[Mb-civic] Fighting a Phony War

Fri Aug 20 20:38:02 PDT 2004

Fighting a Phony War
Is the real aim of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to divert 
attention from Iraq?
WEB EXCLUSIVE 
By Eleanor Clift 
Newsweek 
Updated: 1:36 p.m. ET Aug. 20, 2004 
Aug. 20 - The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth stopped by NEWSWEEK™s 
Washington bureau this week to explain their version of what happened in 
Vietnam 35 years ago and why John Kerry doesn™t deserve three Purple 
Hearts. None were on the Swift Boat Kerry commanded, but they had charts 
to illustrate their contention that Kerry™s boat did not come under fire and that 
two of his wounds were self-inflicted, one when he hurled a grenade at a rice 
bin too close to his position.
A generation of reporters far removed from any war experience listened 
respectfully to their story. Between the fog of war and the passage of time, 
telling the truth has more to do with politics than memory. These men fought; 
they didn™t come home to a hero™s welcome, and they™ll never forgive Kerry 
for protesting the war and branding them as war criminals.
One member of the group recalled how each of them had been issued a 90-
pound sea bag, and Kerry sacrificed 10 pounds of socks and clean 
underwear to pack a typewriter. At the end of a long day of patrols, Kerry 
would sit hunched over his typewriter plugging away at who-knows-what, the 
fellow said, so secretive it seemed subversive. They never understood this 
aloof figure, and the day that he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee”April 22, 1971”is as powerful a date to these veterans as the 
Kennedy assassination. They can tell you exactly where they were when they 
heard Kerry say he had witnessed war crimes sanctioned by commanders in 
Vietnam.
The fact that Kerry attributed the breakdown in military discipline to the 
policymakers in Washington is lost on these men, who take Kerry™s words 
personally. This is not about Kerry™s performance in Vietnam; it™s what he 
said when he came home. Kerry has never made extravagant claims about 
his heroism in Vietnam. He never said his wounds were serious, and he 
never said he didn™t want to get out of Vietnam. After three wounds, under 
military rules, he was entitled to ship out, which he did after a combat tour of 
four months and 12 days. Nothing these so-called Veterans for Truth have 
come up with contradicts what Kerry has said, but that™s not the point.
The Swift Boat veterans have become the Campaign 2004 version of the 
Scott Peterson trial, trading charges and regularly appearing on the cable-
news networks. The book that lays out the charges against Kerry, œUnfit for 
Command, has been No. 1 on Amazon.com for over a week. Never mind 
that almost daily there™s a retraction or a new story to discredit what these 
veterans are saying. On Thursday, The Washington Post revealed that the 
military records of Larry Thurlow, who commanded a boat alongside Kerry, 
contain several references to enemy fire directed at all five boats in the 
flotilla, sharply contradicting what Thurlow is saying as a leading member of 
the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group. The Post got the affidavit through 
the Freedom of Information Act.
The Kerry campaign was curiously passive as the veterans gathered force in 
the media”as though responding would dignify the scurrilous charges. Kerry 
finally broke his silence this week, perhaps mindful that a lie unanswered 
becomes a lie that is believed. Flanked by firefighters in Boston, Kerry 
stripped the mask of patriotic valor from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth by 
pointing out the source of their funding: a Texas Republican who wrote two 
checks for $100,000 to the group. Its sudden emergence is reminiscent of 
the œRepublicans for Clean Air, which emerged during the 2000 campaign 
with a television spot attacking John McCain™s environmental record. Long 
after the ad did its damage to McCain in the New York primary, it was 
revealed that the Wylie brothers in Texas, who backed Bush, had paid for the 
advertising. The group itself was a sham, and the Wylie brothers no 
environmentalists.
If the November election is a plebiscite on who better and more courageously 
served their country in a time of war, Kerry would win. œKerry gets a bye on 
this anyway”he was there and Bush wasn™t, says John Zogby, an 
independent pollster who is not aligned with either campaign. He sees the 
battle over who™s telling whose truth in Vietnam as another symptom of the 
great divide in the country. œWe are two warring nations and neither nation is 
listening to the other, he says. œThis is essentially a net zero politically. It™s 
great kindling wood for the Republicans. It™s the kind of stuff they need to 
hear just as Dems need to hear from Michael Moore.
Questioning Kerry™s heroism fires up the GOP base, but it leaves œsolid 
undecideds cold. They™re not paying attention. Zogby says among this very 
narrow 5 percent of the electorate, 16 percent say Bush deserves to be re-
elected; 39 percent say it™s time for somebody new. œYou can™t help but look 
at those numbers and conclude they™ve made up their mind about one side, 
says Zogby. But Kerry hasn™t been able to close the deal. Zogby has him 
stuck at 47 percent, which isn™t good. But Bush is stuck at 43 percent, which 
is worse. œIt™s still the phony war period, says Zogby. For an incumbent 
president in as much trouble as Bush, fighting a war that™s been over for 
nearly 30 years takes voters™ minds off Iraq.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc. 
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5772260/site/newsweek/

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