BeldarBlog

Who's not being careful about campaign finance disclosures, and why?

N.Z. Bear links an interesting item from OpenSecrets.org which shows that the Kerry-Edwards campaign has a 76% compliance rate with FEC disclosure provisions for campaign contributions, compared to 91% on average for congressional campaigns, and 93% for the Bush-Cheney campaign.

I join him in being puzzled (sorta, when I'm not being snarky) about why the mainstream media isn't digging into, or commenting about, this oddity.  (When I'm snarky and speculative, I'd say the reason why is obvious — full disclosure inhibits cheating, and the MSM aren't interested in whether KE2004 is cheating.)

Mr. Bear also continues his fascinating charting of internet interest in the SwiftVets vs. Kerry controversy, and I take the liberty of stealing reprinting at my own bandwidth expense his final chart:

Legs?  Yes, I think we can all see the legs now.

USN&WR snarks MSM re Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia

The weekly news magazines are late to the party, but at least one of them has the grace and humor to admit that the mainstream media has egg on its face.  John Leo's article for U.S. News & World Report is entitled "A very Kerry Christmas," and begins:

Some people wondered how long the major media would be willing to ignore the Christmas-in-Cambodia story. Well, the answer is in: at least 10 or 11 days.

It just gets better from there.

Update:  Michael Barone also writes about Kerry and Cambodia in USN&WR, without much snark and with the focus on Kerry rather than on the media's noncoverage of the story.  (Hat-tip Hugh Hewitt, who found the story of Kerry's 2000 "gun-running" claims that Barone mentions, but that still begs for MSM follow-up.)

WaPo digs in on Kerry's Bronze Star and third Purple Heart

I've only skimmed it, and I'm too tired right now after just writing at great length about Mr. Rood's memoir in the Chicago Tribune regarding Kerry's Silver Star to give anything else the close look it deserves.  But on the basis of a quick pass-through, my hat's off to WaPo reporter Michael Dobbs for what I believe to be the first reasonably comprehensive examination by any mainstream media source of the Bay Hap River action as the result of which Kerry received his Bronze Star, and the rice-pile action earlier  that day on the basis of which Kerry may have received his third Purple Heart. 

This article shows genuine attempts to interview witnesses, turn up new oral and documentary evidence, and examine the strengths and weaknesses of both sides' claims.  It's a vast improvement over Mr. Dobbs' first foray into the controversy, about which I blogged when it first appeared.

And hey — don't miss the exciting graphic from WaPo!  I can't wait for the movie!

Mr. Dobbs notes the conflicts in the oral recollections.  And while he charges both sides with failing to cooperate to make available all of the relevant documentary evidence, note his summary of what's missing (and who's responsible):

Some of the mystery surrounding exactly what happened on the Bay Hap River in March 1969 could be resolved by the full release of all relevant records and personal diaries. Much information is available from the Web sites of the Kerry campaign and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and the Navy archives. But both the Kerry and anti-Kerry camps continue to deny or ignore requests for other relevant documents, including Kerry's personal reminiscences (shared only with biographer Brinkley), the boat log of PCF-94 compiled by Medeiros (shared only with Brinkley) and the Chenoweth diary.

Whatcha bet that if Sen. Kerry opens up fully, Mr. Chenoweth will turn over his diary (which is the only thing any of the SwiftVets are accused of withholding)?

ChiTrib's William B. Rood adds context, but no revelations, about Kerry's Silver Star

This isn't a fisking.

The single best development for Sen. John F. Kerry during the past two weeks is the just-published first-person account from former Swift Boat skipper William B. Rood of the action on February 28, 1969, that resulted in Kerry's Silver Star.

Mr. Rood's memoir, entitled "Anti-Kerry vets not there that day," deserves a respectful and careful reading from anyone interested in the SwiftVets vs. Kerry controversy.  It provides context and some credible opinions that are unquestionably favorable to Sen. Kerry.

But neither it, nor the companion news article by Rood's Chicago Tribune colleague Tim Jones, directly contradicts the SwiftVets' principle allegations of fact.

To the contrary, for those who've paid close attention to what the SwiftVets have actually alleged, Mr. Rood's new memoir actually supports their main contentions regarding Kerry's fitness for the Silver Star, because they show that Kerry was not charging alone, through overwhelming enemy fire, into a dense concentration of the enemy when he hopped off PCF-94 that day.

That's not the way Mr. Rood's memoir will be spun by relieved Kerry supporters.  But journey with me now, gentle readers, and decide for yourselves as we together examine, closely and with due respect, the details of Mr. Rood's memoir.

Mr. Rood's bona fides and motives

Mr. Rood, now a metropolitan desk editor for the Tribune, has the bona fides to offer both facts and opinions on these events:

I was part of the operation that led to Kerry's Silver Star. I have no firsthand knowledge of the events that resulted in his winning the Purple Hearts or the Bronze Star.

But on Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of PCF-23, one of three swift boats — including Kerry's PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz's PCF-43 — that carried Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep in the area.

Mr. Rood carefully offers neither hearsay nor speculation about any of the rest of John Kerry's combat record.  Nor, apparently, does he intend to in the future:  "My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it."  Correspondent Jones reports that "Rood declined requests from a Tribune reporter to be interviewed for this article."  As for his motivations in speaking out now, Mr. Rood writes:

[I]n recent days Kerry has called me and others who were with him in those days, asking that we go public with our accounts.

