NIGHTLINE - UPDATED INFO RE SHOW RE SBV- I *THINK* THIS IS GOOD

[Tesibria]

See http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Vote2004/story?id=166434&page=1

Vietnamese witnesses contradict SBV claims....

Clips...
Less than a kilometer upriver is Nha Vi, a small hamlet. Vo Van Tam, now 54, was a local Viet Cong commander during the war. According to him, the area was a hotbed of guerrilla activity. They had recently been reinforced by a 12-man unit, supplied with small arms and one B-40 rocket launcher. He said the reinforcements had been dispatched from provincial headquarters specifically to target the Swift boats.

According to Vo, there were at least 20 Viet Cong soldiers at Nha Vi there that day. "There were 12 soldiers from the provincial level and eight from the district level," he said.

His wife, Vo Thi Vi, 54, said Feb. 28, 1969, is a day that the villagers of Nha Vi hamlet will never forget. "Everything was destroyed," she said. "There's no houses left. They leveled everything. There was no leaves left. The fighting was very fierce."

According to the citation for Kerry's Silver Star, when the boats approached the hamlet, "a B-40 rocket exploded close aboard PCF 94" — Kerry's boat. He "personally led a landing party ashore in pursuit of the enemy," the citation says, before commending Kerry's "extraordinary daring and personal courage" for "attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire."

That account is disputed by Swift boat veteran John O'Neill, author of "Unfit for Command," who maintains in his book that the statement "is simply false. There was little or no fire."

***
Villagers say this is what they saw:

"Firing from over here. Firing from over there. Firing from the boat," Vo Thi Vi told Nightline.

She was only a couple hundred yards away when a Swift boat turned and approached the shore, she said, adding that the boat was unleashing a barrage of gunfire as it approached.

"I ran," she recalled, "Running fast. … And the Americans came from down there, yelling 'Attack, Attack!' And we ran."

Her husband Tam said the man who fired the B-40 rocket was hit in this barrage of gunfire. Then, he said, "he ran about 18 meters before he died, falling dead."

***

[Fridays Child]

1. O'Neil needs to be exposed and publicly shamed...

...for the lying traitor that he is.

[rumguy]

2. I want the SBVT destroyed publicly

I want their names to be mud.

[nicktom]

3. This sounds like must see TV,

it would seem to show John O'Neil as a bald face lier. I think it's great to see ABC go to this length to get the facts.

[juliagoolia]

12. will they also do the against the war

activities justice too.. will they show younger americans what america was like during that time ..what the temp of the nation was..

that my lai was before the vvaw march and winter soldier. will they? Will they show that the Senate asked Kerry up to talk and set up Cameras on him?? Will they?

I can only hope

[SammyWinstonJack]

14. Will they?

Hope floats!

[evilqueen]

13. O'Neill *is* a bald-faced liar

He was a shill for Nixon. He had his 15 minutes of fame on the Dick Cavett Show back in the Seventies. Now he writes this book, still pushing the lies, trying to get his name out there again... still chasing Kerry with a lie.

I am ashamed to know this jerk is of Irish descent, he gives us all a bad name. In the olden days, he would be an outcast from the O'Neill clann... prey to the worst dregs of Irish social structure that then existed.

(I'm a MacDermot, we were aligned with the O'Connors, descendants of a long line of Irish hero-chieftains.)

[jackstraw45]

4. CALL every RW'er you know who has brought this up

This is sounding MUCH better than it did a few hours ago.

[BillZBubb]

5. But those were phony Vietnamese.

They were "forgeries" made to make Kerry look good. Those sandals they were wearing couldn't have come from Vietnam. They were probably Kerry workers in disguise. The press has been duped again. You can't trust them.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

8. New Roman sandals for the Times?

[mzmolly]

6. I'm surprised that Sinclair didn't demand Nightline not air this.

When is it on BTW?

[Ivote]

7. Nightline Tonight

11:30 pm Eastern
:kick:

[brooklynite]

9. Well, GEE, you can't trust the Vietnamese...

after all, they're a bunch of commies who want Kerry elected.

...at least, that's what I expect the merry folks at FR will say.

[RafterMan]

10. Also remember

that Ted has a personal feud with the Sinclair guys. This could be a preemptive strike against their agenda.

[BUSHOUT]

11. I figured the EMAIL NIGHTLINE!! reaction this morning might be premature..

We need to be careful of knee-jerkiness a' la CBS "The Reagans".

Now, we'll see if the media gives this any attention.