I honestly think the Liberal Democrats are beyond trying to convince others of their positions. They're now engaging in the heavy sighs, the "you just don't get it"s, the bald assertions that "you're wrong no touchbacks no arguebacks" they attempt to impose on discussions, and the easy jeers at the Right, in order to keep *themselves* convinced. It's the best explanation I can come up with for the transparency of their dodges.

Oh, Mitch, come on. There's one big reason the Swifties have a credibility problem, and that's the fact that they're funded by the right, and published by Regenery (Company Motto: "We Still Think Clinton Had Vince Foster Whacked.")

Look, if Larry Flynt and his band of merry men go ahead and publish the "Bush Paid a Woman to Have an Abortion" book that they're working on, will you take the charges at face value? Will you say, "Well, Larry Flynt wrote a book with a lot of charges in it, and so therefore, President Bush better come clean?" Of course not!

Look, the Swifties have an axe to grind. Until someone without an axe to grind steps forward, this will fail to build as a story.

(Incidentally, while there are "two hundred and fifty!" members of SBVAK, perhaps seven or eight were in a position to actually know what kind of an officer Kerry was. Was Kerry great or not? I don't know. But I'm not going to base my feelings on a Scaife-affiliated organization.)

Hey Fecke...

Have you seen this:

John E. O'Neill, co-author of "Unfit for Command," replaced Kerry as commander of Swift Boat PCF 94 in 1969 and has been confronting him since 1971. O'Neill told me he is no George W. Bush partisan and probably would have supported John Edwards had he been nominated for president, but is committed to keeping Kerry out of the Oval Office. Thus, reversing the usual formulation, the assault on Kerry is personal but not political.

O'Neill told me neither he nor his co-author (Jerome R. Corsi, a writer and expert on the Vietnam antiwar movement) has had contact with the Bush White House or the Bush-Cheney campaign. He said he and Corsi, on their own initiative, went to conservative Regnery Publishing to offer the book.

That's from an article at TownHall.com. You can get the link to it at http://plastichallway.blogspot.com/2004/08/john-kerry-war-president.html

Jeff Fecke: You're only confirming what Mitch asserted, by attacking the SwiftVets personally and ignoring what they said.

Comparing the SwiftVets to Larry Flynt? Ugh.

It's a weird world when noting a group's funding and political affiliations is considered a "personal attack."

Quite frankly, neither the swifties nor their counterparts on the left are credible because their partisanship colors their judgement. Look, when the person you choose to write your polemic has also written things like "So this is what the last days of the Catholic Church are going to look like. Buggering boys undermines the moral base and the lawyers rip the gold off the Vatican altars. We may get one more Pope, when this senile one dies, but that's probably about it," you're not going to be given the instant stamp of approval.

If the swfties' allegations are borne out by anyone left of Michael Savage, wake me up. I'll pay attention then. But until then, I stand by my earlier statement.

It's a misnomer to call noting the swifties alleged connections "personal attacks". It IS, however, a tangent. Everyone tht wants to get their voice heard needs friends in high places, and lots of money, these days.

Partisanship does not necessarily harm credibility: abolitionists, suffragettes and civil rights protesters were intensely partisan, but in the end fully credible. One needs to consider claims on their own merits; and it seems some people are finally drilling past the Dems' smokescreen to do exactly that, to Kerry's peril.

I'm to the left of Savage, so wake up.

Its a tightroipe walk. The swifties (nor any group) is above all reproach. If a group like Move On makes a statement I dont think any dem would be opposed to you guys saying "they have an agenda, are biased, and anti bush". And you would be right. If the dems say the swifties have an agenda, are biased, and are anti-kerry. where exactly is the harm? It doesnt invalidate their points, but it does make the motives behind them suspect. Any advocacy group by its nature "has an axe" to grind, this doesnt mean that they "have no credibility" but it does mean that their cause tends to preclude an objective presentation of their facts.

I see no harm in simply stating that this group is funded by a partisan organization for the partisan purpose of damaging Kerry. Just as I have no problem saying that Move On is a partisan organisation for the purpose of damaging Bush. So wheres the problem?

