SwiftVets release five powerful new videos
Beldar blog
This, obviously, isn't the post I teasered below; I'm still working on that one. But wow. Wow x 5! And this won't wait.
You may think you're "SwiftVetted out." You may have made up your mind one way or the other — you believe 'em, you disbelieve 'em, you think it doesn't make a damn one way or the other.
But if you have any opinion whatever on the SwiftVets and the allegations they've made about Sen. John Kerry's war record, you need to spend the few minutes it takes to watch each of the five short video clips — "mini-documentaries" — that you can access here.
John O'Neill, as he has throughout, serves as spokesman and narrator. But most of the videos are composed of extended statements by eyewitnesses to each of the events being discussed (which O'Neill concededly is not, and has never claimed to be). I'm tremendously impressed with all five.
The first one, entitled "The Sanpan Coverup," covers the least well-known of the incidents — a night encounter on 20Jan69 with a sanpan that Kerry, who wasn't paying attention to his Swift Boat's radar, had allowed to approach too close without warning his crewmen. When Kerry's crew noticed the sanpan and lit it up with a spotlight, Gunners Mate Steve Gardner, manning the twin .50-caliber machine guns in the gun tub atop the Swift Boat, saw a man aboard the sanpan run over to grab an AK-47. Gardner explains in the video that he opened fire, killing the man and causing damage to the sanpan that would result in it sinking within seconds. But the crewmen then saw, to their collective horror, that in addition to the man who'd been going for the AK-47, Gardner's shots had killed a young boy around 10 years of age. The crew rescued a woman and her small baby before the sanpan sank. Gardner says in the video — his voice thick with emotion, in what must have been an incredibly difficult statement for him to make — "There was only two people killed in the boat, and I killed both of them, and I'll take that to my grave with me." But the child's death might not have happened had Kerry been paying attention to the radar. Regardless of that, it was a tragedy that should have been reported. Instead, Kerry falsely wrote the event up as a great victory — two VC captured in action, and five (!) killed.
The second video, "Christmas in Cambodia," covers territory (so to speak) that's now familiar to anyone who's been following the controversy, but like a "Greatest Hits" reprise, it's still entertaining. The third, entitled "John Kerry's first Purple Heart," is likewise familiar, but worth watching especially for the eyewitness statements of Skip Hibbard and Louis Letson about how they'd refused Kerry's request for the medal. Captain Charley Plumley is presented as "speaking for" Adm. Bill Schachte; I wish they could have persuaded Adm. Schachte to speak out again in person, although what Plumley relates is exactly the same as what Schachte himself reported to Lisa Myers and Bill Novak.
The stars of the quintet, though, to my mind, are the fourth and fifth videos, both covering the Bay Hap River action that resulted in Kerry's Bronze Star and third Purple Heart. (Kerry's Silver Star isn't covered by any of these five.) And oh! Calm thyself, Beldar's heart! For whether prompted by my suggestion back on September 6th or not, these clips include animated graphics that exactly match the multiple eyewitnesses' telling of the sequence of events and the locations and actions of the various boats. In particular, the "5000 meters of enemy fire" claim is exposed to be completely ridiculous. And another point that suddenly became clear to me for the first time while watching these videos was that the whole group of boats was traveling down-river, and continued moving down-river after the first mine explosion while the rescue of PCF 3 and its crew took place.
The production values on all five videos are okay — neither flashy nor crude enough to be noticeable. There's a sad trumpet and snare-drum background score, with occasional intercuts of blow-ups from documents and some generic stock footage of Swift Boats zooming down-river or peasants in sanpans, just to break up what would otherwise be nonstop "talking heads."
But with the exception of the extremely helpful (and therefore powerfully persuasive) graphics mentioned above, these videos are mostly indeed about the personal stories of the men telling them. There credibility is on the line, and it's important that you get a fair chance to size them up — to hear them speak in the way real humans tell what's happened (instead of like actors or, God forbid, politicians). As someone who sizes up witnesses and the truthfulness of their testimony for a living, I continue to be impressed by the dignity and inherent credibility of these men when they're allowed to simply tell what they know, without interruption and without some maniac shouting "Creepy liar!" to drown them out.
Remember when the SwiftVets' controversy first broke back in August, and there were threats of defamation litigation from the Kerry camp? That was all bluff, of course, as I said at the time. But watching these clips, I continue to ache for the opportunity for someone — some reasonably competent trial lawyers — to develop these controversies in the methodical fashion we use in courtrooms. Could a seasoned Kerry advocate land some blows if he were allowed to cross-examine the men you see in these videos? Yes, of course. But in very vivid contrast to the men from Kerry's "band of brothers, these guys speak out at length, in detail, and without falling back on stock "talking points." I think they'd eagerly agree to be grilled under oath and in a public spotlight, provided that their counterparts from the Kerry campaign were similarly subject to close questioning. I've got a pretty good idea whose fleet of witnesses would end up shredded by skilled cross-examination, and whose would still be steaming proudly. |
