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At first the Kerry campaign dismissed them as cranks. But with their slickly made ad and frequent appearances on cable TV and talk radio, charging that Kerry had lied to win his medals in Vietnam, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began making inroads. According to a poll taken by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center, more than half the people surveyed had seen or heard about the ad, and about half of independent voters found the ad to be believable. Kerry's campaign fired up his own veterans' machine to try to stop any slippage—especially in key swing states like...

Aug. 30 issue - At first the Kerry campaign dismissed them as cranks. But with their slickly made ad and frequent appearances on cable TV and talk radio, charging that Kerry had lied to win his medals in Vietnam, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began making inroads. According to a poll taken by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center, more than half the people surveyed had seen or heard about the ad, and about half of independent voters found the ad to be believable. Kerry's campaign fired up his own veterans' machine to try to stop any slippage—especially in...

Newsweek: Kerry's Bronze Star Story Doesn't Hold Water In the latest edition of Newsweek, reporters Evan Thomas and T. Trent Gegax take on the story of John Kerry's Bronze Star engagement of 13 March 1969 and write a fairly balanced article describing the controversy and the effect it has had on the Kerry campaign. In the middle of the article, Newsweek notes an interesting change of story from Del Sandusky, one of Kerry's crew (emph. mine): As sailors who weren't on Kerry's boat tell the story of what happened on March 13, 1969, Kerry did nothing very heroic. That day...

Sunday, July 18, 2004 12:50 a.m. EDT Newsweek Big: Media Bias Worth 15-Points for Kerry-Edwards The American press has dived so deeply into the tank for Sen. John Kerry's presidential bid that they don't even bother concealing their pro-Democrat bias anymore. "Let’s talk a little media bias here," Newsweek's assistant managing editor Evan Thomas told PBS's "Inside Washington" last week, reports Sunday's New York Post. "The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. And I think they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards - I’m talking about the establishment media, not Fox, but - they’re going to portray Kerry and...

MR. THOMAS: There's one other base here, the media. Let's talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win and I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards I'm talking about the establishment media, not Fox. They're going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there's going to be this glow about them, collective glow, the two of them, that's going to be worth maybe 15 points.

Recognition of the obvious. The media “wants Kerry to win” and so “they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic” and “there’s going to be this glow about” them, Evan Thomas, the Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek, admitted on Inside Washington over the weekend. He should know. His magazine this week sports a smiling Kerry and Edwards on its cover with the yearning headline, “The Sunshine Boys?” Inside, an article carrying Thomas’ byline contrasted how “Dick Cheney projects the bleakness of a Wyoming winter, while John Edwards always appears to be strolling in the...

By Evan Thomas Newsweek - John Kerry did not have to think all that hard about joining the military and going to Vietnam. He had doubts about the wisdom of U.S. intervention in Vietnam, which was rapidly escalating during 1965-66, his senior year at Yale. But Yale leaders were expected to serve, as the school song went, "for God, for Country, and for Yale." His closest friends in Skull and Bones, the Yale senior society for the best and the brightest, were signing up. Fred Smith, who would go on to found Federal Express, was joining the Marines. So was...

Wes Clark won a war, but ran afoul of his Pentagon masters and lost his job. (snip)Gen. Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that Clark had been sacked as commander of NATO forces after the 1999 Balkans war because of "integrity and character issues." (snip)What really happened? According to a knowledgeable source, Clark ran afoul of Cohen and Shelton by being less than totally forthcoming in morning conference calls during the Kosovo war in the spring of 1999. From his NATO headquarters in Brussels, Clark wanted to wage the war more aggressively, but back...

