The Insanity Of It All

For weeks now, the gloriously dull and dishonourable drumbeat of the so-called "Swift Boat Veterans For Truth" has been escalating to an almost unbearable level.

These Swift Boat Liars For Bush, capitalizing on the relative sleaziness of mainstream cable news, internet websites, blogs, etc... has been able to call into question the heroic military record of senator, vietnam war veteran, and Democratic Presidential Candidate, John F Kerry.

The media, being the endlessly hungry and blindly accepting entity that it has no become, gobbled up the swift boat story with avengeance. Even using the most basic of journalistic standards, if given proper examination, the swift boat veterans' story does not pass the smell test, as was the noting of Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant.

Here is what we do know:

1. For 30+ years Senator Kerry's war record was never questioned.
2. John O'Neil, author of 'Unfit for Command' was recruited by the Nixon administration to counter Kerry's anti-war appeal.
3. John O'Neil is a life long republican and has represented high-profile republicans in his law practice in Texas.
4. The top contributors to SBVFT are some of the biggest republican donors in Texas.
5. The same people who helped to package and distrubute the SBVFT ads and message helped smear John McCain in the 2000 republican primary.
6. Karl Rove is a close friend of multiple high level officials involved in the SBVFT campaign.
7. Numerous GOP websites and HQ's around the country have been caught either promoting the book 'Unfit for Command' and the SBVFT or, in the case of Florida, organizing an event involving official GOP and Bush/Cheney '04 groups to rally alongside the SBVFT.
8. The current SBVFT members' stories have often EVOLVED over time, contradicting their earlier statements about Kerry's heroism.
9. The White House still denies any involvement between their campaign and the SBVFT.

It seems highly unlikely that immediately following Kerry's tour of duty in Vietnam, with events still fresh in everyone's mind, with the Nixon administration scowering his life for any reason or opportunity to attack Kerry, that if there truly was any reason to doubt his heroism or wounds, it would have surely been found.

The right-wing talking point now is to talk about how Kerry insulted and hurt all veterans by coming back to the US and testifying before the senate that many soldiers in Vietnam committed war crimes. They would have you think, by the way they phrase the debate and slice and dice history, that Kerry made these charges without evidence or direct (personal) evidence that such atrocities had taken place. In reality, Kerry was giving a voice to hundreds of veterans who had come forward to tell him their stories of the horrible things they did in Vietnam. He was simply repeating that which had been reported to him by soldiers, nothing more.

Perhaps one of the saddest things about this mess, is the truy disservice it does to veterans all across this land. When we have a president in the oval office right now, who, by his own words, dodged the draft, then went missing while in the national guard, is able to coast right through to election day without having his tattered and hollow record of service questioned, while we sit here and pick apart the solid story of a man who did serve his nation, both on the battlefield and while returning home to put an end to the senseless death and destruction he witnessed while it war, I am taken aback by the irony of it all.

Yes, I am ashamed to be an American today.