Bush condemns 527s, asks Kerry to do the same

[Guest MikeSC]

SVBT doesn't quite go to the extremes of moveon.org et al.

 

The 'Bush = Hitler' ad story is bullshit.

Wasn't referencing "Bush = Hitler". I actually kinda mentioned what I was referring to with the "actual ad from moveon.org" line. The whole "He knew..." ad. Or the one where the Statue of Liberty has a hood over her head, ala Abu Gharib. You know, THOSE ads. REALLY amateurish, hack jobs.

 

BTW, they're very much ON the moveon.org website RIGHT NOW.

Consider it a preemptive strike, then.

Most people would consider it bullshit, actually.

That they attribute the quote to him directly in the latest ad alone is a gross distortion of the truth.

Wow, you really DON'T have much to go on, did you?

 

HINT: If you are testifying about what you heard --- you are implicitly approving it.

-=Mike

...NRO asked a good question: If Kerry wishes to portray himself as a man of honor, why is he parading out Clinton cronies like John Podesta to bash Bush?

 

...And why hasn't he criticized what Podesta said, for that matter?

[Guest MikeSC]

BTW, for those who think Kerry is being unfairly bashed and this is unprecented, let's go back to 1996.

-=Mike

[NoCalMike 0]

As lame and inaccruate all these ads are from both sides, really, what baffoon votes for a candidate based on a television commercial? Maybe I am being naive, but I have never talked to a person that said, "oh oh, but did you see what that commercial said......my mind is made up"

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Wasn't referencing "Bush = Hitler". I actually kinda mentioned what I was referring to with the "actual ad from moveon.org" line. The whole "He knew..." ad. Or the one where the Statue of Liberty has a hood over her head, ala Abu Gharib. You know, THOSE ads. REALLY amateurish, hack jobs.

 

BTW, they're very much ON the moveon.org website RIGHT NOW.

Okay, I've seen those now. Presidents do get criticism when they do things that a lot of people don't like. This is why Clinton was accused of consorting with the Chinese, selling out the White House, having people killed to cover-up a plot, etc. The same thing is happening to Bush here and will happen to whoever succeeds him.

 

What I don't understand is why you're outraged about these MoveOn ads but at the same time saying "Well, you only care about these ads when attack YOUR candidate!" You've been complaining about these groups that have been attacking your candidate the whole time, but when one comes out on the other end, you buy the book and swallow the line. Don't you see a hypocracy in that?

 

If you're complaining about MoveOn, Soros, and etc, why is it suprising that people are complaining about SwiftVets and their attack ad?

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

As lame and inaccruate all these ads are from both sides, really, what baffoon votes for a candidate based on a television commercial? Maybe I am being naive, but I have never talked to a person that said, "oh oh, but did you see what that commercial said......my mind is made up"

 

Not a whole lot, but the million or two people that may be swayed have a good chance of being difference-makers. Campaign advertising is retarded and I'd prefer if it were banned altogether. Unfortunately, I don't think the country or its would-be leaders are ready to adapt to a system based on content and clear statements of policy. It'd also put the challenging candidate at a perpetual disadvantage. Oh, to dream.

[Guest MikeSC]

Wasn't referencing "Bush = Hitler". I actually kinda mentioned what I was referring to with the "actual ad from moveon.org" line. The whole "He knew..." ad. Or the one where the Statue of Liberty has a hood over her head, ala Abu Gharib. You know, THOSE ads. REALLY amateurish, hack jobs.

 

BTW, they're very much ON the moveon.org website RIGHT NOW.

Okay, I've seen those now. Presidents do get criticism when they do things that a lot of people don't like.

Then don't bitch about Kerry's service being questioned --- Bush has received much worse and far harsher treatment.

This is why Clinton was accused of consorting with the Chinese

Umm, hate to be mean, but he did. He took considerable cash from the Chinese Communists for his 1996 campaign. James Riady et al didn't exactly raise DOMESTIC funds for him.

selling out the White House

Did that, too. Bush probably has as well, if it makes you feel better.

having people killed to cover-up a plot, etc.

Which was fucking idiotic for anybody to claim as it didn't make even a shred of rational sense.

 

HOWEVER, the behavior of some in the White House immediately following his death was more than mildly odd.

The same thing is happening to Bush here and will happen to whoever succeeds him.

Which shows that Bush HAS received much worse than Kerry.

