Letters, 2005, If You're with Me, You're a Patriot. July 13, July 16, September 30

 

Republicans love to wrap themselves in the American flag. GOP politicians love the military. If you are a critic of any GOP-promoted war, you are not a true American. Bush: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

***

GEORGE W. BUSH and his supporters are past masters at impugning the reputations and patriotism of opponents, no matter how unimpeachable their reputations might be.

It was therefore amusing to watch the White House switch into reverse after Representative Jean Schmidt of Ohio lectured her congressional colleague, retired Marine Colonel John Murtha of Pennsylvania, about how ''cowards cut and run, Marines never do." White House spokesman Scott McClellan compared Murtha to the lefty filmmaker Michael Moore after Murtha suggested a six-month timetable pulling troops out of Iraq. House Speaker Dennis Hastert said that war critics would ''prefer that the United States surrender to terrorists who would harm innocent Americans," and, as usual, Vice President Cheney played the heavy.

When asked about Cheney's criticism, Murtha, a combat veteran, said: ''I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war and then don't like suggestions about what needs to be done." Murtha was referring to the fact that Cheney, who had ''other priorities" than fighting for his country, sought and received five deferments during the Vietnam War.

Then it dawned on the White House that, with the president's approval ratings in the cellar, perhaps it was not a good idea to launch personal attacks on such a man as Murtha, who has spent his congressional career backing and helping the military.

So, overnight, the rhetoric changed. From Bush in Asia to Cheney in Washington, Murtha became an honorable American -- misguided, perhaps, but no longer a coward or someone who wanted to have terrorists harm Americans. Schmidt, who appears not to have known who Murtha was, sort of apologized and had her remarks struck from the Congressional Record.

Letting up on Murtha didn't mean letting up on war critics, however. Cheney said that senators who suggested that he and the administration had manipulated prewar intelligence to fit their preconceived decision to invade Iraq were making ''one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city." This by the man who went back to the CIA again and again, leaning on them to find evidence to support an invasion of Iraq; this by an administration that spread a net of misinformation about Saddam Hussein-Al Qaeda links, a charge that the CIA refused to confirm but that Cheney kept making anyway (Greenway 1-2)

Work cited:

Greenway, H. D. S. “Bush's Patriotism Smear.” The Boston Globe, November 29, 2005. Net. http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/29/bushs_patriotism_smear/

***

I was especially irritated by the following letter, in which the author. Tony Cavarno, took a shot at long-time liberal letter writer, Lucius Gent. Although we had never met, Gent had called me twice to thank me for letters I had written. He was a widower in his eighties. At the end of his last letter, prompting Cavarno’s response, Gent, an avowed critic of the Iraq War, had listed his World War II service record, no doubt to prove that critics of the Iraq war had also fought patriotically in wars. Here was Cavarno’s response.

***

OK, enough is enough! Why do we seem to have to read articles from several of the same old people expounding the same old line time and time again? Possibly the Siuslaw News doesn’t have many subscribers and only a few write in, mostly malcontents? For those anti-Bush folks with letters you seem to publish constantly, please get over it! Bush won! Gore lost! I say again, please get over it – you may even feel better if you do.

Please also don’t keep dragging up body count of brave men and women that have given their lives in defense of a better way of life for others, and sounding like the proverbial broken record with the same old tired line of “lies” and “deceit” by our president. Incidentally, in regard to body count of U.S. military Iraq war dead, published weekly by the Siuslaw News, I wonder if that policy existed during WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, hmmm?

As it seems essential to establish credentials under one’s name to give credence, I guess, to their article, let me sign out as:

Tony Cavarno

Florence

20-year U.S. Marine Corps 1^st Sgt.

Retiree, Korean and Vietnam War veteran,

Receiver of two Purple Hearts, no Bronze

Star as some, but holder of 18 Citations,

Badges, Combat Awards and Ribbons

***

Here was my response to Cavarno’s letter.

***

Your July 13 letter, Mr. Cavarno, was mean-spirited. Limit your remarks to what you consider factual. Counter what others write that you believe is unfounded. A war veteran citing his military record to disprove the administration’s stereotype that liberals aren’t patriotic does not deserve anyone’s sarcasm.

As to your assertions of fact, ...

Election fraud strikes at the heart of any nation’s democracy. Felon lists that erroneously disenfranchise thousands of opposition party voters, touch screen voting machines designed to leave no paper trail, vote switching, eight hour lines at polls to eliminate a high turnout of voters favoring the “wrong” party – these are recent election day practices that nobody should “get over.”

“Lies and deceit, ... the proverbial broken record.” You may be tired of reading what we write, but those lies were told and fair-minded people that receive most of their information from right wing talk radio and/or network and cable television need to be stimulated to discover on their own what is fact.

On the subject of body counts, to ignore the specific costs of conducting a war is to discredit the “brave men and women that have given their lives” to defend what we Americans hold dear. Body count reminders are especially important when the reasons given for sending our soldiers to war hide actual, unacceptable ideological, economic, and imperialistic motives.

As for casualty reports being a recent development, my wife as a young girl saw weekly pages of photographs in the Cleveland Plain Dealer of metropolitan area World War II servicemen killed, injured, captured, and missing in action.

Printed July 16, 2005, in the Siuslaw News

***

Katrina occurred and Bush provided traitor letter writers like me additional fodder for criticism.

***

First the bull.

“I don’t think anyone could have predicted that the levees would give away.” -- George W. Bush

“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” -- George W. Bush

“Some people are really very anxious to start pointing fingers and playing the blame game.” -- Dennis Hastert

“For centuries, charlatans have been telling Americans that the government can provide, will provide and you deserve to be provided for. Bull.” -- Bill O’Reilly

“What we’ve seen in New Orleans is first and foremost the utter failure of generation after generation after generation of the entitlement mentality.” -- Rush Limbaugh

“The governor failed to call the emergency. And initially, it was the governor who had to call an emergency.” -- Newt Gingrich

Now the truth.

