Rood Counters Swiftvets But Qualifies 250 Other Witnesses

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 claims that the Swiftvet version of Kerry's Silver Star engagement is wrong, and Kerry's is correct:

In February 1969, Rood was a lieutenant junior grade commanding PCF-23, one of the three 50-foot aluminum swift boats that carried troops up the Dong Cung, a tributary of the Bay Hap River. Kerry commanded another boat, PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz, who was killed in action six weeks later, commanded PCF-43. Ambushes from Viet Cong fighters were common because the noise from boats, powered by twin diesel engines, practically invited gunfire. Ambushes, Rood said, "were a virtual certainty." ...

In the book, O'Neill and Corsi said Kerry chased down a "young Viet Cong in a loincloth … clutching a grenade launcher which may or may not have been loaded."

Rood recalled the fleeing Viet Cong was "a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore." There were other attackers as well, he said, and his boat and Kerry's boat took significant fire.

After the attack, the task force commanding officer, then-Capt. Roy Hoffmann, sent a message of congratulations to the three swift boats, saying their charge of the ambushers was a "shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy" and that it "may be the most efficacious [method] of dealing with small numbers of ambushers," Rood said.

I don't have a problem with Rood's testimony, mostly because I believe this was the one battle the Swiftvets should have skipped, at least in terms of Kerry's engagement of the VC. If he shot at the boat, I wouldn't care if he were running away or in circles when Kerry shot him, or whether he wore a loincloth or an Armani tuxedo. Beaching a PCF appears to me to be a tremendously foolish tactical decision, as speed was its only defense and the angle leaves the gunner exposed without giving him full range to return fire -- but in this case it worked. And as Rood explains, it was not a hasty decision but one that the three other PCF officers planned in advance amongst themselves.

However, using Rood to counter -- factually, finally -- one of the Swiftvet's contentions points out that these boats worked together as a unit and that witnesses to engagements do not lose their stature merely because they happened to be on a different PCF during the engagement. If Rood's testimony is valid, and I have no doubt he means well, then that makes all of the other Swiftvets' testimony just as valid.

Besides, as Beldar notes, Rood's description of the events only challenges two assertions made by the Swiftvets: that the VC killed was dressed in a loincloth., and that the beaching of the PCF was an impulsive and foolish tactical move that amounted to grandstanding. Points noted. They still question the awarding of a Silver Star to an engagement that killed one fleeing enemy, which deserved recognition for bravery but probably in normal conditions wouldn't be considered Silver Star material. I'd chalk that up to Pentagon brass looking for good motivational stories than Kerry's legendary talent for self-aggrandisement, even if he did go out the next day to re-create the engagement for his home movie camera.

Rood and the Chicago Tribune has done nothing to put Kerry in Cambodia, or explain why he says Kerry experienced "intense combat" on 2 December while writing on 11 December that he had not yet been shot at, or any of a number of elisions, exaggerations, or outright prevarications that we have documented at Captain's Quarters and elsehwere.

Oliphant Rolls Into Ted Rall Territory

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 Bush. Apart from the execrable Ted Rall, Oliphant may be the most disgusting example of left-wing character assassination in American politics today. Here's the cartoon, which the Minneapolis Star-Tribune saw fit to reprint in today's edition:

In Oliphant's world, men like Paul Galanti -- who suffered torture for his country during his seven years as a POW in North Viet Nam -- are nothing more than drunkards indulging in resume-padding, in a gross reversal of reality. This is such a disgusting display that I find it difficult to describe it in polite terminology. Suffice it to say that Oliphant has aligned himself with the same quality of people who spat on veterans returning from honorable service because of the slander and lies of people like John Kerry. In Oliphant's twisted viewpoint, the experience of a man who endured the worst privations of Hanoi's torture for seven years is somehow trumped by a man who managed to finish only one-third of his one-year tour.

Who's the wannabe? The man who survived seven years of torture, or the man who has been telling stories of Cambodian Christmases and stealing the actions of officers like Lt. Ted Peck?

Oliphant is decribed by his home site as a Pulitzer award winner "acknowledged by many as the nation's most influential political cartoonist." The Pulitzer committee should make sure they see this entry in case they ever consider him for another award. If your local newspaper carries this trash, make sure you let them know that you won't stand for it.

Michelle Malkin On The Northern Alliance Today!

The Northern Alliance will have Michelle Malkin as our special guest on today's edition. Michelle will be discussing her new best-selling book on the internment of the Japanese during World War II, In Defense Of Internment.

Be sure to tune us in at AM 1280 The Patriot, or on our live Internet stream!

Meet Pam Wolf And Captain Ed!

Pam Wolf has been a CQ sponsor for the past few weeks, and she's running for the Minnesota State Legislature in November, in state district 51B. She faces a tough race in her district and needs the support of fellow Republicans across the state in order to bolster the Republican majority in the House. Pam's announced a great fundraiser for Sunday, September 12th -- a golf tournament at Brightwood Hills Golf Course in New Brighton, where Pam has made me the guest of honor!

The entry fee is just $30 to support one of the Republican grassroots efforts to ensure the success of Governor Tim Pawlenty's program and to play golf with one of the worst duffers in Minnesota -- me. If you don't want to play golf but just want to hang out with us and have a hot dog, come on out! Pam has the option for those who are too embarrassed to swing a club, but you'll miss out on Gimme String and the $2 Mulligans. (I may have to buy nine or ten of those right out of the gate ...)

Be sure to sign up for Pam Wolf's fundraiser and meet us on the Brightwood links three weeks from tomorrow.

Kerry Exaggerations Not Limited To His Swift Boat Experience

John Kerry undoubtedly has exaggerated or fabricated a number of his supposed experiences in his brief Swift-boat command, many of which I've covered on this blog. However, CQ reader Charles Moy points to a website for former crewmates of Kerry on board his first assignment, the USS Gridley, for their remembrances of his service -- and it turns out that Kerry's habitual self-aggrandisement extends there as well.

Former E-5 radarman Phil Carter posts a long letter explaining his service and impressions of John Kerry. Carter actually contributed to one of Kerry's Senate campaigns and paid him a visit in 1996. His personal recollections of Kerry seem innocuous and even endearing. However, Carter took the time to read Douglas Brinkley's hagiography, Tour of Duty, and objects to a number of misstatements and outright lies regarding Kerry's service:

When I read “Tour of Duty”, I became concerned because the material on Kerry’s time on GRIDLEY appeared in many instances to be exaggerations and in some cases figments of an overactive imagination. ...

4. Later on page 87 Kerry talks about Olongapo in the Philippines. He talks about bloated corpses floating in the river and starving women with babies dying of malnutrition. Now Olongapo was a wild and wooly town that existed solely for the entertainment of the US Navy, but in over three years of calling there, I never saw a single instance of either thing happening. Kerry uncovered this in his first visit. If this was from his letters home then he was certainly writing for dramatic effect. Balderdash. ...

5. The trip to Danang – GRIDLEY went into Danang for briefings before going to Northern SAR. This section is so full of hyperbole that the urge to giggle is almost uncontrollable. “The panic and pressure onboard GRIDLEY, strapping on a .45, wondering if I would have to use it, B-52’s howling overhead”. A B-52 over Danang would have been so high that only contrails would have been visible, cloud cover permitting. David Simons confirmed my recollection that during our brief stay in Danang Harbor, the sky was overcast to the point of being ominous.

More seriously, no one can remember John Kerry going ashore. I was part of the shore party that went to Monkey Mountain. We were taken in a screened in truck (to protect against grenades being tossed in) and made to unload our .45’s. The driver said that he did not want us newbies to shoot anyone by accident.

Neither Commander Kelly nor LCDR Rueckert (Kerry’s immediate boss) can recall approving a trip ashore for Ensign Kerry. The author uses remarks of David Simons IC2 as a lead in to the Danang section. I spoke to David and he has no personal knowledge of Kerry going ashore at all. He did talk to a researcher and made some generic remarks about Danang but had never discussed Danang with Kerry. He recalls arguing with the researcher because he tried to put the words “cowboy” in his mouth, which ended up in the book.

Not only does the candidate himself like to stretch the truth to the breaking point -- always to make himself look more manly, if you'll notice -- even his researchers press themselves to keep up. If Kerry never left the ship in Danang, then that calls Brinkley's work into question again. Did Brinkley or his researchers bother to fact-check anything from Kerry's journals?

There is no mystery about the “gruesome site of a pile of dead VC.” We saw no sign of anything like this. However, our escort to Monkey Mountain did tell us how the VC bodies were stacked up on the LZ’s after the TET Offensive, which had been several months before. Ensign Kerry would have been told this story by members of the shore party.

It's just another example of John Kerry adapting someone else's experience into his own narrative. Carter finishes with a clarification about whether the US Navy leaves Ensigns in charge of its warships:

6. In command – Again with the hyperbole. Kerry makes much about being “in charge” of the ship after the Captain and XO. The OOD is in charge of the operation of the ship during his four hour watch but hardly in charge of the ship. Kerry qualified almost immediately as OOD(P), in port OOD but that is a given. For much of his time onboard he would have been Junior Officer of the Deck when underway. Although his fitness report as of 22 March says "he is qualified as OOD(I) now" (Independent steaming – with no ships or land anywhere near) , only OOD(P) is listed under duties. His Fitness Report from July 1968 lists two months as OOD(I) which would mean he qualified after leaving the war zone.

Carter insists that Kerry was a good officer and well liked during his tenure on the Gridley, but obviously Carter never saw what Kerry wrote into his journals. His eyes have been opened by the massive inconsistencies coming from Kerry and Brinkley about his service, a reaction that many of the people in Kerry's units have experienced once they've read his stories.

CNN Tries To Run Interference For Kerry

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 use a little misdirection on his behalf to turn Kerry into a reporter (scroll down to subheader "Selected Comments"):

The latest ad selects quotes from Kerry's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. In the ad, Kerry says, "They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads," "randomly shot at civilians," and "razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Kahn."

The ad does not include Kerry's preface, in which he said he is reporting what others said at a Vietnam veterans conference. Instead, a swift boat group member refers to the statements as "accusations" Kerry made against Vietnam veterans.

An official transcript shows Kerry was referring to a meeting in Detroit, Michigan, that was part of what was called the Winter Soldier investigation. He told the Senate committee that veterans had testified to war crimes and relived the "absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do."

I think you can expect that to be the defense strategy of the Kerry campaign -- "All he did was represent the testimony of the Winter Soldiers." John Kerry didn't say that all Viet Nam veterans were war criminals; he claimed that the Winter Soldier witnesses claimed to be. Of course, CNN's argument misses excerpts like this:

So what I am saying is that yes, there will be some recrimination but far, far less than the 200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of America ...

A few dozen servicemen testifying in Detroit could not possibly be responsible for murdering 200,000 people a year -- and if they could, then having them all in Detroit would have solved the problem. No, Kerry went to the Senate to proclaim the results of the Winter Soldier investigation, a mechanism that he helped build in order to give polite cover to the baby-killer protests from his new band of anti-war brothers. He used his former comrades-in-arms (and some in POW camps as he spoke) as the cannon fodder for his political offensive, a term I use in every sense of the word.

If this is the best defense that Kerry and his media cohorts can muster against the second advertisement, they should be praying for a spectacular Republican convention to move the Swiftvets out of the center of attention in nine days. Perhaps some of the broadcast networks may rethink their time commitment to televising the prime-time speeches for that purpose...

UPDATE: Randy from the blog Conservative Minnesotan reminds me that Kerry said this on Meet the Press at the same time he appeared in the Senate:

LT. KERRY: "There are all kinds of atrocities and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free-fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals."

That is lifted from the MS-NBC transcript of a Meet the Press appearance from this year, when Tim Russert used a clip of the 1971 appearance for Kerry to discuss. As far as I know, NBC still has the original clip embargoed; they will not release either the rest of the videotape or a transcript of what was said. So much for the people's right to know.

Captain's Caption Contest #24: Kerry Undercover

It's Friday (evening), so it must be (past) time for another edition of the Captain's Caption Contest! I had difficulty finding our usual subject this week, since he seemed to drop off the face of the earth, until he finally popped his head up like a prairie dog to call his fellow Viet Nam combat veterans a bunch of liars. I did find this rare picture of John Kerry, hiding out:

Guest judging this week will be Marc from Cranial Cavity, or at least we hope he will! As always, put your best caption entries in the comments section -- NO e-mail, please! (E-mailed entries will be typed as journal entries at Sa Dec and run across the Cambodian border in a magic hat.) The contest will remain open until 8 pm Sunday, August 22nd, at which point the comments will be closed and Marc will pick the winners.

In the meantime, if you enjoy the contests and the blog, consider dropping in a donation for Captain's Quarters trip to New York as a credentialed blogger at the Republican National Convention. (And huge thanks to all who have already contributed!) Just click on one of the buttons below and donate whatever you can to the cause -- all donations are cheerfully and gratefully accepted!

Let the games begin!

BUMP 8/21: Great start! ...

COMMENTS CLOSED: Marc, it's all yours!

My Top Three Questions For A John Kerry Press Conference

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 prepare for such an event, assuming it ever happened, which I believe is now unlikely. The challenge is irresistable, though, and so here are the top three questions I would put to Kerry, given the opportunity.

1. For over two years, you and David Alston have spoken about your combat service together and used the engagements of 29 January and 28 February as examples of your combat bond. However, your campaign recently recanted both stories, as records show that you were not part of the 29 January engagement and Alston did not participate in your Silver Star mission. How could it be possible for you to mistake Ted Peck's mission for your own, given that his injury allowed you to take command of his ship the next day, and with the picture of your crew from the Silver Star engagement in your office, how could you allow David Alston to take credit for that mission?

2. Senator, your first Purple Heart came from an event on 2 December 1968 which you describe on your website as "intense combat". Yet, your authorized biography, based on your journals, shows your passage for 11 December 1968 as saying that 'A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn't been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven't been shot at are allowed to be cocky'. The Long Tau trip came after the 2 December engagement. How can you reconcile your journal entry with your report that led to the first Purple Heart? Can you have "intense combat" when no one shoots at you?

3. During your public life, you have often spoken of the epiphany you experienced as a young man in Cambodian territory on Christmas Eve 1968, ordered there by the government run by the man who you heard that day denying any involvement in Cambodia. You told that anecdote as far back as 1979 and as recently as 1994, and even used it on the floor of the Senate in 1986 to argue against supporting the Nicaraguan contras, claiming the event was "seared" into your mind. Yet when your crewmates and your own journal proved that to be incorrect, your campaign responded by claiming you never said it, and then that you meant you were only near Cambodia, and then that you went into Cambodia inadvertently, and then that you went there to support Special Ops insertions. Given that all of these explanations are mutually exclusive, how would you explain to undecided voters these sudden changes in your story and how that affects the credibility of the epiphany that you earlier claimed changed your entire life?

Then I would offer him a copy of the form 180 I would take care to pack for just such an occasion, in order to assist him in getting the truth out about his service record.

Now, if you had the same opportunity, what questions would you ask?

Swiftvets Take The Words Right Out Of John Kerry's Mouth

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 Kerry. You can play the second advertisment at the SBVT site yourself ahead of any ad buys.

Through their juxtaposition of John Kerry's April 1971 testimony to the Senate and the personal stories of veterans and the impact it had on them, the advertisement may be the 2,000-lb JDAM that finally busts the bunker of the Kerry/Edwards campaign. Kerry's own voice from 33 years ago, shorn of its seasoning but full of its current arrogance, almost casually accuses American veterans of atrocities while those same men explain why his testimony was not only false but a complete betrayal:

John Kerry: “They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads. . .”

Joe Ponder: “The accusations that John Kerry made against the veterans who served in Vietnam was just devastating.”

John Kerry: “. . . randomly shot at civilians. . .”

Joe Ponder: “It hurt me more than any physical wounds I had.”

John Kerry: “. . . cut off limbs, blown up bodies. . .”

Ken Cordier: “That was part of the torture, was, uh, to sign a statement that you had committed war crimes.”

John Kerry: “. . . razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan. . .”

Paul Gallanti: “John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I, and many of my, uh, comrades in North Vietnam, in the prison camps, uh, took torture to avoid saying. It demoralized us.”

John Kerry: “. . . crimes committed on a day to day basis. . . ”

Ken Cordier: “He betrayed us in the past, how could we be loyal to him now?”

John Kerry: “. . . ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam.”

Paul Gallanti: “He dishonored his country, and, uh, more, more importantly the people he served with. He just sold them out.”

