That definitely says "boot." Hi-larious.

I hope Kerry comes out in strong support of McCain on this and shows who is the bigger man.

Can someone explain the POW/MIA flags, the obsession generally, and how it fits into the current zietgiest?

A lot to ask in comments, but I don't quite understand it. You see these flags on government buildings, construction sites, and on the back of NYC taxis, too.

thanks

Let me get this straight. These treasonous vermin opened Pandora's Box and are now shocked that the evils they unleashed are being used against a "true patriot."

Gee, ya mean like the "true patriot" they used them against, a man who actually WENT to Vietnam and was actually WOUNDED?

There was a real dirt campaign in 2000, and one of the charges from the FreeRepublic (conservatism is good, radical conservatism better) was the manchurian candidate attacks, that McCain was emotionally unstable to be president as a consequence of his capture, then there was the vietnam apologist attack, that McCain was one whom turned his back on the cause of Vietnam, "the dead enders" of Vietnam I guess you could sum them up as, and then there was the attacks on his family and the adoption issue, the suggestion that he had done so as an outreach to liberals, the suggestion that he had a whore supplied while he was in capture, and allot of other frankly ludicrous attacks that = tin-foil, moonbat, and kook attacks. I saw that the Freepers even pulled a revival of the Vince Foster and Alamo girl writings, the Clinton death list.

South Carolina at face value was the choir singing at the GOP debate, but in real practice is really down and dirty campaigning.

If you were to work in SC for 4 months right in the middle of their primary, you would be genuinely shocked the way that 'bubba' plays hardball.

But really this is just a regurgitation of the same attacks that came from the far right 8 years ago, and resulted in the hard feelings immediately after the campaign in that state between Bush surrogates and McCain's

But there is definetly a long held charge that McCain is a RHINO in some segments of the GOP, and these attacks have been around for quite some time.

But yeah in SC, all is fair play. Bubba plays hardball by his rules, plays it with a smile as they twist a knife. SC is not for the politcal novice, and if your state is late in the primaries and has had no real input into selecting the president of the united states, then you miss the heavy military retirement vote in SC and the way that these attacks are circulated and maintained.

Bob Jones was just an example of the 'public dispute' in SC, the fliers left on cars, were much more ugly and below the belt. That is the way bubba is..

That is their tradition.

There is an intersection between John McCain and Orson Swindle and the fight they had with Paul Weyrich and Ted Sampley back in 2000--

Ted Sampley was an associate and co-founder of "Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry" in 2004 of Jerry Kiley, the organizer of the "Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain" that put out this flier.

Kiley, reportedly, is a donor to Joe Lieberman, and I break it all down in a post here (if I may be so bold as to blog whore for my pal Blue Girl's site)

http://bluegirlredmissouri.blogspot.com/

A big tip of the hat to the commenters over here--ya'll rock!

Sampley and Riley have been low-budget vendetta merchants in the Carolinas for ages.

The ShitBoaters who targetted Kerry were different in kind and degree: they were well funded, professional ops with Bush-friendly money out of Texas.

..."The rabbit hurt me the cat broke me?" WTF? Is this a reference to something?

I came here for the schadenfreude, but I stayed to read the misspellings in the Swift Booters' filing with the FEC.

Buncha semi-illiterate hate-mongers. In other words, perfect Republicans.

Regrettably, SwiftBoat Veterans For Truth opened up a Pandora's box and someone is bound to imitate their tactics.

The tactics are wrong regardless of who employs them.

Can't we win without the crazy, low IQ, ignorant demographic in our corner, assuming that kind of stuff works to some degree?

The only people that will be fooled by this kind of campaign are the "faux spews" types anyway. It's kind'a like supporting Imus right to exist; he isn't converting anyone so who cares.

One of the things I didn't have time to get into, and Paul did a great job highlighting it above, was this whole battle royale that was fought over Vietnam and the POW issue.

McCain was clearly on one side and all of his accusers were on the other side, and they had what amounts to a bloodbath over it in the pre-Internet era.

I'm finding stuff that has been archived, and it all looks creepy and Freeper-ish, and it just smacks of something I think a lot of Americans didn't realize was going on.

ww.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=508210&in_page_id=1811

The man who knew too much? The truth about the death of Hillary Clinton's close friend Vince Foster
By SALLY BEDELL SMITH
Last updated at 00:23am on 15th January 2008>

And then the:

ww.alamo-girl.com

THE DOWNSIDE LEGACY ARCHIVES

The Great Satan on The Free Republic is who? Steve Hatfill

I guess my point is this, LONG BEFORE the FBI snubbed TPM there was the "Great Vast Right Wing Conspiracy."

