Debunking SBVFT

the human machine can be brought to a screeching halt by as few as one gunshot wound.

just thought a little perspective might be useful when deciding how much incoming fire is required to consider it being shot at...

My thread, I'm asking nicely -- everyone, please refrain from the nutjob stuff and just cut and paste whatever is relevant to the thread. Thanks.

Second request, if anyone wants to make the opposing case, go ahead but please do it on your own thread. Then we both can just reply with urls when SBVFT comes up and move on to more important things.

A report on "battle damage" to Thurlow's boat mentions "three 30 cal bullet holes about super structure."

Quote:

A report on "battle damage" to Thurlow's boat mentions "three 30 cal bullet holes about super structure."

From the first post on this thread.

Did Kerry's campaign mess up?
Is Bush glad with the whole thing, at all?

LINK



Quote:

CAMPAIGN JOURNAL
Defense Less
by Ryan Lizza

The New Republic online
Post date: 08.26.04

Never in a campaign has a more disreputable group of people, whose accusations have been repeatedly contradicted by official records and reliable eyewitness accounts, had their claims taken so seriously. John Kerry's accounts of his military service are supported by U.S. Navy documents, his crewmates, and--in the case of the engagement for which Kerry won the Silver Star--the only other living officer who witnessed the event.

As for those disputing his record, Steve Gardner, the man trotted out as an expert on Kerry's first Purple Heart because he served on Kerry's boat, wasn't even on board the day Kerry came under fire. George Elliott, the man who recommended Kerry for the Silver Star but who now criticizes the award as fraudulent, has shifted from supporter to critic to supporter to critic in the span of months. John O'Neill, the co-author of Unfit for Command, argues that Kerry faked the report that led to his third Purple Heart and his Bronze Star. His supposed evidence: John F. Kerry's initials are on the document. But the letters actually scrawled on the page are kjw. O'Neill also claims Kerry was never in Cambodia because his own swift boat patrols never came within 50 miles of the Cambodian border. Yet, O'Neill told Richard Nixon in the Oval Office in 1971, "I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water." As for O'Neill's co-author, Jerome R. Corsi, he has left a bizarre trail of bigoted comments about "ragheads" and papal-approved "boybuggering" on FreeRepublic.com, the modern home of the loony, conspiratorial right.

It's not inconceivable that Kerry exaggerated his war record--it's just not proven. And, of course, lots of things aren't inconceivable. Back in 1999, reporters thought it plausible George W. Bush had snorted cocaine, but, when a scurrilous book by a disreputable author made that allegation, the author didn't end up on the Sunday shows. The press shunned the book, the Bush campaign threatened the author with libel, and the story went away. As for the author, he ended up disgraced and penniless and eventually killed himself.

But, as much as the press bears responsibility for the last few weeks of wall-to-wall Swiftee coverage, many Democrats, who have been tearing their hair out as they have watched this story unfold like a slow-motion car wreck, aren't just angry at the media. They are also blaming the Kerry campaign for allowing the accusations to metastasize into a clear threat to a Democratic victory.

The most frequently heard argument is that, however false the accusations are, the episode underscores a serious weakness in Kerry's case for the presidency. "All of the focus of the campaign was Vietnam, partly because nobody knew what else to talk about," says a Democrat close to the campaign. "I think it didn't have to be important, but it is because John Kerry hasn't been strong on anything else and hasn't enunciated any vision on the war. ... This is the price you pay for having the campaign so focused on the biography."

Other Democrats level a related critique: that the martial emphasis of the Democratic convention helped Kerry match Bush on national security but also left voters hungry for details about his domestic agenda, curtailing any bounce in the polls. Kerry aides argue that the convention was a unique opportunity to tell a man-bites-dog story about a Democrat who cares about national security. They say the plan was always to build up Kerry's bona fides on the war and terrorism and then pivot in August to his message on the economy and domestic issues. But the Swiftees may have set back what Kerry accomplished in Boston, and they certainly smothered his attempts to talk about other issues in August. [..]

The first instincts of the campaign were to change the subject and decry the "right-wing slime machine" rather than forcefully rebut each allegation with the facts, which have always been on their side. That eventually changed, and the campaign itself, without leaving fingerprints, was instrumental in getting facts into news stories that discredited the accusers. But by then, some Democrats complain, the damage had been done. [..]

A final postmortem critique is that the last few weeks highlighted the need to revamp Kerry's communications staff. Senior communications aides have been turf-conscious and reluctant to share authority with others. But, at the peak of the Swiftee frenzy, the campaign finally added two old Clinton pros to help out. Former White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart will now serve as the traveling press secretary, while ex-Clinton adviser Joel Johnson will run the campaign's war room, a position aides say had never been clearly defined. After the toughest stretch of the campaign thus far, the news was greeted like a breath of fresh air at Kerry headquarters. "It's like the adults are coming in to babysit the kids," says one staffer. "I've been in meetings where I think, 'What the **** experience do any of us have with this stuff?' These guys are adults."

Despite all the Monday-morning quarterbacking, it's unclear how much Kerry will be hurt by the whole episode. A case can be made that neither campaign really wanted this debate but both are now stuck with it. Bush's association with the Swiftees, and his failure to condemn the ads, calls into question his character, which is the heart of his campaign, just as much as the recent allegations call into question Kerry's military biography, which is the heart of his campaign. Indeed, by midweek, the momentum of the story had shifted from a debate about Kerry to one about Bush. "It's almost as if the two campaigns have wandered into Gettysburg," says Carter Eskew, a top strategist for Al Gore in 2000. "They did not choose to have this battle in this location." But the outcome could end up deciding the war.

