Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

Good work, DeLong. I echo your comments. Just posted some similarly hypocrisy-raising words over here:

http://www.baratunde.com/blog/archives/2004/08/heres_my_proble.html

i should clarify for those who don't want to leave the site.

basically

republicans are very good at praising a group they really undermine -- in this case, the military. if kerry got these awards falsely, then the entire military is either lying or incompetent and can't keep track of whether or not there was even gun fire

the "press" is beneath horrible in its failure to just tell the truth

Interesting, but how can I be sure?

Nagourney is co #1 with miller on the list of reporters whose career should be ended by a Kerry White House. NO leaks, no talking, no invites, no clearances. Anybody who violates the rule is immediately fired, no exceptions. Until Democrats learn to get vicious about this $#%^ we won't change the press coverage.

"If Nagourney and Rutenberg were real reporters,"

Uhhh, ummm, "real", um, huh?

How one treats their pets is a looking glass into their soul.

The New York Times Hall of Shame over the last few years is enormous: Judith Miller, Jeff Garth (the Whitewater nonevent), Kitty Seyle and her War on Gore, etc., etc.. Consult dailyhowler.com for the full depressing details (and much else).

Fox News I understand. The Times I don't. They're not ideologically part of the Slime Machine, but they don't confront it either; sometimes, as with Seyle, they extend it. Where are their standards? Where are their ethics?

That Knight-Ridder reporter's (sorry, forgot name) theory about fear of losing access (his comment: we can't lose access because we never had it) seems like it's a factor, but is it enough? Although it's been documented beyond any doubt that the media roll over and play dead, I still don't understand it.

I hate to sound gloomy and weepy but I really wish a name-brand Republican would step forward and effectively apologize for the atrocious behavior of their party. An actual straight-forward apology would be nice, but in lieu of that at least a clear disassociation from their dark side. Yet, right when you feel McCain might be the man he undercuts his shared values persona by propping up Bush when he's at his worst. Then Dole, who seemingly had matured to a statesman level flushes his reputation down the toilet.

At this rate who knows when the country will get a Republican that the whole country can accept as one of their own. Eisenhower qualifies, but the only slam dunk since Lincoln is T. Roosevelt and that's a long stretch. We need a better second party. It's enough to drive a person to drinking, or driving oil companies into the ground.

Back in the day, Kerry accused his fellow servicemen of being war criminals. He never recanted or apologized, even though many of the third-hand reports he passed along were fabricated.

Now, he calls these people his "band of brothers."

It's human nature for them to feel used and to be ticked off. If you actually listen to the accusers, they are *really mad* at Kerry, and my guess is you would be, too, if you were in their position. To me, that is part of the context of the story.

It's at least as important to the context as the fact that the Republicans want to win the election.

So call Adam N. and ask him why he doesn't include this info. I'd be very curious to hear his reply - or to hear if he wasn't willing to reply.
(my excuse for not doing so: he wouldn't know me from, well, Adam)

CNN ran a piece this morning dutifully taking the Preznit's point of view which conveniently lumps all negative advertizing together and proceeded to give viewers helpful statistics on just how much money was spent on negative ads directed against Bush. Nevermind that some negative ads may just reveal truths about a candidate that give you reasons not to want them in office. Nevermind that the SBV ads are untruths that are libelous character assassination. Just get behind the President.

Apparently this was too much for the Washington Post editorial board to think about as well:

"WHEN WE FIRST wrote about the ads slamming Democratic nominee John F. Kerry's service in Vietnam, we said that Mr. Kerry's emphasis on his Vietnam experience had made questions about his war record fair game."

Oh, absolutely. If he hadn't brought it up, nobody would have mentioned it. Also, if you lose a tooth and put it under your pillow before you go to sleep, the Bush Fairy will leave you a tax credit in exchange.

http://tinyurl.com/3vy9c

We need to remember that the NYTimes, well enough managed for a decade by Joe Lelyveld and Gene Roberts (not, of course, without lapses), was wrecked by Howell Raines in a brief but disastrous spell of three years. Raines was obsessed with hot stories, full of "human interest," churned out at top speed. If you were known to sleep with favored sources, you'd jump to the top of the food-chain, and careful checking, of course, was out of the question. Raines got the job by doing exactly as Pinch Sulzberger--a wide-eyed and feeble-minded neocon--expected him to do.....Disasters of this kind have lasting effects on newspapers: good people disappear, bad people make the cut, and after they've made the cut, it's hard to get them fired. Serious sources are quick to get the picture, of course, and so they turn to other, better papers to plant their leaks. This, more than anything else, has rendered the Times really helpless in covering the major stories of the last eight months (they've been behind the curve on every major story), and I think it might take them a decade to mend the damage (none of this pertains, of course, to Paul Krugman, who operates in a sphere entirely his own ).

