What I Sent to My Wingnut Co-Brownwater Vietnam Vet

[UTUSN]

Dear "Doc":

You said you and I did our 4 years (in the Nav, not in Vietnam) and KERRY "only got 3 scratches".

He (KERRY) did 4 months in Nam, and did a lot more than "3 scratches". He also killed some VC and personally saved a guy's life.

I guess if you are going to choose between a fellow vet and Shrub who was a cocaine and booze hound, who DIDN'T GO AT ALL, it just makes PERFECT SENSE to pick the A.W.O.L. dude--HA!.

But forget Vietnam. What Shub has done to this country is to ruin it, getting 1000 of ours and thousands of others killed for his mob family vendetta. We shouldn't even be talking about Vietnam in 2004.

What's clear is that the anti-KERRY dudes are one-half pissed over what he said when he came back and one-half rabid rightwingers, with $100,000 paid for by a certain Bob PERRY, a rabid rightwinger building contracter in Houston who has been paying big bucks for years to other Repukes to get laws protecting consumers shitcanned so that he and his cronies can rake in big bucks without anybody in government stopping them.

The other big donor is Merrie SPAETH, who was behind the smear they did on McCAIN in 2000. Shame shame shame. How disgraceful.

Here are the stories on SPAETH, PERRY, and Gannon International-- all pals of Poppy BUSH. But I guess you won't read these either. Go out and buy some M&Ms and Stanley tools from Gannon International.
*******QUOTE*******

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Swift_Boat...

.... History

The website for SBVT was registered on April 14, under the name of Lewis Waterman, the information technology manager, Gannon International, a St. Louis company that has diversified interests, including in Vietnam. Joe Conason wrote in Salon that "although Waterman wouldn't discuss why he had set up the Web site, he didn't deny that his boss, Gannon president and CEO William Franke, had asked him to do so." <2> <3> H3 "The information about my client is confidential," Waterman told Conason. "He acknowledged knowing, however, that his boss Franke is a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam on swift boats. Gannon vice president Stephen D. Hayes, who oversees the company's office in Alexandria, Va., is likewise a swift boat veteran who first met Franke when they served together in the Mekong Delta."

According to the Dallas Observer's John Gonzalez, the newly formed group hired former FBI agent turned private investigator Tom Rupprath, "to locate swift boat vets and to dig up whatever he could regarding Kerry's service record." <4> ....

----------re: SPAETH----------

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Merrie_Spa...

Merrie Spaeth

Merrie Spaeth is "the public relations consultant representing" Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT). "According to CBS television news, election commission records gave the maximum possible £2,000 donation" to the Bush-Cheney '04 Inc. re-election campaign in June 2003. <1>

Her role with the SBVT attack on Kerry prompted the Kerry campaign allegations that she played a role in attempting to discredit John McCain in the Republican presidential primary in 2000. Spaeth told National Review that she was approached to provide PR support after the two Texas millionaires Sam and Charles Wyly, created the front group Republicans for Clean Air to attack McCains environmental policies.

Spaeth said that she agreed to field press inquiries for the group. It "turned out to be the biggest mistake, at least one of the top five," of her life, she said. "I regret being involved in any way," she said. <2>

Spaeth, founder of Spaeth Communications, Inc., "served as a White House Fellow and was assigned to FBI Director William Webster. She was the first Fellow and one of the first two women on the director’s staff. From the FBI, she served two years at the Federal Trade Commission as director of public affairs, and in 1983, President Ronald Reagan named her director of media relations at the White House. Merrie introduced satellite communications to the White House, and the electronic White House News Service. One newspaper headline said she 'took the White House into the Space Age.' <3>

----------Gannon, International--------

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Gannon_Int...

Gannon International

Gannon International, founded in 1983 by William Edward Franke, describes itself as "the classical model of a holding company, with the principal of Gannon International, or Gannon International itself, owning interests in many other corporations, partnerships or companies. Gannon International provides administrative support for many of the companies or partnerships within the three operational groups." <1> ....

The Gannon Pacific Group is "engaged, in conjunction with local partners, in the distribution of products from around the world into the Asian marketplace. Included within its portfolio of approximately 300 products are such brands as L'Oreal, Lancôme and Maybelline cosmetics, M&M/Mars confectionary goods, Stanley tools and hinges, Mohawk carpeting and Wyeth milk and formula products.

"The Gannon Pacific Group is currently expanding into both the packaging and processing of select consumer products and the development of mixed use developments, including resort hotels and retail facilities, within Thailand." <3> ....

"The Gannon Technologies Group has provided the software support and services for several United States federal and state agencies, including an extensive staffing commitment to the Anti-Trust Division of the United States Department of Justice. ....

********UNQUOTE*******

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. trivia about Merrie Spaeth

As a teenager, she was in the film The World of Henry Orient, portraying one of the two young girls who develop a crush on pianist Henry Orient (played by Peter Sellers) and follow him around New York City. She was the one with the blonde pigtails.

[featherman]

2. I remember the movie well

it was unusual for the time, pretty off beat, with an erotic undercurrent that was uncomfortable considering the age of the girls. Strange film.

[UTUSN]

3. KIDDING! Strange Strange Strange n/t

[Jack Rabbit]

4. The World of Henry Orient is an excellent film

The fact that Merrie Spaeth grew up to be a neocon apologist makes it no less so.

Emil Jannings, the German film actor who appeared in F. W. Murnau's The Last Laugh and Josef von Sternberg's Blue Angel made a number of propaganda films for the Nazis in the thirties. His poor personal judgment does not diminish the merits of those films just named or his performance in them.

[UTUSN]

5. Correct, Art-is-art. WAGNER

is a case in point. His music can bring me to my knees. And I hate him.

[0rganism]

6. Doesn't Kerry's 1st tour count as 'Nam, too?

He was in a frigate in the Tonkin Gulf, allegedly the area where the "police action" began, for ~6 months prior to joining the swift boats in the delta. In the next four months he sustained three combat injuries and was removed from front-line service -- Naval policy at the time. He still served a full four years, and it seems to me that counts for something.

[UTUSN]

7. Yep, It Counts ----------(in a Normal, ALTERNATE Universe) n/t

[Rageneau]

8. Has anyone noticed that Cordier is NOT a swift boat veteran?

For people with the word 'truth' in their name, the "SBVFT" sure tell a lot of lies.

Here's one nobody seems to have noticed yet (and one which the major media, because of its rightwing bias) will probably never report).

Namely, this guy Kenneth Cordier, who just had to resign from his job with the Bush Campaign because he appears in the ad for the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" is NOT himself a Swift Boat veteran! He was an Air Force pilot who never served in the brownwater navy, and yet he has the dishonesty to appear in an ad that says he did. And on top of that disgraceful act, has the nastiness to compound that disgrace by using that appearance to slander a man about whose actions he has ABSOLUTELY no independent knowledge.

I thought personal honor was SUPPOSED to matter to American officers. But no American officer who would publicly disparage another officer's conduct -- with ABSOLUTELY no direct knowledge of it -- can be said to be honorable. OTOH, such a person CAN be said to be despicable.

It seems that Repugnicans are so used to distortion and deceit that they don't even REALIZE when they're lying any more. Lies are just another campaign tactic to them -- like banners and bumper stickers.

IOW, it is now patently obvious that the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" are nothing of the kind. They are nothing but "Liars for Bush -- Some of Whom Served on Swift Boats" -- and their own advertising proves it.