Do you ever read anything that anybody else posts? The Swift Boats group was thouroghly discredited. Just for argument, here are the two major problems the Swift Boat group had to begin with.

[link|http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13267-2004Aug18.html|Washington Post]

Newly obtained military records of one of Sen. John F. Kerry's most vocal critics, who has accused the Democratic presidential candidate of lying about his wartime record to win medals, contradict his own version of events.

In newspaper interviews and a best-selling book, Larry Thurlow, who commanded a Navy Swift boat alongside Kerry in Vietnam, has strongly disputed Kerry's claim that the Massachusetts Democrat's boat came under fire during a mission in Viet Cong-controlled territory on March 13, 1969. Kerry won a Bronze Star for his actions that day.

But Thurlow's military records, portions of which were released yesterday to The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act, contain several references to "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire" directed at "all units" of the five-boat flotilla. Thurlow won his own Bronze Star that day, and the citation praises him for providing assistance to a damaged Swift boat "despite enemy bullets flying about him."

Thurlow's version of what happened doesn't hold up. There are a lot of people and written records that disagree with what he says he remembers about the event.

[link|http://www.washingtondispatch.com/spectrum/archives/000553.html|Washington Dispatch]

According to John O'Neill and the smear organization, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, John Kerry made false accusations claiming to have been in Cambodia during Christmas Eve of 1968. O'Neill and his colleagues claim that it was physically impossible to travel into Cambodia via boat.

An archived audio tape recently revealed John O'Neill telling President Richard Nixon the complete opposite. The audio was captured in 1971 as part of Nixon's secret recording system. O'Neill's admission was short but succinct:

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

NIXON: In a swift boat?

O'NEILL: Yes, sir.

O'Neill does not dispute the statement but counters that he was not literally in Cambodia but on the border. Although O'Neill holds John Kerry to the literal meaning of all of his statements, he refuses to be held to any of his own.

O'Neill, the primary pusher of the Kerry in Cambodia story also said that he was in Cambodia in the past. This neatly shredded his credibility, particularly because of the way he tried to wiggle out of the claim after the fact.

Those to problems destroyed the groups credibility. But they pressed ahead with their latest ad claiming that Kerry secretly went to Paris to negotiate with the communists.
[link|http://mediamatters.org/items/200409220006|Media Matters]

While the ad claims that Kerry "secretly met with enemy leaders," the Paris meeting to which the ad refers was not a secret, as The Washington Post noted on September 22 and as text in the ad indicates (words at bottom of screen: "John Kerry's Senate Testimony: United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, April 22, 1971"). The ad is referring to the meeting that Kerry described in his 1971 public testimony before the Senate: "I have been to Paris. I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government."

Whoops, turns out that isn't true either. There was nothing secret about the meeting, nor was he negotiating with the communists.

The Swift Boaters are driven by the sort of hatred you so often attribute to the left. They don't care about truth or justice, they are angry at Kerry for reporting that their war might have been less then glorious and noble.

Jay