WaPo Smears Swift Boat Vets
Today, the Washington Post runs an editorial on the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, titled Swift Boat Smears. The editorial is a window into the mindset behind the apparent decision by most of the mainstream media to ignore the Vets’ accusations of dishonesty by Kerry.
The editorial begins plausibly enough, by noting that John Kerry has made his brief Vietnam tour “a centerpiece of his presidential campaign.” (Some might say the centerpiece.) The editorial continues:
To the extent, then, that there are legitimate questions about Mr. Kerry’s behavior — either in Vietnam or back home as a prominent antiwar activist — those are fair game.
So far, this stands in stark contrast to the views of Los Angeles Times editors, who have claimed (implausibly) that these exact issues are not “fair game.”
Among the issues that the Post editors consider fair game are: Kerry’s “unusually short tour”; his use of his three Purple Hearts, for “relatively superficial” wounds, to dramatically shorten his stay in Vietnam; and his antiwar statements, which Kerry has admitted were essentially exaggerated.
So far, so good. But then the editorial changes its tone. All of a sudden, any accusation against Kerry is suspect, while any evidence supporting him becomes unimpeachable. Critical thinking goes out the window. The editorial ignores, or badly misunderstands, many of the principal arguments made by the Vets.
For example, the editorial completely misapprehends the allegations made by Dr. Louis Letson, who says he treated Kerry for a minor shrapnel wound forming the basis for Kerry’s first Purple Heart. The editorial pretends that Letson’s principal claim is that Kerry’s injury was too minor for a Purple Heart:
Dr. Letson isn’t listed on Mr. Kerry’s medical record at the time. That doesn’t disprove his claim to have treated Mr. Kerry, who received a superficial shrapnel injury to his arm. But neither does the account of Dr. Letson or others about the incident indicate that Mr. Kerry was lying. Mr. Kerry’s wound doesn’t seem to have amounted to much, but he didn’t claim it did — nor does that make him ineligible for a Purple Heart.
This passage completely misses the point of Letson’s accusation that Kerry lied. As a look at the Swift Vets’ website shows, Letson’s claim is that the evidence shows Kerry’s wound was self-inflicted, making it ineligible as a basis for a Purple Heart.
The evidence shows that crewmen accompanying Kerry told Letson that Kerry had actually wounded himself, with a grenade launched from an M-79 grenade launcher. Nobody, not even Kerry himself, claimed to have seen enemy fire. The tiny fragment Letson removed from Kerry’s arm with a pair of tweezers appeared to be an M-79 fragment, corroborating the account of the crewmen accompanying Kerry.
That is the basis for Letson’s claim that Kerry lied.
Have the editors even looked at the Vets’ web site?
Similarly, the editorial says that the “weight of the evidence” supports Kerry’s version of the incident for which Kerry received a Bronze Star. The editorial cites three eyewitnesses (whose statements, though the editorial doesn’t mention it, are corroborated by several other witnesses) who have filed affidavits swearing that Kerry fled during the battle, only to return after the shooting had stopped. How do we know that we should discount these three (or more) percipient witnesses, and that the “weight of the evidence” favors Kerry’s version? Because Kerry has three witnesses. Apparently, that’s good enough for the Post editors. (Never mind that Kerry’s witnesses have a motive to lie, to make their own actions seem more heroic — and that one of them, the man whose life Kerry saved, can’t even seem to keep straight which boat he was on. And never mind that the hull of Kerry’s boat did not receive any bullet holes from the allegedly heavy fire.)
The editorial doesn’t even mention the “Christmas in Cambodia” lie — the alleged turning point of John Kerry’s life, and a story apparently manufactured from whole cloth. Instead, the editorial focuses on who has been funding the Vets’ ad. (Turns out there are some Republicans involved. And here I figured it would be primarily Democrats.) Why this means the veterans themselves are lying, I have no idea.
Do I know whether the Swift Boat Veterans are telling the truth? No — and neither do the editors at the Washington Post. One thing is certain, however: Kerry could clear most of this up by simply agreeing to release his complete military records. Given that the Post says that there are “legitimate questions” about Kerry’s military record, which they admit is a “centerpiece” of Kerry’s campaign, you’d think the Post would call for Kerry to release those records. Unfortunately, the Post’s editors are content to simply smear the Vets with poorly researched arguments and misleading invective. I can’t say I’m surprised, but I am disappointed.
