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NBC NEWS' BIG LIE: 'Nightly News' Graphic Calls Group "Swift Boat Veterans For BUSH"
Media Resource Center ^ | August 6, 2004 | Andrea Mitchell, Tom Brokaw

Posted on 08/22/2004 3:14:03 AM PDT by L.N. Smithee

Edited on 08/22/2004 3:22:25 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]

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To: Bob

Sorry, that should have been "utterly ridiculous."


61 posted on 08/22/2004 8:53:10 AM PDT by atlaw
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To: L.N. Smithee

I've been saying for a long time that the press has dropped their last shred of pretense of objectivity, and with it, their last shred of credibility. This fall, when Kerry loses in a landslide, will be the Democrat party and the mainstream press. Good riddance to both.


62 posted on 08/22/2004 8:54:32 AM PDT by Uncle Vlad
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To: L.N. Smithee
This article has been posted to DoctorZin’s New News Blog!


63 posted on 08/22/2004 11:16:06 AM PDT by DoctorZIn (Until they are Free, "We shall all be Iranians!")
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To: L.N. Smithee
Here's the number, everyone. Don't email --- light up the phone lines!

212-664-4971 or 202-885-4259

64 posted on 08/22/2004 11:19:18 AM PDT by doug from upland (John Kerry is a sports fan like Lorena Bobbitt is a surgeon)
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To: L.N. Smithee
I just called and got directly to the news desk. I didn't know what day it was. Will someone who saw it please call and tell them the day?

212-664-4971 or 202-885-4259

Let's go. Light it up.

65 posted on 08/22/2004 11:21:28 AM PDT by doug from upland (John Kerry is a sports fan like Lorena Bobbitt is a surgeon)
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To: L.N. Smithee

BUMP FOR THE SUPPORT OF SWIFT VETS HERE... http://www.swiftvets.com/


66 posted on 08/22/2004 11:25:27 AM PDT by freddiedavis
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To: L.N. Smithee
You're wrong. Kerry WON'T take on the Swift Vets. He will have to defend his VVAW past, and the Kerry camp avoided that at the DNC convention for a reason.

Kerry doesn't have to do Jack! That's the point. Who or what is gonna force him to release his VN records? If you think it's gonna be the MSM you're in fantasy land!

Kerry brought this VN thing up, Kerry keeps bringing it up and Kerry will continue to bring it up to keep the focus squarly on him!

Kerry doesn't have to take on the SBV because they keep driving the point home. I'll say it one more time, if the SBV keep VN in the forefront and this continues to be round after round of Kerry vs SBV, Bush will be a one termer.

67 posted on 08/22/2004 12:04:11 PM PDT by sirchtruth (Do you just think I fell off a turnip truck?)
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To: atlaw; Bob
Your suggestion that John O'Neil is a closet democrat in his own republican law firm is utter ridiculous.

I have never heard O'Neill describe himself as "a Democrat." But he has said repeatedly that he would have voted for Edwards.

Are you implying that he's lying?

68 posted on 08/22/2004 2:42:53 PM PDT by L.N. Smithee (Hey, KERRY! We said it to Saddam, and now to you -- If you have nothing to hide, QUIT HIDING IT!)
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To: L.N. Smithee

It boils my blood every time a member of the MSM refers to them as “the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.”

When have you ever heard them refer to NOW as “the so-called National Organization of Women?”

It’s never “the so-called People for the American Way” or “the so-called Council on Foreign Relations” either.

Why the distinction with the Swift Boat Vets?


69 posted on 08/22/2004 2:55:04 PM PDT by YankeeFan
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To: YankeeFan
It boils my blood every time a member of the MSM refers to them as “the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.”

When have you ever heard them refer to NOW as “the so-called National Organization of Women?”

It’s never “the so-called People for the American Way” or “the so-called Council on Foreign Relations” either.

Why the distinction with the Swift Boat Vets?

EXCELLENT POINTS ALL!

