Media Boycott of Kerry's Tale Ends

The liberal media's stopped suppressing swirling questions about Kerry's Vietnam service. The New York Times and the Washington Post each ran two stories, the first (Times on Friday; WaPo on Thursday) adopting the Kerry line in its entirety. Both articles claimed the Swiftvets were lying (WaPo headline: "Records Counter a Critic of Kerry"); neither reported contrary evidence; neither mentioned Kerry's fable about Cambodia--despite his campaign already conceding the point. Typical.

The follow-ups (NYT Saturday and Sunday; WaPo Sunday) were a bit better. The Times still hasn't trusted readers with the truth, but acknowledges the Vietnam questions "slowed whatever momentum Mr. Kerry enjoyed after his convention" and "were taking their toll." The WaPo's article was more fair, but mostly focused on March 13, 1969, when Kerry qualified for his third Purple Heart and a ticket home.

So questions about Kerry's Vietnam record are popping up all over. PBS's Jim Lehrer played fair when questioning John O'Neill, co-author of Unfit for Command--and Kerry fan/Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant's attempted challenge flopped.

(Note: Oliphant never mentions his daughter works for the Kerry campaign. Hmmmm. A journalist with a relative inside a Presidential campaign? I thought that was verboten.)

Sunday's Chicago Trib interviews one of its own editors, William Rood, who defends Kerry (but, according to Beldar, doesn't address the issues most disputed). Newsweek's article is reasoned and balanced. Even the Kerry-friendly BBC is worried. In US News and World Reports, Michael Barone and John Leo see defects in Kerry's character--and the press response. Investor's Business Daily says Kerry must answer the Vets' claims. Amazingly, Kerry's Vietnam record is under fire from two lions of the left: Sydney ("Killing Fields") Schanberg and Alexander Cockburn. NZ Bear has a striking chart of the growth in media stories about Kerry's Swiftboat service.

And there's a new issue in town--except that it's three decades old. It's Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony claiming U.S. forces:

had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war.

Now, of course, Kerry praises Vets and bypasses war crimes. Yet another flip-flop. But, as Instapundit says, "this will be harder to spin." Saturday's WaPo spots the problem.

Some [of the Veterans] say they voted for Al Gore in the last election but are still deeply hurt by what Kerry did when he returned from battle. Kenneth Knipple of Erie, Mich., who served three years in Vietnam, backed Gore in 2000 but joined the anti-Kerry movement after leaning about it from a fellow vet. "For him to be wounded that many times and lie as many times as he did, I don't want him to be president," said Knipple, who served on Swift boats, but never with Kerry.

"I wasn't there at the time that happened," said Tony Gisclair, a veteran from Poplarville, Miss., who signed the letter, referring to Kerry's combat in Vietnam. "But look at what the man said about us when he came back."

Tony Snesko, a veteran in Washington, D.C., said he was "devastated" by Kerry's antiwar efforts, prompting him to sign on to the group's anti-Kerry message. Snesko said to see Kerry elected would give credence to the senator's claims that those who fought in Vietnam were reckless baby-killers: "At the point that he might possibly take over this country as president -- it would validate everything that he said about us and would make it appear true."

Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole oozes Senatorial courtesy, but still bristles:

"One day he's saying that we were shooting civilians, cutting off their ears, cutting off their heads, throwing away his medals or his ribbons," Dole said. "The next day he's standing there, 'I want to be president because I'm a Vietnam veteran.

"Maybe he should apologize to all the other 2.5 million veterans who served. He wasn't the only one in Vietnam," said Dole, whose World War II wounds left him without the use of his right arm.

Dole added: "And he's, you know, a good guy, a good friend. I respect his record. But three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they're all superficial wounds. Three Purple Hearts and you're out."

So the second Swiftboat Vets ad, released Friday, is stunning. It focuses on the North Vietnamese using Kerry's testimony to sap the morale of their American POW captives. With Kerry's testimony droning in the background, various former POWs remember:

Ken Cordier [POW Dec. 1966-Mar. 1973]: That was part of the torture, was, uh, to sign a statement that you had committed war crimes.

Paul Gallanti [POW Jan. 1966-Mar. 1973]: John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I, an d many of my, uh, comrades in North Vietnam, in the prison camps, uh, took torture to avoid saying. It demoralized us.

