N. Y. Times dissembles in Kerry story

Senator John Kerry is at it again. But he says this time he really will disprove all those things the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth brought to public attention during the 2004 presidential campaign.

The New York Times lends Kerry a hand today with a 1700-word, front page promo piece, "Kerry Pressing Swift Boat Case Long After Loss."

Here’s part of it:

[A]mong those who were on the front lines of the 2004 campaign, the battle over Mr. Kerry's wartime service continues, out of the limelight but in some ways more heatedly — because unlike then, Mr. Kerry has fully engaged in the fight. Only those on Mr. Kerry's side, however, have gathered new evidence to support their case.

Sounds like what you’d expect from a Kerry press release, doesn’t it?

A number of bloggers have already torpedoed this latest example of Times’ political partisanship cloaked as news reporting. See, for example, Lorie Byrd at Wizbang, Ed Driscoll,and Tom Maguire at JustOneMinute.

But I want to fire my own round at a piece of outright New York Times dissembling.

The dissembling appears in the following paragraph referencing Swiftvet organizer John O’Neill and Kerry's 1971 testimony before the U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations committee. The paragraph contains the Times' only mention of Kerry's 1971 testimony:

Mr. O'Neill said he "would be thrilled to look at anything [Kerry] wants to send." Still, he added, "I'm sorry he never apologized for his 1971 speech," referring to Mr. Kerry's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which he told other soldiers' accounts of ravaging Vietnamese villages and citizens. "I think it would have been a very positive thing to do in terms of the many thousands of people who survived Vietnam and felt that was very hurtful." (Bold mine)

The Times' description of Kerry's testimony as telling "other soldiers’ accounts of ravaging Vietnam villages and citizens" is dissembling by virtue of the Times' silence regarding what it knows are the most notorious and disputed parts of Kerry's testimony.

The Times knows Kerry accused the American military at every level of command of being fully aware of war crimes committed on a daily basis. His exact words to the committee were:

“war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.”

The Times knows Kerry told the committee his fellow Vietnam veterans, millions of them, were monsters. His exact words to the committee were:

The country doesn't know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence.

Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony and his failure to ever apologize for sliming millions who served honorably tells us a lot about him.

And the Times’ dissembling about Kerry’s testimony tells us a lot about it.

And who’s surprised to see one in the service of the other?

They’re a “go together” duo.

It's just sad they'd present their dissembling on Memorial Day weekend.

UPDATE: May 29, 2006 - I just found at Confederate Yankee a fine post with a labeled aerial photo that leads CY blogger Bob Owens to say:

John Kerry did not take anyone into Cambodia from his swift boat based at Ha Tien. The navigable Giang Thanh River runs near the Cambodian border, but at no point does it ever cross.

Take a look. Kerry may have that magic hat but Bob's got a real photo.