HEY, WHERE IS ‘AIR NATIONAL GUARDSMEN FOR TRUTH’? [08/24 04:51 PM]
An NRO reader who wishes to remain anonymous observes:
"Note that NO PERSON ever has stepped forward to say that he knows that Bush did not fulfill his guard service. Col. Turnipseed, the commander of the base at which Bush served in Alabama, has made clear that his original widely circulated statements that he does not remember Bush at the base were quoted out of context, and that he would have no reason to remember Bush from several weekends? service out of the hundreds of guardsmen there. There are no ?Guardsmen for Truth? challenging Bush?s version of events. Moreover, ALL of the available military records indicate that Bush fulfilled his service in Alabama ? in addition to the hundreds of flight hours that he had logged in Texas. But we still get Michael Moore ? and this:"
Then he points to a John Kerry release focusing exclusively on Kerry questioning Bush’s National Guard service.
Bush hasn’t said word one about the Swift Boat Vets, their charges, the medals… He hasn’t even spoken about Kerry’s antiwar protests and 1971 testimony, which seem like undeniably fair game. Ditto for the RNC. Judging from the discussions with RNC and Bush-Cheney campaign folk, it sounds like the first campaign staffer or Republican employee to praise the Swifties on or off the record gets smacked around by Rove.
And yet, in the face of all this, and with no evidence beyond a version of the Ken Bacon six-degrees-of-separation game, Kerry asserts Bush is behind this. Astounding.
…
SO IS ATTACKING BUSH’S MILITARY RECORD INAPPROPRIATE OR NOT? [08/24 03:45 PM]
Kerry, back on August 18
Republican Sen. John McCain called on Kerry to denounce an ad by liberal interest group Moveon.org, that accuses Bush of using family connections to avoid the Vietnam War...
Kerry, mindful of McCain's political clout, issued a conciliatory statement minutes after the Arizona senator told The Associated Press he wanted Kerry to condemn the anti-Bush ad.
"I agree with Senator McCain that the ad is inappropriate," Kerry said in a statement released by his campaign. Hours earlier, at a news conference organized by Kerry's campaign, two veterans accused Bush of using family ties to get out of combat.
Other Kerry remarks on this topic, gathered by Team Bush:
Kerry Said President Bush ?Didn?t Learn The Lessons? Of Vietnam And Is Putting Soldiers ?At Greater Risk.? (Pete Yost, ?Bush, Kerry Honor Veterans On Memorial Day,? The Associated Press, 5/31/04)
Kerry: The President ?Can?t Even Answer Whether Or Not He Showed Up For Duty In The National Guard.? (ABC?s ?Good Morning America,? 4/26/04)
Kerry: ?This Comes From A President Who Can?t Even Show Or Prove That He Showed Up For Duty In The National Guard.? (ABC?s ?Good Morning America,? 4/26/04)
Kerry: ?George Bush Has Yet To Explain To America Whether Or Not, And Tell The Truth, About Whether He Showed Up For Duty.? (ABC?s ?Good Morning America,? 4/26/04)
Kerry Compared President Bush?s Guard Service To Draft-Dodging. ??If people went to Canada, if people opposed the war, if people chose to be in the Guard, that?s their choice, and I?ve never raised that in an issue,? he said.? (Noelle Straub, ?Kerry Presents Himself As GOP?s Worst Nightmare,? Boston Herald, 2/3/04)
Kerry Questioned If President Served In Alabama National Guard. ??I don?t have the answer to that question. And just because you get an honorable discharge does not, in fact, answer that question.?? (Patrick Healy, ?Kerry Casts Doubt On Bush Credibility On Iraq,? The Boston Globe, 2/9/04)
Kerry Even Attacked President?s Service In 2000: ??Those Of Us Who Were In The Military Wonder How It Is That Someone Who Is Supposedly Serving On Active Duty, Having Taken That Oath, Can Miss A Whole Year Of Service Without Even Explaining Where It Went,? Said Kerry.? (Mike Glover, ?Gore Defends Home Turf As Bush Concedes ?Mistakes,?? The Associated Press, 11/4/00)
In February 2004, Kerry Claimed He Never Passed Judgment On President?s National Guard Service: ?It?s Not An Issue That I?ve Chosen To Create.? (Ron Hutcheson, ?White House Releases National Guard Documents,? Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, 2/11/04)
Why is the MoveOn.org ad “inappropriate,” but all the other comments Kerry has made appropriate? Why is the Swift Boat Vets ads criticizing Kerry’s military record part of an inappropriate “smear and fear,” but Kerry’s comments are appropriate?
BostonBarrister has ducked the pertinent issue, that the burden of proof is on the accuser. This is still America, isn’t it? We still have some rights left?
Isn’t it “innocent until proven guilty”? The Swift Boat Liars haven’t proven anything!
Also, lets pull back on the rampaging hypocrisy… When General Zinni released his book calling the Iraq war a boondoggle from Bush, a whole bunch of guys complained that “you can’t trust Zinni, he’s trying to sell a book!” As if General Zinni would make shit up in order to sell a book!
But now we have these Swift Boat Liars pimping a book, but NO MENTION of how that might make THEM biased. How hypocritical is that?
How can you dismiss General Zinni but believe Swift Boater Liars?
Aw shucks, you guys are right, the REAL hero of the Vietnam war was George W Bush, who used his plane to deliver tropical plants between Florida and Texas while other soldiers were actually fighting in Vietnam.
The real hero is George W Bush who sat on a barstool in Alabama, rather than reporting for duty.
Right now there are photos on the net, that show Dubya posing for photos wearing somebody else’s medals!
I’m going to wait and see if it’s not a hoax, before posting the photos here… maybe somebody Photoshopped it.
If it’s not a hoax, there are pics of Dubya wearing medals he didn’t earn!
[quote]Lumpy wrote:
BostonBarrister has ducked the pertinent issue, that the burden of proof is on the accuser. This is still America, isn’t it? We still have some rights left?
Isn’t it “innocent until proven guilty”? The Swift Boat Liars haven’t proven anything!
[/quote]
Lump –
How exactly did I “duck” the "pertinent issue?
Let me refresh you on what I posted on this above, to vroom:
“Firstly, I do believe I’m aware, given my profession, of the legal standard for criminal conviction. However, politics isn’t a court of law, and people, in their beliefs, are free to think what they want. Even if someone is acquitted on a criminal trial people can still think he did it – ever hear of O.J.? See, the “innocent until proven guilty” standard means that the government cannot punish you until you have been properly convicted by a jury of your peers in a court of law, with all the proper evidentiary standards and whatnot. It does not mean people cannot form opinions based on the evidence at hand.”
To you, I will add this: Of course this is America. Given it is America, you have no right to tell anyone else what he or she must think. You present facts, and people make their decisions. Innocent until proven guilty is the standard for criminal punishment, not for political opinion.
If Kerry wants to win the battle for public opinion on this, he should release his journals and the balance of his military records, which, although he promised to do so, he has yet to do. People are quite capable of discerning truth when facts are laid before them, rather than a bunch of desperate ad hominem accusations.