P.S. The incomparable Beldar, who has been on top of this story for days, has a well-written and virtually identical reaction to the editorial.
UPDATE: Thanks to Beldar, The Big Trunk at Power Line, and Captain Ed for the links.
UPDATE x2: ThoughtsOnline has more analysis.
WaPo enters the SwiftVets fray
WaPo’s editorial writers believe Kerry’s Band of Brothers over the SwiftVets because it thinks the latter are biased by partisanship. But were the Swift Boats without bulletholes partisan liars too? MSM is waking up to this controversy!
Trackback by BeldarBlog — 8/12/2004 @ 12:44 am
Thanks for the link. But I completely forgot about the Cambodia angle, as apparently did WaPo’s editorialists; I’m glad you didn’t.
And how could I have forgotten it? I’ve had the damned tune from that Broadway show whose name must not be invoked, lest Godwin’s Law be violated, running through my head for three days now, but with some different lyrics: “CHRIST-mas! In Cam-BO-dia! For JOHN Ker-reeee!” I can’t make it stop!
Comment by Beldar — 8/12/2004 @ 1:05 am
“I say again — go with the guys who were On The Boat”
Three of them say Kerry was never in Cambodia.
Who ya gonna believe the swifties? Or the guys who were On The Boat?
I’m going with the boat guys on this one.
What is the War Hero Afraid of?
Form 180. Release the records.
Comment by M. Simon — 8/12/2004 @ 3:47 am
Washington Post Dances Around Swiftvet Charges
Today’s editorial from the Washington Post denigrating the Swiftvets is a mastery of slicing just enough off the truth to retain the sheen of credibility without actually addressing the issues that the Swiftvets have raised. First, the editorial attemp…
Trackback by Captain's Quarters — 8/12/2004 @ 6:20 am
It should be amazing, but of course it’s not, that for a while there earlier in the campaign season we were treated to week after week of ‘Bush was MIA’ during his Guard service, with every DNC operative and most of the elite media calling for the president to release his records. Now the tables are turned, and the silence is deafening. Too bad the swifties in Coastal Group 11 didn’t have their own video cameras aboard; that’s what it’ll take to get the Post, the Times, or any of the other big boys to ask Kerry to do what they not too long ago demanded of Bush.
Comment by FormerDem — 8/12/2004 @ 10:30 am
Here’s an interesting point. In the Judy Woodruff interview whose transcript you link above, Rassmann (or is it Rassman? newsies can’t seem to decide) says the following:
RASSMANN: I’m here today not just because John
Kerry pulled me out of that water. I’m here
today because if those two kids of mine were in
the military, I would want John Kerry to be the
commander-in-chief, not George Bush.
“I’m here today not just because John Kerry pulled me out of that water.”
But wait… in the opinion piece that Rassmann (then called Rassman) penned for the Wall Street Journal, he gives a more detail account that makes it clear that Kerry did not, in fact, “pull[] me out of that water;” in the version Rassman told in the Journal, he pulled himself out of the water, climbed the cargo net, and stopped, exhausted, just below the gunwale. Kerry only came out on deck and pulled him over the railing.
The odds were against me avoiding the
incoming fire and, even if I made it out of
the river, I thought I’d be captured and
executed. Kerry must have seen me in the
water and directed his driver, Del Sandusky,
to turn the boat around. Kerry’s boat ran up
to me in the water, bow on, and I was able to
climb up a cargo net to the lip of the deck.
But, because I was nearly upside down, I
couldn’t make it over the edge of the deck.
This left me hanging out in the open, a
perfect target. John, already wounded by the
explosion that threw me off his boat, came
out onto the bow, exposing himself to the
fire directed at us from the jungle, and
pulled me aboard.
(Side note: by “already wounded,” Rassman means that Kerry had scraped his arm, a “wound” that does not appear to be particularly crippling.)