70 posted on 08/22/2004 3:16:38 PM PDT by L.N. Smithee (Hey, KERRY! We said it to Saddam, and now to you -- If you have nothing to hide, QUIT HIDING IT!)
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To: sirchtruth
Kerry doesn't have to take on the SBV because they keep driving the point home. I'll say it one more time, if the SBV keep VN in the forefront and this continues to be round after round of Kerry vs SBV, Bush will be a one termer.

I said, "Eventually, if the SBVT stays strong and plays their cards wisely, Kerry will be pressured to sign a 180."

You may remember a guy named J.H. Hatfield. He wrote a book in 1999 called Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President. Hatfield, citing three unidentified sources, alleged that in 1972 Bush was busted in Texas on a cocaine possession charge and, based on family clout, was allowed to perform community service under a veil of secrecy.

Fortunate Son was released in a period in which Bush had to weather "gotcha" questions regarding his college days, including "have you ever used cocaine?" Although he freely admitted being a recovering alcoholic, Bush never answered the coke question, indicating to many that he had used it but wouldn't go on record as having done so, lest he be known as The First Presidential Candidate Who Admits That He Is a Cokehead.

(Al Franken, posing as a reporter at a Bush press appearance, promised he wouldn't ask if he had ever used cocaine. He then asked him if he ever used heroin. Bush laughed, and went on to the next question without answering Franken. Why? Because if he answered the smack question, it would seal that the answer to the unanswered coke question was "yes.")

Hatfield's book debuted in the New York Times bestseller list at #30. Days later, Hatfield's past caught up with him. It was discovered that someone with the name James H. Hatfield was convicted of attempted murder (a car-bomb plot; the bomb didn't go off) and imprisoned for six years in Texas. Hatfield denied it, suggesting that someone else named James Hatfield with his birthdate was the real ex-con. Then, he admitted it. St. Martin's Press, who published the book, recalled 70,000 hardcover copies and actually was quoted as saying that it was to become "furnace fodder."

Here is an interview with Hatfield on a left-wing site from 2000:


J.H. HATFIELD:[In] this country you don’t burn books, publishers are supposed to publish books. The major controversy surrounding the book when it first came out was my past. The book came out on a Tuesday and by Friday it was recalled because they found out I had a criminal history and so the publisher said they doubted my credibility at that point which didn’t make any sense because before that they said it was meticulously fact-checked, scrupulously corroborated, 54 pages of source notes. So you can’t say that one day and then go ok maybe he had a past but one doesn’t have anything to do with the other.

AMY GOODMAN: What did your past have to do with it. Had you denied it before?

J. H. HATFIELD: Well I did deny it when I was approached by St. Martin’s. We got a call from a reporter with the Dallas morning news when I was in NY doing publicity for the book and the publisher asked me and I did deny it until I got home a few hours later and talked to my family and talked to my lawyers and then we tried to work it out with the publisher so we could get it back out again

AMY GOODMAN: Can I ask what your criminal history was and then we’ll go through the book?

J. H. HATFIELD: The crime that got the attention was that I was involved in a conspiracy to try to kill somebody. That certainly made the headlines .

AMY GOODMAN: How long did you serve time in prison?

J. H. HATFIELD: Five years in Texas.

AMY GOODMAN: Who’d you try to kill?

J. H. HATFIELD: An associate of mine. I was a vice-president in a real estate company and she was the other vice president and I kinda got caught in the middle between a blackmail scheme with my boss. She was blackmailing him and I passed the money.

AMY GOODMAN: Was she killed?

J. H. HATFIELD: Oh no. That’s not to lessen the severity of it. But she wasn’t hurt at all

AMY GOODMAN: So when did you get out of jail?

J. H. HATFIELD: 1994

AMY GOODMAN: And when did you start writing this book?

J. H. HATFIELD: About October of 1998. After the elections of 1998 and the Republicans lost in the house and Newt Gingrich and those rascals were kicked out and all of a sudden Bush won in a landslide and they thought he would be the future of the party.
There was a small independent publisher that eventually churned out paperback copies of Fortunate Son, but it wasn't enough to keep the thoroughly discredited Hatfield afloat. In July 2001, Hatfield committed suicide via overdose in (get this!) a hotel room in Arkansas. And yes, there are some liberals who think his suicide is suspicious.