And, with that, I will reiterate what my position has been on this, from the beginning – in fact, let me quote what I wrote at the top of the thread (2nd post of the thread if you care to scroll up):
"Bah. This is nothing more than a he-said/he-said, and we aren’t going to get a final answer. The thing now is that the records pulled by the WaPo were based on after-action reports written by Kerry himself. If they could really prove it was a hoax, instead of just saying they could, then you wouldn’t have Kerry campaign staffers refusing to appear on the same shows as the Swift Boat folks, and you’d have them mounting an actual defense versus questioning the motives. Not to say the Swift Boat people are necessarily correct – the nature of the accusations, and the separation of time, make it virtually impossible to make a hard-and-fast determination of truth here.
So, no, I don’t think they should pull the book, irrespective of whether I agree or disagree, in the abstract, with the accusations. I also don’t think they should pull Michael Moore, or repress the Kitty Kelly book that is to come out about Bush in October. Something that is disputable can be disputed – and if you can prove something is a hoax, get on with it so we can move on.
For me, I wish people would focus a little less on Viet Nam – you know, the war that ended 30 years ago – and a little more on such minor things as Senate records and the plan for the war we’re currently engaged in. But I understand why some of those vets hate Kerry – I wouldn’t be too pleased either, given all his accusations of atrocities and whatnot."
If you did, you’d know that this movie was just as much an indictment of the press as it was of W.
Throughout the movie, Moore used journalistic terms such as “may have” and “could.”
Very few conclusions were drawn.
Even though many of the scenarios depicted in the film may have added up to much ado about nothing, where was the press? Shouldn’t the press have at least investigated the connection between the Bushes and the Saudis? Shouldn’t the press have investigated why only 30 of the 122 bin Laden family members in the US were interviewed?
As such, what Moore did pales in comparison to the Swift boat veterans. Moore lets you decide, but the Switt Boat veterans are below such decency.
Let me run the Moynihan quote again:
“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.”
Not So Swift
John Kerry’s dubious Vietnam revisionism.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Aug. 23, 2004, at 12:11 PM PT
George Orwell once wrote a column about an anecdote concerning Sir Walter Raleigh which, as he put it, deserved to be true. While imprisoned in the Tower of London, Raleigh (as we know for sure) decided to beguile the weary detention by writing a History of the World. One day, his efforts were distracted by a commotion below his cell window. He looked out and saw a brawl in progress among the warders. It ended with a man lying dead on the ground and the others running away. Well-connected as he was in the jail, the learned eyewitness Raleigh could not find out what the quarrel had been about, or who had started it, or who had struck the fatal blow. At that moment, he abandoned his History of the World, and only a fragment of it has come down to us.
I have no idea whether John Kerry is or is not telling the unvarnished truth about his service in Vietnam. (I am pretty sure, though, that he was unwise to prompt the release of the photograph of himself with his latest long-silent defender, William Rood of the Chicago Tribune. The shot of Kerry awkwardly shouldering a rocket launcher for the camera makes him look like a complete poseur.) It’s obviously ridiculous for either side to accuse the other of using their recollections for “partisan” purposes. What else? Kerry himself didn’t make a fetish of this until he sought a party’s nomination (which is what “partisan” means) and his nemesis John O’Neill has been silent since the last time this all came up, which was in the Nixon era. Did Kerry imagine that if he dressed up in his old uniform again, his former critics would decide to keep quiet? What, if anything, was he thinking?
On that previous occasion, though, Kerry was using his service as a warrior to acquire credentials as an antiwarrior. Now, he is cashing in the same credentials to propose himself as alliance-builder and commander in chief. This is not a distinction without a difference.
A few years ago, the faculty and students at the New School in New York (where I should say that I teach part-time) had to vote on whether another Democratic senator?Bob Kerrey of Nebraska?should lose his job as president of the university. He had been accused of committing war crimes in Vietnam. Some of his squad said that he’d personally slaughtered some old people and children, others said he’d been there but not taken a direct part. Nobody disputed that an appalling atrocity had occurred under his command. Whatever the truth of the matter, I thought that Kerrey himself was not telling it. He had, for example, claimed that these cold-blooded murders took place on “a moonless night” when easily consulted records showed this not to be so. The faculty of the school for which I work voted for his resignation, but he sort of copped a pass by having lost part of a limb in a later engagement and having gone on to be anti-Nixon, and a general consensus emerged that one mustn’t pass judgment on actions committed in the fog of war. (Incidentally, this was an absolutely astonishing proposition for the New School, which was home to a generation of anti-Nazi refugee scholars, to have accepted.)
John Kerry actually claims to have shot a fleeing Viet Cong soldier from the riverbank, something that I personally would have kept very quiet about. He used to claim that he was a witness to, and almost a participant in, much worse than that. So what if he has been telling the absolute truth all along? In what sense, in other words, does his participation in a shameful war qualify him to be president of the United States? This was a combat of more than 30 years ago, fought with a largely drafted army using indiscriminate tactics and weaponry against a deep-rooted and long-running domestic insurgency. (Agent Orange, for example, was employed to destroy the vegetation in the Mekong Delta and make life easier for the Swift boats.) The experience of having fought in such a war is absolutely useless to any American today and has no bearing on any thinkable fight in which the United States could now become engaged. Thus, only the “character” issues involved are of any weight, and these are extremely difficult and subjective matters. If Kerry doesn’t like people disputing his own version of his own gallantry, then it was highly incautious of him to have made it the centerpiece of his appeal.
Meanwhile, even odder things are happening to Kerry’s “left.” Michael Moore, whose film Kerry’s people have drawn upon in making cracks about the president and the My Pet Goat moment, repeatedly says that you can’t comment on the Iraq war?or at least not in favor of it?if you haven’t shown a willingness to send a son to die there. Comes the question?what if you haven’t got a son of military age? Comes the next question?should it only be veterans or potential veterans who have a voice in these matters? If so, then what’s so bad about American Legion types calling Kerry a traitor to his country? The Democrats have made a rod for their own backs in uncritically applauding their candidate’s ramrod-and-salute posture. They have also implicitly subverted one of the most important principles of the republic, which is civilian control over military decisions. And more than that, they have done something eye-rubbingly unprincipled, doing what Reagan and Kissinger could not do: rehabilitating the notion of the Vietnam horror as “a noble cause.”
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and a regular contributor to Slate. His most recent book is Blood, Class and Empire. He is also the author of A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq.
If you did, you’d know that this movie was just as much an indictment of the press as it was of W.[/quote]
No, haven’t seen it yet – refuse to put any of my money toward that movie. I will see it when it comes on HBO or Showtime, which I already pay for.
Have you read the SwiftBoat Vets book, Unfit for Command? I haven’t, but am beginning to think I should…
[quote]Throughout the movie, Moore used journalistic terms such as “may have” and “could.”
Very few conclusions were drawn.
Even though many of the scenarios depicted in the film may have added up to much ado about nothing, where was the press? Shouldn’t the press have at least investigated the connection between the Bushes and the Saudis? Shouldn’t the press have investigated why only 30 of the 122 bin Laden family members in the US were interviewed?[/quote]
I believe all the Moore insinuations have been debunked, but I am sure all his Saudi insinuations have been handled. Please refer to the umpteen Michael Moore/Fahrenheit threads. Maybe I’ll PM you a few articles if I can dig them up.
turbot, I respect your opinion, but I think you’re incorrect. Moore twisted the truth, changed text, insinuated headlines from letters to the editor, and basically made an idiot of himself – however, there was no problem except for the fact he was claiming his work was a “documentary” and that it showed the truth, not his doctored version of such.
