Redstate

Posted at 11:58pm on May 9, 2008 Barack Obama has already been "Swift-Boated"

By Dan McLaughlin

This was originally posted as a comment to this.

You know, one of the funny things about watching the Democrats is their alternation between fear and bravado about whether Republicans will "Swift Boat" their candidate this time around. Orwell once said that "The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable.'" This is roughly the way the Democrats use the term "Swiftboating" to suggest a political attack of thoroughgoing fraudulence and impropriety concocted out of whole cloth. Never mind that each and every one of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was a combat veteran, including a number of highly decorated veterans; it's casually accepted that they were all liars, knaves and pawns.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | John Kerry | Swiftboating — Comments (26) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:42pm on Nov. 20, 2007 The Return of John Kerry and his Magic Hat

Magic Hat FTW!

By Ben Domenech

Over the weekend, in response to T. Boone Pickens' $1 Million challenge, John Kerry has reported for duty once again: this time, to prove that something the Swift Boat Veterans said in their 2004 ad campaign was wrong. Wrong, I say!

You can read the letters between Pickens and Kerry, and more on the changing etymology of the "swiftboating" term. But I am really looking forward to Kerry's efforts, considering they might finally give us all a chance to see that famous hat.

But to be honest, I kinda suspect Kerry's case is going to come down to a bunch of clippings from The New York Times.

Posted in 2004 | John Kerry | Swiftboating — Comments (14)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:54am on Mar. 10, 2007 LA Times smears America's most highly decorated living serviceman

By Jeff Emanuel

...but it sure does defend John Murtha!

The LA Times, no great speaker of the truth, and no friend of America, has crossed the line. "Columnist" Rosa Brooks, in a fit of continued rage over the 2004 swiftboating* of John "I'll pander to make the whole world love us (except the 38 countries I'm pretending didn't join us on our invasion of Iraq)" Kerry, lashed out at a panel which appeared at CPAC last week to discuss "The Left's Repeated Campaign Against the American Soldier," calling participants "key" members of "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the right-wing goon squad whose defamatory insinuations helped sink John Kerry's presidential campaign."

Her column, "The lunatic right returns," continues:

What's depressing about the reemergence of the Swifties, though, is that it's symbolic of the increasing takeover of the "conservative" movement by unprincipled, right-wing extremists.

Among these "extremists" Ms. Brooks so loathes (and lumps in as a "key discredited Swift boater") is George E. "Bud" Day (pictured at right; perhaps you recognize the medal around his neck). Who is that, you ask? Well, you might remember the name if you were alive during Vietnam, or if you pay any attention whatsoever to military history. But I'll let Jason of the blog Iraq Now take it from here:

Amazing. Here's the Los Angeles Times' vaunted layers of vetting and fact-checking at work for you: Bud Day's not even a swift boater**

Of course, the Los Angeles Times can't be bothered to tell the reader who Bud Day is, and what he's actually done.

So I will.

And he does, posting a portion of the unbelievable service record of Colonel Day, who earned "nearly 70 decorations and awards of which more than 50 [were] for combat" (and one was the Medal of Honor), and whose career included 5,000 flying hours, and combat duty in WWII, in Korea, and in Vietnam. After being shot down in 1967, Day suffered as a POW for 67 months (that's five and one-half years, for the mathematically challenged), with a two week "respite" after escaping from the North Vietnamese, during which, despite serious injury, he evaded the enemy all the way back into South Vietnam, "earning the distinction of being the only prisoner to escape from North Vietnam" - only to be recaptured and imprisoned until March 1973.

Read on . . .

Posted in Anti-war liberals | Heroism | Liberals | Media | Swiftboating — Comments (36) / Email this page » / Read More »