The term “swiftboater” is a badge of honor in either context.

“Swiftboating” - Telling the truth about democrats.

Let’s scrape the mud of Kerry’s boots from the Vietnam war era and the mud off the wingtips, loafers, boat shoes, tennis shoes, etc. of the people from the Bush administration from that same time period…after we complete some exhaustive experiments, which group of shoes will have evidence of actually touched vietnamese soil? Kerry’s one pair or the 20 or so ones from GW’s admin. I mean, gorsh, the numbers favor the Bush admin, right?

Excellent points, Dan. It’s unfortunate that the anti-Kerry smearers chose to denigrate a decorated war hero for his war service. It’s no accident that the chickenhawk Republicans did this. These are the same people that disrespected and insulted wounded vets, and all people in the service, by handing out Purple Heart band-aids at the 2004 convention. They are remarkably anti-vet, and incredible hypocrites.

I personally believe John Kerry. I also worked with a man, now retired, who says he served with Kerry, provided proof, and said Kerry was a honorable man. That’s all I needed then and now. In my opinion the “boaters” made themselves look bad.

William,

Just for clarification, by “chickenhawk Republicans,” you mean Sater and the “Swift Boat Veterans and POW’s,” right?

I could not agree more with Terry Sater’s comments. His main point is to not rehash the John Kerry campaign. His main point was to remind everyone that the the term swift boats refers to a group of sailors, who risk their lifes for their country, and this should not be lost in the back and forth bickering of a political campaign.

Terry, a Navy Vietnam veteran

Well, by Mr. Sater’s kinda twisted righty-logic, I should be highly indignant that the occupation and reputation of my late Grandfather (an engineer for the Missouri-Pacific Railroad from the late 1890s until the middle 1930s), is tarred and feathered and maligned by the term “railroaded.” From whom can I demand an apology and retraction for such a scurrilous indictment?

I suppose his next article will be in justification of George-the-Texan-fighter-pilot’s friends’ attacks on John McCain a few campaigns ago…

I also liked his Bush-speak definition for waterboarding: “…an intense interrogation technique…” Kinda like calling the medieval rack an “intense torso-elongation instrument.”

To paraphrase Mr. Sater, “It is long past time to scuttle the terms “railroaded” and “railroading.”

One of Mr. Sater’s final points was this: the Swift Boat campaign against Kerry was personal, about as personal as it can get: a man’s actions under fire are pretty much unpredictable until it happens.

My personal opinion is pretty simple: what happened in combat belongs there, to the people who experienced it. One should never try to rehash the stories looking for ‘truth’. There is a reason it’s called the ‘fog of war’. The DOD brought a lot of this on all by themselves by creating the whole system of deferments, “obligation fulfillment” in the national guard, and so on. My perspective is this: If you wore a uniform, and spent time “in country” then you don’t have to justify anything to anyone who didn’t go in country, whether they fulfilled their obligation some other way, or not. If members of the Swift Boat units want to have pissing contests about who did what when, then have at it guys…just keep it to yourselves, the rest of us don’t have any right to say anything about it.

Here is a couple websites that may shed a little light on things;

http://michellemalkin.com/2004/08/24/a-vietnam-vet-fisks-tour-of-duty/

http://weblog.theviewfromthecore.com/2004_08/ind_003968.html