Steyn/Chicago Sun takes aim & fires...
at the media
Mark Steyn of the
Chicago Sun Times writes it like it is concerning the rapidly
growing fury over John Kerry’s Vietnam Lies scandal – the one the
mainstream media refuses to cover:
“If snot-nosed American media grandees don't think there's a story
there, maybe they ought to consider another line of work.”
And says of Kerry’s seared—seared memory of spending Christmas in
Cambodia being shot at by the Khmer Rouge and drunk South Vietnamese
troops:
“...it turns out it's total bunk.”
Pulling no punches, Steyn gives this overview of the “Kerry
biography”:
Thirty-five years on, having no appealing campaign themes, the senator
decides to run for president on his biography. But for the last 20
years he's been a legislative non-entity. Before that, he was accusing
his brave band of brothers of mutilation, rape and torture. He spent
his early life at Swiss finishing school and his later life living off
his wife's inheritance from her first husband. So, biography-wise,
that leaves four months in Vietnam, which he talks about non-stop.
That 1986 Senate speech is typical: It was supposed to be about Reagan
policy in Central America, but like so many Kerry speeches and
interviews somehow it winds up with yet another self-aggrandizing trip
down memory lane.
It’s hard to tell who’s going in the dumper faster in America... John
Kerry, or the main stream media.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette breaks
thru media silence:
writes no-spin Swift Boat Vets’ story
An article in today’s
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, written by Jack Kelly, offers a
straightforward, factual, ‘no spin’ overview of the Swift Boat
Veterans for Truth charges against John Kerry. Kelly’s ‘no spin’
approach breaks new ground for a national (mainstream) newspaper and
gives a glimmer of light to the waiting American people, who have yet
to read or hear the Swift Boat Veterans’ story unfettered by left
bias.
Excerpt:
Accepting the Democratic nomination for vice president, John Edwards
said of John Kerry, "If you have any question of what he is made of,
just spend three minutes with the men who served with him then." The
Democratic National Committee is trying hard to keep you from spending
a minute with most of the sailors who served with Kerry during his
abbreviated tour in Vietnam, because they have unflattering things to
say. The DNC is threatening to sue television stations which run a
commercial produced by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Of the 23 officers who served with Kerry in Coastal Division 11, only
one supports him for president. Two others are dead, and four want
nothing to do with politics. The remaining 16 have declared him "Unfit
for Command," the title of the book written by former Lt. John
O'Neill, who took over Kerry's swift boat, PCF-94, when Kerry left
Vietnam.
Kelly goes on to explain that the Swifties charge Kerry didn't deserve
two of the three purple hearts he was awarded, or either of his medals
for valor, the silver star and the bronze star. Excerpt:
According to Kerry, his first taste of combat came on his first
mission, on the night of Dec. 2, 1968. He was with two sailors in a
Boston whaler on a night patrol. They saw sampans, presumably crewed
by Viet Cong, unloading on a peninsula. They opened fire, and the
Vietnamese ran for cover. In the "engagement," Kerry suffered a
scratch on his arm from a piece of metal.
Kerry's account to his biographer, Douglas Brinkley, gives the
impression that he was in command of the whaler. This was not so. Lt.
William Schachte, later an admiral, was the officer in charge. Shachte
said the Vietnamese never fired on the boat, and the sailors who were
with Schachte and Kerry said they couldn't remember any return fire.
Shachte said Kerry's scratch was self-inflicted. He had fired an M-79
grenade launcher too close to the shore. It struck a rock, and a
fragment of metal ricocheted and struck Kerry. Louis Letson, the
doctor who treated Kerry (he put a Band-Aid on the cut) said the metal
fragment looked like a piece from an M-79 grenade.
The Kerry campaign has charged that Letson didn't treat Kerry, because
the log recording his treatment was signed by J.C. Carreon. But Letson
was the only physician assigned to Cam Ranh Bay at the time. If you've
ever been to a doctor's office, you may have noticed that the doctors
themselves rarely do the paperwork. Carreon (who died in 1992) was
Letson's corpsman.
The article even goes into the doubly-damning “Jim Rassmann water
rescue” story, for which Kerry received his third purple heart AND a
bronze star. The thrid purple heart gave Kerry his quick trip home
after serving only 4 months in Vietnam. Excerpt:
Kerry alleges he was wounded in the right buttock by the explosion of
an underwater mine under an accompanying swift boat. Jim Rassmann, an
Army Special Forces officer, was knocked off Kerry's boat by the mine
explosion. Kerry was awarded the bronze star for coming back "under
heavy fire" to fish Rassmann out of the water. Rassmann and the
sailors on Kerry's boat support Kerry's story.
But sailors on the other swift boats say there was no enemy fire. From
the text released by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: "The force of
the explosion disabled PCF-3, and threw several sailors, dazed, into
the water. All boats, except one, closed to rescue the sailors and
defend the disabled boat. That boat -- Kerry's boat -- fled the scene.
... After it was apparent there was no hostile fire, Kerry finally
returned, picking up Rassmann who was only a few yards away from
[Jack] Chenoweth's boat which was also going to pick Rassmann up." (Chenoweth
is one of the members of the group.).
There is no reason to suppose that Rassmann is lying, but there is
also no physical evidence to support the Kerry/Rassmann account. No
sailors were injured by gunfire; there were no bullet holes in Kerry's
boat, or any other boat.
Kerry's wound, moreover, had occurred not during the mine explosion,
but earlier, when he tossed a concussion grenade into a pile of rice,
according to Larry Thurlow, an officer who was with Kerry at the time.
Rassmann, in his Aug. 10 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, said Kerry
was injured in the mine explosion. But Kerry told his biographer,
Douglas Brinkley that "I got a piece of small grenade in my ass from
one of the rice bin explosions."
Reporter Kelly says that the Kerry campaign “has responded to the
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth not by refuting their accusations, but
by attacking their motives and their character. The Swifties are a
Republican front group, Democrats charge, even though O'Neill says he
voted for Al Gore in 2000. Co-author Jerome Corsi is an "anti-Catholic
bigot." Since Corsi is a Catholic who regularly attends Mass, this
charge is unlikely to be true, and is in any case irrelevant, since it
has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of what the Swifties
charge.”
As the article correctly concludes, all of this could be quickly and
thoroughly cleared up by Kerry:
Kerry could clear up much of the confusion if he would authorize
release of all his military records. His failure to do so suggests
there may be something he doesn't want Americans to know.
"The easiest way out of this is for John Kerry and John Edwards to
request [Committee Vice Chairman] Sen. Rockefeller and myself to
release the attendance [records]," Roberts told NBC's "Meet the
Press." Roberts urged that any Kerry record release should cover "not
only of the public hearings, which they have rebutted, but the closed
hearings," adding, "It is important, because you have to be in
attendance to learn the job."
NewsMax says the Kerry campaign has acknowledged that Kerry skipped
out of scores of public hearings, but insists he attended "private"
sessions and is a "hard-working" member of the Intelligence Committee.
The upcoming Bush/Cheney ad set to debut Aug. 16th accuses Kerry of
being absent for 76 percent of the Intelligence Committee's hearings,
noting that he was completely AWOL for the entire year after the 9/11
attacks.
"That same year," the ad says, "Sen. Kerry proposed slashing the
intelligence budget by $6 billion."
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Jane Harman, who appeared on
"Meet the Press" with Roberts, said she couldn't defend Kerry's
Intelligence Committee attendance record.
"I don't know what the facts are and I really can't speak to that,"
she explained.
to read past Daily Reports