John McCain smiled and nodded in 2004 as the Swift Boat Veterans lied and distorted John Kerry’s record of military service, McCain simply refused to denounce or tepidly rebuke the attacks because he so badly needed the deranged GOP base to support him in 2008. Having made such attacks now a part of our national discourse, McCain now seems to have shifted from enabler to subject.
MORE: And now, Republican candidates have suddenly discovered that they don’t want people to go through their personal histories. They built their now-defunct congressional majority on just those principles, as well as the eight year presidency of Bush and his two campaigns against Al Gore and John Kerry. What good for the goose is never good for the gander, if he’s a Republican. Too bad guys, the seal has been broken.
Uhh….you have got to be kidding.
One guy gins up purple hearts and then runs around the country claiming war hero status, the other guy it trying to bring a failing communist regime into the 21st century.
Ollie’s hypocrisy is exposed for all to see here, again (he believes this group is equvilent to the swifties, they aren’t) as he thinks that two wrongs make a right.
How does one go about “ginning up purple hearts?”
Please try to remember that Kerry volunteered for service. Twice. when he could have gotten deferments.
Just please try to remember that.
you often get back what you ask for…or…what goes around comes around…all the way…
they asked for it, and i guess their bill is just now coming to the table for the obligatory signature & tip.
then, with their signature, the party won’t have to do dishes in kitchen to pay for their sloth-like tactics over the past 20 years.
maybe now we can actually begin to have a substantial discussion on the issues we have to deal with today & not what we did we in high school & college back & our early formative years in the 60s & 70s and now, with the new breed of young republicans, the 80s. we have our work cut out for us as progressives.
i think politicians today, particularly the older versions, are setting fairly poor standards for future american & western history studies in future high- schools everywhere.
Shame. I really wanted to talk about Giuliani’s family problems (by the way, they should also take off firefighters’ unions comments off the campaign. That’s also unfair.) I also wanted to to talk about Gingrich’s hypocrisy regarding his infidelity, but I guess I can’t. I also wanted to talk about Romney’s hidden collection of little boys’ shoes, but I guess I won’t.
Way too late for that now. It’s funny how the Republican’ts have all of a sudden fallen in love with privacy and bi-partisanship, isn’t it?
And how does one go about faking medals? If I had known it was so easy, I’d have gotten myself a Congressional.
When one gets a scratch from shrapnel that may well have come from one’s own ordinance, a scratch that was literally not worth one full line in a medical record, and then one puts one’s self in for a PH, knowing full well that you rack up three, and you are homeward bound.
Meriallen you were in the military, you should know this…you never saw someone get an undeserved award?
Except that it was more than shrapnel, and it was when he served in Vietnam, not in Texas like Bush.
I don’t remember Bush basing his entire campaign around his TANG service, lead off his acceptance speech with “Reporting for Duty”, or slander his fellow troops in front of a Congressional Committee.
By the way, when is Kerry going to publicly release his miltary records like he promised on “Meet the Press”? Will he allow anyone but his personel hagiographer (Brinkley) see them? What is he hiding?
Kerry doesn’t deserve his medals because he ran for President as a Democrat. That is the sole criteria you’re working from Pedro, so button it.
actually kerry stopped deserving his medals when he hurled them over the WH fence.
And Ollie, it was LESS than shrapnel. Shrapnel ought to get you a trip to the OR and an op report…not a little bacitracin ointment and a hello kitty bandaid.
I’m with farris, Kerry gets props for showing up, and then blows it by prancing around like a war hero with little to demonstrate that.
Because he ran for President as a Democrat. You wouldn’t care otherwise.
Actually, Young Master Bush did highlight his TANG duty in both campaigns and his autobiography. And the fact is much of his autobiography regarding his TANG experience is false.
The SwiftBoat liars embarrassed themselves. BTW, if you do a little reasearch on Sampley, you’ll find he he doesn’t do anything without an eye on making a profit from it.
The very fact that KERRY SOLICITED the issuance of his first PH should be enough to make any veteran nauseous and should suggest to anyone with a smattering of common sense that Kerry’s entire career was built upon one preposterous fraud after another.
Yet it’s the Swiftees who lied?
I’m just guessing, but I would be willing to bet that I have more time in the chow hall than “pedro” has in the military. I probably have more time in the chow hall than “pedro” has as an md, but that’s another story.
I would suggest to pedro and all of his ilk that it took more courage for the Kerry’s and Gore’s of the world to actually serve in than it did for the Limbaugh’s and the Cheney’s of the world to find every reason under the Sun to avoid combat, but obviously they had “more important things to do”.
Getting back to McCain … it gets worse than that for him. The proto-Swift Boaters were after McCain in 2000 for his military record, saying he cooperated with the North Vietnamese while in captivity in exchange for special treatment. AFTER these barbs, he stood silently while the SAME people did the same thing to John Kerry.