I can't pretend those calls had no effect on me, but that is not why I am writing this. What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did.

I'm inclined to accept that statement at face value, based on what is not in Mr. Rood's account, and on what Mr. Rood has not done over the past several months.  There's no endorsement of John Kerry for President; no glowing tribute to his overall combat record; no defense of, or even comment upon, Kerry's antiwar activism.  He doesn't corroborate Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" fairy tale, nor any of the other "in or near Cambodia" claims.  He provides a snapshot of Kerry in a camouflage bush hat, but does not comment on its source.  Indeed, it's not at all clear that Mr. Rood even likes John Kerry.  Yet clearly he is a knowledgeable and articulate man, a veteran and former officer who could well have stood onstage with Sen. Kerry at the recent Democratic National Convention to sing his praises, had he so chosen.

Mr. Rood's memoir comprises two principle substantive assertions, the first involving matters of judgment and opinion on military tactics, and the second involving matters of recollected facts.

Mr. Rood's opinions defending
the military tactics used that day

As to the first assertion, Mr. Rood is clearly irked by the SwiftVets' criticism of the military tactics employed that day:

Known over radio circuits by the call sign "Latch," then-Capt. and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the task force commander, fired off a message congratulating the three swift boats, saying at one point that the tactic of charging the ambushes was a "shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy" and that it "may be the most efficacious method of dealing with small numbers of ambushers."

Hoffmann has become a leading critic of Kerry's and now says that what the boats did on that day demonstrated Kerry's inclination to be impulsive to a fault.

Our decision to use that tactic under the right circumstances was not impulsive but was the result of discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of all three boat officers.

Mr. Rood notes that young Kerry "had tactical command of that particular operation," and he credits Kerry with "talk[ing] to Droz and me beforehand about not responding the way the boats usually did to an ambush."  But he does not award Kerry sole or even primary credit for devising the new tactic:

We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush, we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats' twin .50-caliber machine guns on the attackers and beaching the boats. We told our crews about the plan.

The Viet Cong in the area had come to expect that the heavily loaded boats would lumber on past an ambush, firing at the entrenched attackers, beaching upstream and putting troops ashore to sweep back down on the ambush site. Often, they were long gone by the time the troops got there.

The first time we took fire — the usual rockets and automatic weapons — Kerry ordered a "turn 90" and the three boats roared in on the ambush. It worked. We routed the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The troops, led by an Army adviser, jumped off the boats and began a sweep, which killed another half dozen VC, wounded or captured others and found weapons, blast masks and other supplies used to stage ambushes.

I've yet to have read John O'Neill's Unfit for Command, so I can't speak to the details of the differing opinions he or others, including Adm. Hoffmann, may have offered on this change in military tactics.  From Mr. Rood's quotes, I gather that they express different, and critical opinions; and if so, one can understand why Mr. Rood might have taken offense on behalf of, and now spoken out to defend, himself, Lt. Droz, and Lt. Kerry with respect to the tactics they employed that day.  It may be that their criticisms, fairly read, only apply to the second ambush, in which Kerry no longer had a boatload of troops to offload onto the shore to pursue the second ambushers (who were presumably fewer in number than those involved in the first attack).

Personally, I lack the military experience and training to second-guess either set of opinions.  And while it may be true that some of the SwiftVets have criticized young Kerry's tactical judgments, that strikes me as a very minor and almost trivial part of the larger controversies that the SwiftVets have raised about Sen. Kerry's current fitness to assume the office of Commander in Chief.

Mr. Rood's factual recollections regarding
Kerry's personal combat performance

As to the second set of assertions, Mr. Rood's first-hand recollection of the facts of the day's combats are generally consistent with what Sen. Kerry has claimed, and with what both his supporters and critics have claimed.  I've already quoted above Mr. Rood's recollection as to the first of two ambushes in describing how the tactics employed by the Swift Boats that day differed from their usual ones.  As to the second ambush, Mr. Rood recalls:

Meanwhile, Kerry ordered our boat to head upstream with his, leaving Droz's boat at the first site.

It happened again, another ambush. And again, Kerry ordered the turn maneuver, and again it worked. As we headed for the riverbank, I remember seeing a loaded B-40 launcher pointed at the boats. It wasn't fired as two men jumped up from their spider holes.

We called Droz's boat up to assist us, and Kerry, followed by one member of his crew, jumped ashore and chased a VC behind a hooch—a thatched hut—maybe 15 yards inland from the ambush site. Some who were there that day recall the man being wounded as he ran. Neither I nor Jerry Leeds, our boat's leading petty officer with whom I've checked my recollection of all these events, recalls that, which is no surprise. Recollections of those who go through experiences like that frequently differ.

With our troops involved in the sweep of the first ambush site, Richard Lamberson, a member of my crew, and I also went ashore to search the area. I was checking out the inside of the hooch when I heard gunfire nearby.

Not long after that, Kerry returned, reporting that he had killed the man he chased behind the hooch. He also had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, which we took back to our base in An Thoi after the operation.

