Ed Morrissey says that one of the vets who claims to have “served” with him, “on his boat,” didn’t:

He and Alston conspired to deceive people about Alston’s service under Kerry. That conspiracy was intended to give John Kerry cover against exactly the kind of campaign he faces from the other Swiftvets….

…This isn’t just a guy embellishing his war record — this is a deliberate and longstanding attempt to mislead and defraud people by creating his own witnesses after the fact. That he could have done such a clumsy job should disqualify him for higher office on that basis alone.

That point aside, if true, this knocks the legs out from under the dumb argument that one had to be on Kerry’s boat in order to have “served” with him. Alston would have no more (and no less) credibility than any of the other, less complimentary, Swift Boat Vets. I wonder if the Reverend Alston would sign an affidavit?

[Update at 11 AM PDT]

Kathleen Parker describes what the real issue is with this (at least for me):

Like many Americans, I’m reluctant to second-guess anyone’s wartime performance. None of us knows how we’d perform under the unique stress of battle. Whether Kerry was indecisive or heroic so long ago doesn’t much interest me. Stories get told about war; details get lost or distorted by time and memory.

There’s something near tragic about this latest political turn of events–brother warring against brother–but also revelatory on a level that even Kerry critics might not have anticipated. What is revealed isn’t so much Kerry’s lack of consistency in reporting personal history as his studious pursuit of power and an insatiable need for attention.

[Monday morning update]

Byron York says that Alston did serve under Kerry, though perhaps for as little as a week, and that many of the stories about their service together seem to be embellished or exaggerated. Ed Morrissey concedes the point. The Swift Boat Vets were right to tell people to cool it on this particular issue.

Ed Morrissey says that one of the vets who claims to have “served” with him, “on his boat,” didn’t:

He and Alston conspired to deceive people about Alston’s service under Kerry. That conspiracy was intended to give John Kerry cover against exactly the kind of campaign he faces from the other Swiftvets….

…This isn’t just a guy embellishing his war record — this is a deliberate and longstanding attempt to mislead and defraud people by creating his own witnesses after the fact. That he could have done such a clumsy job should disqualify him for higher office on that basis alone.

That point aside, if true, this knocks the legs out from under the dumb argument that one had to be on Kerry’s boat in order to have “served” with him. Alston would have no more (and no less) credibility than any of the other, less complimentary, Swift Boat Vets. I wonder if the Reverend Alston would sign an affidavit?

[Update at 11 AM PDT]

Kathleen Parker describes what the real issue is with this (at least for me):

Like many Americans, I’m reluctant to second-guess anyone’s wartime performance. None of us knows how we’d perform under the unique stress of battle. Whether Kerry was indecisive or heroic so long ago doesn’t much interest me. Stories get told about war; details get lost or distorted by time and memory.

There’s something near tragic about this latest political turn of events–brother warring against brother–but also revelatory on a level that even Kerry critics might not have anticipated. What is revealed isn’t so much Kerry’s lack of consistency in reporting personal history as his studious pursuit of power and an insatiable need for attention.

[Monday morning update]

Byron York says that Alston did serve under Kerry, though perhaps for as little as a week, and that many of the stories about their service together seem to be embellished or exaggerated. Ed Morrissey concedes the point. The Swift Boat Vets were right to tell people to cool it on this particular issue.

…whether or not this blog is serious, or if it’s a put-up job by someone to make the anti-war types seem even dumber than many of them are. It drips of stupidity from every corner, even to the title itself (“…the most important issue of all time, ever: The Iraq war being wrong”).

Either way, it’s entertaining reading.

[after reading a bit more]

The more I read, the more I’m compelled to believe that it’s a spoof. If it’s not, the author is (as one commenter noted) suffering from some site-specific brain lesion.

[Update a little later]

I should warn that reading too much of this site will have a deleterious effect on your IQ. I think mine plunged about twenty points in as many minutes. It was fun, though.

…whether or not this blog is serious, or if it’s a put-up job by someone to make the anti-war types seem even dumber than many of them are. It drips of stupidity from every corner, even to the title itself (“…the most important issue of all time, ever: The Iraq war being wrong”).

Either way, it’s entertaining reading.

[after reading a bit more]

The more I read, the more I’m compelled to believe that it’s a spoof. If it’s not, the author is (as one commenter noted) suffering from some site-specific brain lesion.

[Update a little later]

I should warn that reading too much of this site will have a deleterious effect on your IQ. I think mine plunged about twenty points in as many minutes. It was fun, though.

…whether or not this blog is serious, or if it’s a put-up job by someone to make the anti-war types seem even dumber than many of them are. It drips of stupidity from every corner, even to the title itself (“…the most important issue of all time, ever: The Iraq war being wrong”).

