I read Newsweek’s Election 2004 opus this weekend and still strongly recommend that you do as well. Tom Maguire points out a few choice tidbits from the stories including this one:
But as early as Aug. 5, when the Swifties were just getting traction, Edwards wanted to push back, hard. McCain had just told the Associated Press that the Swift Boat ads were “dishonest and dishonorable… the same kind of deal that was pulled on me.” Edwards wanted to begin a speech, “I join with Senator McCain in calling on the president to condemn this dishonest and dishonorable ad.” But Kerry headquarters said no. Stephanie Cutter, the boss of the Kerry communications shop, explained that the campaign didn’t need to give the Swift Boat vets any more attention than they were already getting.
Edwards played along, but his aides were indignant. They warned the veep candidate that the story was already out of control and about to get worse. Historian Douglas Brinkley, author of a wartime biography of Kerry, cautioned that Kerry’s diary included mention of a meeting with some North Vietnamese terrorists in Paris. Edwards was flabbergasted. “Let me get this straight,” the senator said. “He met with terrorists? Oh, that’s good.”Initially I read the section as Tom did, putting the “terrorist” tag together with the known visits to the North Vietnamese peace accord delegations in Paris.
Charles Johnson changed my mind.
haha i quoted that 2nd paragraph in an earlier comment on the “Inside Campaign 2004” post you had earlier. I loved it.
And of course now we know he collaborated with the North Vietnamese to force the United States to withdraw, yet the MSM didn’t cover this either. Simply amazing.
Nothing the liberal media does surprises ME any more; they’re totally without conscience or shame.
– Thers a very good reason that Kerry dragged his feet on directly confronting the Swiftboat guys…and it wasn’t just at the beggining…To this day he never has….its always been behind the seens denials and trashing and talking point lies such as “They’re all liars and they’ve been discredited”….Wonder if anyone can figure out the real reason he won’t face them…..try real hard now….
Of course, as a serious consumer of news I am much more interested in fake memos regarding events that never happened.
/sarc
On the post-election edition of CBS’s 60 Minutes, Steve Croft announced that, of the 3 US troops pictured in the pre-election edition of the show who were supposedly killed in unarmored vehicles, it was really only one soldier. Sorry about that.