The Omega Letter Intelligence Digest
 

Vol: 35 Issue: 10 - Tuesday, August 10, 2004

"Men of Truth''
by Jack Kinsella

"Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear
God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be
rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers
of tens. . ." (Exodus 18:21)

Back in Moses' day, it must have been easier to find 'men of truth' to
rule over the people than in is in 2004.  The Exodus passage quoted above
says 'men of truth' should rule over 'thousands, hundreds, fifties and
tens'.  So, if the Israelites numbered only 1,160 people, they'd need four
truthful men.

The President of the United States 'rules' over some three hundred million
Americans -- you'd think 'truth' would matter to the voters -- but it
doesn't. For much of the past four years, the media has religiously
recited the mantra that George Bush lied to get us into Iraq, 1) based on
intelligence that Bush somehow KNEW was inaccurate;  2) to seize Iraqi
oil; 3) To help out his oil buddies at Halliburton; and, 4) to make his
daddy proud of him (my personal favorite).

It is not much of a surprise that the media doesn't like George Bush.  He
is a Republican. He was a Texas oilman.  Bush supports capital punishment
and opposes abortion. I was being tongue-in-cheek when I said the media
'doesn't like' George Bush -- 'visceral hatred' would be more accurate.

So the 'Bush Lied' canard became the early first plank in the DNC's
campaign platform.  Howard Dean proved there was no charge too outrageous
to lay at Bush's feet, from openly accusing him lying to get America into
a war to suggesting Bush allowed 9/11 to happen for political reasons. As
long as the charges were laid against Bush, the media was all over it.

Thanks to the media's continual hyping, Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11'
made more than $100 million and is being considered for a number of
filmmaking awards.  Despite the obvious fact that it is a political
propaganda film worthy of Joseph Goebbels, Moore's film is classified a
'documentary' -- as if it documented anything except the fact Michael
Moore hates George Bush.

To this day, nobody has successfully met my challenge to email me with a
provable lie told by George Bush.  By a 'provable' lie, I mean something
like, "I did not have sex with that woman" or, the newly emerging, "I
served my country with honor in Vietnam."

Assessment:

The media IS all over the SWIFT Boat Veterans for Truth story, but the
story isn't the truth, but the SWIFT Boat Veterans themselves.

Last Friday after the ad aired, morning newspapers and TV treated Senator
John McCain's condemnation of the ad as more newsworthy than the substance
of the charges.

"McCain Criticizes Ad Attacking Kerry on Vietnam War Record," declared a
front page Washington Post headline over a story that in nearly 1,200
words didn't quote a word from the ad.

"It's getting ugly out there," Today co-host Campbell Brown fretted before
she asked Tim Russert: "Republican Senator John McCain, a Vietnam vet, has
come out and said that, that ad is quote, 'dishonest and dishonorable.'
Should the White House be doing the same thing or the Bush campaign,
rather, be doing the same thing?"

CNN's Aaron Brown didn't mention the veteran's charges against John Kerry,
but found time to mention John Kerry mocking President Bush for the seven
minutes he continued to read to the schoolkids after hearing of the New
York attack.

(Interestingly, John Kerry once remarked that, upon hearing of the 9/11
attacks, Kerry himself 'was frozen, unable to think' for a full 45
minutes -- but you'd have to dig to find that comment)

Liberal newspapers who did actually cover the SWIFT Boat veterans' charges
either buried the story on the inside pages, reserving, as did the Boston
Globe, the front pages for attacks on the SWIFT boat veterans themselves.

George Elliot, a Navy Lt. Cmdr. who appears in the ad, saying, "John Kerry
has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam" reportedly 'recanted'
to the Boston Globe -- according to the Boston Globe.

When Elliot complained that the Boston Globe invented his alleged
retraction, the Globe ran another front page story to 'stand by it's
story' -- the end result being readers in Boston know that Elliot is
untrustworthy, but are unsure exactly what he said in the first place.

NBC Nightly News denounced the ad from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,
treating the group's expression of free speech as a "loophole" in campaign
finance law that must be plugged.

Unencumbered by any restrictions on their own free speech, NBC's Tom
Brokaw and Andrea Mitchell and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann launched their own
independent attack on the Vietnam vets who are detractors of John Kerry in
order to discredit those with a viewpoint NBC/MSNBC apparently wants to
keep hidden from the American people. "They may get away with it,"
Mitchell fretted.

Here's how MSNBC's Keith Olbermann set up the story, and Mitchell's
enthusiastic 'report'.

Olbermann to Mitchell: "Andrea, if you want an opinion about Lieutenant
John Kerry, ask Lieutenant Commander George Elliott. He seems to have
expressed all of them now."

Mitchell: "Absolutely."

Olbermann: "Do we know what's happening with this man or maybe what
happened to him?"

Mitchell: "Well, I talked to the family today, and they say that he stands
by his participation in the ad so that he is not retracting it as was
previously reported in an interview that he apparently did with the Boston
Globe, so he's had three different positions on this so far, but right now
he stands by being in the advertisement which is challenging the Vietnam
War record of John Kerry. We should point out that none of these men
served on the same swift boat with John Kerry."

Mitchell didn't point out that SWIFT boats patrolled in groups of three or
more, or that most of the men who didn't serve on Kerry's SWIFT boat that
signed off on the ad were his senior officers.  In fact, Mitchell didn't
say anything at all about the substance of the ad -- just that it was an
'anti-Kerry attack' ad.

Since the media has been obsessed for most of the past four years with
catching George Bush in a lie, the free pass it is giving John Kerry is
even more glaringly obvious than the pass it handed to Bill Clinton.

Very few mainstream news outlets have even pretended to investigate the
charges made by the SWIFT Boat veterans.  I've yet to hear a single news
organization note the fact that, out of all the men John Kerry served with
in Vietnam the Kerry campaign could only find thirteen veterans who
support his candidacy. But the SWIFT Boat Veterans for Truth numbers more
than 250 -- all of whom served in the same SWIFT Boat fleet at the same
time as John Kerry.

Kerry's 'Band of Brothers' are for the most part, enlisted men.  Most of
the SWIFT Boat veterans were either brother officers, or Kerry's
commanders including several retired admirals.  But that isn't big news.
The big news is that one man out of 250, George Elliot, allegedly
'recanted' during an earlier interview and now denies recanting.

Anything, so long as the actual big news story doesn't get reported.

What is the 'actual' story?  Somebody is lying.  Either it is John Kerry,
or it is the 250 guys who served in Vietnam with him.

"He that speaketh truth sheweth forth righteousness: but a false witness
deceit." (Proverbs 12:17)