With the Swiftvets group, they are giving their conclusions, in the form of political commercials. Anyone who thinks a political commercial is supposed to present the truth, rather than someone’s spin of the truth, needs some serious political education.
That said, they are making claims of fact based on what they saw as eyewitnesses. They put forth their testimony and tell you what they believe. To the extent Kerry can rebut and prove them frauds, he should, and people will dismiss those claims as false. To the extent he cannot, but the Swiftvet group cannot prove their charges, people should weigh the evidence and come to their own conclusions. To the extent the Swiftboat vets can prove their claims, Kerry will look very bad, or people will decide they don’t care (see Cambodia).
This is why I don’t understand Kerry’s reluctance to release the whole of his military records – and his diaries, for that matter. If he has the facts at his disposal, why not use them?
[quote]Let me run the Moynihan quote again:
“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.”[/quote]
Well said. Perhaps Kerry will release the facts so that we can form our own, informed, opinions.
It turns out that William Regnery, the publisher of the Swift Boat smear book, as well as a host of books that attacked Bill Clinton, is also a White Supremacist!
Oopsie!
First co-author Jerome Corsi is revealed as a racist and a bigot, and now publisher William Regnery is revealed to be a racist.
It turns out that William Regnery, the publisher of the Swift Boat smear book, as well as a host of books that attacked Bill Clinton, is also a White Supremacist!
Oopsie!
First co-author Jerome Corsi is revealed as a racist and a bigot, and now publisher William Regnery is revealed to be a racist.[/quote]
Lump:
Sorry to be the one to break this to you, but “ad hominem” is actually a logical fallacy. Of course, this is even more flawed than that, but you know…
You can’t discredit the testimony (sorry, legal background gives me an attraction to the vocab) of the authors by attacking the credibility of the publisher. Well, I suppose you can try, but it looks really, really pathetic.
Next, you’ll tell me Hitler had some good ideas, and I should overlook that Holocaust stuff. You know, don’t attack the person…
People should know that the publisher (Regnery) and the co-author (Corsi) are racists and bigots, so the fans of the Swift Boat Vets know who they’re supporting. Know who you’re giving your money to, when you buy that book.
Do the beliefs of the co-author and the publisher reflect badly on the Swift Boat Liars? Hell yes!!!
HEY, WHERE IS ‘AIR NATIONAL GUARDSMEN FOR TRUTH’? [08/24 04:51 PM]
An NRO reader who wishes to remain anonymous observes:
"Note that NO PERSON ever has stepped forward to say that he knows that Bush did not fulfill his guard service. [/quote]
Not true!
I’ll be happy to start a new thread that documents Dubya’s missing time in Alabama (aka AWOL), his mediocre record for the time he did serve, how he used his plane to deliver tropical plants (oh the bravery) and how he appears to be wearing medals he didn’t earn in a photograph in his records (still waiting for confirmation on that one).
HEY, WHERE IS ‘AIR NATIONAL GUARDSMEN FOR TRUTH’? [08/24 04:51 PM]
An NRO reader who wishes to remain anonymous observes:
"Note that NO PERSON ever has stepped forward to say that he knows that Bush did not fulfill his guard service.
Not true!
I’ll be happy to start a new thread that documents Dubya’s missing time in Alabama (aka AWOL), his mediocre record for the time he did serve, how he used his plane to deliver tropical plants (oh the bravery) and how he appears to be wearing medals he didn’t earn in a photograph in his records (still waiting for confirmation on that one).
[/quote]
I believe the point was that no one with whom Bush served has come forward to question his service.
I would tell you that just because Hitler advanced an idea doesn’t make it wrong. If I were to show that Hitler supported literacy, would that make literacy wrong? Or if Hitler supported socialized medicine, would that be an argument against socialized medicine? Simply showing that a bad person supports an idea does not discredit the idea.
1. A phrase applied to an appeal or argument addressed to the principles, interests, or passions of a man.
WordNet Dictionary
Adj. 1. ad hominem - appealing to personal considerations (rather than to fact or reason); “ad hominem arguments”
Wikipedia
An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin, literally “argument to the man”), is a logical fallacy that involves replying to an argument or assertion by addressing the person presenting the argument or assertion rather than the argument itself. A (fallacious) ad hominem argument has the basic form:
A makes claim B;
there is something objectionable about A,
therefore claim B is false.
Positive arguments to the person are discussed under appeal to authority.
Ad hominem is one of the best-known of the logical fallacies usually enumerated in introductory logic and critical thinking textbooks. Both the fallacy itself, and accusations of having committed it, are often brandished in actual discourse. As a technique of rhetoric, it is powerful and used often, despite its lack of subtlety.
Usage
An ad hominem fallacy consists of saying that someone’s argument is wrong purely because of something about the person rather than about the argument itself. Merely insulting another person in the middle of otherwise rational discourse does not necessarily constitute an ad hominem fallacy. It must be clear that the purpose of the characterization is to discredit the person offering the argument, and, specifically, to invite others to discount his arguments. In the past, the term ad hominem was sometimes used more literally, to describe an argument that was based on an individual, or to describe any personal attack. But this is not how the meaning of the term is typically introduced in modern logic and rhetoric textbooks, and logicians and rhetoricians are widely agreed that this use is incorrect.
Conversely, not all ad hominem attacks are insulting. “Paula says it is impossible to murder a man, but this is false because Paula never loses her temper.”
Validity
Ad hominem is fallacious when applied to deduction, and not the evidence (or premise) of an argument. Evidence may be doubted or rejected based on the source for reasons of credibility, but to doubt or reject a deduction based on the source is the ad hominem fallacy.
Premises discrediting the person can exist in valid arguments, when the person being criticized is the sole source for a piece of evidence used in one of his arguments.
A committed perjury when he said Q
We should not accept testimony for which perjury was committed
therefore, A 's testimony for Q should be rejected
Subtypes
Three traditionally identified varieties include ad hominem abusive, ad hominem circumstantial, and ad hominem tu quoque.
Ad hominem abusive
Ad hominem abusive (also called argumentum ad personam) usually and most notoriously involves merely (and often unfairly) insulting one’s opponent, but can also involve pointing out factual but damning character flaws or actions. The reason that this is fallacious is that–usually, anyway–insults and even damaging facts simply do not undermine what logical support there might be for one’s opponent’s arguments or assertions.
An example: “Jack is wrong when he says there is no God because he is a convicted felon.”
Ad hominem circumstantial
Ad hominem circumstantial involves pointing out that someone is in circumstances such that he or she is disposed to take a particular position. Essentially, circumstantial ad hominem constitutes an attack on the bias of a person. The reason that this is fallacious is that it simply does not make one’s opponent’s arguments, from a logical point of view, any less credible to point out that one’s opponent is disposed to argue that way.
“Tobacco company representatives are wrong when they say smoking doesn’t seriously affect your health, because they’re just defending their own multi-million-dollar financial interests.”
It is important to note that the above argument is not irrational, although it is not correct in strict logic. This illustrates one of the differences between rationality and logic.
Ad hominem tu quoque
Ad hominem tu quoque (literally, “at the person, you too”) could be called the “hypocrisy” argument. It occurs when a claim is dismissed either because it is inconsistent with other claims that the claimant is making or because it is inconsistent with the claimant’s actions.
