GREAT STUFF IN THE NY POST
Two fascinating bits in the New York Post:
Robert "Friar Tuck" Brant — one of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who signed a letter charging Kerry with sliming fellow Vietnam vets by accusing them of war crimes — said Kerry asked to meet with him, but he refused. Brant, a retired Navy commander, said Kerry called on Sunday, asking if he knew about the Swift Vets for Truth, and he bluntly replied, "I am one, John."
Kerry replied, "I appreciate your honesty. Well, why are you?" Brant recounted to The Associated Press, adding he replied that he was angry at Kerry's antiwar activism, which included charges of war crimes by U.S. troops.
"I said, 'You know that's not true.' That's been simmering in me about 35 years," Brant said, adding that he rebuffed Kerry's request for a meeting by saying, "I know what I know."
Sean McCabe, a spokesman for the 264-member organization, said it plans to send a cease-and-desist letter warning Kerry "to stop calling our members," because it's an independent "527" group and it's illegal for campaigns to contact them.
And this one:
Cutter also sought to explain the apparent contradiction between how Kerry got his first Purple Heart for combat, on Dec. 2, 1968, and a diary entry days later in which he wrote he had "a cocky feeling of invincibility" because "we hadn't been shot at yet."
Kerry was talking about two different boats, Cutter said, adding the Dec. 2 action involved a small Boston Whaler-type boat, but he felt cocky days later because he hadn't yet been shot at aboard his larger Swift boat.
Oh, that makes perfect sense. Wait, here's another explanation, from the Washington Times:
A Kerry campaign official, speaking on background, told The Washington Times yesterday that the "we" in the passage from Mr. Kerry's journal refers to "the crew on Kerry's first swift boat, operating as a crew" rather than Mr. Kerry himself.
"John Kerry didn't yet have his own boat or crew on December 2," according to the aide. "Other members of the crew had been in Vietnam for some time and had been shot at and Kerry knew that at the time. However, the crew had not yet been fired on while they served together on PCF 44 under Lieutenant Kerry."
What is this, the Royal We?
BUSH'S TRAVELS, PRE-CONVENTION
Bush pre-convention schedule:
On Thursday, Bush heads to New Mexico, one of the US states Democrat Al Gore won in 2000 by a narrow margin.
Bush will join fellow Republican Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who saw the city through the September 11, 2001 attacks.
On Friday, Bush will travel to Florida, which was decisive in the 2000 elections. On Saturday he will be in Ohio and on Sunday in West Virginia.
On August 30, Bush will visit New Hampshire and Michigan. On August 31 he will go to Tennessee and on September 1, he will arrive in New York after a stopover in Ohio.
WHAT KERRY SAID AT THE SWIFT BOAT DEDICATION
The guys at CrushKerry.com found Kerry's speech at the dedication ceremony for Swift Boat One. The full text is here.
There's nothing in the speech, at least, in the vein of Kerry's reported comment to Robert "Friar Tuck" Brant that, "I said to all the swift guys that I wasn't talking about the swifties, I was talking about all the rest of the veterans."
But there are a few interesting lines:
we proudly share with the nation we willingly served, hundreds, even thousands, of examples of daring, courage, commitment and sacrifice. We do that with none of the braggadocio or even brash arrogance of our younger days...
We were bound together in the great and noble effort of giving ourselves to something bigger than each and every one of us individually, and doing so at risk of life and limb.
"Great and noble effort"? I thought they were chopping off the heads of civilians!
But, because of the nature of the war we fought we came back to a country that did not recognize our contribution. It did not understand the war we fought, what we went through, or the love that held us together then. It did not understand what young men could feel for boats like these and men like you.
Gee, I wonder why the country didn't recognize your contribution. Maybe some nut was telling secondhand tales of war crimes on national television...
This is really the first time in 30 years that we've been able to share with each other the feelings that we had then, and the feelings we have now. They are deeply and profoundly personal feelings. They are different for each of us, but the memories are the same — rich with the smells and sounds of the rivers and the power of the boats — punctuated by the faces of the men with whom we served and the thoughts we shared.
But that was 30 years ago, and now it is time to move on.
Where was this "move on" attitude when you started your presidential campaign?
BUSH WINS IOWA! WELL, THE STATE FAIR AT LEAST
Don't read too much into this, but take note: "More than 25,000 Iowa state fair goers cast their ballot at the Iowa Secretary of State booth, which sponsored the poll from August 12 - 22. President Bush and Vice President Cheney have won the 11-day straw poll at the Iowa State Fair, beating Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards by 3,111 votes, 56 percent to 43 percent.
There's a bit more from the campaign about their grassroots effort in that state: "Bush-Cheney '04 has now registered over 20,000 Bush Volunteers in Iowa, and has appointed a Bush-Cheney '04 county chair in every county statewide. The Bush-Cheney '04 Iowa grassroots effort, all 20,621 strong, is built on the premise that neighbor-to-neighbor contact is the most effective tool for energizing participation, and support is growing throughout communities and neighborhoods in the state."
Maybe all of this is hype, but so far the anecdotal evidence is that this ultra-state-of-the-art, all-the-bells-and-whistles, leave-no-Bush-voter-behind grassroots turnout system that the GOP has spent a small fortune and about a google man-hours on building could work pretty well. Maybe the GOP turnout on Nov. 2 is going to be a lot higher than the pollsters are currently calculating.
Rove, Mehlman, Dowd, Gillespie and company are going to either look like geniuses or fools on the morning of Nov. 3.
Actually, straw polls in Iowa are far more accuarte than "professional" polls by political operatives.
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