Wow, the trolls are out in force. And that was a 3 1/2 bucket spew from Adrian, which is a new personal best (or worse, depending on the viewpoint).

Trolls, trolls, trolls....what ever led me to think that De Long was off their radar? After all, this isn't the biggest blog in the blogosphere.....is it?

Nagourney writes the same article over and over again - it's about how unnamed democrats see some flaw in kerry and about how republicans intend to exploit that flaw - and each time i dutifully write off and bitch to daniel okrent at public@nytimes, for all the good it's doing me. You would honestly think that the Times learned no lessons from their internal criticism of their own pre-iraq war coverage.

Arnold and Jason, of course, do three things simultaneously: a.) they distort what kerry said in his testimony and related speeches in the early '70s; b.) they implicitly deny that the US committed atrocities in Vietnam, which takes some denial indeed; c.) they fail to come to grips with the focus of Kerry in those days, which was that the war was wrong and the leadership that had created the war was putting soldiers in the awful position of behaving the way some of them did. It's a terrific performance.

But not as terrific as the awesome Adrian, whom i mostly try to ignore, but really, he did actually promise us the other day, in response to some other perceived deviation by prof delong, that he was out of here. It was, i suppose, too much to hope for: since he gets no traffic for his nitwit blog and his idiot ideas, he has to resort to the comments sections here and elsewhere to try and get someone - anyone - to pay attention to his piffle.

Arnold and Jason,

Is this really so hard to understand?

The Winter Soldier Investigation (and Kerry) never claimed that all Vietnam veterans were war criminals. But it did present testimony from many veterans (over 100, I believe) who claimed (not "third-hand") to have witnessed or even to have committed war crimes with the tacit or explicit support of their commanding officers.

Kerry never claimed that Republicans were more likely to commit war crimes than Democrats, or any such thing.

I know a lot of people think that even if U.S. troops were committing war crimes in Vietnam, talking about it only helped the Viet Cong. I suppose some people think that U.S. troops really didn't commit war crimes, or hardly ever did. And I also suppose that some people would think that Kerry was personally calling them war criminals no matter what he actually said. If any of the Swift Boat Veterans fall into that third group, I just wish they had thought harder.

Mark Lindeman

al Qaeda speaks Arabic. You may have missed this fact while frothing at the mouth and struggling against the restraints. And, happily, Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt would not have created the totalitarian regime that you haters of democracy long for.

"You would honestly think that the Times learned no lessons from their internal criticism of their own pre-iraq war coverage."

I think that the lesson they learned was that they can get away with total BS. Of course, they probably had already learned that from Whitewater, and the other Clinton 'scandals'.

Hi Brad - a couple of minor things.

First - a typo. In the clause "how eager the American press corps is to amplify the smears" you left the "e" off the end of "corpse." "Press corpse" is what you surely must have meant.

Second: "Would it have been too much for Nagourney and Rutenberg to put some context in the lead?" What are you thinking? Times "reporters" are now supposed to do actual work?

Thankfully, though, these are minor points, easily corrected.

PS - someone should spank young Mr. Spidle and take away his piece of chalk.

whoa. what happened to adrian? did somebody change his drug menu?

