Thursday, October 21, 2004

A Bush for President sign was stolen from my yard today. So were most of the other Bush signs in my neighborhood. Kerry supporters get a lot of publicity when their signs are stolen. I wonder if anyone will report on this?

Last week Nightline did a segment on Kerry's Silver Star. They went to Viet Nam and asked people in the village involved about what really happened. None of the accounts quite matched any of the contemporary accounts but they were closer to Kerry's account then to the SwiftVets' account. When they came back from the break, Koppel's guest was John O'Neill, the author of Unfit For Command. O'Neill was inarticulate, repeating the same thing over and over again. I suspect that he had been ambushed by the footage.

What O'Neill should have said:

"Ted, we are talking about events from 35 years ago. You have been a newsman long enough to know that over that period of time memories can become confused. This is especially true when you are working through an interpreter. It is possible that they were describing one or more different events. Contemporary accounts are much more accurate. In addition, none of them were present during the battle. The one man who said that he was there admitted that he hid during the fighting. Add in the desire of poor farmers to say what they think the rich Americans want to hear and the presence of an official minder from a government that considers Kerry a hero and you have an unreliable report. This would never stand up in a court of law."

Thomas Sowell has things to say about the Nightline segment, also.

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