John O'Neill media blitz continues

John O'Neill ^ | April 22, 2004 | Interesting Times

[Interesting Times]

John O'Neill, the Vietnam veteran who took on John Kerry in the 1971 debate on American "war crimes" that was recently rebroadcast on C-SPAN, will continue his series of media interviews this afternoon, interviewing with Michael Buchanan of the BBC at 4:30pm, with Larry Elder on ABC radio at 7:00pm, and with Alan Colmes on Fox Radio News at 11:15pm. All times are Eastern.

O'Neill, who commanded a Swift boat in the same division as Kerry -- though for considerably longer -- more than held his own against Kerry during a 90-minute special broadcast of the Dick Cavett Show. Now he is challenging Senator Kerry to continue the debate they began 33 years ago, in an effort to clear the names of the Vietnam veterans Kerry once accused of war crimes "committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

Recent FR threads on John O'Neill:

John Kerry & John O'Neill, Dick Cavett Show Debate from 1971 on C-SPAN Now [LIVE THREAD]
Veteran John O'Neill will be on CNN between 5:15 and 5:45pm today...
TRANSCRIPT: John O'Neill's Remarks Regarding John Kerry on Wolf Blitzer's Show Today
John O'Neill appearing on CSPAN....Live
Veteran John O'Neill on CSPAN--LIVE THREAD
John O'Neill's Interview with Wolf Blitzer (Video-Real Player)

WinterSoldier.com will work with John O'Neill and other Swift boat veterans to tell the true story of how they trained and served in the Mekong Delta.

[Stultis]

Interesting that Mueller mentioned McNamara (later) admitting that he and other officials "knew" the war was lost in '67. And yet, just a few years later, with Nixon as Commander-In-Chief the war was going much better, even with drastically (by nearly a full order of magnitude!) fewer American troops.

In 1973 Nixon (via Kissinger) was able (because he was putting the hurt on Hanoi) to get a peace agreement that was far, far better for America, Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam than anyone at the time believed possible. He achieved his campaign promise of "peace with honor," even though the 'Rat congress would dishonorably prevent both Nixon and Ford from doing anything to effectively enforce the agreement. (At times there was literally bumper-to-bumper truck traffic along the Ho Chi Min trail, in direct and massive violation of the Paris accords, yet Congress had passed legislation preventing air operations to bomb them.)

In any case, this sad history should tell us all we need to know about the different ways that Democrats and Republicans fight wars. Democrats decide they can't win, that the enemy is too strong and we're too weak, but still feed more and more troops into the quagmire. Republicans concentrate on finding a winning strategy. Nixon took a "lost" war and turned it around (winning major concessions from the North Vietnamese) in just a few years. To the discredit of the preceding administrations, Nixon did it largely by doing the bleeding obvious: Destroying the Cambodian/Laotian bases, taking the war to the North (bombing, mining harbors), and a massive program of Vietnamization.

[Interesting Times]

Good points. Bobby Mueller wants everyone to believe that defeat in Vietnam was inevitable from the start. Promoting such a view is of course an excellent way to make it true. He's trying out the same self-fulfilling prophecy in regard to Iraq. It's pretty clear that whatever the conflict, this guy isn't on America's side.

Muller (and Colmes) also want to change the debate from "O'Neill versus Kerry" to "O'Neill versus Mueller," thereby demoting O'Neill rather significantly. Don't expect John to bite on that one...

[dsc]

"I don't think their efforts are going to be very effective."

Unless they actually kill him. Watch for an arkancide.

[hoosiermama]

Dozed off while Mueller was speaking. Must be a sign!

If there is any thing we can do to help get O'N message out, please give instructions.

[jocon307]

Thanks for posting the link to the NRO piece. I probably wouldn't have read it otherwise.

It does make O'Neill seem a bit of a saint, interviewing him in his recovery bed after he's donated a kidney to his wife! Let's see if Terayza could get a kidney out of JF'nK if she needed one.

[texasbluebell]

Thanks for posting the link to that article.

Very interesting to read about a man who stands by his principles, an honest decent man.

[Jeff Gannon]

I was on the Schmuley show on Liberty Broadcasting with John O'Neill yesterday. It was a 3-way fight with some DNC flak.

Kerry's going to get creamed with this stuff. I found myself screaming at the Dem guy to get Kerry to release his FBI files.

He said: "So you want to use J. Edgar Hoover's files as a character reference?"

I SURE DO!

[Interesting Times]

Kerry's in the untenable position of squaring his claim that he loves and respects his Vietnam "brothers" with the fact that he spent two years calling them baby-killers.

If they were baby-killers, how can he possibly love and respect them? And if not, why did Kerry devote years of his life to telling vicious lies about them? It's a daunting straddle, even for someone as experienced and adroit at twofacery as Kerry.

The next problem the leftists are going to face is this: how long can they hide the fact that maybe 80% of all Vietnam veterans loathe Kerry with every fiber of their beings? Simply avoiding polls on the topic and telling lies has worked pretty well so far, but I don't think that's going to hold up much longer...

[Jeff Gannon]

Kerry has the additional problem that his rabid Democrat base supported VVAW and think well of him because of it.

Many of them dominate the elite media. The NYT called his activities "principled dissent." Most Americans call is treason.

It's a long way to November.

[Chad Fairbanks]

Bump!