Demosophia

Koppelgate

Cap'n Ed has posted an account of Nightline's recent episode on the Swiftvet claims about John Kerry's Silver Star incident. The left blogohemisphere (see Josh Marshall, for instance) is currently gloating about what they bill as an incontrovertible expose of the Swiftvets as "hacks, liars, [and] puppets." The Swiftvets claim that Kerry shot a lone fleeing Vietcong in the back, an action that they feel (while not cowardly) was undeserving of the Silver Star. In case you missed the episode ABC traveled to the area in Vietnam where the incident happened and took testimony that the action involved a large number of Vietcong, a version of events that directly contradicts that of the Swiftvets.

However what the left blogohemisphere omits, and John O'Neill observed on Nightline, (and others have verified with triangulated accounts since), is that the Vietnam villagers' version of events apparently doesn't agree with other pro-Kerry accounts, including his own autobiographical version, on the critical detail of whether more than one enemy combatant was involved. Kerry's own account holds that the Vietcong fighter was, in fact, alone. Thus John O'Neill's statement to Koppel that "you've been had" is beyond plausible.

Upon first hearing about the Nightline episode from the left what struck me was how readily ABC had swallowed the notion that these villagers seemed to have command of a wealth of detail, including the name of the dead VC, 36 years on. I suppose it's possible, but does that justify accepting the Vietnamese version without any further checking... either for internal consistency or conformity with other pro-Kerry versions of the same incident? It appears that ABC, like CBS, was all too eager to believe what they wanted to believe and have been caught out in another episode of biased investigative reporting. The villagers, in spite of ABC's naive claim that they had no dog in the hunt, had every incentive to "tell a whopper" in order to enhance the reputation of a benefactor known by most Vietnamese, and especially by those old enough and proximate enough to have been around the delta during the war.

And as anyone who has ever lived in a small town knows, whoppers aren't really that hard to come by. Just drop by the corner tavern, or the barber shop.