<p>Dec. 29/Jan. 5 issue - The Special Forces commando had already pulled the pin. He was primed to toss the grenade into the "spider hole," a Vietnam-era nickname for lethal hiding places. But the man cowering inside did not use the pistol resting in his lap. He raised both hands in submission and, speaking in English, announced, "I am Saddam Hussein, I am the president of Iraq and I'm willing to negotiate."</p>

So liberals have finally found a drug addict they don't like. And unlike the Lackawanna Six – those high-spirited young lads innocently seeking adventure in an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan – liberals could find no excuses for Rush Limbaugh. After years of the mainstream media assuring us that Rush was a has-been, a nobody, yesterday's news – the Rush painkiller story was front-page news last week. (Would anyone care if Howell Raines committed murder?) The airwaves and print media were on red alert with Rush's admission that, after an unsuccessful spinal operation a few years ago, he became addicted...

snipped from article... "...I can take hostages, too," Powell warned the secretary of Defense. "How hard do you want to play this thing?" Pretty hard. Powell lost, as he often does in the councils of the Bush war cabinet, and Rumsfeld had his way. Only one of the 16 State officials was restored to Garner's reconstruction team. It was a petty triumph, but emblematic of Rumsfeld's dominating, sometimes overbearing style. Rumsfeld was not a rogue elephant. In much of what he did, Rumsfeld himself was following orders. The hidden hand of the White House (read: Vice President Dick Cheney) was...

    Al Qaeda in America: The Enemy Within   How the terrorist organization is recruiting and planning strikes here in the U.S.       By Daniel Klaidman, Mark Hosenball,Michael Isikoff and Evan ThomasNEWSWEEK       June 23 issue —  Khalid Shaikh Mohammed looked more like a loser in a T shirt than a modern-day Mephistopheles. But “KSM,” as he is always referred to in FBI documents, held the key to unlock the biggest mystery of the war on terror: is Al Qaeda operating inside America?

How the terrorist organization is recruiting and planning strikes here in the U.S. June 23 issue — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed looked more like a loser in a T shirt than a modern-day Mephistopheles. But “KSM,” as he is always referred to in FBI documents, held the key to unlock the biggest mystery of the war on terror: is Al Qaeda operating inside America? THE ANSWER, ACCORDING TO KSM’s confessions and the intense U.S. investigation that followed, is yes. It is not known where the authorities took KSM after he was captured, looking paunchy and pouty, in a 3 a.m. raid...

After 9-11, as talk of war against Iraq picked up in Washington, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) became jittery. On Oct. 29, 2002, a memo from Directorate 14 (in charge of special operations and “wet work” like assassinations) reported that “one of our sources in the United States, with a high level of reliability, says the CIA and the so-called opposition have a joint plan to bring ‘quislings’ to Iraq from the north and south to gather information and await future missions. Our informant will be one of them.” The memo suggests, disturbingly, that Saddam had a mole somewhere inside...

April 21 issue — Know thine enemy is a cardinal rule of war. Ignorance was costly for American soldiers fighting guerrillas in Vietnam. Before plunging into Iraq, U.S. psychological-warfare operators studied certain cultural stereotypes. ONE WAS THAT young Arab toughs cannot tolerate insults to their manhood. So, as American armored columns pushed down the road to Baghdad, 400-watt loudspeakers mounted on Humvees would, from time to time, blare out in Arabic that Iraqi men are impotent. The Fedayeen, the fierce but undisciplined and untrained Iraqi irregulars, could not bear to be taunted. Whether they took the bait or saw an...

The Secret WarIt’s been the best-covered war in history. But the key to success was what we didn’t see: Special Forces, psyop, the air war—and the utterly inept Iraqi Army By Evan Thomas and Martha Brant NEWSWEEK April 21 issue — Know thine enemy is a cardinal rule of war. Ignorance was costly for American soldiers fighting guerrillas in Vietnam. Before plunging into Iraq, U.S. psychological-warfare operators studied certain cultural stereotypes. ONE WAS THAT young Arab toughs cannot tolerate insults to their manhood. So, as American armored columns pushed down the road to Baghdad, 400-watt loudspeakers mounted on Humvees...

Did anyone else hear Evan Thomas on Imus this AM? He was asked to comment about the 9-11 anniversary and he said that he was tired of it, but that he supposed it was a good thing to remember and that once a year was about right, and then he added that it was especially good right now since we are headed toward war with Iraq and that seeing the coverage of 9-11 would remind us of the consequences. I was blown away. I thought he would say "remind us of what we are fighting" or something of the sort,...