BUT ... BUT ... THEY'RE COMMIES!

Nightline went to Vietnam and interviewed villagers to demonstrate convincingly that Kerry deserved his Silver Star. Was there heavy fighting and did Kerry face a large number of VC?

According to Vo, there were at least 20 Viet Cong soldiers at Nha Vi there that day. "There were 12 soldiers from the provincial level and eight from the district level," he said.

His wife, Vo Thi Vi, 54, said Feb. 28, 1969, is a day that the villagers of Nha Vi hamlet will never forget. "Everything was destroyed," she said. "There's no houses left. They leveled everything. There was no leaves left. The fighting was very fierce."

According to the citation for Kerry's Silver Star, when the boats approached the hamlet, "a B-40 rocket exploded close aboard PCF 94" -- Kerry's boat. He "personally led a landing party ashore in pursuit of the enemy," the citation says, before commending Kerry's "extraordinary daring and personal courage" for "attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire."

That account is disputed by Swift boat veteran John O'Neill, author of "Unfit for Command," who maintains in his book that the statement "is simply false. There was little or no fire."

Villagers say this is what they saw:

"Firing from over here. Firing from over there. Firing from the boat," Vo Thi Vi told Nightline.

Was there dishonor in Kerry's kill?

None of the villagers seems to be able to say for a fact that they saw an American chase the man who fired the B-40 into the woods and shoot him. Nobody seems to remember that. But they have no problem remembering Ba Thang, the man who has been dismissed by Kerry's detractors as "a lone, wounded, fleeing, young Vietcong in a loincloth." (The description comes from "Unfit for Command," by Swift boat veteran John O'Neill.)

"No, this is not correct," Nguyen Thi Tuoi, 77, told ABC News. "He wore a black pajama. He was strong. He was big and strong. He was about 26 or 27." ...

Her husband, Nguyen Van Ty, in his 80s, had a slightly different account of how Ba Thang died.

"I didn't see anything because I was hiding from the bullets and the bombs," he said. "It was very fierce and there was shooting everywhere and the leaves were being shredded to pieces. I was afraid to stay up there. I had to hide. And then, when it was over, I saw Ba Thanh was dead. He may have been shot in the chest when he stood up."

So what's the response of John O'Neil of Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth? This: You can't believe 'em! They're commies!

No, really:

"While I have a tremendous amount of respect for Ted Koppel and ABC News I was appalled to learn that ABC News would go to the lengths of traveling to Vietnam to interview three Viet Cong communists in yet a third attempt by ABC to corroborate John Kerry's version of the events that took place on February 28th, 1969.

"I would only ask the American people: 'Who do you trust more, three members of a communist regime that tortured and killed our American troops or a group of more than 280 highly decorated American veterans, who proudly served their country and are now responsible members of their respective communities....'"

If you can't challenge the facts, smear the witnesses. It's an old lawyer's trick. Hey, you knew O'Neil was a lawyer, didn't you? Funny how that doesn't bother his GOP pals.

FCC won't prevent airing of anti-Kerry film, chairman says

Well, I could have told you that.

Look, attacking Sinclair is great fun, but it's time to fact-check this movie's ass. In The New York Observer, Robert Sam Anson (who's been there) makes a start, but I wish he got down to cases and did a serious, detailed debunking:

Think Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, made by the 16th assistant director....

It's distorted and manipulative, and a lot of other adjectives, including not remotely close to the truth, [the testimony] not the way John Kerry spoke and meant it. And fairness? Forget about it. There’s none -- and God knows how many P.O.W.'s were sorted through to produce the desired effect, or how many contrary opinions were left on the cutting room floor.

Stolen Honor is propaganda at its worst -- just as surely designed. And a further sign, as if more were needed, of the lengths the right will go to, democracy be damned.

But the age-old formula works: The more grotesque the lie, the harder to combat.

Anson's real work of debunking this film, or at least part of it, is here, in a column he wrote a month ago that's given over almost entirely to veterans' testimony about Vietnam atrocities -- testimony that backs up what Kerry said in 1971:

...As we approached the vill[age], everything was like burnt down. There was a group of people on this one end of the vill, about 10 women and kids. There weren't any men. I was about fourth back in line, behind the radio operator. Nobody said anything, but all of a sudden guys started shooting. They were shooting women and kids. I couldn't believe it. These guys did this so systematically, like it was something done so many times before, it was easy. It didn't appear to bother any of them. It was just cut-and-dried, like it was understood that this was going to happen.

