Swifties Update

[whometense]

I hesitated to post this due to the nausea factor, but if we're going to watch John's back we need to know what's going on.

Vietnam sparks war of words on election panel

LUBBOCK - • Provocative debate on the Vietnam War's effect on the 2004 election wraps up a three-day conference at Texas Tech.

"The Tactical Nuclear Weapons Option in Vietnam" was informative. "Re-education and Its Aftermath" was moving.

Then there was "The Vietnam War and the Election Year," as seen and told by former members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and members of the Swift boat Veterans for Truth.

This was some academic conference.

"Welcome to the steel-cage death match" portion of the 5th Triennial Vietnam Symposium, remarked one panelist.

<snip>

Burkett even dropped this bombshell: "I personally think George Bush is a draft dodger. But George Bush never lied about Vietnam. John Kerry did."

The Vietnam Center has always been unconventional in its approaches to symposiums, unafraid of presentations by nonacademics. That doesn't mean that the center director, James Reckner, wasn't apprehensive about Saturday's panels.

Despite repeated admonitions about maintaining civility, Reckner -- a two-tour Vietnam veteran and self-described "hard-core conservative" -- said he was disappointed by the behavior of the Swift boat veterans. Bailey, for example, irritably interrupted the daughter of a soldier killed in Vietnam and told DuBose to "sit down" and refused to hear his question.

Reckner said he found Bailey's actions "totally unacceptable. There can't be a dialogue without questions and answers. You can't answer questions just from your friends."

[TayTay]

1. This is nuts

Although it looks like that forum was a real free-for-all with Wingnuts opposed by VVAW people. Sound slike it was lively as hell.

Oh, just to make your day even better, I saw an article in the Kansas City Star that had Dick Armey (Former R-TX) saying:

On John Kerry: "A hack politician," though, he added, "I may be misjudging the man."

On Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: "She's one of the most adult people in the Democratic Party."

Good thing I don't give much cadence to wingnuts.

[whometense]

2. That has to be among the most

(inadvertently) hilarious quotes I've ever seen: "A hack politician," though, he added, "I may be misjudging the man."

Where do you even start???

It does sound like the Texas forum was pretty crazy. It never fails to amaze me how intense the emotions around Vietnam still are, after so many years. It's like it happened yesterday.

[karynnj]

3. Armey may have been looking into the mirror

when he talked of hack politician - didn't he not run for re-election because he was complicit in some of the Enron mess. Kerry's past contains none of these ethical transgressions, which would kind of make him NOT a political hack.

It's interesting that he adds he may be misjudging (Kerry). From his RW partisan perch, the first sentence is rote, the second may be that he knows it's not true.

As far as judging adultness, he lost is not one to talk after referring to Rep Barney Frank as Barney Fag, which seems to put his maturity at about age 13. I am surprised how many RW people have recently spoken well of Hillary.

[TayTay]

4. PJ O'Rourke slammed Kerry real bad

about his JFK speech. I read the criticism and I didn't understand it. I saw Kerry's speech and it seemed reasonable to me. I think O'Rourke just hates Kerry. (Hey, on the left wing, Mickey Kaus of Slate seems to hate Kerry beyond all reasonableness. I actually sought out his reports on Slate because they were so vicious, I thought they were funny.)

[whometense]

6. I read (most of) that O'Rourke

column. It was filled with hatred.

You're a stronger person than I if you can handle Kaus. As bad as wingnuts are, I reserve a special place in hell for people who identify themselves as democrats just to give them special authority to bash democrats. I put Kaus in this category (even though he is a thoroughly pathetic loser hack.)

[elshiva]

10. O'Rourke is damned annoying!

[GRLMGC]

9. Eww

That guy is a dick (pun intended). He's the one who said that Boston wasn't American. I hate him so.

