Swiftboat Veterans for "Truth"? Ha!

Colonel David Hackworth, US Army (ret.) had a great column last week, "Once More, A Nation Divided" about those who simply will not let the wounds of the Vietnam war heal. Hackworth, the most decorated soldier of the Vietnam war, writes:

"Once again, that tragic war divides America – and this time around it’s vet pitted against vet.

Sure, Bush dodged the draft, along with a reported 14 million other Americans with the savvy to work out that Vietnam was a no-win, sorry war. But although he had the luck and the connections to land a spot in the Air Guard, he did put his butt on the line flying a machine for which he was entitled to hazardous-duty pay – and that's because zooming around in a jet fighter was and still is highly dangerous.

And sure, Kerry’s campaign push on how he Ramboed his way through the war – for four months – rubs a lot of vets the wrong way. And it does take its toll on those of us who prefer our heroes to be modest, unassuming types like Alvin York – who stayed the course until it was “Over, over there.”

But politics and style aside, Kerry did serve with distinction in Vietnam when he easily could have avoided that killing field. His service to his country shouldn’t be diminished by the same despicable, politically motivated tactics visited upon Sens. John McCain in South Carolina and Max Cleland in Georgia, also Viet vets. This kind of gutter-bashing doesn’t belong in American politics, and vets shouldn’t allow themselves to be used as ammo for cheap shots at one of their own."

Full text of the article: http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Hacks%20Target.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=85&rnd=619.2491272001583

Democratic Underground has a good refutation of most of the Swiftboat "Veterans" for "Truth" claims on their Top Ten Conservative Idiots this week: http://www.democraticunderground.com/top10/04/167.html

William Rood, one of the three Swiftboat officers who was actually present during the action for which Kerry won the Silver Star, has finally broken 35 years of silence to clear the record: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-040821kerry,1,7582568.story?coll=chi-news-hed (registration required, or the statement itself can be found here: http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/news/news_2004_0822.html)

The New York Times has finally done a full-blown article on this nonsense: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/politics/campaign/20swift.html?hp

An excerpt: "Records show that the group received the bulk of its initial financing from two men with ties to the president and his family - one a longtime political associate of Mr. Rove's, the other a trustee of the foundation for Mr. Bush's father's presidential library. A Texas publicist who once helped prepare Mr. Bush's father for his debate when he was running for vice president provided them with strategic advice. And the group's television commercial was produced by the same team that made the devastating ad mocking Michael S. Dukakis in an oversized tank helmet when he and Mr. Bush's father faced off in the 1988 presidential election.

The strategy the veterans devised would ultimately paint John Kerry the war hero as John Kerry the "baby killer" and the fabricator of the events that resulted in his war medals. But on close examination, the accounts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' prove to be riddled with inconsistencies. In many cases, material offered as proof by these veterans is undercut by official Navy records and the men's own statements.

Several of those now declaring Mr. Kerry "unfit" had lavished praise on him, some as recently as last year. "

Both Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd had good columns about this today, too: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/24/opinion/24krugman.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/22/opinion/22dowd.html

Excerpt from Krugman's:

"One of the wonders of recent American politics has been the ability of Mr. Bush and his supporters to wrap their partisanship in the flag. Through innuendo and direct attacks by surrogates, men who assiduously avoided service in Vietnam, like Dick Cheney (five deferments), John Ashcroft (seven deferments) and George Bush (a comfy spot in the National Guard, and a mysterious gap in his records), have questioned the patriotism of men who risked their lives and suffered for their country: John McCain, Max Cleland and now John Kerry.

How have they been able to get away with it? The answer is that we have been living in what Roger Ebert calls "an age of Rambo patriotism." As the carnage and moral ambiguities of Vietnam faded from memory, many started to believe in the comforting clichés of action movies, in which the tough-talking hero is always virtuous and the hand-wringing types who see complexities and urge the hero to think before acting are always wrong, if not villains.

After 9/11, Mr. Bush had a choice: he could deal with real threats, or he could play Rambo. He chose Rambo. Not for him the difficult, frustrating task of tracking down elusive terrorists, or the unglamorous work of protecting ports and chemical plants from possible attack: he wanted a dramatic shootout with the bad guy. And if you asked why we were going after this particular bad guy, who hadn't attacked America and wasn't building nuclear weapons - or if you warned that real wars involve costs you never see in the movies - you were being unpatriotic."