..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

September 7 , 2004

Via Jeff Dowd

Why the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth Are Not That Swift and Not That Truthful
by Deane Rink

The organization was formed by John O'Neill, who has harbored a grudge against John Kerry since the days when O'Neill worked in the Nixon White House. O'Neill is also the co-author of UNFIT FOR COMMAND, a book that refers to the Vietnam War as an "adventure." How a man who once took orders from Tricky Dick's Department of Dirty Tricks is qualified to determine who is fit for command boggles the mind. O'Neill's co-author is Jerry Corsi, whose previous claim to fame was the posting of racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Islamic screeds on a website. UNFIT FOR COMMAND has been promoted in print and on television by conservative columnist Robert Novak, who has somehow neglected to inform readers that his son works as a publicist for Regnery, the far right publishing house that put out UNFIT FOR COMMAND. Novak is also, many will recall, the columnist who "outed" covert CIA operative Valerie Plame because he disagreed with her husband's findings that the African nation of Niger had not provided yellowcake uranium to agents of Saddam Hussein.

The first Swiftvets ad has video of John Edwards urging people to talk to "the men who served with" John Kerry, followed by interviews with several Swiftvets who asserted they had served with Kerry, then proceeded to denounce him. These ads were deceitful because Edwards was referring to crewmates of Kerry's on the swift boat he commanded, all of whom support his candidacy without reservation. The ad distorts the meaning of "served with" to refer to the entire Mekong River delta naval operations. Many of the "witnesses" in the swift boat ads never even saw Kerry in Vietnam. Their anger at him stems from his denunciation of the war as bad policy upon his return stateside.

Bob Dole and Michelle Malkin and others have appeared on cable news shows defending the Swiftboat ads by asserting that Kerry's wounds that got him one of his Purple Hearts were self-inflicted. They have not had the integrity to define "self-inflicted," but other combat veterans have come forth to do so. It does not mean that Kerry nicked himself to get a Purple Heart. It merely means that he was wounded by flying shrapnel from his own malfunctioning weapon as he engaged the enemy, a not-uncommon occurrence in the "fog of war."

O'Neill stated on Crossfire that "more than 60 people that served with John Kerry contributed" to his book. This is a blatant lie. Only one Swiftvet, Steve Gardner, ever served on Kerry's boat, and he was never on that boat when any of the activities for which Kerry won medals or awards occurred.

One of the Swiftvets most persistent claims is that John Kerry somehow wrote his own after-action combat reports, and that in these he either exaggerated his injuries or falsely characterized what had occurred. These claims have gotten wide television coverage, despite two salient facts: this is strictly against military regulations, a system established explicitly to prevent this from ever occurring, and no Swiftvet has been able to produce a single document substantiating their charge. In addition, independent inquiries by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune have all concluded that such self-promotion never occurred.

The only other living commander (than Kerry himself) of a swift boat from the February 28, 1969 incident that led to Kerry's Silver Star broke his silence last week after 35 years because he had become disgusted by the tall tales of O'Neill and the other Swiftvets. William Rood takes issue with UNFIT FOR COMMAND's assertion that Kerry's Silver Star came from "facing a single, wounded young Viet Cong fleeing in a loincloth." According to Rood, "he was a grown man dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore. There were others who fled. There was also firing from the opposite riverbank, as well. It was not the work of just one attacker."

Rood continues: "What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did." Then-Captain Roy Hoffman, the commander of the swift boat brigade, wrote at that time that the mission was "a shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy" and that it "may be the most efficacious method of dealing with small numbers of ambushers." Rood's newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, obtained Hoffman's after-action report, which stated that the tactics developed by Kerry and Rood (and a third commander, now deceased) were "immensely effective" and that the operation did "unreparable damage to the enemy in this area."

The same Hoffman has had a change of heart.  He now says that Kerry's tactics confirm Kerry's tendency to be impulsive. This in spite of Hoffman's claims to a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that he had no first hand knowledge that would contradict the claims of Kerry's courage as documented by others. Hoffman also told the Milwaukee newspaper that, although Kerry did serve under his command, he knew little about Kerry personally. Could it be that Hoffman, like the other Swiftvets, has chosen to use ambiguous and vague terminology in a deliberate attempt to muddy the record?

This is the pernicious effect that all these Swiftvet attacks have. Charges are reported sensationalistically, yet the counter arguments that effectively rebut the worst of the charges never attain the same high degree of visibility that the initial smears generate. This is a familiar tactic, made all the more effective by an uncomprehending or willingly complicit mass media. It worked for Senator Joe McCarthy in the Fifties, and it worked for Lee Atwater in 1988 when he invoked the spectre of Willie Horton against presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. Although Atwater apologized on his deathbed for what he had wrought, expect no such similar mea culpa from his protege Karl Rove, who surreptitiously releases stinkbombs and then has the audacity to complain about the foul air.

Back to the Mekong Delta. If Kerry's tactics were impulsive, one would not expect George Elliott, the officer who recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, to write "In a combat environment often requiring independent decisive action, Lt. j.g. Kerry was unsurpassed . . . [he was] calm, professional, and highly courageous in the face of enemy fire." If Kerry's tactics were not in line with the expectations established by the top brass, why did Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, the commander of all naval operations in Vietnam, fly personally down to the base to pin the Silver Star on the young officer, John Kerry?

