Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Kerry Calls Swift Boat Liars Bluff, Will They Come Clean?

John Kerry’s newly released Form 180 records revealed yesterday that there were no deep, dark secrets hiding in Kerry’s previously unreleased military records as the Swift Boat Liars had claimed. The Boston Globe noted that these newly released records prove what the Kerry campaign ascertained all along, that all of Kerry’s records were made available in April 2004. It does appear that the conspiracy theories have been disproved, yet again.

Now we’ll watch the spin on the right and the left once again and see where this story leads us. Sadly, along with the right-wing blogs spinning this story yesterday, there were left-wing blogs blowing it out of proportion as well. Evidently some on the left enjoy helping the right-wing, as I mentioned here Tuesday. The Leftcoaster is claiming “vanity” as the answer to why Kerry did not previously release his Form 180 records, noting that the news generated from this story yesterday is the spin on Kerry’s grades at Yale as opposed to his military record.

And of course, the vitriol from the right-wing continues in wake of the release of Kerry’s records, including a call from one blog for the Boston Globe to release all the records on their website as a PDF and another who has written the Globe’s ombudsman asking for verification of what is in the records. What we have not seen from the right-wing or the Swift Boat Liars is any sort of acknowledgement that they were wrong. Not that we expected that we would.

The right-wing Disinformation Society is hard at work spinning more spew over this issue. Aside from the media’s attention yesterday on the “grades” story further examples of the right-wing spin can be found here (including a statement from Kerry nemesis John O’Neill), here, here, here and here. So tight is the Republican hold on the spin that the reality is, as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said in his Vanity Fair article in MayThe Disinformation Society, “No matter who the Democratic nominee was, this machinery had the capacity to discredit and destroy him.”

The Swift Boat Liars have never had anything solid on John Kerry, nor has the right-wing for that matter. In lieu of real dirt, the next best alternative of course is to sling synthetic mud. And when that does not stick, sling more synthetic mud. Now they are slipping and sliding in their own nasty mess, like a bunch of sorry mud wrestlers and they cannot come clean on this with out a whole mess of lye soap. Not even lye soap will wash away the fact that a few men saw fit to besmirch the military record of American war hero, a candidate for president, a seated senator of the United States. It is the Swift Boat Liars, who are covered in dirt here, not John Kerry.

As a Kerry spokesperson pointed out yesterday morning, off the record, now Kerry has “called the Swift Boat Liars' bluff and let's see if they will come clean about THEIR records.”

And, for that matter, when will Bush be releasing all of his records?

Related posts:
Kerry allows Navy release of military, medical records
Why Kerry May Have Been Right In Not Signing Form 180 Earlier
A Tale of Two Students

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