John O'Neill, author of a highly critical account of Kerry's Vietnam service, describes the man Kerry chased as a "teenager" in a "loincloth." I have no idea how old the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but both Leeds and I recall that he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore.

The man Kerry chased was not the "lone" attacker at that site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who fled. There was also firing from the tree line well behind the spider holes and at one point, from the opposite riverbank as well. It was not the work of just one attacker.

In his companion article, Tribune correspondent Jones reports:

Asked for his response to Rood's account, O'Neill argued that the former swift boat skipper's version of events is not substantially different from what appeared in his book. The account of the Feb. 28 attack draws heavily on reporting from The Boston Globe, O'Neill said.

And indeed, O'Neill has never claimed to have any first-hand knowledge of the events that day.  Rather, as I understand them, his and the SwiftVets' critiques have relied on the facts reported by other veterans who were present that day, including Sen. Kerry's own recollections as reported in various places, including not only newspaper accounts, but also Douglas Brinkley's authorized biography Tour of Duty and Michael Kranish et al.'s John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best.

Notwithstanding contrary portrayals by Sen. Kerry's supporters and the popular press, O'Neill and the SwiftVets have stressed repeatedly that their criticisms of Kerry, and their skepticism of his fitness for the Silver Star, do not depend on whether Kerry shot the fleeing VC soldier from the front or the back, or whether his rocket launcher was loaded or not, or whether he was a teenager or full-grown, or whether he was in a loin-cloth or a full set of combat body armor.

Thus, the only substantive facts that Mr. Rood's memoir adds are his assertions that "were [also other attackers] who fled" and that there "was also firing from the tree line well behind the spider holes and at one point, from the opposite riverbank as well."  Mr. Rood's memoir adds little in the way of details about time and distance intervals, numbers, volume and type of fire, and so forth; indeed, Mr. Rood's account is actually less detailed than that already reported by other witnesses, and discussed by the SwiftVets in their published evaluations of young Kerry's conduct.

But overall, Mr. Rood's version is generally consistent with the factual claims previously asserted both by Kerry supporters and Kerry critics.  It's a tale told — credibly enough — from yet another witness and yet another perspective, and I do not suggest that it be disregarded.  But it's not new or revolutionary.

More to the point, it does not address the SwiftVets' main contention, which is that the Navy brass (including Captain George Elliott) who recommended young Kerry for his Silver Star were then under the impression — since dispelled by Kerry's own repeated telling of the story, plus that of other witnesses now including William B. Rood — that Kerry's valor was in charging ashore through overwhelming fire into a dense concentration of the enemy.

Conclusion

Near the conclusion of his memoir, Mr. Rood writes:

My Bronze Star citation, signed by Zumwalt, praised the charge tactic we used that day, saying the VC were "caught completely off guard."

There's at least one mistake in that citation. It incorrectly identifies the river where the main action occurred, a reminder that such documents were often done in haste and sometimes authored for their signers by staffers. It's a cautionary note for those trying to piece it all together. There's no final authority on something that happened so long ago — not the documents and not even the strained recollections of those of us who were there.

But I know that what some people are saying now is wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're saying impugns others who are not in the public eye.

Surely everyone interested in this controversy can agree with Mr. Rood's cautionary note.  To his considerable credit, Mr. Rood himself doesn't claim to be the "final authority" on any of these matters.  He acknowledges that Sen. Kerry's critics in the SwiftVets and elsewhere don't mean to impugn others.  Certainly to the extent, if any, that their criticisms may have been taken, reasonably enough, to include within their ambit Mr. Rood and others who served bravely that day, Mr. Rood has spoken carefully and eloquently and persuasively to refute those criticisms.

But my impressions from Mr. Rood's memoir are not unlike those I had in 1992 when I cross-examined John O'Neill under oath as an expert witness called by my opponents to support their claim for attorneys' fees in a huge securities fraud case.  O'Neill was a damned impressive witness, and with every word, every opinion, he told the truth as he saw it.  But there was much in that truth that actually supported my client's position, when the spin and hoopla was stripped away.  In my first-hand encounter with John O'Neill, there was indeed a "final authority" — the jury that ended up using O'Neill's testimony as justification for that portion of their verdict in which they found that a "reasonable attorneys' fee" for my opponents' efforts was "zero." 

In the SwiftVets vs. Kerry controversy, of course, the final "verdict," whether authoritative or not, will come at the voting booths in November.  And unless spin ultimately prevails over substance, I remain unconvinced that Sen. Kerry will be rescued there by Mr. Rood's memoir.

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Update:  The ChiTrib helpfully has published an annotated scan of the after-action report to which Mr. Jones' article refers, here.  To more accurately summarize the SwiftVets' own allegations, I've also deleted the word "alone" from my phrase near the end of my original post that originally read "charging ashore alone, through overwhelming fire, into a dense concentration of the enemy"; the mistake was mine, and Kerry's Silver Star citation clearly refers to him "personally [leading] a landing party ashore" rather than being alone.

