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Swift Boat to Hell
Posted on August 17, 2004 in Campaign 2004 Journalists & Pundits Scoundrels
It’s politics Tuesday!
When it comes to laying out the truth about the Swift Boat ads, John Gonzales gets mired in the illogical and false “many truthes” fallacy which many liken to thinking. The facts in the Swift Boat controversy come down to this: did John Kerry serve honorably or not? Gonzales reads the Swift Boat claims and concludes that he can’t tell who is lying and who isn’t:
if there’s any common ground between the two groups, it’s that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Veterans for Kerry strongly believe in what they’re saying, and they plan to keep preaching right up until the election. Their ongoing battle, they hope, will bring voters around to their side and their version of the truth. And so Americans are left to wade through the post-Vietnam muck, left to determine who’s lying and who’s not before casting their ballots. It is an important task for the country, and a difficult one, too – on that, there can be no disagreement.
We have enough elements to first raise suspicions about and then decisively rebut the Swift Boat claims. First of these is the history of enmity that John O’Neill had held against the Massachusetts Senator ever since Kerry — who volunteered to serve in Vietnam — used his charismatic presence and status as a veteran who had actually been there to discredit that war. This is the bully who just won’t go away, the rat who waits for his moment to chew at the ropes of the ship he cannot stop. It is jealousy incarnated in khaki, the man who went nowhere politically shouting his frustrations at the one who did.
Second, there are the circumstances under which O’Neill became involved in Kerry assassination. He was put up to the task in the first place by Nixon and again by Ronald Reagan! He appears whenever Kerry is a threat to dubious overseas military interventions beginning with Vietnam, continuing through the Contras, and ending with the recent attacks on Kerry’s service record. Between April 23 and July 15, they raised $158,750 — $100,000 of which came from Texas Republican supernumerary Bob Perry. We have no record where they got the money for the commercial — yet. This is not, as O’Neill characterizes it, a citizen rising up, but someone who is keeping his finances and his backing murky, a servant of those with a stake in things that are wrong.
Third, the veterans misrepresent their own service. “We served with John Kerry” as if they were there on the boat with him. They weren’t. Some weren’t even in the same part of Vietnam. These aren’t comrades in arms.
Fourth, they offer no hard documentary evidence to substantiate their claims. Where the first and the second issues raise suspicions, the third and the fourth damn them. They are neither eyewitnesses nor do they provide proof contrary to Kerry’s claims. This is enough for any competent and professional journalist to say “There’s nothing here, boys and girls.” But Gonzales appeals to the “some people say” logic of Fox News. He taints the truth with innuendo. He keeps alive a lie.
Even more important than exposing these lies however, is exposing the methodology of the press. Your best resource for seeing how the Beast operates is FAIR.
