold, especially on our pages. I am sick to death of being played for a chump by the likes of Karl Rove. America can definitely do better. Jim Boyd is the Star Tribune's deputy editorial page editor. + + + + + The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes. I think it may be quite amusing to see Boyd's reaction come November when he realizes that Kerry is the one who's been playing him for a chump. See Ambushed! Lane Core Jr. CIW P Tue. 08/31/04 07:35:02 AM |
What We Can Do For Terri IX Lane Core Jr. CIW P Tue. 08/31/04 06:56:03 AM |
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