Update:  McQ of QandO has a military service background that I emphatically lack, and weighs in on the question of whether the tactics employed by the Swift Boats that day were or weren't prudent.  After reading Mr. Rood's memoir, McQ still is inclined to the latter view.  McQ also argues that

[w]hen you read the citation, the impression I get is it's being awarded for the whole operation. It appears to me that the award is being given to the OITC (Officer In Tactical Command) of the operation (Kerry) for the results of the operation, a part of which was this pursuit of the wounded (or not wounded) VC. Hoffmann's praise was for the operation's total results, not the killing of the single VC. So I'd have to side with Kerry and Rood on this one.

McQ's argument about Kerry's status as OITC is the best I've heard yet.  My fairly confident inference, however — from Captain George Elliott's emphasis on Kerry's on-shore pursuit activities in Elliott's second affidavit — is that when he approved Kerry's Silver Star nomination, Elliott was under the misimpression that Kerry's onshore pursuit was the same part of the multi-part engagement in which Kerry had displayed "personal courage" by "attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire."  Captain Elliott has said in so many words that he would not have recommended Kerry for the Silver Star had he had available to him back in 1969 the versions of events that were related in 2004 by Sen. Kerry's biographers like Kranish et al. from Sen. Kerry's own telling of the tale.  Mr. Rood's memoir adds little if anything to the account of Kerry's onshore pursuit that the Kranish book contained; it's therefore hard to imagine how Mr. Rood's memoir could undercut Captain Elliott's revised opinion, and indeed, it seems that Mr. Rood's memoir would, if anything, only further support Captain Elliott's reasons for changing his original view from 1969.  The separate "way to go" approval message at the time from Hoffmann may indeed have been praise for the entire operation, including Kerry's role as its OITC; but it's unclear to me what role, if any, Hoffman had in the nomination or approval of Kerry for his Silver Star, much less the selection of the language used in the Silver Star citation.

Meanwhile, Captain Ed posts with further analysis of Mr. Rood's memoir, and points up what seem to be troubling inconsistencies.

WaPo's beginning to find the meat!

Washington Post staff writers Josh White and Brian Faler today bring us a front-page article entitled "Some Veterans Still Bitter at Talk of Crimes: Senator's Activism Made A Lasting Impression."  (Hat-tip to InstaPundit.)

Although the latter half of the article repeats — in case you've missed it — the sensational (and manifestly false) disclosure that "At the behest of the Nixon White House in 1971, O'Neill debated Kerry on television about the war" and other such references to the evil Republicans who must be manipulating the SwiftVets' leadership, most of the article is actually quite refreshing, and indeed something that hasn't been reported in the mainstream media.  For example:

William Ferris was confined to a bed in a military hospital, his severed sciatic nerve reminding him of the attack on his Navy Swift boat in a Vietnamese river. A shot from a recoilless rifle had pierced the boat's pilothouse and then Ferris's body, leaving him in constant agony.

But it was what appeared on Ferris's television that really pained him. John F. Kerry, a decorated fellow Swift boat driver, was testifying before Congress about atrocities in Vietnam, throwing his medals away, speaking at antiwar rallies. Ferris, who was trying to rehabilitate himself back to active duty, felt betrayed.
 
"I was livid," Ferris, 57, of Long Island, N.Y., said yesterday, recalling how his dislike for the presidential candidate began in the early 1970s. "I said to myself at the time, this is someone who is using his experience for his own purposes, and this was long before he ever ran for office. I thought he was using, actually manipulating, what he had done in Vietnam. Just like he's doing now."

Ferris is one of 250 Swift boat veterans who in May signed an open letter to the Massachusetts senator asking for full disclosure of his military records, specifically focusing on events during a four-month tour in Vietnam for which Kerry was awarded medals for bravery in combat. The veterans group — Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — has criticized Kerry for using his military experience as a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, arguing that the Democrat has exaggerated his experiences at war for political gain.

This statement may, or may not, be correct:

Unlike casual participants, the most committed members say they are driven by desire to expose Kerry as a fraud who doctored his record to win medals and an early release from Vietnam. But they are a minority in the larger group.

To the extent that it is correct, this assertion completely misses the dynamic of what's happening, even though that dynamic fairly drips from other quotes from vets whose first reason for being concerned about Sen. Kerry's candidacy arose from resentment and bitterness over his post-combat antiwar activism.

To anyone who's watched this controversy evolve, it's blindingly obvious that most members of the SwiftVets — whether "casual" members or its leadership — have only begun to learn the full details of Sen. Kerry's combat service and decorations fairly recently, as Candidate Kerry and his "Band of Brothers" have begun to trumpet them on a national stage.

Many of the veterans who took offense at Kerry being portrayed as a "war criminal" in his 1996 Senate re-election campaign, for example, and spoke out in his defense then, have only learned since the beginning of 2004 of the details behind that combat service and those decorations.  Ironically, in large part it's been the Kerry camp's own revelations that have changed the opinions of those who the WaPo now characterizes as the ring-leaders. 

Captain George Elliott, for example, had duly believed, based most probably on an after-action report that Kerry himself had authored, that Kerry fully merited the Silver Star for which Elliott had recommended him — until Elliott learned from Kerry hagiographer Douglas Brinkley's 2004 book that instead of charging ashore into a concentrated enemy force under heavy fire, Kerry had actually pursued and dispatched a single, wounded fleeing Viet Cong soldier.  The mainstream media, prompted by the Kerry camp, has insisted that Captain Elliott's changed opinion means he's untrustworthy and a liar, but the fact of the matter is that Captain Elliott is simply ahead of the mainstream media on the learning curve.

