Remember the Clinton scandals - well-funded rightwing groups can make stuff up almost as fast as Matt Drudge can spread it on the Internet.
The same is true with Candidate Kerry. And will be true for a President Kerry, as well.
On Tuesday, the Kerry-bashers had their shorts in a knot over a claim from a new book from the Swift Boat Liars for Bush group, saying that Kerry once claimed to have been in Cambodia during the Vietnam War but he couldn't have, so liar, liar, pants on fire.
We could point out that the alleged lie is many orders of magnitude less significant that Bush's claims about WMDs in Iraq. But why spoil the Freepers' fun?
For anyone who takes the Swift Boat Liars for Bush seriously, you may want to check out Steve Gilliard's take on why it's entirely credible that Kerry could have been in Cambodia: Kerry, SOG and the war in Cambodia 08/11/04. Kevin Drum also does a reality-check on this silliness: Kerry in Cambodia 08/10/04. So has Thomas Lang at CJR Campaign Desk: Where Were You on Christmas, 1968? 08/10/04.
And before you drink too much of the "Swiftees'" Oxycontin-laced kool-aid, you may want to check out the Joe Conason articles on the Swiftees that I referenced in a recent post. And you might want to consider that Joe Corsi, one of the co-authors of the new Swiftees anti-Kerry book Unfit for Command (Regnery Press) is, well, a raving anti-Semitic extremist. He don't much like Muslims, either: "RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters -- it all goes together". (See Who is Jerome Corsi, co-author of Swift Boat Vets attack book? MediaMatters.org 08/06/04 ) He and Chuckie should git along real fine.
Or maybe you want to just believe. Faith is a marvelous thing. I'd be careful with the "ragheads are boy-bumpers" line, though. Good country-club Republicans are still uncomfortable using those kinds of lines inpublic.
2 comments:
I'm reposting this, Bruce without the spelling error (blush). Can you delete the other one for me?
I'm sick of the attacks already. I wonder if that's their strategy, to make us realize how miserable they'll make us when Kerry's elected.
Seems that one of those not so "swiftees" has a problem with more than just John Kerry. Check out what Ted Sampley had to say about GHW Bush in 1997:
http://www.usvetdsp.com/story46.htm
Old comment deleted. But don't worry too much about spelling errors in comments. I generally make at least one or two in every comment I post.
Thanks for the link, too. The Swift Boat Liars for Bush group is a typical rightwing sleze-slinging outfit. I heard Al Franken on a late-night talk show, comparing Air America to rightwing talk radio. He mentioned (quoting from memory here) a statistic about the minimum wage that Rush Limbaugh used on the air. He had the Air America researchers check it out with the Bureau of Labor Statistics and found out that it was blatently wrong. Al said, "Rush just pulled that number out of his butt."
He concluded from this, after a funny impression of Rush's pomposity, "That's one difference between us and them. We get our numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They get theirs from the Bureau of Rush's Butt."
Not so long ago, books and press releases from the likes of the Swift Boat Liars would have been restricted to the fringe circulation of John Birchers and similar groups. Now they're taken seriously by respectable journalists who should know better. Who DO know better, in fact. - Bruce
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