By far, the most effective part of this ad is not Gallanti nor Cordier or Ponder. It is John Kerry, and the irony of having the testimony he used to climb over the reputations of good men, just to launch his political career, presented to curtail it is too delicious to ignore. The almost careless tone of voice underscores Kerry's complete lack of concern over the effect that his testimony had on his "band of brothers" and of the people of that region of the world. Those people would shortly grow smaller, by millions, thanks to the precipitous American withdrawal that he had a large hand into making a reality.

The strategy of the Swiftvets is nothing short of brilliant. Some people questioned why they didn't just start out talking about this instead of going after Kerry's service. It turns out that they knew a lot more than the naysayers could have imagined -- and they forced Kerry to withdraw a myth he's sold ever since 1979 about Cambodia. In fact, that effort has so unnerved Kerry that his campaign continues to put out changing stories two weeks later.

The predictable reaction to that would be a full-frontal assault on the motives and methods of the Swiftvets, which the New York Times and Washington Post helpfully provided this week. Some, including Mickey Kaus' bosses at Slate, considered the story to be over, as Mickey related on Hugh Hewitt tonight. But these military men know how to counterattack, too, and this ad provides the answer to the Times/Post shilling for the official Kerry position. Hardly motivated by Republican money, these men have a real grievance with Kerry that goes back a very long time, and when you see the commercial, you understand how sincere and deep that grievance runs.

No silly charts pointing to Karl Rove can get Kerry off of this hook. He set this trap himself 33 years ago, and the Swiftvets merely have forced him into it. The man who claims to have the superior intellect required to run the free world just got outfoxed again, this time by 250 men determined not to allow a man who dishonored them take command of the armed forces of this country.

Lurching From Disaster To Disaster

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 his obvious pandering look like a grade-school stunt, and he received well-deserved hoots for his effort. However, Kerry has usurped the role that his Hollywood handlers strove to hang on George Bush and John Ashcroft, attempting to intimidate combat veterans, publishers, and retailers into censoring the free political speech of dissenters:

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry asked the Federal Election Commission on Friday to force Republican critics to withdraw ads challenging his military service, and accused the Bush campaign of illegally helping coordinate the attacks.

The Kerry campaign said it filed the complaint against the group behind the ads, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, "for violating the law with inaccurate ads that are illegally coordinated with the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign and Republican National Committee."

And this:

Cutter sought to turn the argument over presidential readiness back on the White House. "Mr. McClellan needs to understand that John Kerry is not the type of leader who will sit and read `My Pet Goat' to a group of second graders while America is under attack," she said.

So, let's see ... the Kerry campaign's response to attacks from his former comrades in arms is to (a) call them liars, (b) sue them, (c) sue the Bush campaign, (d) send staffers out to attempt to intimidate the publisher and retailers to pull a best-selling book of political speech off the shelves, and (e) try to invoke Michael Moore's fantasy life as a campaign theme.

Can we all say "meltdown"?

Fair-minded people, who may have been sympathetic to Kerry up to this point, have to ask themselves why he's acting like a screechy old spinster whose beau had the temerity to ask her age. The Swiftvets are liars? Easily proven: sign the 180 and release all of the records, including the medical reports, all of the fitreps, the after-action reports, his journals -- everything. Mr. Bring It On could also additionally choose to stand at a podium and take questions from the so-called legitimate press in order to refute their charges on a factual basis, working from those records. (And thank you to Jake Tapper and The Note for suggesting that he answer a few of my questions at any such function -- perhaps Mr. Tapper could get me a credential to that press conference?)

Instead, the darling of the Hollywood set and the courageous war hero has run behind the skirts of Stephanie Cutter, who laughably calls George Bush's intestinal fortitude into question while her boss hides from the media. Michael Meehan has no problem getting in front of a microphone to berate Regnery and several retailers for carrying the book and suggests that they ban it from sale, which gives an enlightening view of how a Kerry administration will handle dissent. I suppose that the Northern Alliance would have to sign loyalty oaths to Kerry before being allowed around a microphone, and even then we'd have to submit our copy to Meehan before entering the booth.

Are these people really that stupid? Can a campaign for a major party be run by this many incompetent oafs?

And let's remember what it is that they're crying about -- one 527 has purchased less than $500,000 worth of TV ads attacking John Kerry. In contrast, a variety of 527s have spent over 100 times that amount attacking Bush:

McClellan also accused the Kerry campaign of sanctioning the same type of attack ads by outside groups that it is accusing the president of approving.

"I mean, where has the Kerry campaign been for the last year while more than $62 million in funding through these shadowy groups have been used to negatively attack the president?" he asked. Outside groups funded by Bush's opponents have spent millions on commercials that criticize the president.

The ad that drew Kerry's angry response on Thursday aired in only three states at a cost of well under $1 million. It features several Vietnam veterans who accuse Kerry of lying about the circumstances surrounding events for which he won his medals. Kerry received three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star while in Vietnam.

Even so, the Annenberg survey said "more than half the country has heard about or seen" the commercial — the result of widespread coverage on cable television and talk radio as well as the Internet.

What concerns Team Kerry is the effectiveness of the SBVT campaign, not some supposed collusion. No wonder they're crying. Unfortunately, as my good friend and colleague Rocket Man explains at Power Line, the Kerry team built the model that the Swiftvets follow:

Hypocrisy among the Democrats is never a shock, but this is really something. The Dems' 527 organizations have spent over $50 million, compared to around $250,000 by the Vets. One of the Dems' 527's, America Coming Together, is virtually the Democratic Party in exile, and a top MoveOn staffer recently moved over to the Kerry campaign. So the idea that there is something fishy about the fact that Bob Perry donates to Republican politicians as well as to the Vets is ludicrous.

The Kerry camp has convinced itself that by remaining in what they consider "attack mode", they demonstrate leadership and decisiveness, but that's just hogwash. All they demonstrate is that Kerry can't live without his lawyers to fight the battles he started. Reasonable people don't get impressed by lawsuits -- they see lawsuits as part of the problem with American society. They want straightforward answers and skilled handling of dissenting opinions. Instead, they've watched the Democrats bury their candidate and attempt to cast attention everywhere except on the questions raised by the veterans, who have already been proven correct on the Cambodian Christmas myth.

It's meltdown time at Kerry/Edwards, and it's not a pretty sight.

Hey, I Won!

I discovered when going through my e-mail ... belatedly ... that I won the Watchers Council contest for non-Council post of the week! The Watcher of Weasels was kind enough to let me know (it's been a busy week!) I was nominated for our continuing work on the Alston/Kerry story that showed their fabrications going back more than two years. Tom "River Rat" Mortensen shares this one with me. Also a winner was Alpha Patriot for his post on Swift Boats vs The Media.

Be sure to read all of the nominees. While you're there, take a good tour of the Watcher of Weasels blog. You'll be glad you did.

The Magic PCF?

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, including PCF-3, which hit a mine and sustained crippling damage, throwing Special Ops officer Jim Rassmann overboard. According to the Kerry story, he commanded 94 to retrieve Rassmann under enemy fire and then towed 3 out of harm's way. Kerry won a Bronze Star and his third Purple Heart for this engagement.

However, take a look at the official damage assessment for PCF-94, filed on 14 March:

BRAVO: ... 2. PCF not capable of executing Market Time Patrol. ...

DELTA: Two stbd and one port main cabin windows blown out. VRC-46 radio and all remote units pilot house inop. AC wiring shorted out. Onan generator inop. Steerage control after helm inop. Stbd bilge pump broken. Screws curled and chipped. Radar gear box frozen. Main engines experienced RPM drop.

The report shows no mention of who filed the damage assessment, although my assumption would be that the OinC of the boat (Kerry) would either have to have filed it or approved it. Here's what Kerry's website has to say about the end of the incident:

Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry directed his gunners to provide suppressing fire, while from an exposed position on the bow, his arm bleeding and in pain and with disregard for his safety, he pulled the man aboard. Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry then directed his boat to return and assist the other damaged boat to safety.

I'm no sailor, but how does a boat that has curled screws, engines power diminished, no AC power or generator on line, and no radio communication manage to get back to Rassman to pull him out of the water, and how does such a boat tow another back to harbor? It seems especially odd when you consider that the other three boats on the scene had no such damage to their crafts and could easily have towed PCF-3 back themselves.

There may be an innocent explanation for this, but it certainly appears that Kerry either claims to have towed the boat back when he didn't -- and other accounts back him up -- or he filed a false damage assessment, one that looks like what you'd expect for PCF-3 instead. Bandit got this originally from the Kerry campaign, and has this to say:

Since this was released by Sen. Kerry (and undoubtedly he reviewed what was being released for approval), why didn't he elect to correct this obvious error? We know he claimed in the past that his boat had struck a mine (see above Congressional Record) providing an possible explanation for his "arm bleeding and in pain" as he pulled Jim Rassmann from a river as detailed in his Bronze Star citation.

It certainly looks like this is the leftover loose thread from a previous lie that the media has allowed Kerry to escape.

UPDATE: Did anyone else catch what escaped me this morning when I wrote this -- what's missing from this report?

Bullet holes in the hull.

Regardless of whether this damage was sustained by PCF-94 or PCF-3, a boat with this kind of maneuverability problems should have been peppered with bullets if it sat in the middle of a crossfire.

Last Week's Caption Contest Update ...

I hear you clamor for the results, and the truth is that we had a disconnect with the guest judge, to no one's fault. I will judge the entries myself and post the winners tomorrow before our radio show. I apologize for not having the time this week to catch up to it, but between working and blogging for content (and the Bush rally), I just ran out of resources.

I will not be delaying this week's contest, of course ... as you will see!

UPDATE: Well, perhaps a little delayed, but it will be up by evening. I elected to run with the new Magic PCF story instead and ran out of time.

Malkin: My Evening In Hell With The Moron Twins

If readers would like to know why MS-NBC/CNBC has become a cesspool in both ratings and content, Michelle Malkin can explain it all to you in her blog today. Malkin describes what an evening on CNBC's featured political talkshow, Hardball, feels like when having having to deal with the increasingly emotionally unbalanced Chris Matthews:

As I am seated at the table with Matthews, who I am meeting for the first time, he cracks a joke--and not in a well-meaning way--about how I look. (There are quite a few people who are hung up on this.) "Are you sure you are old enough to be on the show? What are you? 28?" I grit my teeth. He badgers me again with the same question. I politely answer his question and supply my age.

(I wonder how Matthews' wife, the respected TV journalist Kathleen Matthews, who hosts a show about working women, would react if informed about her husband's treatment of a fellow female journalist. I've been in the business a dozen years and would be happy to talk to Mrs. Matthews about my firsthand experience with Neanderthal chauvinism in the workplace.)

Needless to say, things went downhill, fast and loud, from there.

Malkin wound up appearing on Hardball paired off with San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown when the Washington Post's Dana Milbank couldn't make it. Politically, I can't abide Brown, but he is sharp as a tack and quick on his feet, and I certainly would have to be on my A-game to debate him. (As an aside, Brown once referred to my uncle, former California Assemblyman Jim Morrissey, as a m*****f*****, which my uncle took as a compliment.) Malkin has a quick wit and an acerbic pen, and has enough backbone not to take crap off of anyone. Unfortunately for Matthews and his viewers, that combination of guests confirmed the diminutive emotional and intellectual status of the host, as his actions proved:

4) Willie Brown expresses exasperation over Swift Boat Vets' questions about Kerry's wounds. He says: "There are questions about the shrapnel wounds. So what else is there? How much he got shot? How deep? How much shrapnel does he have?

Note that I didn't bring the subject of shrapnel. (Got that, Keith Olbermann?) Willie Brown raised the issue.

Here is how I responded verbatim:

"Well yeah. Why don't people ask him more specific questions about the shrapnel in his leg? There are legitimate questions about whether or not it was a self-inflicted wound."

Matthews frantically stuffed words down my mouth when I raised these allegations made in Unfit for Command that Kerry's wounds might have been self-inflicted. In his ill-informed and ideologically warped mind, this transmogrified into me accusing Kerry of "shooting himself on purpose" to get an award.

I repeated that the allegations involved whether the injuries were "self inflicted wounds." I DID NOT SAY HE SHOT HIMSELF ON PURPOSE and Chris Matthews knows it.

Once again, the failure of the mainstream media to understand basic military terminology causes them to act like idiots, and the reference to the terminal puffery of Keith Olbermann will become apparent later in Malkin's story. Matthews kicked Malkin off the show at the break for being "irresponsible" -- and then immediately runs off with her copy of Unfit For Command to fact-check after the fact:

As the show broke for commercials, Matthews scrambled for his producers to see if what he said was true. And I'm irresponsible? One staffer ran to the office where I had left my copy of the book, and handed it to Matthews, who--for the first time, apparently--started flipping through it. I asked for my book back and politely said thank you. After I left, he trashed me again on the air and his scurrilous charges were repeated by his MSNBC colleague Keith Olbermann, who called me an "idiot."

Olbermann and Matthews are two main reasons why the CNBC/MS-NBC tandem can't scratch the underbelly of Nielson ratings. The meltdown of Chris Matthews has become almost complete, and the only part we're missing is a complete nervous collapse on camera, which would then be reported by Olbermann with the smirk he uses for every story for which he reads copy.

Michelle Malkin appears on the Northern Alliance Radio Network tomorrow, which starts at noon Central and can be heard via our live stream (link on my left sidebar). We'll be talking about her new book, but I'll try to work in a few moments for her experiences with the emotional and immature prima donnas of minor cable news shows.

NY Post: Blogosphere Now Leading Edge On Kerry Vetting

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 as his central qualification for the Presidency. As CQ reader Amelia discovered when she read the piece, Orin credits Captain's Quarters for uncovering the Alston dodge, which Tom "River Rat" Mortensen and I spent a lot of time and effort outlining:

THERE'S now some real angst in Democratic circles be cause of the growing evidence that Democrat John Kerry's claim to have a memory "seared in me" of spending Christmas 1968 in Cambodia was false — and just didn't happen.

But what worries some pro-Kerry Democrats is the fear that Kerry has, as one put it, "an Al Gore problem" — that he's a serial exaggerator. (Remember how Gore claimed to have invented the Internet and inspired the novel "Love Story"?)

Remember Kerry's claim that "I've met foreign leaders" who told him he had to beat Bush? Turned out he hadn't met any foreign leaders in years.

Kerry's campaign Web site claimed credit for Vietnam missions when another man, Tedd Peck, was the skipper (that was removed when he protested) and last week was claiming credit for former Sen. Bob Kerrey's service as Senate Intelligence Committee vice chairman.

"John Kerry, Bob Kerrey — similar names," blithely explained Kerry campaign spokesman Michael Meehan, as if Kerry didn't know his own bio.

Orin steps through more of the list of known Kerry lies and embellishments that are out in the open -- and it's an impressive list -- before drilling down to the crux of her column. In a year where the Internet was expected to play some role, if tangential to the main thrust of the well-heeled 527s and the party machines on both sides, the blogosphere has instead turned into a powerfully influential force. Orin uses our Alston coverage as an example:

The other fascinating part of this story is the key role that bloggers on the Internet have played in pointing out the holes in Kerry's story — even as much of the press tries to ignore them.

For instance, when Team Kerry held a press conference featuring his crewmates this week, one was conspicuously missing — David Alston — after the Internet-fueled revelation that he may have only served on Kerry's boat for one week.

A Web blogger, captainsquartersblog, began questioning whether Alston (who has spoken emotionally about how they "bled together") ever served with Kerry. National Review examined the records and concluded maybe — for just one week.

This has been the second mention for Captain's Quarters in the mainstream media in the past two days. I'm thrilled, and in this case even more so, as Orin mentions other bloggers hanging tough on Kerry's factually-challenged account of his service record. Roger Simon and Hugh Hewitt also get well-deserved credit for their tenacious efforts in keeping the light shining on Kerry. (Coincidentally, or perhaps not so much so, the three of us spent two segments of Hugh's show together last week discussing the Cambodian Christmas myth.)

What may be more fascinating is not that what we wrote here affecting the media coverage (which is what we intended, after all), but we had an impact on the campaign itself. I had not realized that David Alston had been removed from the campaign trail until Orin wrote that today. Did we do that? It's hard to say; Byron York's piece on NRO had to have had an impact, and while I think that York may have been too credulous with Fred Short, his story confirmed what we already knew: Alston and Kerry had lied for a long time about their inclusion in the actions of 28 February and 29 January, respectively. And that started here and with Bandit on his forum.

It's all very heady stuff, and everyone who contributed to the Alston story should give themselves a hand.