“You say airplanes fly because of physics, but this is false because you said earlier airplanes fly because of magic.”
The tu quoque form is often a specific kind of the two wrongs make a right fallacy.
Taxonomy
The argumentum ad hominem is a genetic fallacy and red herring, and is often but not necessarily an appeal to emotion. Argumentum ad hominem includes poisoning the well.
See also
* fundamental attribution error
* validity
* ""
This article is a copy of the article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia. It is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.
This seems interesting, although it’s probably just one more item that will be disputed:
Diary refutes Kerry claim
By Stephen Dinanand Charles Hurt
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
John Kerry’s own wartime journal is raising questions about whether he deserved the first of three Purple Hearts, which permitted him to go home after 4? months of combat.
The re-examination of Mr. Kerry's military record, prompted by commercials paid for by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the book "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" by two of the group's members, continued even as Mr. Kerry stated that voters should judge his character based on his anti-war activities upon returning from Vietnam.
A primary claim against Mr. Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans is that Mr. Kerry’s first Purple Heart ? awarded for action on Dec. 2, 1968 ? did not involve the enemy and that Mr. Kerry’s wounds that day were unintentionally self-inflicted.
They charge that in the confusion involving unarmed, fleeing Viet Cong, Mr. Kerry fired a grenade, which detonated nearby and splattered his arm with hot metal.
Mr. Kerry has claimed that he faced his "first intense combat" that day, returned fire, and received his "first combat related injury."
A journal entry Mr. Kerry wrote Dec. 11, however, raises questions about what really happened nine days earlier.
"A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn't been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven't been shot at are allowed to be cocky," wrote Mr. Kerry, according the book "Tour of Duty" by friendly biographer Douglas Brinkley.
If enemy fire was not involved in that or any other incident, according to the Military Order of the Purple Heart, no medal should be awarded.
"The Purple Heart is awarded to members of the armed forces of the U.S. who are wounded by an instrument of war in the hands of the enemy," according to the organization chartered by Congress. According to regulations set by the Department of Defense, an enemy must be involved to warrant a Purple Heart.
Altogether, Mr. Kerry earned three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.
A Kerry campaign official, speaking on background, told The Washington Times yesterday that the "we" in the passage from Mr. Kerry's journal refers to "the crew on Kerry's first swift boat, operating as a crew" rather than Mr. Kerry himself.
"John Kerry didn't yet have his own boat or crew on December 2," according to the aide. "Other members of the crew had been in Vietnam for some time and had been shot at and Kerry knew that at the time. However, the crew had not yet been fired on while they served together on PCF 44 under Lieutenant Kerry."
Mr. Kerry's campaign could not say definitively whether he did receive enemy fire that day.
The newly exhumed passages were first reported by Fox News Channel in a televised interview with John Hurley, national leader of Veterans for Kerry.
"Is it possible that Kerry's first Purple Heart was the result of an unintentionally self-inflicted wound?" asked reporter Major Garrett.
"Anything is possible," Mr. Hurley replied.
The Swift Boat Veterans say that means Mr. Kerry is now backing off of his first Purple Heart claim, just as he has apparently changed his claim that he spent Christmas 1968 on an operation in Cambodia.
"It's a house of cards," said Van Odell, one of the veterans. "What he wrote in 'Tour of Duty' and how he used that is nothing but a house of cards, and it's exposed."
At a fund-raiser last night in Philadelphia, Mr. Kerry defended his anti-war activism upon his return from Vietnam, which also has come under attack by the Swift Boat Veterans, as "an act of conscience."
"You can judge my character, incidentally, by that," he said.
"Because when the time for moral crisis existed in this country, I wasn't taking care of myself, I was taking care of public policy," Mr. Kerry told his audience. "I was taking care of things that made a difference to the life of this nation. You may not have agreed with me, but I stood up and was counted, and that's the kind of president I'm going to be."
The Swift Boat Veterans' claims and the political storm that surrounds them has dominated the presidential campaign for the last two weeks.
The Center for Media and Public Affairs said that from Aug. 9 to 15, the first week after the group's ads were released, there were 92 mentions in major papers and 221 mentions in all news reports. By last week, Aug. 16 to 22, there were 221 mentions in major papers and 696 mentions in all news reports the center tracks.
"The Swift Boat veterans commercial is the 'Blair Witch Project' of campaign ads ? an enormous return on a small investment," said Matthew T. Felling, media director for the center. "Everyone is talking about it, and no one can agree on where the line between fact and fiction exists."
He said the commercial has become "a national player in its own right," nearly equaling Vice President Dick Cheney's 733 mentions in all news reports last week.
Mr. Kerry himself is making personal phone calls trying to stamp out the controversy.
On Monday morning, a day after former Sen. Bob Dole questioned Mr. Kerry's Purple Hearts on CNN, Mr. Kerry called the former Republican presidential candidate.
"There's respect there. We were in the Senate together," Mr. Dole told interviewer Wolf Blitzer on Monday. "But we're talking about the presidential race, and I tweaked him a little on the Purple Hearts."
And on Sunday, Mr. Kerry called Robert Brant, one of the members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
A source associated with the veterans group and familiar with the 10-minute conversation said Mr. Kerry asked whether Mr. Brant knew about the group. When Mr. Brant said he was part of it, there was "kind of a silence" on the line before Mr. Kerry continued the conversation.
The source said Swift Boat Veterans is considering sending a cease-and-desist letter to Mr. Kerry asking him not to contact their members anymore because it might be a violation of campaign-finance laws.
In a speech at the Cooper Union school in New York yesterday, Mr. Kerry said the "Bush campaign and its allies have turned to the tactics of fear and smear."
Asked by reporters about the Swift Boat furor later yesterday, Mr. Kerry said he's trying to focus on "the economy, jobs, health care ? the things that matter to Americans."
Asked specifically if he has been calling Swift Boat veterans, Mr. Kerry said, "I am talking about the things that are important to Americans ? jobs, health care, how we are going to fix our schools."
In last night's Philadelphia speech, even while defending his activities with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Mr. Kerry called the criticism of his service "so petty it's almost pathetic in a way."
But the issue is not likely to go away, in part because Mr. Kerry's defenders want their full say.
A new documentary, "Brothers in Arms," will be released in a theater in New York and on DVD everywhere on Friday that highlights Mr. Kerry and the veterans who served with him, and filmmaker Paul Alexander said he found the veterans' stories very convincing.
"What's remarkable to me is when you see the interviews in the movie, how consistent they are on what happened," said Mr. Alexander, who said he interviewed all the men who served on PCF 94, and interviewed them several times over several months. Mr. Alexander previously wrote "Man of the People: The Life of John McCain."
He said the movie particularly sheds light on the incident for which Mr. Kerry earned his Bronze Star, for rescuing a Special Forces officer from the water under what he and his crew said was enemy fire.
The Swift Boat Veterans, including Mr. Odell, say there was no enemy fire, but Mr. Alexander said after making the movie and talking with crewmates Mike Medeiros, Del Sandusky and David Alston, he believes there was enemy fire.
"Mike described the mortar rounds that were going over the top of the 94, and David and Del described the sound effects ? specifically down to what kind of machine gun it was ? the AK-47," Mr. Alexander said. "Their description is so specific they're not mistaken."
?This article is based in part on wire-service reports.