Yet in the Swiftvet TV ad, Elliott now says that Kerry "has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam." John Kerry was once a prosecutor. If he had allowed a witness to testify to something that directly contradicted an earlier statement made by that selfsame witness, there's not a judge in the land who would have allowed the smear to be admitted into evidence without a showing that the witness had not always felt this way. Yet this is precisely what John O'Neill and the Swiftvets have done. They have publicized smears on a national scale and sought to hide their contradictory statements that might shed light on their underlying motivations.

Why didn't the Swiftvets include the viewpoints of Kerry crewmate Del Sandusky, who told reporters that he was present for all the battles and skirmishes that led to Kerry winning the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts? Sandusky remembers Vietnam vividly and has no self-contradictory statements lurking in his past. He says "I knew a lot of boat officers in my two and a half years in Vietnam. John Kerry was the last one and the best one . . . we were in ambushes and firefights, you know, one, two, three, four times a day . . . He made decisions every night that kept us alive - got us out of there in one piece."

Why didn't the Swiftvets for Truth enlist William Sweidell, a Korean war vet who once supported both Bushes for president. He now says "Nobody was talking about how it was hurting all veterans to have them criticize Kerry's medals. The whole system is now suspect based on what these people are saying. It's pernicious." It should come as no surprise that Sweidell now supports John Kerry.

Instead, the Swiftvets bring in Larry Thurlow, the skipper of another swift boat operating alongside Kerry on the night Kerry saved the life of crew member Jim Rassman. Thurlow suggests that Kerry's Bronze Star is "totally fabricated" and that "I never heard a shot [on that night]." When pressed on this by reporters and television interviewers, Thurlow refused to release his own records from that day, records that exist because Thurlow too was awarded a Bronze Star. The Washington Post filed a Freedom of Information Act suit against the National Personnel Records Center and it became clear why Thurlow was reluctant to release his own records. They directly contradict the assertions he made on the TV ads. "Enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire were directed at all units." Furthermore, an angry Rassman recalls "no one can tell me we were not under fire. I saw it, I heard the splashes, and I was scared to death. For them to come back thirty-five years after the fact to tarnish not only Kerry's record, but my veracity, is unconscionable." Rassman adds "These gentlemen appear to be making it up as they go along and they are not keeping their stories straight."

There are other witnesses as well, testifying to Kerry's bravery and refuting specific allegations made by the Swiftvets in their TV ads. But it's pretty clear what the strategy of the Swiftvets is - to sling as much mud onto the wall as possible and be secure in the knowledge that some of it will stick, that it will infect a substantial percentage of voters, even if it is al effectively refuted over time. It is as if Kerry were to hire five Yalies from the Sixties to all say they snorted white powder with Geroge W. Bush. The truth of the assertion is irrelevant. Only its smear value counts.

The Swiftvets have also engaged in one other lie that must be mentioned. They deny that they are acting as agents of the Bush campaign. They will tell you that they are hurt by Kerry's political posturings and by the way he turned on his fellow vets when he returned from the war and started speaking out about its futile nature. They will hint that the anti-war Kerry was treasonous. Let's take one last moment to consider these charges.

It is true that John Kerry organized against the Vietnam War after his return, with substantially more credibility as a decorated ex-vet than many civilians had. He was articulate, and an officer, and was therefore chosen to deliver messages from many veterans who had come to believe that the Vietnam War was an unwinnable folly, the bastard stepchild of bad political philosophy so consumed by a negative (anti-communism) that it overlooked the positive selling points of liberal democracy. He spoke of aberrations in American military policy, atrocities that came out of frustration and that were to be expected in a climate of flawed military judgments and ideological civilian controls. The architect of the Vietnam War, then-Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara, came to the same conclusions, conveniently after his retirement. Kerry stands accused of being prematurely prescient about Vietnam. His personal experiences, and his depth of international understanding, are strong talking points that support his claim to the mantle of leadership, or would be in a rational democracy.

But a rational democracy is the last thing the GOP wants to promote. They seek to inflame emotions, cloud judgment, and divert attention from their own failings.

The Swiftvet ads ran in three states and were underwritten by a Houston businessman named Robert Perry. Perry has long been a financial supporter of George W. Bush and a political ally of Bush's grey eminence, Karl Rove. One of the Swiftvet "witnesses" was forced to drop out of the Bush campaign structure after John Kerry started pointing out that these ads were thinly-disguised fronts for the Bush campaign itself. And just last week, Bush campaign election law expert, the D.C. lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg, resigned when it was revealed that he had been simultaneously advising John O'Neill and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Even more recently, Laura Bush has been quoted as saying she didn't think the Swift Boat ads were dirty politics. She might have a point had the ads been "fair and balanced," but, as we have seen, they are among the most outrageous distortions ever made in an American political campaign. If you believe the Swiftvets, you probably also believed George W. Bush when he landed on that aircraft carrier in full dress regalia and announced (about the Iraq War), "Mission Accomplished."

Deane Rink
8/30/04