ABC NIGHTLINE - PLEASE USE CAUTION IN PREEMTIVE CRITICISM !!!

According to the notice posted at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1071254 re: tonight’s ABC Nightline program ….

“The group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth alleges that Kerry has distorted the truth about what happened during the war and questions whether he deserved the medals he received. Tonight, you'll hear from eyewitnesses who have not spoken before: the Vietnamese who fought against him.”
…
“Producer Andrew Morse went to Vietnam, to the coordinates taken from the U.S. military after-action report from Kerry's battle for which he won the Silver Star. And there Andrew found several people who had either witnessed the events of that day, or in some cases, had actually fought against the swift boats. And it is their accounts that you will hear tonight.”
…
One of the Vietnamese men in the area says he was visited by a man claiming to be a swift boat veteran and a cameraman. He says the veteran was disparaging towards Kerry's conduct in the war, and asked him in an interview about the events of that day. We do not know who that man is, or whatever happened to that tape.

POINT 1: Don’t the SBV argue that Kerry got at least one medal for the incident where there was no fighting/no battle going on? Based on the second clip above – i.e., “people … had actually fought against the swift boats” – it seems to me that the program is going to DISCOUNT the SBV claims, NOT support them.

POINT 2: Ok – a person seeking dirt on Kerry came and interviewed one of the Vietnamese. That tape has never surfaced and was not made part of the Stolen Honor movie or any SBV ad (or anything else that we’ve seen). Now – don’t you think that if this witness supported the SBV “crowd”, we would have seen that tape 1000s of times by now???

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE – to the extent that you ARE writing to Nightline, do NOT assume that the show is going to be negative and do not “slam” them preemptively. I think it’s perfectly fine to say you hope they’re going to present the facts fairly and honestly – but it’s not helpful at ALL to criticize them before we even know what they’re going to say. All indications that I can see are that this will be more positive than negative.

No one cares anymore. Surprised they're running it.

But those undecideds who seem ready to leave it to a coin toss may yet be influenced, and the Swift Boat Vets for Truth (SIC) have given no indication of letting up. If Nightline discredits them for good, neutralizing them for the next 19 days, this could be worthwhile.

they are obviously too stupid to recognize a real leader versus a witless shell.

What do you think now?

:thumbsup:

the show may well expose O'Neill once again for the vile lying hypocritical creep that he is.

Even if they back Kerry up, they'll just say that "John Kerry's Commie friends come to his rescue. What a traitor."

Fuck ABC.

but I usually get pretty strong feelings about things, call it like I see it, and express my sentiment for better or worse.

I have never found Ted Koppel to be a shill for anybody's cause, and I think they may have a surprise in store for chipmunk cheeks.

validate kerry's role and swift boat duty adn what they experienced. it may be one of the ones being interviewed, but, he backed kerry

http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:hzjrCJnWr2wJ:abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/Investigation/vietnam_tiger_force_031112.html+Andrew+Morse+vietnam&hl=en

That is a cached link on google....about tiger force

Nov. 12— The 101st Airborne Division's Tiger Force was among the most elite units in the Vietnam War, tasked with cleaning out the enemy in a string of villages in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. But according to an Army investigation, which the government kept secret for almost three decades, the mission turned into a seven-month-long mass murder.




Between May and November 1967, the highly-decorated, all-volunteer reconnaissance unit, which was attached to the 101st Airborne, moved through a series of villages deep inside Vietnam's Central Highlands, territory controlled by the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies. Their orders were to ambush and booby-trap enemy combatants, but the 45-strong unit took the war to the villagers, killing hundreds of them.
Medic Rion Causey, 55, who is now a nuclear engineer in California, says he watched as soldiers killed unarmed civilians. He estimates the unit killed 120 civilians in one five-week period alone.

"Murder was not uncommon," former Tiger Force Sgt. William Doyle, 70, told ABCNEWS, confirming what has now been revealed in Army documents. "It was more or less the rule of the day.

"We trusted absolutely nobody," he said. "You know, that was rule number one."

The Tiger Force investigation was kept secret by the Army for almost three decades until last month, when The Blade, a newspaper published in Toledo, Ohio, ran a four-part series on the killings and investigation that followed. The series was based on an eight-month investigation by reporters Mike Sallah, Mitch Weiss and Joe Mahr, who obtained hundreds of pages of classified Army documents.

"What they would essentially do is they would kill prisoners, they would kill soldiers, they would kill villagers and they would sever the ears to wear as necklaces," Sallah told ABCNEWS. "Twenty-seven Tiger Force soldiers testified during the Army's investigation that they had either taken part in the ritual or that they had witnessed it firsthand — the severing of ears to be made into necklaces."

The Army said today it is conducting a preliminary assessment of any new evidence raised by The Blade's reporting. The assessment will determine whether a new case will be opened, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Kevin Curry told ABCNEWS.

Doyle said he regrets every American soldier who got killed, blinded or injured in the war, but he does not regret what happened to the Vietnamese. "I did not kill any Vietnamese that I did not feel that by killing them I was prolonging my own life and the lives of my friends, and my men under my command," he said. "I was not out just cold-blooded killing people for no reason. That would be a war crime. I'm not guilty of that."

‘Kill With a Look’

Now the people involved are freely admitting to ABCNEWS what they did, saying that their actions were necessary to ensure the safety of the American soldiers.

"You had to have a killer instinct, you had to have a strong survival instinct," said Doyle, who is now retired and living in Missouri. "You got to be quick on the trigger. You got to be pretty merciless."

"If you're walking along a rice paddy dyke, and them farmers are out there planting rice, and one of them looks up at you and makes eye contact, and the eye contact is the wrong kind of contact — because you can kill with a look — he's a dead man," he said. "You better not look with hate. Curiosity — maybe he might live. But when he made eye contact, if you detected hate, you would probably kill him

piece on one of the newscasts that interviewed a Nam soldier that was there that day. He was 100% supporting Kerry and Kerry's men's version of events. He talked about the position of the boats on the river, etc. and said that he was the only one of his group alive. The rest were all killed that day. Unfortunately, this never got the wall to wall coverage 24/7 like the rest of the crap. That's probably why people think it is buried.