Kerry Critic Criticized

Well, Good Lord, folks.

The Swift Vets story is still out there and it’s even being picked up by major newspapers – well not the New York Times or the Washington Post – but other major newspapers.

But that’s not exactly true. The Washington Post ran its first story on the Swift Boat Veterans’ criticisms of John Kerry today. In fact, the newspaper received military records, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, and are using those records to attack…

…one of the Swift Boat Veterans.

You know, I stopped reading the article right there. I don’t care what this Larry Thurlow’s military records say. I don’t care what the Washington Post’s conclusion is about what the records showed about his medals then and now.

Here’s what I do care about in this story. The Washington Post has decided not to investigate the Swift Boat Veterans’ charges at all. One of the top newspapers in America has decided, in fact, to investigate the accusers instead of the accusations. The Swift Boat Veterans have a book out which any Washington Post reporter could buy. This book is full of sworn testimony, attributed quotes, footnotes, and primary source documents. But all of that means absolutely nothing. In fact, it barely exists except as a springboard from which the WaPo can attack one of the people making the accusation.

That is not news reporting. That’s either incompetence or bias – you pick which one you want based on whether or not you think the editors of the Post intend to assist John Kerry or not.

Has the Washington Post filed a FIOA request to get any of John Kerry’s military records? No. In fact, this esteemed tabloid has barely even reported that the Kerry campaign refuses to release all of his records.

The Post, on the other hand, has not hesitated to mention Bush’s National Guard service. A simple Google News search on the words “Bush” and “national guard” shows 30 mentions in the paper in the last month. Is the President’s service still an open issue? You’d think so from the number of mentions the issue seems to get. But guess what? The president released 300 pages of documents on his service way back in February.

John Kerry, on the other hand, promised on national television, to make all of his military records available at his campagn headquarters back in April. The Boston Globe decided to take them up on it and guess what they found out?

He lied. What he really said, said the campaign spokesman, was that the only records the campaign would release were the records the Globe already had. When Kerry said “release” he meant…well, I don’t know what he meant and neither does anyone else who might speak English at a third-grade level. So, to this day, Kerry has released nothing – not a single piece of paper. No medical records. No evaluations. Nothing.

You’d think that maybe a newspaper might be interested in this, right? Sure, they’d be interested, in the sense that Andrew Sullivan might be interested in lesbian porn or intellectual consistency. Here’s how interested they are.

One of the Swift Boat Vets’ accusations was that John Kerry said on the floor of the Senate (and elsewhere) that he was in Cambodia on Christmas Day. Well, he wasn’t. He lied about it. He got hammered on it so badly that his story has actually changed. Turns out he wasn’t in Cambodia. He was just kind of near Cambodia. He was in Cambodia later on secret missions that no one else knows about and about which there seem to be no written records. Not even the men on his boat remember the boat being in Cambodia at any point. Now I might let this one slide, except that in his Senate testimoney he said how the incident was “seared – seared” into his memory. Folks, if that’s how John Kerry defines “seared”, I don’t want him anywhere near a barbecue grill. You’re going to get steak tartar.

So, okay. We have differing stories on Cambodia and the candidate has actually changed his original story (which gives him two stories all by himself). Might the voting public want to know about this? Could it perhaps speak to the candidate’s veracity, or at least his ability to remember things? I’ll ask a better question: Is this news?

The Post certainly doesn’t think so. Do a Google search on “Kerry” and “Cambodia” for the Washington Post and see how many stories jump out at you. Come on, go ahead. I’ll even settle for a story where the Post managed to find Kerry’s diary entries from that time (I mean, how hard could it be? A columnist for a British newspaper found a quote, for goodness sake!). Heck, I’ll make it easy. I’ll take any Washington Post article that mentions the words “Kerry” and “Cambodia” together – in any context. I’m not picky.

Did you find anything? Nope and neither did I. Do you think that’s a coincidence? Do you think that it’s journalistically responsible to run 30 news stories in a month noting Bush’s National Guard service and none noting Kerry’s Cambodia story? Do you believe that such a publication could call itself objective without being stuck by approximately a bazillion lightning bolts? I wouldn’t want to tempt God quite that much. Even if I were an athiest, I wouldn’t want to take that chance – not even were I wearing a rubber thong and standing on a stick of tires fifty feet underground.

But in fairness to the Post, and goodness knows I want to be fair to a newspaper I’m accusing of becoming the house organ of the Democratic Party, they’re not the only ones miles away from the story. Like I mentioned, the New York Times has said nothing about the Christmas in Cambodia story. Neither has the Associated Press or Reuters. And that’s just a small part of the Swift Boat Vets’ accusations. It also happens to be the part that Kerry has admitted is correct by changing his story, even if he is “nuancing” the story so hard it’s squealing like Ned Beatty in the deep Georgia woods.

So here’s how I’ve reduced this issue in my own thinking. Regardless of whether Kerry or the Swift Boat Veterans are right, the major news outlets have abdicated the job they say they hold so very very sacred. A real honest-to-God election year story has practically dropped into their laps and they wouldn’t even have to leave their desks to write the story. They could investigate the whole book and the subsequent stories in the blogosphere from their desks with a computer and a telephone. Could it get any easier for them?

Well, yeah. The allegations could be about President Bush instead of John Kerry. Then, at least, they’d do the investigation.

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Category: Oh, THAT liberal media., President George Bush