GOD BLESS THE SWIFTEES - Click the logo to donate to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth!
Posted on 09/11/2004 10:53:46 AM PDT by USMCVIETVET
Call your local newspapers, jewish and veterans organizations, and request they demand a public apology from Sanders and from the Kerry campaign. See last 2 paragraphs of article.
Oakland Tribune
Kerry critics draw crowd, ire during speech in S.F. By Josh Richman STAFF WRITER
Saturday, September 11, 2004 - SAN FRANCISCO -- The summer heat grew milder but the rhetoric index was sky-high Friday as two leading critics of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's military service repeated their attacks while protesters picketed their presence.
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth co-founder John O'Neill, author of "Unfit for Command," again aired his claims that Kerry not only conflated his own record in Vietnam for political gain but also smeared other veterans' reputations while speaking out against the war after his return.
"It's simply a fraud on the American people, much of it," he told an audience at the Commonwealth Club of California's Market Street offices.
Also speaking Friday was retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson, a senior aide to President Clinton who since has authored two books taking Clinton and other Democrats to task for what he deems their failings in military wisdom and national security. Antiwar liberals "hijacked" the Democratic party decades ago, he claimed, and Kerry is "ill-equipped to lead our young troops in combat."
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth filed a disclosure report Friday showing it had raised $1.9 million since April 23. O'Neill said Friday the section 527 advocacy group has received thousands of donations averaging $65 to $70, but the report shows $1.19 million was raised from a dozen donors, of whom eight -- including O'Neill himself -- are wealthy Texans.
O'Neill focused Friday on three specific incidents during what he called Kerry's "short and controversial" four-month combat stint. First, he said Kerry's account of a secret mission inside Cambodia on Christmas 1968 was "a total and complete fabrication ... a malicious lie."
Second, O'Neill said a report Kerry filed on a January 1969 incident claims enemy troops were involved, while Kerry's book claims he felt guilt for having accidentally slain civilians. And third, he claimed, Kerry's boat not only wasn't under fire when rescuing an overboard crew member in March 1969 but actually fled the scene during a short firefight.
O'Neill himself never saw Kerry in Vietnam; he took command of the same swift boat Kerry had led several weeks after Kerry left. Taking questions and mild, sporadic heckling from the audience, he said most officers and enlisted men in Kerry's unit -- although not aboard the same boat -- now feel Kerry is unfit to be commander-in-chief.
Outside, a few dozen protesters bore signs declaring "Unfit for Consumption -- Liar go home!" and "Swift Boat Lies for Bush" as the Kerry campaign recruited volunteers and registered voters.
Former Deputy Assistant Navy Secretary Wade Sanders of San Diego, who commanded a swift boat alongside Kerry's and who now leads California Veterans for Kerry, called O'Neill's claims "a pack of lies." "I would go into combat with John Kerry any time, any place -- I wouldn't follow George Bush into an ice cream parlor."
O'Neill "needs to be confronted with the lies he's fomenting," Sanders said. He likened O'Neill and Karl Rove to Nazi propaganda master Joseph Goebbels, saying they "studied at that man's knee."
Contact Josh Richman at jrichman@angnewspapers.com .
Response to this article by Bruce Kesler:
As a proudly Jewish veteran of Vietnam, I take strong exception (and that's more polite than it deserves) at Kerry's California Veterans for Kerry leader, Wade Sanders, using language that likens John O'Neill to Joseph Goebbels. This is the same as when John Kerry said "The only feeling you could have was that you were like the Germans" in being in Vietnam [Dick Cavett show, 1971]. It is because of Kerry's words and actions then and now, and those like Sanders whom Kerry enlists in leading his campaign, that Vietnam veterans are so outraged, as are so many other citizens. Their brand of gutter smear politics reaches its ultimate low with likening Vietnam veterans to Nazis.
Done. Another C-note.
Personally, I will not slam Kerry for serving in the Navy, nor for the probablity of his decorations being fraudulently obtained. That is for someone who knows more about those circumstances than I do. I will, however, be critical of Kerry for his activities following his return from Vietnam. His actions as a member of a Communist front group, his false statements before the Senate, and his continual adherance to enemies of the US (NVN, NK, the UN, Saddam Hussein, et. al.) ARE subjects of legitimate criticism, and raise questions as to whether he would be serving the people of the US, or Kofi Annan were he to be elected President.
My own military service was ultimately inconsequential compared to many, but I NEVER turned my back to my country, nor to those I served alongside, and I never will. I cannot bear to think of a traitor, for that is what he is, such as Kerry occupying the same office held by George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, U.S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. The idea that a traitor would claim the title borne by honorable military men such as William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Benjamin Harrison, James A. Garfield, R.B. Hayes, William McKinley, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, J.F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford is offensive to me....and deeply so.
For the sake of our country, for its soverignty and for our precious liberties, John Kerry MUST be defeated!
You're both fine patriots, I don't care what JH2 says!! ;-)
That this treasonous scumball remained a commissioned USNR Standby Reserve officer, while I was in formation on the tarmac at Great Lakes, makes me nauseous.
Let's tell Wade Sanders that comparing John O'Neill to a Nazi propagandist goes just a tad over the line...
Why bother? Just make a note and mention it along with other desperate hate attacks from the Kerry campaign, saying what would would expect when John Kerry has no real defense for his actions as an anti-American, anti-war activist who wants to be commander-in chief in a time of war? Stay on our message and just use the attacks as more evidence of Kerry's lack of substantive message.
Sanders would follow THIS MAN into battle?
Where.....a street fight outside a Paris restaurant?
BTTT!!!!!!
As a side note I was in SF on Market street yesterday at noon. The Kerry supporters (about 30-50+) were out with a number of TV crews doing interviews. I though of counter FReeping but I don't think my boss wanted to see me on TV.
California not in play, huh? Then why is Kerry in SF trying to shore up the base? Frisco should be solid for Kerry.
We can't use the Swift Vets copy of that Corbiss picture on Free Republic, in "Unfit for Command."
However, we can show that picture to our friends, relatives and others with our copy of the book.
That picture of Kerry behind Fonda is on the 4th page of pictures in the book, "Unfit for Command"!
My book will be going out with me until this election is over. That picture will be shown to every vet, who I know or meet.
The loony left are getting more and desperate as Kerry comes unglued.
Be Ever Vigilant!
Kerry has been forced to hire the forgers, liars and spinners from Herr Clintoon's fascist regime.
Ping
Does anyone have the e-mail address for The Jerusalem Post? This needs to be e-mailed to them. They are trying to change the Jewish vote majority from Dims to pubbies this year.
Kerry loves these Vietnam hatchet men....there is one thing
that the Nation is rapidly seeing in this egomaniac..that is: It's not the medals that a man wears
But the mettle in the man !!!!!!!!!!
Jake
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