The Swift Boat Saga, Part VII: The Death of the New York Times

Funny coincidences keep cropping up lately. Yesterday, John Kerry finally had a public comment on the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and their book, Unfit for Command. What he had to say wasn't pretty:

Defending his record, the Democratic presidential candidate said, "Thirty years ago, official Navy reports documented my service in Vietnam and awarded me the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts."

"Thirty years ago, this was the plain truth. It still is. And I still carry the shrapnel in my leg from a wound in Vietnam."

...In his speech, Kerry employed a wartime metaphor. "More than 30 years ago I learned an important lesson. When you're under attack the best thing to do is turn your boat into the attack. That's what I intend to do today."

Speaking of the organization airing the ads that challenge his war record, Kerry said, "Of course, this group isn't interested in the truth and they're not telling the truth. ...

"But here's what you really need to know about them. They're funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Republican contributor out of Texas. They're a front for the Bush campaign. And the fact that the President won't denounce what they're up to tells you everything you need to know. He wants them to do his dirty work."

Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt said, "That charge leveled by Senator Kerry is absolutely and completely false."

"The Bush campaign has never and will never question John Kerry's service in Vietnam. The president has referred to John Kerry's service as noble service," the Bush spokesman said.

Kerry said, "Of course, the president keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that. Well, if he wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: 'Bring it on.'"

You know, Senator, I'd bring something else if there was anything else you were running on. But unfortunately, your sole qualification to serve as President seems to be your service in Vietnam, based on your campaign thus far.

But let's get to the substance of his remarks here... wait, there are none. No response regarding his Christmas in Cambodia fabrication. Nothing to refute the specific charges levelled by the veterans in a well-researched book that's #1 on Amazon's best-seller list and has far more credibility than the unsubstatiated allegations regarding Bush's service in the National Guard, let alone the tripe served up by Michael Moore in movie theatres.

The issues isn't Kerry's service in Vietnam per se, but his fantasies and exaggerations regarding it. The gents at Powerline summarize it nicely:

The issue, of course, is not whether Kerry served honorably and bravely in Vietnam. I take it as a given that he did. The questions are: 1) whether he has lied, repeatedly, about his service in an effort to embellish it; 2) whether he has delibertately tried to take credit for engagements fought by other men (Lt. Ted Peck in particular); 3) whether his leadership of the anti-war movement, which was the origin of his political career, was based on a tissue of lies, including not just the Christmas in Cambodia fantasy--the stated reason for Kerry's purported disillusionment with government--but, more fundamentally, his claims that his fellow servicemen were a group of war criminals who routinely committed atrocities.

These are serious questions that go the the heart of Kerry's fitness to be Commander in Chief, but Kerry won't acknowledge them (let alone answer them) unless he absolutely has to.

What does Kerry do? He attacks Bush, claiming he's behind the ad, and maligns the veterans as Republican hacks. Not that he has any proof, of course.

Oh, wait. Now that the Kerry campaign has officially responded, the two newspapers of record, the Washington Post and the left-wing dishrag (a.k.a. the New York Times) , feel comfortable actually writing about the charges made. Let's start with the Post, which spit out an article in advance of the Kerry offensive yesterday. The Post's piece, entitled "Records Counter a Critic of Kerry", notes that Larry Thurlow, one of the more vocal Swift Boat vets, also received a Bronze Star the same day that Kerry did. And despite Thurlow's claims to the contrary, the citation Thurlow received states that he received the citation for bravery under enemy fire. But what's really interesting is Thurlow's response on being confronted -- he doesn't change his story one bit...

"It's like a Hollywood presentation here, which wasn't the case," Thurlow said last night after being read the full text of his Bronze Star citation. "My personal feeling was always that I got the award for coming to the rescue of the boat that was mined. This casts doubt on anybody's awards. It is sickening and disgusting."

Thurlow said he would consider his award "fraudulent" if coming under enemy fire was the basis for it. "I am here to state that we weren't under fire," he said. He speculated that Kerry could have been the source of at least some of the language used in the citation.

