Last Night on Hannity and Colmes, Swiftboat Financers T. Boone Pickens appeared to respond to John Kerry concerning his $1 Million challenge for anyone to find a lie in the ads by the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth.
But one wonders just what's he's willing to give someone who points out all the lies he perpetrated during this program?
First let's start with the easy stuff, Picken changing the terms of the deal as soon as Kerry accepted it.
The First Swiftboat Ad includes some of the following claims:
George Elliott: John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.
Al French: He is lying about his record.
Louis Letson: I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury.
Van O'Dell: John Kerry lied to get his bronze star...I know, I was there, I saw what happened.
Jack Chenoweth: His account of what happened and what actually happened are the difference between night and day.
Admiral Hoffman: John Kerry has not been honest.
Adrian Lonsdale: And he lacks the capacity to lead.
Larry Thurlow: When he chips were down, you could not count on John Kerry.
Colmes continues...
Colmes: As I understand it, the offer was that if you prove any one charge wrong I'll give you a million dollars.
Pickens: The charge was on the ads, Alan.
Colmes: Right, if you prove any of it wrong...
Pickens: That's right.
Colmes: Now when John Kerry comes forward you say you want his journal that he maintained during his service, you want to see his military records, specifically his service record from 1971-1978, and that he has to give a million dollars - but that wasn't part of the original deal.
Pickens: No, I didn't say that he had to give a Million Dollars
You didn't what? Then what
is this about? In order to disprove the accuracy of the Swift Boat ads, I will ultimately need you to provide the following:
1) The journal you maintained during your service in Vietnam.
2) Your military record, specifically your service records for the years 1971-1978, and copies of all movies and tapes made during your service.
When you have done so, if you can then prove anything in the ads was
materially untrue, I will gladly award $1 million. As you know, I have been a long and proud supporter of the American military and veterans' causes. I now challenge you to make this commitment: If you cannot prove anything in the Swift Boat ads to be untrue, that you will make a $1 million gift to the charity I am choosing -- the Medal of Honor Foundation.
Sincerely,
T. Boone Pickens
That's Lie Number One.
Pickens: It's like playing Poker, I put my hand on the table - he puts his hand on the table.
Colmes: But that wasn't part of the original deal.
Pickens: Why would he not want me to see his records, if he's so proud of his service?
Colmes: He did release his records in 2005, and he signed the 180 (Release form), and the Navy did an investigation which concured with John Kerry that the medals that he received just the way John Kerry said they were.
Pickens: (Chuckles)
Colmes: Why not believe the Navy investigation?
Pickens: He's the one that applied for the medals.
No he didn't.
There has never been any evidence that John Kerry submitted his own medal applications or wrote the after-action report himself.
From the Washington Post.Much of the debate over who is telling the truth boils down to whether the two-page after-action report and other Navy records are accurate or whether they have been embellished by Kerry or someone else. In "Unfit for Command," O'Neill describes the after-action report as "Kerry's report." He contends that language in Thurlow's Bronze Star citation referring to "enemy bullets flying about him" must also have come from "Kerry's after-action report."
O'Neill has said that the initials "KJW" on the bottom of the report "identified" it as having been written by Kerry. It is unclear why this should be so, as Kerry's initials are JFK. A review of other Swift boat after-action reports at the Naval Historical Center here reveals several that include the initials "KJW" but describe incidents at which Kerry was not present.
That's Two Lies.
Picken's: I just want a copy and I can't get a copy.
Kerry's Silver Star Citation is
HERE (pdf), his Bronze Star Citation is
HERE and his 3rd Purple Heart Casualty Report is
HERE. In 2005 Kerry signed his 180 forms and his Naval Records has released
to the Boston Globe who found
nothing to support the SBVT claime.
If Pickens wants a copy the Globe's number is 617-929-7900.
That's Three Lies.
Colmes then played a clip of Commander Adrian Lonsdale:
Lonsdale: Senator Kerry was among the finest of those Swiftboat drivers
Colmes then quotes from one Navy officer concerning John Kerry's Silver Star who told the Chicago Tribune - "John Kerry earned that Silver Star".
Pickens: But Alan do you remember that I challenged John Kerry on any of these things? I haven't said anything about his Silver Star.
If you haven't said anything about his Silver Star - why are you demanding access to all of his records, particularly when the ads included Capt George Elliot who was John Kerry's commander and
signed an affidavit claiming that Kerry's Silver Star award was illegitimate.
John Kerry was not forthright in Vietnam. For example in connection with his Silver Star, I was never informed that he simply shot a wounded Vietcong in the back
Elliot admitted to the Boston Globe that signing the affidavit was a mistake.
George Elliott (Globe account): It was a terrible mistake probably for me to sign the affidavit with those words. I'm the one in trouble here. . . . I knew it was wrong . . . In a hurry I signed it and faxed it back. That was a mistake.
Elliot then later signed
a second affidavit recanting that claim.
I do not claim to have personal knowledge as to how Kerry shot the wounded, fleeing Viet Cong
The problem here is that Kerry didn't receive his Silver Star for shooting that one enemy member of the Viet Cong he received it for counter-attacking rather than fleeing from an ambush.
The citations - based on what Elliott wrote up at the time - dwell mostly on Kerry's decision to attack rather than flee from two ambushes, including one in which he led a landing party.