Nope… no ties or association at all… of course not, that would be preposterous.
[i]Bush Campaign Lawyer Quits Over Ties to Ads Group
By Adam Entous
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - A top lawyer for President Bush (news - web sites)'s re-election campaign resigned on Wednesday after disclosing he provided legal advice to a group that accuses Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) of lying about his Vietnam War record.
Benjamin Ginsberg was the second person to quit the Bush campaign over ties to the group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which has been attacking Kerry’s record through television commercials and a book.
[/i][big snip][i]
Records show the Swift Boat group received some of its funding from long-time Bush supporters. Its new commercial also features one veteran, Ken Cordier, who was on a Bush campaign committee until last week, when he was forced to quit.
[For more see…]
Hmmm… par for the course too…
[i][/b]Kerry Backer Tries in Vain to Get Protest to Bush[/b]
[/i][big snip][i]
Worried about falling support among veterans, Kerry’s campaign dispatched Cleland to Texas where he said Bush “owes it to every soldier and veteran in the nation to stop condoning their smears through his silence.”
Cleland lost his own 2002 bid in Georgia for re-election to the U.S. Senate after a bitter campaign in which Republicans questioned his patriotism. Cleland lost both his legs and one arm while serving in Vietnam.
[For more see…]
Hmm, didn’t McCain also suffer at the hands of Bush due to inflated negative ads? I mean, it is proven to work, what does it matter if there is any truth to it, right?
So, whatever it takes, no matter the cost, no matter who it hurts, whether it is true or not. Yep, those are the qualities you want in administration officials.
Of course… given these types of tactics this should be no surprise either…
[i]General Says U.S. Forces Tortured Iraqis in Jail
An Army general acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that U.S. forces tortured Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib jail and his report said a colonel who headed the military intelligence unit at the prison could face criminal charges.
[/i][big snip][i]
The report described “misconduct ranging from inhumane to sadistic by a small group of morally corrupt soldiers and civilians,” a lack of discipline by Pappas’ military intelligence unit and “a failure or lack of leadership” by the military leadership in Iraq (news - web sites), then headed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.
The report said 23 U.S. military intelligence soldiers, as well as four contractors working with them, were directly involved in 44 instances of prisoner abuse. These Americans either directly abused prisoners or “requested, encouraged, condoned or solicited military police personnel to abuse detainees,” or violated rules on interrogations, it said.
The report also found U.S. forces improperly hid at least eight detainees from observers of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and investigators asked the Pentagon inspector general’s office and the CIA (news - web sites) to look further into the issue of so-called ghost detainees.
The report came a day after a high-level panel headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger found that top civilian and military officials at the Pentagon bore indirect responsibility for the abuse.
[For more see…]
The stench from Abu Ghraib is slowly rising up to higher levels. I wonder how high it really goes? I wonder if anyone else out there sees a pattern in all of this?
Oh well, hope you like having a morally bankrupt administration. And, as ever, I remain disgusted. What a bunch of bottom dwelling cesspool turds we have around here.
[quote]vroom wrote:
Nope… no ties or association at all… of course not, that would be preposterous.
[i]Bush Campaign Lawyer Quits Over Ties to Ads Group
By Adam Entous
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - A top lawyer for President Bush (news - web sites)'s re-election campaign resigned on Wednesday after disclosing he provided legal advice to a group that accuses Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) of lying about his Vietnam War record.
Benjamin Ginsberg was the second person to quit the Bush campaign over ties to the group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which has been attacking Kerry’s record through television commercials and a book.
[/i][big snip][i]
Records show the Swift Boat group received some of its funding from long-time Bush supporters. Its new commercial also features one veteran, Ken Cordier, who was on a Bush campaign committee until last week, when he was forced to quit.
[For more see…]
I’m going to give you some stuff I posted on the 527 thread, and add a few things as well.
Funniest line I’ve heard today: Kerry camp on ties between their lawyers and anti-Bush 527s.
Sometimes I genuinely can’t tell if the NYT’s reporters have a deliciously droll sense of humor or are just really dense:
[Begin NYT Excerpt]"Mr. Ginsberg, the chief outside counsel to the Bush-Cheney re-election effort, agreed to an interview after several telephone calls to him and the campaign’s asking that he explain his role. He said that he was helping the group comply with campaign finance rules and that his work was entirely separate from his work for the president. President Bush has called for an end to advertising by all groups like that of the Swift boat veterans, called 527’s for the section of the tax code that created them.
The campaign of Senator John Kerry shares a lawyer, Robert Bauer, with America Coming Together, a liberal group that is organizing a huge multimillion-dollar get-out-the-vote drive that is far more ambitious than the Swift boat group’s activities. Mr. Ginsberg said his role was no different from Mr. Bauer’s…
[Referring to Ginsberg’s advising the SwiftVets:] “It’s another piece of evidence of the ties between the Bush campaign and this group,” Chad Clanton, a spokesman for Mr. Kerry, said. Asked about his [i.e., the Kerry] campaign’s use of shared lawyers, Mr. Clanton said, “If the Bush campaign truly disapproved of this smear, their top lawyer wouldn’t be involved.”
…
?Joe Sandler, a lawyer for the DNC and MoveOn.org, a group running anti-Bush ads, said there is nothing wrong with serving in both roles at once. Attorneys are ethically bound to maintain attorney-client confidentiality, and could lose their law licenses if they violate that, he said.?
[End NYT Excerpt]
BUSH CAMPAIGN STATEMENT ON GINSBERG [08/25 03:59 PM]
Bush-Cheney '04 Campaign Manager Ken Mehlman issued the following statement:
"Ben's resignation is an example of a decent public servant who understood the entrenched double standard in the media?s examination of the relationship between campaigns and outside interest groups, exemplified by their tolerance of blatant lies by two Kerry spokespeople regarding their campaign's relationship with Bob Bauer. The Kerry campaign?s hypocrisy today embodies the worst of American politics. Ben's Democratic counterparts and outside observers of campaign finance law have all made clear that there's no legal conflict in what Bauer, Joe Sandler and Ben Ginsberg do for their various clients. The differences between President Bush's campaign of ideas - and commitment to keeping the campaign debate focused on ideas - and the Kerry campaign's unflinching commitment to the politics of personal destruction are disappointing but not surprising."
Letter from Bush-Cheney '04 National Counsel Benjamin L. Ginsberg to the President:
Dear Mr. President:
It has been the highest honor to represent your campaigns for President and the truly outstanding people I have had the pleasure to work with in those efforts. My family and I have been privileged to know you as a governor, a candidate and now, as one of our nation's most inspirational presidents.
Nothing is more important to me or to this country than your reelection. The choice in this election between your principled, decisive leadership and John Kerry's record of vacillation on the most important issues facing this nation deserves the undivided attention of our nation.
I am proud to have given legal advice to American military veterans and others who wish to add their views to the political debate. It was done so in a manner that is fully appropriate and legal and, in fact, is quite similar to the relationships between my counterparts at the DNC and the Kerry campaign and Democrat 527s such as Moveon.org, the Media Fund and Americans Coming Together.
Unfortunately, this campaign has seen a stunning double standard emerge between the media's focus on the activities of 527s aligned with John Kerry and those opposed to him. I cannot begin to express my sadness that my legal representations have become a distraction from the critical issues at hand in this election. I feel I cannot let that continue, so I have decided to resign as National Counsel to your campaign to ensure that the giving of legal advice to decorated military veterans, which was entirely within the boundaries of the law, doesn't distract from the real issues upon which you and the country should be focusing.