What I don't understand is why you're outraged about these MoveOn ads but at the same time saying "Well, you only care about these ads when attack YOUR candidate!" You've been complaining about these groups that have been attacking your candidate the whole time, but when one comes out on the other end, you buy the book and swallow the line. Don't you see a hypocracy in that?

Moment they have people under affidavit making these claims, I'll take them seriously.

If you're complaining about MoveOn, Soros, and etc, why is it suprising that people are complaining about SwiftVets and their attack ad?

Because Bush himself never really mentioned them, outside of calling for a ban on ALL of those ads.

Not a whole lot, but the million or two people that may be swayed have a good chance of being difference-makers. Campaign advertising is retarded and I'd prefer if it were banned altogether. Unfortunately, I don't think the country or its would-be leaders are ready to adapt to a system based on content and clear statements of policy. It'd also put the challenging candidate at a perpetual disadvantage. Oh, to dream.

Blame the voters.

 

Campaigns don't do things that are ineffective for their goal.

-=Mike

[Guest MikeSC]

And, don't worry, George Bush Sr. got HIS record questioned as well.

 

By Sid Blumenthal, no less.

 

From The New Republic, 10/12/92

Since the first day of the Republican convention there has been no issue emphasized more by the Republicans than Bill Clinton's draft record... From August 25 to September 21 the Bush-Quayle campaign fired off eighteen press releases attacking Clinton on the draft. The issue also points to... deeply troubling feelings from his past that Bush has wished to submerge for five decades.

 

George Bush was a 17-year-old student at Phillips Academy in Andover when Pearl Harbor was bombed. He wanted to join the military at once. Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the president of the prep school's board of trustees and a friend of Prescott Bush, delivered a speech to the students urging them to remain in school. George's parents and teachers persuaded him to graduate, but immediately afterward he enlisted in the Naval Air Corps, becoming one of the youngest pilots. "I couldn't wait for my 18th birthday," he told U.S. News & Wolrd Report in 1987. He was trained to fly a new torpedo bomber, the Avenger, which was specially built to make emergency landings on water. Bush's base was the San Jacinto aircraft carrier, from where he made many runs. Indeed, his plane was hit once, and he made a successful water landing. The Avenger proved itself seaworthy enough for the three crew members to paddle in a raft to a rescuing destroyer, singing "Over the Bounding Main."

 

On September 2, 1944 - the day Bush experienced what he has called "the most dramatic individual moment of my life" - he flew off the San Jacinto in a squadron attack on a Japanese radio installation on Chichi Jima island. While approaching the target, his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire. What followed is subject to disputed accounts and may never be truly known. Yet, over time, it has become the center of Bush's political legend as the hero-pilot, a commander in chief in whom we trust. According to the intelligence report approved sometime later by the squadron leader (it was oddly undated), Bush's plane was enveloped in "smoke and flames," and "Bush and one other person were seen to bail out... Bush's chute opened and he landed safely in water... The chute of the other person ... who bailed out did not open." The plane crashed into the sea and sank. Both John Delaney and Ted White were reported missing in action, presumed dead. The report added a cautionary note: "Bush has not yet been returned to squadron by rescue sub, so this information is incomplete."

 

The confidential log of the USS Finback, the sub that picked up Bush, recorded on the day of the incident that at 11:56 a.m. Bush "stated that he failed to see his crew's parachutes and believed they had jumped when plane was still over Chichi Jima, or they had gone down with plane." At 4:20 that afternoon, the Finback picked up another downed pilot, James Beckman, who, according to the log, "stated that it was known that only one mail had parachuted from Bush's plane" - namely Bush. The log concluded: "This decided us to discontinue any further search of that area...."

 

Bush spent eight weeks on the submarine before being reunited with his squadron. Back in the Ready Room on the San Jacinto, he sought out Chester Mierzejewski, who had been the tail gunner on the plane just ahead of Bush's when it had been hit - the man with the clearest view, only 100 feet away.

 

Mierzejewski had been particularly close to Delaney. And Bush seemed to want to answer the agonizing unasked questions: Why didn't he make a water landing? Why was he the only one to jump? Did he panic? "Look," Mierzejewski told me Bush said to him, "I'm sure the two of them in the back were dead. I called them three times and got no answer." (Given the construction of the Avenger, it was impossible for the pilot, shielded by an armor plate, to see the crew; the only communication would have been by radio.)