Considering that nobody, not even Rassman (or Rassmann), claims that nobody else on any of the other four boats was on the deck, we learn that Kerry in fact did not expose himself worse than anyone else there. He certainly did not — as many had previously supposed — dive into the water through a hail of gunfire to rescue Rassmann. Or even Rassman.
I don’t think Rassmann (CNN spelling) was intentionally trying to mislead by saying Kerry had pulled him out of the water… but he was clearly trying to make it sound more dramatic.
Considering that that is exactly what Thurlow was accusing Rassmann of doing with the rest of his story, this is a serious piece of evidence: evidently, Rassmann is not above engaging in some story-telling to improve the drama and make his own and Kerry’s roles seem more dangerous and heroic.
Here is what I think most likely happened:
Rassmann was in unfamiliar environs in the first place; he wasn’t a Swiftie, he was Special Forces and probably not used to riding around on those boats up the canals and tributaries that feed into the Mekong River. The boat right next to his hit an underwater mine, which exploded frighteningly close.
I believe the testimony from the people on the other boats that Kerry sped his boat away, lurching so quickly that Rassman fell off the back after it had already moved a hundred feet or so. At this same moment, the other boats opened fire into the banks, fearing the mine might have been part 1 of an ambush.
Rassman dove into the water, coming up a few seconds later, probably having drifted a bit downstream. At that point, coming up, he heard the machine-gun fire, confirming his worst fears that he was helpless in the water during a firefight. (And depending on how far away he was, see next paragraph, he might have had shell casings [brass] landing in the water nearby from thirty feet up, giving the impression to a frightened mind that bullets were smacking into the water all around Rassman.)
He looks around and sees Kerry’s boat aways off to one side — and because of his own movement, he sees the other boats aways off to the other side. This even more confirms the idea that “when I surfaced, all the swift boats had left, and I was alone taking fire from both banks.”
Time and story-telling has likely by now altered the memory, which was traumatic and probably not very videotape-like in the first place; I’m sure Rassman actually believes what he’s saying by this point.
Yet there is physical evidence that simply contradicts it, the two most important pieces being:
* The 3-boat was disabled and had to be towed, so it couldn’t have “left,” as Rassman says. Had the other boats left and Rassman stayed where he had fallen, he would have surfaced next to the 3-boat and been rescued immediately by them, not Kerry.
* None of the five boats took any damage from this supposed barrage of gunfire. That’s either some amazingly poor shooting by the Viet Cong, or else the other Swifties were correct and there was no return fire from the banks.
The account above seems the most plausible, given the physical evidence and the testimony. I wonder if the Washington Post even considered it?
Dafydd
Comment by Dafydd ab Hugh — 8/12/2004 @ 1:26 pm
Excellent dissection and analysis. I hope you’re using your skills by posting on WaPo’s message boards.
Comment by Mike — 8/12/2004 @ 3:08 pm
Actually, I’m using my “excellent” writing skills (thanks!) and my noticibly less-than-excellent Web skills to finally create a Web page, after which I intend to maintain a blog.
I’m pretty sure that contributing to the message boards of any newspaper is useless, as only a handful of people read them. But if a blog takes off, it can reach thousands, even tens of thousands of readers, eventually. This, as Rumsfeld might say, is rather more helpful.
Dafydd
Comment by Dafydd ab Hugh — 8/14/2004 @ 12:29 pm
STEPHEN KOFF
Washington Bureau Chief of the Cleveland Plain Dealer does the Swift Vet / Kerry in Cambodia story: “War stories collide as Kerry’s Vietnam medals come under fire”. For the…
Trackback by PRESTOPUNDIT -- "Kerry in Cambodia" Wall-to-Wall Coverage — 8/16/2004 @ 10:47 am
The Kerry rapid response team is acting like Bush is co-ordinating with Swiftboat Vets for Truth by presenting a flyer that has a rally sponser of Swiftboat Vets for Bush. It appears to be a bait and switch. Are the two the same or connected? Is the Swiftboat Vets for Bush a 527? Maybe someone can check it out. Here’s the Kerry URL http://blog.johnkerry.com/rapidresponse/archives/002519.html#002519
Comment by Kerry Kenoyer — 8/21/2004 @ 1:28 pm