The Dem response shouldn't surprise. Apparently believing that the First Amendment applies only to liberals, the NY Times calls the ad "outlandish . . .flackery" and all but urges censorship. The Kerry campaign sued to force the FEC to forbid the ads. Kerry also asked Bush to stop the ad--which would be impossible since the President didn't fund or create them.

As I've argued before, Kerry himself put Vietnam "in play":

Essentially, Kerry made Vietnam, and these men, the centerpiece of his campaign. Of course, that was when he thought they'd support his candidacy. No matter that he'd never bothered to ask their permission to use them to promote his political career. Now, however, the Kerry campaign is on a search-and-destroy mission to attack the credibility of these same men -- calling them liars, all 60 of them, and saying they didn't serve in the military with him. Really? Then why'd Kerry use their pictures in his ad campaign?

And Deborah Orin in the New York Post understands the potential consequences:

Not one of Kerry's Swift boat crewmates, even the ones backing his candidacy,recalls being in Cambodia in Christmas 1968 -- and anti-Kerry Swift boat veterans cite a host of evidence that he was 50 miles away in Vietnam. Why does it matter? Because Kerry has said the Cambodia incident -- of being sent on a covert mission to "a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops" was "seared" in his mind and changed his view of America.

Kerry's inability to resolve the Vietnam questions is undermining his chances in November, according to Scripps Howard's Martin Schram:

Privately, but no longer quietly, Democrats are beginning to despair. They cannot fathom why their man, John Kerry, cannot seem to fathom how easy it should be to put President Bush away, seize the high ground and take command of the issues of the war on Iraq and the war on terror. . .

Democrats despair because, given all of that, a majority of America's voters still tell pollsters they believe that Bush, not Kerry, can better command the war on terror. And mainly, the Democrats privately despair because they know why the people feel that way. They know it is because Kerry has been pathetically unable to answer, clearly and forthrightly, the simplest questions about the war in Iraq and the war on terror. Kerry cannot explain just what he would have done and what he will do now to better command and win the unwon war on terror.

Democrats say privately they don't know what is wrong with Kerry. Here is what's wrong: The Democratic presidential nominee has no clearly defined conceptual framework that is the basis of what he thinks about the war on terror and the war in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the race remains essentially tied, with the Republican convention and official campaign ads still to come. And Kerry's strategy is risky, says RealClear Politics: "[Kerry's] provided a big opening for more coverage of Kerry's antiwar past and thus have given up, at least to some degree, control over the narrative of the central rationale for their candidate's bid for the White House." In sum, this week may be remembered as when President Bush turned the corner.

More:

The beginning of the end? The Boston Globe says Kerry's campaign deleted 20 more pages of military records from the website. And the NY Times quotes an unnamed Kerry adviser:

When you're basically running on your biography and there are ongoing attacks that are undermining the credibility of your biography, you have a really big problem.

(via Instapundit) NZ Bear agrees: "it is over. The head has been cut off the Kerry candidacy; the body just hasn't realized it yet."

Still More:

Two more articles Monday. First, Roger Franklin in Business Week:

After 19 years in the Senate, the achievement on which he has chosen to place the most stress in proving he has the mettle to occupy the White House is a four-and-a-half-month tour as a junior officer in a war that America lost.

"Reporting for duty," Kerry told Boston's Democratic conventioneers, snapping a smart salute on the night he accepted his party's nomination. . . Back when George McGovern was their hero and Kerry was accusing his former comrades of tormenting Vietnam "in a fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan," none of them were hailing the legions of other young men who dutifully reported at recruiting stations and induction centers. Cheering? Jeering, more like.

An observer with an eye for consistency can only be struck by the aspiring President's explanation for that change of heart. That was then, he has said, when he was younger and less inclined to curb his tongue. Those accusations he made of rape and the lopping off of ears, committed by U.S. soldiers, were "excessive," he has said.

Business Week also printed a (less persuasive) opposing column by Thane Peterson.

Second, Mackubin Thomas Owens in NRO:

What seems to offend the Swifties, as well as other Vietnam veterans, is that after having made his political debut as an anti-Vietnam War activist, Kerry is now playing the hero, pointing to his Vietnam service as the reason he should be president, and campaigning with his "band of brothers." This is hypocrisy of the highest order.