Will The Navy SEALs Swift Boat Obama?

[Gina]

Posted May 1, 2012 8:06am EDT

Almost eight years ago, presidential candidate John Kerry accepted the Democratic nomination with the infamous line: “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty.” His military service, in a war three decades old, became the centerpiece of his campaign.
Within weeks, the Republicans had turned what was seen as one of Kerry’s strongest assets against him.

Swift Boats Veterans for Truth—which included over 200 Vietnam veterans, most who hadn’t even served with Kerry—succeeded in raising doubts about the heroic narrative Kerry was selling.

What seemingly started as a scratch turned into a sucking chest wound for his campaign.
Yesterday, the Obama campaign got clawed.

What was supposed to be an easy win—a victory lap on the anniversary of Bin Laden’s death, trumping up the president’s most militant moment—appeared to be slipping away.

The frustration—or, even anger—within the SEAL community is real, and has been brewing for months, particularly among a politically conservative core of operators. It started immediately after the raid, with questions among the Special Forces and intelligence community of whether the president should have waited to announce the kill to exploit the intelligence cache at Osama’s compound.

It simmered after a Chinook helicopter was shot down, killing 30 Americans, 22 of them Navy SEALs from Team Six.

Link

[Odysseus]

Posted May 1, 2012 8:06am EDT

Link

SEALs currently on active duty will not say or do anything publicly. That would be a massive violation of the UCMJ. However, I suspect that former SEALs will be extremely vocal about this.

[Starbuck]

The article dismisses swift boat veterans, saying "most of them hadn't even served with Kerry" as if that made a difference. Swift boat veterans didn't sink Kerry. Kerry sank himself by being the egotistical, shallow, self-serving jerk that he is. Swift boat veterans didn't sink him, and Moveon.org didn't save him. He just lost.

No, the navy SEALS won't "swift boat" Obama. The "youth vote" won't save him, either. He'll just lose for all the right reasons.

[Novaheart]

Do cheer the "Swift Boat Veterans." A group which attacked a veteran in favor of George Bush.

[Rockntractor]

Do cheer the "Swift Boat Veterans." A group which attacked a veteran in favor of George Bush.

[namvet]

let's just swift boat Obastard at the polls and get rid of it

[Zathras]

Do cheer the "Swift Boat Veterans." A group which attacked a veteran in favor of George Bush.

Who, you convienently forget to mention, is also a veteran. So, no matter who they supported, they would have been attacking a veteran.

[Janice]

No, that be Lurch.

[Starbuck]

Do cheer the "Swift Boat Veterans." A group which attacked a veteran in favor of George Bush.

Oh, Jeez, Nova. Just because someone is a veteran doesn't mean he automatically gets support from all other veterans.

Speaking for every veteran I know I can tell you we just didn't like Kerry. In fact, voting against Kerry was my primary purpose in voting that year. If he hadn't run I probably would not have voted.

While not a swift boat veteran, I am a veteran of Operation Game Warden, a veteran of the U.S. Junk Force, and participated in the Tet Offensive of '68. And I never heard of anyone other than Kerry who went to the trouble of re-enacting events for the benefit of his personal camera. We preferred Bush. Still do.

[Odysseus]

Do cheer the "Swift Boat Veterans." A group which attacked a veteran in favor of George Bush.

There are a number of veterans who would make lousy presidents, and a few who I wouldn't trust to be dog-catcher (while Obama, who is not a veteran, appears to have an affinity for stray dogs, at least if they are prepared correctly). Wesley Clark was universally reviled by people who served with him, and his campaign did not feature any of his former staffers or peers. OTOH, Harry Truman's WWI artillery battery campaigned for him en masse and used to meet at the White House for reunions during his tour. That's a very telling thing about the loyalty that they felt for him, and from him. Kerry's fellow Naval officers and enlisted members considered him a self-absorbed phony who couldn't be trusted, and they said so, individually and in unison. They knew that he felt no loyalty to them during the war, much less after, when he tried to use his service as a springboard to public office, failed, and then turned himself into an antiwar candidate, again using his service for credibility. His testimony before congress was a pack of self-serving lies and his conduct as a leader of the Winter Soldier hearings was despicable.

OTOH, had the positions been reversed, and Bush's leaders in the Guard come out against him, you'd have had no problem with it. However, since they didn't, it was left to Dan Rather and his producers to pretend that they had and produce forgeries of documents to support their lie. This is the real issue, that the media lied about Bush's record, and when the Swift Boat Vets told the truth about Kerry, the Media lied about them, too.