Bush Texas Air National Guard Memos are Forgeries

[Brainster]

While I don't dismiss the possibility of this crap, I also can't readily find a reliable source. And given the Swift Boat fraudulent attack, well, needless to say I'm skeptical.

So do you have a source besides the right wing lie-osphere?

From the introduction to the Boston Globe book on Kerry:

To Kerry, the war was "a great leadership lesson, a great human interpersonal lesson. Six guys on a boat, you know, helping to deliver a breech-birth child to a Vietnamese woman, and you are patching up a guy who was trying to shoot you three minutes earlier...."

BTW, the Brinkley book also fails to mention Kerry's medic duty on the guy who was trying to shoot him.

The car wash story comes from the NY Times lie-osphere:

Months later, a sympathetic profile in The Worcester Telegram summed up Mr. Kerry's predicament on a day he had been doing errands, ran out of gas, then headed to the car wash. "All of a sudden, water started washing over my shoes!" Mr. Kerry explained in the article. "The car was filling up with water! Water was coming out of every orifice! I could see the headlines: 'John Kerry, Former Congressional Candidate, Drowned in Car Wash."'

Deer Hunter? Mo Dowd:

He not only reads poetry — "I love Keats, Yeats, Shelley and Kipling" — he writes it. "I remember flying once; I was looking out at the desert and I wrote a poem about the barren desolation of the desert," he said. "I wrote a poem once about a great encounter I had with a deer early in the morning that was very moving." (Sometimes he shoots deer, sometimes he elegizes them.)

 

[Crossbow]

In the OP, I was mostly bitching about the NY Times interview of Blanchett, Redford, Mapes, and Rather, which I had in fact already seen. I'm still confused about what the director was trying to do in the movie. Mapes and Rather clearly were happy with their portrayal. I thought that allowing their avatars to give sanctimonious speeches about truth and duty while committing obvious journalistic malpractice made them look hypocritical to the point of delusion. If the director's intention was to make them out to be heroes, then he failed miserably. If his intention was to present them as they probably were in real life, then I think he succeeded brilliantly.

You have been bitching about quite a few things in this thread (the interview that you did read, the movie that you had not seen, the Kerry Campaign that you did see, and so on), but as for you OP, I thought that the last bit was the most bitching of all.

Specifically:

.. snipped for relevance ...

Is Hollywood really so delusional and/or ruthless that it will embrace this movie? Are liberals really so delusional and/or ruthless that they will treat such pathological liars as Rather and Mapes as heroes who have been persecuted?

Inquiring minds want to know.

 

[varwoche]

Kerry was a fabulist. He would see a movie and then say that some dramatic scene in the film happened to him.

Christmas in Cambodia? It's from Apocalypse Now.

That's not fair. According to Brinkley, who obtained Kerry's contemporaneous logs, Kerry was in Cambodia several times shortly after xmas. On top of which, the border was ill-defined. Based on the evidence, we can fairly say that Kerry is guilty of slight exaggeration.

Maybe there's other things Kerry said that demonstrate he's a fabulist (ala Reagan). Xmas in Cambodia is a weak example.

 

[sunmaster14]

Memo validity aside, does anyone doubt GW got out of going to Vietnam because political strings were pulled?

As a matter of fact, yes, I do. I refer you to the Thornburg-Boccardi report, pp. 46-37:

Significantly, Mapes indicated in the April 1999 email that she had been informed that there was no waiting list for President Bush's TexANG unit at the time he entered. She posited the "darkest spin" that then-Colonel Walter Staudt, then in charge of the 147th Fighter Interceptor Group, deliberately kept these spots open "to take in the children of privilege ... while maintaining deniability." Mapes told the Panel that she never found any proof for this theory.

...

Major General Hodges told Mapes that they "were hurting for pilots at that time" due to "big turnover." He said that there were "no strings pulled" to get Bush into TexANG.

...

Specifically, General Staudt told Mapes, according to her contemporaneous notes of their conversation, "No influence used to get [President Bush] in the Guard. Nobody called me."

 

[Wolrab]

I am gobsmacked that you went to a double feature of Dragnet and Spaceballs and complain about Spaceballs.....

