corrente

This is the first in an erratic series of post on the "Swiftboat Vets We Smear In The Name Of Truth" phenomenon. Some of it I wrote last night, when I was feeling fairly despairing that there was any way to really counter it. I don't feel that way now, as subsequent posts will suggest. In part, I feel better because I spent the night rading "Cruel And Unusual" Mark Crispin Miller's new book. I hadn't intended to read all of it, only to begin it; I couldn't put it down, it's that kind of book. Of all the excellent and many books I've read in regard to Bush & Co, this one strikes me as the most important, or perhaps most central would be a better image. It's a barn burner. It builds on some of his observations of Bush in the Dyslexicon, but this one goes so much further. It is hands down the best analysis of the Bush/Rove propoganda/slime machine, and its Republican antecedents, and what it is doing to our democratic republic. Nothing good.

The book is not going to get good reviews. It is far too hard on the press for that. And Miller dares to talk about the ways in which we are becoming more like societies that eventually became....well, think non-four letter "f" word. We need to make this a best seller. Truly. More to come.

This post is about the first Purple Heart. That myterious fourth man the Swift Vets keep claiming was on that skimmer in December of 1968 somewhere in the Mekong Delata, has emerged to tell Robert Novak that it's all true. And he's a Retired Rear Admiral. Could it be that John Kerry has finally been nailed? Because if he lied about this.....

Retired Rear Adm. William L. Schachte Jr. said Thursday in his first on-the-record interview about the swift boat veterans dispute that "I was absolutely in the skimmer" in the early morning on Dec. 2, 1968, when Lt. (j.g.) John Kerry was involved in an incident that led to his first Purple Heart.

"Kerry nicked himself with a M-79 [grenade launcher]," Schachte said in a telephone interview from his home in Charleston, S.C. He said, "Kerry requested a Purple Heart."

At the time of the incident, it should be pointed out, Schachte wasn't an admiral, he was, like Kerry, lieutenant junior grade. However, he claims that he was in command of the boat, and that this particular type of mission was his idea, and thus his baliwick.

Kerry supporters said no critics of the Democratic presidential nominee ever were aboard a boat with him in combat. Washington lawyer Lanny Davis has contended that Schachte was not aboard the Boston whaler and says the statement that Schachte was aboard in Unfit for Command undermines that critical book's credibility.

Schachte until now has refused to speak out publicly on this question and agreed to give only two interviews. One was a television interview with Lisa Meyers of NBC News, for broadcast Thursday night. The second was a print interview with me, for publication today.

Schachte described the use of the skimmer operating very close to shore as a technique that he personally designed to flush enemy forces on the banks of the Mekong River so that the larger swift boats could move in. Around 3 a.m. on Dec. 2, Schachte said, the skimmer -- code-named "Batman" -- fired a hand-held flare. He said that after Kerry's M-16 rifle jammed, the new officer picked up the M-79 and, "I heard a 'thunk.' There was no fire from the enemy," he said.

Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis are the two enlisted men who said they were aboard the skimmer and did not know Schachte. However, two other former officers interviewed Thursday confirmed that Schachte was the originator of the technique and always was aboard the Boston whaler for these missions.

Grant Hibbard, who as a lieutenant commander was Schachte's superior officer, confirmed that Schachte always went on these skimmer missions and said, "I don't think he [Kerry] was alone" on his first assignment. Hibbard said he had told Kerry to "forget it" when he asked for a Purple Heart.

Ted Peck, another swift boat commander, said, "I remember Bill [Schachte] telling me it didn't happen" -- that is, Kerry getting an enemy-inflicted wound. He said it would be "impossible" for Kerry to have been in the skimmer without Schachte.

"I was astonished by Kerry's version" [in his book Tour of Duty] of what happened Dec. 2, Schachte said Thursday. When asked to support the Kerry critics in the swift boat controversy, Schachte said, "I didn't want to get involved." But he said he gradually began to change his mind when he saw his own involvement and credibility challenged, starting with Davis on CNN's "Crossfire" on Aug. 12.

The next time he saw Kerry after the first Purple Heart incident, Schachte said, was "about 20 years" later on the U.S. Senate subway in the basement of the Russell Senate Office Building. "I called, 'Hey, John.' He replied, 'Batman.' I was absolutely amazed by his memory." He said they "talked about having lunch" but never did it.

Schachte said he never has been contacted by or talked to anybody in the Bush-Cheney campaign or any Republican organization. He said he has been a political independent who votes for candidates of both parties.

The first point a fair minded audience member for these SwiftVets Follies ought to make is that Lanny Davis no doubt took the position he did because there is no official record that Schachte was on the boat, and the two enlisted men who've said they were with Kerry that night have also said they don't remember there being more than three people on the skimmer. It may well be that Schachte was on the boat, perhaps staying in the background, supervising the less experienced Lt. As Bob Sommerby would say, I don't know what the truth is, and neither does Bob Novak, and perhaps, even the three to four men who were there that night in Vietnam.