Americans who have looked carefully at the SwiftVets charges regarding Kerry's combat service and decorations are likewise far ahead of the mainstream media on that learning curve.  But today's WaPo article is encouraging to me because it begins to suggest that at least some members of the mainstream media are capable of looking beyond the Kerry camp's talking points.  Maybe they'll catch up to their own readers.  Let's hope so.

Do you agree with LAT that the 2nd SwiftVets ad takes Kerry out of context?

The Kerry campaign and its allies — obviously including the Los Angeles Times — are reacting to the second SwiftVets ad thusly (second bracketed portion in original):

The ad does not make it clear that Kerry is recounting stories that came to light during the so-called Winter Soldier Investigation in Detroit earlier in 1971, in which more than 150 honorably discharged veterans talked about war crimes they had committed in Southeast Asia. He was not claiming to describe events that he had witnessed.

Contrary to [SwiftVet ad spokesman Joe] Ponder's assertion, Kerry did not say that all soldiers committed heinous acts against the enemy. In his testimony excerpted in the Swift boat ad, Kerry was describing only what the Winter Soldiers said themselves that they had done.

"In the context of that testimony, this is not a statement of every soldier, sailor and Marine in Vietnam," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, whose organization documented the widespread recognition of the group's first ad.

"You can say that by repeating it, he's legitimizing [the allegations], but it's not fair to him to make it seem that he's making the charges himself and making them about all soldiers."

The Kerry campaign argued that the new ad took Kerry's Senate testimony out of context and edited his comments in a manner that distorted the facts.

Okay then, let's see.  Let's ignore, for example, that many of those whom the LAT characterizes as "more than 150 honorably discharged veterans" were complete phonies who never served at all in Vietnam.

Here's quite a bit more of what young Kerry said under oath to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 22, 1971, just to add some context that the SwiftVets short ad didn't have time for, and that the LAT certainly wants to ignore.  The full context makes it absolutely clear that Kerry was purporting to speak for many more than just the veterans then protesting in Washington, and of many more than just the veterans who'd "testified" in Detroit (boldface mine throughout):

STATEMENT OF JOHN KERRY, VIETNAM VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR Mr. Kerry: Thank you very much, Senator Fulbright, Senator Javits, Senator Symington, Senator Pell. I would like to say for the record, and also for the men behind me who are also wearing the uniforms and their medals, that my sitting here is really symbolic. I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of the group of 1000, which is a small representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at this table they would be here and have the same kind of testimony.

Here young Kerry has deliberately and explicitly begun his prepared statement by claiming not to speak only of, or for, the "Winter Soldier 150," but at a minimum for at least 1000 veterans (presumably then in Washington for the ongoing antiwar protests) — and more likely for a "they" and a "them" consisting of a "very much larger group of veterans in this country."  In terms of who Kerry's speaking for, then, everything else in his testimony was subject to his claims in this introduction.

I would simply like to speak in very general terms. I apologize if my statement is general because I received notification yesterday you would hear me and I am afraid because of the injunction I was up most of the night and haven't had a great deal of chance to prepare.

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

Again, Kerry claims to be "representing all those veterans" — at a minimum the "1000" and more probably the "very much larger group."  He does here make his first reference to the 150 so-called "Winter Soldiers," without identifying them yet by that name.  But he immediately and deliberately broadens the remaining scope of all his Senate testimony by making the charge that the war crimes of which the 150 Winter Soldiers "testified" were "not isolated incidents."  Rather, says young Kerry — and this is a line that wasn't included in the SwiftVets' ad, but completely undercuts any claim that Kerry's testimony is now being taken "out of context" — the war crimes of which the 150 Winter Soldiers spoke were "not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."  It is simply impossible to square that line with any of Sen. Kerry's or his supporters' current efforts to minimize the scope of the accusations he made in 1971 or the targets of those accusations.

Having indicted the entire US military, both in the field and at "all levels of command," young Kerry did indeed next return to a specific discussion of what the 150 Winter Soldiers had claimed:

It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

With that last phrase, young Kerry goes out of his way to broaden the responsibility for the acts about which the 150 Winter Soldiers "testified" to the entire United States.  Continuing:

They told the stories at times they 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 country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

This language is in the SwiftVets' second ad.  To claim, as Kerry's campaign and supporters and the LAT does, that he was speaking only of the 150 Winter Soldiers absolutely ignores the deliberate, sweeping indictment immediately above it — "not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."  And indeed, the whole point of the Winter Soldiers charade was not for them to confess individual atrocities they had committed, but to present those as being representative of normal US military practice, carried out with the full knowledge, conplicity, and responsibility of everyone up the entire chain of military command.

We call this investigation the "Winter Soldier Investigation."  The term "Winter Soldier" is a play on words of Thomas Paine in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriot and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.

We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now.  We could come back to this country; we could be quiet; we could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.

