I was white-hot angry yesterday over J.D. Vance’s “Stollen” Valor comments about his now counterpart Tim Walz. Today isn’t any better. Actually, something I worried about but didn’t mention in a rant I posted here on Politizoom yesterday has come to pass. Team Trump appears to have started to “Swift Boat” Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz. Given the key role Trump campaign co-chair Chris LaCivita played in the infamous 2004 ad that slandered Democratic nominee John Kerry none of us should be surprised he’s dusted off that despicable playbook and is turning into version 2.0 to slander Tim Walz.
How despicable was the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans For “Truth” (quote marked added my me) it actually led to the term getting an actual definition. Go ahead. Type in ‘Swift Boat definition’ or ‘Swift Boating into your search engine and see what comes up. Here I’ll cite the Wikipedia entry titled Swiftboating (yes – it’s got its own page!) for you:
The term swiftboating (also swift-boating or swift boating) is a pejorative American neologism used to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. The term is derived from the name of the organization “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” (SBVT, later the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) because of their widely publicized—and later discredited—political smear campaign[1][2][3][4][5] against 2004 U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry.[6][1][7][8] Since the 2004 election, the term hasme to commonly refer to a political attack that is dishonest, personal, and unfair.[9][10]
I won’t include the actual ad here. I flat out refuse. What’s really awful is that the group that paid to produce it only paid to run it that first day. After that, the freaking media ran it over, and over again countless times a day on every outlet. As “news” coverage. At least a hundred millions of dollars worth, much of it in prime time. Worse still, the ad starts with a former Naval Officer who served in the same unit as Kerry, a P.O.S. by the name of George Elliott saying John Kerry lied about his actions on the River that day (referring to his documented heroism in saving the life of an Army officer in the river) but here’s the thing. Elliott was up the chain of command a bit and signed off on the award.
It gets better, or worse depending on how you want to look at it. For all those countless times the ad ran, while there was some minor investigations by journalists no one took much of a look at those who appeared in the ad slandering Kerry. Including that guy who kicks the whole thing off. Unless you’re a bit older and a political junkie you might not know that after getting into politics lots of Kerry’s crew from his Swift Boat would make appearances with him onstage at events. Sometimes others from their squadron would show up too, including…you guessed it – George freaking Elliott. It took literally a comdedy show, a self-professed FAKE NEWS show (that’s how they billed themselves day after day) to do a bit of searching with their minimal staff and find a clip of Kerry’s last Senate campaign. It was an event at Boston Harbor and sure enough Elliott (no relation to me) was there on stage praising Kerry’s heroism.
Anyone besides me wonder how much he got paid to front that ad?
The thing is, the whole ad and the media flogging it was devastating to Kerry’s campaign. Kerry was old school and didn’t want to dignify it with a response or some such patrician notion he learned growing up and at Yale. ‘Gentlemen’ don’t wade into the muck and all that. There simply wasn’t enough push back and Kerry’s service, medals and all he did (few seem to know even now he’d done a tour offshore on a destroyer. His ticket was “punched” for a future political career. He VOLUNTEERED to go back for a tour in the “Brown Water Navy” and command one of those patrol boats, a truly dangerous gig) was openly mocked by the GOP and again, journalists simply let it slide. But remember what I pointed out about George Elliott and even some of the others.
Because those already popping up to make accusations against Tim Walz should get the kind of deep-dive scrutiny Elliott and others SHOULD have gotten in 2004.
So, let’s turn to where we are right now. J.D. Vance opened the door on all this. I wrote yesterday Vance accused Walz of Stolen Valor, of ‘preparing his unit for Iraq and then abandoning them’ while HE accepted his orders and went to Iraq when the Corps ordered him to do so. I watched him live and now can’t find video of all he said but I stand by what I wrote yesterday, that he implied HE was out there in hostile territory. No, he spent his six months in an office handing out press releases and giving tours. He never once was found himself under hostile fire or having to return it, which is why his own awards don’t include the Combat Action Ribbon. I still say HE tried to paint a picture of himself as being a combat guy or at least someone who went out into dangerous places.