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Chris Matthews interview with Robert Redford about the movie is excellent. He brings up more aspects than just, was the memo fraudulent? His comments about the difference between the newsrooms of Woodward & Bernstein and Mapes & Rather is insightful.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

From the introduction to the Boston Globe book on Kerry:



BTW, the Brinkley book also fails to mention Kerry's medic duty on the guy who was trying to shoot him.

The car wash story comes from the NY Times lie-osphere:



Deer Hunter? Mo Dowd:

I'm trying to find some straight forward evidence there supporting your claim Kerry has a Brian-Williams habit of making stories up and all I see is a bunch of complaints that he was a Vietnam War protester.

NY Times lie-osphere? How is that evidence?

Look, don't link to a bunch of political crap, post something that confirms Kerry lies on regular basis about his past besides the discredited Swift Boat lies.

 

[Brainster]

I'm trying to find some straight forward evidence there supporting your claim Kerry has a Brian-Williams habit of making stories up and all I see is a bunch of complaints that he was a Vietnam War protester.

NY Times lie-osphere? How is that evidence?

Look, don't link to a bunch of political crap, post something that confirms Kerry lies on regular basis about his past besides the discredited Swift Boat lies.

Do you actually believe he and his crew tried to help a woman deliver a breech-birth baby, and that Brinkley somehow forgot to mention this dramatic incident? Do you actually believe that he patched up someone who was trying to kill him only moments before? Do you believe that water was pouring into his vehicle from every orifice?

And did you know that the word "gullible" is completely made up, and does not appear in the dictionary?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Do you actually believe he and his crew tried to help a woman deliver a breech-birth baby, and that Brinkley somehow forgot to mention this dramatic incident? Do you actually believe that he patched up someone who was trying to kill him only moments before? Do you believe that water was pouring into his vehicle from every orifice?

And did you know that the word "gullible" is completely made up, and does not appear in the dictionary?

Post a link where he said it. Post a link exposing it as a lie. Post a link with his response.

I'm not going to look this crap up for you because I know from past experience your claims more often than not come from unreliable right wing distorces.

 

[varwoche]

I was immersed in Kerry/SBV back in 2004 and I was operating from memory here...

That's not fair. According to Brinkley, who obtained Kerry's contemporaneous logs, Kerry was in Cambodia several times shortly after xmas. On top of which, the border was ill-defined. Based on the evidence, we can fairly say that Kerry is guilty of slight exaggeration.

Maybe there's other things Kerry said that demonstrate he's a fabulist (ala Reagan). Xmas in Cambodia is a weak example.

... which isn't good, because even things that are seared into our minds can turn out to be false memories.

That said, even this is an overreach. Based on Kerry's contemporaneous logs, it's indeed possible he was in Cambodia on xmas.

 

[cmikes]

I was immersed in Kerry/SBV back in 2004 and I was operating from memory here...

... which isn't good, because even things that are seared into our minds can turn out to be false memories.

That said, even this is an overreach. Based on Kerry's contemporaneous logs, it's indeed possible he was in Cambodia on xmas.

Who, according to John Kerry, was President of the United States in December of 1968?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I was immersed in Kerry/SBV back in 2004 and I was operating from memory here...

... which isn't good, because even things that are seared into our minds can turn out to be false memories.

That said, even this is an overreach. Based on Kerry's contemporaneous logs, it's indeed possible he was in Cambodia on xmas.

Slight exaggeration is consistent with pretty much how we all remember the past. It differs considerably from the accusation that Kerry was a fabulist.

 

[dropzone]

Memo validity aside, does anyone doubt GW got out of going to Vietnam because political strings were pulled?

I don't, since most everybody with a lick of sense would have done what they could to avoid it, and I regret that this controversy has made it impossible to discuss the subject.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

I don't, since most everybody with a lick of sense would have done what they could to avoid it, and I regret that this controversy has made it impossible to discuss the subject.

My mother was pregnant with me when my father got drafted. He was a conscientious objector, so the Army put him in medic school. When the trainees were told to "buddy up for catheter training" he raised his hand and announced "I took 5000 micrograms of LSD the day I was inducted and haven't come down yet. I don't feel safe with this task."

Eventually they cycled him out as untrainable. Despite his 4-months-and-change time served, he qualified to die of cancer in a Section 8 apartment a few years ago. Part of the post-9/11 veterans program, as I understand it.