"I see no harm in simply stating that this group is funded by a partisan organization for the partisan purpose of damaging Kerry. Just as I have no problem saying that Move On is a partisan organisation for the purpose of damaging Bush. So wheres the problem?"

The problem is when people think that a group with *any* agenda - or, more usually, an agenda someone disagrees with - isn't credible for that reason alone, without considering the merits of the claims being made.

I don't blithely dismiss MoveOn's claims; investigation fairly reliably shows them to be false anyway. The Swifties' claims seem to be accreting more and more meat as we go here...

Actually, I think Jeff has a very good point. If Larry Flynt is behind something, it does taint it to some degree. But Republicans don't dismiss his efforts out of hand. When Flynt exposed House Republicans who had affairs, we didn't say that those affairs didn't happen. Rather, those House Republicans all had to admit their sins. Flynt is a dirtball, but it doesn't mean he is not credible when bringing facts to light. But Flynt normally works with shadowy skanks. Not 250 war heros.

So the Flynt analogy works to some extent. But not to the degree the Kerry supporters would like.

Yeah, the Swifties are not to be trusted because they have raised a massive $150,000 ($25 from me! Yeah, I'm part of the VRWC, and I am now apparently a millionaire!!!) for their ads, and got their book published by a conservative publishing house. Naturally, any book published by Regnery cannot be trusted, as it is obviously part of the VRWC. Unlike the small independent poublishing house of Viacom/Simon & Shuster/CBS.

I would expect now that everytime there is a MoveOn.org ad, these same folks will condemn George Soros for his MILLIONS he is spending to destroy George Bush.

And getting into bed with Larry Flynt, to my mind, destroys the credibility of an argument. I'll take 250+ Navy Vets over Larry Flynt and George Soros anyday. Most Americans will too.

Round and round, its hard to have a rational discussion about the topic at hand ("r.e. do the "lefties" discount the credibility of the swift boat vetrans) when you refuse to actually talk about the topic you posit.

Short answer, I dont believe they have NO credibility, I do believe their motives, funding, and timing are suspect.

And it might just be a matter of perception mitch but the more I read up on those guys assertations the LESS I belive them.

This is why the Cambodia Christmas story is so important, for two reasons. First, Kerry himself has contradicting version of this story: in one version he is writing in his journal at Sa Dec, in another he is 5 miles over the Cambodian border. Second, three of the five crewman who served under Kerry at the time deny the Cambodia incident ever took place. These are three of the nine Douglas Brinkley interviewed who, overall, have favorable opinions of Kerry. (The other two crewman on the boat at the time, incidentally, do not confirm the story; they have chosen not to comment.)

So the Cambodia story stands on its own regardless of the credibilit of the Swift Boat Vets.

Sorry for the typos: "version" -> "versions", "crewman" = "crewmen"

I'm having trouble with comparing the Swifties to MoveOn. The Swifties were trying to come off like a group of nonpartisan vets that came together because they wanted to tell the truth about Kerry. MoveOn is an openly and overtly partisan organization - I mean, it's what they are and nobody is surprised at that.

But the Swift Boat Vets are trying to come off as ordinary concerned guys:

"We are acting solely as Vietnam veterans who served in Swift Boats. [...] Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is a non-partisan organization."

Okay, so - those are lies. The people behind them [a] have given millions to Bush and Texas Republicans (fine), [b] are behind some of the 2000 attack ads on McCain, [c] in the case of O'Neill, has been going after Kerry since he was a tool of the Nixon Administration over 30 years ago. So how seriously am i supposed to take these guys, pulled together by the Republicans 30 years later, and right off the bat they're lying about who they are and their agenda? Not very seriously at all.

As I said in my site, this kind of mudslinging crap (on both sides) is what keeps voters away from the polls. We can piss over Vietnam and military records (or lack thereof) until the cows come home, it won't get us anywhere.

Chuck: You asserted that:
"Okay, so - those are lies. The people behind them [a] have given millions to Bush and Texas Republicans (fine), [b] are behind some of the 2000 attack ads on McCain, [c] in the case of O'Neill, has been going after Kerry since he was a tool of the Nixon Administration over 30 years ago. So how seriously am i supposed to take these guys, pulled together by the Republicans 30 years later, and right off the bat they're lying about who they are and their agenda? Not very seriously at all."

