PrintKerry's oppo squad? war crimes II?
Stoically ignoring the fast—breaking news about CBS's blatant complicity in forwarding the Democrat Party's agenda, Newsweek's famously courageous reporters Howard Fineman and Michael Isikoff take the time to light into the lavishly financed dirty tricks of the Republican Party in the current campaign.
If I read them right, our intrepid journalists seem to feel that these GOP dirty tricksters were not even above signing up for Swift Boat duty in Vietnam thirty five years ago so as to be able to come forward later to besmirch their (Newsweek's and the rest of the other Democrat house organs') champion, John F. Kerry.
Happily for Newsweek these GOP no—goodniks are at long last being answered (albeit belatedly) by those pure souls of the Kerry camp, who are now at long last going to start doing their own brand of opposition research (albeit reluctantly):
Slime Time Live
In your face: Fueled by shadowy cash, the attacks get uglier and uglier. Why the mud's flying so thick and fast.
Sept. 20 issue — The rap on Mary Beth Cahill, even inside the presidential campaign she administers, is that she is too reserved—a schoolmarmish sort who rules with icy glances, who frets overmuch about "going negative" and who, therefore, is the wrong person to guide the fortunes of Sen. John Kerry during this hypernasty political season...
Stung by airstrikes on his Vietnam years, Kerry and his allies are fighting back. His sidekick on the plane is now John Sasso, a Boston consultant who derailed Joe Biden's campaign in 1988 by circulating evidence that the senator had plagiarized portions of his stump speech. On the ground, a hard—core Kerry group is setting up a new "oppo" squad. Tentatively called Sealords II—Kerry's Mekong Delta mission in Vietnam was known as Sealords—the group has a $1 million budget and will be housed at the Democratic National Committee, where, one of its members says, the mission will be "message, debate prep, attack, attack."
Part of the surely unintentional humor in this is that the Kerry people seemed to be ignorant of the fact that Kerry himself considered the Sealords mission a "war crime."
Here is a prime example from Kerry's debate with (true American hero) John O'Neill on the Dick Cavett Show, June 30, 1971:
MR. KERRY: Yes, we did participate in war crimes in Coastal Division 11 because as I said earlier, we took part in free fire zones, harassment, interdiction fire, and search—and—destroy missions. The concept of operations, I gather, changed somewhat from the time when I was there and the time when you were there later on. And I believe that we moved into operations called Silver Mace II and some others in which we were not quite involved in as —
But I know that there's no way in the world you can say that you didn't ride through the Ku Alon River or the Bodie River [phonetic spellings] and see huts along the sides of the rivers that were totally destroyed. Did you see them destroyed?
MR. O'NEILL: I think —
MR. KERRY: Were they destroyed?
MR. O'NEILL: May I answer the question?
MR. KERRY: Were they destroyed?
MR. O'NEILL: I'd like to answer that question very fully. On those particular raids, as you and I both know, John —
MR. KERRY: How do you know? Were you on them? Were you on them?
MR. O'NEILL: Yes, I was on the —
MR. KERRY: Sealords?
MR. O'NEILL: Absolutely correct.
MR. KERRY: Sealords raids.
MR. O'NEILL: That's absolutely correct.
MR. KERRY: And you never burned a village?
So is the Kerry camp admitting they are going to conduct war crimes? Is this truth in labeling at long last?
Does it take an "oppo squad" to raze a village?
Steve Gilbert 9 21 04
