WaPo has the scent, but can't or won't find the meat yet in the SwiftVets vs. Kerry controversy

Washingtonpost.com, the online version of WaPo, tonight posted a lengthy article by staff writer Terry M. Neal entitled "When is a Campaign Ad Not a Campaign Ad?" Because it's currently listed as an "online extra," I don't know whether it will or won't also appear in tomorrow's hardcopy WaPo, but I hope it does. Ostensibly it's an article about the so-called 527 organizations that have sprung up in the wake of recent campaign reform legislation, and it does indeed include some general discussion of issues common to those organizations. But almost the entire article is a discussion of the SwiftVets vs. Kerry controversy:

[T]his week it's another group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, that's getting all of the ink with ads accusing Kerry of being a liar and war coward.

Here's Mr. Neal's framing of the issues behind the controversy:

O'Neill and the group make the argument that Kerry lied or exaggerated facts to receive his three purple hearts, Bronze Star and Silver Star. O'Neill said he talked to more than 60 eyewitnesses, including former swift boat crewmen who served in the same division with Kerry during Vietnam and who take issue with his interpretation of events. It would take another book, or at least a long investigative report, to truth-squad every point made in the O'Neill book or the SBVT ads. And we won't attempt to do that here. We will, however, give you links to the organization's site, www.swiftvets.com, where, if you're really interested, you can get their side of the story — and view the anti-Kerry rhetoric — in detail. For the sake of fairness, we'll also provide you the link for David Brock's Media Matters website, which has done a comprehensive deconstruction of the SBVT's arguments. Media Matters also exposed anti-Catholic, anti-Islamic and otherwise outrageous statements made by Corsi over the years on the conservative FreeRepublic.com website. Instead, this column is meant to examine the larger issue of whether this group can rightly call itself non-partisan while suggesting that its goals are educational, rather than political.

Mr. Neal is absolutely right that it would take "another book, or at least a long investigative report, to truth-squad every point made in the O'Neill book or the SBVT ads." Among the rather major points that he neglects to mention at all, however, is the "Christmas in Cambodia" discrepancy — something that, compared to many of the other factual conflicts now being argued outside the mainstream media, is dirt simple. This omission is odd, especially given that the most recent example of Sen. Kerry claiming to have served in Cambodia was published by this very same Washington Post on June 1, 2003 — Kerry's "lucky CIA-guy hat" story that is now absolutely infamous outside the mainstream media, but as yet unmentioned within it. From a personal standpoint, I'm modestly proud to note that as of this moment, a Google search on the terms "Kerry lucky hat" or "Kerry hat Cambodia" turns up BeldarBlog as the number one or two search result. And yet, isn't that incredibly pathetic? Shouldn't the results of entering those search terms — which Google and similar search engines rank in order of relevance, which includes a heavy weighting for source credibility (as determined by super-secret algorithms which consider how often the source has been linked elsewhere on the net) — be giving off links to WaPo and the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune and CNN and ... well, you get my point, I hope. If George W. Bush were to claim that Chuck Yeager had given him a lucky rabbit's foot just before they flew a secret joint mission together over Cuba, do you honestly think the mainstream media would ignore that story? ***** Moreover, his protestations to the contrary about being unable to "truth-squad" the factual disputes between the SwiftVets and Sen. Kerry, Mr. Neal proceeds to regurgitate, albeit in toned-down vitriol, virtually all of the Kerry-Edwards 2004 and DNC talking points that have been trotted out over the last week to attempt to discredit the SwiftVets, collectively and (in the case of their principle spokesmen like John O'Neill) individually. In reading them here, as elsewhere, I'm continually struck by one thing: Only one side's spokesmen ever use the terms "smear" or "sleazy." John O'Neill, for example, has been called a partisan thug, a Colson protege, a career-long Kerry-hater, a Republican tool, and much worse. He'll defend himself from those charges, when asked about them, with polite and calm factual rebuttals. But he keeps his cool, and he never plays the victim card, no matter how tempting that must be. Compare, for example, this, from O'Neill's interview with the WaPo's Neal:

O'Neill acknowledged that only one of the SBVT members actually served in Kerry's boat. But he said that misses the point — the other former crewmen worked in close proximity to Kerry and have eyewitness accounts that contradict the senator's version of events. While he said he respected the opinions of those like McCain who have criticized the group for distorting Kerry's record, he said SBVT's members have a duty and have earned the right to speak out "against a man who came back home and falsely accused us of being war criminals and lied about his own record."