One more on this subject, from Univerisity of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse:
One strategy to make the Swift Boat controversy go away might be to refocus on a topic so eye-glazingly tedious that people will prefer to talk about anything else. That topic is lawyers and the requirements of campaign finance law. Here’s the front-page story in today’s NYT about the travails of a lawyer–Benjamin L. Ginsberg–who specializes in helping people comply with the complicated campaign finance law. Is campaign finance law a Catch-22, where it’s so complicated you need a specialist lawyer to avoid violating it, but if you go to the specialist, he will then be a hub that connects you to other people who are trying to comply with the complicated law, and that in itself will be the violation of the law?
According to the NYT, Ginsburg has a counterpart, Robert Bauer, who advises the Kerry campaign as well as groups that are not supposed to coordinate with the campaign. Both sides need to get technical legal advice to attempt to comply with the law, so shouldn’t both sides avoid calling foul over every line that can be traced from a 527 group to the candidate’s campaign through through a lawyer who specializes in campaign law compliance? The law requires that there be no coordination between the campaign and the 527 group. I’m no specialist in this area of law, but to “coordinate” means “[t]o work together harmoniously.” We shouldn’t be so ready to call every connection coordination unless the real goal is to deter the independent groups from operating at all. Of course, President Bush has openly embraced that goal–which I think contravenes free speech principles–and Ginsburg himself, as the article describes, was involved in using a strong interpretation of campaign law to control the 527s that were working against Bush. Poor Ginsburg looks hypocritical now that the pro-Bush 527s are finally kicking into gear. But I don’t see how the pro-Kerry forces can complain about Ginsburg when they have Bauer.
I think a terribly complicated problem has emerged here, as everyone tries to win political advantage and everyone takes every opportunity to exploit the campaign law to his advantage. The campaign now threatens to devolve into a dispute about lawyers and legalistic matters. That’s likely to turn everybody off.
posted by Ann Althouse at 9:18 AM
As for the funding, big whoop. Wow, you mean someone working for the Swiftboat Vets wants Bush to be elected? Please, say it ain’t so? You think George Soros or any Hollywood types who contributed to MoveOn.org or their ilk perhaps hosted or attended fund raisers for Kerry? This doesn’t demonstrate anything other than a coincidence of purpose. Someone who wants to defeat Bush can give money to MoveOn.org, and give money or raise money for Kerry, and that does not imply any coordination between Kerry and MoveOn.org. Substitute Swiftboat Vets for MoveOn.org and Bush for Kerry above and the reasoning still stands.
[quote]Hmmm… par for the course too…
[i][/b]Kerry Backer Tries in Vain to Get Protest to Bush[/b]
[/i][big snip][i]
Worried about falling support among veterans, Kerry’s campaign dispatched Cleland to Texas where he said Bush “owes it to every soldier and veteran in the nation to stop condoning their smears through his silence.”
Cleland lost his own 2002 bid in Georgia for re-election to the U.S. Senate after a bitter campaign in which Republicans questioned his patriotism. Cleland lost both his legs and one arm while serving in Vietnam.
[For more see…]
Hmm, didn’t McCain also suffer at the hands of Bush due to inflated negative ads? I mean, it is proven to work, what does it matter if there is any truth to it, right?
So, whatever it takes, no matter the cost, no matter who it hurts, whether it is true or not. Yep, those are the qualities you want in administration officials. [/quote]
Senator John Kerry
304 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Kerry,
We are pleased to welcome your campaign representatives to Texas today. We honor all our veterans, all whom have worn the uniform and served our country. We also honor the military and National Guard troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan today. We are very proud of all of them and believe they deserve our full support.
That?s why so many veterans are troubled by your vote AGAINST funding for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, after you voted FOR sending them into battle. And that?s why we are so concerned about the comments you made AFTER you came home from Vietnam. You accused your fellow veterans of terrible atrocities ? and, to this day, you have never apologized. Even last night, you claimed to be proud of your post-war condemnation of our actions.
We?re proud of our service in Vietnam. We served honorably in Vietnam and we were deeply hurt and offended by your comments when you came home.
You can?t have it both ways. You can?t build your convention and much of your campaign around your service in Vietnam, and then try to say that only those veterans who agree with you have a right to speak up. There is no double standard for our right to free speech. We all earned it.
You said in 1992 ?we do not need to divide America over who served and how.? Yet you and your surrogates continue to criticize President Bush for his service as a fighter pilot in the National Guard.
We are veterans too ? and proud to support President Bush. He?s been a strong leader, with a record of outstanding support for our veterans and for our troops in combat. He?s made sure that our troops in combat have the equipment and support they need to accomplish their mission.
He has increased the VA health care budget more than 40% since 2001 ? in fact, during his four years in office, President Bush has increased veterans funding twice as much as the previous administration did in eight years ($22 billion over 4 years compared to $10 billion over 8.) And he?s praised the service of all who served our country, including your service in Vietnam.
We urge you to condemn the double standard that you and your campaign have enforced regarding a veteran?s right to openly express their feelings about your activities on return from Vietnam.
Sincerely,
Texas State Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson
Rep. Duke Cunningham
Rep. Duncan Hunter
Rep. Sam Johnson
Lt. General David Palmer
Robert O’Malley, Medal of Honor Recipient
James Fleming, Medal of Honor Recipient
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Castle (Ret.)
Also, I will note the irony of Cleland’s bearing a letter claiming how horrible it is to question a person’s service or run down veterans, when:
Bush hasn’t questioned Kerry’s service, but Kerry has questioned Bush’s service;
The Democrats are doing their best to denigrate each and every one of the members of the Swiftboat Vets org, each of whom is a veteran, many of whom were POWs and many of whom were decorated; and
John Kerry’s Senate testimony back in the early 1970s was basically a giant accusation of war crimes against everyone who served in Viet Nam.
[quote] Of course… given these types of tactics this should be no surprise either…
[i]General Says U.S. Forces Tortured Iraqis in Jail
An Army general acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that U.S. forces tortured Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib jail and his report said a colonel who headed the military intelligence unit at the prison could face criminal charges.
[/i][big snip][i]
The report described “misconduct ranging from inhumane to sadistic by a small group of morally corrupt soldiers and civilians,” a lack of discipline by Pappas’ military intelligence unit and “a failure or lack of leadership” by the military leadership in Iraq (news - web sites), then headed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.
The report said 23 U.S. military intelligence soldiers, as well as four contractors working with them, were directly involved in 44 instances of prisoner abuse. These Americans either directly abused prisoners or “requested, encouraged, condoned or solicited military police personnel to abuse detainees,” or violated rules on interrogations, it said.
The report also found U.S. forces improperly hid at least eight detainees from observers of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and investigators asked the Pentagon inspector general’s office and the CIA (news - web sites) to look further into the issue of so-called ghost detainees.
The report came a day after a high-level panel headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger found that top civilian and military officials at the Pentagon bore indirect responsibility for the abuse.
[For more see…]
The stench from Abu Ghraib is slowly rising up to higher levels. I wonder how high it really goes? I wonder if anyone else out there sees a pattern in all of this?