Here is why I’m not scared of McCain — the guy is a tool.
Bingo — the guys who served in Kerry’s boat during the incidents in question, the guys who would know, all called the Swift Boaters liars. So yes, they lied, and anyone who continues this just perpetuates the lies and the focus on such a petty campaign issue.
Doesn’t matter what anybody thinks about Kerry now.
Like it or not, the same gang of little hoodlums you people cheered when they were kicking Kerry are now going after McCain.
Enjoy it, fellers.
Kerry’s commanding officers from Nam say that Kerry never solicited or had anything to do with requesting ANY of his medals.
… but if you repeat it often enough maybe you can make it true …
The accusations about Kerry tricking the Navy into getting free medals — has anyone ever provided ANY evidence to support these claims?
Giuliani’s firefighter front flap
…First, the background. In November 2001, six weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Giuliani decided to limit the number of FDNY searchers who could recover the remains of their fallen colleagues. The fight between the mayor’s office and the fire department grew rather intense. Ultimately, as Mark Kleiman described it, “[O]nce the Bank of Nova Scotia’s gold bars had been recovered, Giuliani ordered that the remaining rubble — including whatever bodies were still there — scooped up and taken to a landfill. When firefighters held a protest, he ordered them arrested.”…
This is in addition to the divorce in which he tried to move his mistress into Gracie Mansion with his wife and children. No wonder his children hate him and won’t campaign with him. What a creep, kinda like that Republicans who cry ’support the troops,’ unless a decorated soldier takes on their gutless wonder, Dubya.
Hey, is John Kerry running for President in 2008? No? Then why does his military record matter now?
Here’s the thing about McCain–besides the fact that he stood by and let the Swiftees run roughshod over a fellow war veteran, he also said nothing when Bush 2000 ran over his family.
How can you trust a man to stand up for a country if he can’t even stand up for his own family?
Hang on, now, I’m no fan of McCain, but to say he didn’t offer so much as a tepid rebuke to the Swift Boat campaign isn’t exactly accurate. He made a lot of noise when the first ad aired, and in fact made the pointed comment, “It was the same kind of deal that was pulled on me.” (SF Chronicle, 2004-08-06)
Now, he basically shut up about it after that, which I agree was spineless triangulation in the hopes of getting the ‘08 nom, but it’s not accurate for you to say he never denounced or even tepidly rebuked the ads.
Viking, hope you enjoyed your military service. I assume you worked in a chow hall, accounting for the amount of time you spent there. Perhaps that is just where you liked to hang out and drink coffee…
Gavage, maybe you could ask Kerry to release his records, then we could give you lots of hard evidence…
As soon as Bush releases his. I’d like to see those myself.
Here you go Duros, can you link me to Kerry’s now?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/2004-02-14-bush-docs.htm
No, I meant all of them. Including the ones that are sealed from when he was Gov. of Texas.
Now learn how to hyperlink, please.
Here is Kerry’s third purple heart….
http://www.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/3rd%20Purple%20Heart.pdf
No notification of NOK
Treated and released from a freaking “small-boy” sickbay.
I.E. He got a boo-boo and a bandaid….
Anyway, my point is made.
Apparently, it’s on the top of your head.
Now, he basically shut up about it after that
No, he didn’t. Willis’s post is a total rewrite of history. See, for example, the NY Times (8/27/2004):
“President Bush said yesterday that he would team with Senator John McCain to force a crackdown on independent groups that run political attack advertisements.
“The president made his pledge a day after a lawyer for the Bush campaign resigned because of his work for a veterans’ group that is criticizing Senator John Kerry.
“Mr. Bush acted following Mr. McCain’s renewed calls on him to condemn an advertisement from the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which accuses Mr. Kerry of lying about his war record. The president did not disavow the ad, but did say yesterday that he did not believe Mr. Kerry had lied about his service….
“Mr. Bush made his overture to Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, in a telephone call yesterday.
“Mr. McCain said later that he would work with Mr. Bush ”in the courts and through legislation” to increase restrictions on the outside groups, called 527’s for the section of the tax code that created them.
“Mr. McCain has argued that the groups should be barred from raising unlimited ‘’soft money” donations because they are essentially working as political committees.”
McCain stood up for Kerry. Repeatedly. You may recall there was even talk of a Kerry-McCain ticket.
…when is Kerry going to publicly release his m–
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Moronic brownshirt fucks: we hate who we’re paid to hate. Decorated war heroes? Fine. Doesn’t fucking matter to us. Get the name on the check right.
Get your facts straight. Sen. McCain passionately denounced the swiftboat ads the day they came out. Who’s distorting the facts now Mr. Willis?