The longest of the citations, signed by Vice Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, commander of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam, describes Kerry as killing a fleeing Viet Cong with a loaded rocket launcher. It says that as Kerry beached his boat to attack his second set of ambushers, "an enemy soldier sprang up from his position not ten feet from Patrol Craft Fast 94 and fled. Without hesitation, Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY leaped ashore, pursued the man behind a hooch, and killed him, capturing a B-40 rocket launcher with a round in the chamber."
Two other citations omit any mention of the killing.
If the issue is what was claimed in the SBVT ads, and Elliot's claim both in the ad and in the affidavit relate to the Silver Star citation - thereby by putting up the $1 Million Challenge Picken's did indeeed "Say something about Kerry's Silver Star", if admittedly by proxy.
That's Four Lies.
Hannity: Has he (Kerry) come forward with anything that he found, in the ads - you were very specific, that was not true?
Pickens: No
During the Election (on August 15th) John Kerry's campaign forcefully - although without much followup media coverage -
called the Swiftboat claims liesKerry: 30 Years ago official Navy reports and every person there documented my service in Vietnam, and awarded me the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple hearts. 30 Years ago, this was the plain truth - it still is and I still carry the shrapnel in my leg from a wound in Vietnam
More details on How the Kerry Campaign responded
at the time.">Additional Evidence
Last year, in 2006, Kerry
renewed his counter claims in the NY Times against SBVT using Navy records and Photos (showing the wound that led to his Bronze Star, the Rocket Launcher Carrying VietCom lying face up, not face down
as if he'd been shot in the back, evidence that his boat had indeed been in Cambodia on Christmas of 1969 and the original spot reports for his awards which were written by a "Lietenant Gibson", not Kerry himself.)
Kerry
has already come forward with numerous pieces of evidence which debunks the SBVT - so that makes this Picken's Lie Number Five.
Hannity: He has not released his Military record..
Pickens: He hasn't released anything
That's Six.
Pickens: He's just now answering something that happened three years ago. I don't want to Rush him into a response.
Picken's just now put out this reward.
That's Seven.
Hannity: Why wouldn't he want to give the money to a Charity for Veterans?
Why wouldn't he? He did offer to give the $1 Million
to the veterans.
Kerry: I would be more than happy to travel to Dallas to meet with you in a mutually agreed upon public forum, or would invite you to join me in Massachusetts for a public dialogue and then together we could visit the Paralyzed Veterans of America in Norwood and see firsthand how we can put your money to good work for our veterans.
This admittedly is a Lie by Hannity, not Pickens - so it shouldn't count against the running total, but the next one should.
Hannity: The only thing (SBVT) did was point that John Kerry, who slandered them in Vietnam, when they got back and accused them of cutting off limbs and heads. So isn't it really "He said, he said" except that you have a bunch of Swiftboat guys?
Pickens: The thing that you have - and I put up the money, along with 155,000 other people - and you had there John Kerry himself, in one of the ads, in his testimony before the Foreign Relations committee with his medals that he said latter he "threw away"
Before I get to the last of Picken's likes have to point out another of Hannity's own lies.
John Kerry didn't accuse his fellow Swiftboat drivers of "cutting off heads and mutilating bodies" as was alleged in the second swiftboat ad where they said "
He Betrayed Us". He wasn't talking about them, he was talking about the testimony he'd witnessed at the Winter Soldier Event. He didn't blame or betray the Troops, he blamed what happened on a Lack of Leadership.
On Aug. 20 the Kerry campaign issued a statement calling the ad an a smear and a distortion, saying it "takes Kerry’s testimony out of context, editing what he said to distort the facts."
There is some missing context. What's missing from the ad is that Kerry was relating what he had heard at an an event in Detroit a few weeks earlier sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and was not claiming to have witnessed those atrocities personally.
In August of 2006 the Los Angeles times released a report gathered from thousands of pages of classified documents relating to the Vietnam War which indicated that what Kerry heard that the Winter Soldier Event and told Congress in 1971
was absolutely true.The Times examined most of the files and obtained copies of about 3,000 pages -- about a third of the total -- before government officials removed them from the public shelves, saying they contained personal information that was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
In addition to the 320 substantiated incidents, the records contain material related to more than 500 alleged atrocities that Army investigators could not prove or that they discounted.
And for Picken's there is the troubling little fact that Kerry
didn't throw his medals away.
At issue is Kerry's participation in a 1971 protest at which several veterans discarded their medals in protest of the Vietnam War.
Kerry threw away the ribbons from his medals, along with the actual medals of two veterans who were not able to attend the ceremony, according to the candidate's Web site.
He threw away his ribbons, not his medals - his ribbons.
That's Lie Number Eight - all in less than 7 minutes. If Kerry were like Picken's and decided to
change the rules of the arrangement on the fly he could demand Picken's personally pay for all of his Lies on the Hannity and Colmes show which would cost him a cool $8 Mil!
But fortunately, Kerry isn't the kind of low-life that Picken's is.
Oh and by the way, Kerry isn't the only one who says these guys are liars. John McCain - way back in the days of 2004 - also said that the SBVT ads were dishonest.
McCain : I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable. As it is none of these individuals served on the boat (Kerry) commanded. Many of his crewmates have testified to his courage under fire. I think John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam.
Ever since Kerry spoke Truth to Power 30 years ago, people like John O'Neill have been dogging him for revenge. In 2004 they finally got it, and managed to prevent him from becoming our President. It's well past time that Kerry had his full due and they paid - in cash - for their endless vendetta.
Vyan
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