After that, we moved down this S-shaped trail into the vill -- and there were 10 more people there. I'll never understand why they didn't take off after they saw the first 10 people killed. But they were standing there quietly. My squad leader looked at me and said, "This is a good time for you to try out your canister rounds." It was like he was saying, "If you don't, you are not one of us. And if you are not one of us, you are one of them." I was actually scared for my life.

Well, the people were standing about 20 meters away. I pointed my canister round at them, [but] just before I pulled the trigger, I deflected the barrel toward the ground. I shot and looked away. I looked back, and there was [a cloud of] dust, but everybody was still standing. As soon as I did this, the rest of the squad opened up and killed all these people, too. At that point, I isolated myself from the rest of the platoon. Stayed by this bamboo stand, shaking like I was in shock. [While I was there], they got another bunch of people and killed them. In all, it was about 30 people killed in this vill. There weren't any men there at all. Women and children only....

There's also this Village Voice article by Nicholas Turse, which is also largely given over to testimony from veterans -- in this case, veterans who confirm the specific atrocities Kerry cited (and blamed not on the men but on those in charge).

This is a start. But it's not enough.

I hope the hell the Kerry campaign has figured out a way to preemptively blunt the impact of this film, because it has the potential to change the outcome of this election.

HIS RECORD

Bush Says Debates Highlight His Record

Blasts Kill 10 in Baghdad's Green Zone

2004 Deficit Hits Record $214 Billion

--top three stories at Yahoo News right now

Words of inspiration from the No-Spin Zone:

Has America gone crazy about sex, or what? Sure, sex has been getting us in big trouble since the Garden of Eden. Most of us can't have a happy, successful life without it, but you have to control this powerful force or it will control you, and maybe cause you to lose the things in life that are most important to you.

*****

Young O'Reilly had no moves. Count them: none. So far as boy-girl interaction was concerned, I was pathetic. So were all of my friends, for all of the same reasons. So we played a lot of football and got very good at it. We imagined a lot. And we kept reading those Playboys. Every issue was like butter.

*****

For three bucks a minute and up, phone sex is available....

Can this be good? I don't think so. Dating was exciting to me because it was a slow buildup to something special -- I'm talking about the best kind of dating. Now immediate gratification is the order of the day.

*****

...don't get married unless you can put your spouse's needs above your own. Constantly.

--Bill O'Reilly, The O'Reilly Factor, hardcover edition, pp. 26, 99, 103-104, 113

(If you don't know why I'm posting this, go here or here.)

CARLTON SHERWOOD -- BUSH ADVISER?

"...he's advised the President Bush..."

A reader points e-mailed me this Real Audio link to a November '03 Judicial Watch radio show in which host Tom Fitton interviews Carlton Sherwood, the maker of the anti-Kerry documentary that's soon to be shown on Sinclair's TV stations, and says of him, about two minutes into the show, "he's advised the President Bush [sic]."

Is that so? Is that a factual error on Fitton's part, or is what he said accurate? And if Sherwood really was a Bush adviser, in what capacity? On what subject?

According to Sherwood's bio at the Stolen Honor Web site, here's what he was up to in 2003:

In early 2003, Sherwood was named executive vice-president for the wvc3 Group, an antiterrorism, security firm in Reston, VA. Later that year he traveled to Iraq to conduct a theater-wide fact-finding mission....

Hmmm -- according to Nicholas Lemann in The New Yorker, Bob Woodward has said that Bush told him this about Iraq:

"I have no outside advice. Anybody who says they're an outside adviser of this Administration on this particular matter is not telling the truth.... The only true advice I receive is from our war council...."

While working for wvc3 Group in 2003, Sherwood, the ex-newspaperman and Sun Myung Moon apologist, managed to get a couple of pro-administration stories about the war published in friendly right-wing publications. So is that how he was advising the White House -- as a propagandist? And if so, how long did the relationship continue?