Apparently later that day he realized he might have gotten out over his skis and in response to a question almost lost his cool saying he never claimed he was in combat. THAT should have been followed up with something like ‘So why did you bring the whole subject up in the first place and even misquote Gov. Walz while doing so?’ I call bullshit on Vance. He tried to paint a picture, and at some point realized how easy it would be to check HIS record. (Not to mention Walz’s which I’m certain Vance had before shooting off his mouth)
Anyway, there are plenty of “news” stories today about all this. I’ve read quite a few. This one from Rolling Stone is short and presents a fair and balanced assessment of things. It includes this:
The senator actually misquoted Walz in his screed. In the clip Vance was referencing, Walz says that he “carried” weapons in war, not “used.” Given that Operation Enduring Freedom was a part of the post-9/11 War on Terror, and that Walz was deployed to Italy under it – and likely had a service weapon – the claim that he is engaging in “stolen valor” holds little water.
Vance spoke on Wednesday as if he served more honorably than Walz, noting that he went to Iraq “I did it, I did what they asked me to do and I did it honorably,” he said The senator was deployed for six months in Iraq as a combat correspondent in 2005 as part of the Marines’ Public Affairs office. He – like Walz – never engaged in active combat and has stated that he was “lucky to escape any real fighting,” during his deployment.
There are as you’d expect some negative articles/stories already (Fox I’m sure is just getting warmed up as are other RWNJ print rags and outlets) but some try to paint a “balanced’ picture while still taking shots at Walz. Such is this Real Clear Politics article:
But Republican Rep. Michael Waltz, a Green Beret who retired from the Florida Army National Guard last year as a colonel, said the debate over Walz’s rank is not clerical. It isn’t just a point of mistaken emphasis either. “From a veteran’s perspective,” Rep. Waltz said in an interview with RCP, “these are not slip-ups that you would make. I would never purport myself to be a one-star general if I retired as a colonel. Those are just clear-cut lines that he has crossed.”
So we have some National Guard Officer from FLORIDA who never served with Walz (except as a fellow Congress Critter – I wonder much trashed he talked when Walz was Ranking Member of the Armed Services Committee getting sh*t done for Veterans?) taking a shot. Just like back in 2004 when sailors who weren’t part of Kerry’s boat crew, or in some cases even part of the same Swift Boat Squadron coming out of the woodwork to carve chunks out of Kerry. Expect plenty more where this came from because the line that really jumped out at me from the RCP article was this:
LaCivita made the comparison explicit in an interview with RealClearPolitics. “Birds of a feather,” he said of Walz and Kerry, “will be tarred together.”
This is going to get a LOT uglier and fast if we don’t push back and force journalists to treat all this properly. Look, if Vance wanted to highlight having served in the Corps and even done a six month stint in Iraq, albeit in a “support” role I’d have no problem with him doing so. Instead he deliberately chose to make it seem like HE is the “real deal” and Walz is a fake. Vance stuck his jaw out so there are journalists who actually embedded with combat units and came under enemy fire need to be speaking up. Being hosted on news shows. Pointing out what some actual journalists did over there compared to Vance sitting in an air conditioned office passing out press releases and giving tours! Sadly, I don’t see that happening but maybe the stringer from Lincoln Project who keeps an eye on Politizoom will read this and have Rick Wilson take a look. He can easily dig up someone to have a quick chat with and turn it into a video. Ending with the question to journalism outlets of whey THEY haven’t done it!
At least for now groups like Vote Vets have wasted no time pushing back. Others are too and that’s good but it’s going to take more. Walz of all people should know it. He was after all working in a key role in Kerry’s 2004 campaign when the Swift Boat ad thing happened. This is about the only thing Team Trump has to work with and sleazy and slanderous as it is, we know for a fact Chris LaCivita is able and willing to engage in it. It’s like part of the pre-deathbed Lee Atwater (who apologized for his career and especially the Willie Horton ad in 1988) hung around in the air and found a new “host” in LaCivita.
Maybe Senator Tammy Duckworth who lost her legs on a rescue mission pulling soldiers out of actual shooting zones in Iraq will take this up. She pretty effectively skewered Trump with the ‘Cadet Bone Spurs’ thing. I’d love to see her in front of cameras tapping her steel prosthetic legs and asking why it was she or a fellow chopper pilot never had to pull a wounded J.D. Vance out of the sh*t to safety – and lifesaving medical care.
I could run on all night about this but I fear I’ve already taxed the attention of those who’ve chosen to read this enough. I close with a thought/opinion. Walz simply isn’t the kind of person or soldier who’d pretend he was something he was not. My belief is that he worded a statement badly. Left out a word or two, or perhaps a qualifying phrased. I’m sure what he meant to say was something along the line of having trained to and trained others to carry weapons of war, and such weapons are meant for use in war zones. Not in civilian hands. He can still do that and in my own humble opinion needs to do so and do so most riki-tik.