The reference to "what went on in Vietnam," again, is a reference to the broad pattern that both the 150 Winter Soldiers and the 1000 antiwar protesters claimed to have seen.  The "we" in the phrase "the crimes which we are committing" can refer, at a minimum, to the 1000 protesters — since Kerry wasn't himself one of the 150 Winter Soldiers, "we" couldn't mean just them — but far more likely, the "we" was meant to refer to the entire American military.  Otherwise, the war protesters wouldn't have been going to petition Congress, but to turn themselves in to the MPs.

I would like to talk to you a little bit about what the result is of the feelings these men carry with them after coming back from Vietnam. The country doesn't know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history; men who have returned with a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped.

Here it is absolutely clear that the "monster" created by the claimed systematic commission of and complicity in war crimes encompasses "millions of men."

The next several paragraphs, discussing Vice President Agnew's characterization of veterans who were protesting the war, can fairly be read as Kerry speaking for, and of, a limited subset of the American military.  But then he shifts back into a broader mode, first referring to "we" war protesters, but then clearly indicting the entire American military presence in Vietnam beginning with the odd phrase "our taking umbrage" (when he probably meant "taking refuge," although umbrage can also mean "shade" in addition to meaning "a feeling of anger caused by being offended"):

We are here in Washington also to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country, the question of racism, which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions also, the use of weapons, the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage in the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war, when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions, in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, the killing of prisoners, accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam.  That is what we are trying to say.  It is part and parcel of everything.

Only when he reaches this next to last sentence has young Kerry shifted back into "we" war protesters.  But even then, he deliberately broadens the scope of his accusations, painting what "we [war protesters] are trying to say" as being "part and parcel of everything."

*******

I could continue.  Throughout the remainder of young Kerry's prepared statement, and then through his responses to the softball questions tossed to him by fawning senators, he continues to pontificate about the entire American military and indeed, the entire American culture — arguing, for example, that the entire culture bears responsibility for war crimes like those of which Lt. William Calley was convicted.

But surely this is enough for one to ask — Who, exactly, is Sen. Kerry now trying to kid?  How stupid, exactly, do Sen. Kerry and his proxies think the American people are?

The simple fact is that the SwiftVets would have loved to add more context to their ad, I'm sure.  The closer one looks at the full context, the more powerful the conclusion becomes that John Kerry's sworn, televised testimony in the United States Senate was an indictment of the entire American presence in Vietnam — from the lowest buck private to the Commander in Chief, and indeed beyond that to the entire nation.

----------------

Update:  Add PBS Newshour talking head Mark Shields to the list of those desperately trying to insist that the SwiftVets second ad takes Kerry's testimony out of context.  (Hat-tip: Power Line.)  Captain Ed also points to CNN's attempts to make the same claims, and adds his own excellent debunking of those claims, quoting not only from the Senate testimony but a contemporaneous Kerry appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" (rebroadcast this year) in which Kerry asserted his first-hand knowledge of, and personal involvement in, the same types of "war crimes" that he'd broadly accused the entire US military of complicity in during his Senate testimony. 

Finally, I've noted some minor variations in the transcription of Kerry's Senate testimony from the source I linked above and the .pdf scan from the Congressional Record; I've edited my blockquotes above to conform them to the Congressional Record version, and I've also interspersed throughout them more specific comments of my own, outside the blockquotes, regarding who Kerry claimed to be speaking for, and who he claimed to be speaking of, at various points in his testimony.

WaPo and NYT see the blood in the water, but still won't look for its source; can't they remember the "five Ws and an H"?

In Saturday's mainstream media papers, NYT reporter Adam Nagourney serves up "Kerry Might Pay Price for Failing to Strike Back Quickly," while WaPo's Jim VandeHei brings us "Group to Air Ad Attacking Kerry's 1971 Testimony."

Both seem surprised and puzzled that the SwiftVets vs. Kerry controversy has proved, at least, that it "has legs."  Writes NYT's Nagourney,

A CBS News poll found that support for Mr. Kerry among veterans has declined markedly since the convention, and some Democrats said they believed that the attacks had at the least slowed whatever momentum Mr. Kerry enjoyed after his convention.

The question now is whether his response came in time.

Mr. Kerry's aides said the candidate's decision to confront the questions had undercut the accusations and put the White House on the defensive by forcing Mr. Bush's political aides to deny that he had orchestrated the attack.

Still, more than a few Democrats expressed surprise on Friday that a campaign that has made such a point of presenting itself as aggressive and fast-footed had let this story go on unattended for so long.

And from WaPo's VandeHei:

Yesterday [Friday], Kerry did not respond to the new allegations [in the SwiftVets' second ad], although aides said his testimony was directed at military leadership, not the soldiers fighting in Vietnam. The Kerry campaign filed a legal challenge against the veterans group, alleging it is illegally colluding with the Bush campaign. Aides denounced the president and his aides for what they called a smear campaign.

Debate over war and protests three decades ago drowned out discussion of issues such as Iraq, terrorism, the economy and health care. It is dominating the strategy sessions of the two campaigns and changing the political calculations of both parties.

Kerry hoped to focus on domestic matters but finds himself plotting a response to a veterans group that did not even exist a few months ago over an issue he thought had died. He has been forced to spend money and valuable time responding. Kerry talked with aides throughout the day about a strategy to put the issue of his Vietnam service and protests to rest.

