Fake But Accurate

I was reading Powerline tonight when I clicked on a link in this story and I began reading Mackubin Thomas Owens' Seared in My Memory. Owens discusses Kerry's claims that atrocities were routine and a matter of public policy in the Vietnam war. Like any honest broker, Owens concedes that atrocities were committed in Vietnam, just as they are in every war. However, he points out that even generous estimates of the atrocities committed in Vietnam show that less than 1% of the men in Vietnam committed them. He says, "I doubt that many armies in history could match that record."

As I continued to read I came across this quote of historian John Prados, who disputes the charge that the claims of Kerry and his cohorts are false.

Lewy's primary evidence consists of noting that VVAW members refused to give depositions. When the Naval Investigative Service tried to pull VVAW members into an inquiry, it found one Marine who either could not or would not give details of what he had seen and allegedly located several other veterans who said they had never gone to Detroit. (O'Neill had cited this same information in his televised debate with Kerry.) But even if true, these incidents were far too limited to establish anything in particular about the Winter Soldier Investigation; the fact that some of the winter soldiers declined to give depositions does not prove or disprove the legitimacy of the entire project. The VVAW leadership left it up to individual members to decide how to respond to requests for depositions. And veterans had good reasons to decline. For one thing, they argued that their purpose was to protest U.S. policy, not to draw attention to individual soldiers. What's more, with the VVAW under direct assault from the Nixon administration, it's understandable that the group's members were loath to cooperate with government investigators.

I was stunned. What Prados is arguing is "even if the specific claims are false, the story itself is true" - fake, but accurate!

This is the same damnable lie that Rather and NYT and LAT and the DNC are trying to pass off on us now with regard to Bush's Guard service! So what if the witnesses in the Winter Soldier Investigation lied? So what if they were frauds who never even served in Vietnam? So what if we can't corroborate any of their testimonies? The essence of their claims is still true!

The arrogance of it is breathtaking! This lie has been passed off on us for more than thirty years! The deleterious effect it has had on this nation is inestimable and, until now, unchallenged. I'm more convinced now than ever that this election is much more than a referendum on Iraq. It's a referendum on the honor of the American soldier and the deceit, arrogance and appalling lack of integrity of the American left.

When the history of this time is written, John Kerry will be seen as the catalyst that caused the Vietnam-era vets to rise up and right a festering wrong that has eaten away at the fabric of this nation like a cancer. For that we should thank him. Despite his unconscionable theft of our honor 33 years ago, his overweening ambition to be President and his unfathomable choice to cast himself in the mold of war hero has granted us the opportunity to set the record straight and in so doing to restore to this country the honor that is rightfully hers.

America has always been an honorable country. The liars and elites have used fake evidence and forged documents to claim otherwise. They are no longer the all powerful gatekeepers of information. Chomsky has been exposed and his empire has no clothes. From now on we will demand to see the evidence or we will not believe.

In Iraq, as in this election, America will reclaim her honor.