“This is about the real consequences of what governments do and not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying the price for those policies.” -- Molly Ivins

“Throughout the Bush II years, how many of us have thought in less dramatic moments ‘I can’t believe this is America’?” -- Ellen Goodman

“The truth is the people who suffer the most from Katrina are the very people who suffer the most every day.” -- John Edwards

“What we see here is a harvest of four years of complete avoidance of real problem solving and real governace in favor of spin and ideology.” -- John Kerry

“It’s time to end the impunity of President George W. Bush.” -- Norman Solomon

Printed September 30, 2005, in The World

Letters, 2005, Cheaters Never Prosper? February 19

 

Incensed that George Bush had defeated John Kerry November 2, 2004, by narrowly carrying Ohio, where substantial voter fraud might very well have occurred, seeing that “W.” was acting as if he had been handed a huge mandate to govern as he saw fit, I had to vent my indignation.

***

American elections never play out perfectly. But the dramatic imperfections in the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, as detailed in a series of letters and reports circulated by Representative John Conyers (www.house.gov/conyers), deserved a far more serious response than they received from most Congressional Democrats. Conyers got his information the old-fashioned way: by listening. When Ohioans began to raise concerns about irregularities in the approach of Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell–a Bush campaign apparatchik–to conducting the election and counting the votes in the contest that ultimately decided the race between Bush and John Kerry, they initially got more encouragement from Greens and Libertarians than from national Democrats. But Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, took the complaints seriously enough to go to Ohio. There, he and minority staffers for the Judiciary Committee conducted hearings and investigations that reached two basic conclusions: First, voting and vote-counting procedures in Ohio were so flawed that citizens were disenfranchised; second, legitimate questions about the problems with the Ohio vote have yet to be fully resolved. Accordingly, Conyers announced that he would object to the certification of the results from Ohio when Congress met to review and approve Electoral College votes on January 6.

Conyers found a handful of allies among House Democrats, mostly from the Congressional Black Caucus, but he had less luck in the Senate, where at press time only one senator–California’s Barbara Boxer–was considering signing on. At least one backer is required to sustain a formal objection. If sustained, the objection would force a full debate in both House and Senate on whether to count Ohio’s votes for George W. Bush, although in the end those Republican-controlled chambers would have defended Bush’s claim.)

The events surrounding the certification question offered an eerie echo of 2001, when members of the Congressional Black Caucus tried to object to the certification of electoral votes from Florida, only to be ruled out of order because no senator backed their complaint. The scene of African-American members being gaveled into silence was one of the most powerful moments in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, and it was impossible to imagine that it would ever be repeated. Yet this year [2005] Conyers, the senior African-American in Congress, pled for a chance “to debate and highlight the problems in Ohio which disenfranchised innumerable voters.”

It is important to note the language Conyers used. He was not calling for overturning the election of George W. Bush. Rather, he was suggesting that, based on the evidence of voter disenfranchisement, flawed or corrupted voting machinery and improper procedures for counting and recounting votes in Ohio, it was inappropriate for Congress simply to rubber-stamp the decisions of Blackwell and other Ohio officials. Ultimately, that objection never had a chance to get beyond the debating stage. But Conyers was right to argue that a formal objection needed to be made, and that the objection should be broadly supported by Democrats–and honest Republicans–in both the House and Senate. That it was not is a sad statement about the seriousness with which most Democrats took their party’s pledge to “count all the votes this time”–and about the prospects for reform of erratic and unequal voting systems that, as Conyers and his aides have ably illustrated, are prone to abuses that undermine confidence in America’s democratic experiment (Nichols 1-2).

Work cited:

Nichols, John. “An Appropriate Objection.” The Nation, January 6, 2005. Net. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/appropriate-objection/

***

I resent being lied to, especially by the President of the United States.

Emboldened by his reelection “mandate,” he is at it again, pushing what should be labeled Medical Malpractice Accountability Destruction and Social Insecurity, Let’s Line-the-Pockets-of-Wall Street Privatization.

Each issue deserves a thorough analysis of what is fact and what is crafted beeswax. Look for well-respected newsmagazines and newspapers to continue to provide it. My purpose? To remind you that “Pants on Fire” George W. expects yet again to hoodwink us. Why shouldn’t he, having slipped past us the following?

“Most of the tax cuts went to low-and middle-income Americans.” Oct. 13, 2004

“There was nobody in our government, at least, and I don’t think the prior government that could envision flying airplanes into buildings.” Apr. 13, 2004

“Facing clear evidence of peril [Saddam’s WMD], we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” Oct. 6, 2002.

“Saddam was a threat because he could have given WMD to terrorist enemies. Sanctions were not working.” Oct. 8, 2004

“Clear Skies legislation will significantly reduce smog and mercury emissions, as well as stop acid rain.” Apr. 22, 2002. It will “bring cleaner air to Americans faster, more reliably, and more cost-effectively than under current law.” Aug. 30, 2003.

“America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.” No date. “We must uncover every detail and learn every lesson of Sept. the 11^th.” July 2002.

“We’ve never let up on Osama bin Laden from day one.” campaign commercial

“Because you [Congress] acted to stimulate our economy with tax relief, this economy is strong, and growing stronger … and jobs are on the rise.” Jan. 20, 2004.

“When a drug comes in from Canada, I want to make sure it cures you and doesn’t kill you.” Oct. 8, 2004

“We are -- should and must provide the best care for anybody who is willing to put their life in harm’s way.” Jan. 17, 2003.

        Printed February 19, 2005, in the Siuslaw News

Not having had the votes three years ago to repeal permanently the estate tax, Bush and his friends legislated a graduated increase in the amount a deceased person’s estate is exempt from taxation. This year that amount is 1.5 million. If I should die tomorrow, my heirs would be able to subtract 1.5 million from the value of my estate and would pay taxes solely on what remained. They need not worry. I’m not close to being worth 1.5 million. Less than 1% of the country’s population is.