HALLIBURTON

Halliburton rejiggered some workers' pensions. Then, taking advantage of a loophole that became law in Bush and Cheney's first few months in office, Halliburton screwed the workers out of a big chunk of their pension money using deceit.

It's a complicated story, but The New York Times has it here:

...Halliburton acquired the Olean division when it acquired Dresser Industries in 1998 - a deal that Vice President Dick Cheney, then Halliburton's chief executive, called a "win-win" transaction. Halliburton eventually merged the Dresser pension fund into one of its own, much smaller pension funds.

On Feb. 28, 2000, Halliburton sold its stake in the Olean unit. For pension purposes, it deemed the workers to have "terminated employment," it told them in form letters. It did not say so in these letters, but by treating them as if they had resigned, it stopped their vesting service in the pension plan. That meant that unless they had already turned 55 by March 1, 2000, they would be denied their early retirement benefit. The workers say none of this was explained to them at the time. A May 2000 memo shows the employees were told only that they would "remain active participants" in the plan, and would not be eligible to take out their money until they retired or terminated employment.

In August of that year, Mr. Cheney left Halliburton to join the Republican ticket. In 2001, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act was signed into law, including an obscure provision allowing an employer to consider workers legally severed from service if it sold the division where they worked. In July 2001, David J. Lesar, the new chief executive, executed an amendment to the pension plan, deleting four words: "or any successor thereof" from more than 150 pages. Until the deletion, the document barred workers from cashing out of the pension fund until they stopped working for their division, or any successor thereof.

This amendment was not disclosed to the work force at the time. It had the effect of allowing Halliburton to start urging workers to take their money and leave the pension fund.

So now Halliburton could legally encourage these workers to take early pension payouts -- "warning that [the workers] would otherwise lose their right to take their benefits in a single check," as the Times story notes -- and it did so, knowing that those payouts would be a fraction of what the workers had been led to expect.

... when the workers called Halliburton to enroll for their payouts in the summer of 2002, hundreds of them were told that the benefits available in their names were significantly less than what they expected....

Bill Chamberlin, a head draftsman at the division in Olean, said he was previously told he would receive about $60,000 but was offered just $28,000 by Halliburton....

Kathie Driscoll, a clerical worker, was 54 when she got her letter, urging her to take a benefit that was less than half what Dresser had earlier promised. She did, and a year later, she was laid off - just as she reached the age when she could have taken her early retirement subsidy, had it still been available. At about the same time, her mother suffered an incapacitating stroke. Ms. Driscoll lives with her mother and provides full-time care....

Did this affect the best known former Halliburton employee? Gosh, no:

Mr. Chamberlin and others expressed particular anger that when Mr. Cheney departed from Halliburton in 2000, he was too young to qualify for retirement benefits, but was granted a package worth millions of dollars anyway, through a special vote of the board.

Disgraceful -- but are you surprised?

The polls look good -- Keryy 39%-25% (uncommitted voters) at CBS, Kerry 53%-39% at CNN, Kerry wins CNN's focus group 10-7. Is Kerry just flat-out winning this election now? Are people just fed up with Bush's exasperation at the notion that anyone could possibly disagree with him?

Stephanopoulos thinks it's a draw. Mark Helperin thinks it's a draw.

...George Will, bizarrely, thinks one of the two key questions was the one on immigration. (That and Social Security.)

...I'm guessing fortysomething to fortysomething in the ABC snap poll.

...Yup: Kerry 42%, Bush 41%. (And that's in a pool of respondents that was 38% Republican, 30% Democratic, 28% independent. Nice.)

Instead of being in a constant state of rage because Kerry has the audacity to disagree with him, tonight Bush seems in a constant state of bewilderment. Odd.

Is it too much to hope that John Kerry will be great tonight? I'm actually hoping for a little less righteous anger (people know by now that he can be a stand-up guy) and a little more Capraesque (or Clintonesque) hopefulness. We all know Bush is going to be angry and pissy, so I think it would be a good contrast. The voters who are still saying they're not hearing what they want to hear in the debates want to hear someone say, in effect, "I'll lead you out of this mess"; if that sounds sentimental, well, Americans are a sentimental people (present company excepted). The still-undecideds, I think, are hearing as Kerry's message as "Bush will just keep leading you around in circles," and Bush's message as "I sure will -- it's called 'leadership.' You got a problem with that?" I don't need to hear violin music from Kerry, but I think a lot of people want to hear it from somebody; a tiny bit of schmaltz tonight might be just what he needs.