Purely on the basis that lies have worked in the past, they think they’ll continue to work.
But lies are all they have, and ever have had, and people see this clearly now.
We are all tired of being lied to.
The fact that he continues to lie just continues to show how little respect he has for voters.
He’s about to get that respect back in spades.
We have a group following us on X called MarinesForHarris. They have been sharing our articles too.
the real reason Kerry was swiftboated was because bush hid out in Houston snorting coke while pretending to be in the military. the playbook is still out there.
Given my (admittedly deserved) reputation for too-long and multi-topic articles I didn’t want to dig into the huge change that happened because Bush 41 chose to use Guard and Reserve units in Desert Storm, the first Gulf War that kicked Saddam out of Kuwait. Even people my age (67) and older have forgotten Vietnam. Westmoreland knew when he was engineering (both literally and politically) his big ramp up over there he made a deliberate choice NOT to call up Guard or Reserve units. He knew at best it would cause controversy over time and perhaps even wipe out public tolerance for the type of war he wanted to wage. No, he wanted to use the draft to pluck people from here and there rather than see community’s gather to send off their Guard or Reserve unit the way we’ve seen the last three decades.
Many a guy of service age fought like hell to get a slot in the Guard or Reserves once that dirty little secret became widely known, albeit not talked about. People begged for spots, calling for favors to get moved up the list. Two well known examples were Dan Quayle and George W. Bush who jumped up (if memory serves) some 900 spots on the waiting list. But nooooooooo. No one made a discreet phone call to the head of the TX Air National Guard! How DARE anyone think such a thing!
The fact is by then it was common knowledge that the SUREST way to NOT get sent to Vietnam was being in the Guard or Reserves. In my small southern Illinois hometown I know the handful who got slots with the unit over in neighboring Carbondale held actual parties to celebrate. One was for the guy my oldest sister seemed destined to marry in fact. During my teens and even after she blew up their relationship and dumped him he was like a big brother. But my point is that Westmoreland did NOT want units like that called up. It was made up of guys from a collection of towns from a lot of counties down there. Many had not only local papers but there was a regional one, The Southern Illinoisan (we like to joke and call it the southern illusion at times) that went to every town south of I-64. You can bet it would have been not just front page but with additonal stories had the National Guard unit in Carbondale shipped out. Followed by more when they arrived in Vietnam. But when the stories about guys getting maimed and even killed started showing up a decent sized chunk of rural/small-town America would learn about each and every one. Unlike some small town back there that would lose someone here and there the entire region would know about each and every one. The same thing would have been true in lots of places all over the country.
THAT is why for decades the very thought of using Guard/Reserve units if a war came up was never part of planning. At least until Bush 41 changed things. By the time his idiot son ran for President you had a couple of generations who never know what things were like back he W got into the TX Air Guard! Or why. Interestingly enough there were a small number of Reservists who served in Vietnam. Almost exclusively they were volunteers. But the interesting part is that just like with Korea the ones begging to go over there were PILOTS. Some wanted flight and hazard pay for flying cargo planes in and out and didn’t actually transfer to Vietnam. Fighter jocks on the other hand fought to get a chance to fly against MIGs in combat.
W of course never thought about volunteering. In fact, he found out that the jets of his age were NOT the aircraft his dad flew in WWII. They were far less reliable back then and training deaths were startlingly high. Every fighter jock either served in or had a good friend who did so who served in some squadron that went through a bad stretch. Several months of at least one and often closer to a rate of two guys dying EACH week in training. Around 1970 a study was published in an obscure avaition journal that had looked at the data going back quite a few years and found those who intended to fly high performance military aircraft as a career (as in twenty years) stood well over a twenty percent chance of DYING in an aircraft accident. (I don’t want to say for sure without looking it up but I believe the actual statistic was 23%) And that didn’t even include COMBAT deaths.
I’m sure that once he was done with jet training and got assigned to an operational squadron in something more advance than the standard trainers of the era Bush knew or met one or two people who clued him in about those ‘bad streaks” and decided he’s done enough to punch his “I followed in your footsteps daddy” ticket and found something far safer to do. Like walking out one day and never going back. Moving to another state with a promise to join an Air Guard unit he’d never keep. And given who he was the place he’d contacted about “transferring to” didn’t kick up a fuss after he moved to the state (I think it was AL) and making a fuss. Had he not been his ass would have been arrested and he’d have been charged and convicted for what at the time was called AWOL.