It Wasn't Tet, Either

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:

Kerry's biographer Doug Brinkley says that Kerry wasn't in Cambodia, or even close, on Christmas Eve 1968, which has been widely reported as proving that the story is false. But -- ain't that the LEAST important part of the story? The WSJ scoffed at Kerry's 'visions of sugar plums', but if you read what he actually said -- every time, he's been very consistent -- what 'seared' him is #s 1, 3, 4 and 5. Number two just happens to be a handle for the story, it's not essential.

And it is false. But the error tends to corrororate the rest of the story.

Cuz -- again, according to Brinkley, who has the documents -- Kerry WAS in Cambodia on several occasions, in late January and early February 1969. Kranish's reporting tends to support Brinkley in part and doesn't disprove him anywhere.

Tet was February 17, 1969.

Two things are wrong with this hypothesis. First, why would Kerry have any emotional attachment to Tet? Kerry's Catholic, not Buddhist, and his "seared" memory very much evoked the angst he felt at being separated from his home and family. But even more than that, the official chronolgy of his unit casts grave doubts on being anywhere near Cambodia at that time. Here's the entry for 18 February:

PCFs 50, 66, 72, and 94 conducted operations in the Bay Hap River ...

If so, he'd have to have returned to his unit in one hell of a hurry, through hostile territory, only to go out on a new mission as soon as he arrived. Very, very, very unlikely.

Gray Lady Hides Kerry Behind Her Skirts

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 attention to the well-documented allegations from the Swiftvets. Trying to paint the 250 decorated Viet Nam vets as stooges for eeeeevil Republican-machine leaders, the Paper of Record manages to counter a story it ignored with copious silence over the past two weeks:

Mr. Kerry called them "a front for the Bush campaign" - a charge the campaign denied. A series of interviews and a review of documents show a web of connections to the Bush family, high-profile Texas political figures and President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove.

Records show that the group received the bulk of its initial financing from two men with ties to the president and his family - one a longtime political associate of Mr. Rove's, the other a trustee of the foundation for Mr. Bush's father's presidential library. A Texas publicist who once helped prepare Mr. Bush's father for his debate when he was running for vice president provided them with strategic advice. And the group's television commercial was produced by the same team that made the devastating ad mocking Michael S. Dukakis in an oversized tank helmet when he and Mr. Bush's father faced off in the 1988 presidential election.

So they received about $200,000 dollars from Republican Bob J. Perry a few weeks after forming a 527 with the explicit mission to reveal John Kerry's lies about Viet Nam and his service? Well, isn't that shocking? Did anyone labor under the impression that the Swiftvets would get their money from billionaire George Soros? Oh, wait, sorry ... Soros' money is tied up in activist groups like Americans Coming Together and MoveOn.org dedicated to unseating George Bush -- to the tune of at least 25 times that amount.

I assume the big expose' of MoveOn as a dirty-tricks front for the Democrats will be forthcoming from the New York Times. I'll start looking tomorrow.

Unfortunately, half of the article is dedicated to the list of influential people SBVT founder John O'Neill knows through his law practice in Houston the way the Old Testament documents its geneology: O'Neill represented Falcon Seaboard, and so he knows David Dewhurst, who was (cue heavy music) "a central player" in the Texas redistricting plan. O'Neill's practice also brought him into relationships with Perry and Harlan Crow, who donated money to his cause. And because Perry was active in Texas politics, you know who he knows? Karl Rove, the eeeeeevil genius behind eeeeeevil Republicanism.

If you can sit through this litany of begats and connected-tos that lead to no conclusion whatsoever, the Times then begins to use memes that had been discarded before they wrote the article to cast doubt on the Swiftvets' credibility -- amazingly, without bothering to provide any resources to actually investigating their claims:

Mr. Elliott, who was in charge of the process of awarding medals in Vietnam, had signed one affidavit saying Mr. Kerry "was not forthright" in the statements that had led to his Silver Star. Two weeks ago, he told The Boston Globe that in retrospect he felt he should not have signed the affidavit. He then signed a second affidavit that reaffirmed his first, which the Swift Boat Veterans gave to reporters. Mr. Elliott has refused to speak publicly since then.

Elliot has repeatedly stated that his remarks were taken out of context, and that he told the Globe that he only regretted one small part of the affadavit regarding an event that he personally had not observed. Compare that to the martyr treatment that the Times gives Patrick Runyon for the same exact thing for which they hang Elliot:

Patrick Runyon, who served on a mission with Mr. Kerry, said he initially thought the caller was from a pro-Kerry group, and happily gave a statement about the night Mr. Kerry won his first Purple Heart. The investigator said he would send it to him by e-mail for his signature. Mr. Runyon said the edited version was stripped of all references to enemy combat, making it look like just another night in the Mekong Delta.

"It made it sound like I didn't believe we got any returned fire," he said. "He made it sound like it was a normal operation. It was the scariest night of my life."

I'm willing to accept Runyon's clarification, but it's worth noting that his recollection conflicts with Kerry's own journals, which clearly state at 11 December 1968 that he had not yet been shot at.

The Times also reviews the Letson testimony, if only to note that he disputes the record and says his only evidence is his own word. They cover the Bronze Star story in more detail, using today's Washington Post story regarding Larry Thurlow's Bronze Star citation as an impeachment against his testimony. However, Thurlow has repeatedly stated that he never put himself in for a medal, and that the only report that mentioned incoming enemy fire was Kerry's.

Curiously, the story that the Times has yet to cover for its readers is put last on the list: the Cambodian Christmas myth. After impugning the credibility of the Swiftvets for four full sections, the Times finally acknowledges that the Swiftvets were right about the story that Kerry once said was "seared -- seared" into his memory and has used for at least 25 years to explain his political activism (as opposed to a narcissistic egomania):

This week, as its leaders spoke with reporters, they have focused primarily on the one allegation in the book that Mr. Kerry's campaign has not been able to put to rest: that he was not in Cambodia on Christmas Eve in 1968, as he declared in a statement to the Senate in 1986. Even Mr. Brinkley, who has emerged as a defender of Mr. Kerry, said in an interview that it was unlikely that Mr. Kerry's Swift boat ventured into Cambodia on Christmas or Christmas Eve, though he said he believed that Mr. Kerry was probably there shortly afterward.

In an article of over 3,500 words, those 99 are the only coverage the Gray Lady provides for the embarrassing debacle of the campaign's last two weeks. No mention of Kerry advisor Michael Meehan's clumsy geographical explanations of how the Mekong Delta formed the border between Cambodia and Viet Nam, which the London Telegraph noted was a "geographical area not found on maps." Not a word about how the Kerry campaign insisted that Kerry never said he had been in Cambodia, hastily reversed itself when shown the Congressional Record for March 27th, 1986, and then went silent for two days while it concocted the ludicrous notion that Kerry had meant he was near Cambodia -- which makes no sense of this supposed epiphany. Finally, they dragged up Douglas Brinkley to assert that Kerry made secret missions with Special Ops guys and promised to write all about it in the next New Yorker -- and instead has hidden himself from all contact in the media.

None. Not a word over 99. And that 99 comes five paragraphs from the bottom of a 73-paragraph article.

After studiuously ignoring the raging controversy, the New York Times finally reported on it on the same day that Kerry "came out swinging," in the words of another media outlet, charging his fellow combat veterans Republican stooges. How ... convenient for Kerry that the Times had written an article that fits his campaign strategy so very well.

CBS Poll: Kerry Losing Ground In August

The new CBS poll shows that support for John Kerry in the weeks following the convention has eroded when expectations should have him gaining strength after the nomination, falling back into a virtual tie with George Bush in a poll that traditionally oversamples Democrats:

he race for the presidency is now essentially tied, with a gap between the two major party candidates within this poll’s margin of error. Voters are paying more attention to this campaign now than at this point four years ago, and their overall opinions about each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses remain relatively stable.

Just after the Democratic convention, John Kerry led President George W. Bush by a small margin; the recent tightening of the race reflects a loss of support for Kerry among some of this election’s most contested groups: Independents, veterans and Catholic voters.

Translation: if this is what CBS shows, then the Democrats are in deep weeds. If he's losing ground on Catholics, he's vulnerable in Ohio and maybe even Pennsylvania. If veterans have jumped off Kerry's boat, it's because he's beached it on the border of Cambodia. And if independents start walking away, all he has left is the lunatic fringe to reverse the momentum -- not an appealing prospect for convincing swing voters to return.

My bet is that Hugh Hewitt was completely correct in his assessment today with Peter Beinart -- the Democrats' internal polling must be setting off warning bells all over the place. That's why you suddenly see Kerry calling over 200 combat veterans from his own unit out as liars. Unfortunately for Kerry, desperation in politics is usually as attractive as it is in dating.

Suddenly, that Torricelli option looks pretty good, I'll bet, to some Democrats. Does anyone know Hillary's schedule over the next couple of months?

Ted Kennedy -- A Danger In The Air?

Drudge caught this Agence France-Presse report about Ted Kennedy making the high-risk list for the Transportation Security Agency, and he's not happy about it:

At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) Thursday, the Massachusetts Democratic senator described having endured weeks of inconvenience after his name ended up on a watch list barring persons deemed to pose a threat to civil aviation or national security from air travel.

Kennedy said that on several occasions last March, he was nearly denied permission to board a US Airways shuttle from Washington to Boston because his name landed on a no-fly list in error. ...

But the misunderstanding persisted for weeks -- even after US Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge personally intervened.

"It happened even after he called to apologize," Kennedy said at the hearing "because my name was on the list at the airports and with the airlines. He (Ridge) couldn't get my name off the list for a period of weeks."

TSA confirmed that two incidents occurred where Kennedy had been denied access to board flights, and that only the intervention of higher management had allowed him to travel as planned. TSA insists that the problem was a confusion between the Senator and a real watch-list suspect with a similar name. Kennedy used the experience to challenge DHS Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson and assert that homeland security policies make life too tough on the average citizen.

However, could it be that TSA had Kennedy on the list in part from Kennedy's actual track record of in-flight disturbances? In his book Sons Of Camelot: The Fate Of An American Dynasty, author Laurence Leamer relates this anecdote as an example of how the mainstream media gave a Boston politician a pass for strange and irrational behavior (page 121):

Ted could drink about as much as any man and still appear relatively sober. That was the most dangerous of gifts. But something was different now, and this trip brought him back to thoughts of death and dying. "They're going to shoot my ass off the way they shot Bobby's," he said as the reporters listened and took their private notes. Wanting only to pop a few more drinks, he did not eat at the airport in Fairbanks on the way home. He got on the plane and asked the flight attendant for a drink, and then another. He swaggered up and down the aisle, bouncing a pillow on the head of one of his aides, shouting for him to wake up, and then weaving along shouting, "Eskimo power! Eskimo power!" The journalists listened and noted Ted's sad state, but none of them wrote about it in their publications when they got home.

Chanting political slogans and assaulting passengers? Okay, it was 1972, but we pay TSA to stay vigilant against anyone with a history of unstable political activity, don't we?

Bye-Bye-atollah

Moqtada al-Sadr, trying to burnish his credentials as an American-style politician, flip-flopped yet again on his burning desire to foment revolution by giving into his burning desire to remain alive and out of the hands of the Iraqi government tonight. The AP reports that Sadr has ordered his Mahdi militia to abandon the Imam Ali mosque:

Radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his fighters Thursday to hand control of a revered Najaf shrine to top Shiite religious authorities, hours after U.S. forces bombed militant positions and Iraq's prime minister made a "final call" for the cleric's militia to surrender. ...

In a speech, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi had warned the radical cleric to disarm his forces and withdraw from the shrine after his government threatened to send a massive Iraqi force to root them out.

Defying that ultimatum, al-Sadr sent a telephone text message vowing to seek "martyrdom or victory," and his jubilant followers inside the shrine danced and chanted.

Later in the day, a top al-Sadr aide said the cleric had ordered his militia to relinquish control of the shrine where they have been holed up for two weeks fighting Iraqi and U.S. forces. But in a letter shown by the Arab television station Al-Arabiya, al-Sadr said he would not disband his Al Mahdi Army. Al-Sadr had said in recent days he wanted to make sure the shrine was in the custody of religious authorities, though it was unclear if the government would agree to that.

Two positions in one day? That may yet be a record for Sadr, whose on-again, off-again revolution matched perfectly with the casual ineptness of his Mahdi army and its military generalship. The only field victory Sadr can claim was his occupation of the shrine itself, and that was a desperate move to avoid annihilation. His followers must be confused to get retreat orders from the callow cleric after he exhorted them to defend the mosque to their deaths just hours before.

Somehow, I think the Allawi government will be less confused than Sadr and his henchmen. After a number of such offers to behave, quickly broken, nothing less than a surrender will make much difference now. The government insisted on hearing personally from Sadr and not from aides in order to tie him directly to the negotiations, negating a favorite Sadr tactic of disavowing truce agreements (and I suspect to lure him out).

Others, including the Secretary-General of the Arab League, proclaim great trepidation over a military effort to snuff out Sadr's sedition, predicting that any action will result in a massive Shi'ite uprising throughout Iraq. Possibly. But can anyone think that such a prospect would actually bother the Arab League? More likely the lack of such an uprising, which has been "predicted" for months now, will be exposed for the myth it is if the Allawi government takes on Sadr and quells this rebellion for good. As myths go, this one is powerful and enduring; the pan-Islam-uprising bogeyman has been used to scare Westerners since the turn of the last century, and it still works on the weak-kneed to this day.

Hopefully the Iraqis can salvage the Imam Ali mosque for its historical and artistic value, if not for its religious and cultural significance. However, if they allow their country to be hijacked over one building and refuse to stamp out direct assaults on their authority, they will not face a massive Shi'ite rebellion but a thousand smaller ones which will doom their government and condemn their people to an Islamofascist nightmare.

On The Subject Of Trolls -- Who And What Are They? (Updated)

Okay, now that I have a full-scale battle going on in the varoius comment sections, along with hints of mutiny ("Mr. Christian!"), it's time that we had a discussion about the bounds of propriety on Captain's Quarters. I had wanted to write a post about the fantastic time I had at the George Bush rally first, but I think I need to address this issue immediately, and I'd like to keep the Bush review on top.

Here's what I wrote in the CQ Comments Policy on May 15 of this year:

When I began my blog, I was advised to disable comments as some blogs have experienced many problems with "trolls", but I think that the comments are in some ways the best part of CQ. In my definition, a troll is a commenter whose comments are off-topic and designed to insult other readers or us or to start silly flame wars. Threatening comments also are the hallmark of the troll. Any comments from trolls may be deleted by the author of the post at our discretion, with or without warning or notice.

However, I do not delete comments that disagree with me, even when that disagreement is handled disagreeably. I have a number of fine, intelligent readers who regularly disagree with me, and I appreciate their points of view. I love the debate, so please feel free to continue to post your disagreements. I also don't worry too much about foul language, although you should remember that cursing should be handled as a spice: too much and you overwhelm the meal.

A number of you feel that Arne Langsetmo and Truck have crossed these lines, although by far I receive more complaints about Arne than Truck, probably because Arne posts so much more. I think some of you have a point -- in reading through Arne's output of late, he makes a lot of reference to RW (right-wing) foamers, assumed to be the other commenters on my blog. Hell, maybe me, too, although I seem to be excepted. I didn't much care for the comment regarding Ja wohl, either, a not-to-subtle aspersion of Naziism I find distasteful.

However, if you look at posts from other readers, some of whom I agree with politically, invective and name-calling have come rather easily from their keyboards. (I am not referring to Marc from Cranial Cavity, as I think he was provoked.) Do you think these people are trolls, too? At what point do I start banning people wholesale? The one troll I banned added nothing at all to the debate, just some childish one-liner insults, and posted under multiple pseudonyms. I have had at least one long-time liberal reader and commenter give up on this blog, complaining (fairly, in my mind) of the treatment she received by others in the Comments section.

Plus, I have to remind people that I work for a living, and trying to ride herd on these comments will either mean less posting and more policing, or less policing and more posting. I'm thrilled with the success of Captain's Quarters, but it does require a lot of my spare time. I'd rather focus on providing content, if possible, and allow those whom most consider trolls to die of starvation. (If one of y'all can figure out a way to make this a paying gig, of course, then I'll gladly do both ...)

So this thread is open to all of my readers to advise me what kind of community they would like to see on CQ. I warn everyone now that I will exercise a great deal of scrutiny on this thread, as I want some thoughtful answers from all sides. Any more name-calling or flaming will definitely result in my making decisions on the future of allowing certain members of our community to continue posting ... and I am keeping track of IP addresses, as well.

Let's put the politics aside and figure out where we go from here.