What Mr. Schacte's sudden appearance on the scene does illustrate superbly is how difficult it is to defend against a smear like Mr. ONeil & Co's. Not that I can't point out right away some curious aspects of Schacte's testimony as taken down by Kovak; to call it an "interview," I fear, could suggest Mr. Kovak is something of an embellisher himself.

Notice, for instance, that the right honorable Admiral is supposed to have spoken at the time with others, as per Mr. Peck, about the fact that John Kerry didn't receive a wound from enemy fire. Okay. But what was the context for that or any other such conversations? Was John Kerry going around telling everyone he'd been hit by enemy sharpnel? Or was the context his supposed attempt to ask for a Purple Heart, as per Grant Hibbard, who was the commander of both Kerry and Schachte? If so, how is it possible that Schachte, Peck, and Hibbard wouldn't have been aware the regulations for awarding of a Purple Heart at that time did not differentiate between enemy and friendly fire, and in fact, even "self-inflicted" wounds were elegible if they were received in the course of attempting to fire on the enemy. And commanders don't apply for a Purple Heart for their men; they forward any medical report that involves an injury that came from engagement in combat with the enemy.

Of course Schachte claims there was no enemy fire. And if there were not, then clearly it would not have been a wound involved in combat. But then why would Kerry have picked up a grenade launcher and attempt to fire it, and at whom?

Here's how Pat Runyon remembers how Kerry was wounded:

Runyon said Kerry was wounded after one vessel tried to avoid an inspection.

"Lt. Kerry said, 'I'm going to pop a flare, and when I do, I want that engine started,' " Runyon said. But the outboard would not crank. Meanwhile, the sampan's crew steered it to the riverbank, and people started running on the shore. Runyon said shooting broke out.

Somehow, Kerry's weapon stopped firing. Runyon thinks he ran out of ammunition. He said Kerry bent down to pick up another gun and got hit in the arm.

"It wasn't a serious wound," Runyon said, and Kerry was able to start shooting again. When the firefight was over, Runyon said Kerry told him all he felt was a "burning sensation."

Runyon said he remembers the incident clearly because it was the first time he had been in combat. "I hadn't seen any kind of action or anything," he said.

He said Kerry, Zaledonis and himself were the only men aboard. When he got the motor started, they took off. He said the outboard was in bad condition and did not have a handle to steer with. "I had to wrap my arms around it, like hugging it, to turn it," he recalled.

You don't have to look all that carefully at both men's narrative to realize that there is quite a bit of overlap. The retired rear admiral talks about a flare, and about Kerry's rifle jamming; interestingly, he doesn't offer any sort of narrative to make sense of the two events. What was the flare for? I've never held any sort of gun in my hand, but I assume the way one finds out one's rife has jammed is by attempting to use it. What was Kerry's target? A tranquil shoreline from which nothing had yet been flushed? Also, it isn't difficult to grasp that in a situation like that of the Swift Boats, where they were patrolling, or ferrying personnel and equipment, what constituted "combat," was up for definition. The fact is that despite a description which sounds like support of forward combat units, the Swift Boats saw dangerous combat action all the time.

And if Schachte had conversations at the time about Kerry's wrong version of that December night, why was the retired admiral so startled to read of Kerry's version of the incident as reconstructed by historian Brinkley in his book? Even so, Schachte claims that when first approached about joining the Swift Vets, he was reluctant to get involved. Not until that damn Lanny Davis started to appear on TV did he rouse himself to join the effort. Then, why, I wonder, is his version of what is wrong with Kerry's first Purple Heart in O'Neil's book, used as evidence that Kerry is a liar and got his medals falsely. Hadn't Schachte essentially "come forward" long before Lenny Davis took to the airways?

I'm not prepared to call a retired rear admiral a liar. On the other hand, the notion that I've already begun to see Novak pushing on CNN, that Schachte's version of events proves that the two enlisted men who support Kerry's version are liars, or that Kerry's first Purple Heart, is unearned are outrageous claims, that themselves rise to the level of a "lie," if for no other reason than the refusal of Kovak, like so many of the blogs and pundits who are determined to keep this smear alive, to confront the contrary evidence, of which there is plenty.

And keep it alive they intend to. While looking for that list of SwiftVet members, I noticed they are planning to have an anti-Kerry rally in Washington DC in September.

UPDATE: MSNBC showed Lisa Myers' interview with Schachte last night, on three of its evening programs. She did a fair job of presenting the contrary evidence, but in general, both on Hardball, and especially on Scarborough's outrageously unbalanced reportage, or whatever the hell Rich Kaplan thinks is going on during that hour of prime time, Kerry has taken a terrible beating.