 

Bush was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his action at Chichi Jima, but he evidently was filled with the remorse of the survivor. "You mention in your letter that you would like to help me in some way," wrote Mary Jane Delaney, the sister of one of those killed. "There is a way, and that is to stop thinking you are in any way responsible for your plane accident and what has happened to your men." (The letter is published in Flight of the Avenger: George Bush at War by Joe Hyams.) "I try to think about it as little as possible, yet I cannot get the thought of those two out of my mind," Bush wrote to his parents - a letter he cites in his autobiography, Looking Forward.

 

Whether responsible or not for what befell his companions, he felt - admirably - responsible.

 

In 1980, campaigning for president, Bush spotted Mierzejewski, who was about to retire as a foreman from the Pratt and Whitney aircraft plant, at a rally in Meriden, Connecticut. "I'm glad to see him," said Bush, calling attention to his old war buddy from the podium, according to an article in the Meriden Record-Journal "Those were heroic times." In December 1987 Mierzejewski settled down in his living room to watch Bush, running again, be interviewed by David Frost. He was startled to hear the presidential candidate retell his war story, the one about how the plane was "in smoke and the wings were burning"; and how, of the two crewmen, "one of them got out. I think the other was killed in the plane."

 

This was not what Bush had told Mierzejewski in the Ready Room. Bush had related that he had called them three times - and he insisted that before he deserted the cockpit he was convinced that the two men must have been dead. Now Bush was saving on national T.V. that one of the men got out. "I never saw anyone else coming out of the plane," Mierzejewski told me. "It seems he Bush was awfully anxious to open that parachute. But I couldn't guess if those guys were alive. If the people are possibly alive, he was supposed to try to make a water landing. But I'm not in his mind." Mierzejewski now thought that Bush had "told me" that the men were dead as if he was justifying to me why he was bailing out himself." And why, he wondered, was Bush talking about smoke and fire? Mierzejewski had witnessed only a "puff of smoke" after Bush's plane had been hit - not billows of smoke and flames, certainly no smoke in the cockpit.

 

Bush's latest account, he decided, was not right. So he wrote the vice president an anxious letter: "These recollections are entirely different from my recall of the incident... I do not want to see your campaign hurt... I do not intend to dispute you in public." But he received no reply.

 

Mierzejewski's neighbor, a lawyer to whom he had confided his story, contacted the New York Post, whose reporter in turn contacted Mierzejewski. On August 12, 1988, the first day of the GOP convention in New Orleans, the newspaper published a front-page story, THE DAY BUSH BAILED OUT, by Allan Wolper and Al Ellenberg, which laid out Mierzejewski's claims. Some of the other crewmen substantiated a number of his details, including that he had the best view. The article noted that Mierzejewski was upset that though he was interviewed by the officer who wrote the intelligence report, his account was not included in it.

 

The Bush campaign responded to the story by circulating the intelligence report to the press. A spokesman called Mierzejewski's version "absurd." (None of the articles on the event observed that the intelligence report contradicted not only Mierzejewski's story but also the Finback log.) Then the coup de grace was delivered by Michael Dukakis, who remarked: "I don't think that kind of thing has any place in the campaign." Bush's wish was his command. Never again during the presidential race was the story raised.

 

Yet, during the contest, Bush published two campaign autobiographies containing divergent accounts of his war experience. In Looking Forward (written with Victor Gold, a friend and adviser), Bush described telling Delaney and White to "bail out" and jumping himself. "I looked around for Delaney and White, but the only thing in sight was my parachute drifting away." This story seemed to square with what Bush had related oil the Finback and to Mierzejewski. But in Man of Integrity (written with Doug Wead, Bush's liaison to the eligious right), he presented a radically different version. "I thought I was a goner," Bush recounted here. "I looked back and saw that my rear gunner was out. He had been machine-gunned to death right where he was. So then I turned back over the water and we bailed out. "But Delaney did not survive. "He was evidently cut to ribbons as he parachuted down. I was luckier."

 

In 1991 two books celebrated Bush's exploits as warrior-aviator, just as he was being celebrated as the victor in the Gulf war. Joe Hyams published Flight of the Avenger with "the cooperation of the president," which neglected to mention Mierzejewski and his story. Robert Stinnett, who had flown with Bush in his plane during the war as a Navy photographer, produced George Bush: His World War II Years, which attempted to refute Mierzejewski by citing four crew-member accounts, which disagreed with Mierzejewski's version, but did not quote the crew members reported in the New York Post who affirmed a number of Mierzejewski's particulars. Bush's story seemed intact...