Jason, to respond to yourself: a.) kerry, as he made perfectly clear in his remarks, was reporting on the winter soldiers hearings. Yes, i suppose he could have assumed that every soldier there was a liar; yes, i suppose he could have sought funding from a foundation to go on and investigate every single participant in the winter soldier hearings bonafides and the claims that said solider made; yes, i suppose he could also have noted that the position of the US government was that, other than my lai, there were no offensive behaviors by us military. But to call correctly labelled description of what soldiers said in the hearings unsubstantiated is a distortion; b.) the substantiation of "a," as i just said, consisted of first-hand testimony by a reasonably large sample of soldiers. Much of the general thrust - such as the atrocity of free-fire zones - has, of course, been validated. Perhaps you noticed that Tommy Franks, on Hannity, acknowledged same several weeks ago. So I can only assume that by calling the testimony "unsubstantiated," when, in fact, we know that there were atrocities committed by US forces, you are denying that any were committed; c.) well, this assumes that kerry was "smearing" anyone. In fact, he makes it very clear that he is not interested in accusing individual soldiers; he makes it very clear that he is interested in holding the political decision-makers who sanctioned the Vietnam war and created the conditions the soldiers had to endure accountable. Comparing this to Bush cherrypicking intel to build an exaggerated case for war fails the first test of analogy: it's not analogous.

Now, as for double standard, i have no idea what you mean, since for the "double standard" to be true, it would have to be true that: a.) Kerry "condemned" fellow vets and b.) was never criticized for it. Since neither is true, i don't see where the double standard exists. And discussing this sans a discussion of the essential element of Kerry's testimony, which was not the Winter Soldiers testimony at all but was, instead, the failure of our vietnam policy, is a meaningless argument. Context does matter.

I should also note that the panel to which he testified included WW II veterans, and included Sen. Stuart Symington, the first secretary of the Air Force, and yet none of them saw anything awful about what Kerry had to say with respect to what was going on in Vietnam - because they knew he wasn't making it up. This too is relevant.

PS. What exactly is your point about the Amazon reference? I don't see how it relates at all.

Kerry didn't make "unsubstantiated" charges of wrongdoing. He had eyewitness testimony from dozens of veterans. That is the best anyone could do at the time, access to digital cameras being some decades in the future. Consider the difficulty of getting the authorities to pay attention to My Lai.

Kerry didn't "fabricate". He reported the results of a meeting. He cited the cource. He didn't "smear". If you say people razed a village and they razed the village, that's not a "smear".

When Kerry testified, the war had been lost. The onlly real issue is how fast we should withdraw without "losing face". Kerry advocated a faster withdrawal, and one point was that the war produced many human rights violations which was corrupting to the troops and the command. He didn't say they were bad people. He said the circumstances pushed them toward doing bad things. If he exaggerated, he was at least trying to engage reality, in contrast with the present incumbent.

The full text of Kerry's comments before Congress can be read here:

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/08/ale04035.html

"I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago, in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia....They relived the absolute horror of what THIS COUNTRY, in a sense, MADE THEM DO.

...We are angry because we feel we have been used it the worst fashion by the administration of this country....

...We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We're here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The Marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They've left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country....

...And so, when, thirty years from now, our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned, and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning."

Kerry is squarely placing the blame for Vietnam on the POLITICIANS and the war plans and tactics that they necessitated and approved. THE POLITICIANS ATTACKED KERRY then because Kerry stood up for his fellow veterans and BLAMED THE POLITICIANS. Kerry is today being attacked by that same breed of POLITICIAN who are doing to our troops in Iraq today what a generation ago. POLITICIANS did to our troops in Vietnam.

Brad, your point is well made, but the title you have chosen is illogical.

"Paul Krugman Gets It Very Wrong"

I think you are intending to say that Krugman made an error in prior judgment, that is, he didn't understand as you did how low the Bush camp could or would go.

But, by any normal reading of your title in conjunction with his article, one would conclude that you are faulting his admission of the error. Surely you are not intending to say that Krugman was wrong to say he was wrong?

With all due respect to you, Brad, I was wondering if anyone else has the feeling that poorly made headlines in the media are having a similarly negative
effect on the quality of headlines chosen by bloggers?

Jason, did your reading include the actual transcript of Kerry's testimony at http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/index.php?topic=Testimony or the somewhat edited version at http://www.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/JohnKerryTestimony.html by any chance? Have a look at page 4 of the PDF version from the freepnet site and you'll see the references to war crimes as reported first hand by servicemen at the Winter Soldier Investigation. You can find transcripts of the Winter Soldier Investigation panels at http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Winter_Soldier/WS_entry.html where it is part of the Sixties Project.

If you can go to that testimony and find actual reporting of John Kerry saying that Republicans were more likely than Democrats to commit war crimes, or in any other way show that Mark Lindeman's "recollection of the quality of the Winter Soldier testimony," feel free to post links and excerpts.