In a telephone interview Tuesday evening after he attended a Swift Boat Veterans strategy session in an Arlington hotel, Thurlow said he lost his Bronze Star citation more than 20 years ago. He said he was unwilling to authorize release of his military records because he feared attempts by the Kerry campaign to discredit him and other anti-Kerry veterans.

The man's willing to call his own award fraudulent -- doesn't this lend credibility to his story? Of course, if he needs help getting rid of his medals, I'm sure Kerry can assist, since he's already thrown someone else's medals over the White House fence.

But the hatchetjobs had only just begun. The left-wing dishrag also decided to get into the act with a piece today, concentrating on what it believes to be the key issues. To wit, the Times, which failed to report on the story until now, decides to run a story detailing the group's connections to key Republicans in Texas, and how public statements made by members of the group in the past apparently conflict with their present-day views of Kerry. Keep in mind, the Times did not find the actual charges made by the group to be worthy of news coverage, but is willing to talk about the rebuttal and its investigation into the group itself...

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.

...Several of those now declaring Mr. Kerry "unfit" had lavished praise on him, some as recently as last year.

In an unpublished interview in March 2003 with Mr. Kerry's authorized biographer, Douglas Brinkley, provided by Mr. Brinkley to The New York Times, Roy F. Hoffmann, a retired rear admiral and a leader of the group, allowed that he had disagreed with Mr. Kerry's antiwar positions but said, "I am not going to say anything negative about him." He added, "He's a good man."

In a profile of the candidate that ran in The Boston Globe in June 2003, Mr. Hoffmann approvingly recalled the actions that led to Mr. Kerry's Silver Star: "It took guts, and I admire that."

George Elliott, one of the Vietnam veterans in the group, flew from his home in Delaware to Boston in 1996 to stand up for Mr. Kerry during a tough re-election fight, declaring at a news conference that the action that won Mr. Kerry a Silver Star was "an act of courage." At that same event, Adrian L. Lonsdale, another Vietnam veteran now speaking out against Mr. Kerry, supported him with a statement about the "bravado and courage of the young officers that ran the Swift boats."

"Senator Kerry was no exception," Mr. Lonsdale told the reporters and cameras assembled at the Charlestown Navy Yard. "He was among the finest of those Swift boat drivers."

Those comments echoed the official record. In an evaluation of Mr. Kerry in
1969, Mr. Elliott, who was one of his commanders, ranked him as "not exceeded"
in 11 categories, including moral courage, judgment and decisiveness, and "one
of the top few" - the second-highest distinction - in the remaining five. In
written comments, he called Mr. Kerry "unsurpassed," "beyond reproach" and "the
acknowledged leader in his peer group."

What's great about the Times piece is how attentuated the connections are to the Bush camp.

The ad team that worked the Dukakis tank ad? The Times later mentions they also worked for John McCain... who's usually cited for condemning the ad.

Rove is friends with a man who's the top Republican donor in Texas, which is shocking. Since this man also cut huge checks to the Swift Boat Vets, this is apparently sinister. But the Times waits several paragraphs to note that Rove has stated that he and Bob Perry, the donor in question, haven't spoken in over a year, and they have absolutely no evidence to refute this.

Despite this, the Times feels the need to produce graph detialing all the "connections" between the Vets and the Republicans. Which of course does not in any way disprove any of their allegations.

Even better, the Times fails to give context to the statements they cite as proof that the vets are contradicting themselves... even though Jim Geraghty at National Review covered the topic over three months ago:

The Kerry campaign also showcased what it appeared to believe was a smoking gun: video of two of Kerry's critics, Capt. George Elliott, and retired Cmdr. Adrian Longsdale, at a 1996 news conference at the Charlestown Navy Yard.

Navy Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, who commanded U.S. Navy forces in the Vietnam War, also appeared with Kerry that day. His son, retired Lieutenant Colonel Jim Zumwalt is among the Kerry critics. The Kerry campaign also made sure reporters got a sheet of quotes from the press conference eight years ago.

