Help! Need good debunking articles about

[asjr]

Swift Boat Vets for Truth. A friend just emailed an email he had received about this. Long, long bullshit piece about Kerry. He asked me if it was just more mud-slinging and I told him yes. But if any of you know of an article I can send him about John O'Neill please let me know. I have urged him to come to DU, but he is with an airline and his schedule sometimes doesn't allow him the time to put into it. I am still working on him.

[nostamj]

1. Joe Conason....

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/07/16/swift_boat_veterans/index.html

[asjr]

3. Thanks. Helps a lot.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

2. Who is John O'Neill?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200405040004

snip

The May 4 Wall Street Journal editorial page featured an op-ed by John O'Neill about Senator John Kerry under the headline "Unfit to Serve." O'Neill is identified by the paper as having "served in Coastal Division 11 in 1969-1970, winning two Bronze Stars and additional decorations for his service in Vietnam." As Joe Conason wrote in Salon.com on May 4, O'Neill has long-standing ties to the GOP establishment, and O'Neill's own p.r. adviser has described O'Neill as sounding like "a crazed extremist."

snip

The Heritage Foundation's website Townhall.com became a vehicle for bringing O'Neill back to the current media spotlight. On April 2, Townhall.com published a syndicated column by Mona Charen -- and on April 8, David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine published a timeline by Winter Solider.com -- both making brief mention of a 1971 debate between Kerry and O'Neill on The Dick Cavett Show in which O'Neill accused Kerry of lying about the activities and conduct of American military forces in Vietnam.

snip

Houston lawyer John O'Neill is a Republican -- as the Houston Chronicle noted the day after O'Neill's interview with Blitzer. According to the paper, O'Neill voted in the 1998 Republican state primary. But O'Neill's ties to the Republican Party extend far beyond party affiliation. During the CNN interview, Blitzer reported that former President Richard Nixon had urged O'Neill to publicly counter Kerry on The Dick Cavett Show, but there is more to the story. O'Neill was a creation of the Nixon administration, as Joe Klein detailed in the January 5 issue of The New Yorker. Former Nixon special counsel Chuck Colson told Klein that Kerry was an "articulate" and "credible leader" of those veterans calling for an end to the Vietnam War and therefore "an immediate target of the Nixon Administration." As such, the Nixon administration found it necessary to "create a counterfoil" to Kerry. Colson recounted, "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, and we did everything we could do to boost his group." Articles from the April 21 Houston Chronicle and the June 17, 2003, Boston Globe confirm close ties between O'Neill and the Nixon administration.

Beyond his role in the Nixon administration's strategy to undermine Kerry in the 1970s, O'Neill is also connected to Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist (a Nixon appointee) and to former President George H.W. Bush, according to Houston Chronicle articles from March 31 and April 21. In the late 1970s, O'Neill clerked for Rehnquist; in 1990, according to an October 7, 1991, report by Texas Lawyer, the former President Bush considered O'Neill for a federal judgeship vacancy.

snip

— N.C.

[asjr]

4. Muchos Gracias. I really appreciate it.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

5. No prob, that's why this is such a great site. n/t

[hope42mro]

6. Test all e-mail rumors at TruthOrFiction.com

This site has research teams devoted to investigating all sorts of e-rumors. Usually they've already investigated a rumor by the time it reaches you. But if they haven't heard it uet, just send them the e-mail.

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