The items you have linked to, which have painted such a negative picture for you, were written by opponents of Kerry who wish to paint that just negative picture. Go read some primary sources.

bakho I think you have found the holy grail

Hmm, has an anti-Kerry ad run that suggests Kerry's actions are like chaining a black man to a pickup and dragging him to death?

No?

Then it hasn't yet gotten as ugly as Democrats made the 2000 election.

What are you whining about?

Jason, in case you need more background on the truth of the testimony at the Winter Soldier hearings, please see this

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=SRTIGERFORCE
page.

Arnold,

If veterans want to be angry at Kerry for his antiwar activities that is their right, of course. But it utterly escapes me how you or anyone else can think this anger justifies the slimy lies and smears they are putting out.

I find it interesting, by the way, that both you and Sebastian, while defending SBVT, implicitly concede that their accusations are false.

I've read Kerry's testimony, and it is completely irrelevant to the question of whether we was presenting truthful witness accounts. If you are going to testify before Congress, you are absolutely accountable for ensuring the accuracy of your testimony. He had people that said women were raped by an entire battalion. Do you know how many people that is?

I don't dispute that there were atrocities in the Vietnam war, but I take issue with the notion that you are therefore justified in presenting any arbitrary bad act as truthful. To me, it is ETHICALLY identical to a Sec of State going to the UN with unverified and low quality intelligence.

The bit about Kerry blaming politcians didn't wash with veterans because it is paper thin. Each veteran knows that under UCMJ, he is obligated not to follow certain orders. To assert, without verifying sources, that veterans at large were forced to commit atrocities is identical to saying that soldiers at large are moral cowards. Why do you think they are so frickin' mad?

Am I confused or has my initial post been removed?

what a bunch of partisan hypocritical crap. you all are doing exactly the same thing, saying the same things as the Right. all you partisans, on both sides, are fraught with hypocrisy and selective perception. each of you fails miserably in your intellectual integrity by taking the stance that "we're righteous and pure and they're corrupt and evil." a pox on both your houses. by sacrificing your intellectual integrity, by putting your party's benefit above your country's, by letting your party TELL you what to think and to feel, by willingly giving up your ability to think factually for yourselves, you are polarizing the country at every important level and leading the country to the brink of political meltdown. partisans! what a bunch of puppets on a string. but, go on, march in lockstep with your party's false leaders, wear your brownshirts and voice your hatred, and march out the door to your party's anthem with your party's insignia on your sleeve. all you partisans, on both sides, are willingly ignorant of factual reality, willingly giving yourselves over to the fantasy realities that political parties construct.

"I take issue with the notion that you are therefore justified in presenting any arbitrary bad act as truthful."

You thinkin' of the Human Shredder?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/analysis/story/0,3604,1155399,00.html

Via Atrios, on topic:

STEWART: Here's what puzzles me most, Rob. John Kerry's record in Vietnam is pretty much right there in the official records of the US military, and haven't been disputed for 35 years?

CORDDRY: That's right, Jon, and that's certainly the spin you'll be hearing coming from the Kerry campaign over the next few days.

STEWART: Th-that's not a spin thing, that's a fact. That's established.

CORDDRY: Exactly, Jon, and that established, incontravertible fact is one side of the story.

STEWART: But that should be -- isn't that the end of the story? I mean, you've seen the records, haven't you? What's your opinion?

CORDDRY: I'm sorry, my *opinion*? No, I don't have 'o-pin-i-ons'. I'm a reporter, Jon, and my job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other. Little thing called 'objectivity' -- might wanna look it up some day.

STEWART: Doesn't objectivity mean objectively weighing the evidence, and calling out what's credible and what isn't?

CORDDRY: Whoa-ho! Well, well, well -- sounds like someone wants the media to act as a filter! [high-pitched, effeminate] 'Ooh, this allegation is spurious! Upon investigation this claim lacks any basis in reality! Mmm, mmm, mmm.' Listen buddy: not my job to stand between the people talking to me and the people listening to me.

STEWART: So, basically, you're saying that this back-and-forth is never going to end.

CORDDRY: No, Jon -- in fact a new group has emerged, this one composed of former Bush colleages, challenging the president's activities during the Vietnam era. That group: Drunken Stateside Sons of Privilege for Plausible Deniability. They've apparently got some things to say about a certain Halloween party in '71 that involved trashcan punch and a sodomized piñata. Jon -- they just want to set the record straight. That's all they're out for.