UPDATE: Thank you for your thoughtful responses. After spending a day thinking this over and reading your comments remotely, I have made a couple of decisions:

1. Arne Langsetmo is banned. His continued provocations on other threads while disdaining this one made my mind up. Out of respect for Arne and me, please do not further respond to his posts.

2. I will be requiring names and e-mail addresses on any comments entry. If I suspect you are a troll and your e-mail address isn't valid, you will be banned.

3. Bill Wiggington and his alter ego, Frothing Right-Wing Nut, is also banned. (Bad day to troll, dude.)

4. If this doesn't work, Typepad registration will soon be required for comments. I know that some of you have had your problems with Typepad, but the only way to effectively moderate this blog's comments will be to do it through Typepad. I don't have the time to approve 187 comments during the day, and almost as many at night -- although with Arne gone, that number may drop off.

5. I will be happy to discuss having a third party moderate comments as a fallback position, but it would have to be someone with a heck of a lot of time on their hands.

Some of you wrote to tell me that it's time that I drop the day job and get work full-time as a writer/journalist. Hey, folks, I'd love that! If any of my readership are decision-makers at a newspaper that would like to establish a blog run by someone with a talent for self-promotion on the blogosphere, feel free to contact me. You would get a good chunk of CQ's 15K+/day readership -- at least this week -- and a prolific writer. (You'll never lack for content!) I'd need a certain pay level and health coverage for the First Mate, but otherwise am reasonably self-sufficient. And if you act now, we at CQ will throw in first-person press coverage of the Republican National Convention, a value normally priced at $1,500!

Operators are standing by .... ;-)

Brinkley Must Answer For Incompetence

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 New Yorker piece into print that would defend Kerry's magic hat account, but does Brinkley really want to bet his reputation on Kerry's journals at this point? Or does he want to step back and ask himself whether a senator who invented "searing" memories might have had a creative pen along with his movie camera during his tour of duty?

It remains possible that Kerry's magic hat and his gun-running are true accounts that neither his campaign nor Admiral Hoffman know of, and which have somehow eluded the historians' accounts of the "Salem House" operations of the Studies and Observations Group that was running the covert insertions into Cambodia in early 1969.

What is more likely is that Kerry has expanded his Vietnam service whenever necessary for the advancement of his career, that he has molded it to the exigencies of the speech he needed to give or the attention he needed to gain. Kerry did not anticipate the internet or the power of a thousand pairs of eyes checking and rechecking, and he may not have counted on the instinct of a historian to preserve his reputation even at the expense of his access.

Douglas Brinkley owes the public an accounting of John Kerry's accounts. Perhaps he will salvage the senator's Cambodian tale. And perhaps he will sink it.

Brinkley forgot to be a biographer and a historian and turned himself into an unquestioning, unreasoning shill -- a black mark on any professed historian. Brinkley needs to come clean and quit hiding. Read all of Hugh's post.

Democrats Use Intimidation Tactics In Oregon

Members of the SEIU, a labor union supporting John Kerry for president, have decided to help their Democratic colleagues by targeting Ralph Nader petition gatherers for intimidation, posing as investigators and attempting to scare them off the job:

The Service Employees International Union, which supports Kerry, said in an election complaint filed with the state that it has heard from more than 30 people who say their names were falsified on Nader's petitions.

The union also has warned nearly 60 of Nader's signature-gatherers that they could face a felony conviction and prison time for knowingly submitting fraudulent signatures. ...

Nader's Oregon coordinator, Greg Kafoury, said one petition-gatherer was "badly shaken and intimidated" by two union members who knocked on her door and told her she was under investigation. "We have been sabotaged and smeared, and now we have had our people bullied by people who knock on doors at night," Kafoury said. He said there is no intentional effort to turn in invalid signatures.

Kafoury said 30 of the campaign's 150 petition-carriers have quit because of the union's actions, but he said the Nader campaign still believes it will be able to meet Tuesday's deadline.

Oregon has been one of Nader's stronger states, although that's really not saying much, and even with Nader in the race, Kerry shouldn't expect a lot of trouble hanging onto Oregon. However, the Democrats remember that Gore only barely carried the state in 2000 by 0.4%, and apparently the union goons want to take no chances. Rather than wait to find out whether the signatures collected are valid -- they can be challenged as a legal process -- the SEIU has decided to ensure that no one is around to collect them in the first place.

Many people throw around charges of fascism and Nazi tactics during this election cycle, and for the most part, they're way off base, as anyone who studied the Nazis would tell you. Leaving the Bush rally yesterday, one of the protestors held up a pathetically homemade sign written on a piece of a cardboard box proclaimimg, "Fascists For Bush," unmindful that had that been true, the attendees would have responded not by rolling their eyes and shaking their heads, but by cracking their heads instead. Responding to criticism with criticism is Socratic, not fascist, something the Hollywood elite have never learned nor care to know. However, following people to their homes an intimidating volunteers through their physical presence and vague threats of action should appall all Americans, especially since the SEIU represents goverment workers.

If this is what the Democrats have to offer in terms of political debate -- Paul Begala and James Carville shouting down criticism of John Kerry with personal invective and blockading debate, the SEIU stalking political volunteers, and their candidate threatening lawsuits against anyone who dares question the credentials he has loudly proclaimed as his primary qualification for the office for the last several months -- then I would argue that they have completely lost political legitmacy, and that the fascist taunts appear to be a matter of psychological projection. Voters should turn them out at all levels of the ballot in November, especially in Oregon.

Kerry Loves A Crowd

The Washington Post reports today on a kerfuffle between the Kerry campaign and the national-security bureaucracy on setting up security briefings for John Kerry. Dana Milbank reports that Kerry's insistence on having a larger team handle the briefings outside of Washington has provided the largest stumbling block:

Aides to President Bush and John F. Kerry are sparring over the terms for intelligence briefings for the Democratic presidential nominee, delaying the post-convention overview typically given to the challenger.

Those on Bush's side say the Kerry campaign is insisting on having briefings outside of Washington -- a hardship for top CIA officials during a time of heightened threats -- and is demanding that an unusually large number of Kerry advisers be permitted to participate in the highly classified sessions. Those on Kerry's side say it is the Bush administration that has been slow to deal with the logistics, including security clearances, needed for the briefings.

Of course, it's worth noting that up to a month ago, one of the people who would have been demanding a security clearance for these meetings would have been Kerry's national-security policy advisor for the campaign, Samuel "Sandy" Berger, who got caught months ago stuffing highest-classification notes and documents into his clothing and making some of them disappear -- and who failed to inform Kerry he was under investigation. One cannot fault the security apparatus from treating others in the Kerry campaign with a bit more caution as a result.

Another point that Milbank makes, although at the end of his uncharacteristically balanced article, is that the history of these briefings show that only the candidates themselves and an additional one or two aides ever received clearances for these "eyes-only" meetings. Milbank doesn't disclose how many people Kerry submitted for clearances, but if the use of the word "large" is any kind of accurate indication, it seems that Kerry is deliberately abusing the process, perhaps forcing the administration to object so he can claim partisanship:

According to a paper about such briefings written by the CIA, the preelection sessions for nominees have typically been open to the presidential candidate, the vice presidential nominee and one or two aides, and have been held in various locations. Carter was briefed with Walter F. Mondale and two aides. In 1980, Ronald Reagan was joined by George H.W. Bush and three aides. In 1988, Michael S. Dukakis received the briefing with Lloyd Bentsen, one aide and two members of the House intelligence committee. In 1992, Bill Clinton was joined by Al Gore and two lawmakers.

One point not made by Milbank is that both Kerry and John Edwards are members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, where they should be able to review most of the data anyway. Why do they need a large number of aides to be cleared for these briefings? They have repeatedly relied on their committee membership as a qualification for them to step into the executive branch -- especially Edwards, whose incomplete first term in the Senate (or anywhere else) has been interrupted further by his campaiging in the primaries and now in the general election.

My guess is that Kerry's no-show record for the committee -- 76%, which led even his staff to confuse Kerry with Senator Bob Kerrey -- would be repeated at these briefings as well, in spirit if not corporeally. He doesn't want to be bothered to travel back to Washington for a national-security briefing, and it looks like even if he did, he'd not give it much attention, relying on aides instead.

Is this the kind of attention that national security would receive under a Kerry administration? Sadly, the answer appears to be yes.

Captain's Quarters Inspires Washington Times Editorial

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 criteria for awarding a Purple Heart is that the person in question was involved in action against the enemy. A wound resulting from friendly fire still qualifies for a Purple Heart as long as it was incurred while engaged with the enemy. We relate this information because the writers over at Captainsquartersblog.com have raised an interesting question surrounding John Kerry's first Purple Heart.

By golly, they even get the domain name right! And that's not all -- they review the relevant facts without delving at all into motivations and point out that between his journal, his authorized biography, and his website, Kerry impeaches himself:

According to Mr. Kerry's account of what happened on Dec. 2, 1968, he and his crew were steering a Navy skimmer on patrol in Cam Ranh Bay. Mr. Kerry and his crew came upon a group of Vietnamese unloading cargo on the far shore. Mr. Kerry and his crew opened fire. In the brief moments of action, Mr. Kerry received a shrapnel wound in his arm from an unknown source. What's missing is any mention that Mr. Kerry's crew was fired upon. ...

The question is not whether Mr. Kerry was sufficiently wounded on Dec. 2. The question is: Was Mr. Kerry actually involved in combat that night? ... What amounts to a record of the night are a timeline that states, "December 2, 1968: Kerry experiences first intense combat ...

But two weeks after Dec. 2, 1968, Mr. Kerry wrote an entry in his journal that raises questions about his own account of that night. Shortly after being wounded, Mr. Kerry was transferred to Cat Lo on the Mekong Delta and assumed his first command of a swift boat. In his biography of Mr. Kerry, "Tour of Duty," Douglas Brinkley reports on page 189 that soon after Mr. Kerry turned 25 on Dec. 11, 1968, he headed out on his first mission: "[The crew] had no lust for battle, but they also were not afraid. Kerry wrote in his notebook, 'A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn't been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven't been shot at are allowed to be cocky'. "

The Times leaves the obvious conclusions for the reader. I think that the understated and dispassionate nature of their editorial makes the argument far more effective than one might expect; it reads like an indictment, which it surely is. In the comments section of my original post on this subject, a great deal of effort has gone into parsing the rules and regulations of the Purple Heart commendation, most of which misses the heart of the issue. Kerry said he was in combat on December 2nd, an event which he has described as one of the most frightening experiences of his life -- and yet his journal and his authorized biography have him explaining that nine days afterward, he and his crew had the cockiness of Americans who had never seen combat. The Washington Times gets the problem: John Kerry lies, lies badly, and does it to feed his ego and his career.

Having our site show up in an editorial of a major newspaper as the explicit inspiration for uncovering this kind of shenanigans amazes me. I had no idea the editors of the Times read my blog (or perhaps I assume too much -- although I didn't e-mail them, someone else may have). But let's not forget that the original reporting came from Art Moore at WND and that Amelia first brought it to my attention, or that more readers found the relevant passage of Tour of Duty in a searchable function at Amazon.com.

The blogosphere has become a community of interacting forces and blurred lines, where readers, bloggers, and primary news sources blend into a continuum more than remain discrete parts. I can't help but think that the continuum evolved further today, and that the information media has moved another step away from a delivery-only mechanism to a real partnership with those they serve. Perhaps objectivity, or at least transparency, will be the next step. We can hope -- and as all of us proved here at CQ, we can also work towards that goal.

Bush Ignites St. Paul, Norm Coleman Provides The Match

In my entire life, I have never attended a political rally of any large scope. The closest I got was the election-night party at the Orange County Performing Arts Center when my uncle ran (and won) his first term as California State Assemblyman, and a friend's house when he ran for the Cerritos school board (he lost, unfortunately). When my fellow members of the Northern Alliance received an invitation to attend today's George Bush rally, the opportunity was too good to pass up. And I'm glad I didn't.

Quite a few members of our family out here decided to come along, incluing Sean from Everything I Know Is Wrong and the First Mate. However, I got the option of using a VIP ticket to stand in front of the stage, or what I called the Mosh Pit, along with Mitch Berg, and Brian "St. Paul" Ward and the Elder of Fraters Libertas, and I decided that I wanted to see the President up close and personal.

I brought along the digital camera and a cool new digital recorder to capture the speeches. However, I forgot to check the batteries on the camera, and as a result, I only got one usable picture of Bush during his speech. I won't make that mistake again. While I had fresh batteries in the sound recorder, the quality of the recording itself (blaring out from loudspeakers) doesn't lend itself to easy transcription.

In short, I had an early lesson in what not to do in New York, two weeks from now. And I'm glad I learned them now, rather than there.

Apart from these glitches -- and the fact that standing in one spot for four hours is hell on my back and legs -- I have to say that the rally was one of the most energizing political experiences I have had. The Republicans presented a number of speakers, emceed by the ever-acerbic Laura Ingraham, who was in fine form tonight. She led off with a short speech, and after that limited herself to commentary between the speakers. The first emotional high point came early, when St. Paul mayor and Democrat Randy Kelly came onstage to wild approbation in order to endorse George Bush. He explained that America needs "stable leadership" in tough times, and received his longest applause.

Members of the Republican Congressional delegation came and went, all good speakers, to generous cheering. Mark Kennedy quieted the room down with a touching story about his experience with an Iraqi woman who traveled to the US after the liberation to learn more about democracy. After taking her around the Capitol, Kennedy noticed that she had her picture taken with an American flag that she deliberately draped over her shoulder. He got her a flag that had flown over Capitol Hill during 2003 and presented her with it as a gift, explaining that it had flown over the building while her country was being liberated -- and she wept with joy. Gil Gutknecht and John Kline also did a fine job with their time, although both acknowledged that they had been asked to hurry it up, as the rally was running long.

Between these seasoned pros, we heard two firebrands -- Colonel Joe Repya and the leader of the College Republicans, whose name escapes me at the moment. (UPDATE: Eric Hoplin!) Both fired up the crowd, and both held the crowd's attention through their exhortations to get active and make a difference in the election. I was particularly impressed with Eric Hoplin, and feel sure we will hear from him again, and soon.

But by far, the two stars of the night apart from Ricky Skaggs' musical interlude were Senator Norm Coleman and George Bush himself. I got a taste of what was in store later when Coleman took the stage to wild cheers and screaming, and Coleman did not disappoint. Keeping his remarks rather short as well, Coleman went over the ten reasons to keep George Bush in office:

10. Values Matter: "George Bush's values are America's values..."
9. It's The Economy, Stupid: "The Democrats put us into a recession and George Bush is bringing us out.
8. You Can't Beat Somethin' With Nothin': "The Democrats are the bubble-boy party of ideas. They want to stop the tax cuts, stop the churches, stop the highways ... they're a NASCAR racer with no gas pedal."
7. Darned Good Ideas: "He's a reformer with results."
6. Telling The Truth: "John Kerry voted for the war and against it, he voted for education reform and against it, for the Patriot act and against it. He's Wendy's for lunch when the cameras are on him, and shrimp vandallo when the cameras are off. If elected, he'd be the only President to give the State of the Union speech and the rebuttal."
5. Leadership Matters: "[John Kerry] picked his vice-presidential candidate not on the basis of accomplishment but on the basis of polls."
4. We Are At War: "Minnesotans know a work horse from a showhorse, and we don't change horses mid-stream ... We have committed to a goal, and we will finish the job."
3. Good Things Come To Those Who Wait: "The president knows we cannot change course and still come to our destination."
2. He's A Good Man: "He's one of us...He cares more about what Americans think than what the UN or the Europeans think."
1. He's Our President: "When the towers fell, he lifted our spirits; when the terrorists raged, he fired right back...This Xcel Energy center did not rise from words or good intentions, and neither will America rise unless she is led by a man with the courage of his convictions."

Coleman packed more into an eight-minute speech than most people can handle in an hour or more.

And then Bush came on to paroxysms of delight from the crowd. Even those who had been a bit diffident to everyone else -- you know, the too-hip-to-cheer folks that gave golf claps to everyone but Coleman -- seemed to get excited for Bush's prolonged entrance. He arrived in a huge campaign RV (believe me, you won't mistake this beast on the road) that rolled right into the arena, and had to finally wave people down to give Mayor Randy Kelly a chance to introduce him. After the introduction, another multi-minute ovation erupted. Finally, he had the chance to speak.