What happened with smearing Kerry wasn’t his “brain” Karl Rove’s first attempt to ensure W wouldn’t face someone with actual military service. Former Senator and Nebraska Gov. BOB Kerry was putting together a run and got a shot across the bow. That Kerry for those who don’t know wasn’t just an Officer but a Navy Seal. Highly decorated. Even the Medal of Honor. And he lost a leg over there. But SEAL missions like so many SpecOp ones can be murky sometimes. A member of his Boat Crew (as SEALS call a unit) who’d been disciplined decided to get some payback by accusing Kerry of a war crime on a mission. The charge was investigated and found without merit but Rove learned about it and floated it to journalists who eagerly ran with it. Rather than drag up a literally painful period of his life Kerry abandoned any Presidential run. And he’s have had a real shot.
There are other appalling examples of the GOP trashing good people who literally gave up limbs. Remember what Saxby “Trick Knee” Chamblis did to Max Cleland. My then wife worked for a bit with a gal who was either engaged to or “engaged to be engaged” to Chamblis and she dropped by her old workplace one day when I happened to be there to pick my ex up after work. She was being feted as the potential wife of a potential Senator and as I happened to be in uniform she introduced herself. Let’s just say it didn’t go well and my ex was mighitly pissed at me for “making a scene.” I said I wouldn’t shake the hand of a draft dodger like Saxby who took part in the trashing of a man like Max Cleland.
I eventually, years later got to meet Cleland. Twice in fact. I watched a Kerry/Bush debate with a crowd of Kerry supporters in Martinsburg WV sitting next to him. We had a great chat waiting for it to start. I recall that awful moment when Kerry name checked Mary Cheney when talking about gay people Bush knew and accepted. He and I looked at each other and even in a darkened room it was clear he was thinking the same thing as me – as in FUCK! That could be the whole balllgame right there.
Well, I could keep going but I need to try and wind down and get some sleep.
Flash back to 1972, Richard Nixon, a naval supply clerk, called George McGovern, who piloted bomber missions in Europe, “a coward”.
Trump still hasn’t topped that in my mind.
It took me too long to realize a simple FACT. But after the trashing of Max Cleland it finally dawned on me. For Republicans, NO amount of heroism, or even blood and sacrifice counts if the person who gave up limbs on the battlefield (or even their lives) happens to be a Democrat. It’s in GOPers DNA now. At most a few of them might pay lip service, the way so many say “thank you for your service” and it’s clear they mean it about as much as some clerk at the end of their shift (a rough one) doing checkout of your purchase remembers to save “have a nice day” in case some supervisor is within earshot because they’ll get fired it they don’t say it. Not a single goddamned P.O.S. Republican politician means it. ONLY Republican service counts. Period. And a Dan Quayle, George W. Bush or J.D. Vance is as far as their fellow Republicans concerned worth more than EVERY bona fide war hero in our nation’s history. Combined.
The handful of those who would have told others to knock that shit off, like Bush 41, John McCain or perhaps sometimes Bob Dole (and even they sometimes took small potshots at Dems) are dead and buried.
Kerry didn’t have the spine to fight the Swiftboaters.
Harris’s Crew learned how to slapback in the Gen X and Y elementary school yards, educated in the schools of Hard Knox, refined in the halls of the Divine Nine, and made into an art in places like 1980s dial-up BBs, 1990s political nntp newsgroups, early 2000s various chatboards, and post 2005 social media. They’ll defend him until CSM Walz gives them reason not to.
Or maybe they turn Captain Kelly loose on them first: https://www.aol.com/mark-kelly-slams-vance-attacking-141920063.html
hillbilly boy needs to have some facts about HIS “military” service. Popping off press releases (IF he even was allowed to do that which is highly doubtful), which is behind the lines duty (and often these people are stationed in the states WHERE THEY BELONG), is what he did. PERIOD. If anyone deserves to be “swift boated” it’s hillbilly boy. There is much in this fool’s life that does not stand up to any scrutiny at all let alone close scrutiny. It’s time the Harris/Walz campaign applied that scrutiny and brought it before the public–and not just his “military” service–his support of a man/book who wishes to have contraceptives outlawed and having children a required duty is something he keeps very, very quiet. I think we need a loud-speaker on this shit.