STEWART: Well, thank you Rob, good luck out there. We'll be right back.

"Am I confused or has my initial post been removed?"

That is standard operating procedure for leftist economists. Max Sawicky does it too when he can't confront facts.

Speaking of which,

"STEWART: Here's what puzzles me most, Rob. John Kerry's record in Vietnam is pretty much right there in the official records of the US military, and haven't been disputed for 35 years?"

Sure they have, and you can see that by visiting Kerry's website. Here's the original citation for his Silver Star, signed by Elmo Zumwalt:

http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/jkmilservice/militaryrecords_1.pdf

You can read all about how Kerry dispatched a fleeing VC who had a rocket launcher if you scroll to pages 7 & 8 at the above. However, if you go here:

http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/jkmilservice/Silver_Star.pdf

That, and other claims, are missing from the Zumwalt citation. Read for yourselves, if you've got the cojones to handle the truth.

Jason,
Your argument isn't sensible. You are saying that Kerry shouldn't have testified becase he couldn't guarantee that the underlying evidence was correct up to some arbitrarily high level. In other words, a code of silence regarding atrocities.

I doubt that veterans in general are "friggin' mad". The testimony is 35 years old, and Kerry has run for the US Senate. It's hardly news.

And whatever the merits of his testimony in 1971, how does this justify lie after lie concerning his service in 1968?

Gosh, Patrick, all those lying witnesses whom Kerry has been paying off all these years.

Have you stirred yourself for one second (i haen't checked back; have to scroll down) to find out if silver star reports routinely change as they move up the ranks? Until you do, why should we take you seriously?

PS. Patrick, "missing from" is not the same as "disputed." You do understand at least that much, don't you?

What this is about. This is all about people angry because Kerry protested the war after he returned from Vietnam. Whatever you want to say about Kerry, his position was not popular then. If Kerry really were a political opportunist, he would have taken his medals home and shutTF up. However, Kerry knew the futility of Vietnam first hand. We were not winning. We were not ending the insurgency. Millions of Asians were killed in Vietnam. So he had a conscience and spoke his mind.

So would you have all our current veterans in Iraq come home and tell them to shutTF up and quit complaining about the mess in Iraq? Think we should vote Bush back into office so we can lose 1000 soldiers in Iraq every year while Bush is trying to figure WTF he is doing?

Why was the Vietnam War good? What good came out of it? What did 10 years in Nam change (other than killing a million people?)

Why is Iraq War good? What good has come out of Iraq? How safe is Iraq now? How safe was it before the war? Would you walk around downtown Baghdad without an armored guard? WTF are we doing there and HTF are we going to getTF out? Kerry critics need to answer these questions. They can't so they are left with spitting on our decorated Vietnam Veterans.

Roger,

All I'm asking for is the same evidentiary standard that we should use for any arbitrary Republican claim. Mostly, I'm questioning why Kerry gets the benefit of the doubt when questions arise, but every remotely friendly article or statement uttered by the administration not independently verified by three liberal eyewitnesses in good standing is deemed a flat out lie.

ogmb:

Believe it or not, I was precisely thinking of the shredder. I am making no statements about Kerry's honesty or lack thereof. I am mostly annoyed with the ongoing liars this and that comments that have taken over the good professor's blog. We should hold these guys to the same standard.

Job statistics are reported before the automotive turnover using the same numbers every administration has always used. It isn't a good number, but everyone has always used it. Here, this is 'another Bush lie'. That sort of thing. There are lies out there, to be sure, but the academy should strive valiantly to maintain some semblance objectivity.

bakho:

Can Kerry answer those same questions, especially the ones about how to get out?

I must say, I'm a little surprised that my initial comment was edited off the site. I'm beginning to feel like you guys don't love me after all ...

Jasn,

You're clearly making up your "standards" as you go along. So far, there's no evidence that Kerry lied about anything. Arguendo, if he really lied, it had few consequences. In particular, his Congressional testimony didn't cause us to lose a war that everyone knew was already lost. This is in marked contrast with the situation of the present incumbent.

Kerry has a strategy to remove US troops from Iraq. Bush plans to keep US troops based in Iraq indefinately. That is the difference.