Now, I'm no professional journalist.  But I seem to recall something from my distinguished service on the Lamesa High School newspaper staff in 1974 about "five Ws and an H" — with none of those Ws being the sitting President's middle initial. 

Specifically, Messrs. Nagourney and VandeHei might have found something newsworthy — something that would help cure their puzzlement — if they'd asked, and found the answers to, this "W-question": 

Why is the Democratic Party's nominee bleeding so profusely over a story that has been almost ignored by WaPo and NYT?  Why haven't our efforts to pooh-pooh and ignore this whole controversy carried the day?

Or maybe another related "W-question":

What are the prospective voters who are changing these polling numbers coming to understand that the mainstream media has missed?

And then there's this "W-question" that might shed some light on the controversy:

Who wrote up the reports upon the basis of which Navy brass awarded those five medals to young Kerry in a four-month tour on the Swift Boats?  Who was promoting Kerry's medal prospects, and was it in fact the same person to whom the medals ended up going (at least before those/someone's medals/ribbons went over a Capitol fence)?

Or this "W-question":

When did young Kerry enter Cambodia — to drop off guns or SEALs or spooks or special forces — if, as his campaign has admitted, if it wasn't on the Christmas Eve that he'd so long claimed was "seared — seared into [his] memory"?

That leaves the last "W-question": 

Where is Sen. Kerry's signed Standard Form 180, which would allow the release of the remaining source documents (full backup from the citations, full medical records, full after-action reports, full performance evaluations) from the Navy, and where can the press and the public find young Kerry's war diaries that have heretofore been available only to his pet biographer Douglas Brinkley?

Finally, of course, there's the "double-H-question," which Messrs. Nagourney and VandeHei ought to direct to themselves and their fellow professionals at NYT, WaPo, LAT, etc.:

How the hell did we mainstream media outlets get left so far behind on this issue that's obviously having a major influence on the 2004 Presidential election?

I've lost my original notes from my high school newspaper staff days, but I'm pretty sure I'm remembering this journalistic guideline correctly.  Five Ws and an H.  Mr. Nagourney, Mr. VandeHei, you should feel free to print out this post and tuck a copy in each of your respective wallets if it'll help you remember them.  While you have your printer on, you might also want to print out these three questions from Captain Ed to take with you to your next Kerry press conference.

The NYT's "Connections and Contradictions" line chart

I wrote briefly last night about the graphic that accompanied the NYT's hit piece on the SwiftVets, and since then I've been pondering about where I could be inserted into that same chart, based on my own personal history.  Like John O'Neill, I've been a practicing lawyer in Houston for well over two decades.

I suppose the chart would start with the SwiftVets, to whom I've donated $25 (plus, indirectly, whatever my TypePad bandwidth overcharges are going to be for this month).  Throw in that I once represented a codefendant of the company that O'Neill's late partner (and Merrie Spaeth's late husband) Tex Lezar (a one-time candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Texas) represented; Tex's and Merrie's names are on the NYT's chart, and both Tex's client and mine were great big insurance companies, which must mean Republicans, right?  I also spent six years at Houston's Baker  Botts, co-founded by the great grandfather of former Reagan cabinet secretary and current partner James A. Baker III.  (Never mind that Baker wasn't at Baker Botts when I was, because of neoptism prohibitions; his son was, although in the DC office.)  If you'll review the online records, you'll find that I've made almost no political contributions to candidates from either party, with the exception of a few judges (which have tended to be Republicans, which in turn have tended to be the only serious judicial candidates in Texas since the late 1980s, usually running unopposed).  I have, however, voted in several Republican primaries, and in no Democratic ones since the Dems stopped running competitive state-wide candidates some years ago.

So those would be some of the connecting lines radiating out from "Beldar" on the chart — at least the lines going to the right.  But what about the other lines, the ones running to the left?

Well, I guess since all of John O'Neill's partners' political activities are being attributed by the NYT to him, we have to look at my former law partner Richard Ben-Veniste (we were both at Weil Gotshal & Manges at the time), who's lately famous as a Democratic designee on the 9/11 Commission, but first earned fame as a staff lawyer in the Nixon impeachment.  Then there's my past relationship with Bill White, current mayor of Houston, former head of the Texas Democratic Party and Deputy Secretary of Energy for Clinton; Bill and I were never partners, but I worked under him when he was editor in chief of the Texas Law Review in 1978-1979, and several years later had a lovely lunch with him at his home when his firm (now one of the Dems' biggest fundraising bastions in Texas) offered me a job.  The judge for whom I clerked, the Hon. Carolyn D. King (who's now Chief Judge of the Fifth Circuit) was a Carter appointee; certainly if John O'Neill's clerkship for Justice Rehnquist shows his Nixon ties, my clerkship should show my Carter ties.  And don't forget the time in 1971 when my high school band marched in the second inaugural parade for the late Texas Governor Preston Smith, a Democrat born in my hometown of Lamesa, Texas.  It's a really small town; we must have been friends and political allies, right?

