MSM's new attempt to help their candidate

[dude1394]

So it seems that the latest attempt by the media to help their candidate against the swifities is to claim that:

The Kerry campaign and its allies — obviously including the Los Angeles Times — are reacting to the second SwiftVets ad thusly (second bracketed portion in original):

The ad does not make it clear that Kerry is recounting stories that came to light during the so-called Winter Soldier Investigation in Detroit earlier in 1971, in which more than 150 honorably discharged veterans talked about war crimes they had committed in Southeast Asia. He was not claiming to describe events that he had witnessed.

AS beldarblog aptly points out that the swifities was about a 15-30 second ad that couldn't show all of kerry's testimony. So you would think the MSM would actually do a "little" reporting to see if the rest of his statement either supported or contradicted their attempt to help their candidate.

beldarblog
[quote]
Here's quite a bit more of what young Kerry said under oath to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 22, 1971, just to add some context that the SwiftVets short ad didn't have time for, and that the LAT certainly wants to ignore (boldface mine throughout):

STATEMENT OF JOHN KERRY, VIETNAM VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR Mr. Kerry: Thank you very much, Senator Fulbright, Senator Javits, Senator Symington, Senator Pell. I would like to say for the record, and also for the men behind me who are also wearing the uniforms and their medals, that my sitting here is really symbolic. I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of the group of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at this table they would be here and have the same kind of testimony.

I would simply like to speak in very general terms. I apologize if my statement is general because I received notification yesterday you would hear me and I am afraid because of the injunction I was up most of the night and haven't had a great deal of chance to prepare.

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country....

I would like to talk to you a little bit about what the result is of the feelings these men carry with them after coming back from Vietnam. The country doesn't know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history; men who have returned with a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped....

... I want to relate to you the feeling that many of the men who have returned to this country express because we are probably angriest about all that we were told about Vietnam and about the mystical war against communism....

We veterans can only look with amazement on the fact that this country has been unable to see there is absolutely no difference between ground troops and a helicopter crew, and yet people have accepted a differentiation fed them by the administration....

We are here in Washington also to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country, the question of racism, which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions also, the use of weapons, the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage in the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war, when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions, in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, the killing of prisoners, accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam....

Sometimes the context suggests that Kerry was indeed speaking only of "we" meaning himself and his fellow antiwar activists. But on balance, can he fairly be read as limiting himself that way? Can he fairly be read to have "describing only what the Winter Soldiers said themselves that they had done" when he said "we are more guilty than any other body" of war crimes?

Who, exactly, is he trying to kid? How stupid, exactly, do Sen. Kerry and his proxies think the American people are?

The simple fact is that the SwiftVets would have loved to add more context to their ad, I'm sure. The closer one looks at the full context, the more powerful the conclusion becomes that John Kerry's sworn, televised testimony in the United States Senate was an indictment of the entire American presence in Vietnam — from the lowest buck private to the Commander in Chief, and indeed beyond that to the entire nation.

[dude1394]

From investors daily

We'd like to know — and suspect the American people would, too.

You may be wondering: Why raise these questions now, in the heat of a campaign? Sadly, the major media have all but ignored questions of Kerry's record. They've been too busy looking for scandal in Bush's past and, more recently, attacking O'Neill and anyone else who dares question Kerry's glowing accounts of his service.

The bias is pervasive. As the Media Research Center, a media watchdog, pointed out, ABC, CBS and NBC did 75 stories on charges Bush was "AWOL" from the National Guard. They did nine on claims Kerry fibbed about his war record. Biased might be too kind a description.

The major media in this country are overwhelmingly liberal and refuse to ask the questions that need to be asked. They do their viewers and readers — and Kerry for that matter — a disservice.

If Kerry thinks he's being slandered, he should answer with facts —not with insults, threats and lawsuits.

We have questions, senator. We're ready for your answers.

[Drbio]

*bump*



Still waiting on the answers....and waiting......and waiting.....