 

What really happened at Chichi Jima will never finally be resolved. Were the men really dead when Bush jumped? Did one man parachute out? Why did the intelligence report say one thing and the Finback log another? And why have Bush's versions changed over time? Bush's experience in the Good War was more tortured and his accounts more tortuous than he now admits.

 

"I don't want to think about it," said Chester Mierzejewski. "I don't want to get involved politically." Still, he sees the attacks on Clinton as cynical in the light of what he has come to believe about the event of long ago. "I knew two guys who would be glad if George Bush had been a draft-dodger," he told me.

 

What we do know, in the end, is that terrible things happen in wartime; that the young Bush was consumed with doubt and pain; that the older Bush has presented a simple, unambiguous, but contradicting, story; and that he has directed his campaign to project onto Clinton's youthful grapplings with a very different war the harsh image of the evader.

Man, how can Kerry deal with such unusual tactics?

-=Mike

[Vern Gagne 0]

Hell. If Bob Dole's war injury wasn't so obvious his story would of been checked.

 

Did i miss something or did John Kerry do something for 20 years that allowed him to win the Democratic nomination for President?

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Wow, so many responses, so little time:

 

JOTW: Those Moveon.Org ads are running heavily. Being in a battleground state, I've seen a bunch of them. Also, they are being run a lot during talk shows like Povich -- the better half and I watch a "Who's-your-babby's-daddy?" shows.

 

Mike: Great comparison to the BoSox. Only a lawyer would be so shameless as to do what Boston did.

 

NoCal: Back in Journalism school, it was sickening to do man-on-the-street interviews and ask businessmen and women simple civic questions and having them go "I dunno."

 

Vern: Yesterday Rush was reading some article on (National Review I think) about how the Nation Magazine was questioning Dole's war record back in '96. Yeah, I know the Nation is a left-wing rag, and I'm not calling these people "mainstream," but it was funny nevertheless...

[Guest MikeSC]

So, will Kerry condemn THIS?

A Swift (& deadly) response

 

Sen. John Kerry called a member of the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth over the weekend to try to reason with him over the group's attacks on his record. But fellow Democrats aren't hesitating to try far more aggressive tactics.

 

A group of Democratic loyalists is compiling incriminating dossiers on the members of the veteran group - and they sent us a preview of what might be in store for Swift Boat activist James Zumwalt, son of illustrious Adm. Elmo Zumwalt - and it isn't pretty.

 

Zumwalt "attempted to kill himself with an overdose of prescription drugs," after the murder of his ex-wife's fiance, John Kowalczyk, according to the dossier, which is footnoted to news sources, and was "convicted of reckless driving after chasing Kowalczyk at a high speed on the highway."

 

Zumwalt stepped into the line of fire when he testified with the controversial Swift vets at the National Press Club in Washington last May.

 

What was that old chestnut about loose lips sinking ships?

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/225425p-193615c.html

CLASSY!

-=Mike

[Guest thebigjig]

So, will Kerry condemn THIS?

A Swift (& deadly) response

 

Sen. John Kerry called a member of the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth over the weekend to try to reason with him over the group's attacks on his record. But fellow Democrats aren't hesitating to try far more aggressive tactics.

 

A group of Democratic loyalists is compiling incriminating dossiers on the members of the veteran group - and they sent us a preview of what might be in store for Swift Boat activist James Zumwalt, son of illustrious Adm. Elmo Zumwalt - and it isn't pretty.

 

Zumwalt "attempted to kill himself with an overdose of prescription drugs," after the murder of his ex-wife's fiance, John Kowalczyk, according to the dossier, which is footnoted to news sources, and was "convicted of reckless driving after chasing Kowalczyk at a high speed on the highway."

 

Zumwalt stepped into the line of fire when he testified with the controversial Swift vets at the National Press Club in Washington last May.

 

What was that old chestnut about loose lips sinking ships?

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/225425p-193615c.html

CLASSY!

-=Mike

I just heard on the news that recently reviewed Navy records reflect what Kerry has been saying all along

[Guest MikeSC]

So, will Kerry condemn THIS?

A Swift (& deadly) response

 

Sen. John Kerry called a member of the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth over the weekend to try to reason with him over the group's attacks on his record. But fellow Democrats aren't hesitating to try far more aggressive tactics.

 

A group of Democratic loyalists is compiling incriminating dossiers on the members of the veteran group - and they sent us a preview of what might be in store for Swift Boat activist James Zumwalt, son of illustrious Adm. Elmo Zumwalt - and it isn't pretty.