[karynnj]

5. Texas Tech should be ashamed of their inability to moderate

an event like this in a scholarly-like way. A moderator would have been able to question the veracity of the charges made against Kerry. It seems to me highly unlikely that Kerry was a butcher or a war criminal as they say. When Nixon investigated Kerry, this would have come out and Nixon would have used it as it would have utterly destroyed Kerry's image as a clean-cut war hero speaking out eloquently questioning the morality of the war. His superiors who were appalled that he spoke out would not have sat on this information.

A real academic discussion of the war or of the impact Kerry had on the war would be interesting. The war was already winding down when Kerry spoke and the protest movement if anything was stronger in 1969 and 1970. At the hearings, Kerry was asked why he wasn't satisfied with Nixon's approach to slowly winding down the war - Kerry's answer that it wasn't worth another life is vindicated as they got the same terms in 1973 that they could have gotten in 1968 and an additional 13,000 lives were lost from the time Kerry spoke until the end of the war.

There are at least three things that could measure Kerry's impact.

Public Opinion:
It would be interesting to know if anyone ever analyzed whether there was a sustained increase in the proportion of people against the war or people' s negative or positive view of Vets after April, 1971 versus before. (I think for a lot of people, Kerry replaced Calley as the dominant image of the Vietnam soldier - people now forget the time line and the fact that the Mi Lai information was out first. So, his impact had to have been positive.)

Legislators:
Kerry clearly did not influence the executive branch, so the question is did he influence the Legislature. Have any Senators or congressmen of that time ever said that Kerry's speech was the catalyst for them changing in any way their actions. (He did get a lot of praise, but what was the impact)

Other Veterans:
It may be that Kerry might have had an impact in diverting many angry vets from the increasingly radical VVAW to the more Veteran issue oriented VVA.

But this scream fest couldn't even touch these basic real issues.

For Kerry, the real question might be whether there were people who otherwise would have voted for him who didn't because of either the lies about his war record or his anti-war activities. Of these, how many would have voted for another Democrat. Releasing his war record might not even end the lies about it and it won't address the protests. I hope he will have someone quietly investigate how much these things actually hurt him. Unfair as it is that his honorable, even heroic actions on both are held against him while Bush is allowed a pass on 40 years of irresponsibility and bad behavior, these issues might be a reason not to run if there are a significant number of possibly Democratic voters in the group that hate him.

[TayTay]

7. The Rethugs never stopped trying to slam Kerry

The same gang of regressive bastards who stuffed Kerry during the Iran-Contra hearings are still there. I mean look at John Bolton, who probably helped to block AG Meese (Yuck!) from pursuing the charges of drug and gun running back in 86. Look at John Negroponte who almost certainly knew about the Death Squads in Honduras in the 80's as well. Kerry knew about their operations, but he was blocked.

These guys hate John Kerry. Back during the Iran-Contra hearings, Rethugs on the Foreign Relations Committee leaked the ongoing investigation findings to Ollie North. They had enough info that at one point they directed the AG to investigate Kerry's office for witness tampering. (Laughable charges that never got out of Justice. Even the immoral Reagan Justice Dept.) These people hate Kerry. They have just switched the ways in which they have gone after him. They have no ethics, no morals and a sense of self-righteous, God-given hubris to go after whoever they think the villains are. These people are scum.

No wonder Kerry wants to run again. He is just sick of these bastards and their illegal and immoral conduct.

[karynnj]

8. God Bless Kerry for having the strength to continue trying

He really has fought these jerks most of his life. What's hard to believe is that even with all that was known on Iran/Contra and the support of the right wing death squads in Central America, it was so easy to consider that everything was OK during the Clinton years.

I wonder how the population as a whole can ever deal with what has been done in our name by the Reagan/Bush/Bush people. I don't know how Kerry has found the strength to deal with these people, working so hard and well each time, only for them to resurface time and time again.

Oddly, Kerry might be the only one who would really go after them. I wish Clinton would have made more if an issue with Bush's Iran/Contra pardons, because at least it might have made it less likely that they could all be confirmed under GWB.

I still can't believe that half of this country could really have looked at Bush and Kerry in the debates and have thought Bush was qualified for anything.