Setting the Record Straight on the Swift Boat Veterans

[Valin]

The Weekly Standard:

Mark Hemingway

Oct 07, 2016

 

In an interview with the Nieman Lab this week, New York Times editor Dean Baquet was asked about how the media are struggling to cover Donald Trump. He noted that this is not the first time during the course of a presidential campaign that the media has had hard time combat untruths, except that his answer was rather revealing:

 

I think that everybody went in a little bit shell-shocked in the beginning, about how you cover a guy [Trump] who makes news constantly. It's not just his outrageous stuff…he says things that are just demonstrably false.

 

I think that he's challenged our language. He will have changed journalism, he really will have. I was either editor or managing editor of the L.A. Times during the Swift Boat incident. Newspapers did not know — we did not quite know how to do it. I remember struggling with the reporter, Jim Rainey, who covers the media now, trying to get him to write the paragraph that laid out why the Swift Boat allegation was false…We didn't know how to write the paragraph that said, "This is just false."

Ok. Let me stop Baquet right there. It's worth discussing the Swift Boat allegations, and how this came to be media shorthand for dishonest smears. Over the course of his 2004 presidential campaign, Kerry was forced to admit significant details of his service in Vietnam weren't true—recall his claim that he spent Christmas of 1968 in Cambodia where U.S. troops were not supposed to be and "I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me."

 

Enter the Swift Boat Vets for Truth. While GOP political operatives did eventually get involved with the group, the truth is that the organization was started organically because his fellow swift boat vets were genuinely upset about the way that he characterized his service. In January 2004, Admiral Roy Hoffman read Douglas Brinkley's campaign biography, Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, and was incensed. In the book, Kerry basically libeled Hoffman, saying officer in charge of the swift-boat mission, had "a genuine taste for the more unsavory aspects of warfare" and sought "splashy victories in the Mekong Delta" to get promoted. Hoffman starts working phones asking other swift boaters about Kerry. (Brinkley had to make significant changes to the paperback edition to clarify things, and though he doesn't mention it in the book, publicly repeated Kerry's untrue claim he was in Cambodia.) Now Kerry was already infamous among Vietnam vets for his "winter soldier testimony" in 1971 where Kerry testified before Congress, sans any corroborating evidence, about soldiers who "had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war."

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

some Skinny Old Wiseass

ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa, went the the twin engines on John kill em all kerry's boat (real heros have nick names like that). It was a dark and quiet night, John kill em all Kerry turned to his first mate and (in a quiet yet confident voice) said...."it's quiet...too quiet I don't like it.

If only we can get a bit farther up river without getting spotted we'll be able to drop off secret agent x-183".

In the blink of an eye the calm of the night was SHATTERED KAPOW KAPOW WOOOOSH BLAM BLAM the night came alive with a song of DEATH! They had sailed into a clever ambush set by Charlie (John kill em all Kerry's long time foe).

The crew strickened with fear and unable to move turned as one to the one man who had the courage, the skill, the WILL to save them.

 

John kill em all Kerry like a coiled spring leapped into action (That's what heros like to do in these kind of situations) with a sneer on his lips John kill em all Kerry THRUST the throttle forward and mzzz teraza (hero's like john kill em all Kerry like to have names for their boats) LEAPPED like a mighty stallion BAAATTLE STATIONS he shouted! Waking as from a dream John kill em all kerry's band of brothers charged to their stations.

 

BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA sang the quad 50s in a tune that sang death and destruction for Charlie and his commie stooges, BRRRRAAAAAPPPP the 60's spat out a curtain of lead, BOOOOM BOOOOM the 300mm mortars adding their song to the aria of war!

 

Now the dirty commies would pay for DARING to attack John killl em all Kerry and his All American band of brothes! With a ferral grin John kill em all Kerry shouted DIE COMMIE SCUM! (see hero types like John kill em all Kerry say things like that, they teach them that at hero school).

 

Just when it looked like one more (glorious) victory for John kill em all Kerry and his gallant band of brothers, KABOOOOM sneeky underhanded commie frogmen (and they're the worst kind) had placed a mine (the dirty rotten dastardly Khmer rouge bast*rds) on the sleak and deadly mzzz teraza! In a bat of an eyelash john kill em all Kerry knew his gallant little steed was done for,

 

Flinging the little mzzz teraza at the nearest nest of vipers John kill em all Kerry CHARGED straight into the muzzels of death.

 

Afraid? Not he, John kill em all Kerry didn't know the meaning of fear

{fear(Function): noun Etymology: Middle English fer,
from Old English f[AE]r sudden danger; akin to Latin
periculum attempt, peril, Greek peiran to attempt
Date: 12th century
1 a : an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by
anticipation or awareness of danger
b (1) : an instance of this emotion
(2) : a state marked by this emotion
2 : anxious concern :
SOLICITUDE
3 : profound reverence and awe especially toward God
4 : reason for alarm : DANGER synonyms FEAR, DREAD, FRIGHT, ALARM, PANIC, TERROR, TREPIDATION mean painful agitation in the presence or anticipation of danger. FEAR is the most general term and implies anxiety and usually loss of courage .
DREAD usually adds the idea of intense reluctance to face or meet a person or situation and suggests aversion as well as anxiety .
FRIGHT implies the shock of sudden, startling fear .
ALARM suggests a sudden and intense awareness of immediate danger .
PANIC implies unreasoning and overmastering fear causing hysterical activity .
TERROR implies the most extreme degree of fear.
TREPIDATION adds to DREAD the implications of timidity, trembling, and hesitation.}

The mortally wounded boat rammed into the den of inequity, and leapping from the galllant but doomed craft a 50cal in his right hand his (trusty) M-16 in his left a 5in. cannon strapped to his back John kill em all Kerry LEAPPED into the very heart of the enemy AAAAHHHHHH he cried all the while dealing death to the left and right (hero types do stuff like that all the time, that's why they're hero types)

 

The (dirty) commies quaked in fear at this (magnificent specimen) All American hero type in a blood lust cried "It's kill em all Kerry! Please don't kill us, John kill em all Kerry would have none of that! Not after their dastardly attack and mortal wounding of his (beloved) mzzz teraza, DIE YOU DIRTY COMMIE RATS, I'LL TEACH YOU TO MESS WITH MASSACHUSETTS!

 

And oh the carnage the ensued, So terrible was his (awesome but sensitive) wrath that soon after those above him (being jealous of his superior combat skills and the love his band of brothers had for him) sent him back to the good old US of A.




What do ya think? Good enough for hollywood?

 

8 posted on 9/16/2004, 11:02:09 PM by Valin (I'll try being nicer if you'll try being smarter.)