Ryan Lizza is a senior editor at TNR.

My thread, I'm asking nicely --

Second request, if anyone wants to make the opposing case, go ahead but please do it on your own thread.

sozobe wrote:

My thread, I'm asking nicely --

Second request, if anyone wants to make the opposing case, go ahead but please do it on your own thread.

sozobe wrote:

Quote:

A report on "battle damage" to Thurlow's boat mentions "three 30 cal bullet holes about super structure."

From the first post on this thread.

This wasn't kerrys boat, this was the only reported battle damage, how do we even know if this was from this incident?

Where are battle damage reports from fire fights that everyone agrees were actual firefights? Comparison of these reports should yeild some insights.

* There's the account of William L. Schachte Jr., who claimed to be on the boat as well and that there was no fire - but who isn't actually remembered by anyone. The Plain Dealer article notes that Runyon "said Kerry, Zaledonis and himself were the only men aboard", and the NYT article describes:

Quote:
William L. Schachte Jr., a retired rear admiral who says in the book that he had been on the small skimmer on which Mr. Kerry was injured that night in December 1968. He contends that Mr. Kerry wounded himself while firing a grenade.

But the two other men who acknowledged that they had been with Mr. Kerry, Bill Zaladonis and Mr. Runyon, say they cannot recall a third crew member. "Me and Bill aren't the smartest, but we can count to three," Mr. Runyon said in an interview. And even Dr. Letson said he had not recalled Mr. Schachte until he had a conversation with another veteran earlier this year and received a subsequent phone call from Mr. Schachte himself.

Bush Dismisses Idea That Kerry Lied on Vietnam
By DAVID E. SANGER and ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: August 27, 2004

FARMINGTON, N.M., Aug. 26 - President Bush said on Thursday that he did not believe Senator John Kerry lied about his war record, but he declined to condemn the television commercial paid for by a veterans group alleging that Mr. Kerry came by his war medals dishonestly.

Mr. Bush's comments, in a half-hour interview with The New York Times, undercut a central accusation leveled by the veterans group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose unproven attacks on Mr. Kerry have dominated the political debate for more than two weeks.

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In the interview, which included topics like preparations for the Republican National Convention, the reconstruction of Iraq and the twin nuclear threats of North Korea and Iran, Mr. Bush portrayed himself as a victim of the same type of political interest groups - called 527 committees for the section of the tax code that created them - that are attacking Mr. Kerry.

"I understand how Senator Kerry feels - I've been attacked by 527's too,'' he said, adding that he had spoken earlier in the day to Senator John McCain and had agreed to join him in a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission to bar the groups.

Mr. Bush also acknowledged for the first time that he made a "miscalculation of what the conditions would be'' in postwar Iraq. But he insisted that the 17-month-long insurgency that has upended the administration's plans for the country was the unintended by-product of a "swift victory'' against Saddam Hussein's military, which fled and then disappeared into the cities, enabling them to mount a rebellion against the American forces far faster than Mr. Bush and his aides had anticipated.

He insisted that his strategy had been "flexible enough'' to respond, and said that even now "we're adjusting to our conditions'' in places like Najaf, where American forces have been battling one of the most militant of the Shiite groups opposing the American-installed government.

Mr. Bush deflected efforts to inquire further into what went wrong with the occupation, suggesting that such questions should be left to historians, and insisting, as his father used to, that he would resist going "on the couch'' to rethink decisions.

On environmental issues, Mr. Bush appeared unfamiliar with an administration report delivered to Congress on Wednesday that indicated that emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases were the only likely explanation for global warming over the last three decades. Previously, Mr. Bush and other officials had emphasized uncertainties in understanding the causes and consequences of global warming.

The new report was signed by Mr. Bush's secretaries of energy and commerce and his science adviser. Asked why the administration had changed its position on what causes global warming, Mr. Bush replied, "Ah, we did? I don't think so."

Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush's press secretary, said later that the administration was not changing its position on global warming and that Mr. Bush continued to be guided by continuing research at the National Academy of Sciences.

Mr. Bush conducted the interview in an unusual setting: A cinderblock dressing room, outfitted with a conference table and leather reclining chairs, accessible only by walking through a men's room underneath a small stadium here, where he appeared for a campaign rally. The president was joined by one of his closest advisers, Karen P. Hughes, who is now traveling with him; the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice; former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, who was introducing him at rallies across the state; and his press secretary, Scott McClellan.

In the interview and at three rallies across the state, Mr. Bush appeared relaxed in an open-collared shirt with his shirtsleeves rolled up. Aides said he was in a good mood because of recent polls that showed him gaining ground on Mr. Kerry after months of bad news in Iraq.

ehBeth wrote:

sozobe wrote:

My thread, I'm asking nicely --

Second request, if anyone wants to make the opposing case, go ahead but please do it on your own thread.

This thread is titled "Debunking SBVFT" which involves a claim that the swiftboat veterans making the claims against John the gigolo Kerry have in fact been debunked and now you are asking others to be polite and not try to introduce any real information or ratoinal thinking into the process?

Sorry, but that simply doesn't strike me as a reasonable request.

Brand X wrote:

He was the commander of the boat but the men who were on the boat dont remember him? Its just getting weirder and weirder, this story ...