The way the Repubs presently have it, nobody will have to pay an estate tax in the year 2010. After that, the tax returns. Oh, we can’t have that! they lament. Time to spread again lies about how much small businesses and rural America will be affected. (Fact: 440 such estates paid taxes last year, 1 person out of every 665,989 deceased) We can cut badly needed social programs, short-shrift our veterans, do nothing about spiking medical care expenses, and expand the national debt beyond comprehension; but we must protect yet again the wealthiest of Bush’s friends!

Should be easy, heh, heh, heh, says George. We’ve got the votes! And, heck, 77% of the good folks out there believe the Death Tax affects all Americans! What’s $1 trillion in lost revenue over the first ten years after 2010 anyway? Why, we’ll just grow the economy!

        Printed April 20, 2005, in the Eugene Register-Guard

***

My letters were now getting blow-back. I wrote the following criticizing a Republican fool whose frequent letters to the Register-Guard consisted almost entirely of abusive name-calling of Democratic officeholders.

***

James T. Bryant (letters, June 18) rails against the liberal media, which gave scant attention to the blatant election fraud perpetrated by Republicans in Ohio last November. This is the very media that has ignored the Downing Street and related British government memos regarding President Bush’s perfidy about invading Iraq.

Bryant should write Rush Limbaugh’s copy. Or has it been the other way around?

        Printed June 29, 2005, in the Eugene Register-Guard

***

I received this response in the mail June 29, 2005. A post-it was attached to it saying “An advance copy. Cheers!”

***

Another liberal idiot checks in. Liberal idiot Harold Titus writes in, from Florence, to criticize me, saying that I sound like every Conservative sounds; fit to be tied over our abusively liberal media’s coverage of the events of the day.

Liberal idiot Titus scolds me and suggests, as all good little liberals in lock-step with kook websites like moron.org, do, that I get all my info from their arch nemesis, Rush Limbaugh. Could it be that liberal idiot Titus listens to Limbaugh, or is he, like all good little liberals, merely repeating the liberal mantra; “Left-wing extremists good and all Conservatives bad”?

Liberals have never recovered from their thumping in every election in recent history. 2000, in Florida, is especially appalling. What they can’t accept is that every liberal rag media organization in the country looked at that election under a microscope and all they found was that George Bush actually got more votes than originally reported. Of course liberals, being basically stupid, didn’t learn that just having the media on their side didn’t let them steal the election and tried it again in Ohio in 2004. Liberals have no ideas so they look to larceny to try and win elections. Idiots!

Remember! The liberal profile is appalling ignorance backed up by fundamental dishonesty. These idiots will say anything, fully knowing that it is a lie if they think it will harm the Bush Administration. Liberal idiots like Titus have no conscience, no morals, no honor, no integrity, no courage, no vision, no perspective and nothing except a seething and drooling rage against a man their superior in every way.

Liberal idiots like Titus despise George Bush and admire Bill Clinton, an admitted liar, a convicted perjurer, a womanizer, an adulterer, a sexual harasser, a disbarred attorney and a three time rapist.

Liberal idiots, to who instinctive idiocy is a gameplan, would not recognize and probably wouldn’t care for an honest man. In the land of our libs a decent and caring man is a freak.

James T. Bryant

Eugene

Letters, 2004, Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, Jim Rassmann, September 18

It was generally acknowledged that the ad campaign having the greatest impact on the 2004 U.S. presidential election was that run by the political action group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The group, which counted 275 Vietnam War veterans among its ranks, strongly opposed Senator John Kerry's presidential bid, charging him with being unfit to lead America as its commander in chief. To that end they created, with the help of the Virginia-based advertising agency Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, a series of damning television ads calling into question Kerry's war record, the medals he had been awarded, and even his patriotism. The attacks were direct, personal, and highly effective.

Over the course of six months, from May through October 2004, the Swift Boat Veterans, led by fellow Vietnam veteran John O'Neill, raised $6.7 million, all but $800,000 of which was spent producing and airing its television spots. The ads were simple in design and clear in purpose. Each featured a number of real veterans, all members of the Swift Boat Veterans organization, explaining in their own words why they felt that Kerry was ill-equipped to be president. In one ad the veterans repeatedly used words and phrases such as "not been honest," "lied," "lying," "dishonored," "cannot be trusted," and "betrayed" in reference to Kerry. While most major news outlets debunked or refuted the claims of the Swift Boat Veterans, and although only a very few of their ranks had ever actually served with Kerry in combat, their message was played and replayed throughout the national media, garnering them far more exposure than their limited budget ever could have allowed. Indeed, this was part of their overall strategy.

Regardless of the accuracy of their claims, or perhaps because of their inflammatory nature, the Swift Boat Veterans were successful in casting doubt on one of the cornerstones of Kerry's campaign: his war record. …

… Soon after Kerry returned to the United States, however, he became vocal in his opposition to the war. Despite having served in Vietnam—or perhaps because of what he had witnessed there—he came to feel that the war was both immoral and unwinnable. After meeting with a group of Vietnam veterans in early 1971 to hear their eyewitness accounts firsthand, Kerry testified in April of that year before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as an outspoken member of Vietnam Veterans against the War. His testimony detailed atrocities, war crimes and violations of the Geneva Convention that had taken place during the conflict. Many veterans felt that Kerry was betraying and dishonoring them by making sweeping accusations about the conduct of soldiers in the field. In truth, Kerry's primary goal was not to denigrate the actions of his fellow soldiers but rather to condemn those of higher rank who, he felt, either sanctioned or turned a blind eye to crimes being committed against the civilians of Vietnam. U.S. soldiers, Kerry testified, "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, cut off limbs, [and] randomly shot at civilians." He claimed that these acts "were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

…

In order to differentiate himself from President Bush, who served in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War but was never called up for active duty, Senator Kerry made his Vietnam service and decorated heroism a cornerstone of his political campaign. He drew as much attention as he could to his wartime conduct, often appearing with fellow veterans at campaign stops and even saluting the audience as he walked onstage at the Democratic National Convention. Unfortunately for Kerry, this served to make the attack of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth on his honor and character all the more potent. By casting doubt on Kerry's war record and by bringing attention to his own antiwar protests in the early 1970s, the Swift Boat Veterans successfully targeted those Kerry supporters for whom his war record and numerous medals were decisive factors in their support (Kolstad 1-3).