But they appear to have omitted that the veterans' 1996 appearance wasn't a typical, "hey,-isn't-John-Kerry-a-great-guy-who-should-be-reelected" backslapping photo opportunity. They were there to defend Kerry against the charge of committing a "war crime" from a Boston Globe columnist.

On October 27, 1996, nine days before Election Day, Kerry was locked in the fight of his political life against Republican Governor William Weld. In the Sunday edition of the biggest paper in the state, business columnist David Warsh wrote about discrepancies in recent accounts of day that Kerry won the Silver Star.

...Kerry was outraged, and his Senate reelection campaign quickly set out
to refute the allegation.

Zumwalt, who commanded U.S. Navy forces in the Vietnam War, said at the conference that the column "was such a terrible insult, such an absolutely outrageous misinterpretation of the facts, that I felt it was important to be here."

Zumwalt said he traveled to Boston from Washington because "a wartime commander has a lifetime responsibility to look out for the guys under him." Kerry's conduct on that day was also commended by retired Capt. George Elliott, Kerry's commander at the time; and retired Cmdr. Adrian Longsdale, who supervised shoreline operations.

...It's worth noting that Lonsdale and Elliot didn't say during that conference what a great president Kerry would make, or that his accusations of war crimes in 1971 weren't distortions or a hurtful betrayal, or even that they endorsed him for the Senate. They just said that they believed Kerry earned his Silver Star in that encounter and that they recalled nothing to justify an accusation of war crimes.

The Times fails to mention this anywhere. But give it credit -- there are legitimate questions about the Swift Boat Vets' accounts versus those of Kerry's supporters. But the left-wing dishrag has decided that the dispute may be worthy of news coverage, but the original assertions were not? Give me a break.

Of course, the Times also waits over 60 paragraphs to mention that the Swift Boat Vets have already been proven correct on their assertion that Kerry lied about his trip to Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968 -- and in reporting this fact, the Times denigrates the Swift Boat Vets as "adaptable." Powerline again notes the Times' inability to report on the claims made by the Vets until after Kerry responded:

What a coincidence! Yesterday John Kerry finally responded to the Swift Boat Vets' accusations, not by dealing with them substantively, but by denouncing the Vets as tools of the Bush campaign. The very next morning, the Times broke its silence with its long-awaited coverage of the issue, which, rather than investigating the merits of the Vets' claims, attacked the Vets as tools of the Bush campaign!

Instead of addressing the point at issue--whether Presidential candidate John Kerry is a serial liar--the Times devoted its vast investigative resources to digging up dirt on the Swift Boat Vets, and came to this blockbuster conclusion: some of the people supporting the Vets are Republicans! Tomorrow, we'll expect to see a similar investigation of Americans Coming Together and MoveOn.org. What do you want to bet some of their contributors are Democrats? I'll bet some of them have even met people who have served in Democratic administrations. What an expose!

But let's take a look at what the Times omitted. Ed Morrissey at Captainsquartersblog nails the Times' coverage of the Cambodia issue...

In an article of over 3,500 words, those 99 [words] 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.

He's not the only one noting this stuff. Deborah Orin of the New York Post outlines some of Kerry's credibility problems and points out some of the key facts the Times opted not to discuss:

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.

Not one of Kerry's Swift boat crewmates, even the ones backing his candidacy, recalls being in Cambodia in Christmas 1968 — and anti-Kerry Swift boat veterans cite a host of evidence that he was 50 miles away in Vietnam.

Why does it matter? Because Kerry has said the Cambodia incident — of being sent on a covert mission to "a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops" was "seared" in his mind and changed his view of America.

Team Kerry's excuse is that maybe he accidentally crossed the border or his time frame was fuzzy, but that just won't square with his passionate 1986 claim, on the Senate floor, that the Christmas memory was "seared — seared — in me." Unlike the conflicts over Kerry's medals, this isn't a he said/he said dispute — Kerry either was or wasn't in Cambodia. Eventually a reporter will ask him point-blank if he still claims he was in Cambodia that Christmas — yes or no.