Oh well, hope you like having a morally bankrupt administration. And, as ever, I remain disgusted. What a bunch of bottom dwelling cesspool turds we have around here. [/quote]
This is related to this thread how?
But, lest you think I’m ducking you, what was it that the upper level people were “indirectly” (to quote the above) responsible for in this case?
Let me answer that for you: some sort of undefined “failure or lack of leadership”. What, precisely, does that make the administration culpable for? Picking the wrong commanding officers in the theater? Lax oversight, in that they trusted their commanding officers to follow protocol and maintain proper discipline in their units?
Better yet, here’s the entire AP Story:
Army Probe Into Abu Ghraib
Blames 27 in Intelligence Unit
Associated Press
August 25, 2004 3:14 p.m.
WASHINGTON – Twenty-seven members of an intelligence unit at Abu Ghraib prison either requested or condoned certain abuses of Iraqi prisoners there, an Army investigation found.
“We discovered serious misconduct and a loss of moral values,” said Gen. Paul Kern, the head of the investigation, while briefing reporters at the Pentagon. Gen. Kern and other officials detailed the results of the investigation, commonly called the Fay report, after one of the chief investigators.
Of the 27 individuals, 23 were military personnel and four were contractors. Eight more people, including two contractors, knew of abuse and failed to report it, Gen. Kern said.
“There is no single, simple explanation for why the abuse at Abu Ghraib happened,” the report’s executive summary says. The summary blames the abuses on several factors: “misconduct (ranging from inhumane to sadistic) by a small group of morally corrupt soldiers and civilians, a lack of discipline on the part of leaders and soldiers,” and a “failure or lack of leadership” by higher command in Iraq.
The Fay report makes a distinction between the abuse depicted in many of the now-famous photographs from the prison – which the military says was committed by a small group of rogue guards who weren’t attached to the intelligence unit there – and abuses committed during interrogations.
Some of the abuses during interrogations were committed by soldiers who were unclear on what techniques they could legally use on prisoners, the report says. The report also attributes some of the problems to the influence of officials with “other government agencies” – a term frequently used by the Pentagon for the Central Intelligence Agency.
“It is clear that the interrogation practices of other government agencies led to a loss of accountability at Abu Ghraib,” it said. The nonmilitary interrogators had wider latitude in determining what techniques they could use, and also had “ghost detainees” – prisoners kept off the books from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The guards at Abu Ghraib were from the 800th Military Police Brigade, commanded by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski. This unit handled security at the prison. The interrogators belonged to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, commanded by Col. Thomas Pappas.
The report by Maj. Gen. George Fay comes a day after a separate, independent panel released a report blaming senior leaders, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers, for lax oversight and inattention to the issue of military-run prisons in Iraq. This contributed to the chaos at Abu Ghraib, said members of that panel, which was led by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger.
The Schlesinger report, which looked at problems throughout the system of U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said about one-third of the substantiated cases of prisoner abuse took place during interrogations. It found no policy of abuse and concluded that the problems were the direct fault of the soldiers who committed violence against the prisoners, and their immediate supervisors.
The Schlesinger panel said disciplinary action “may be forthcoming” against Gen. Karpinski and Col. Pappas.
That report is one of several that have examined various aspects of the prisoner-abuse scandal, which rocked the Bush administration and triggered calls by some in Congress for Mr. Rumsfeld to resign.
Mr. Schlesinger’s review criticizes senior leaders for not focusing on issues stemming from the detention of large numbers of prisoners in Iraq. This lack of attention and resources contributed to the chaotic conditions at Abu Ghraib, the report said. But commission members said no senior officials deserve to lose their jobs.
The Schlesinger report assigned significant blame to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, saying he should have ensured that his staff dealt with the command and resource problems at Abu Ghraib when they first came to light in November 2003. Still, it acknowledges that Gen. Sanchez was focused on ending a mounting Iraqi insurgency at the time.
The White House had no immediate comment on the Schlesinger report.
Rand Beers, national security adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, said report exposes “a failure to plan for the peace in Iraq, a failure to adequately train the troops and a failure to provide clear orders for interrogation.”
Copyright ? 2004 Associated Press
[ADDENDUM - editorial from today’s Wall Street Journal:
A Rumsfeld Vindication
August 26, 2004; Page A12
Since Operation Enduring Freedom began in October 2001, the U.S. has handled about 50,000 detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq and other venues of the war on terror. Among those, about 300 allegations of abuse have arisen. And as of this month 155 investigations have resulted in 66 substantiated cases of mistreatment. Only about a third of those cases were related to interrogation, while another third happened at the point of capture, “frequently under uncertain, dangerous and violent circumstances.”
So notes Tuesday’s report from the Independent Panel to Review DOD Detention Operations, empowered in May by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and chaired by former Pentagon chief James Schlesinger. The report offers invaluable perspective on the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib and is devastating to those who’ve sought to pin blame on an alleged culture of lawlessness going all the way to the top of the Bush Administration. John Kerry must be even more disoriented by the Swift boat story than he appears if he thinks now’s the time to call for Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation.
“The behavior of our troops is so much better than it was in World War II,” Mr. Schlesinger told us yesterday, by way of comparison. Of the Abu Ghraib photos, he added, “It is preposterous that what these pictures show is we were prepared to use torture to get information,” as Senator Ted Kennedy and others have alleged. Rather, Mr. Schlesinger characterized the photographed Abu Ghraib abuses as “free-lance activities on the part of the night shift,” echoing the testimony we’ve heard so far during the courts martial for the accused.
The Schlesinger report does place blame higher up the chain of command – including some with ex-theater commander Ricardo Sanchez – but for inadequate supervision of the detention facility and adapting too slowly to the Iraqi insurgency. Another report released yesterday by the U.S. Army and Major General George Fay likewise exonerates the military chain of command of policies that could be interpreted as sanctioning abuse, though it does say that an intelligence unit at Abu Ghraib was involved in abuses separate from those involving the now-famous Maryland National Guardsmen.
That distinction is critical, and the Schlesinger report emphasizes the latter “were not part of authorized interrogations nor were they even directed at intelligence targets.” Looking at mistreatment both at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, the report says that “No approved procedures called for or allowed the kinds of abuse that in fact occurred. There is no evidence of a policy of abuse promulgated by senior officials or military authorities.”
Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, for one, would seem to owe some apologies. In a May hearing he accused Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Peter Pace, and the rest of the Pentagon of sanctioning war crimes. Also owing apologies are all those journalists who applauded his demagogy as some kind of gotcha moment, and who threw around words like “torture” so glibly.
Worse than being wrong, these accusations have endangered the lives of soldiers by forcing a retreat in interrogation techniques so severe that it’s hampering the U.S. ability to fight the counterinsurgency in Iraq. “We can’t even use basic police interrogations tactics that they use in the States,” a Marine officer is quoted as saying in a Journal news article yesterday by Greg Jaffe and David S. Cloud.
Administration critics have had to seize on the fact that the Schlesinger report shows attempts in 2003 to transfer some coercive interrogation techniques from Afghanistan and Guantanamo to Iraq. In the former, the U.S. policy was that the Geneva Convention protections for POWs did not apply, while in Iraq they did. But in fact the timeline shows the military chain of command operating as it should to clear up confusion over what was permissible.