Work cited:

Kolstad, Jonathan. “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.” Encyclopedia.com. Net. https://www.encyclopedia.com/marketing/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/swift-boat-veterans-truth

***

In 2004, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth started out on the margins of the presidential race. In an era of Old Media domination, they might have stayed there. When the group's founders held a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington on May 4, there was nothing in the next day's Washington Post, and the episode got scant attention elsewhere. A conservative website, FreeRepublic.com, however, covered the news conference and listed the fax numbers of Establishment news organizations, urging readers to send missives demanding to know why they were "blacking out" the event. A day later, the Post and New York Times carried short stories inside the paper. The Post report included the Kerry campaign's response that the Swift Boat Veterans was a "politically motivated organization with close ties to the Bush administration."

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was organized by Vietnam veterans who profoundly resented Kerry's role in the antiwar movement. … The group was funded and promoted by prominent Republicans, several of whom had ties to both President Bush and Karl Rove, though no evidence of a coordinated effort ever emerged.

As it happened, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth need not have worried about the amount of coverage they would receive, in either the New Media or the Old. And the spasm of publicity would come at the worst possible time for Kerry. On July 28, one day before Kerry formally accepted the Democratic nomination at the party's national convention in Boston, [Matt] Drudge touted the imminent release of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. On the morning of Drudge's report, the book was ranked at #1,318 on Amazon.com. The next day it had jumped to #2, and within a couple of days it hit #1.

The book, published by the conservative Regnery Publishing, alleged that key elements of Kerry's account of his Vietnam service were false. Most dramatically, it claimed that Kerry's Bronze Star for heroic service, earned on March 13, 1969, was based on fraud. The group also questioned other aspects of Kerry's versions of his tour of duty and his involvement with the antiwar movement.

Beyond the book, the Swift Boaters started with relatively modest purchases of television advertising time. But their sophisticated political advisers knew that cable TV, talk radio, and, eventually, the Old Media would pick up on the ads themselves as controversial content, and give them the equivalent of millions of dollars in free coverage. This, of course, promoted their message and drove up awareness of their cause, traffic to their website, and donations to their coffers. In the end, the group was able to purchase additional millions' worth of television ads. Democratic polling showed widespread awareness of the group's message, even in places where the advertisements never aired. The group's work also lit up the blogosphere and talk radio for weeks, giving the Old Media another hook in covering the coverage of the story.

The Swift Boaters pointed out authentic flaws and contradictions in some of Kerry's assertions about his war service and protest activity. But their most sensational claims were either unsupported by evidence or contradicted by independent journalistic inquiries. This nevertheless did nothing to diminish the group's significance in the 2004 campaign: It inflicted crippling damage on Kerry. Many of his strategists in retrospect regard the Swift Boat Veterans as the single biggest reason he is not president today. …

…

One reason the controversy moved from the margins to front-and-center was that Bush's reelection team -- which had been watching the story with delight -- helped push it there. While there is no evidence that the Bush campaign orchestrated the group's allegations, surrogates gave the charges respectable validation (Halperin and Harris 24-25).

Work cited:

Halperin, Mark and Harris, John F., Excerpts from The Way to Win and the ABC internet article “ Political Pundits on How to Win the White House.” ABC News, October 30, 2006. Web. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Books/story?id=2517449&page=1

***

Early in September 2004 our Florence Area Democratic Club President, Betty Crooks, persuaded Jim Rassmann to speak about his experiences with John Kerry during the Vietnam War and his impressions of the presidential campaigns that Kerry and George Bush were waging. Rassmann was and remains a resident of Dunes City, nine miles south of Florence. Standing in the back of the room, I (Harold Titus, secretary of the Democratic Club) videotaped his presentation. I noticed while doing so that there appeared to be no press coverage. The next morning I phoned the local newspaper, the Siuslaw News, to ask if they had had a reporter at the event. No, they had not. The person they had assigned to cover the event had been unable to attend. “Then it falls upon us to report what was said,” I answered.

The following is what I submitted to the newspaper.

Rassmann Tells Florence Citizens the Facts

Jim Rassmann, former Special Forces officer whose life John Kerry saved in Vietnam, retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy, local resident and international orchid authority, spoke last Friday to interested citizens at the Events Center. His appearance was sponsored by the Florence Area Democratic Club.

Mr. Rassmann became involved in Senator Kerry’s campaign because of his particular concern about the forthcoming election. “I felt for the first time in my life I had to do something [politically].” A registered Republican until this year, Rassmann has always voted for the man he believed was the best presidential candidate. This year George Bush is not that candidate.

Attending orchid conferences throughout the world, Rassmann has witnessed both the apprehension and the disdain that foreigners harbor toward the president. “How have you and the U. S. gotten into this situation? You’ve got a cowboy in the White House. He is incompetent,” Rassmann has been told. In Germany, England, France, Japan, South America, everywhere that he has gone the reaction has been the same. These people are “looking to us for the same sorts of ideals that we’ve put forward ever since World War I. We are a country that stands for justice, … law, … fair play. We are a country that does not torture prisoners.” People are frightened of us. The decision we make Nov. 2 “is going to show the rest of the world what we are all about.” They will “be watching very, very closely.”

Rassmann spoke at length about his Swift Boat experiences.