Now, the purpose of my rehashing this: Hatfield was a fool to take on the Bush family when he knew good and well that if someone did a simple check on him, they would discover that he was a parolee and that he had set things in motion to kill his former employer. If the hit man that he hired hadn't screwed up, it's very likely that he would have been executed in Texas.

In addition: Hatfield didn't have a shred of evidence of his charge that Bush was caught with cocaine. When challenged by the new publisher to name the source, he said it was Karl Rove. Accepting solely for the sake of argument that Rove was his source, there wasn't a chance in Hades that Rove would confirm that at the time. If Rove was caught on tape passing along this information to Hatfield, we wouldn't be talking about John Kerry; President Gore would be running for re-election.

St. Martin's Press recalled Fortunate Son not because they had qualms about its content; it is because they could no longer trust the author of the book. But Regnery, the publisher of Unfit for Command, apparently trusts the fellows in Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, and they certainly appear to be made of sterner stuff than J.H. Hatfield was.

If the Swift Vets are telling the truth (and they have the debunked Christmas in Cambodia claim in their favor), they can say with all sincerity that Kerry's unreleased military files will show that they are telling the truth and that Kerry won't release them to the public because they will prove him to be a liar. This shifts the burden of proof to Kerry, because he wants to be President based on his military record!

He is demanding the book be recalled, he is calling it a smear, he's intimating that attacks on Bush are going to get more pointed (a flip-flop on Little John's plea to "reject hateful politics"), he's mad as hell and he's not going to take it any more. Well, he only has to take it as long as he wants to settle this once and for all, he should do it.

"If your full military files will prove us to be liars, Senator Kerry, you have nothing to fear. If you aren't afraid of the truth, the truth shall set you free." I can think of a couple dozen ways to say it, and I hope SBVT does soon.

71 posted on 08/22/2004 8:13:52 PM PDT by L.N. Smithee (Hey, KERRY! We said it to Saddam, and now to you -- If you have nothing to hide, QUIT HIDING IT!)
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To: L.N. Smithee
"...Kerry's unreleased military files will show that they are telling the truth and that Kerry won't release them to the public because they will prove him to be a liar. This shifts the burden of proof to Kerry, because he wants to be President based on his military record!"

My guess is Kerry has a mole in the defense department who is doctoring the official records to support his version of the "facts". He is dragging his feet to give the mole time to make the changes without being detected. Once the changes have been made Kerry will sign the 180 and say..." See I told you I was telling the truth..."

Remember, many government employees are rats, because voting that way fattens their own wallets.

72 posted on 08/22/2004 9:01:35 PM PDT by Auntie Dem (Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Terrorist lovers gotta go!)
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To: Auntie Dem
My guess is Kerry has a mole in the defense department who is doctoring the official records to support his version of the "facts". He is dragging his feet to give the mole time to make the changes without being detected. Once the changes have been made Kerry will sign the 180 and say..." See I told you I was telling the truth..."

I think if Kerry was capable of doing something like that without anyone getting wise, he would have produced documents showing that he was really severely injured.

Kerry's lies over the years aren't that elaborate. From the Winter Soldier hearings to this FEC action, Kerry depends on having a friendly, compliant audience for his lies so they won't be quickly contradicted. The audience this time around? The leftist media majority.

73 posted on 08/22/2004 11:07:42 PM PDT by L.N. Smithee (Hey, KERRY! We said it to Saddam, and now to you -- If you have nothing to hide, QUIT HIDING IT!)
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To: L.N. Smithee
Let me just say this first. Your writing is excellent. Clear, concise, easy to follow. I really wish I had the talent to write like you.

The point I'm trying to make is it does not matter whether or not Kerry is lying. I believe his flip flops alone are lies, and he's proven to be a coward on proclaiming he owns an SUV. What matters is where the major focus of the 2004 election lies.

I don't believe that the SBV can turn this into Anybody But Kerry simply because the MSM will not allow it. Kerry is not going to be forced to provide any records, and even if he is they're going to be sanatized to the max and then what?

74 posted on 08/23/2004 4:18:33 AM PDT by sirchtruth (Do you just think I fell off a turnip truck?)
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