And yes, I'm prepared for this to sound stupid as of 10:30 tonight.

USED AND TOSSED ASIDE

Remember when the AARP angered many members by endorsing the Bush prescription drug plan? You'd assume the president would want to express his gratitude. You'd be wrong:

Bush to Skip AARP Gathering of 25,000

President Bush and 25,000 AARP members will be in Las Vegas at the same time this week, but the Republican incumbent won't drop in on the organization that gave a boost to last year's Medicare prescription drug law.

The 35 million-member AARP invited Bush and Democratic rival Sen. John Kerry to speak at the Las Vegas meeting. Kerry, who opposed the Medicare law, is on Thursday morning's schedule, AARP spokesman Steve Hahn said Tuesday.

The Bush campaign said it is dispatching first lady Laura Bush to the AARP meeting....

This reminds me of a passage in Nicholas Lemann's New Yorker article on Bush:

...not long after his inauguration, Bush held a White House screening of the movie "Thirteen Days," about the Cuban missile crisis, partly as a way of fostering a warm relationship with Senator Edward Kennedy, of Massachusetts, whose brothers were lionized in the movie, and who is the most important Democratic senator when it comes to education issues. Several Kennedys, including the Senator, attended the screening, and it looked as if a happy across-the-aisle partnership had begun....

Once the [No Child Left Behind] bill passed, there were no more chummy phone calls from Bush or invitations to the White House for Kennedy and [Representative George] Miller, [also a Democratic supporter of the bill,] and then, when the next federal budget came out, in January, the amount allotted to No Child Left Behind was ninety million dollars less than Kennedy and Miller felt they had been promised. Subsequent budgets brought the same pattern: no contact with the White House, and funding far below what Bush had indicated he would commit. The Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, has referred to the biggest teachers' union as a "terrorist organization."

Bush got what he wanted from the AARP, just as he got what he wanted from Kennedy and Miller, and now they're expendable -- servants he can kick after they've shined his shoes.

Nicholas Lemann's New Yorker profile of George W. Bush makes it clear that he's wary of Bush's aggressive radicalism, but it's hard not to sense profound testosterone envy as Lemann writes about Bush's appearance at a golf tournament in 1999:

... the captain of the American Ryder Cup team, Ben Crenshaw, of Austin, Texas, ... had asked Bush to come to Brookline to give the U.S. Ryder Cup team a pep talk if necessary. And, sure enough, the European team opened up what seemed to be an insurmountable lead. On the eve of the last day of the match, Bush came into the room where the team was gathered and, by prearrangement with Crenshaw, recited the text of William Barret Travis's letter from the Alamo.

... "I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna," Travis wrote (and Bush repeated to the Ryder Cup team). "I have sustained a continual Bombardment and cannonade for twenty-four hours and have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken. I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat.” Travis ends with this unforgettable, triple-underlined kicker: "victory or death."

... In Boston, the day after hearing from Bush, the American team staged a remarkable comeback and won the Ryder Cup.

Wow. Stirring, right? You can tell that this makes Lemann feel like a beta male in comparison.

But here's a part of the '99 Ryder Cup story Lemann left out:

The Daily Mirror headline summed up the British media's bitter reaction to the U.S. victory over Europe in the Ryder Cup:

"United Slobs of America."...

The anti-American outpouring was provoked in particular by the scenes at the 17th green, when players, wives, girlfriends, caddies and spectators rushed out to engulf Leonard after his huge putt.

Leonard's opponent, Spain's Jose Maria Olazabal, had to wait out the celebrations before attempting a 25-foot putt to keep Europe's hopes alive. He missed.

Sam Torrance, Europe's vice captain, called it "the most disgusting thing I've ever seen," and accused American player Tom Lehman in particular of improper behavior....

