Reply #20: The swiftboats were answered [View All]

[karynnj]

The problem in August was they released a book with hundreds of unrelated and even inconsistent charges.
The campaign disproved most charges, including all the important ones and gave the info to the MSM. The cable stations continued after it was obvious that the group had lied repeatedly to give equal weight to proven liars as they gave to Kerry surrogates. Kerry also put 140 pages of naval records on the web site. Anyone who tried to make a fair assessment would have rejected the charges for one of three reasons.

1) Kerry did answer the charge in the spring by saying that his medals were not challenged for 35 years and that his line of command then thought well enough of his service to make him an aide to an admiral. (In fact, one of the documents on his web site was approval for the higher level of clearance needed for that position.)

2) Nixon investigated him 2 years later and found him squeaky clean - clearly as they were concerned about this highly decorated vet, they would have checked this out.

3) If anyone chose to wade through the 140 pages of records - there were many fitness reports - all very good - some signed by SBVT. As it's unlikely that they would lie to make a poor performer look extraordinary , it's more likely they were lying last year. (A mediocre report would have sufficed if they thought he was poor, but didn't want to hurt him.}

It's possible that a major emotional response by Kerry could have worked, but as it is the path not taken no one knows. McCain responded emotionally and that destroyed him. Kerry's teams methodical support showing the mendacity of the group probably would have worked 4 years ago. (Also, look at how the media backed away form the whole TANG story when non essential documents were shown to possibly be false. This discrepancy may be the best clue that there really was no right way for Kerry to respond.