...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 whole story could be a test of the Internet's impact in this campaign. While most papers have been ignoring the story — until Kerry went ballistic at the Swift vets yesterday — bloggers have been examining it in detail.

On Web sites like Instapundit.com, captainsquartersblog.com, hugh-hewitt.com and rogerlsimon.com, skeptical veterans are trading details on Kerry's service and raising intricate questions about his veracity based on their own experience.

Their online dialogue is punctuated with questions about why the "mainstream media" have been mostly ignoring this story — and why the 13 pro-Kerry vets are automatically assumed to have more credibility than 264 anti-Kerry vets.

Just imagine the coverage if 264 vets who served with Bush in the Texas Air National Guard made similar charges. For those bloggers, this story has become a test of the mainstream media's credibility — and its liberal anti-Bush bias.

The best part is in the last two paragraphs, where we have the stories of 264 veterans whom the mainstream press wants to ignore and worse, simply attack. This is in contrast to the unsubstantiated rumors about Bush's military service, which these same "news" outlets were only too glad to report a few months back.

Does it matter? Hugh Hewitt explains why it matters:

The collapse of Kerry's narrative about Vietnam does matter because Kerry made it matter. In fact, Kerry needed it to matter because a focus on his votes over 20 years in the United States Senate could not be sold to the American public, especially not during an economic expansion, and especially not during a war.

So now Kerry's sliding, and there is high dudgeon within the Kerry camp. Wait until the next phase, where Kerry's exclamations of pride in his service in Vietnam are put side-by-side with Kerry's Senate testimony of 30 years ago. I expect this will be considered bad form by the Kerry-boosters as well. Kerry was kid, they'll say, exaggerating his "war crimes" even as he exaggerated his Christmas-Eve-in-Cambodia in 1979, 1986, and 1992, and his CIA missions in 2003 and 2004. They will avoid the questions from the veterans of that war that Kerry slandered then who want honesty now. But it won't work. It is a video and an audio age, aided by the wonderful fact-checking of the internet. Kerry has been many different men. It
bothers a lot of people for a lot of reasons.

There's a lot to the problem Kerry has -- his credibility is slowly disappearing, much like any lead he had in the polls, most particularly among vets, as pointed out in this L.A. Times article...

The attacks may have already hurt. According to a new poll by CBS News, Kerry has lost ground among veterans since the Democratic National Convention, when he ran neck and neck with Bush among those voters. Now, the president has an 18-point lead among that group, according to the poll, which surveyed 1,009 adults nationwide.

Mickey Kaus, who supports Kerry, even rips the left-wing dishrag for this editorial, where it furthers its attack on the Swift Boat Vets. As Kaus notes:

I don't know which side is right. I don't know that I'd even hold it against Kerry if he did exaggerate a bit to get the three Purple Hearts that let him leave Vietnam. I do know that if freedom of speech means anything it means that a group of citizens can get together to bring up this sort of charge against a presidential candidate, subject to the laws of libel...The Times thinks the ad should be stopped because you just shouldn't be able to make such "outlandish" independent charges in a campaign. They're against the speech, not the financing. Like Kerry, they're trying to come up with a "process" reason that avoids the inconveniently messy issue of truth. But their process reason--an attack on "independent" criticism per se--seems particularly dangerous.

P.P.P.S.: Respectable big-time journalist friends who met with the anti-Kerry vets recently found them a lot more credible than expected.

The polls are dropping, and this is without mainstream media coverage. Must be an awful lot of people reading blogs and watching Fox News. But maybe this is more of a funeral for the mainstream media then one would think. As Polipundit noted:

Regardless of whether or not the Swifties story has a lasting effect on the presidential campaign, it has already played a huge role in exposing the reasons that the mainstream media's influence is dwindling, and it will definitely aid in hastening their demise.

Maybe they'll find honest work eventually. Or maybe they can work directly for the Kerry campaign. As one e-mailer pointed out to Instapundit, "With all the fuss and charges about coordination between 527 organizations and campaigns, I wondered, given today's article in the New York Times, if they are coordinating with the Kerry Campaign?"