British papers cited other incidents of "appalling behavior," including a fan shouting at the top of Olazabal's backswing during his approach shot to the 17th green, verbal abuse directed by fans throughout the competition at Colin Montgomerie and spectators sending rookie Andrew Coltart in the wrong direction as he looked for a lost ball.

Montgomerie, a favorite target of U.S. golf fans, said his father left the course Sunday because he was so upset at the "hurtful comments" being directed at his son from the crowd.

The Evening Standard said the Americans showed "how to win a Cup but lose all dignity." ...

The Mirror said, "Football hooligans act better than the way the Americans have treated the Ryder Cup over the last three days. Their antics whipped the crowd into uncontrollably boorish behavior. Sporting relations between the two nations have now slipped to an all-time low." ...

"The cavalry charge, led by the clear winner in the pass-the-sickbag award, Hal Sutton -- was truly appalling, though, it has to be said, no more gross than most forms of American tribalism," the Telegraph said.

The Guardian ran the headline, "Joy of Ugly Victory brings out the Ugly American."

"The whole distasteful scene was watched by Crenshaw, who did nothing to stop it," the paper said....

Bush arrives on the scene, declares that a conflict is a full-blown war, and what follows is chest-thumping triumphalism, incivility, gratuitous attacks on foreigners, and chaos. Surprised?

Is Bush giving up on Pennsylvania? The New York Daily News reports:

President Bush appears to be conceding some ground in the hard-fought battleground of Pennsylvania, as the 2004 race, which has been fought in only a small number of states, narrows even further.

Bush has visited the Keystone State 39 times - more than any other state - but a White House source said he does not plan to return soon and Pennsylvania was not on a list of the President's top 10 advertising targets last month.

...A new Quinnipiac poll of Pennsylvania shows Kerry has only a 2-point lead, but the Keystone Poll found Kerry racking up a 7-point advantage in the state after the first debate....

Interesting.

Did you realize that the recently approved package of corporate tax breaks -- the one that helps, among others, bow-and-arrow makers, owners of NASCAR tracks, and importers of Chinese ceiling fans -- is officially known as the American Job Creation Act of 2004?

And let's not forget that the guy who's going to accuse John Kerry of fiscal irresponsibility tonight is almost certainly going to sign this bill into law.

I just heard Bush on TV telling a crowd at a campaign appearance that at the debate tomorrow he's going to say, "We're not going back to the era of tax and spend."

Oh, please, George. Please tell me you're going to say that tomorrow night.

Senator Kerry?

"Is the president referring to the last time we had a Democrat in the White House -- when we balanced the budget for the first time in a generation, and created more than twenty million new jobs? Is that what he doesn't want to go back to?"

And so on.

And the thing is, it's obvious that Kerry can respond that way, and still I think Bush is going to hand him the opportunity to say it.

Go away. Don't read this blog if you haven't read "Subsidiary of Network Airing Anti-Kerry Film Awarded 'War on Terror' Contract" at the Raw Story, or -- even more remarkable -- the stories that link the Bush administration, Sinclair broadcasting, and Enron (!) at Sid's Fishbowl and Hullabaloo. Excellent work -- I'm in awe.

Sinclair Broadcast Group says Stolen Honor isn't a Bush campaign ad, but it ought to be noted that filmmaker Carlton Sherwood's Red, White and Blue Productions shares a mailing address and phone number with Quantum Communications in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The "principal" of Quantum Communications (here he's called the CEO) is Charles R. Gerow -- a delegate to this year's Republican convention and a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association. Other items listed on Gerow's RNLA page:

Reagan/Bush Campaign Field Staff, 1980

Active involvement in numerous campaigns

Advance work in 6 Presidential campaigns

Alternate Delegate at Large, 1988

Dole for President, surrogate speaker,1996

Lawyers for Bush, 2000

He's a bit of a gadfly -- an anti-taxer who ran against GOP moderate Bill Goodling for Congress in 1996 and 1998 (he nearly pulled off an upset in '96, getting 45% of the vote; in '98 he won endorsements from Grover Norquist, Gary Bauer, and Ed Meese), and he supported Pat Toomey in the GOP primary against Arlen Specter this year. But he's no independent.