Perhaps there is quantitative evidence to the contrary, but I think the Swift Boat rubbish is turning off large numbers of people, including higher-toned Republicans, and that it is going to boomerang on Bush. My long-time Republican father is a good barometer to me, and on a visit home recently he insisted on turning the TV off whenever pissing contests about Swift Boat appeared.

Still nary a peep from Patrick in reply to those numerous points I raised on the "Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?" thead below. In particular, we have the fact that it turns out that Thurlow's own petty officer testified that Thurlow carried out his actions "with enemy bullets flying about him" and that he deserved a Bronze Star for that reason -- a fact which Thurlow tried to conceal by refusing to release his military records, until the Washington Post dug them up anyway using the FOIA act.

Thurlow's latest reaction to this, by the way, is as follows ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5810242/ ):

"Thurlow says if being under enemy fire is required to earn the medal, he will give it back.

" 'I knew it was false. But nobody else was going to see it. I accepted it because I felt at the time I'd been given the thing because I'd saved the wounded on the boat and saved the boat,' he says."

His petty officer will no doubt be gratified to learn that Thurlow is now accusing him of lying when he said that Thurlow deserved the medal because he was under fire.

And, Patrick, I'm STILL waiting to see your evidence that Kerry and Jim Russell have changed their own account of that firefight -- and whether it's any more accurate than your earlier repeated statement to us and Tom Maguire that Thurlow had won his Bronze Star in "another action" (which you refused to name). Which, of course, he didn't.

As for Patrick's yelling about inconsistencies in the official military records being anti-Kerry evidence in themselves, we have the revelation last night that one of the most important records that the Kerry campaign didn't release turns out to back Kerry completely, and that they didn't release it simply because they didn't HAVE a copy of it.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30920-2004Aug25_2.html , last sentence).

And on the Cambodia front, we have the following discovery today ( http://www.tnr.com/blog/campaignjournal?pid=1956 ):

John O'Neill on August 8:
"You asked about Cambodia. How do I know he's not in Cambodia? I was on the same river, George. I was there two months after him. Our patrol area ran to Sedek, it was 50 miles from Cambodia. There isn't any watery border. The Mekong River's like the Mississippi. There were gunboats stationed right up there to stop people from coming. And our boats didn't go north of, only slightly north of Sedek. So it was a made- up story."

John O'Neill on the Nixon tapes, June 16, 1971:

O'NEILL: I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water.

NIXON: In a swift boat?

O'NEILL: Yes, sir.
_______________________

When you compare this to Joshua Muravchik's useful summation of the case that Kerry is lying about Cambodia ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27211-2004Aug23.html ), I don't think this new little revelation from O'Neill gets Kerry completely conclusively off the hook -- but it does indicate that asking whether you were "in" Cambodia on any given day is rather like asking whether the sky is blue or cerulean.

While by now this point should be obvious: if Kerry really is a lying Communist traitor, it's quite amazing how many other veterans of that war are sympathetic to lying Communist traitors. Including, it turns out, one of Courdier's and Gallanti's cellmates in Hanoi.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26519-2004Aug23.html :

"Phil Butler, who spent eight years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, took issue with suggestions by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that Kerry's antiwar protests caused the POWs to be treated badly. 'I lived with two of the POWs who are now in that group -- Mr. [Ken] Courdier and Mr. [Paul] Gallanti -- and I am telling you, they are full of it. We never heard a blooming thing about John Kerry while we were there,' said Butler, who contacted the campaign months ago to support Kerry and only recently heard back from Kerry's veterans coordinator, John Hurley."

Postscript: the Associated Press seems a bit more direct than I am about O'Neill's change of story. Their headline reads: "Swift Boat Writer Lied on Cambodia Claim."

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-kerry-critic-swift-boats,0,2260949.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

Second postscript: O'Neill tried to explain himself on "Hannity and Colmes", and the results got even stranger ( http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/003337.php ):

"ALAN COLMES: Look, this issue of Cambodia, you said, on George Stephanopoulos' show over the weekend that you knew that Kerry was not in Cambodia, that you could not have been in Cambodia on a swift boat, that he didn't go north of Sadak (ph). They just didn't go that far. You were 15 miles away.

"There's a tape of you, as you now know, in the Oval Office, saying you were in Cambodia, you said to Richard Nixon. You worked along the border, or you were in Cambodia.

