Left discredits itself with attacks on Swiftvets

Power Line:

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters must be America's lamest media critic. We knew he couldn't argue; it now appears that he doesn't read so well, either.

What prompts this observation is this post by Boehlert in which he tries to rebut the observations I made here about the Swift Boat Vets and their campaign against John Kerry. The context was my applauding President Bush for his recess appointment of Sam Fox as Ambassador to Belgium; the Democrats had blocked Fox's appointment, purely out of spite, because Fox contributed to the Swift Boat Vets during the 2004 campaign. Here is what I wrote:

That the Vets have been "discredited" is a commonplace not only on the left, but in the mainstream media. Yet it is hard to find any explanation of where this "discrediting" lies. Most of what the Vets said in their ads has never been disputed, let alone discredited. Their most effective ad showed pictures of John Kerry in his anti-Vietnam war days, and quoted Kerry's own speeches. The ad was important because most voters had no idea that Kerry had accused his fellow servicemen of being war criminals. The Vets also exposed the lie of Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia," which Kerry now admits was false. Another ad showed officers who had ranked above Kerry in the chain of command, and who now consider him unfit to be commander in chief. How has that been discredited?

In fact, there was only one SBV ad the accuracy of which is even disputed, the first one that talked about the medals Kerry was awarded during his Vietnam service. Some of those facts are still uncertain, but the thrust of the ad, that Kerry's purported heroism in Vietnam was being grossly over-sold, was certainly true.

Boehlert quoted only the third sentence above, so if his readers were foolish enough to rely on him without actually reading what I wrote, there is some chance they wouldn't realize how dishonest he was.

So, how did Boehlert try to rebut the point I made? He cited a number of factual disputes that have been raised in connection with points made by the Swift Boat Vets. But every single one of the factual controversies noted by Boehlert relates, exactly as I wrote, to the subject of Kerry's medals. He never questions the accuracy of any of the Vets' seven other ads. Thus, Boehlert's post, far from rebutting my point, actually reinforces it. Unbelievable.

We could stop there, of course. But let's not. Instead, let's take a walk down memory lane, and remind ourselves of what the Swift Boat Vets said about John Kerry, apart from the relatively minor matter of his Purple Hearts. This was the ad that probably finished Kerry as a Presidential candidate; it simply shows John Kerry as he appeared in 1971, and quotes his own words....

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John then provides links to most of the Swiftvets' ads and challenges the contention that any of those listed have been discredited in any way. There is one ad for which there is a factual dispute, but it is a long way from being discredited. What happened with these ads is that the left was so eager to dismiss them that it seized on any alleged discrepancy to say taht the group and all its ads were discredited. This is dishonest argument, but it is apparently enough for many on the left.