Today's editorial from the Washington Post denigrating the Swiftvets is a mastery of slicing just enough off the truth to retain the sheen of credibility without actually addressing the issues that the Swiftvets have raised. First, the editorial attempts to portray a fairness in its opening paragraphs that it quickly discards later on:
.
Quote:
|
To the extent, then, that there are legitimate questions about Mr. Kerry's behavior -- either in Vietnam or back home as a prominent antiwar activist -- those are fair game. Mr. Kerry's four-plus months in Vietnam made for an unusually short tour. He used his third Purple Heart to go home early, and his wounds were relatively superficial.
|
After that, it's Katy bar the door, as the Post goes into full damage control -- protecting its own lack of coverage on the Swiftvets as a subtext to attacking them:
Quote:
|
But a new assault on Mr. Kerry -- in an ad by a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and in a new book -- crosses the line in branding Mr. Kerry a coward and a liar. This smear is contradicted by Mr. Kerry's crew mates, undercut by the previous statements of some of those now making the charges and tainted by the chief source of its funding: Republican activists dedicated to defeating Mr. Kerry in November.
|
Ah, yes, those eeeeeeeevil Republican activists! Why, one of them donated $100,000 to the Swiftvets, accounting for two-thirds of their funding prior to the book's publication. (They've raised about $200,000 since from 5,000 individual donors.) It's a ludicrous non-sequitur; the Swiftvets' testimony is what should be at issue here, not a single donation from a Republican. Does the Post seriously think that Democrats would line up to assist over 200 veterans from Viet Nam tell the truth about John Kerry? And will the Post be as dismissive of allegations from MoveOn, which has been funded to the tune of millions of dollars by rabid partisan George Soros?