In March of 1969, in charge of 30 Chinese and Vietnam nationals at the very southernmost tip of South Vietnam, Rassmann conducted military operations for thirty days with Navy Seals and several swift boat commanders, one of whom was John Kerry, with whom he would be associated for two weeks. The boats were operating at the confluence of two large rivers and the many canals running perpendicular to them. The area was largely mangrove swamp. Jungle came right to the edge of the rivers. It was a very dangerous area. “I got ambushed a lot. I got in a lot of fire fights.”

On March 13 Rassmann was on John Kerry’s boat. They discovered amongst a few huts a large cache of rice buried in the ground. He and Kerry blew up much of the cache by dropping into a hole four hand grenades. One of Rassmann’s mercenaries was blown to pieces. “John Kerry among some of his crew policed up all the parts … [He] was not an officer who was afraid to get his hands dirty."

They motored off to an adjacent area and came under fire. The boat to Kerry’s left hit a mine. Five to seven seconds later Kerry’s bow gunner had his M-16 disabled. He yelled for another weapon. Rassmann, carrying a spare, moved toward him along the narrow left side of the boat. A smaller explosion under the boat sent Rassmann sailing into the river and Kerry hurtling across the pilothouse into the bulkhead.

Rassmann went to the bottom of the river to wait for the other swift boats to pass. “As soon as I cleared the surface, I started getting fired at.” He headed under water for one of the banks. “Every time I’d come up for air I’d get shot at … They were AK’s [the enemy’s weapon, not the sailors’ M-16s] … I could hear the AK’s fire [an unmistakable sound]. Five or six breaths later I came up and here are the boats coming back towards me. I distinctly remember two boats. I didn’t see any of the others.”

Critics have claimed that other boats were ten feet to ten yards behind him.

Rassmann swam toward the center of the river. “I didn’t see any other boats other than” the two, Kerry’s boat in the lead. “I grabbed a hold of the boat’s scrabble net on the bow” and started climbing. Because of the shape of the hull, Rassmann was not able to get over the top. Under fire, Kerry ran out of the pilothouse, got down on his hands and knees, reached under the bow and pulled Rassmann aboard. “A lot of things that have been said since then about that incident,” – for instance, that the boat had not been under fire -- have “been shown to be fabrications.”

Rassmann believes that the problem that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and other Kerry critics have has nothing to do with the way Kerry performed his duty in Vietnam. It has to do with “the fact that John … spoke out against [the war and] the Nixon administration’s policies” saying that “American troops had admitted to committing atrocities.”

Certain Vietnam veterans have called Kerry a traitor. Rassmann stated, “Kerry didn’t commit treason. [He] exercised his First Amendment right to criticize our government.” Kerry said that American servicemen were committing war crimes. “He didn’t say that all of them were, like some people would have you believe. He quoted people who had talked to him and told him what they had done themselves. He talked about things he knew about firsthand. He talked about what he had done in regard to free fire zones.”

“We have books [written by] people that have spent years researching all of this and they say to a man that these acts were going on.” Kerry did what needed to be done.

Rassmann spoke about a young MP named Darby who had worked at Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad. Analogous of Kerry’s speech before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Darby had made a copy of the CD containing photographs of prisoner abuse. He slipped it, subsequently, under the door of an investigator charged with uncovering evidence of alleged abuse. Darby’s house and that of his sister have been vandalized. “Terrible things have been said about him in print … Is he a traitor? If you believe he is a traitor, you’re in the wrong country,” Rassmann forthrightly declared.

Last week a group of retired senior officers criticized the investigations about prisoner abuse thus far completed. They said that the findings are essentially “a cover-up.” They say that there is such a thing as command responsibility. About the president’s conduct of the Iraq War, Rassmann stated that “George Bush is directing things for political reasons. And it’s to our detriment. We have 140,000 people over there, and every single one of them is either our son, our daughter, our brother or sister, our father or mother, and we’re responsible for them. The only way we can effect that responsibility is when we vote on Nov. 2.”

Answering questions from individuals in the audience, Rassmann discussed the incident that earned Kerry the Silver Star. An enemy soldier had fired a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) at Kerry’s boat, wounding a crewman. Kerry drove the boat into the bank and chased after, fired at, and killed the retreating soldier. Rassmann explained that an RPG “has to go a certain distance before it becomes armed.” Acting as he did, Kerry had denied the enemy soldier that distance, thereby saving his boat and the lives of his crewmen.

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have lied about that incident, too. They “know that John Kerry lied. [But] none of them were there.”

Former Special Forces friends have told Rassmann that the Republican opposition has targeted him. “People are seeking any possible way … to discredit me.” People looking for discrepancies in what he says have followed him from presentation to presentation. He has been accused of being gay. They have claimed that “Teresa Kerry has paid me a lot of money to do this for John Kerry.” The latest accusation is that thirty-five years ago he and Kerry agreed to “scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,” in other words, that he agreed to put in for Kerry’s citation and Kerry to put in for Rassmann’s purple heart.

Rassmann is understandably angry about the lying. He is additionally upset that people are “not working harder to learn about what’s going on. … They don’t seem to care. A lot of them have made up their minds already. You talk to them and it doesn’t seem to me that they know the issues. We have so few people who read the paper anymore. They get their news from these sound bites on TV and they seem to be perfectly happy with doing that.”

At the beginning of his presentation, Rassmann said that he had toured the Events Center parking lot looking for Bush/Cheney bumper stickers. He had been hopeful that there would be “Bush fans” present for him to attempt to persuade. As this gentlemanly veteran sees it, we are “all in this boat together and the boat is the United States and it is very important that we come to some decision based on a dialogue, or a debate, or even an argument, if you will. I’d hate to be preaching to the choir.”