But when FreeRepublic started donating PAC money, and started actually tossing the stuff around, they were in part legit, are they on the FBI email list?

Laughing, but the real spread of the Manchurian Candidate manifesto!! Is here.

ww.freerepublic.com/forum/a389bdcbe0de0.htm

Manchurian Candidate McCain: Release your POW files!

Enough said???

LOL, it is deja vue all over again.

But seriously folks, Muckraking is not new.

As a Viet Nam army aviation vet involved in inserting and extracting special ops people into Laos and Cambodia I can say that what truly amazes me is that bomber pilots like McCain were kept alive at all. It shows an amazing discipline amongst the Viet Namese people that they wouldn't have outright ripped captured fliers limb from limb for the aerial atrocities we were committing day after day after day. The whole POW/MIA flag issue is designed to keep us hating the Viet Namese for some sinister hiding of the captives decades after there would no even be a propaganda purpose. Disgusting to see these flags still flying from federal and state office buildings.

As I said at the time the Swift Boat liars were Swiftboating John Kerry, all those morons really did was denigrate their own service by forever demeaning what a Swift Boat actually is.
Forever, instead of a Swift Boat meaning "patriotic service at a time of war", it means "a disgraceful, slanderous pack of lies perpetrated by a bunch of sorry losers against a political target".
"Swift Boat" is now a derogatory verb, not an act of patriotism.
I hope all of you Swift Boat liars are proud every time you hear your service defamed when the words "Swift Boat" are uttered.
You sad sacks "Swiftboated" yourselves.
Reap, sow.

I looked at some of the material in this or a similar groups website and it raises questions.

They claim that McCain is the son and grandson of 2 admirals and has benefited unusually from that including getting 28 medals for 20 hours of combat flying while some grunts spent thousands of hours in the mud and got nothing.

They claim that McCain benefited from his families rank when he was captured, and claim that he gave tactical information in exchange for special treatment and they have some pretty good evidence.

I hate the idea of smearing someone who has sacrificed for his country as he did but when a man is a candidate for the presidency all things must come to light.

I would like to see McCain address all of the accusations and make this right. We have a real jerk as president now and it could have been avoided by the application of some very bright light. If McCain did give tactical information that resulted in the lives of his shipmates for medical care I want to know. Because the "Swift Boot"ers have outrageous claims doesn't mean that their wrong.

Cindy Brochure (252) 522-4775 910 Pamela Dr, Kinston, NC 28504

Can this be an exclusive? I mean can we all listen in on the interview?

I would tune in to a raving kook, moonbat, and tin-foil account of these accusations.

If you had it on the veracifier I would watch.

This would run Alex Jones for his money.

I can understand wanting closure, but the Vietnam POW/MIA thing seems wholly 'Merican in that we dropped tens of thousands of soldiers into the jungle of a backwards country, bombed the crap out of them, toxified the place and now are all uppity and whiny about them not turning over every last bone of every last soldier who died there. Oh, please, get a grip. Don't invade distant places if you don't want to leave soldiers behind. How f***in' complicated is that??

Traveling in Britain we came across a WWI monument to their MIAs. The total was well over a million. We're arguing with Vietnam over a few thousand.

OxyCon >"...all those morons really did was denigrate their own service by forever demeaning what a Swift Boat actually is.

Forever, instead of a Swift Boat meaning "patriotic service at a time of war", it means "a disgraceful, slanderous pack of lies perpetrated by a bunch of sorry losers against a political target"...."

Welcome to politics Asian style.

TPTB in eastern Asia are doing a fine job following their plan to disassemble any possible resistance to a dynasty of Asian dominated power brokers (replacing the tired old Euro-based ones). Puppet masters are puppet masters no matter their culture and language.

Savvy people take note of Sun Tzu

"For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill" - Sun Tzu

If they adopted the logo and simply changed the name to a barely perceptible "Swift Boot..." they haven't made themselves any less accountable for trademark infringement. Trademark law protects against similar uses that create a "likelihood of confusion" between the original and the infringing marks.

daCascadian wrote on January 16, 2008 4:00 PM

"For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill" - Sun Tzu

Nice quote, and this is deja vue all over again.

But I have to admit that the battlefield of ideas has changed, that the media has changed, and that we are becoming dated in approach and style....

ww.propagandamatrix.com/articles/january2008/160108World.htm

To be the best now? You package in MTV soundbite, endeavoring to tantalize an increasingly smaller attention span.

An animated gif use to be effective, now it is the video clip that rules, forget the context, show me the action.

