How it’s done

Rocket Man predicted here recently that the New York Times would not simply report on the claims made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth regarding John Kerry. Rather, Rocket Man predicted, the Times would counterbalance the claims of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth with references to the controversy regarding President Bush’s Air National Guard service. In today’s sighting of the Swifties’ claim in the New York Times, that is exactly how they are treated: “Campaign briefing.” The Times reports:

The liberal group MoveOn.org will begin showing new advertisements to counter a spot from a group of Vietnam veterans that accuses Senator John Kerry of lying to obtain some of his military decorations. The group said it would first show a new commercial today on CNN and stations in four cities in Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin where the veteran’s group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is running its spot. In the MoveOn spot an announcer says, “George Bush used his father to get into the National Guard, was grounded and then went missing,” and, “now he’s allowing false advertising that attacks John Kerry.” It ends with comments by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, condemning the Swift boat group’s advertisement and calling on Mr. Bush to do the same. The White House says that Mr. Bush met all of his military requirements and received an honorable discharge and that it has nothing to do with the Swift boat group. A MoveOn spot later this week will make specific accusations about Mr. Bush’s service record. Jim Rutenberg (NYT)

Thanks, Jim. Now over to the Los Angeles Times for its late and labored take on the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: “Veterans battle over the truth.” Over at Patterico’s Pontifications Patrick Frey disassembles the Los Angeles Times story: “Christmas in Cambodia story hits the LA Times.” See also the justice rendered by Beldar under the heading “Fisking the LAT’s new article, ‘Veterans battle over the truth.'”
Hugh Hewitt takes note of the Los Angeles Times story in this post. Hugh rests on the fisking of the story by Patterico and Beldar, but adds:

I want to thank the Times for letting the world know that as late as June, 2004, John F. Kerry –the F increasingly appears to stand for “Fraud”– was still selling the CIA man story, though not the magic hat: “In a Times interview last June, Kerry said: ‘I celebrated Christmas Eve on the border of Cambodia.’ And he added that on a later mission, ‘I went into Cambodia with the CIA.'”
“I went into Cambodia with the CIA.” Sure you did, John. Can we see that hat again?
Note that in his interview with the Times, Kerry had begun to hedge the Christmas Eve in Cambodia story months ago, perhaps aware that it couldn’t hold up, but that he was hanging tough on his ride with the spook. Heh. This little piece proves he knew we would come to discover that he way lying with his soaring declarations of having been involved in illegal cross-border missions, and at the same time, that his magic hat story was too emphatic and recent to recant.

For a story carried by the New York Times on Kerry’s activities, but that is unadulterated with the rabid partisanship of today’s Times, it is apparently necessary to go to the archives. A reader has kindly sent us this post from To The Point News. The post carries a readable scan of an AP story dated July 23, 1971, explaining, in the words of To The Point, “why they call him Hanoi John.”
The story recounts a Kerry press conference interrupted by the protests of the wives of several American prisoners of war. The take of the POW wives on Kerry in 1971 aligned perfectly with that of a fellow Dartmouth student when I saw Kerry giving his standard antiwar speech at Dartmouth that fall on his first tour as a celebrity. At Dartmouth Kerry spoke in a relatively small, informal venue (the student lounge on the second floor of Hopkins Center) before a large audience of wide-eyed students.
Kerry gave his then-standard stump speech, reprising his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. One of the students in the audience stood up to walk out on Kerry’s speech and shouted to Kerry as he approached the steps to go down to the first floor: “You phony. You’re just in this for yourself.” Kerry was only momentarily flustered, bending down to the microphone and asking the guy to stay and talk after he’d already gone down the steps.
At the time I couldn’t believe the obtuseness of the student. Like everyone else in attendance, I bought Kerry’s act completely. In retrospect, however, that student strikes me as a person of uncommon discernment.