People have the impression that George Bush is a lousy speaker. Not true. When working from a prepared speech, he's actually very effective and projects a clear and honest charm that is sadly lacking in his opponent's pedantic and lecturing style. He also works best when working in a bit of humor and gentle, understated digging, which the media refers to as "mockery":

I'm proud of my running mate, Dick Cheney. I admit it -- he's not the prettiest face in the race. [Laughter] I didn't pick him for his looks. [Laughter]

Most of his speech stayed on the themes that he has already sounded on the stump this year -- the war on terror, the economy, education and tort reform (with a special emphasis here on medical tort reform, as the Twin Cities hosts several world-class research facilities). He spoke on his newer theme of the "ownership society," noting that more people own their own homes under his expanding economy than ever before. People who own their own homes and businesses, Bush explained, feel more than ever that they own a stake in America.

One highly effective part of his speech dealt with the successes of his administration in implementing reforms of Medicare, education, and other issues, while contrasting it to Kerry's lack of legislative accomplishments in his Senate tenure. He made the point explicit -- voters have the choice in November between the candidate who talks endlessly on issues, and usually on both sides of them, or the candidate who actually made things happen.

I wish I could provide more of Bush's speech, verbatim. Unfortunately, the recording is more difficult to parse than Coleman's, because of the cheering around me during most of it. However, the President's tone and style comes through, even if the mike was too sensitive to the ambient noise, and Bush's ease at the podium clearly comes through. If this was a warm-up to the Republican convention in two weeks, he will blow people people away.

I can't wait.

Straight Into The Heart Of Darkness

Fellow Northern Alliance members Scott "Big Trunk" Johnson and John "Rocket Man" Hinderaker of Power Line perform a public service for Twin Cities residents in today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Since the Strib has decided not to cover questions regarding John Kerry's credibility in its news section, the Power-houses of the local blog scene have invaded their op-ed section instead:

The story of his 1968 Christmas in Cambodia is one that Kerry has told on many occasions over the years. He invoked the story in 1979 in the course of his review of the movie "Apocalypse Now" for the Boston Herald. Most recently, Kerry told the story -- with remarkable embellishments involving a CIA man who gave him his favorite hat -- last year on separate occasions to reporters Laura Blumenfeld of the Washington Post and Michael Kranish of the Boston Globe. ...

Over the past few weeks, the Christmas in Cambodia tale, a keystone of John Kerry's Vietnam autobiography, has been revealed to be fraudulent. On Christmas 1968, Kerry was docked at Sa Dec, 50 miles from Cambodia, in an area from which the Cambodian border was inaccessible.

You could never prove that in the Strib's news section, of course, because although they followed every meme of the "Bush AWOL" story with bated breath, the Strib hasn't provided a moment's coverage of the Cambodian Christmas myth. Their readers may wonder about this story suddenly appearing in its expert presentation by Scott and John. They have an answer for the Strib's readership that I'm surprised they approved for their pages:

Neither the influential mainstream newspapers nor the broadcast television networks have reported the meltdown of Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia story. Only readers of Internet blogs such as ours have kept current on the exposure of Kerry's tall tale. Or on the Kerry campaign's lame efforts to resurrect a version of the story that contradicts what Kerry has said for the past 25 years, but allows Kerry to continue using his Vietnam experiences, real and imagined, for his own political purposes.

Whatever the reason -- and we have our suspicions -- when it comes to scrutiny of Sen. Kerry's veracity, the mainstream media are saluting, but they are decidedly not reporting for duty.

Read the whole thing, and make sure you give it to anyone who doesn't understand why the Cambodian Christmas myth matters in this election.

Did Kerry Admit To Falsifying His First Purple-Heart Report?

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 off its duff and started doing its job. According to Art Moore, Kerry's account of taking incoming fire as the reason for his first Purple Heart injury is disputed by his own journal:

A previously unnoticed passage in John Kerry's approved war biography, citing his own journals, appears to contradict the senator's claim he won his first Purple Heart as a result of an injury sustained under enemy fire. Kerry, who served as commander of a Navy swift boat, has insisted he was wounded by enemy fire Dec. 2, 1968, when he and two other men took a smaller vessel, a Boston Whaler, on a patrol north of his base at Cam Ranh Bay.

But Douglas Brinkley's "Tour of Duty," for which Kerry supplied his journals and letters, indicates that as Kerry set out on a subsequent mission, he had not yet been under enemy fire.

While the date of the four-day excursion on PCF-44 [Patrol Craft Fast] is not specified, Brinkley notes it commenced when Kerry "had just turned 25, on Dec. 11, 1968," which was nine days after the incident in which he claimed he had been wounded by enemy fire.

This is what Kerry's journal said at the time, according to Moore, and apparently Brinkley:

"They pulled away from the pier at Cat Lo with spirits high, feeling satisfied with the way things were going for them. They had no lust for battle, but they also were were not afraid. Kerry wrote in his notebook, 'A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn't been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven't been shot at are allowed to be cocky.'"

If this is true -- and Brinkley wrote the book using Kerry's journal as a prime resourse -- it absolutely destroys his first Purple Heart claim. It shows that Kerry set out to get as many PH awards as quickly as possible, probably in order to build a political resume as a war hero. It also demonstrates that Kerry felt free to lie about his actions for the sake of self-promotion.

If it's true, it's devastating, and also devastatingly stupid, removing yet another supposed qualification for the presidency for Kerry. If it's true.

UPDATE: It appears to be true. This passage sets up the Kerry journal entry:

"On the bright side, the four-day cruise proved that Lieutenant (j.g.) Kerry -- who had just turned 25 on December 11, 1968 -- was a fine leader of his men."

That would be about nine days after his supposed combat injury on 2 December. Moore was right; the passage that Brinkley quotes from Kerry's journal directly refutes his Purple Heart story.

Compare that to the timeline at the John Kerry website:

December 2, 1968: Kerry experiences first intense combat; receives first combat related injury.

December 6, 1968: Kerry moved to Coastal Division 11 at An Thoi on Phu Quoc Island

December 13, 1968: Kerry moved to Coastal Division 13, Cam Ranh Bay

So now Kerry not only won commendations at a rate which threatened to outstrip Audie Murphy (literally) but also managed to win a combat award a week before he saw combat. Now we can understand the reluctance of his superiors to award the first Purple Heart; even John Kerry admitted in his own writing that he didn't deserve it. It takes a gross stupidity or an unbelievable egomania for Kerry to think that no one would cross-reference dates between his journal and the service record he had posted on his site in order to boost his credentials for the presidency! Not to mention a fecklessness bordering on incompetence for his biographer, Douglas Brinkley, who at last report was busy trying to rescue the Cambodian Christmas myth for the New Yorker.

Do the lies ever end for Kerry?

Chris Matthews: 9/11 Dick Cheney's Fault

Has anyone ever seen a media hack self-implode the way Chris Matthews has over the past week? First he comes unglued all over John O'Neill and can't keep from interrupting him every time O'Neill says something Matthews can't refute. Next he shouts down Matthew Dowd for supporting George Bush. Last Friday he put on his tinfoil hat and blamed 9/11 not on the terrorists, not on foreign-policy and intelligence failures, but on one man -- the left's favorite example of eeeeeeeevil Republicanism, Vice President Dick Cheney:

MATTHEWS: MSNBC‘s Felix Schein is on the campaign trail with John Kerry up in Portland, Oregon. And MSNBC‘s Priya David has been on the campaign trail with Vice President Dick Cheney. Let me go to Priya, sitting with me right now. Priya, what is this argument over the word “sensitive”? What‘s wrong with that?

PRIYA DAVID, MSNBC POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, according to John Kerry, nothing. He released a statement today...

MATTHEWS: Well, according to anybody, what‘s it mean?

DAVID: ... saying, you know, Don‘t worry about it...

MATTHEWS: What‘s the word choice?

DAVID: Well, you know, what they‘re trying to do is frame that John Kerry is weak. That‘s the message that they‘ve had all along.

MATTHEWS: OK, let‘s get some...

DAVID: It‘s a very typical message.

MATTHEWS: ... straight—Dick Cheney is probably the man most responsible for the fact we‘ve had troops in Saudi Arabia for 10 years. That‘s what drove the terrorists to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They were angry that their own holy lands were besmirched—basically, dumped on by the United States for 10 years.

That sensitivity might have saved us a horror, knowing how angry those people would be about us putting our troops, 10,000 troops in the holy land near Mecca and Medina. Why is it stupid to be sensitive to those kinds of insults to a country?

Don't you think that it's possible that the man most responsible for having troops in Saudi Arabia for ten years might have been the president which had them in place for eight of them -- Bill Clinton? Or perhaps the man who they were designed to contain -- Saddam Hussein? Dick Cheney was the Secretary of Defense when American troops arrived in Saudi Arabia as part of the coalition the first Bush put together to force Iraq out of Kuwait. That would have been in late 1990. Cheney was defense secretary for two years after that. Cheney again enters the picture in January 2001 as Vice-President in January 2001, and less than eight months later, we are attacked on 9/11. That adds up to a little less than three years of involvement.

On the other hand, those troops -- which were supposed to ensure Saddam's compliance with the terms of the cease-fire and the variety of UNSC resolutions -- sat there for eight years under the auspices of Bill Clinton while Saddam defied the world and stuffed his pockets. They should have been used in 1998 to invade Iraq as soon as Saddam kicked the inspectors out, the most egregious (though far from only) violation of the cease-fire and UNSC resolutions.

I've long since stopped watching Hardball because Matthews had descended into lunacy. Thankfully, CNBC's other viewer, CQ reader Wolff, pointed this one out to me.

Big Day Tomorrow

I will be lightly posting tomorrow morning and then off for the bulk of the day, as I will be attending a speech by George Bush at the nearby Xcel Energy Center, along with most of my Northern Alliance comrades and my family. I even got a VIP ticket, so I plan to bring my digital camera and my digital recorder so I can come back and blog about the appearance. Laura Ingraham opens up for the President, so we can expect a lively afternoon/evening. Unfortunately, I have to get up at 3:30 tomorrow so I can put a full day in at the office before leaving for the speech.

I'm looking forward to the event. Xcel holds about 15,000 people, and I'll bet you there won't be a sitzpinkler in the whole arena...

Sitzpinkler: Your CQ Word Of The Day

Just when you thought that the Japanese had the market cornered on weird inventions, the Germans have asserted their industrial might to push ahead. Well, German women have pushed ahead, anyway:

German men are being shamed into urinating while sitting down by a gadget which is saving millions of women from cleaning up in the bathroom after them.

The WC ghost, a £6 voice-alarm, reprimands men for standing at the lavatory pan. It is triggered when the seat is lifted. The battery-operated devices are attached to the seats and deliver stern warnings to those who attempt to stand and urinate (known as "Stehpinkeln").

Lest you think that Anglo-American men have nothing to worry about, the Brunhilde women plan on making English-language versions available. English-speaking men may soon be interrupted in the lavatory by the sound of the quintessential American male role model insisting that the guys take it like a girl:

Their prototype English-speaking WC ghost says in an American drawl: "Don't you go wetting this floor cowboy, you never know who's behind you. So sit down, get your water pistol in the bowl where it belongs. Ha, ha, ha."

Apparently, the Germans have a word for men who can't stand up for themselves, both literally and figuratively. It's 'sitzpinkler', which means both one who sits when urinating and wimp. All CQ regulars should take every opportunity to use this phrase as often as they can, especially in a political context ... It applies wonderfully to those who make something a central issue in a campaign and then uses underlings to answer questions about it instead, don't you think?

And At The End, They Shot Spider Again For Old Times

How would you feel if these guys all got together at an Italian restaurant while you were the waiter? As long as Joe Pesci wasn't around, at least you wouldn't worry about getting a bottle upside the head as a tip:

The theme of the night was "breaking bread, not legs" when some of the cast and filmmakers of "Goodfellas" reunited for a traditional sit-down dinner Monday night.

Ray Liotta, Paul Sorvino and real-life mob informant Henry Hill — whose gangland experiences inspired the story — showed up to gobble baked ziti, swap stories, sing some Italian opera and recall director Martin Scorsese's acclaimed mob movie.

If you haven't seen it, Goodfellas is really one of the best Mafia pictures ever made -- less artistic than the Godfather series, but more realistic in its depiction of organized crime. Rather than indulge in a false romance about gangsters and codes of ethics, Goodfellas tells it like it is about the mob: thieves on an Amway plan, whose discipline was destroyed by the drug trade. I've never read the book on which the movie was based ("Wiseguys"), but I have read "Donnie Brasco", which made the same essential point from an undercover FBI agent's point of view.

Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci didn't make it to the reunion, and neither did director Martin Scorcese, although one of my favorite people, former Dodger skipper Tommy Lasorda happened by and sang a little opera with Paul Sorvino. No mention of Michael Imperioli in the article, although had he come in with a limp, that would have made my night ...

The Alston Timeline (Updated)

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 by Tom "River Rat" Mortensen, The Bandit, Lori, and several others. I'll update this timeline as more information becomes available.

The Bandit, whose work with River Rat formed the basis of this thread, has updated his original article, so be sure to check back there for more information.

UPDATE: More background information from River Rat and a bump to the top of the blog.

06 December 1968

PCF-44 under the command Lt (jg) John Kerry (with Gardner, Hatch, Wasser, Whitlow, and Zaldonis) and PCF-57 under the command of Lt. Ted Peck (with Alston, Belodeau, Medeiros, Sandusky, and Thorsen) depart Cam Rahn Bay for an extended 4 day coastal passage (including a brief stop in Cat Lo for repairs to PCF-44) to COSDIV 11’s AOR based in An Thoi. (T of D) 154, 167).

07 December 1968

This date is questionable as Brinkley says the arrival in An Thoi was on 7 Dec 1968. (T of D pg. 172) Brinkley thus contradicts himself when he says it was 4 day trip. I estimate the trip with a brief repair stop in Cat Lo should have put Kerry and Peck at An Thoi late in the day on 07 Dec 1968.

13 December 1968.

After 5 days of coastal (not river) patrols and no action Kerry and PCF-44 is ordered (or requested transfer) to COSDIV 13 based in Cat Lo. (T of D pg. 186). Alston remains with Peck on PCF-57 and operates out of An Thoi until 21 Jan 69.

Ted Peck and the crew, including Alston, take over PCF-94 after Peck’s return from the “Saigon Meeting”. PCF-57 had gone in for repairs and Lt. Peck assumed command of PCF-94, with his entire crew including Alston, on 23 Jan 69. (T of D pg. 261)

This leads to further speculation regarding the provenance of the crew photo which includes Alston. Is it a cropped photo taken by Medeiros of the crews of PCF-44 and PCF-57 prior to their departure from Cam Rahn Bay? Was it taken or taken and cropped at some point in the period 6 Dec 68 and ending 13 Dec 68 while when PCF-44 and PCF-57 were in transit or operating out of An Thoi? Was it taken or taken and taken and cropped in the period commencing sometime between 8 January after which Kerry and PCF-44 returned to the An Thoi area of operation and 29 Jan 69 while Alston was serving under Lt. Ted Peck?

13 January 1969

PCF-44, under John Kerry's command, participates in its first action in Coastal Division 11 (Page 2), indicating that his transfer from Cosdiv 13 came between 08 January and this date. Lt. Ted Peck still had command of PCF-94 at the time:

PCFs 50, 88, and 44 conducted operations in the Song Ong Doc. Units were sent up river and air strikes were called in to hit known VC ambush sites.

22 January 1969

John Kerry and all other Swiftboat officers go to Saigon to meet with Admiral Zumwalt, leaving his command of PCF-44.

Kerry and other Swift boat commanders travel to Saigon for meeting with Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, Commander Naval Forces Vietnam (COMNAVFORV), and Gen. Creighton Abrams, Commander United States Military Assistance Command Vietnam (COMUSMACV)

25 January 1969

Lt. Ted Peck commands PCF-94 in combat (Page 3, 2nd paragraph):

PCFs 66 and 94 proceeded up Song Ong Doc in support of ground forces.

This demonstrates that Zumwalt's Saigon meeting had wrapped up and the commanders were back in their assigned zone by 23 January. Peck had returned to PCF-94.

28 January 1969

River Rat sends this update: "Ted Peck was OinC of 94 until 29 Jan 69. Alston was the forward gunner. Both were wounded on 29 Jan 69 and medevaced. Kerry took over PCF-94 no earlier than 30 Jan 69. It doesn't appear at this writing Alston served under Kerry's command at any time other than an undated photo. Kerry and PCF-44 were transferred to Cosdiv 11 sometime between 08 Jan 69 and 13 Jan 69. The first action recorded for Kerry in the An Thoi AOR took place on 15 Jan 69, and it was aboard PCF-44.

