If it’s true that you are known by the enemies you make, Kerry seems to be pretty solid: when the president singles out an unknown Navy vet for his enemies list and creates a group to undermine his credibility, that’s credibility itself.
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth – Disinfopedia:
“Nixon’s chief counsel, Charles Colson, didn’t just tap John E. O’Neill to attack Kerry, he also formed an entire group around him called Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace: [2]
“[Kerry] was an immediate celebrity. He was also an immediate target of the Nixon administration. Years later, Chuck Colson — who was Nixon’s political enforcer — told me, ‘He was a thorn in our flesh. He was very articulate, a credible leader of the opposition. He forced us to create a counterfoil. We found a vet named John O’Neill and formed a group called Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace. We had O’Neill meet the President, and we did everything we could do to boost his group.”
‘Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’ be seen as merely a 21st century reinvention of Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace.
Joe Klein, “The Long War of John Kerry,” The New Yorker, January 5, 2004 (Courtesy of Matt Gunn and Mike Stark)
I wonder if the folks who leave comments like this are unwitting dupes of a clumsy smear or if they know they’re lying.
When I lived in the south, it wasn’t hard to find folks for whom the Civil War had never really ended: some attribute this to the stock from which many southerners descended — ill-used Scots and Irish who had a lot of practice at nursing grudges and inculcating them into new generations. When I read about this kind of thing here in the 21st century — some ugly Nixonian hangover — I wonder if, for some, Watergate and Nixon’s Imperial Presidency will ever end. The fact these facts have been out for quite awhile but unremarked, that O’Neill’s ties to Nixon and Colson and his years toiling in the Republican vineyard have been documented but not factored into the attacks on Kerry’s service, is frustrating. Ignoring these attacks isn’t enough: it’s not as if these are casual comments by disinterested veterans. It’s a calculated astroturf campaign that should be exposed for what it is. These kinds of attacks on the truth, on the facts, need to be stopped.