Redstate - Inside the Swift Boat Veterans Latest Move By: krempasky · Section: Election 2004
Ed Note: This report written by RedState reader & Editor Dave Bufkin
Politics is usually an ugly business but every now and then you are privileged to meet some truly exceptional American heroes. Last Saturday Red State was privileged to be the only blog allowed to cover the filming of the last – and most devastating of the Swift Boat ads. (In fact, there was only one other media outlet present)
We spent the better part of an hour in an intense conversation with a genuine hero named Dr. Louis Letson. You can not spend more than five minutes with this charming retired family-practice physician from Northern Alabama without becoming convinced of one central fact. That this Dr. Letson is the genuine article. There is no guile at all in this man.
In fact, we were to get this impression over and over again as we circulated among the 90 or so former Swift boaters and POW’s who had gathered to make one final appeal to the country that John Kerry should not be trusted as commander-in-chief.. It is not about revenge or partisan advantage. These people want America to know the truth. They sincerely don’t think John Kerry is morally equipped to be commander-in-chief.
This is what makes their campaign so crippling to Kerry. The honesty of the Swifties doesn’t have to be proved. It’s apparent.
One quickly senses that Dr. Letson and the others all had better places to be. But the same sense of duty that placed them in harm’s way in Vietnam 30 years ago, compelled to stand under the lights for more than four hours in a drafty sound stage in a Washington, DC studio while the finishing touches were put on the Sift Boaters’ (now merged with the POWs) last ad.
We have agreed not to discuss details of this ad in advance. We can report that it will be the most crippling blow delivered so far from a group that almost certainly single-handedly derailed the initial momentum of the Kerry campaign in August.
And thanks to an overwhelming spontaneous deluge of gifts from fellow veterans and fellow citizens, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are now financially prepared to buy enough airtime to have a real impact.
To those who say the Swift Boat charges have already done all the damage they can to Kerry and the campaign has moved on to other fronts, we say, wait until you see this ad!
We found Dr. Letson charming in a folksy and engagingly avuncular style. There is nothing of the crank or hothead about him. (One senses he is the polar opposite of the fevered Col. Burkett, who along with the ranting Wesley Clark, seem to embody the military support of the Kerry campaign.)
Dr. Letson clearly remembers the day in 1968 that John Kerry appeared at his medical facility at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam. Keep in mind that while the Kerry campaign and its surrogates carp that Dr. Letson's name does not appear on Kerry's medical report, Dr. Letson was the only doctor stationed at that particular facility at the time of Kerry's injury.
He recalls a barely injured Kerry insisting on seeing a doctor for a wound so minor that any naval “hospital man” could have treated it. (Dr. Letson makes no specific accusation here but recalls that the rules for awarding a Purple Heart include a suffering a wound severe enough to require the services of a doctor.)
He also recalls that witnesses to the events surrounding Kerry’s wound clearly (and even mockingly) disputed Kerry’s account of enemy fire leading up to the wound.
Were standards relaxed and medals awarded in Vietnam as a cure for sagging morale? Almost certainly. Does Kerry’s case stand out even so? Significantly, Dr. Letson can recall no other wound so minor that ever merited a Purple Heart. In fact, he can’t recall a single other instance in which a Purple Heart was awarded over the objection of an immediate commanding officer, as was the case with Kerry.
The Kerry campaign's response to Dr. Letson's account is to publicly question his medical qualifications. This is a vile and scurrilous lie – even by modern campaign standards. Dr. Letson was a fully accredited physical while serving in Vietnam, although the Kerry campaign has repeatedly suggested he was only pretending to be a doctor.
In fact, it is on the basis of such untrue charges against the Swifties that most of the main stream media embrace the position that the Swift Boat vets have been discredited. FACT: almost none of the Swift Boat accounts have been challenged in any substantive way. (See Beldar for more information) And none of Dr. Letson’s account has been challenged by any credible source.
Dr. Letson reports no personal satisfaction from enrolling with the Sift Boat veterans. It has been a taxing and sometimes grueling experience. He has lost lifelong friends, received hate mail and has been taken away from a peaceful retirement lifestyle in his beloved north Alabama home. The Dr. has even been cruelly disappointed in the one fringe benefit he expected from notoriety – to be interviewed by an “attractive lady reporter” (“you know, like that Paula Zahn”). Sadly, your Red State correspondents did nothing to redress this disappointment.
Dr. Letson, as he has in past Swift Boat spots, will appear on camera to deliver his opinion about John Kerry. His words are his own. He will look directly into the camera and tell America what he thinks. IN doing so he will be joined by a number of other men who can directly testify to Kerry’s fitness for duty – as well as the POW’s who sat in camps listening to the enemy guards replaying Kerry’s accusations against them.
Would George Soros or any of the other billionare-Bush haters or Hollywood have the courage to face the American people so squarely with their convictions. IF so, they haven’t yet. Maybe that’s why the meager sums raised and spent by the Swifites have had so much more influence than the anonymous poison of MoveOn et al.
When such a remarkable group of men as these gather for common cause it is impossible for rational voters to ignore them. Based on the kind of men we spoke to at this gathering of Swift Boat Veterans and POW’s we do not think the country will ignore them on November 2nd. |
