argh

[jazzfish]

No, Walden's in the mall does not have Unfit for Command. We don't have it because corporate didn't send us any. I, personally, suspect that this is because Regnery, being a small press, either couldn't keep up with or vastly underestimated demand, and corporate thus sent their limited supply to places they expected would sell.

When you accuse us of having political motivations for not carrying the book, you are engaging in rampant ideological blindness of the worst kind. We carry a pretty well-balanced collection of political books. Currently we've got a lot of Michael Moore because, guess what? After F-9/11 came out he became a big seller. We had a lot of Hannity and O'Reilly when they first came out as well. Hell, we've got Michelle Malkin's screed about how all the hanky-heads ought to be locked up just like the Japs during WWII.

Please don't be an idiot. Thank you.

[As an aside, Atrios has a transcript from The Daily Show that's of some relevance.]

And the Washington Post gives us a few more bad apples. Hey, you folks who don't think anyone above the rank of sergeant bears any responsibility for Abu Ghraib &c? All of you can go to hell.

Comments

[rubinpdf.livejournal.com]

The book by the Swift Boat Liars... who were in Viet Nam at the same time as him [though, in general, in utterly different parts of Viet Nam]

Sorry, but I couldn't let this go by without a response. While it is true that they were not on the same boat as Kerry, the majority of the non-POWs sited in the book were in the same regiment as Kerry - and went on many of the same missions as Kerry (albeit in separate boats).

As to whether the Swift boat Vets are liars... The Kerry campaign has had to retract several statements when some of the charges listed in the book were investigated further.

Examples include:

• The Swift boat vets book claims that Kerry's buttocks shrapnel wound came from a self-inflicted wound when Kerry threw a concussion grenade into a rice pile and stayed too close rather than from mine shrapnel. Kerry's campaign now says it is possible the Purple Heart was awarded for an unintentional self-inflicted wound.



• Kerry said, "I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies. ... The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real."
  
  The Swift boat vets book refutes the claim Kerry that he was in Cambodia.
  The Kerry campaign now says Kerry was near (within 50 miles of) the Cambodian border on Christmas of 1969, and not actually in Cambodia.
  
  (On a personal note, why this statement wasn't taken to task sooner is beyond me. Nixon wasn't even President Christmas of 1968. He would not be inaugurated for his first term until January of 1969... however he was President-elect at the time of Kerry's claim.)

So it is very difficult to say for certain that the Swift boat Vets are liars. As much as I'm sure that the Swift boat Vets believe everything they say about Kerry's service, I am also sure that Kerry believes the same.

When asked about how the quality of Doctor Who had declined over the years, producer John Nathan-Turner used to say, "the memory cheats." Meaning that since most fans hadn't seen those older episodes since they were originally broadcast some 10-20 years earlier (repeats/syndication was rare in Britain at the time), and their memories of the higher quality of those older episodes were not as clear... and in most cases he was correct.

I see this issue in a similar manner. Perhaps the Swift boat vets memories are clouded by Kerry's anti-war activities... but then again it could be that Kerry's memory of events have been clouded by his desire to have been more heroic... More likely, it's a combination of both. As the non-partisan website factcheck.org says, "At this point, 35 years later and half a world away, we see no way to resolve which of these versions of reality is closer to the truth."

[jazzfish]

Their claims to have "served with" Kerry are disingenuous in the same way that claiming "contact" between al-Qaeda and Iraq is disingenuous, or my claim that they were "in different parts of Vietnam altogether." [Well, basic logic says they weren't in exactly the same part of Vietnam, two things can't be in the same place at the same time.]

The vets in separate boats have made statements contradicted not only by Kerry and the official report, but by other people in their boats [ack, can't find link, but at least one other person on Thurlow's boat says "yep, we were under fire too"].

The shrapnel thing doesn't detract from the Purple Heart award, though. Unless you think that Bob Dole should give back his as well.

As for Cambodia, Kerry made the Xmas claim only a few times, most recently more than twenty years ago, and it now appears most likely that he was there over Tet [Viet holiday], not Xmas. A mildly disturbing contradiction, on the level of Cheez Whiz, and hardly something worth making an issue over. And the Swift Boat Liars remain full of crap on the subject of Cambodia in any event.