The Schlesinger report also shines a well-deserved spotlight on the International Committee of the Red Cross. It notes that much of the ICRC criticism used to bludgeon the Pentagon stems – as we’ve noted in this column – from a radical interpretation of the laws of war under which “interrogation operations would not be allowed,” and which “would deprive the U.S. of an indispensable source of intelligence in the war on terrorism.”
In particular, the ICRC is rapped for insisting that the U.S. adhere to a controversial document known as Protocol 1, which the U.S. long ago explicitly rejected and which would grant terrorists and other non-uniformed combatants all the privileges of normal prisoners of war. The ICRC, the report says, promulgates this standard dishonestly “under the guise of customary international law.”
The report suggests that the ICRC can still play a valuable role as “an early warning indicator of possible abuse,” but that “the ICRC, no less than the Defense Department, needs to adapt itself to the new realities of conflict, which are far different from the Western European environment from which the ICRC’s interpretation of the Geneva Conventions was drawn.” We wonder if the journalists who’ve lived off Red Cross leaks will report this rebuke.
The Schlesinger and Fay reports obviously haven’t satisfied some critics, who are furiously spinning them for political advantage even though their accusations about alleged command failure have shifted drastically from “condoning torture” to poor supervision and planning. Some others are dismissing them altogether as a whitewash.
But Mr. Schlesinger and his fellow panelists, having already had long and distinguished careers, have no motivation to risk their own reputations for Mr. Rumsfeld’s. They have produced what’s to date the definitive assessment of what went wrong, and the bottom line could hardly be more clear: While the Abu Ghraib abuses deserve to be punished, like other wartime excesses, the allegations that they had anything to do with so-called “torture memos” and a Pentagon “culture of permissiveness” are nothing but a political smear.]
___________________-
You can figure out where I think you can keep your disgust, especially since you continually degrade the debate with your name calling. If you can’t figure it out, I’ll give you a hint: It’s dark and deep, and sounds as if it could be mistaken for that planet out past Saturn.
BB, comparing ties to a smear campaign to ties to a get-out-the-vote campaign is comparing apples to oranges.
However, the establishment of ties is very significant in telling how much truth there is likely to be behind the smear campaign – and you damned well know it.
As for a get-out-the-vote campaign, well, it if is of the same moral character as the tactics of the Bush camp I’d be very surprised.
Just because you are a lawyer doesn’t mean you have to defend everything, now matter how unjust. I know your professional training has you ready to find baloney to defend any stance, but you aren’t on the payroll are you?
Are all your arguments going to be this flimsy and this circuitous? If so, it’s a good thing you aren’t actually a Barrister.
In any case, how you use your talents defines you. If you choose to use them to cloud the waters around a smear campaign based on some ludicrous conspiracy theory, then go right ahead. You cheapen yourself.
“Oh for Pete’s sake,” Lumpy, only a “real maggot” would denegrate honorably discharged Vietnam veterans by calling them “clowns.”
It’s not for “…President Bush to wave the attack dogs off.” Despite the best efforts of people who feel (not think, they can’t) as you do, this is a free country, or is supposed to be, where regular folks can, or should be able to voice their opinions as they please. The very idea that citizens have to get the approval of those they wish to displace on how much they are allowed to spend in doing so is absurd. That Feingold, a Democrat, would sponsor this kind of bullshit is understandable, but for a Republican Senator and Dubbya to go along is very sad indeed.
This whole Kerry and Vietnam thing is sheer political stupidity on his part. On one hand, he wants to be seen as a war hero. In fact, he has always wanted to be seen as a war hero. Why else would he have made those films of himself? He wanted his JFK PT 109 moment, and I suspect that is the main, possibly only reason, he ever got near combat.
Had he kept his mouth shut and went on to other things, the script could have worked out well. But to go back to the World and denegrate a whole generation of soldiers in political theater is another thing entirely. Is he so daft as to think that none of them would fire back? He is either very, very stupid in a political sense, or his hubris has gotten the better of him.
In 1992, if I had listened to the Democrats, I should have choosen a draft dodger over a WWII vet, who was the youngest pilot in the Navy and had been shot down in combat.
In 1996, the Democrats were telling me to pick the draft dodger over a candidate that lost the use of his right arm fighting the Naziis.
Now, in 2004, I’m supposed to pick a guy that went to war over one that avoided it? Yeah, right, sure.
No, Lumpy, nobody running for the nation’s highest office would ever get caught “…pushing completely biased bullshit,” especially no Democrat. No Democrat-leaning 527’s are carting around “truckloads of filth” and doing “dirty tricks.” No sir, not even one would do that.
To listen to Lumpy is to believe that if Kerry says it, etch it in stone. If someone opposes what he says, they are “full of shit.”
In one sense Lumpy, you are right, you “…haven’t got a clue.” Your rants are “…so ridiculous they are laughable.”
[quote]vroom wrote:
BB, comparing ties to a smear campaign to ties to a get-out-the-vote campaign is comparing apples to oranges.
However, the establishment of ties is very significant in how telling how much truth there is likely to be behind the smear campaign – and you damned well know it.
As for a get-out-the-vote campaign, well, it if is of the same moral character as the tactics of the Bush camp I’d be very surprised.
Just because you are a lawyer doesn’t mean you have to defend everything, now matter how unjust. I know your professional training has you ready to find baloney to defend any stance, but you aren’t on the payroll are you?
Are all your arguments going to be this flimsy and this circuitous? If so, it’s a good think you aren’t actually a Barrister.
In any case, how you use your talents defines you. If you choose to use them to cloud the waters around a smear campaign based on some ludicrous conspiracy theory, then go right ahead. You cheapen yourself.[/quote]
You must be joking. MoveOn.org is a “get out the vote” campaign, rather than an organization that has collected millions of dollars that it plans to use to fund anti-Bush advertising in swing states? The Democratic National Committee and MoveOn.org share a lawyer - obviously, must be tied together. [sarcasm - see below]
As for America Coming Together, we’ll see if it limits its activities to voter mobilization efforts in swing states, but I have a feeling that, with its goal of $125 Million, $30 Million of which it has raised thus far, it might just be looking to fund some negative ads.
But that wasn’t even the point – the point was that having the same lawyer does not imply any connections. Didn’t you see the statement by the DNC/MoveOn.org lawyer above? Let me give you the same example I gave Lumpy earlier:
“Do you know how many public companies my firm does work for? Of course, you’d have no way of knowing that, but for the sake of argument let’s say 100. None of those clients has anything to do with any of the others simply because we represent them. If you show Latham & Watkins (not my firm) represents Ford and GM as outside counsel (I have no idea if they do - this is a fictional example for the purpose of argument), do you really think you’ve demonstrated collusion between GM and Ford? Whoever would even imply this proves anything knows precisely nothing about lawyer-client relationships. Actually, ignorance would be the charitable explanation. The not-so-charitable explanation would be that they’re lying through their teeth.”
The above is for the purposes of clarification, since it seems what I posted before was misunderstood.
As for the rest of your post, I was going to give counter arguments, but since you presented no arguments that’s impossible. By defintion, one can’t counterargue with a bunch of bile and invective.
When Kerry has ties to smear ads I’ll be unthrilled about that as well. However, a smear isn’t simply anything which the other side does not like to hear.
I don’t imagine you can tell the difference between advertising that is negative but sticks to facts and advertising that is negative and is based on conjecture.