"That seems very different than being 15 miles away and saying the swift boats didn't go to Cambodia. So they can't both be true.

"O'NEILL: Alan, yes, they are, Alan. It's two different places, Alan. One place is along the Mekong River, right in the heart of the delta. The second place is on the west coast of Cambodia at a place called Hatien (ph), where the boundary is right along that border.

"Where Kerry was in Christmas of 1968 was on this river, the Mekong River. We got about 40 or 50 miles from the border. That's as close as we ran.

"Later, Kerry went, and I went to a place called Bernique's (ph) Creek -- that was our nickname for it -- at Hatien (ph). That was a canal system that ran close to the border, but that wasn't at Christmas for Kerry. That was later for him.

"So it's two separate places, Alan, and the story is correct.

"COLMES: All right. Well, either you were in Cambodia or Kerry was in Cambodia and you claim he wasn't in Cambodia. You claimed at one point you weren't and then you claimed you were. This is very confusing to people.

"O'NEILL: Well, it shouldn't be confused. I was never in Cambodia, and Kerry lied when he said he was in Cambodia.

"COLMES: You said to Richard Nixon you were in Cambodia.

"O'NEILL: And it was the turning point of his life.

"COLMES: You said to Richard Nixon, I was in Cambodia, sir.'

"HANNITY: On the border.

COLMES: There's a tape of you saying that to Richard Nixon.

"O'NEILL: What's the next sentence? I was along the Cambodian border. That's exactly right. What I told Nixon and was trying to tell him in this meeting was I was along the Cambodian border. As Sean clearly read...

"COLMES: 'I was in Cambodia,' Those are your words.

"O'NEILL: Yes, but you missed the next sentence. You're not reading the next sentence, Alan.

"COLMES: Yes, along the border. But you're in Cambodia or you're not in Cambodia.

"O'NEILL: Well, I'm sorry, Alan. I wasn't -- I was talking in a conversation."

OK. So O'Neill is now saying that:

(1) When he told Nixon he was "in Cambodia", he REALLY meant he was in a place right next to the border of Cambodia where covert cross-over excursions would have been extremely easy -- but he never actually did any, nosirree, even if he did tell Nixon otherwise.

(2) Kerry was in the same place, presumably for the same reason, but --

(3) Kerry wasn't there at Christmas 1968 -- so Kerry's a horrible liar, nyah nyah!

This, really, is getting to be a bit much. At this point, one might call it The Incredible Shrinking Scandal.

Moving on to another related subject: take a look at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34024-2004Aug25.html , in which a man who claims to be a longtime friend of Bob Dole -- and who definitely served for three years as one of Nixon's special assistants and five years as Reagan's assistant defense secretary and director for special military planning -- says flatly that Dole is foully besmirching himself by smearing Kerry under pressure from Bush, after earlier resisting such pressures from Charles Colson while all of them were working for Nixon:

"I spent a year in Vietnam and came home without a scratch. My brother served two tours in Vietnam, earned three Purple Hearts (and was hospitalized, and does draw disability -- weird yardsticks used to measure John Kerry's alleged shortfall), and yet spent far less time than I did in-country. Indeed, his first 'tour' lasted about 15 minutes, ending on the beach near Danang in the midst of the U.S. Marines' first amphibious assault in Vietnam.

"Time in-country, how often a man was wounded, how much blood he shed when he was wounded -- it is hurtful that those who served in Vietnam are being split in so vile a fashion, and that the wounds of that war are reopened at the instigation of people who avoided serving at all. It is hurtful that a man of Bob Dole's stature should lend himself to the effort to dishonor a fellow American veteran in the service of politics at its cheapest.

"There was a time when he would have refused. I know. I was there."

Holy cow.

And O'Neill strikes again!

http://www.tnr.com/blog/campaignjournal?pid=1962 :

"While we're on the subject of O'Neill lying, to get a sense of just how dirty he plays, compare the way he describes what John Kerry was doing on the morning of March 13, 1969 with the account in Michael Dobbs's careful examination of the subject in Sunday's Washington Post.

"O'Neill on "Hannity and Colmes" last night: '[Kerry]'s admitted first he actually wounded himself in a very minor way when he was playing around with a grenade that morning when he was throwing it around, throwing it in a rice field.'

