SubscribeIn Tuesday's "cease and desist" letter, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth called on Kerry's campaign to stop what it said was the unauthorized use of the images of some of them in a 60-second biographical spot titled "Lifetime." The ad began running nationwide in early May.Mmmm. Principle-icious.
The U.S. Navy photo in question depicts 20 officers, including Kerry, and was taken January 22, 1969, on the island of An Thoi in Vietnam. The ad shows only a portion of the picture -- not all of the men are visible -- and is displayed for two seconds.
A Kerry spokesman dismissed the group's claim, noting the Swift Boat Veterans used an enlarged version of the same photo at a news conference announcing the anti-Kerry group's formation in early May.
"Somehow they didn't call to ask if they could use John Kerry's image," Michael Meehan said. "When it was useful for their politics they show a big blowup."
not widely reported by any major news serviceNow, Google News is not a particularly reliable way to check this claim. After all, stories only stay in that database for around a month, so any references to this group before mid-May won't be included. If I had Lexis-Nexus access I'd use that. But, let's just see what Google has to say. Because the Swift Boat Veterans used PRNewswire to spread their claims, the story has appeared at Yahoo.com. Now, I won't bother including all the small regional papers that wrote stories off of that release. I assume you mean the big, liberal media. So I won't bother listing all the stories from the conservative sites like NewsMax (3), WorldNetDaily (3), FrontPageMag (1), TownHall (2), or NRO (1). Now, how do you justify saying the media didn't cover this story when 2 seconds of research turn up articles from CNN and the New York Times? What, you want some Washington Post coverage? There's none in GoogleNews' results, but what happens when you expand to regular Google? There's an article on the subject from the Herald, in ultra-liberal Boston. Another from the even-more-liberal LA Times. And, yes, a story from that Queen of the 'Liberal Media,' the Washington Post. Again, I ask, how can you justify saying that the media ignored this story? Hell, it was even a top story on CBS News one night!
So Kerry testifies before the US congress that *he* *and* those he served with, committeed HORRIBLE war crimes, that he *witnessed* and *confesses to* committing himself. Even going so far as to say WHAT war crimes *he* and *they* committed.Please. That's not what he said at all. He said he was representing the soldiers who had told their stories at the Winter Soldier conference. He never said in sworn testimony before congress that he committed war crimes. I quote:
I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command....I understand it's easy to get confused. Meet the Press is so much like the Capitol building, isn't it?
They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
I think--look, there's no excusing shooting children in cold blood, or women, and killing them in cold blood. There isn't, under any circumstances. But we're not asking, you know, nor is Bob Kerrey saying, "Excuse us for what we did." We're asking people to try to understand the context and forgiveness. And I think the nation needs to understand what the nation put its young in a position to do, and move on and take those lessons and apply them to the future.btw, you do know that the US soldiers did commit war crimes in Vietnam, right? That it's not just some liberal conspiracy? It happened.
In a news conference, the swift boat group -- composed of about 215 former officers and enlisted men who served in Kerry's wartime division -- declared Kerry unfit to be president because of his statements in 1971 alleging that U.S. soldiers committed routine atrocities during the war. Kerry raised the allegations in testimony to a Senate committee investigating the war that year.I'm not sure what you'd like from the media. Perhaps they should have transcribed the entire CSPAN video or something? Would that have made you happy? They reported what the charges were that the group was lobbing at Kerry. They quoted them. They quoted Kerry's spokesman. They quoted Bush's spokesman. How is that anything but classic, by-the-books journalism?
The group also raised questions about Kerry's service record, for which he was awarded three Purple Hearts, and Bronze and Silver stars for valor. In particular, the group's founder and co-chairman, Texas lawyer John O'Neill, alleged in an interview that Kerry was awarded his first Purple Heart for a wound that was minor and self-inflicted.
"I have very serious questions based on talking to people who were involved in those incidents," said O'Neill, a former naval officer who has been a longtime Kerry critic. Calling Kerry's wound "trivial and insignificant," he said that it may have been the result of a fragment from an M-79 grenade Kerry launched at close quarters. "It was fraudulently reported [by Kerry] and used as the basis for leaving Vietnam early." O'Neill did not serve with Kerry.
Kerry spokesman David Wade denounced the statements as "a false, lying smear campaign against a decorated combat veteran." He added, "This is the ugly face of the Bush attack machine questioning John Kerry's patriotism."
Marc Racicot, chairman of Bush's reelection campaign, said in a statement: "Neither the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign nor the Republican National Committee have coordinated or participated in the planning of this news conference." O'Neill also denied any connection to the Bush camp.
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posted by mr_roboto at 6:41 PM on June 16, 2004