What you say seems logical, but do you have any sources for your assertions? I ask in the interest of better judging the credibility and motivations of the SwiftVets for Truth group.

Oh yeah, sources would help. :-)
I tried to link to my post on this, but no HTML allowed. Here are a few sources:

http://factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=231
http://mediamatters.org/items/200408050007
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/05/04/swift/

"[a] have given millions to Bush and Texas Republicans (fine), [b] are behind some of the 2000 attack ads on McCain, [c] in the case of O'Neill, has been going after Kerry since he was a tool of the Nixon Administration over 30 years ago. So how seriously am i supposed to take these guys, pulled together by the Republicans 30 years later, and right off the bat they're lying about who they are and their agenda? Not very seriously at all."

As to the "lies" about their agenda - oh, c'mon. Par for the course these days - "MoveOn" calls itself nonpartisan, too. So, for that matter, do NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and the BBC.

As to your links: O'Neil HAS been after Kerry for a long time. I really don't blame him. Once upon a time I interviewed another prominent vietnam vet; HE was disgusted with Kerry, and this was in 1986! It's not that rare!

Chuck,

I don't have the link handy, but a quick check will show that the factcheck.org reference has been fisked pretty well already.

...It's a weird world when noting a group's funding and political affiliations is considered a "personal attack."...

Your side started this "personal attack" business when you started whining about voting record comparisons being tantamount to "Negative Campaigning." Your side furthered it by referring to Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, and others as "trailer-park trash."

You made this, you sleep in it. We'll tell you when it's time to wake up.

I found the link to the fisking of factcheck.org
http://qando.net/archives/003752.htm

Loren

Everyone needs to refocus back on what is important. The claims these guys make and its credibility.

I saw 4 of them interviewed on TV last night (no not on FOX), caught the end of it but wow.

They described the event where Kerry rescued someone out of the water. Kerrys boat was quite a distance back from the boat that actually hit the mine. I guess there were several boats in this operation. A total of 4 people were fished out of the water. They said there was no enemy fire from either shore let alone the 3 miles of intense gun battle Kerry claims. Not one boat in the unit sustained even one bullet hole (including Kerrys). When kerry submitted his request for his purple heart that gave him the ticket home he combinded that "heroic event" of pulling someone out of the water with the (US)grenade that went off(I think at a training excercise) where they pulled a little shrapenel and rice out of his behind) on the same form, I guess since it was the same day

With all that experience gathering medals, he knew how the system worked, and worked it well.

"In a combat environment often requiring independent, decisive action LTJG Kerry was unsurpassed. He constantly reviewed tactics and lessons learned in river operations and applied his experience at every opportunity. On one occasion while in tactical command of a three boat operation his units were taken under fire from ambush. LTJG Kerry rapidly assessed the situation and ordered his units to turn directly into the ambush. This decision resulted in routing the attackers with several enemy KIA. LTJG Kerry emerges as the acknowledged leader in his peer group. His bearing and appearance are above reproach. He has of his own volition learned the Vietnamese language and is instrumental in the successful Vietnamese training program. During the period of this report LTJG Kerry has been awarded the Silver Star medal, the Bronze Star medal, the Purple Heart medal (2nd and 3rd awards)."
-G.M. Elliott, 18 December 1969

Like Hewitt, I emphasize that I (like most credible conservatives) am NOT attacking Kerry's service in any way, Flash. He's entitled to his PerfReps, and I won't quibble with a word of it.

Merely his ex post facto navigation.

Loren: Thanks for that link. The "fisking" of FactCheck.org doesn't negate any of my three points, however.

Mitch: True, it is par for the course these days. :-)

Read the Washington Post today, 8/19/04 and the official Military records of the guy making the accusations against Kerry.

And still he denies any shots were fired and blames Kerry for writing up his Bronze medal. Which he could not have done.

Seems we have more than the President walking around in the King's New Clothes. Either that, or they are so far into denial, they must seek mental health.