Either way, it’s entertaining reading.

[after reading a bit more]

The more I read, the more I’m compelled to believe that it’s a spoof. If it’s not, the author is (as one commenter noted) suffering from some site-specific brain lesion.

[Update a little later]

I should warn that reading too much of this site will have a deleterious effect on your IQ. I think mine plunged about twenty points in as many minutes. It was fun, though.

If anyone doubts that the Dems have no coherent response to the Swift Boat Vets, other than ad hominem hysteria, read this CNN transcript.

Many forget, but one of the things (besides Ross Perot, and the bogus supermarket scanner story, and his seeming unfeeling toward those who felt that the recovering economy wasn’t recovering fast enough) that resulted in George Herbert Walker Bush’s loss of his second term, was the limp response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to Hurricane Andrew in the summer of 1992 before the election, in southern Florida. If his son is smart, he’ll have FEMA ready to aid the Gulf Coast immediately this weekend, if Charlie is even a small fraction as devastating as many are predicting.

[Update at noon Pacific Friday]

Welcome, Corner readers. It occurs to me that this is now likely to be worse than Andrew was, in terms of property damage. It’s at least as strong a storm, and there’s a lot more population in the current track. The Gulf Coast hasn’t been hit in over forty years, and there are a lot more people living there now than in the early sixties. It’s very likely to set a new record for financial losses from a natural disaster.

No one who was paying attention should have been surprised by Senator Kerry’s current public-relations problems. Emailer Mike Daily points out one of the indicators from this past spring about the “Boston Strangler” (and if true, what does that choice of code name tell us about Senator Kerry?):

Working with call sign

From an interview at Hugh Hewitt’s site:

“Well, on any movement we would do, we are talking four or five boats going in on an engagement, we were always within 50 or 75 yards of each other. And to be perfectly honest about it, if you were to look at an overview, if your were looking for an overview of a situation, you were better off being on another boat and looking at the rest of the other boats.”

Read the whole thing.

[Update a few minutes later]

The first movie biography of John Kerry is about to come out.

Praise Allah.

[Via Roger Simon]

[Another update at 10 PM PDT]

Along the lines of my previous observation, Gary Aldridge has a warning for the Swift Boat Vets:

…the mainstream media does not like George Bush, and they will do nothing to help him win re-election. Did you think for a minute that they would rush to cover your press conferences and report the news that the majority of Veterans cannot stand John Kerry? Did you actually believe you would be invited on

One would like to think that there’s no lower form of life in the Democrat party than Lanny Davis. Unfortunately for hopes of a livable world, there are worse.

I watched the segment myself, and I hope that Mr. O’Neill (a lawyer himself) knows what kind of smear machine he’s up against, and has adequately prepared himself. Based on what happened this weekend, he may indeed have. I’d like nothing better than for Mr. Davis, at long last, to finally have to pay at least a financial penalty for his vicious calumnies.

What was particularly irritating about the Hannity & Colmes show (which is often the case) was how ineffective Hannity was in arguing with him.

Lanny consistently referred to the Swift Boat as a “ship” (a term that any Navy vet would find laughable). The intent is obviously to imply that Kerry was commander of a vessel in which the crew, and the crew alone, worked, ate, slept, laughed, shat, and most importantly, fought with him, and that no one else was in a position to know what happened on his “ship.”

That is nonsense. It wasn’t a ship. It was a boat (as implied by its name), and not one on which the men lived. They lived on shore with others who got up every day and patrolled by day, often in close proximity to each other.

If one accepts the Kerry defenders’ arbitrary definition of “served with,” no one served with George W. Bush except the people who flew in his (single-seat) F-102 with him (i.e., no one). One doesn’t have to be in the same squad, or platoon, to “serve with” someone. There are higher levels of the hierarchy in which people still interact, often on a daily basis. The Swift Boat Vets all served together, despite the mud you’ll see slung over the next days and weeks as this story continues to grow more legs than a mutant millipede.

The more this goes on, the more hysterical the defenders become (Colmes: “Isn’t this despicable–how can they impugn the honor of a medal winner?” Ignoring, of course, the fact that many of those testifying against Kerry have their own medals, but Alan has no problem with smearing them as liars).

As I said, this is right out of the Clinton playbook. Ad hominem, trash the accusers, obfuscate the facts, use misdirection, like any skilled magician. At least this time, the nuts aren’t sluts–they’re attacking veterans and medal winners, not women victimized by Bill Clinton…

I suspect that this time, the illusion won’t stand up.

[Update at 10 PM PDT]

I see that Snopes has already leapt to his defense, emphasizing the evidence in his favor, and ignoring any against. I hope that this will also blow up the myth about them being non-partisan.