Smear Starts at White House
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Smear Starts at White House
| Tue, 08-24-2004 - 5:26am |
Everyone I know (Republican, Democrat & Independent) thinks that the anti-Kerry smear campaign on his Vietnam War record began at the White House. Not a person, I know, believes the administration denials.
Does that matter? I think it does!
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Another, and for me this is key:
Watching John McCain saying, "Let me tell you what really went over the line," during a debate in February 2000.
Sitting next to Bush, the former prisoner of war says that when "a fringe veterans group" attacked him at a Bush campaign function, Bush stood by and didn't say a word. "That fringe veteran said that John McCain had abandoned the veterans. Now I don't know how if you can understand this, George, but that really hurts," McCain says, adding that five U.S. senators wrote Bush a letter and said "apologize."
"You should," McCain says. "You should be ashamed."
I know that McCain has resolved his differences with the president, but that doesn’t change what happened in 2000.
Remember, in this country people are convicted of murder on circumstantial evidence.
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As I stated previously, the evidence is circumstantial, but one would be that the Bush campaign’s counsel, Benjamin Ginsberg, resigned, conceding that he'd provided legal advice to the swift boat bunch.
Another, and for me this is key:
Watching John McCain saying, "Let me tell you what really went over the line," during a debate in February 2000.
Sitting next to Bush, the former prisoner of war says that when "a fringe veterans group" attacked him at a Bush campaign function, Bush stood by and didn't say a word. "That fringe veteran said that John McCain had abandoned the veterans. Now I don't know how if you can understand this, George, but that really hurts," McCain says, adding that five U.S. senators wrote Bush a letter and said "apologize."
"You should," McCain says. "You should be ashamed."
I know that McCain has resolved his differences with the president, but that doesn’t change what happened in 2000.
Remember, in this country people are convicted of murder on circumstantial evidence.
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The other is from a video that I have seen on the internet and on TV a few times, where he said that he himself committed attrocities (to which I am sure he is referring to the firing in free fire zones, etc.)
"MR. KERRY: Well, I have often talked about this subject. I personally didn't see personal atrocities in the sense that I saw somebody cut a head off or something like that. However, I did take part in free fire zones and I did take part in harassment interdiction fire. I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were burned to the ground. And all of these, I find out later on, these acts are contrary to the Hague and Geneva Conventions and to the laws of warfare. So in that sense, anybody who took part in those, if you carry out the applications of the Nuremberg principles, is in fact guilty".
......btw, he knew going to Vietnam that these were all against both the Hague and Geneva Conventions, as he attended a class prior to being shipped to Vietnam on this very topic.
However, the Swift Boat ad are proving to be more than a little exaggerated and in many cases outright lies.
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As far as Thurlow and some others, I think it’s fair to say that their accounts are being credibly refuted:
Swift boat memories
Eagle Point vet who was there backs Kerry’s assertion that bullets were flying the day he won two medals on a river in Vietnam
By PAUL FATTIG
Mail Tribune
Robert E. Lambert doesn’t plan to vote for John Kerry.
But the Eagle Point man challenges claims by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that there was no enemy fire aimed at the five swift boats, including the one commanded by Kerry, on March 13, 1969 on the Bay Hap River in the southern tip of what was then South Vietnam.
Lambert, now 64, was a crew member on swift boat PCF-51 that day. The boat was commanded by Navy Lt. Larry Thurlow, a now-retired officer who questions why Kerry was awarded a Bronze star for bravery and a third Purple Heart for the March 13 incident.
"He and another officer now say we weren’t under fire at that time," Lambert said Wednesday afternoon. "Well, I sure was under the impression we were."
Lambert’s Bronze Star medal citation for the incident praises his courage under fire in the aftermath of a mine explosion that rocked another swift boat on that day 35 years ago.
"Anytime you are blown out of the water like that, they always follow that up with small arms fire," he said.
Lambert contacted the Mail Tribune after reading a lengthy article from the Washington Post examining the controversy. That article, carried in the Tribune, indicated that Lambert was a witness to the event but declined to comment.
Although noting he was never contacted by the Post, Lambert stressed that he believes the swift boat controversy has no place in the presidential election.
"This is being blown out of proportion," he said. "It’s absolutely unnecessary and irrelevant, as far as I’m concerned. All of this is nothing but a distraction. It doesn’t have anything to do with what is going on today."