"the memory cheats"

No, Patrick. These people are liars. At least two [George Elliott and Adrian Lonsdale] are contradicting statements that they made in the past about Kerry's service. [find-in-page for 1996] Larry Thurlow picked up a Bronze Star in the same action that got Kerry his, and is now saying "Oh, well, Kerry must've doctored the after-action report" with nothing to back up this assertion. O'Neill can't keep his Cambodia story straight from one day to the next. [Jerome Corsi is a disgusting bigot, but at this time I have no direct proof that he, personally, has lied; on the other hand, he's not claiming to have served in Viet Nam with Kerry.] The official Navy records side with Kerry. At some point, you have to judge the credibility of your sources.

[rubinpdf.livejournal.com]

You seriously wish to question Bob Dole war wounds? You have gone insane. Whether or not he deserved Purple Hearts, Kerry's three wounds did not require hospitalization. There is just no comparison to the injuries that Bob Dole received.

While trying to assist the downed radio man, Dole was hit by Nazi machine gun fire in the upper right back and his right arm was so damaged that it was unrecognizable. Dole was immediately given morphine by an Army field medic to alleviate the pain, and his forehead was marked with an "M" in his own blood to alert medics. He was not expected to live.

Dole waited nine long hours on the Italian battlefield before he was finally taken to the Fifteenth Evacuation Hospital. After a brief stay in a field Army hospital in Italy, he was transported back to the United States and to Topeka's Winter General Army Hospital, where he continued his painful recovery and endured a kidney operation. Then, he was transferred to Percy Jones Army Medical Center in Michigan, where he survived his second brush with death -- blood clotting.

It took about three years and nine operations for Bob Dole to rehabilitate. He learned to strengthen his injured arm, and also had to learn how to write with his left hand, as the doctors could not rebuild the excessive damage done by the Nazi machine gun fire.

To paraphrase Emperor Palpatine, "Your hate has not made you powerful."

[jazzfish]

I can only assume that you didn't bother clicking on the link to read the text behind it. I will therefore cut-and-paste the appropriate text from the link:

In a 1988 campaign-trail autobiography, here's how Dole described the incident that earned him his first Purple Heart: "As we approached the enemy, there was a brief exchange of gunfire. I took a grenade in hand, pulled the pin, and tossed it in the direction of the farmhouse. It wasn't a very good pitch (remember, I was used to catching passes, not throwing them). In the darkness, the grenade must have struck a tree and bounced off. It exploded nearby, sending a sliver of metal into my leg--the sort of injury the Army patched up with Mercurochrome and a Purple Heart."

Seems to me that Bob Dole believed in 1988 that his Purple Heart wound was about as bad as John Kerry's. Do I want to question Bob Dole's war wounds? Hey, you're the one who started questioning duly awarded medals. [No. I think that the US Armed Forces are not in the habit of awarding medals for no reason. I do not question the worthiness of anyone's medals. "You get a Purple Heart because you might have been killed. Sometimes your family gets it because you were."]

---

I notice you have nothing else to say about the Swift Boat Liars. Perhaps because another report contradicting their version of events has surfaced. Specifically, the after-action report filed by Roy Hoffman, Swift Boat Liar, five days after the incident in which Larry Thurlow claims that no shots were fired. Curiously, Hoffman's incident report supports the stance that yes, the boats were under fire.

Also of particular note is the last sentence in the article: "The anti-Kerry group has not produced any official Navy documents supporting its claim." In the case of old Dr Who episodes, we can now in some cases watch the episodes and say yeah, they weren't as great as we remember them. In the case of Viet Nam, there are tons of reports filed. If there were actually any question about the facts, one would expect some of these reports to support Kerry and some to support the Swift Boat Liars. So far, the only support for the Swift Boat Liars are 1) the timing of Kerry's trip to Cambodia, and 2) the severity of the wound for which Kerry received one of his three Purple Hearts.

Perhaps every witness starts out equally credible, but after someone's been caught out in this many lies, rational people stop believing their next one.