Let's look at smearvet John O'Neill's lies now.
John O'Neill took over for Kerry. But he never met Kerry in Nam, never knew him, never served with him, never got any of the medals Kerry got and was nowhere near as successful and respected as a skipper. But no doubt some of his crew boasted about how brave Kerry was and told O'Neill of his courageous exploits. So how was O'Neill to feel as the new skipper?
This is clearly just jealousy of a dishonest little fat-faced weasel boy who also was a rightwing partisan.
In the April 22, 2004, CNN article O'Neill claimed that not only had he "served in the same Navy unit as Sen. John Kerry" (though he never met him in Nam and didn't admit that) but also denounced "charges the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee made as an antiwar protester that he and other U.S. troops committed atrocities in Vietnam."
Said O'Neill, "'I saw some war heroes ... John Kerry is not a war hero ... He couldn't tie the shoes of some of the people in Coastal Division 11." O'Neill "joined the Navy's Coastal Division 11 two months after the future senator left Vietnam," according to CNN. [2] (http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/20/kerry.military/)
In an interview on CNN O'Neill said Kerry's 1971 "allegations that people committed war crimes in that unit, and throughout Vietnam, were lies. He knew they were lies when he said them, and they were very damaging lies". [3] (http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/20/kerry.military/)
O'Neill's enmity towards Kerry dates back to the Vietnam war days. A Houston Chronicle article reported that in 1971 Richard Nixon and top aide (convicted felon and dirty tricks chief) Charles W. Colson turned to O'Neill to discredit Kerry, the veteran turned leader of the leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
In a key encounter, Kerry debated the U.S. role in Southeast Asia with O'Neill in a 90-minute televised forum on the Dick Cavett Show. That was the only time O'Neill ever met Kerry. [4] (http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/cspan.csp?command=dprogram&record=176287540)
Earlier this year the Houston Chronicle cited a June 15, 1971 memo from Colson that stated "Let's destroy this young demagogue before he becomes another Ralph Nader." [5] (http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2476454)
The PBS program Frontline covered O'Neill's ongoing effort to discredit Kerry in an October 2004 report titled The Choice 2004 (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice2004/).
According to "Be Honest," (http://ideamouth.com/swift.htm) ideamouth.com, 2004: "John O'Neill, the leader of the swiftboat veterans 'for truth' is on record as having lied about the role of the swift boat operators in Cambodia. In 1971, this (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0408/24/asb.00.html) was his videotaped conversation with Nixon [Scroll down to segment.]:
O'NEILL: I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water.
NIXON: In a swift boat?
O'NEILL: Yes, sir.
"However, he later claimed that no one could cross the border by river and he claimed in an audio tape that his publicist played to CNN that he, himself, had never been to Cambodia either."
"One would think that O'Neill, as the leader of this group, would actually have known something about Kerry's service - especially after reading an OP-Ed he wrote, entitled: 'I was on Mr. Kerry's boat in Vietnam. He doesn't deserve to be commander in chief.' However, he did not serve with Kerry. He arrived in Vietnam after Kerry had already left.
The smearvets other co-chief, Jerome Corsi never met Kerry in his life and had no basis for any opinion of him other than Corsi's well-known rightwing extremism and outrageous bigotry. |
