August 7, 2004
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have finally unveiled their campaign against John Kerry this week, first in a 30-second televised ad, and now in a new book that's vaulted to #1 on the Amazon hit parade, according to Matt Drudge....
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have hired their own lawyers in response to the Kerry/Edwards campaign's threat of ruinous lawsuits for anyone who allows the independent 527 to purchase ad time at their media outlet. For some reason, the...
Continue reading "The Swifties Fire Back" »
One more thing about the Swiftvets and John Kerry that certainly indicates that Kerry habitually either exaggerated or lied about his service in Viet Nam appears in the letter posted below. John Kerry has repeatedly insisted that he spent Christmas...
August 8, 2004
Drudge reports that the Christmas in Cambodia story continues to fall apart. John O'Neill of Swiftboat Veterans for the Truth writes in his upcoming book at more length on the Cambodia story than his letter to the station managers I...
Tom Maguire at the excellent blog Just One Minute points out this AP story from twelve years ago explaining Kerry's Cambodia experience. See if you can point out the inconsistencies in Kerry's story back in 1992: Navy Lt. John Kerry...
August 9, 2004
Longtime CQ reader Retired Military points out yet another article with yet another version of the Christmas in Cambodia story from John Kerry. Kerry had long insisted that he was ordered to patrol in Cambodian waters, and spoke of his...
Instapundit reports this evening that the Kerry campaign is now backing away from three decades of Kerry assertions that the young lieutenant took part in illegal military operations in Cambodia: Via the show, I heard a Carl Cameron story on...
August 10, 2004
The priceless Mark Steyn, the prose laureate of the Right, deconstructs the Christmas in Cambodia mythology with the skill of a surgeon in today's column. Steyn also answers those courageous Democratic Underground commenters here at CQ who called us Nazis...
Jim Rassman, the Kerry campaign mainstay who reminds everyone that the young lieutenant saved his life under fire, attempts to return the favor in today's Wall Street Journal On Line. Rassman attempts to do this with a handy bit of...
There are finally some indications that the mainstream media may take a closer look at the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign on John Kerry's war record -- the main qualification that the Democrats have put forward for his candidacy....
Apparently unable to respond substantively to the charges outlines by the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, the Left has instead decided to run with the Kerry/Edwards strategy of suing them into silence. The AP reports that three so-called "watchdog"...
I was just on the Hugh Hewitt show, discussing the Christmas In Cambodia myth that just exploded in the Kerry/Edwards campaign's face. I joined Hugh and Roger Simon (hey, who says the blogosphere ain't cool?) in reviewing the latest developments...
Stephen Gardner, a member of John Kerry's Swiftbaot crew, appeared with Hugh Hewitt on his show tonight after I had already been on. Although I missed Hugh's show -- I was taking a break at work when I went on...
August 11, 2004
Fox News updates the fallout from the collapse of the Christmas in Cambodia mythology (via Instapundit). After reviewing the story in a rather dispassionate manner, Fox includes this update to the Kerry camp's reaction: The Kerry campaign first asserted that...
Unsurprisingly, the Swiftvets' attack on John Kerry's credibility scored its first direct hit even before their book Unfit For Command has been released to the general public, and the Kerry campaign has been forced into its usual strategy -- yet...
August 12, 2004
The London Telegraph went where no American newspaper deigns to go this morning, taking a long and critical look at John Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia myth, doing the work that the American press claims it exists to do. The Telegraph's...
Let me make one point before getting to the meat of this post: I dislike Pat Buchanan. Not personally -- he seems like an interesting character -- but politically, I find him to be a destructive force and I rarely...
With the Christmas in Cambodia myth collapsing all around him, Matt Drudge is flashing the news that John Kerry has turned to official biographer Douglas Brinkley -- whose previous work never mentioned Kerry's purported foray into Cambodia -- to recast...
I don't know how I missed this, but while the New York Times has been busy plugging its ears over the Christmas in Cambodia myth, Ira Stoll has been trying to get through the media blockade in the Big Apple....
August 13, 2004
Decorated Vietnam veteran (Navy) and CQ reader Tom "River Rat" Mortensen sent me an article that he also sent to media outlets as part of the campaign to reveal the truth about Kerry's service in Viet Nam. Much has been...
Continue reading "Did David Alston Ever Serve On Kerry's Swift Boat?" »
With his campaign being pounded by the very "band of brothers" that John Kerry invoked time and again on the stump, his advisors have been working overtime on two tracks: discredit the veterans he once presumed would wholeheartedly support him...
