NATION'S PULSE: Kerry Yellow
Holman, David
THE NATION'S PULSE DAVID HOLMAN Kerry llow The windsurfer of 2004 has taken up swiffboating. / ~ YEAR AND A HALF AFTER HE LOST the 2004 presidential election, John Kerry can't get enough of...
...Democrats moved quickly to silence the film and Sinclair...
...it's a smear bankrolled by Republican money, and I don't think Americans will stand for it...
...Their dog in that fight wasn't so much a candidate or a party as the fact that the man who had smeared them was now applying to lead the U.S...
...Kerry shows no sign of having learned his lesson 35 years after that notorious Senate testimony...
...While Kerry maybe motivated bypersonal pique, the Swiftie mania is widespread among Democrats...
...Most ofthe Swift Boat veterans who questioned Senator Kerry's war record and objected to his characterization of American troops in Vietnam were political rookies...
...David Holman is a reporter for The American Spectator...
...Supporting an Iraqi war vet running as a Democrat for Henry Hyde's congressional seat...
...Since last November, Kerry has dredged up the Swiffies in eight separate fundraising appeals...
...Early that month, Sinclair contacted the Kerry campaign about having the candidate participate in the program, Mark Hyman, Sinclair's vice president for corporate communications, told TAS...
...the audience is expected to understand that it means political foul play...
...He still levels the war crime charge against American servicemen...
...Already the Republican Party is airing misleading attack ads in key swing states where they hope to pursue their 'swift boat' tactics to obscure their record of failure," her letter said...
...And rather than issue an apology to the Stolen Honor vets, Kerry offers contempt...
...More broadly, the popularization of the "swiftboating" term has become a way the left can show its hostility to American troops and the policies they carDAVID HOLMAN ry out...
...Ask Jack Murtha...
...Kerry's image of starched-white-uniform war hero, as depicted on the cover of Douglas Brinkley's friendly campaign biography, depended on silencing those who could credibly say otherwise...
...1...
...Then in 2004 they're accused of making things up...
...We didn't want him to command my nephew who was wounded in Iraq, or any other nephew over there...
...One might say, Kerry and company swiftboated them...
...Then again, if it was delusional of him to run as a war hero in the first place, admitting to such a gross political miscalculation would end his presidential ambitions once and for all...
...Swiffboat" has become a verb, shorthand among the left for an unfair smear...
...Sen...
...Reflecting on the ordeal, Hyman put it well: "These were 13 men who suffered horrific abuse and torture because they wouldn't say something that was untrue...
...Dick Durbin called the documentary "scurrilous...
...As documented in the film Stolen Honor, John Kerry had abetted the torture of captive American soldiers when he charged in his 1971 Senate testimony that brutal war crimes-murders, rapes, dismemberments, tortures, and decapitationswere commonplace actions by American troops in Vietnam...
...In 2004, Kerry's campaign representative in Pennsylvania called the maker of the film a "Bush hack...
...Consequently, most Americans didn't learn about the Stolen Honor vets nearly as well as they did about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth...
...It's beyond yellow journalism...
...Kerry's testimony was perfect fodder...
...Shortly thereafter, on October 9, the Los Angeles Times reported Sinclair's plans...
...T NLIKE THE SWIFT BOAT VETERANS, there was a i group that was actually stopped from making...
...Why, John Kerry and his friends "will never surrender" to "Swift Boat-style attacks against Democratic candidates...
...Hyman said that change was a news decision because "we became part of the news story...
...I know something firsthand about the Swift Boat-style Republican attack ads of the last election-but you don't have to take my word for it," Senator Kerry wrote in a March fundraising e-mail, on behalf of Tammy Duckworth, an amputee whom no one has criticized...
...Jack Murtha called for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq last fall, a single charge of cowardice made him the victiminstead of the troops whose mission he undermined...
...Ask Max Cleland...
...These men stood up, knowing they had a great deal to lose, and caught hell for it...
...These erstwhile free speech paragons used bully tactics to muffle the film during the 2004 campaign...