I'm pretty sure that if I trace back through the ranks of the three major law firms where I've worked and my law school classmates, I can find cabinet secretaries, general counsels to governors, judgeship appointees, campaign managers and fundraisers, elected officials, and probably a convicted felon or two.  Tell me what faction of politics or public affairs you want the chart to highlight, and I'm pretty sure I can come up with one that's just exactly as factually well-grounded as the NYT's chart.

So now I'm confused.  Which vast ___-wing conspiracy am I part of?  Guess it would depend who wanted to smear me with that label, huh?

Funniest line I've heard today

From USA Today:

"Any time there's a debate about Vietnam, we win," Kerry spokesman David Wade contends.

Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk!

More O'Neill sans shouting hecklers

Human Events Online has a lengthy interview with SwiftVets spokesman John O'Neill today, packed with details.  It's definitely worthwhile reading for anyone following the development of the facts about Kerry's medals.  By "details," I mean naming eyewitnesses' names, ranks, and opportunities to report from first-hand knowledge, with copious cross-referencing to the documentary evidence from such military records as Kerry has permitted to be released, plus inconsistencies in Kerry source materials like the Brinkley and Kranish books.

O'Neill isn't an eyewitness.  His personal interest, as he's said many times, is as someone who served in the same unit that Kerry was in, albeit shortly afterwards.  But using his skills as a calm and articulate courtroom lawyer, he continues marshalling the evidence, bit by bit, and dispelling the Kerry camp's counterspin, distortion by distortion.  And he clearly has interviewed his witnesses carefully, so that he's capable of offering vivid details at a deeper level than any commendation citation or dry affidavit can ever reflect. 

For instance, here's a snippet of what O'Neill had to say when asked about Larry Thurlow's involvement in the Bay Hap River incident out of which both Thurlow and Kerry received Bronze Stars:

He was the commander of the rear boat. He was famous for this incident because he went aboard the 3 boat, saved the boat from sinking and actually saved the crew while Kerry was gone. The boat was in slow movement, 500 RPM with one screw gone. Thurlow jumped over the boat, dropped into the water, was almost chewed up by the props, climbed back out and jumped over again. He brought the boat to a halt and began plugging the holes in the engine room so that the boat wouldn't sink with the people aboard.

It's just a snippet, a summary.  But man, I look forward to hearing O'Neill when he's given the chance to deliver a full-scale "closing argument," summarizing the evidence to paint the full vivid picture for the jury of American voters: 

Can you not imagine the scene, ladies and gentlemen?  A sudden explosion, the PCF 3 boat lifted out of the water, injured men everywhere, some thrown into the water, nervous gunners on the other boats laying down suppressive fire towards the shoreline in case this is a full-blown ambush.  PCF 3 sinking, moving slowly but without purpose, billowing black smoke, one screw churning the waters filled with injured sailors.  There's no fire coming back from the shores, but there's still an on-going crisis — lives of injured men will either be extinguished or preserved depending on what their comrades around them do.  Thurlow, commanding another boat, see all this.  And he "[d]ropped into the water [and] was almost chewed up by the props."  He stops PCF 3 from moving, keeps it from sinking, acts decisively, directs the rescue operations — risks his own flesh to stablize this chaotic, confused, still-very-dangerous situation. 

However many, or few, of these details were related accurately to the commanders who awarded it, do you doubt that Larry Thurlow deserved his Bronze Star, ladies and gentlemen?

Meanwhile, Lt. Kerry, whose own boat, by his own account, has moved away some distance, finally returns to the scene.  He's greviously wounded, somehow — a near mortal bruise to the forearm, later treated with a cold cloth (and perhaps a "boo-boo get better" kiss from a medic?)  Kerry plucks Rassmann from the water, moments before another boat would have done so.  Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down please:  Bronze Star for Skipper Kerry?

In this interview, O'Neill also provides what any good dramatist will recognize to be "foreshadowing" (bracketed portions in original):

INTERVIEWER: You mentioned that you interviewed now Rear Admiral William Schachte. [In Unfit for Command, Schachte is described as being on a Boston Whaler with Kerry on Dec. 2, 1968, when Kerry, according to the book, fired a grenade into the shore from too-close range and was slightly wounded in his arm by rebounding shrapnel. Although there was no enemy fire that night, according to Unfit for Command, it was this incident, witnessed by Schachte, for which Kerry received his Purple Heart.].

On that same August 12 Crossfire program, Lanny Davis said in an exchange with you on that issue that Schachte was not on the boat and your claim that Schachte was on the boat is false.

O' NEILL: I am absolutely certain that Schachte was on the boat. I know it from multiple sources. First of all, I know it from Rear Admiral William Schachte himself, the former acting Judge Advocate General of the Navy. Secondly, I know it from other crewmen who were available to testify that Schachte was on the boat. Third, I know it from the commanding officer of the unit, Commander Grant Hibbard, who detached Schachte for the purposes of commanding the boat.

INTERVIEWER: Is Schachte willing to come forward and speak publicly about what he told you when you were researching this book?

O' NEILL: I believe that Admiral Schachte will ultimately come forward at his own time and own his own pace to testify publicly about exactly what happened.

Heh.  The gun displayed in Act I will be fired before the conclusion of Act III.  And folks, we're still in Act I at the moment.

Update:  O'Neill gives even more details in this Washington Times op-ed.