"Previously Kerry and PCF-44 were assigned to COSDIV 13 commencing 13 Dec 68 at Cat Lo which is at the mouth of the Mekong River about 200 NM from An Thoi. The last note on Kerry in COSDIV 13 in Cat Lo was on the Streuli FitRip; a cable of recognition to Kerry dated 08 Jan 69. The Streuli FitRep was signed and dated 28 Jan 69."

This will demonstrate the falsity of the Meehan timeline as noted below.

29 January 1969

PCF-94, under command of Lt. Ted Peck, is ambushed; Lt. Peck and David Alston wounded and evacuated, Alston to Binh Thuy [emph. mine -- CE]. Record posted at johnkerry.com, later removed:

AWFA: GMG2 DAVID MARION Alston, USN, 99T 57 46
BRAVO: ACTIVE DUTY, ATTACHED TO COASTAL DIVISION ELEVEN AT AN THOI, RVN
CHARLIE: INJURY, HOSTILE FIRE
DELTA: 29, JAN 69, 1030H, SONG CUA LON - SONG BO DE, WHILE SERVING AS FORWARD GUNNER ABOARD PCF 94, ENGAGED IN CORDON AND SEARCH OPERATIONS IN THE ABOVE RIVER, GMG2 Alston RECEIVED SHRAPNEL WOUNDS TO HIS HEAD WHEN PCF CAME UNDER INTENSE HOSTILE ROCKET AND A/W FIRE.
ECHO: CONDITION GOOD, PROGNOSIS GOOD. PRESENCE OF NOK IS NOT MEDICALLY WARRANTED AS REPORTED BY CORPSMAN.
FOXTROT: MRS. IDA MCQUILLAR ALSTON, MOTHER
GOLF: NOK NOT OFFICIALLY NOTIFIED. REQ NOK NOT REPEAT NOT BE NOTIFIED.
HOTEL: SERVICEMAN TREATED BY CORPSMAN AND MEDEVACED TO 29TH EVAC HOSP. BINH THUY.
2. PATIENT ABL TO COMMUNICATE WITH NOK.
3. NO FURTHER INFO WILL FOLLOW.

Lt. Peck was the only officer on board PCF-94, as enlisted man Del Sandusky takes command of the boat following Lt. Peck's wounding. The article confirms the disabling nature of at least Peck's wound and the timing of the attack which wounded Alston:

In January 1969, Sandusky's boat, PCF-94, came under attack during one such ambush. Lt. Ted Peck, the officer in charge, and another crewman were seriously wounded. Sandusky had to take command.

The boat was sinking and on fire, but Sandusky steered it back to safety. They counted 155 bullet holes in the boat and found a live enemy rocket in the main cabin.

30 January 1969

John Kerry takes command of PCF-94 as his crew on PCF-44 had rotated stateside while Kerry was in Saigon. Sandusky provides both the exact date and the sequence which clarifies this, as the Kerry website obscures the date with "late January":

With their officer headed home, the crew of PCF-94 needed a leader. And Lt. j.g. John Kerry, whose crew on PCF-44 had rotated back home, needed men to lead. ... From Jan. 30 to March 13, 1969, Kerry and the crew of the PCF-94 would conduct 18 missions in the Mekong Delta river system. In that time, Kerry would earn a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and add two Purple Hearts to the one he received earlier.

The date obscuration is important, because Kerry had tried at one time to appropriate the action of 29 January to his own command rather than Peck's. Note Kerry advisor Michael Meehan's use of the phrase, "Kerry's boat":

29 JAN 1969 Cua Lon Rivers

Early in the morning seven swift boats embarked on a mission to destroy enemy installations along the Cua Lon River. While Kerry's boat and another (PCF72) were probing a canal along the river, Kerry's boat came under heavy fire and was hit by a B-40 rocket in the cabin area. One member of Kerry's crew -- Forward Gunner David Alston - suffered shrapnel wounds in his head. His injuries were not considered serious and he was sent to the 29th Evac Hospital at Binh Thuy.

Note also on that link that Meehan appropriates all of the missions for PCF-94 between January 1 and January 30 in an attempt to acquire its combat record, even if it puts Kerry on two Swift boats concurrently (PCF-44 and PCF-94). Peck himself complained of this misappropriation in April of this year:

On the Kerry website, the report of the combat on that day on the 94 boat is posted as occurring during Kerry's time as skipper of the boat. Peck said Kerry replaced him after the Jan. 29, 1969, event.

"Those are definitely mine," Peck said, referring to the combat reports that the Kerry campaign posted as representing Kerry's action. "There is no doubt about it."

On or about 13 February 1969

Sailor Fred Short arrives on board PCF-94 as a replacement for the injured David Alston, indicating that Alston had not recovered enough from his wounds on 29 January to return to duty:

The crewman with the best view of the action was Frederic Short, the man in the tub operating the twin guns. Short had not talked to Kerry for 34 years, until after he was recently contacted by a Globe reporter. Kerry said he had "totally forgotten" Short was on board that day.

Short had joined Kerry's crew just two weeks earlier, as a last-minute replacement, and he was as green as the Arkansas grass of his home.

This is confirmed in another article in the Akron Beacon-Journal, which mentions Alston as the sailor Short replaced:

Short, 56, wasn't supposed to be on Kerry's boat. A gunner's mate 3rd class, he was assigned to PCF 94 to replace a gunner who had been wounded. That wounded gunner, the Rev. David Alston of South Carolina, was one of the speakers at the convention Monday.

28 February 1969

John Kerry commands PCF-94 into an action which wins him a Silver Star and a commendation of some kind for every member of his crew. Several days after the February 28, 1969 action, Kerry was flown to An Thoi, South Vietnam, where Vice Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., pinned the Silver Star on Kerry's chest. From the book Tour of Duty (courtesy reader JFK-No):

In addition to Kerry's Silver Star PCF-94's performance on February 28 also earned Bronze Stars for Tommy Belodeau and Mike Medeiros and Navy Commendation Medals with Combat V Devices for Del Sandusky, Fred Short, and Gene Thorson.

What about David Alston? Despite the awards going to every other crewmember on PC-94, Alston's name is curiously left off the awards list. Consider Alston's recollection of the same engagement:

Since Kerry will not talk about the day he killed a man, four of Kerry's crewmates from the Navy Swift boat he commanded sat down with Nightline to try to explain what happened, though not one was eager to revisit the events of that day. ...

Alston recalled: "I know when John Kerry told Del to beach that damn boat, this was a brand-new ball game. We wasn't running. We took it to Charlie." ...

The Boston Globe carries a picture of the award recipients which include Kerry and five crew members taken at the time the Silver Star and other awards were presented, which should be a full complement for the Swiftboat. None of them are Alston. Short, Alston's replacement as gunner, received a commendation for his action, and again his account has him manning the guns in the action of 28 February:

The crewman with the best view of the action was Frederic Short, the man in the tub operating the twin guns. ... Short had joined Kerry's crew just two weeks earlier, as a last-minute replacement, and he was as green as the Arkansas grass of his home.

While this is not conclusive in the criminal sense, this sequence of events suggests strongly that Alston never served directly under Kerry in combat or at any other time. It certainly demonstrates a high probability that Alston lied about being part of the 28 February action that gained Kerry his Silver Star.

These discrepancies could also explain Meehan's strange appropriation of Ted Peck's command time in combat with PCF-94. With Alston on board to support Kerry, the campaign needed a way to get Alston and Kerry on the same boat at the same time. Unfortunately for Kerry, Peck himself recognized that the dates Kerry used stole his own combat record for Kerry's use. At the time, no one understood what Kerry had to gain by mixing up the dates and just assumed it was a mistake.

One thing is clear: if Alston never served on the Swift boat with Kerry, or even if he didn't serve during the 28 February action, then Alston lied at the convention and especially during his interview with Jake Tapper at ABC. What's more, the men who served on PCF-94 during February -- especially Short, who replaced Alston two weeks after Alston's injury -- knew that he lied about it. And while Kerry may not have known about Meehan's juggling of the timeline, Kerry had to know that Alston had not been under his command in February 1969. If he didn't realize it at first (assuming Alston returned to duty in the two weeks that Kerry had left on PCF-94), he should have realized it when Short reminded him of his replacement service:

Short had not talked to Kerry for 34 years, until after he was recently contacted by a Globe reporter. Kerry said he had "totally forgotten" Short was on board that day.

One more point: The picture of John Kerry's crew from his Silver Star award had to have come from Kerry's own collection. The Boston Globe ran an entire pictographic series of Kerry's life using Kerry's pictures as a primary source. How likely is it that Kerry had the picture of his crew and yet forgot that Short was part of the action? Or could it have been that Kerry realized that Short's appearance would complicate Alston's story?

In order to clear this up, both Kerry and Alston need to release all of their military records for review. Because the way it looks right now, Kerry and his campaign have perpetrated a fraud in order to bolster the credentials from the only executive role he has ever had, and the central qualification he's put forward for his candidacy.

Addendum: I've received a ton of comments regarding the picture of Alston with Kerry that I included in the first Alston post. The picture was taken by Madeiros, and some sites have dated it from March 1969. However, it doesn't appear to have been taken on a Swift boat, which could mean it was taken in January, in the week between Saigon and 29 January, when Alston was injured. Alston had to be out of action at least a month, or else he would have returned to PCF-94. That means his wounds had to be fairly serious, and you can easily see that Alston's head looks just fine in the photograph. Plus, you'll notice that Short doesn't appear in the photograph -- and Short joined the crew in mid-February. If it's the crew of PCF-94 after mid-February, where's Short? Madeiros took the picture, so he's not behind the camera.

It could have been taken if and when Alston returned to PCF-94, but that had to be after 28 February, since we can see that Alston was not part of that engagement.

I believe that the photograph is genuine -- I'm no expert, but I can't believe that the Kerry campaign would take that kind of risk, and besides, it appears normal to me. A photo of the crews of PCF-57 (Ted Peck) and PCF-44 (John Kerry) could have been taken as early as 6 Dec 1968 when the two boats departed on a extended 4 day coastal passage for John Kerry’s 1st abbreviated assignment on PCF-44 to COSDIV 11 in An Thoi.

Houston Chronicle Shines Light On Kerry

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 AWOL allegations against George Bush earlier this year. Cearnal manages to hit all of the salient points, and even includes the "magic hat":

The same news media that demanded George W. Bush release his National Guard records — and went over them with a microscope — have shown an appalling lack of interest in John Kerry's military service. And as it turns out, there are far more legitimate questions about the latter than the former. Kerry has made his four months and 11 days in Vietnam the central theme of his presidential campaign. This is entirely understandable given his 20 years as the Senate's leading dove. He needs the cover that Vietnam can give him. ...

As to the truth of this tale, there is only Kerry's word, which the press seems quite willing to take, to the extent of not reporting on the controversy at all. It is not a trivial matter. Kerry has pimped the story repeatedly in an effort to paint himself as a stand-up eyewitness to events that were both illegal and, in his view, immoral.

And that is really the central issue as to why this matters. Kerry used stories like the Cambodian Christmas in order to puff up his anti-war resume early in his political career, used them again in order to add heft to his opposition to assisting the Nicaraguan contras, and now uses these stories to boost his credentials as a war president. Pimping, indeed -- Kerry can't seem to decide what qualifications go with which job, or with which policy position. However, until the Swiftvets demolished the Cambodia tale, it had the unique distinction of being the most consistent story Kerry ever told about his Viet Nam experience.

Earlier, I noted that Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe made the point about Kerry's character, and lack of it, in his hiding behind his proxies once people started questioning him about his narrative. Lee Cearnal does the same, only to his colleagues in the media. Let's hope they'll be more responsive than Kerry.

Even Rabid Partisans Demand Answers From Kerry

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 ... and yet:

Kerry offers the promise of a credible voice speaking truth to Americans and the world. Therefore, Bush's one hope for reelection rests in changing that perception about Kerry. The incumbent must somehow turn this election into a choice between liars. That's what the Bush campaign is doing via the book, "Unfit for Command," written by the Vietnam veterans who question Kerry's actions in the war, and via a Willie Horton-like television commercial by those same vets that has been denounced by Democrats and Republicans alike. However, having surrogates denounce an ad and question the motives of the attackers does not necessarily diminish their effectiveness.

You really have to read the entire Vennochi op-ed to get the sense of her bias. Comparing the Swiftvets' ad to the Willie Horton ad -- which originated with Al Gore, Joan! -- only works in the sense that both were factually correct. Unless Vennochi has found an undercurrent of racism in attacking John Kerry for his misrepresentation of his military record, why Willie Horton? It's a handy codeword for eeeeeeeeevil Republican tactics, so much so that Vennochi has lost its definition entirely.

And yet ...

But ridiculous as it may be, Kerry ignores the attack at his peril. If Bush and Kerry are both liars, it gives voters a reason to rationalize sticking with Bush.

Bush is the known purveyor of false information. He is the president who convinced a nation to wage war because, as he told us, Iraq represented an imminent threat to America. He is the president who invaded another country on the basis of bad intelligence or bad faith -- it doesn't really matter which.

Well, Joan, it does if your main purpose is to support the "Bush Lied, People Died" meme. If he acted on bad intelligence in good faith, as all sources indicate, then he didn't lie. Bill Clinton, the member-nations of the Security Council, and Congress -- including your candidate John Kerry -- all reached the same conclusion. It turned out to be wrong, or just possibly out of date, but that doesn't make it a lie. Not unless you're three years old and can't understand the difference.

And yet ...

Kerry's statements about Cambodia do have traction for opponents. He has referred to spending Christmas or Christmas Eve 1968 in Cambodia and coming under fire. At the time Cambodia was neutral and supposedly off-limits to US troops. "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia," Kerry said in 1986 at a Senate committee hearing on US policy toward Central America. "I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there, the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me."

The Kerry campaign now says Kerry's runs into Cambodia came in early 1969. "Swift boat crews regularly operated along the Cambodian border from Ha Tien on the Gulf of Thailand to the rivers of the Mekong south and west of Saigon," Michael Meehan, a Kerry adviser, said in a statement last week. "Many times he was on or near the Cambodian border and on one occasion crossed into Cambodia at the request of members of a special operations group."

Answers like that aren't good enough. Kerry put his Vietnam service before voters as the seminal character issue of his presidential campaign. He should answer every question voters have about it -- and he should answer them himself.

Even the Bush-haters seem to get this one. Kerry brought this fight on by repeatedly using his Viet Nam record as a character issue, but when challenged, has hid behind a phalanx of advisors who keep giving contradictory answers. That reveals more about Kerry's character than a thousand Swiftvets sitting at a thousand typewriters. When Joan Vennochi loses patience with John Kerry's ducking, we know the story has started to hit home. (via Instapundit)

The Corn People Vs The Northeasterner

The Boston Globe has been working since June with a small focus group of undecided voters in Ohio, arguably one of the two most important swing states in the upcoming election (Florida being the other). At this point, one could expect that the group would be evenly split among the two candidates, much as recent polling shows Ohio to be at this moment. However, the Globe found that Kerry's message has not resonated with its focus group, and three of the five who express any preference lean Bush:

Amy Locy's opinion of the president is not temperate. "I just can't stand George Bush," said the deputy clerk of council of nearby Munroe Falls. ...

Score one for Democratic nominee John F. Kerry?

Not quite. Locy, 39, is still undecided in the presidential race.

You know it's getting bad when Kerry starts having trouble locking in the Bush-hater voters. The Globe finds that the challenger has credibility and message problems in Ohio, that the focus group considers him standoffish, phony, and indecisive. While Ohio has been hard hit by the economy over the past four years, these voters tend not to blame that on George Bush but on market forces. Four of the five support Bush on the war.

But more than anything else, Kerry's style seems to be wearing thin with Ohio voters:

Some in the group questioned Kerry's ability to reach them anyway. The senator is very Northeastern, they said, the kind of candidate who has trouble connecting with ordinary folk. Locy and Beegle felt Kerry was talking down to them, and several in the group said Kerry's selection of North Carolina Senator John Edwards as his running mate was a transparent attempt to give the candidate some common-man bona fides. Locy called Edwards "the plain, normal-folk guy bringing it down to our level so you'll be able to understand this gumball and ice cream cone sensibility, putting it down to a level so we can understand."

"A lot of New England people think Ohio people and this region's people are stupid," said Gaul, who regularly watches the talk show of Boston native Conan O'Brien. "They always make fun of Cleveland, and like this is a corn state. My impression is that New England people often think Midwesterners are stupid."

King said: "They talk like that about people in Ohio, yet we're the deciding vote. What's funny is, the corn people know."