...His futile, foreign-based filibuster attempt of Sam Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court...
...Media Matters for America, a Democratic Party mouthpiece, attempted to stir an advertiser boycott and a shareholder lawsuit...
...When Cindy Sheehan's credibility was questioned, she herself claimed to be the victim of"more 'swiftboatingY Any Democrat's long-ago war experiences, however brief, have become his absolute shield from any criticism related to his military positions...
...John O'Neill told us last year, "What brought us forth here, we didn't believe this guy should command the armed forces of the U.S...
...Times published the broadcast plans...
...Eighty-five Democrats from the House followed suit the next week...
...That's another one oftheir'Swift Boat'-style tactics where they try to throw up the mud and stick it...
...A mid-sized Maryland media company, Sinclair Broadcasting, planned to air Stolen Honor in its entirety as part of a news program on its 62 stations in October 2004...
...After all, it effectively voided any military service advantage he might have had over President Bush and weakened his credibility on current military issues...
...YEAR AND A HALF AFTER HE LOST the 2004 presidential election, John Kerry can't get enough of the / ~ ~ - - Swift Boat Veterans for Truth...
...its case in 2004...
...In the L.A...
...military in the midst of an ongoing, consequential war...
...Just ask John McCain...
...Asked if he's accepted campaign contributions from Abramoff affiliates...
...In spite of this public barrage, the Kerry camp continued to meet privately with Sinclair, which offered the candidate an opportunity to speak on his behalf on the program or offer a surrogate...
...One might assume that John Kerry would want to forget the Swift Boat controversy...
...The Bush administration is "Swiftboating their enemies at home and torturing 44 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2006 them abroad," claimed Mother Jones...
...It's not the American way for powerful corporations to strong-arm local broadcasters to air lies promoting a political agenda," he said...
...The Kerry campaign spokesman said on Fox News that Sinclair "better look out...
...MAY 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 45...
...Last October, his spokesman David Wade called the filmmaker and the Stolen Honor vets "the same serial liars who disgraced themselves in 2004...
...When Rep...
...Amid falling stock prices, threatened shareholder suits (which never materialized), protests, and federal regulatory complaints (since dismissed), Sinclair eventually minimized the film's role in the news program...
...Throughout the media storm, Hyman said that he remained "guardedly optimistic" that Kerry would participate until the program aired...
...The term is so commonplace that no explanation is offered...
...The point is to inoculate the senator and other war-squeamish Democrats against charges of cowardice or ill will toward the troops...
...No matter the ~ '~ occasion, he doesn't miss an opportunity to parade his campaign wounds, however incoherently and obsessively...
...In a December interview with Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, Kerry alleged that American soldiers are "going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women...
...The term also works as an adjective, as Hillary Clinton demonstrated in a fundraising letter of her own in March...
...The Democratic National Committee filed a complaint against Sinclair with the Federal Election Commission...
...In the end, it was Hackett's own party that smeared him out of a Senate race...
...Kerry and his sympathizers have more in mind than settling old scores, though...
...Times article, Kerry spokesman Wade echoed these sentiments...
...North Vietnamese interrogators were quite eager to use such accusations against American POWs...
...Frank Rich and Helen Thomas cried that Republicans were trying to "swift boat" him...
...By this logic, anyone who has once prayed would qualify for sainthood...
...That same day, a Saturday during a Senate recess, 18 Democratic senators wrote to the Federal Communications Commission, requesting an investigation...
...Hyman told TAS that Sinclair's news executives and legal counsel met with Kerry campaign officials including Mary Beth Cahill, the campaign manager, and legal counsel in Washington after the L.A...
...Rather bizarrely, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party attacked conservative political ads that use veterans and surviving kin offallen soldiers as "a kind of'swiftboating.'" Chris Matthews asked Ohio congressional candidate Paul Hackett if his Iraq military service meant Republicans wouldn't "swift boat" him...
Vol. 39 • May 2006 • No. 4
