Help! Re: Kerry re-enacting service

[Mixxster]

I saw a mention of this the other day at DU but now I can't find it. On another forum, there's someone posting this as fact and Snopes has nothing on it. Does anyone have a source to refute this? This woman constantly spews anti-Kerry threads and I realize that she is Bushwashed (hey, I just made that up) and a lost cause but I am concerned that others will believe her claims.

[democratreformed]

1. "Bushwashed" - Hey, I like that term!

He He. I think I'll start using it, if it's okay.

[Mixxster]

3. Be my guest

I haven't copyrighted it...yet. :)

[democracyindanger]

2. Search the NYT site

Bill Keller looked at all the footage, and said it was just film any young soldier with an 8mm camera would have shot in his down time. The 'reenactments' were just soldiers walking around territory they had already taken, and Kerry is rarely in the footage.

[joefree1]

4. Mediamatters.org debunked it.

NYT article on discredited Drudge story failed to report paper's own executive editor had debunked it

A July 30 New York Times article joined the echo chamber surrounding the discredited charge that Senator John Kerry (D-MA) reenacted Vietnam combat scenes on videotape for his future political ambitions. The attack was revived on July 28 by Internet gossip Matt Drudge on his highly trafficked website, The Drudge Report.

More ...
http://mediamatters.org/items/200407300013


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[joefree1]

5. Also from Mediamatters.org

Simply not true, Keller found after sitting through 40 minutes of footage in Kerry's office. Contrary to Drudge's assertion -- which apparently quoted O'Neill's upcoming book -- that Kerry would "reenact combat scenes where he would portray the hero," Keller wrote:

The first thing to be said is that the senator's movies are not self-aggrandizing. Mr. Kerry is hardly in the film, and never strikes so much as a heroic pose. These are the souvenirs of a 25-year-old guy sent to an exotic place on an otherworldly mission, who bought an 8-millimeter camera in the PX and shot a few hours of travelogue, most of it pretty boring if you didn't live through it.

Keller also wrote that, according to the Swift Boat Sailors Association, "a group of veterans who manned" the kind of riverboat that Kerry commanded, "lots of enlisted men did the same." Former Senator Max Cleland (D-GA), a strong Kerry supporter who lost three limbs in Vietnam, told Keller that he has hours of film from his service in Vietnam, which, Keller wrote, "he has had edited into a three minute meet-the-senator video."

As Media Matters for America has noted, both Patterson and O'Neill have a history of issuing false claims about Kerry. Patterson, author of the new book Reckless Disregard: How Liberal Democrats Undermine Our Military, Endanger Our Soldiers, and Jeopardize Our National Security (Regnery Publishing, 2004), severely distorted Kerry's record on defense spending, intelligence spending, and veterans' pay in two recent appearances on the FOX News Channel. Patterson also asserts in his book that "every terrorist" is "hoping" the Democrats win the upcoming U.S. election.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200407290002

[Mixxster]

6. Thanks!