— to this, from Salon's Martin Lewis (registration or annoying ad req'd to view):

In 1971, John O'Neill was Richard Nixon's personal choice to attack Veterans Against the War leader John Kerry. Thirty-three years later, O'Neill is still on the attack. And as his recent lie on CNN shows, he has no more credibility now than he did then.... Respected historian Douglas Brinkley, author of "Tour of Duty," has studied Kerry's Vietnam record exhaustively. "These are malicious fabrications in the heat of the election," Brinkley says. He adds that O'Neill; Adm. Roy Hoffman, his main source; and the other Swift Boat Veterans "are simply malcontents who have never forgiven Kerry for his actions in speaking out against the war. They seek retribution by fabricating stories to destroy him. Hoffman, in particular, lacks credibility. His claims against Kerry have changed frequently. And John O'Neill has zero credibility. He was — and still is — Richard Nixon's patsy."

At its most virulent — as practiced by James Carville and Lanny Davis in what can only be described as a gang-rape on national television — the Kerry supporters' tactics consist of continuous shouting to block O'Neill from speaking. They literally will not allow O'Neill to get in a word edgewise. O'Neill neither ramps up to argue that John Kerry was "Ho Chi Minh's patsy" nor complains about the personal attacks that have been made on himself. Rather, O'Neill has the calm poise of an experienced courtroom lawyer who's fought hard cases in tough venues before. He knows from experience that eventually, if only one side is shotgun-blasting the loaded rhetoric while the other side is rifle-shooting the objective facts, the jury will eventually notice. Some of them will be swayed and inflamed by the rhetoric, but as the voice tones and the body language and the sputtering and the ugliness begin to penetrate into their collective unconsciousness, the jury will draw the appropriate inferences. ***** WaPo's Mr. Neal eventually gets back to the ostensible subject of his piece, the 527s. After characterizing the SwiftVets' arguments as thinly veiled attempts to promote Bush's re-election rather than educate the public about Sen. Kerry, he offers a nice and rather important factual counterpoint:

However much Kerry supporters may gripe about SBVT, the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity — which has filed its own complaints against SBVT — has found that almost 95 percent of contributions to 527 groups this year have gone to Democratic-leaning organizations. Democrats can complain about SBVT, but it may be a can of worms they opened themselves with their aggressive efforts to navigate around the spirit of the very campaign finance law they championed.

In plain terms, if the campaign finance laws are being broken — a subject on which I have no firm opinion, because I can't make sense of the new laws and strongly suspect that they make no sense and are incapable of meaningful enforcement — the (not-so-secretly) pro-Kerry team has been breaking the law ninety-five times for every five times the (not-so-secretly) pro-Bush team has done so. (In fact, given the polarization of current politics, it may actually be more accurate to describe the opposing 527 organizations as genuinely anti-Bush or anti-Kerry, rather than pro-anybody.) ******* One of the things I tell my clients is that lawsuits aren't like soccer games or hockey games, where one or two big plays decide the outcome and the final score is 2-1 or 3-0. They're more like pro basketball games, in the old ABA days, when the final score may be 148-144 after three overtimes. I'm not sure how far either sports or courtroom metaphors can be extended to politics, but that won't stop me from trying. My sense is that the refs still aren't calling any but the most obvious of one team's fouls, and they're whistling dead some shots from the other team that would have overwise counted because they clearly caught nothing but net. They're still ignoring altogether about half, or maybe two-thirds, of the playing court. They know who they would like to see win, or maybe who they think ought not to win. But O'Neill and the SwiftVets are scoring some points. The fans are beginning to heckle some of the more egregious fouls and the refs for refusing to call them. The team that was heavily favored coming into the game has thrown some bricks and some clangers and some airballs; they're not winning by the forfeit they expected, and they're starting to sweat; and that team's star player has got to be worried that he's close to being in foul trouble. The game's a long way from being over. Just speaking for myself, I like the trends. BeldarBlog may yet lose its place in the Google rankings — and on the day when WaPo links top BeldarBlog links for "Kerry lucky hat," I'll be lifting a glass to the SwiftVets. Update (Sat Aug 14 @ 9:15am): Just ran a Technorati search on the URL for this story — precisely one match, that being, of course, this post. Why do I get the feeling that poor Mr. Neal's mother and I are the only two people in the world who've read his story? I tried to find Neal's email address, but it's not in the list of WaPo staff writer emails — perhaps because he's only staff for the online edition? I did note that since I first posted it, however, they've changed the title of Mr. Neal's article to "'Nonpartisan' Swift Boat Ad?" Still no MSM mentions of Christmas in Cambodia, though.