It looks like Kerry will be a tough sell in the Buckeye State, a situation that our friend Hugh Hewitt underscores every chance he gets.

Kerry Can't Dance, But He'll Steal Your Credit

John Fogerty appears to be a big fan of John Kerry, and the admiration surely is mutual. Kerry, in fact, seems to be an embodiment of Fogerty's song "Zaenz Can't Dance". In an unbelievable gaffe ten days ago, the Kerry campaign fired back at allegations made by the Bush campaign that Kerry was a no-show at Senate Intelligence Committee meetings a whopping 76% of the time by claiming, in part, that Kerry had been the Vice-Chairman of the committee:

BUSH-CHENEY CREDIBILITY GAP

Narrator: "And after the first attack on the World Trade Center Kerry proposed cutting intelligence by $7.5 billion and missed over 3/4 of the Senate Intelligence Committee public hearings. Just like clockwork."

THE RECORD

John Kerry is an Experienced Leader in the Intelligence Field - - John Kerry served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for 6 years and is the former Vice Chairman of the Committee.

Well, for a real credibility gap, there's no place like Kerry. Or is it Kerrey? Because it turns out that Kerry/Edwards can't distingiush JFK from former Senator Bob Kerrey, who actually was the SSCI Vice-Chairman. Eugene Volokh notes the discrepancy, as well as Robert Tagorda:

The LexisNexis Congressional Page, whose member profiles go back to the 1997-1998 session, provides the following intelligence-committee ranks for Kerry:

108th Congress (2003-2004): Not a member
107th Congress (2001-2002): Not a member
106th Congress (1999-2000): 3
105th Congress (1997-1998): 4

If John Kerry was the Vice-Chairman, he would have to have been the second-ranking member of the committee, a position he never attained.

Volokh commented that he wouldn't want to be in the shoes of the staffer who made that mistake. That staffer, however, seems to be following in the footsteps of the candidate himself, who has made a career of assuming the work of others into his personal narrative -- real people like Lt. Ted Peck and his actions on 29 January 1969, and fictional characters like Captain Benjamin Willard from Apocalypse Now.

No Cheering In The Press Box?

CQ reader (and frequent e-mailer of late) Tamsey sent over a very interesting alternate view of the UNITY conference of minority journalists, at which both George Bush and John Kerry appeared. It gives an insight into the kind of coverage that the American electorate receives for the presidential election, including a pretty good indication why the Swiftvets' specific allegations have received almost no attention, except to call the group a bunch of Republican stooges. James T. Campbell, a member of the Houston Chronicle's editorial board, describes the vastly different receptions given to both men by what are supposed to be journalistic professionals:

It was an affirming moment. Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry walks onto the stage and audience members jump to their feet and applaud with wild enthusiasm. A campaign pep rally in Boston?

No, it was the UNITY: Journalists of Color convention, a gathering of African-American, Hispanic, Asian-American and Native American journalists, recently held in Washington D.C.

As I sat there with Karen Hunter, the readers' representative for the Hartford Courant and Chronicle colleague Pete McConnell, I thought this affirms what conservatives say about the "liberal media." This was a firmly partisan crowd when it shouldn't have been. I wanted to shout "No! no! We're journalists. This is not supposed to happen" each time the crowd of journalists rose to its feet to applaud Kerry.

Even Kerry, who was basking in the glow of love like a blushing rock star, must have been taken aback by this suspension of journalistic etiquette. It crossed my mind that had Kerry whimsically ordered the crowd "to raise your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't care," he likely would have received cheerful compliance. It was that surreal.

While Campbell waited for John Kerry to leap into the mosh pit of adoring fans -- er, seasoned reporters -- he found that the journalists had regained their composure by the time George Bush spoke. In fact, their reception of the President differed greatly:

In contrast, President Bush's reception was exceedingly underwhelming, if civil. Indeed, had Kerry received a like reception the previous day, we wouldn't be having this discussion. But unlike Kerry, there were no repeated interruptions of Bush's address. No sporadic chants of "Bush, Bush, Bush" from the crowd. But there was disrespectful laughter from some in the crowd when, during the question and answer session, Bush stumbled while trying to answer a question about "tribal sovereignty." Conversely, no one laughed the previous day when Kerry flailed for an answer to a question that had stumped him. The difference was remarkable, and again affirming.

Bob Steele, a senior ethics faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla., told a Baltimore Sun reporter of the display, "The key value here is professionalism. We should not allow ourselves to cross over the lights at the foot of the stage with partisan behavior."

Campbell notes that, ironically, the last panel at the convention to meet was the ethics panel, which sought the answer to the question, "Is the public right to distrust their news?" Campbell answers in the resounding affirmative.

Good for him for speaking out about this lack of objectivity from those who hold themselves out as such. However, did anyone else notice any other newspapers cover this angle from the UNITY conference? If not, then that answers the ethics panel's question far better than Campbell just did.

This is the state of the mainstream news media in America. They are not careful arbiters of the information stream, objectively reporting all the news that's fit to print. They are largely cheerleaders for the Democrats. Only a few MSM organizations dare to reveal that. Be sure to follow those outlets for your reality check on the information you receive.

UPDATE: If you want an example of how this affects the news coverage of electoral issues, look no farther than Patterico's analyis of the Los Angeles Times and its story on the Swift Boat veterans:

The article is pro-Kerry spin, pure and simple. The strategy of the article is apparent: before actually setting forth a single detail of the Swift Boat Vets' allegations, the article carefully lays the groundwork to prepare the reader to be skeptical. The article accomplishes this in multiple ways -- many of them misleading, and all of them prime examples of the fine art of slanted rhetoric.

First, the allegations are described early on as "staples of conservative talk shows and Internet sites" -- code language telling readers that the allegations need not be taken seriously.

The story then uses several misleading turns of phrase to suggest that the veterans really don't know what they're talking about, and that Kerry has been forthright about his Vietnam experience...

Read all of Patterico's excellent analysis.

Fred Short: Not Your Average Military Historian

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 the benefit of the doubt, because I didn't believe that Short had any particular axe to grind, except for his support for John Kerry. In the end, that testimony proves the specific points Tom "River Rat" Mortensen, The Bandit, and I (along with readers like Lori) have made about the lies built into the stories told by Alston and Kerry. Alston didn't take part in the action on 28 February and Kerry was not on PCF-94 on 29 January, as both had claimed since at least May 2002.

However, an anonymous reader sent me a link to an AP story, still available at Fox News, which throws some doubt on Short as a credible witness. Short gave an interview on April 29, 2003, in support of John Kerry in the early days of the campaign. In that interview, Short wildly exaggerated the ambush that Kerry fought through on 13 March:

Short recalled the third of three ambushes on their group of boats on March 4, 1969, when his twin 50-caliber machine guns couldn't tilt low enough to shoot a Viet Cong soldier lying in a ditch, aiming a rocket launcher at their boat.

"We were in a small canal and normally we would have tried to exit, but Mr. Kerry ordered us to charge," Short said. "While I shot high, he and Tommy Bellodeau charged under me, right at the guy, and we routed them. That's why Mr. Kerry won the Silver Star."

Short said the crew avoided any casualties, even though 800 of 900 American troops caught in that zone died that day [emph mine -- CE]. He said it was a few weeks later, April 28, 1969, that he finished his tour and last saluted Kerry.

The casualty counts in Short's story boggle the imagination. We lost over 58,000 men and women in almost a decade of fighting, and in the worst year, we lost 16,000 (1968). The worst week for KIA was 10-17 February 1968, when we lost 543. Short's assertion that we lost 800 in a single engagement is so outrageous that it goes beyond mere embellishment -- it's either a separation from reality, or another deliberate falsification in order to burnish Kerry's leadership credentials.

In fact, the ten worst engagements in terms of KIA were:

Battle............Combat fatalities..........Dates

Ia Drang Valley..........300...........10/23/65 - 11/26/65
Khe Sanh.................205...........1/20/68 - 4/14/68
Dak To...................192...........11/1/67 - 12/1/67
Cu Nghi..................121...........1/28/66 - 1/31/66
Hue......................119...........2/2/68 - 3/2/68
Kim Son Valley...........107...........2/16/66 - 2/28/66
Con Thien(ambush near)....84...........7/2/67
"Nine Days in May"........79...........5/18/67 - 2/28/67
Dak To....................76...........6/22/67
Vinh Huy..................73...........5/30/67 - 6/2/67

Not only would Short's description would have topped this list, but it would have almost tripled its nearest competitor. 800 casualties in a single engagement in 1969 would have amounted to almost 8% of all KIA for the year.

Even beyond this incredible embellishment, Short makes a very obvious factual error in the interview. He has his last day of service in Viet Nam as 28 April 1969, which one would assume a man would remember; you could reasonably expect it to be "seared" into his memory. However, he told the AP reporter that 28 April 1969 was the "last day he saluted Kerry," a nice rhetorical flourish. Unfortunately for Short, Kerry wasn't in Viet Nam to return the salute. Kerry left Viet Nam on 17 March 1969 after leveraging his third Purple Heart into a transfer stateside, either on his own (Kerry's version) or by persuasion (some SBVT reports).

None of this means Short lied, and indeed, the wild nature of his claims doesn't really help anyone out. It does, however, have some bearing to his reliability as a witness.

UPDATE: Thanks to alert reader Tom Howard for pointing out a searchable database for Viet Nam casualties. According to this database, there were 45 hostile-fire deaths for all branches of the service on 28 February 1969 in the entire country of Viet Nam. (You may need to reload the search to get the results.)

NRO Picks Up The Alston Story, Clarifies Time Line

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 he manages to both extend the story, correct some points in our posts, and emphasize that both Alston and Kerry lied about their joint service:

In the last few days, there's been a new accusation floating around the Internet about John Kerry's Vietnam record. It involves speculation that David Alston, one of the "band of brothers" who served on board Kerry's Swift Boat, did not actually serve with Kerry at all. If such a story were true, it would be sensational news, given that Alston has made extensive public statements, including a speech at the Democratic National Convention, about his time with Kerry. The only problem is, it's not true. Alston did indeed serve under Kerry.

But the attention the rumor brought to Alston and his service aboard Kerry's boat, PCF-94, has cast new light on the time the men were together. And it appears that while Alston was in fact on board PCF-94 when Kerry was in command, his total time of service under Kerry was quite brief — perhaps as little as seven days. According to records of Kerry's service posted on his campaign's website, it appears the two men were in actual combat together on two of those days ...

York interviewed Fred Short, Alston's replacement as gunner on PCF-94, and Short tells York that Alston eventually came back to PCF-94 and replaced him as the regular gunner's mate, sometime after 4 March. Since Kerry's last engagement occurred on 13 March, it appears that Alston served under Kerry's command ... for a week, including two engagements.

But York also notes that Alston and Kerry have both misrepresented their time together, as we noted earlier this morning:

In addition, Alston has on at least one occasion seemed to give the impression that he was present for Kerry's Silver Star-winning actions on February 28. "I know when John Kerry told [crew member Del Sandusky] to beach that damn boat, this was a brand-new ball game," Alston told ABC's Nightline on June 22. "We wasn't running. We took it to Charlie."

For his part, Kerry has sometimes left the impression that he was present when Alston was wounded. Paying tribute to Alston's service during a speech before a South Carolina veterans' group in May 2002, Kerry said, according to an account in The New Republic, "He [Alston] sat up in a turret above my head in the pilot house — firing twin fifty-calibers to suppress enemy fire from ambushes. We were extremely exposed — always shot at first.... On one occasion in an ambush his turret was riddled with almost one hundred bullets penetrating the aluminum skin. This gunman kept firing even though he was wounded — one bullet going through his helmet, grazing his head and another hitting his arm...."

That description sounds precisely like the incident on January 29, 1969 in which Alston was wounded. But Lt. Peck, and not Kerry, was in command of PCF-94 that day.

According to a report in the Boston Globe, the Kerry campaign website has in the past listed Kerry as being the skipper of PCF-94 at the time of Alston's wounding. When Kerry's military records were first posted on the site, according to the Globe, "the campaign summarize[d] action that took place on Jan. 29, 1969, this way: 'While Kerry's boat and another (PCF-72) were probing a canal along the river, Kerry's boat came under heavy fire and was hit by a B-40 rocket in the cabin area. One member of Kerry's crew Forward Gunner David Alston suffered shrapnel wounds in his head....'" The campaign website also listed two other incidents that took place prior to January 29 as having occurred under Kerry's leadership.

That was taken from the Meehan timeline, which I linked in my Alston timeline. It looks deliberately vague in order to cover Kerry's earlier statements about the time Alston and Kerry served together, using the phrase "Kerry's boat", which while technically not false, leaves the impression that it was Kerry's boat at the time of the incident -- which is categorically untrue.

As it stands, we were incorrect about Alston never serving under Kerry's command, but we are still correct about both Alston and Kerry lying about their joint involvement in the engagements on 29 January and 28 February. John Kerry and David Alston need to explain why they have spent the last two years taking credit for combat engagements met by others in order to burnish credentials for both men, the former as a leader in battle and the latter as a spokesman for the former.

UPDATE: The Bandit doesn't think York did a good job of vetting the information he got from Short and Alston, and fires off a blistering rebuttal of his own:

Actually it now appears Fred Short replaced a fellow by the name of Mike Givens who was shot in the right arm on Feb. 27, 1969 (View Givens Casualty Report.) We also have Fred Short's own statement confirming his first mission with Kerry that took place on Feb. 28, 1969, the day that had lead to Sen. Kerry receiving a Silver Star. The Times Record of Arkansas of July 29 records the following:

"Speaking to Arkansas delegates earlier this week, Short told of how Kerry saved his life in 1969 when their Swift boat was ambushed during his first day on patrol under Kerry's command."

The above fits that facts nicely because Givens was wounded the day before, and with a five man crew plus a skipper there would have been too many crew to account for if Fred Short was onboard as he claims -- (Del Sandusky, Gene Thorson, Tom Belodeau, Michael Givens, Michael Medeiros and Kerry) equal 6 man crew. So Fred Short was telling the truth on July 29, and lying to Byron York for his article. ...

Furthermore, has anyone ever heard of anyone being returned to combat within two weeks after receiving a bullet through their arm? It is obvious that Fred Short and David Alston caught Byron York with his pants down and took him for a wild spin through fantasy land. The evidence still shows David Alston never served under Sen. Kerry and that David Alston and the rest of Kerry's "Band of Brothers" still refuse to tell the truth.

Read the entire post.

Novak Questions Kerry Credibility On War Record

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 during the impeachment, and made a name for himself with his cool demeanor and analytical approach. Davis abandoned both when he met John O'Neill twice to debate O'Neill on SBVT allegations that Kerry lied about his service record:

The campaign accepted, and he jumped in -- too early. Bill Clinton's calm advocate became a shouter for Kerry who accused critics of being liars. Davis was not ready last Monday when the Kerry campaign placed him on Fox's ''Hannity and Colmes'' program. He had not yet read O'Neill's book, and mixed up an attack on one target, Louis Letson, a former Navy doctor who is quoted in the book as saying the wound was trivial and probably self-inflicted from a ricocheting grenade shell.

On that program, Davis bought into the statement that Kerry was treated by ''another doctor, J.C. Carreon.'' ''This Letson guy never signed a single sheet of paper,'' Davis said. Actually, the now deceased Carreon was a medic who, according to Letson, bandaged Kerry's wound and regularly signed routine medical reports such as Kerry's. I contacted Letson, a retired family doctor, at his home in Scottsboro, Ala. He told me he remembered taking care of Kerry's wound, which was ''only a scratch,'' and also recalled the enlisted men, with some amusement, describing Kerry as promising he would ''come out of the war as the next JFK.''

Davis doesn't make many mistakes, but that was a doozy. The first rule for any lawyer is always: Don't ask questions for which you don't already know the answer. Instead, he got caught up in the Kerry campaign's strategy of hysterical ad hominem attacks on over 200 decorated servicemen rather than answering the charges with factual rebuttals. Davis didn't make that mistake for very long, as Novak reports:

By the time Davis appeared on CNN's ''Crossfire'' on Thursday, he had read the book and changed his emphasis. Davis was appearing for the first time on television next to O'Neill. He hammered home the point that nobody who ever had been in the same boat with Kerry has criticized his war service. O'Neill reiterated his contention in the book that Lt. William Schachte (later a rear admiral) was aboard the small whaler as Kerry's training officer and ''witnessed Kerry, with an M-79 [grenade launcher], fire and wound himself.'' Davis interrupted, shouting, ''That was a false statement.''