An independent analysis of the reaction of independent voters from the Swiftvet television ads has been completed by Muhlenberg College and HCD Research and the results posted here. The study group consisted of 371 independent voters who self-described their political...
For those of you who may still be questioning Tom "River Rat" Mortensen's query about David Alston and his service with John Kerry, he dug up an interesting bit of information from the Kerry campaign web site itself. Here's the...
August 14, 2004
Thanks to reader Lori in Texas, I think we've just about pieced the record together on David Alston and his supposed service under John Kerry's command. Lori points out a sympathetic article on Del Sandusky, one of the few Swift...
On June 24th of this year, ABC ran a story on the action that gained John Kerry a Silver Star. ABC's Jake Tapper spoke at length with Kerry's crew members, including David Alston, who is quoted at length in the...
August 15, 2004
The utter media blackout on John Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia myth appears to be lifting, and in one of the least predictable markets. Scott Canon writes a Knight-Ridder wire article that at least covers the outlines of the story, and...
August 16, 2004
As early as May of 2002 the Rev. David Alston and Senator John F. Kerry commenced perpetrating a deliberate fraud on the American electorate – a fraud to present Alston as an eyewitness to Kerry’s self-reported heroics in battle. They...
Robert Novak writes about the Kerry counterattack on the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in his Chicago Sun-Times column today, focusing on the contributions of Lanny Davis. Davis, as you may recall, served as one of Bill Clinton's legal team...
Byron York at National Review Online has become the first major media correspondent to pick up on the David Alston story. Unfortunately, he failed to mention CQ, Tom Mortensen, or the Bandit for our work, but we'll forgive him, as...
Byron York of the National Review Online interviewed Fred Short in his investigation of the David Alston story, and Short gave his recollection that Alston returned to John Kerry's unit on or after 4 March. Earlier today, I gave Short...
August 17, 2004
More points of light are peeking out through the media blackout on the Christmas in Cambodia myth. In today's Boston Globe, rabid Kerry supporter Joan Vennochi insists that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are nothing more than Republican hacks...
It appears that John Kerry's strategy of lying low in order to avoid the Cambodian Christmas fable has not worked. Today. Lee Cearnal of the Houston Chronicle excoriates his media colleagues for their silence, especially given their rabid pursuit of...
Several of you have written to ask that the Alston/Kerry issue be put into some sort of timeline, and I think one would be helpful. Below is the timeline I can re-create using the information and links supplied to me...
August 18, 2004
CQ Reader Amelia picked up this intriguing report on World Net Daily, which may not be the most reliable resource on the Internet. However, this should be rather easily cross-checked, and would be if the mainstream media would ever get...
August 19, 2004
Reader and fellow blogger Pat Curley and also William Millan note that today's lead editorial in the Washington Times regarding John Kerry's conflicting claims for his first Purple Heart explicitly credits Captain's Quarters for raising the question: One of the...
Hugh Hewitt writes another of his must-read columns in today's Weekly Standard challenging historian/Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley to come out of hiding and explain his incompetent work on Tour of Duty: Drudge announced last week that Brinkley was rushing a...
The expected broadside to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth came this evening, as the New York Times advances the campaign strategy John Kerry launched this afternoon -- ad hominem attacks and screeching about funding sources while paying little factual...
August 20, 2004
CQ reader Ed Jordan, in another thread, pointed me to Virginia Postrel's Dynamist blog, where a reader asks if John Kerry's Cambodian Christmas myth could have happened at Tet instead, when Vietnamese would have been more likely to be celebrating:...
The New York Post's Deborah Orin writes a great piece on the failure of the mainstream media to do their jobs in vetting John Kerry's campaign claims, especially when it comes to the Viet Nam service he has long proclaimed...
The Bandit at Talking Issues points out yet another inconsistency in Kerry's Viet Nam narrative, this one more subtle but just as perplexing. In the Bronze Star story, Kerry's PCF-94 patrolled the waterway with four other PCFs om 13 March,...
John Kerry has the worst tin ear for politics than anyone at least since his former Massachussetts boss, Michael Dukakis, and perhaps even worse than that. All Dukakis did was ride around in a tank wearing a helmet that made...
John Kerry will have a very difficult time casting the main testimonial of the new advertisement of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as a pack of lies. The new spokesman for Swiftvet anger at John Kerry is -- John...
I posted below that I would love to get the chance to be credentialed for a John Kerry press conference where he would face all questions regarding his Swiftboat service. A reader suggested that I share what questions I would...