***

The Siuslaw News printed an account of the event September 18. I was very displeased with it. I had expected my long article to be edited but not the way it was. Additions, based (I am assuming) from information provided the newspaper by other people who had attended, were made that I considered unnecessary. The newspaper was careless about its use of quotation marks. Some of the sentences – attempts to paste together statements that I wrote – were clumsy. I especially disliked the newspaper article’s ending. I told Betty Crooks that I was thankful that my name had not been attached.

Letters, 2004, Bush's Popularity Wanes, March 13, July 32

 

Late in 2003 I was asked by the chair of the Florence Area Democratic Club to take the office of vice-chair. Nobody held that position and the chair wanted somebody to help her find guests to speak at our meetings and plan meeting agendas. I declined confessing that I hadn’t the experience to know how to do what she wanted. She then suggested that I take the office of secretary and the current occupant become the vice chair. I agreed. The job entailed taking the minutes of each meeting and releasing club reports to the press.

The Presidential election of 2004 was looming. Public support of President Bush was waning. Hope was in the air. Senator John Kerry, Vietnam War veteran, would become the Democratic Party candidate. Several polls taken in May suggested that Bush might be “on the ropes.”

***

Several new polls have Bush hitting new lows in important ways.

First, the Newsweek poll. In this poll, Bush’s overall approval rating is down to 42 percent, with 52 percent disapproval, his lowest rating yet in any public poll. (Note: Zogby also has his rating at 42 percent, but Zogby job ratings are based on a different question and therefore are not directly comparable with other public polls.) And Bush’s approval rating on Iraq is down to 35 percent, with 57 percent disapproval, also a new low. Wow. It was just a few days ago (see below) that his Iraq rating went below 40 percent for the first time.

Bad as the Newsweek findings are for Bush, the findings from the CNN poll are probably worse. First, the poll finds Kerry ahead of Bush in practically every issue area, including protecting the environment (+22); health care (+19); reducing the deficit (+18); handling the economy (+13); and even taxes (+6). But here’s the really significant part: besides these domestic issues, Kerry is also ahead of Bush on handling foreign policy (+2) and handling the situation in Iraq (+3). A couple of weeks ago, Bush had a healthy lead on handling Iraq; last week Bush had a small lead; this week, he’s behind. Clearly, the tide is turning.

And even on his “signature issue,” as it were, handling the war on terrorism, he now only has a seven-point lead over Kerry (49 percent to 42 percent). I am quite sure that this is the smallest lead we have seen yet for Bush on this issue. If he loses a few more points and Kerry gains a few more, he and Kerry will be essentially tied on handling terrorism! I suspect that would get the Bush-Cheney campaign kind of worried (Teixeira 1-2).

Source cited:

Teixeira, Ruy. “New Polls Bring New Lows for Bush.” Center for American Progress, May 19, 2004. Net. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/news/2004/05/19/782/public-opinion-watch/

***

I was trying to influence public opinion of the President by sending letters to newspaper editors. This one was printed by the Siuslaw News March 13. I presumed that readers were sufficiently familiar with the people I mentioned that I would not need to identify them. The second letter was printed July 31.

***

Are Administration Republicans really a bunch of liars and crooks? Consider Iraq.

Thanks to Paul O’Neill we know that the Bush people were making plans in Jan. 2001 to depose Saddam. The day after 9/11 Rumsfeld opined that the hijacker attacks had provided the Administration the opportunity to remove Saddam. After bin Laden had escaped into Pakistan, the Administration exploited the opportunity.

We heard numerous speeches about WMD. Rumsfeld’s department created the Office of Special Plans to rake up nuggets of WMD “evidence” that the CIA, despite Cheney’s pressure, had refused to sanction. Chalabi and his exile group kept whispering falsehoods that Cheney and the neocons wanted to hear. And Bush had the assassination attempt on Pappy to avenge.

Wolfowitz admitted later that WMD had been the Administration’s most saleable argument. We heard about crop-duster drones, al Qaeda operatives given WMD secrets, mobile labs, aluminum tubes, and mushroom clouds.

9/11 and Saddam were constantly juxtaposed.

Well after Bush’s aircraft carrier landing, we were told that real progress was being made -- Why wasn’t the press reporting it? -- while our soldiers were being killed one or more a day.

We were told that Iraqi oil production would pay for Iraq’s reconstruction.

When public opinion turned, the Administration said it shouldn’t be blamed for declaring Saddam an “imminent” threat. Heck, the CIA had given Bush bad intelligence. (And Bush had never used the word “imminent”) Congressional Democrats had looked “at the same intelligence” (the doctored version, thank you) and they had authorized preemptive action! Even the Clinton Administration had believed that Saddam had been developing WMD. (Meaning Clinton, in Bush’s place, would also have defied world opinion, dismissed Hans Blix’s inspection results, and invaded?)

And least we forget, Saddam had WMD programs! Because he would have used them, going to war preemptively was still warranted!

We are supposed to believe now that all of the chicanery above doesn’t matter. Bush is Mr. Democracy, Mr. Humanitarian, Protector of the Homeland, Savior of World Peace. Like Napoleon in Animal Farm, he will lead us safely, unselfishly through this “challenging,” harrowing time. Trust him. (God forbid that we elect Kerry!)

Printed March 13, 2004, in the Siuslaw News

***

Ed Gillespie goes on Hardball, Charley Black appears on Scarborough Country, Kelly Ann Conway expounds on Inside Politics, lesser and larger lights recite the same talking points on Fox Cable News. On the radio Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, etc. drive home the same message.

Lie. Vilify. “Frivolous” lawsuits are the cause of skyrocketing health care costs. The selfish trial lawyers lobby is preventing “essential” tort “reform.” John Edwards, no good. But the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has stated that malpractice lawsuits represent less that 2% of the nation’s total health care costs.

Bushites have claimed that “frivolous” lawsuits are also responsible for outrageous medical malpractice insurance premiums. Another lie. The number of malpractice court cases over the past decade has remained constant. Insurance companies raised premiums to remedy bad stock market investments.

