Thursday, September 30, 2004
Swift Boats ride again...
Can you take one more post on this bogus issue? Had to post a couple things I just read on this:
John Kerry is being pilloried for his shocking Senate testimony 34 years ago that many U.S. soldiers—not just a few "rogues"—were committing atrocities against the Vietnamese. U.S. military records that were classified for decades but are now available in the National Archives back Kerry up and put the lie to his critics. Contrary to what those critics, including the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, have implied, Kerry was speaking on behalf of many soldiers when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971from Nicholas Turse's "Swift Boat Swill" in the Village Voice.
And some letters from Newsweek that sum it up better than I can:
Comparing the swift boat attacks on John Kerry with attacks on George W. Bush regarding his Air National Guard duty does not make for balanced news. One involves tearing down behavior in battle that was deemed worthy of several Purple Hearts. The other involves filling in gaps in a service record embarked on (with whose help?) to avoid battle, and notable more for absence from—rather than attendance to—duty. Trying to equate these in any substantive way is not balance—it is spin.Kerry, can you please do the damn thing tonight. You, and the country really need you, to do this, f'real f'real.
Gregory Bachelis
West Bloomfield, Mich.
Your cover story implies that because mud is being slung, it is fairest to blame both parties. This is false, and most of the media know it. Bush's campaign workers have spent a large part of the election, and a large part of their ad dollars, smearing John Kerry. They have smeared him for not being wounded badly enough in a war they didn't bother to participate in. They have smeared him for voting to cut funding from the B-2, the Bradley fighting vehicle, the Apache helicopter and other weapons programs—the same cuts that the then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney asked for. The charges made by the Kerry campaign have been largely, demonstrably, measurably true. The Bush camp has engaged in far more distortion, negativity and deception, and thrown far more mud in this campaign. It is dishonest to try to paint a "balanced" picture where there isn't one.
Eric Hanson
Minneapolis, Minn.