 

Zumwalt "attempted to kill himself with an overdose of prescription drugs," after the murder of his ex-wife's fiance, John Kowalczyk, according to the dossier, which is footnoted to news sources, and was "convicted of reckless driving after chasing Kowalczyk at a high speed on the highway."

 

Zumwalt stepped into the line of fire when he testified with the controversial Swift vets at the National Press Club in Washington last May.

 

What was that old chestnut about loose lips sinking ships?

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/225425p-193615c.html

CLASSY!

-=Mike

I just heard on the news that recently reviewed Navy records reflect what Kerry has been saying all along

I read that, also.

 

Not quite the case, if one actually reads the story.

-=Mike

[Guest thebigjig]

I HEARD it, but now I just looked it up... and yeah it seems to support a portion of Kerry's story

 

Navy records appear to support Kerry's version

Swift Boats came under fire, task force reported

 

WASHINGTON - The Navy task force overseeing John Kerry’s swift boat squadron in Vietnam reported that his group of boats came under enemy fire during a March 13, 1969, incident that three decades later is being challenged by the Democratic presidential nominee’s critics.

 

 

The March 18, 1969, weekly report from Task Force 115, which was located by The Associated Press during a search of Navy archives, is the latest document to surface that supports Kerry’s description of an event for which he won a Bronze Star and a third Purple Heart.

 

The Task Force report twice mentions the incident five days earlier and both times calls it “an enemy initiated firefight” that included automatic weapons fire and underwater mines used against a group of five boats that included Kerry’s.

 

Task Force 115 was commanded at the time by retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the founder of the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which has been running ads challenging Kerry’s account of the episode.

 

A member of the group, Larry Thurlow, said Tuesday he stood by his assertion that there was no enemy fire that day. Thurlow, the commander of another boat who also won a Bronze Star, said task force commanders probably relied on the initial report of the incident. Thurlow says Kerry wrote that report.

[Guest GreatOne]

So, will Kerry condemn THIS?

A Swift (& deadly) response

 

Sen. John Kerry called a member of the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth over the weekend to try to reason with him over the group's attacks on his record. But fellow Democrats aren't hesitating to try far more aggressive tactics.

 

A group of Democratic loyalists is compiling incriminating dossiers on the members of the veteran group - and they sent us a preview of what might be in store for Swift Boat activist James Zumwalt, son of illustrious Adm. Elmo Zumwalt - and it isn't pretty.

 

Zumwalt "attempted to kill himself with an overdose of prescription drugs," after the murder of his ex-wife's fiance, John Kowalczyk, according to the dossier, which is footnoted to news sources, and was "convicted of reckless driving after chasing Kowalczyk at a high speed on the highway."

 

Zumwalt stepped into the line of fire when he testified with the controversial Swift vets at the National Press Club in Washington last May.

 

What was that old chestnut about loose lips sinking ships?

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/225425p-193615c.html

CLASSY!

-=Mike

I'm proud of the Democrats for being such a moral upstanding high ground party that is obviously above 'Republican smear tactics'.........oops.

 

As William Shatner would say, 'These people aren't idiots, they're the people that watch Tekwar!!!!!!!'

 

But wait, whenever Kerry whines about Bush's proposals on this or that being too soft or 'too favorable to the rich' (or read 'Well it's not my policy, WAAAAAAAAA) wouldn't that imply that Bush is actually TALKING ABOUT THE ISSUES?

[Guest MikeSC]

Not exactly accurate. Let's get a little timeline.

 

Kerry and his boats were transporting Mike Strike and RF/PF forces to an action in a village. We know this by all of the reports at the time. This was the action, mind you, where Kerry suffered one of his PH injuries when he threw a grenade into a rice cache, didn't get out of the way of the blast radius, and was hit by the rice. This is according to the medical officer.

 

At the village, the boats left the Mike Strike and PF/RF forces --- they were the ones who provided the "later intelligence" that indicated 1 VC killed and 5 VC injures.

 

On the way BACK, they ran into a mine --- the Rassman incident. We know this was after the fact because RF/PF and Mike Strike Forces are NOT mentioned in the report dealing with the mine detonation. On the way back is when the mine was hit. And, of the 4 remaining boats, one fled the scene.

 

That one was Kerry's.

 

Could enemy fire have been present when Kerry pulled Rassman out of the water? Possibly --- but it seems REAL unlikely that they could have missed the very wounded Rassman, the troops trying to salvage his boat, and later, Kerry swimming to pull him out of the water. They could be abnormally poor shots, but it's unlikely.