Why do many good Americans take as gospel this Administration’s gross deceit? Corporate ownership of media news is one answer. Tell them whatever will serve our and the Administration’s self-interest. Play to their foibles. Get them mad.

Bush’s Believers live in a fantasy land where Reagan’s “trickle-down” economic policy did bring about the prosperity of the 90s; Clinton’s “heavy-handed” tax rates did cause the recession of 2001-2002; Bush’s tax cuts, for sure, are helping all Americans; Saddam Hussein, in fact, had a hand in 9/11; and invading Iraq has, indeed, made us safer.

Calvin Hurd’s letters to the contrary, radical right governance has America’s ship of state steaming for the rocks. On November 2 we can do something about it.

    Printed July 31, 2004, in the Siuslaw News

***

Karl Rove, campaign manager of the President, dubbed “Bush’s Brain” by syndicated columnist Molly Ivins, had become famous for his tactic of attacking his client’s opponent’s greatest perceived strength. John Kerry’s conspicuous strength was his Vietnam War record. Kerry would come under withering attack from Vietnam veterans claiming that Kerry had not deserved the purple hearts and service awards he received for valor under fire.

***

In the Navy, Kerry served aboard boats known as PCFs, or swift boats. According to a Boston Globe overview of Kerry’s service in Vietnam, as reported by Snopes.com and FactCheck.org: “Under [Navy Admiral Elmo] Zumwalt’s command, swift boats would aggressively engage the enemy. Zumwalt calculated in his autobiography that these men had a 75 percent chance of being killed or wounded during a typical year.”

Kerry received a Purple Heart after being wounded in December 1968 when he got hit by schrapnel. The Boston Globe quoted William Schachte, who oversaw the mission, as saying it “was not a very serious wound.”

A wound is described as any combat injury to the body; the Purple Heart criteria have no mention of how severe the injury needs to be.

In an affidavit, physician Lewis Letson said he treated Kerry and said Kerry’s wound was self-inflicted when his gun jammed and he threw a grenade at an object, which sprayed the area with shrapnel. Kerry’s medical records show that he was treated by J.C. Carreon (who has since died). Letson said it was common practice for medics to sign the paperwork for the attending physician.

Letson said in his affidavit that “the crewman with Kerry told me there was no hostile fire, and that Kerry had inadvertently wounded himself with an M-79 grenade.” But the crewmen with Kerry that day deny ever talking to Letson, FactCheck.org reported.

A second Purple Heart was awarded after Kerry was returning from a PCF mission in February 1969, when shrapnel hit his leg. Again, the wound was not serious.

Kerry earned his Silver Star later in February when he jumped onto the beach from his boat to chase and shoot a guerrilla who had a rocket launcher and who, Kerry thought, was about to fire a rocket at Kerry’s boat. According to the Boston Globe, another member of the crew on Kerry’s boat - Frederic Short, with whom Kerry had not talked for 34 years until being contacted by the Globe reporter - confirmed the account and said there was no doubt Kerry’s action saved the boat and crew.

Republican Sen. John Warner, who was Under Secretary of the Navy at the time, said there was careful checking for the Silver Star award and “I think we best acknowledge that his heroism did gain that recognition.”

A third Purple Heart and Bronze Star was awarded in March 1969 when Kerry’s boat took fire, sending a man overboard. Kerry, who said his injuries came from an underwater mine, returned to pull the man to safety and to assist another damaged boat. Jim Rassmann, the man who fell overboard, confirmed the account in a detailed article in the Wall Street Journal. But other sworn statements say there was no hostile fire and Kerry’s wounds came from his negligently throwing a grenade into a rice pile.

Although Snopes.com labels attacks on Kerry’s medals being earned under “fishy” circumstances as “false,” FactCheck.org said in 2004, “at this point, 35 years later and half a world away, we see no way to resolve which of these versions of reality is closer to the truth” (Fader 1-2).

Work cited:

Fader, Carole. Fact Check: John Kerry’s War Accounts and Whether He Deserved Commendations Still Being Called into Question.” jacksonville.com,, January 3, 2013. Net. https://www.jacksonville.com/article/20130103/NEWS/801259907

Letters, 2003, Bush Dishonesty, July 1, August 23

 Not until late in the year did a sizable number of registered voters begin to question the honesty of the President’s declarations about why our country invaded Iraq. Inter Press News Agency reported the following November 13, 2003.

***

WASHINGTON, Nov 13 2003 (IPS) - Popular doubts about President George W. Bush’s credibility and his justification for going to war in Iraq are on the rise, according to a new survey conducted by the University of Maryland’s Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

The survey of a random sample of more than 1,000 voters, which echoes the results of other recent national polls, found that 55 percent of respondents believed the administration went to war on the basis of incorrect assumptions, particularly the notion that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States or its allies.

And despite subsequent denials by senior administration officials, an overwhelming 87 percent of the public felt that the administration before the war portrayed Iraq as an imminent threat.

While 42 percent believed that the administration did have the evidence to justify such a depiction, a strong majority of 58 percent said that it did not.

This disparity, according to PIPA, which conducted the survey between Oct. 31 and Nov. 10, has translated into major questions about the president’s personal veracity and credibility.

Only 42 percent of those polled said they believed that Bush was ”honest and frank”, while 56 percent said they had doubts about the things he says.

Moreover, 72 percent (up from 63 percent in July) said that when the administration presented evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – one of its two major pre-war reasons for attacking Iraq – it was either presenting evidence it knew was false (21 percent) or ”stretching the truth” (51 percent), according to the survey.

That represents a sharp rise in public scepticism about the war’s justifications from five months ago.

Last June, 39 percent of respondents said they thought the administration was being truthful in its pre-war assertions about the threat posed by Baghdad. That percentage has now fallen to 25 percent.

And the 21 percent who now believe the administration was, in effect, lying in its claims about Iraqi WMD is more than double the 10 percent who told pollsters that five months ago.