It is the Machiavellian utilization of this new media that is now the subtle application of Sun Tzu.

Does anybody really think that people are going to navigate to the DOJ for information?

nah.. we got WIKI and video, we have a new narrative emerging.

Live by the smear...die by the smear.

Sorry...no sympathy for McCain here. Johnny got the treatment from Bush in SC (robo push calls to voters asking if their vote would change if they knew he had a black child -- he and his wife had a Thai adoptee.) It killed his campaign drive.

He watched Rove et al do the same thing with the Swift Boat campaign against Kerry and McCain HAD to know just what was happening, but he immediately went out on the campaign trail with Bush and gave him big bear hugs of support.

So there is McCain...getting smeared....watching a colleague and fellow vet get smeared and then turning around and giving big hugs of support to the guy who ultimately was responsible for the smears simply because he wanted to be President and felt he had to suck up to bush to stay in good graces with the party's right wing...their money and their manpower.

So now John....how do you think that decision is paying off......maybe you will learn John. But I guess it is too late. These people never had any morals or ethics....and it seems you are now a member of their group for having made the decision you did. Was it worth it?

If it weren't for their general ignorance and illiteracy, I would just assume that the German spelling of Boot was intended and totally in character for the group's fascistic fantasies. I mean, it does seem that the republicans are running to be the head Knight Templar, rather than president. These clowns deserve each other.

"nogo war wrote on January 16, 2008 2:43 PM:

". . . . Too many Viet vets wear hats, pins, jackets proclaiming who they are. For some that is their only identity.

That nails it. And the underlying additional fact, which is exactly opposite that visual boasting, is that they cannot admit that they were suckered. Were themselves wrong to unquestioningly swallow, believe, and act upon the propaganda we were all fed.

How can one tolerate living day in day out as a constant hater obsessed at core with avoiding one's own responsibility?

US involvement in Viet Nam was wrong; _ergo_, any who supported and advanced that were wrong. That sole admission is by itself nearly sufficient to clear up all the outerdirected bile.

"Ironically they embrace the Republicans that fucked us over after 1968."

They embrace the tough-talkers who help them avoid the fact of their individual responsibility for having been wrong. What's especially bizaare is that they embrace the party of chickenhawks; but apparently "supportive" rhetoric is more important than fact and reality. It doesn't matter that Bushit went AWOL -- a courts-martial offense; it only matters tha he "Supports the troops" -- even though he doesn't.

Sound, appearance, and nonsense, and no substance.

I appreciate those who served, in whatever branch of the military; but the shoveling of veterans under the rug after a war is nothing new; my father signed up the day after Pearl Harbor, and he discovered that fact directly, and his children were told about it. As for Viet Nam: it was difficult deciding what to do, but ultimately it came down to this question: Do I want to go through what my father was put through?"

Nothing at all new about it: read up on the core cause of Shays's Rebellion, which occurred after ratification of the Articles of Confederation, and added some impetus to the framing of the Constitution.

Let me set some of the record straight. Ted Sampley, Jerry Kiley and Earl Hopper are all friends of mine. I used to be a live POW activist but finally gave up.
Sampley was a Green Beret, served a first tour as a mere paratrooper with 173d Airborne Brigade in Vietnam and a second tour as a Green Beret in Cambodia. Earl Hopper is a retired Air Force colonel, with service in Vietnam, the father of a Vietnam MIA and former chairman of the National League of Families (he was ousted in 1984 when the still incumbent faction decided to focus on the recovery of remains). Jerry Kiley served in Vietnam in the Signal Corps; he has been nicknamed the "stealth activist" for his ability to penetrate places where you would expect tight security (even confronting then vice president Bush at the 1988 Al Smith dinner held during the election). Kiley was prosecuted on misdemeanor charges over his run-in with the Vietnamese premier but acquitted by a United States magistrate judge in a non-jury trial.
What motivates them: first, they all believe that Vietnam held back live prisoners of war at the end of the war. (two quick examples - and there's lots more - 17 men who had appeared in published photos while in captive status were not returned in 1973; between 150 and 200 men that U.S. intelligence, before the end of the war, believed the Vietnamese could absolutely account for, dead or alive, were not returned in 1973). John Kerry and John McCain were the leading lights on a 1991-93 Senate select committee, whose final report essentially rejected the concept that there were still live POWs; thus, they are, in the eyes of Sampley et al., public enemies no. 2 and 1. Second, Kerry's activism in Vietnam Veterans Against the War and his (I suspect, overblown) accounts of war atrocities committed by U.S. troops have not been forgiven. Third, Sampley and especially Kiley have close ties to Vietnamese emigre activists, who aren't much different than Miami Cubans.
Ergo, when Kerry ran in 2004, Sampley and Kiley started an anti-Kerry web site but stood it down when they saw that the Swift Boat vets were going to be far more effective. This year, it's McCain's turn.
One final point (I think I've covered all the issues): the POW-MIA flag flies from government buildings because it's been lobbied into law everywhere. And not necessarily by live POW activists - there are other factions interested in the flag display for other reasons.

