John O’Neill in 1971 hated Kerry then, hates him now
HoustonChronicle.com – Witness breaks silence – backs Kerry’s story. Why is all this old material suddenly news.
This seems to have gone on long enough. The whole thing stinks of Richard Nixon’s use of a dirty tricks squad headed by Donald Segretti and modelled after the fabled trickster Dick Tuck — Nixon’s nemesis. If you didn’t know it, John O’Neill of the Swift Boat group was also used by Nixon back then too. If we are going to run the 1968 John Kerry against the 1968 GW Bush this would make more sense. But that’s not who we have and I wonder how the 1968 Bush would fare.
To me this all started before the campaign. It was a known fact that Carl Rove had this Swift Boat group up his sleeve. Its website name was bought back in April. They don’t like Kerry, fine. But this is pure low-life mud-slinging. The problem is the President has zero achievements to run on. He can’t get the economy going and even by starting a war the economy won’t budge. That’s a first! His administration is promoting offshoring jobs and promoting illegal aliens to citizenship. Maybe that’s part of the problem. The deficit is a disaster and I just don’t see how he can win re-election. Since when does “stay the course” really mean anything to fickle Americans? And what course are we talking about?
Meanwhile, the entire anti-Kerry smear campaign goes back to 1971 when current Swift boat honcho John O’Neill actually got into a nasty debate with Kerry on the Dick Cavette show. Kerry was an young protestor and O’Neill hated him for it. According to these reports O’Neill has been trotted out at least once before as a pro-war foil by the Nixon Whitehouse.
It is not the first time that Kerry has been criticised by veterans who resented his role in speaking out against the Vietnam war. Writing in The New Yorker, Joe Klein reported that Nixon’s chief counsel, Charles Colson formed the Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace featuring John E. O’Neill to attack Kerry.
Klein recounted a conversation with Colson years later in which Colson said of Kerry “He was a thorn in our flesh. He was very articulate, a credible leader of the opposition. He forced us to create a counterfoil. We found a vet named John O’Neill and formed a group called Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace. We had O’Neill meet the President [Nixon], and we did everything we could do to boost his group.” [3]
Also read this entry on O’Neill.
So the Swift Boat stuff starts to appear. This particular post got my attention. It uses the old bromides. Drudge rolls out a teaser then the right wing media jumps all over it all bemoaning the fact that the “mainstream” news is ignoring it. They still say this. Personally I think it’s over-covered. What the media is ignoring are the claims that don’t seem to add up. Then the counter claims appear. My fav is posted below.
Capitol Hill Blue: Anti-Kerry Ad Laced With Distortions, Inaccuracies
McCain : I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable. As it is none of these individuals served on the boat (Kerry) commanded. Many of his crewmates have testified to his courage under fire. I think John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam.
What made this interesting was the reaction to John McCains assertions that this appears to be a bunch of dirty tricks and propaganda. Suddenly the radio talk show hosts — who were all huge McCain fans — went ballistic. McCain is now an idiot — a stooge. A stooge for who?
That said you can read one website that lists a bunch of disgruntled Vets against Kerry. If you read between the lines you find that this is all about Kerry’s 1971 anti-war attitude AFTER his tour(s) of duty. They’re blaming him for what? Complaining 33 years ago about a controverisial war in which he took part? Hm. I guess he won’t get their vote. A lot of people are not going to vote for Kerry, but mostly because of current events, not Viet Nam era grudges.
related link:
National Review article on the O’Neill-Kerry grudge
By this time, O’Neill had been star-spotted by President Nixon, and he met the president at the White House. (The sunny atmosphere turned a little frostier when O’Neill confided that he’d voted for Hubert Humphrey in ’68: “The people all around me were shocked” when he told Nixon he was a Democrat.) He was also introduced to several Democratic congressmen and senators who didn’t like Kerry’s slanderous grandstanding.