…

Significantly, most of the public in the latest survey believed that Bush was determined to go to war regardless of the actual evidence.

Sixty-three percent said the president would have attacked even if U.S. intelligence agencies had told him there was no reliable evidence that Iraq possessed or was building WMD or was providing substantial support to al-Qaeda.

Despite all of these findings, only 38 percent of those polled believed that going to war was the wrong thing to do. Forty-two percent said the war was the best thing for the United States and an additional 15 percent said they supported the war in order to support the president, though they were not certain that war was the best option.

Supporting these judgments was the belief that, while Iraq might not have posed an imminent threat on the order depicted by the administration, most of the public still believed it had a WMD programme (71 percent) and was providing support to al-Qaeda (67 percent), despite no evidence to support these conclusions.

”The majority’s views about the decision to go to war are nuanced," said [Steven] Kull [director of the University of Maryland's Program on International Polling Attitudes (PIPA)]. "It believes there were legitimate concerns that prompted the decision, while at the same time it believes the threat was not imminent and the decision was taken precipitously, without proper international support" (Lobe 1,3).

Work cited:

Lobe, Jim. POLITICS-U.S.: Doubts Rise over War Rationale, Bush Credibility.” Inter Press Service News Agency, November 13, 2003. Net. http://www.ipsnews.net/2003/11/politics-us-doubts-rise-over-war-rationale-bush-credibility/

***

I had had George W. Bush pegged as an inveterate liar before the 2000 Presidential election. What I had observed and read about him forewarned me that this man from Texas might become our worst President. My suspicions were similar to what David Hastings Dunn wrote in International Affairs in February 2003, that Bush’s motives were about “oil, revenge for the President’s father [whom Hussein had order to be assassinated], support for Israel, hegemonic control of the Middle East, even just the hubris of the macho Texas cowboy. Or, in the words of the [British] poet laureate [Andrew Motion] ‘elections, money, empire, oil and Dad’” (Dunn 1).

Work cited:

Dunn, David Hastings. “Myths, Motivations and ‘Misunderestimations’: the Bush Administration and Iraq.” International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), vol. 79, no. 2, 2003, pp. 279–297. Net. www.jstor.org/stable/3095821.

***

I felt compelled to speak out. Here is what I wrote, printed July 1.

***

Does it bother you that President Bush

    Claimed that we as a nation were in immediate peril of Saddam Hussein’s WMD

        when we were not?

    Sent our soldiers off to war in the Middle East not to defend our nation but to do his         and his neoconservative advisors’ business?

    Decided, after the defeat of the Taliban and the disappearance of bin Laden,

        that his mission of life was to rid the world of evildoers, not just Al Qaeda,

        and look what has happened since?

    Is a crony capitalist that does handsprings to give corporate America

        everything it demands much to the detriment of the vast majority of us?

    Has pushed through huge tax cuts that benefit only the rich and has the gall

        to advertise them as growth, jobs creation measures?

    Pursues a hard-right, survival-of-the-fittest domestic agenda that eliminates

        revenue needed to preserve social security, Medicare, and Medicaid, yet still

        passes himself off as a compassionate, every-man type leader?

    Very much resembles Napoleon of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the majority of

        us behaving like Manor Farm sheep swallowing whole his simplistic slogans,

        taking as gospel truth hate-talk radio propaganda, accepting without

        equivocation every assertion, every criticism, every utterance that passes from

        his anointed lips?

    Printed July 1, 2003, in the Eugene Register-Guard

***

I continued to participate in the weekly Saturday protest gatherings at the corners of Highways 101 and 126 in Florence. My next door neighbor, a staunch Republican, spotted me and mentioned it amicably. Several of the people I got to know at the corners were members of the Florence Area Democratic Club. The group met at a local restaurant the first Saturday of each month. I decided to see what they were about.

I was welcomed as a guest and listened quietly to resolutions stating opposition to the war being read to the club members for a discussion and vote of acceptance. When the members were asked to offer their opinions, I raised my hand and was called upon. My one-sentence statement was “I don’t think the resolutions are strong enough.” Then I apologized, saying I wasn’t a member.

“Why don’t you become one?” the chair of the club replied. “The dues are ten dollars.”

I plopped a ten dollar bill on the table in front of me. I have been a member to this day.

Amid like-minded individuals, emboldened, I became a frequent letter-writer.

I wrote the following letter for the readers of the Siuslaw News, the Florence newspaper.

***

If George Bush were a truth-teller, he would have to admit the following:

    I’ve brought secrecy and hypocrisy to the White House.

    I like photo-ops and speech lines that make me look, if not compassionate, heroic.

    We stick it to our enemies, like allowing Enron to price gouge California.

    I’m a crony capitalist. Ken Lay is an old family friend.

    My tax cuts are designed to cut “socialist” programs off at the knees.

    We give corporations everything they want. Get used to dirtier air, polluted water,        toxic waste, and genetically altered food.

    If the economy recovers, it won’t be my doing but I’ll take the credit.

    We really used 9/11 to push our hard-right political and economic agenda.

    You can get a lot that you want done if you get the public scared and act like you’re     John Wayne.

    Because we’re the world’s only superpower, we expect other countries to dance to        our tune.

    Waging war on “terror,” not just Al Qaeda, allows us to redo the Middle East to our        liking.

    We attacked Iraq because we wanted to, we could, Saddam was the perfect target,     and Arabs needed a smack in the face.

    Our propaganda machine really works. How about all those Americans believing that     some of the 9/11 terrorists were Iraqis.

    I’ve been hearing the name George Orwell. I don’t know him from Adam. If anybody     does, it would be Karl Rove.

    Disrespectful? Yes. Justified? Absolutely. We need a political debate to expose this        administration’s intentions and conduct. Feel free to join in. The forthcoming                election is much too important not to.

        Printed August 23, 2003, in the Siuslaw News