No matter how many times Matthews is corrected by various of his guests he continues to insist that Kerry personally called his fellow vets war criminals who committed atrocities, and that in his testimony before Congress he was extremely angry and used harsh, extreme, leftist language. Who really thinks that Chris Matthews has ever sat down to watch the testimony, or read through it, other than to find phrases which he can tear out of context to support his a priori view. Perhaps we should be sympathetic, though. Apparently Chris's brother, who fought in "Nam," had a hard time when he got back, and the brother and his wife blame John Kerry for that. Of course, John Kerry had no problems upon his return; no terrible memories, no guilt about those left behind, no friends who didn't come back, and what could be more fun for a well-to-do, well-connected ambitious young man pay no attention to his own immediate career plans, and instead to hang out with other scruffy young vets with stories to tell and become part of a protest movement that even many of those who wanted us out of Vietnam resented. (Why do rightwingers always seem to think that grassroots organizing and being part of a protest movement is such fun? It has its moments, but there are always things you'd rather be doing. ) You might think that Chris Matthews, ever the savvy politico, would at least be able to see through the argument that Kerry's protest period was actually part of a opportunistic masterplan to jumpstart his own political career? No. On Thursdays program, I think, he mentioned that there was no downside for Kerry politically, not in a hard left state like Mass., one of only two that went to McGovern.

Nor, apparently, in Matthews view, before John Kerry told them in such harsh, leftist language, had the American public any prior notice everything going on in Vietnam might not be entirely copacetic - no Buddhist monks setting themselves on fire, no repression by the autocratic Diem regime, no assisnationn of Diem, no statement by JFK in regards to S. Vietnam, that the war couldn't be won " ...unless a greater effort is made by the Government to win popular support..." and that...." In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it.", no Madame Nu, no tiger cages, no Gulf of Tonkin incident that wasn't, no Tet offensive, no My Lai, no tiger cages, no Pentagon Papers, which showed, let's be clear about this, that what the CIA, based on intelligence gathered on the ground in Vietnam, was saying about the impossibility of winning that conflict, was pretty much what the war skeptics, in and out of government, had also been saying all along, what John Kerry would say in 1971, and what has been proved to be true about Vietnam, over and over again.

This is not to say that the North Vietnamese weren't communists, although there is some indication that had the western powers right after the end of World War 2 realized immediately that the age of colonialism was over, that even under Ho Chi Minh, some form of social democracy might have been possible, but that was not to be; nor is it to say that the North didn't betray its own supporters in the South when it united the country, nor that its own treatment of its own people was a human rights horror story, and continues to be problematic, to say the least. A powerful argument can be made, which you rarely hear these days, but which John Kerry was making in 1971, that our continuing presence in Vietnam only made it more likely that the eventual reunification of the country would be bloody and hellish. And God knows it was.

But when you hear someone like Ben Stein, as I did the other night, spinning the tale that the real tragedy of Nixon's resignation and the whole Watergate bruhaha was that it meant Nixon and Kissenger were unable to engage on behalf of the south when the North Vietnamese made their final move, and more tragic still, could not thereby stop the Cambodian genocide by the Khmer Rouge, run for the history books. You will find almost no evidence to back up this theory, unless in something published by Regenery. Kissinger knew perfectly well when he signed the Paris Accords that the north would soon force the south to reunite with it, and both Nixon and Henry knew that there was no way in hell, and both of them were well acquainted with the Satanic, the American people would support re-entrance into Vietnam. The Accords were nothing more nor less than our surrender, tarted up, like an old war whore, with a bit of makeup here and there, in a hopeless attempt to disguise the total wreck of our ambitions in southeast Asia. And don't get me started on Cambodia. Read William Shawcross's "Sideshow" if you haven't yet. And no one can accuse Shawcross of being hard left. After Vietnam got rid of the Khmer Rouge, Shawcross went back to Cambodia and reported, in a NYRB article, about the museum the Vietnamese had set up to display the history of the genocide, correctly slamming the new occupiers for their attempt to place the horrors of the Khmer Rouge in a Nazi, Fascist context, when they were clearly as pure an expression of communist/Leninist/Stalinist genocidal terror as one could ever expect to look upon. And, by the way, Shawcross was an angry, determined supporter of Blair and invading Iraq, though Shawcross' arguments were almost exclusively based on Saddam's human rights record. I only add this last point to remind us all that yes, political discourse cannot be accurately described by an inept verbal cartoonist like Chris Matthews.

For trying to say some of all that to the American people by testifying in front of the harsh, angry, hard left body, the Senate of the United States of America, John Kerry deserves to be lied about, he deserves to be called a liar, a fabulist, a coward, a phony, a fake; no one at the convention should have even mentioned Vietnam, now Democrats deserve everything they're getting in the way of in-coming. So says Chris Matthews, so says, and worse, the voices of Scarborough Country.

Are we really going to let them (the Republicans and the SCLB) get away with another Big Lie, another super smear, just like all the ones they launched against Clinton and then Gore?

UPDATE Alert reader Brian CB comments:

I sort of wondered why there would be two lieutenants on a 14-foot boat. Isn't one lieutenant enough?

Details, Brian, details!