Third SwiftVet Ad

The SwiftVet who served on John Forbes Kerry's boat -- the man the media is forever claiming simply does not exist -- calls him a liar on his one-man SuperCommando Cambodia Incursion.

Related: Kausfiles thinks he spies a sea-change in the Conventional Wisdom.

But don't get cocky yet. The Conventional Wisdom is always wrong. That's why they call it conventional wisdom rather than just "wisdom."

Connected to the Main Item by "Shadowy Links": Not-glaringly-unfair-or-biased AP account of John O'Neill.

John Forbes Kerry's first line of defense -- let the liberal media completely ignore the story and thereby suppress it -- has failed.

His second line of defense -- let the liberal media "debunk" the story using selective evidence and charges of "partisan interests" (all the while failing to comprehend that perhaps John Forbes Kerry's campaign has a "partisan interest" in his alleged record as well) also just jumped the shark.

The third and last line of defense is a direct personal refutation of the charges. He's always hoped to avoid that, and it's not clear he can convincingly manage it, even with his liberal media Spirit Squad cheering him on.

But They're Still Trying, Bless Their Hearts: Newsweek, one of the most reliably partisan rags around, claims that stuff we already knew (the official reports say that there was "small arms fire" during Kerry's Bronze Star engagement) proves the case that Thurlow & Co. are lying.

What about the obvious rejoinder that Kerry wrote the after-action report?

Lambert’s surviving military records do not include the initial recommendation for this medal, so there is no way to know who filled the required role of witness to vouch for Lambert’s actions. But the citation contains such detail about the actions of both Thurlow and Lambert—actions that Kerry cannot have known since his launch was on the far side of the river—that it seems implausible Kerry could have written either the recommendation or this citation.

Oh, I see, it "seems implausible." There's no way that a man writing an after-action report for the entire sqaudron of boats could possibly have asked his fellow officers about their actions during the events before writing his report.

I mean, there you go right there. Check and mate. It "seems implausible" that Kerry asked Thurlow, "What were you doing during this event?"

This ridiculous bit of fancy relies upon the unstated and obviously-wrong assumption that a "report" can only contain reports of events witnessed first-hand, sort of like sworn court testimony. This is absurd; were this the case, no unit could submit a single after-action report, because each and every man would have to submit a personal report of what he personally did and saw.

Obvious, an after-action report for the entire unit will contain some reports of things seen by all and some reports of things seen by only some of the men-- not everything will be personally witnessed by the writer. It is, you see, a report, gathered from the unit as a whole, not the personal eyewitness testimony of the man writing the report.

This is so obvious that John Barry of course needs to suggest this assumption while not actually stating it; were he to state it, it would be blatantly obvious he's just making silly shit up.

If that's John Barry's notion of what a "report" is -- direct eyewitness testimony only -- than how on earth did he write his own report?

Since John Barry was not a direct eyewitness to any of the events he reports upon, it "seems implausible" that he could possibly have written this article. After all, "reporting" requires being a first-hand eyewitness to the events reported; as it "seems implausible" that John Forbes Kerry could possibly have written a report about events he did not personally or directly witness, it must also "seem implausible" that John Barry wrote his report.

Please tell me this is a joke. This is outrageous. The press is inventing rationales that "seem implausible" to "debunk" the SwiftVets.

posted by Ace at 04:39 PM

| Access Comments