Thank bob atkinson and those others to address the persistance of MIA-POW flags in the culture and what it means and why.

But as bob atkinson mentions, what does it mean that all these government buildings fly it? It seems to me to retrograde and bizzare, given the issues the country has to deal with, to be flying that flag.

i was also very moved and saddened by the Denver Vet who attests to how a lot of Vietnam Vets cling to their identity s Vietnam Vets because it is all they have. And they seem to feel the Republican Party is on their side, somehow. It reminds me of Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas."

And, beyond that, the corrosive effect of that war... it all reminds me of RObert Stone's short story, "Helping."

As Hillary would say

This is all a left wing conspiracy

The respose by NATIONAL is typical of those who have little if any knowledge of POW/MIA history. And while I may very well be true that I am NOT in my "right" mind, As someone who spent two tours in combat with the 5th Marines in Vietnam, I have certainly earned the right to express my opinions. I wonder what Mr. NATIONAL ever did to EARN HIS right to express an opinion. (other than having been born American).
The suggestion that America would never abondon it's servicemen is laughable.
The issue of McCain's behavior while in captivity CANNOT be evaluated by public, press or, anyone else. ALL POW debriefing documents were classified at the insistence of Senator McCain. So, those who rush to support McCain are doing so out of a sense of loyalty rather than a position of knowledge. I include those former POW's who support McCain, in my evaluation. After all, it is NOT possible for any of those men to KNOW what McCain did or did not say when he was interrogated. In addition, information contained on the Vietnam Veterans against McCain web site contain a good deal more than simple accusations by Mr. Kiley and Mr. Sampley and deserves a thorough review.
Despite the media's long held position, that McCain is the military's guy, the fact remains that Senator McCain is despised by thousands of veterans who witnessed his despicable behavior while a member of the POW/MIA Committee. Readers of this post are encouraged to read Bill Hendon's AN ENORMOUS CRIME
before they rush to defend McCain.

The issue of POW/MIA's has been so twisted because of political fear, it is impossible to get an honest answer from either the government or the military. Unfortunately for those, like McCain and Kerry, there is
undeniable, historical evidence which pretty much establishes the willingness to "sacrifice the few" for the benefit of the country.
Towards the end of WWll, the Soviets overran hundreds of German POW/concentration camps, seizing HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of allied POW's. These men were shipped to the gulag system...NEVER TO BE HEARD FROM AGAIN.
This is not a matter of conjecture. The US military and US intelligence services were well aware of what was happening and did nothing to stop it. I don't deny that the situation was very dangerous as the Soviets were willing to keep fighting. We (the US) were not.
In 1992, in open session of the Senate POW/MIA hearings, Col. Philip Corso admitted under oath that he was the man who advised Eisenhower to adopt the policy of declaring all the lost POW's dead (and we are talking about TENS OF THOUSANDS of AMERICAN SERVICEMEN). Col. Corso stated that the "country was 'war weary' and would not support a war against the Soviet Union in order to recover our men."
Col.Corso also testified on POW's lost and never returned by the North Koreans as well.
Many who believe the notion that ALL living POW's were returned during Operation Homecoming point to the fact that, after ALL THESE YEARS not a single POW has ever been released(or escaped) despite reward offers in the millions of dollars. Foolish people think that it would be impossible to hide POW's after Vietnam "opened up." A belief born of ignorance. If the Soviets could hide hundreds of thousands of POW's, preventing even a single escape, surely the vast jungles of South East Asia could hide a few hundred POW's
forever.
The FACT is, the United States has a long tradition of abandoning POW's. For the most part, the country couldn't care less. The population makes all the sympathetic noises, and greedily accepts the most unlikely and outrageously absurd explanations put forth by our leaders.
Reagan called it the "highest national priority" and did NOTHING. We've ALL DONE NOTHING and it makes me ant to puke.
If McCain is really such a genuine "Hero" let him release ALL his military records, including his debriefing
documents. In fact, all POW debriefing documents should be released, just as ALL government documents relating to the POW/MIA's. There's a reason why that's never going to happen and it has NOTHING to do with privacy. It has to do with deception, lies and dishonor.