Oh, and, amusingly, Quantum Communications is providing "strategic counsel and media relations" for AccuPoll, Inc., which makes touch-screen voting machines (although Gerow may be bucking the GOP establishment in this -- AccuPoll's machines give a paper receipt).

WASHINGTON POST MISSES SWIFTEE-DOCUMENTARY LINK

This is from yesterday's Washington Post story about Sinclair's decision to air the anti-Kerry documentary Stolen Honor:

The documentary's producer -- a small production company in Harrisburg, Pa., headed by a former journalist, Carlton Sherwood -- has no official connection to the Swift boat group.

Apologies for repeating myself, but let me give you this link again -- it's to a September 29 press release that acknowledges a direct connection between the Swift boat liars and this film:

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a non-partisan, non-profit group representing more than 250 Swift Boat veterans who served with Senator John Kerry in Vietnam, announced today they are joining forces with a group of American prisoners of war who were held captive by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. The merger coincides with a new $1.4 million television ad campaign released by the new group Swift Vets and POWs For Truth...

The POWs also released a new 40 minute documentary titled Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal, produced by Pulitzer Prize and Peabody Award winning journalist Carlton Sherwood (www.stolenhonor.com)....

So what's going on here? It seems to me that the mechanism for attacking Kerry's war record may well have been designed months ago: The Swift boat guys organize themselves as a 527, do a book, and run ads, and at roughly the same time Sherwood does a documentary "independently" (while arrangements are made with GOP-friendly Sinclair to show the film on TV in the fall). Then, in the closing weeks of the campaign, the Swiftees' 527 join forces with a heretofore distinct group to release Sherwood's "independent" film.

If the documentary had been made under the aegis of the Swift boat guys' 527, it would be seen as a political ad and couldn't be shown on TV as "news" during the campaign. Conversely, if the Swiftees hadn't organized as a 527, they couldn't have run ads.

And yes, I think Karl Rove called this elaborate square dance.

Fighting terrorism like you fight the numbers racket? Welcome to the world of John F. Kerry.

--Bush-Cheney campaign Web site, October 10, 2004


...the American people must understand this war on terrorism will be fought on a variety of fronts, in different ways. The front lines will look different from the wars of the past.

So I told the American people we will direct every resource at our command to win the war against terrorists: every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence....

We've established a foreign terrorist asset tracking center at the Department of the Treasury to identify and investigate the financial infrastructure of the international terrorist networks.

It will bring together representatives of the intelligence, law enforcement and financial regulatory agencies to accomplish two goals: to follow the money as a trail to the terrorists, to follow their money so we can find out where they are; and to freeze the money to disrupt their actions....

--George W. Bush, September 24, 2001

FLIP FLOP FLYNN

2004:

Former Boston Mayor Raymond L. Flynn urged fellow Roman Catholic and home-state Sen. John F. Kerry not to "impose any abortion litmus test on candidates for the federal judiciary -- especially those who are faithful Catholics" if he is elected president.

In an ad that took nearly a full page in Sunday's New York Times, Flynn scolded Kerry for saying he would appoint only people who support abortion rights to be justices on the U.S. Supreme Court....

Kerry has denied that his standard amounts to a "litmus test," only an assurance that any prospective justice would support a constitutionally protected right of privacy....

--Boston Globe/AP


1992:

And George Bush -- George Bush won’t guarantee a women’s right to choose; I will.

Listen. Here me now. I am not pro-abortion; I am pro-choice, strongly. I believe this difficult and painful decision should be left to the women of America.

I hope the right to privacy can be protected and we will never again have to discuss this issue on political platforms. But I am old enough to remember what it was like before Roe v. Wade, and I do not want to return to the time when we made criminals of women and their doctors.

--Bill Clinton, acceptance speech, Democratic convention, July 16, 1992

On September 11, [1992,] I went to South Bend, Indiana, to deliver an address to the students and faulty at Notre Dame, America's most famous Catholic university.... The church hierarchy agreed with Bush's opposition to abortion, but I was far closer to the Catholic positions on economic and social justice.... Boston mayor Ray Flynn and Senator Harris Wofford came along to lend moral support.

--Bill Clinton, My Life, page 428

*****

(Here's the text of Flynn's ad.)