Breaking news and desperation

Drudge is reporting that Kerry contacted a Swift vet after Bob Dole spoke out against him on Sunday. Kerry tried to get the vet, Robert Brant, to understand his position, but Brant told him "You should know what you said when you came back, the impact it had on the young sailors and how it was disrespectful of our guys that were killed over there."

Kerry's response is outlandish - "When we dedicated swift boat one in '92, I said to all the swift guys that I wasn't talking about the swifties, I was talking about all the rest of the veterans."

Oh, so you only meant to disparage 2.898 million vets instead of 2.899 million! (Of course, this isn't what Kerry has said earlier this year when he claimed he was cricitizing the command structure and not the "grunts".) His shifting positions are laughable, to put it charitably.

Drudge is also reporting the story of Kerry's journal entry that I first exposed on August 13th - "In Kerry's own journal written 9 days later, he writes he and his crew, quote, 'hadn't been shot at yet'... Developing...."

The wheels have come off....

And in a sign of complete desperation, John Hurley, Kerry's Veterans coordinator tells Fox News

"This is a Republican smear campaign. ... The United States Navy awarded John Kerry a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Every single man who served under his command, when he won those awards, supports John Kerry," Hurley told "FOX News Sunday," adding that all the members of the Swift Boat group except for one never met Kerry in Vietnam.

Not surprisingly, Fox doesn't bother to correct Hurley's obvious lie. Steve Gardner served directly under Kerry for over two months, and he is opposed to Kerry. Robert Brant, whom Kerry contacted Sunday evening, is reported to have "put Kerry to bed" when he was sleepwalking! Furthermore, it's completely laughable to claim that the Swift vets never met Kerry in Vietnam when he reported to several of them who were his commanding officers!

Why does the press report this stuff without any commentary? When they know a statement is false, don't they have a duty to correct it in the story?