"Dobbs on Sunday: 'As they were heading back to the boat, Kerry and Rassmann decided to blow up a five-ton rice bin to deny food to the Vietcong. In an interview last week, Rassmann recalled that they climbed on top of the huge pile and dug a hole in the rice. On the count of three, they tossed their grenades into the hole and ran.

'Evidently, Kerry did not run fast enough. "He got some frags and pieces of rice in his rear end," Rassmann said with a laugh. "It was more embarrassing than painful." '

"While on a dangerous mission with a Special Forces officer Kerry was injured destroying a cache of Vietcong rice. In O'Neill's hands this is turned into a story about Kerry harming himself while 'playing around with a grenade...in a rice field.' O'Neill is a disgrace."

Patrick? Patrick? Yoo hoo!

Hey! Where'd he go?

I seem to say that a lot where Patrick is conceerned.

Meanwhile, in today's SBVT news: Robert Lambert (on whose testimony Larry Thurlow got his own Bronze Star)has finally opened up, and explicitly says (A) that he intends to vote for Bush, (B) that he finds Kerry's anti-war activities "reprehensible" ("but then, I'm career military"); and (C) that Thurlow, Chenoweth and Pees are lying through their teeth when they say there was no enemy fire during Kerry's Bronze Star incident, and also when they say there was any conceivable way that Kerry could have doctored the after-action reports of the incident:

http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2004/0826/local/stories/01local.htm

And, as still further evidence, Newsweek has independently tracked down a copy of Lambert's own Bronze Star citation for the same battle, complete with bullets a-flying ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5831541/site/newsweek/ ):

"Lambert’s surviving military records do not include the initial recommendation for this medal, so there is no way to know who filled the required role of witness to vouch for Lambert’s actions. But the citation contains such detail about the actions of both Thurlow and Lambert—actions that Kerry cannot have known since his launch was on the far side of the river —- that it seems implausible Kerry could have written the recommendation.

"Lambert’s military record shows he retired from the U.S. Navy in 1978. Efforts to trace him have been unsuccessful."

Well, now he's been traced -- and says that he dislikes Kerry's politics and won't vote for him, but that there were indeed bullets a-flying and that the information for all the Bronze Star citations came from multiple witnesses on all boats.

And more from the New Republic on frequent US war crimes in Vietnam ( http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040906&s=trb090604 ):

"Calling Kerry unpatriotic is a useful way of delegitimizing his allegations without disproving them. Some of the organizers of the Winter Soldier Investigation have been discredited, but most of the testimonies themselves have not. Miami University Professor Jeffrey Kimball, one of the most respected Vietnam historians, says, 'On the whole, the Winter Soldier Investigations established that some Americans committed atrocities in Vietnam. Claims that their testimony has been discredited are unwarranted.' Another prominent historian of the war, Wayne State University's Mel Small, says, 'Most of the evidence of atrocities presented by the [Winter Soldier] vets remains unchallenged to this day.'

"On the question of atrocities more broadly, Kerry's claims also find widespread academic support. The University of Kentucky's George Herring, author of 'America's Longest War', says, 'The atrocities that took place are pretty much those described by Kerry in 1971.' In a recent interview with The Boston Globe, Stanley Karnow, author of 'Vietnam: A History', also said Kerry got it right. [Note from Moomaw: Karnow's book got a rave review from the American Spectator.] Even Robert McNamara himself has stated that 'there were atrocities, without any question. ... I don't think enough attention was paid to it by the chain of command.' [Second note from Moomaw: Tommy Franks has now told Sean Hannity twice that he agrees.]

"Conservatives have taken special umbrage at Kerry's statement, in a 1971 'Meet the Press' interview, that he 'committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers.' What they generally ignore is that Kerry was referring to the fact that he 'took part in shootings in free-fire zones' -- zones where the U.S. military designated any Vietnamese who did not evacuate as combatants. And Kerry was right: The free-fire zones violated the fourth Geneva Convention, which outlaws indiscriminate attacks against areas in which civilians are present."

One clarification on Lambert's account: according to accounts I had already read, the VC's modus operandi in that war was not to just wait around and hope a boat would happen to hit a mine before opening fire on it (which would have been impractical), but instead to have a guy actually hit a plunger to detonate one or more mines while the boats were passing near it. As an ambush technique, that worked pretty well.