Davis, unfortunately, did not read the book well enough. Stephen Gardner served with Kerry for two months in his first Swift boat assignment, and Gardner has been anything but complimentary about Kerry's service. Gardner has been very outspoken in his insistence that Kerry has lied about both his record and his leadership as an officer in Viet Nam, and that he lied about his record even during his tenure on the Swift boats.

As far as Schachte goes, I know that the Swiftvets have been very careful not to put out any statements that cannot be backed up with independent means of verification. I suspect that O'Neill may be playing chicken with Davis, although Novak did contact the other two men on the whaler, who both insist that the three of them were alone on the skimmer.

Novak's column is a rational and sane attempt at a mainstream media analysis of the credibility of both sides. Unfortunately for Davis, he comes off the worst of the lot.

Maybe The Windsors Should Take Up A New Hobby

The London Guardian reports today on what appears to be an ongoing albatross for the Royal Family -- their prized art collection. Don't get me wrong; I'm sure it's lovely, and they have every right to it, but it just seems to attract the worst luck these days:

They have survived Cromwell, the Blitz and the close attentions of a Soviet spy. But now one of the Queen's prized paintings has fallen prey to an unexpected danger: a policeman determined to protect the Royal Collection.

The unnamed officer was attempting to close a window in St James's Palace when he tumbled from a chair, pulling down curtains and tearing a sizable hole at the heart of a large oil painting. ... "To get leverage he stood on a chair, but it collapsed, sending him flying. He flung out his arm, grabbed the curtains and landed in a heap of drapes," the source said.

"He then saw the hole in the canvas. He still doesn't know how he did it. He either stuffed his hand through or a curtain hook ripped into it."

So not only did he tear a hole in one of the Queen's paintings but he also managed to smash a chair as well. Doesn't anyone own a stepladder at the palace? The Queen has graciously allowed for the mistake and have no intention on disciplining the constable responsible, not even docking his pay for the repair, which should be completely restorative.

About that Soviet spy? The Guardian saves that for last with typical Fleet Street snark:

The Royal Collection has been amassed by kings and queens over five centuries, and contains armour, jewellery, books and furniture as well as more conventional artworks.

Cromwell disposed of many of the finest works amassed by Charles I, but subsequent royals - including George III and Queen Victoria - boosted the collection again.

The eminent art historian Anthony Blunt oversaw it for many years, until he was exposed as a still more accomplished Soviet spy.

Oh, dear. Good help is so hard to find these days. Perhaps they should concentrate on polo.

The Real World Intrudes Into The Olympic Respite

The Olympics have long been a venue where the stated goals are "tolerance, solidarity, peace and friendship," but at the same time, also have a long history of member nations playing politics with its athletes and athletes playing politics on their own. Even the IOC has hardly been blameless as an organization in this regard, combining grubby graft (uncovered in the Salt Lake games) with overarching and ostentatious snobbery (their refusal to allow professional athletes to compete for decades).

In Athens, the Iranians took their turn at injecting politics into sport by having their star judo champion refuse to take a bout with an Israeli challenger:

Iran's Arash Miresmaeili has been eliminated after failing to make the correct weight at the Athens Olympics. But there is confusion over the affair, following the judo star's reported threat to walk out in protest when he was drawn against an Israeli opponent.

Iran has a strict policy of sanctions against Israel and forbids any contact with Israeli citizens. Iran's President Mohammad Khatami has said Miresmaeili's act will be recorded among the nation's glories.

The International Judo Federation (IJF) said: "We're very surprised an elite player could not make his weight."

It added: "At the moment we have someone who is representing his country and did not make the weight. We have to know more about it."

I have not followed any of the Athens games so far, for a couple of reasons. One, I am not particularly interested, and two, I'm far too busy with other things. However, this story makes me laugh out of the sheer stupidity of the Iranians -- and of those surprised by the Iranians. Did anyone really think that they would do anything different? After all, they spend millions of dollars every year funding terrorist groups who kill Israelis as their primary mission.

But the foolish naivete by others hardly even stacks up to the stupidity of the Iranians, who should know full well that the Olympics would view such a display with little sympathy. Did Khatami expect the IOC to make arrangements so that they never had to expose Iranian "purity" to Israeli "corruption"? The only achievement that the Iranians accomplished is to disqualify one of the only medal hopes they have at this Olympiad, and to do so in such a manner as to underscore the extreme and anti-Semitic nature of their regime. All they've proved is that Iranians are still far too immature to be allowed on the playground.

Besides, if they really didn't like Israelis, wouldn't judo have been the perfect sport in which to meet them? The contact in that sport would be much less intimate than in the other sport in which the Iranians expect to be competitive: wrestling. Guess what sport the Israelis also expect to compete? It's going to be a very short Olympiad for Khatami's crew.

The Alston Story Goes Back Farther Than First Thought

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 lied about the action on 29 Jan 69 aboard PCF-94. Contemporaneous reporting from the Associated Press (Jim Davenport, 4 May 2002), The State (Columbia, S.C., John Huiett, 5 May 2002), and The Boston Herald reveals Kerry and Alston's untruthful representation of John Kerry's service in order to claim the record of an officer who was wounded in the very same action.

We know from Spot Reports, the Command history of COSDIV 11, the Alston injury and evacuation report from 29 Jan 1969 taken from John Kerry’s own website, Tour of Duty (pages 261-266), John F. Kerry, The Complete Biography by Michael Kranish (pages 93-95), and Ted Peck’s press quotation in April which resulted in Kerry changing the claims for January on PCF-94 that Ted Peck was the OinC of PCF-94 on 29 Jan 1969 when Alston was wounded and evacuated. There is also no record of Kerry being on PCF-94 until 30 January 1969.

Kerry, who was the guest speaker at the state Democratic Party's annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner fund-raiser Friday, May 3, 2002 in Columbia, S.C., said a decision on the presidential race is months away - after his November re-election bid. Kerry went on to say:

'I was in the big branch that the Marine Corps belongs to,' Kerry said of his time in the Navy. About the time Jackson was in fire fights, Kerry was commanding a small gunboat, plying the country's waters with David Alston of Columbia, who was running the boat's dual 50-caliber machine gun turret.

'Every time we got ambushed, which was often, we relied more on this fellow to get us out than anybody else,' Kerry said of Alston. In one brush, Alston's turret ended up riddled with 100 holes. Alston suffered wounds to the head and arm but continued to fire, Kerry said. 'How he survived, I don't know.'

Alston said he remains fiercely loyal to Kerry. If Kerry ran and won, 'America would have a great president,' said Alston, now an ordained minister who works at a nuclear fuels plant. 'We were extremely exposed - always shot at first and the gunner was the first target,' Kerry told the crowd of Democrats.

The Senator from Massachusetts said nearly 100 rounds ripped into the aluminum turret where Alston, who became a preacher after Vietnam, manned twin 50-caliber guns, Kerry recalled.

'This gunman kept firing even though he was wounded - one bullet going through his helmet, grazing his head and another hitting him in the arm,' said Kerry. 'I had no idea there was a holy man on those guns.'

Their efforts culminated in Boston last month, during the Democratic National Convention. The Kerry campaign allowed David Alston to repeat the story of Ted Peck's command as John Kerry's experience on the campaign trail -- stealing from Peck's honorable service record -- fully knowing that Alston would speak falsely to the nation on Kerry's behalf. And Kerry returned the favor, allowing Alston to claim the service of the man, decorated veteran and Kerry supporter Fred Short, who replaced him in order to complete the fraud.

For instance, Alston shared this experience with the entire nation at the convention:

Once, he even directed the helmsman to beach the boat, right into the teeth of an ambush, and pursued our attackers on foot, into the jungle. In the toughest of situations, Lieutenant Kerry showed judgment, loyalty and courage. Even wounded, or confronting sights no man should ever have to see, he never lost his cool.

And when the shooting stopped, he was always there too, with a caring hand on my shoulder asking, ‘Gunner, are you OK?’ I was only 21, running on fear and adrenaline. Lieutenant Kerry always took the time to calm us down, to bring us back to reality, to give us hope, to show us what we truly had within ourselves. I came to love and respect him as a man I could trust with life itself.

The 'Silver Star combat mission' commanded by John Kerry on 28 February 1969 is worthy of additiomal study but Alston wasn’t one of the gunners on that mission. Alston's replacement on that mission was Fred Short, who had joined the crew of PCF-94 two weeks earlier to replace Alston who had been medevaced immediately after his injuries in combat on 29 Jan 69 under the command of Lt. Ted Peck aboard PCF-94.

This is known because GMG3 Fred Short received a decoration for his action as gunner’s mate during that engagement, along with everyone else on PCF-94. John Kerry won a Silver Star, and the other four crewman appear with Kerry and Short in a photograph commemorating their awards. But Alston isn’t one of them.

Kerry and Alston began two years ago to publicly perpetrate a fraud on the people of America to further Kerry’s aspirations to become the commander-in-chief of our Armed Forces. It’s time for Americans to know what they’ve done.

Copyright: 2004 by G. Thomas Mortensen and Edward Morrissey. All print and broadcast rights reserved. This article may not be distributed in physical or broadcast format without the express written consent of the authors.

Print and/or broadcast distribution rights and supporting documentation may be obtained by contacting G. Thomas Mortensen (BM2, USN retired decorated Vietnam riverine veteran) at anticipation@offwind.com or by calling (650) 216-9936. Neither of the authors is affiliated with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the Republican National Committee, or the Bush/Cheney Campaign other than as contributors.

(updated for minor grammatical changes, 8/16/04 20:34 CT)

Troll Banned

The troll that has recently begun posting as both Anjin-San and Swifty has been banned and his comments -- all of them -- have been deleted.

People who try to post non-sequiturs under multiple pseudonyms will be assumed to be trolls, especially when the brain surgeons in question all come from the same IP address. Really, really, really smart.

What Do You Do When The Priest No-Shows?

I took the day off from blogging, for the most part, after writing a couple of posts this morning and updating the Alston timeline. The First Mate and I took the Little Admiral to the Irish Fair, where we spent a couple of hours looking through the exhibits and eating typical fair food, and having a great time. And since we didn't go to Mass in the morning as we planned, since the Little Admiral uncharacteristically kept waking us up during the night, we decided to go to the 6 pm Mass instead.

Now, I've been Catholic all my life, and for the past sixteen or seventeen years I've been a practicing Catholic. (I practice but I don't get much better. I need more practice, I guess.) I'm not the best about going every single week, but I go more often than I don't. I'd say in that period of time, I'd have gone at least 40 weeks every year, making it close to 800 Masses I've attended.

Until tonight, the priest showed up to every one of them.

I go to a great parish which is large enough to have two full-time priests and a deacon. Some small parishes have to share priests, but none to which I've belonged. I suppose that a few times, I've gotten a last-minute substitution and just never knew it. But tonight, we literally had no priest to celebrate the Mass.

If you're not Catholic, you may not get the problem here, but the act of transubstantiation (turning the wafers into the Body of Christ) requires the priest. Not only that, but the entire rhythm of Mass is set by the priest. Having him not show up not only worries you -- after all, he's missing! -- but you're left wondering whether you should just go home or sit around and wait.

Fortunately, one of the liturgical ministers decided to perform what's called a "Sunday Celebration Without A Priest," which is Mass performed by laity. You have to leave out all the Eucharistic prayers, and it only works if the church has blessed hosts already in the tabernacle. Otherwise, all it turns out to be is a prayer service.

The main problem is that our church is so used to having at least one priest on hand that no one really knew how to follow this option. We wound up slogging our way through, thanks to the very brave lay minister, although we almost skipped the Profession of Faith and put the Lamb of God before the Sign of Peace. On the plus side, it went by a bit quicker than a normal Mass, thanks to all the omissions, and even with the delay while we waited for the priest at the beginning, we wound up leaving earlier than normal.

We'll check with the church in the morning to make sure the priest is all right; it was probably car trouble or a misunderstanding of the schedule between him and the pastor. It was such a singular and interesting event that I thought I'd share it with you all.

Media Blackout On Cambodian Christmas Begins To Lift

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 the Seattle Times -- serving one of the most liberal areas of the country -- becomes the second major newspaper to cover it as a news story (via NZ Bear):

John Kerry's repeated claim that he spent Christmas Eve of 1968 upriver in Cambodia — against official United States policy — has drawn harsh criticism from anti-Kerry veterans.

Roy Hoffmann, a retired admiral who was a Navy captain in command of Kerry's unit at the time, said the candidate's Cambodia statements can't be true.

"I think he just outright lied," said Hoffman, a founder of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. "He never was there."

Most of this will be rather superficial rehash for those of you who have been following this story on blogs such as mine and Power Line. It does manage to include Big Trunk and Rocket Man's favorite part of the story, John Kerry's Magic Hat:

The Kerry campaign has since said that the presidential candidate's recollection was imprecise — that his runs into Cambodia came in the early months of 1969. A June 2003 article in The Washington Post quotes Kerry talking about a mildewy and faded-green camouflage hat he carries in his black attaché.

"My good-luck hat," Kerry told the Post. "Given to me by a CIA guy as we went in for a special mission in Cambodia."

Absent from Canon's report are Kerry crewmate Stephen Gardner's statements that not only did his boat (PCF-44) never go into Cambodia, but you could hardly pick a worse vessel for covert incursions anyway. The Swift boats were not stealthy by any means -- they were powerful and fast, speed being their only intrinsic defense, and they were loud. Gardner indicated that they could be heard for miles. Also missing is any explanation why a boat assigned to a Coastal division with a junior officer with less than three months experience would be given cross-border covert missions which would have been delicate, to say the least, considering the loud protests made by Cambodian Prince Sihanouk that the US was violating its neutrality. Wouldn't that assignment gone to a River division, using more appropriate watercraft, and probably just been done by the SEALs themselves?

Canon also picks up on Michael Meehan's tortured explanation of Vietnamese/Cambodian geography from the London Telegraph without the Telegraph's well-explained cynicism of it:

"Swift Boat crews regularly operated along the Cambodian border from Ha Tien on the Gulf of Thailand to the rivers of the Mekong south and west of Saigon," Michael Meehan, a senior adviser in the Kerry campaign, said Friday. "Boats often received fire from enemy taking sanctuary across the border. Kerry's was not the only United States riverboat to respond, inadvertently or responsibly, across the border."

"Many times he was on or near the Cambodian border and on one occasion crossed into Cambodia at the request of members of a special operations group operating out of Ha Tien" on the Gulf of Thailand, Meehan said in his statement.

Hoffmann, the retired admiral, said he was leery of Kerry's claim to have ventured into Cambodia in early 1969 to deliver CIA operatives or special-forces soldiers.

"I was always properly informed. The whole time I was there, I don't recall" such a mission, Hoffmann said.

It's hardly a comprehensive look at the data, and the article shows just how far behind the blogosphere and the British that the American media has fallen. Nowhere is it mentioned, for instance, how Kerry used this anecdote as a motivation for his public life and his embitterment with a corrupt government. However, it's a start, and perhaps now that the taboo has been broken, more intrepid and talented reporters can start really digging into the mythology.

Addendum: If you think that there is no media blackout, let's all take a trip in New England Republican's Wayback machine and see how the media handled the AWOL charges against George Bush, when Bush hadn't even made his TANG service an issue in his candidacy. Just a bit of a difference in tone and style, don't you think?

Captain's Caption Contest #23: The Balancing Act

It's Friday, and that means it's time for another installment of the Captain's Caption Contest! You know, running a blog is a delicate balancing act. You try to get stories out quickly but well-written and strongly sourced. You look at all angles to make sure you don't miss anything. But bloggers have nothing on politicians, who have to balance a lot of life narratives to make sure that they don't stumble on the campaign trail. Here's one politician who obviously needs more practice:

Don't straddle the fence -- give us your best entries for guest judge Amy L (who designed our Northern Alliance logo)! As always, put your best caption entries in the comments section -- NO e-mail, please! (E-mailed entries will be typed as journal entries at Sa Dec and run across the Cambodian border in a magic hat.) The contest will remain open until 8 pm Sunday, August 15th, at which point the comments will be closed and Amy will pick the winners. After you post your entries, be sure to also visit Daly Thoughts, who was one of a number of people (like Bear) who sent in this picture.

In the meantime, if you enjoy the contests and the blog, consider dropping in a donation for Captain's Quarters trip to New York as a credentialed blogger at the Republican National Convention. Just click on one of the buttons below and donate whatever you can to the cause -- all donations are cheerfully and gratefully accepted!

Let the games begin!

BUMP 8/15: Another great series of entries! Keep 'em coming ...

COMMENTS CLOSED: Amy, take it away!