August 21, 2004
After the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth released their latest advertisement, a devastating look at John Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony that branded Viet Nam veterans as war criminals, Kerry's mainstream media supporters have rallied to his side. CNN attempts to...
Pat Oliphant, the syndicated cartoonist whose work appears in numerous broadsheets across the US, published an editorial cartoon that attempts to paint the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as a bunch of drunk, wannabe sailors stooging it up for George...
As Mickey Kaus noted yesterday, Chicago Tribune editor William Rood broke 35 years of silence in order to counter one of the attacks in Unfit for Command, the Swiftvet book that has sold out seven printings around the country. Rood...
August 22, 2004
As William Rood's testimony gets parsed more closely and the initial novelty of a factual refutation of a Swiftvet allegation wears off, certain elements of the story will begin to beg nagging questions. The Bandit, with whom I've worked on...
In the latest edition of Newsweek, reporters Evan Thomas and T. Trent Gegax take on the story of John Kerry's Bronze Star engagement of 13 March 1969 and write a fairly balanced article describing the controversy and the effect it...
It seems like a far cry from "Bring It On!," but John Kerry and John Edwards are begging George Bush to violate election law and the First Amendment in order to force the Swiftvets into silence: Democratic presidential candidate John...
August 23, 2004
The Kerry campaign has decided that frontal assault on an entrenched foe, despite 140 years of military experience to the contrary, is the best strategy they've got in dealing with the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth. Adan Nagourney and...
Roger Franklin at Business Week writes a clear-headed editorial in today's edition, which forms a partnership with an opposing piece in the same issue by Thane Peterson. Peterson makes the claim that despite John Kerry's promotion of his Viet Nam...
As a rule, media critics do better when they stick to media matters rather than insert themselves into political controversies. Here in the Twin Cities, we have ringside seats to the never-ending entertainment of Brian Lambert and his fact-free insertions...
August 24, 2004
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Jack Kelly reviews the devastating effect that the Swiftvets have had on John Kerry and his campaign during the short time that they've advertised their claims im his new column for Jewish World Review (which has an...
A number of people have written to me overnight stating that a Kerry campaign spokesman has acknowledged on Brit Hume's Fox news show that John Kerry's wound on 2 December 1968 came from an unintentionally self-inflicted wound -- an accident,...
Joshua Muravchik writes an article that may prove mortal to John Kerry's presidential aspirations in today's Washington Post. Muravchik's piece, entitled "Kerry's Cambodia Whopper," not only dissects the meaning of the collapse of this so-called epiphany, but it also moves...
McQ at QandO has figured out what the COSDIV 11 chronology for John Kerry's Bronze Star engagement means, and it casts a lot of doubt on Jim Rassmann's version of events -- and by definition, Kerry's as well. I must...
August 25, 2004
The New York Daily News reports that "a group of Democratic loyalists" plan to target one of the less public figures from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth by using humiliation to intimidate him into silence (2nd item): Sen. John...
Now that John Kerry's Viet Nam narrative, which once formed the center of his campaign, has come under a sort of peer review, major and minor inconsistencies keep popping up more often than VC the Wonder Dog. CQ reader Sam...
August 26, 2004
Instapundit notes today that "You won't like Bob Dole when he's angry," and he's definitely not a happy man. Dole appeared on Scarborough Country last night and reminded everyone why the Kerry campaign had to be insane to poke this...
Alert CQ reader Martin points out that the "clarifications" continually being offered by the Kerry campaign are boxing John Kerry into more and more contradictions in his Viet Nam narrative. Yesterday, in response to the revelation of Kerry's 11 December...
CNS News reports on a piece of John Kerry's testimony that, judging from my e-mail, explains a lot about the limited records that the Kerry campaign has released regarding his medals and the combat from which they came. While testifying...
August 27, 2004
An old friend of the Northern Alliance, reporter Thomas Lipscomb (who broke the stories of the Phoenix Project shortly after Kerry took control of the primaries), writes in today's Chicago Sun-Times that the US Navy disputes the records that John...
August 28, 2004
After waiting weeks for the mainstream news media to cover the collapse of John Kerry's narrative on Viet Nam, and waiting out the media attack on the testimony of over 200 combat veterans, two bellwether media outlets have suddenly reversed...
Thomas Lipscomb breaks another major development in the Chicago Sun-Times this morning, and the Kerry campaign may need to do more backpedaling as a result. Former Secretary of the Navy and 9/11 Commission member John Lehman denies ever signing the...