A registered independent, Lambert said the presidential debate ought to be on the future, not the past.
"They should be focused on our exit strategy from Iraq," he said.
Lambert does take issue with Kerry’s opposition to the Vietnam War once he returned to the states.
"That was absolutely reprehensible but, there again, I’m career military," said Lambert who retired from the Navy as a chief petty officer after 22 years of service.
Nor does he have much time for the debate over who wrote the medal citations. Thurlow says his citation for a Bronze Star, which states the boats were being fired upon, was based on an initial report written by Kerry.
Lambert doesn’t know who wrote the documents.
"They took what everybody said after they got in, piled it altogether and shipped it off and somebody wrote that, either at the division level, squadron level or commander of naval forces, Vietnam level," Lambert said. "They decided what kind of medal was going to be put on it.
"Mine was for pulling Lt. Thurlow out of the river while we were under fire," he said.
Lambert, whose stout arms sport tattoos he picked up in the Navy, was already an "old salt" by 1969. He had joined the Navy right after graduating in 1957 from high in Chino, Calif.
Altogether, he would serve three tours in Vietnam, including a year on a mine sweeper.
In 1969, he was on his second swift boat tour. Among his duties, he helped train the officers in charge of the swift boats. He did not train Kerry.
"When they brought a new crew into country, they broke the crew apart, put each man on a different boat," he said. "Even though I was only a petty officer first class, I trained the officer in charge. When we all decided the officer and crew was ready, we put them back together and gave them a boat."
Lambert has a photo album of swift boats, including several shots of Kerry’s PCF-94, although he doesn’t recall ever having met Kerry. One of his photographs of Kerry’s boat was taken on the morning of March 13, 1969, he added.
He flipped to a photograph of a bullet hole in the side of his swift boat — PCF-51.
"That’s the bullet hole they keep talking about that they got the day before in the 51 boat — that was my purple heart," he said, noting he was hit on the upper left arm.
"When those bullets hit that aluminum, it was like hitting glass," he added. "There was shrapnel everywhere."
His photographs include swift boats riddled from AK-47 rifle rounds and larger holes from rocket blasts.
Lambert said that while he disagrees with Thurlow over whether they were being fired at that day, he and the crew liked and respected him.
"He was an excellent officer," he said. "The man was absolutely professional all the way. I would have went anywhere with him, he was that good.
"But I can understand why Thurlow doesn’t like Kerry — these people did a year in Vietnam, not four months," he said later.
The five swift boats were operating off U.S. Coast Guard cutters farther out in the bay on March 13. The swift boats had dropped off a load of Chinese mercenaries and American Special Forces. The mission of the ground forces was to push the enemy out of the jungle and onto the beach, where the swift boat crews were ready to pounce with their .50-caliber machine guns and other weapons.
According to Kerry’s Bronze Star citation, he was awarded the medal for rescuing Special Forces officer Jim Rassmann, who had been blown off his swift boat. Rassmann, who lives in Florence, has repeatedly stated the boats were under fire.
"We were done with our OPs and on the way back out to sea," Lambert recalled. "We were exiting the river. Kerry’s boat went through, then the 43 boat."
Then PCF-3 hit a mine.
"The mine was right underneath it, just lifted it right out of the water," he said.
The six-member crew was stunned and shaken by the blast; the boat was running free.
"It was running wide open — we were all running wide open, trying to get out of there," he said.
But while PCF-3 was running at full throttle, there was no one at the helm.
Thurlow pulled his boat up along the PCF-3 boat and told Lambert to take control of the PCF-51 boat, Lambert said.
"Everybody was shooting back," he said. "After my boat officer (Thurlow) jumped on the 3 boat, he was looking at people (the crew). His boat hit a sandbar and he was knocked overboard. So we went in and got him out."
Lambert, who reached down to help Thurlow aboard, was awarded the Bronze Star for his "courage under fire," according to his citation.
"We went right back to the 3 boat and he (Thurlow) went back on the boat," he said. "We got the 3 boat off the sandbar, got a boat tied to each side of it and down the river we went."
Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at pfattig@mailtribune.com
You can find this story online at:
http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2004/0826/local/stories/01local.htm
So far there have been no credible links established by any of the media for MoveOn being tied to Kerry.
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Does this help?
Miffy - Co-CL For The Politics Today Board
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