I thought that after that embarrassing infantile display by Lanny I should
take time to advise newcomers to this group of some facts they may want to
consider.

1.- ASA has collectively more sailing related knowledge than almost any
other group.
2.-Introductions are appropriate if you require information.
3.-You are welcomed to join in on the antics if you have sufficient brain
cells to not take such behaviour overly serious.
4.-Don't assume we are recruiting, but if you care to join... understand
you will be shown no more mercy than we offer each other.
5.-No crying allowed.... if you can't take it.. grab your ball and bat and
go home.

CM

Capt. Mooron wrote:

I thought that after that embarrassing infantile display by Lanny I
should
take time to advise newcomers to this group of some facts they may want
to
consider.

1.- ASA has collectively more sailing related knowledge than almost any
other group.
2.-Introductions are appropriate if you require information.
3.-You are welcomed to join in on the antics if you have sufficient brain
cells to not take such behaviour overly serious.
4.-Don't assume we are recruiting, but if you care to join... understand
you will be shown no more mercy than we offer each other.
5.-No crying allowed.... if you can't take it.. grab your ball and bat
and
go home.

CM

6. -No long right-wing political crap, like this:

"Live" with TAE
The American Enterprise
April/May 2005
http://www.taemag.com/issues/article...cle_detail.asp


Interview with John O'Neill


One of the most dramatic stories of Election 2004 was the coalescence of a
large group of Vietnam veterans dedicated to the idea that John Kerry was
not fit to become America's Commander in Chief. Many of those who joined
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had served with Kerry in Vietnam. And his
behavior there--and, even more, upon his return--convinced them that Kerry
could not be trusted to lead our nation in wartime.

To their great surprise, the testimony of the Swift Boat veterans was
simply ignored by a hostile media establishment. The veterans were
tenacious, however, and eventually captured the attention of the alternate
media, then finally the nation as a whole. That's when the media elites
attacked them with icy ferocity.

In the end, the Swift Boat vets raised more than $26 million and took their
message directly to the public with a grassroots advertising and personal
testimony campaign. Their first ads appeared in early August when Kerry was
leading the Presidential race. They were widely credited with reversing
that lead, which Kerry never won back.

John O'Neill first became aware of John Kerry's accusations that American
soldiers in Vietnam acted in a "fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan" back
in 1971. He felt compelled to speak out, and debated Kerry on "The Dick
Cavett Show."

O'Neill then disappeared into private life, only appearing again in 2004 to
debunk John Kerry's revisions of his Vietnam record during his pursuit of
the White House. O'Neill became a spokesman for Swift Boat Veterans for
Truth.

John O'Neill was interviewed for TAE by contributing writer David Isaac.


TAE: How and when did the idea for the Swift Boat veterans group come into
being?

O'NEILL: The one who conceived of this was Admiral Roy Hoffmann. He began
contacting many Swift Boat people in January and February last year. At
that time, I was in the hospital. I had given my wife a kidney for a
transplant. I became a part of it in early to mid March. I was motivated by
several things, the first and most important being a genuine fear of what
would happen to our country, our national security, and our armed forces if
John Kerry became Commander in Chief. The reason we had our press
conference on May 4 was that we thought if we could come forward quickly,
we might be able to prevent John Kerry from becoming the Democratic nominee
and allow the Democratic Party to pick someone else, in which case we could
all go home.

TAE: At the Swift Boat veterans' May 4 press conference you had an open
letter calling Kerry unfit to be Commander in Chief. It was signed by
virtually all of John Kerry's commanders in Vietnam. Yet the story fell
flat. The media ignored it. How did your group react to the media blackout?

O'NEILL: We were shocked. We couldn't believe it. I haven't been involved
in politics or media relations, and I thought the job of the media was
primarily to report the facts. It was obvious to me that many hundreds of
his former comrades coming forward to say that he lied about his record in
Vietnam and that he was unfit to be President would be important
information for Americans. I only then became aware of the bias of the
media.

TAE: How do you explain the media's response?

O'NEILL: The establishment media was very pro-Kerry. They were opposed to
any story that was critical of Kerry, and I believe that they were captured
by their own bias. We met with one reporter around that time. We told a
story to him relating to Kerry's service. He acknowledged it was true and
terribly important. And he told us he would not print it because it would
help George Bush. That's when we began to realize we had a real problem on
our hands.

TAE: Is there anything other than pro-Kerry bias to account for the
establishment media's attitude to the story?

O'NEILL: Perhaps a second factor is that there are very few veterans in the
established media. It makes it very difficult for them to understand the
story or to care about it. That's very different from the situation 40 or
50 years ago when most people had served in some fashion in the armed
forces or had uncles or brothers who had.

TAE: Did your group consider giving up?

O'NEILL: We couldn't give up because in the end our objective was to get
our facts out. We had to be able to look at ourselves the day after the
election and know we had done everything we could. If we were simply
shouting in the desert, we would still have to shout. Our analysis after
the press conference was that the three major networks, the New York Times,
and the Washington Post would under no circumstances carry a story like
ours, no matter how well documented. The strategy we devised first involved
use of a fifteenth-century method of communication; that is, writing a
book, which may sound strange in the telecommunications age. But that book,
Unfit for Command, sold over 850,000 copies. I've often mused how funny it
is that the New York Times had to list it as No. 1 on its bestseller list.
The second thing we did was run, with the small amount of money we had, our
ad, which featured 15 of us.

TAE: Did your group come up with the content of the ads?

O'NEILL: Yes, the content had to come from us. There's not an advertising
firm in the world that's ever been on a Swift Boat. And none of them were
there on the day of March 14 when Kerry fled on the Bay Hop. The same thing
is true of the second ad. None of us will ever forget the day Kerry testi-
fied before Congress. It was like the Kennedy assassination. And so we just
couldn't live in the United States if we didn't make a statement about his
testimony in 1971.

TAE: Before the first ad came out, who picked up the story?

O'NEILL: The only people willing to publicizing the story very early were
Sean Hannity, the Wall Street Journal, Investor's Business Daily, several
Web sources, and finally C-SPAN (which aired the press conference). Other
people who contributed to the story later in a significant way were the
Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh. Another very important person was Laura
Ingraham, who went through the allegations point by point and permitted
rebuttal, and there was none. That made it apparent that there was a large-
scale media cover up in progress.

TAE: Between the press conference and when you released your first ad, May
5 to August 5, what was the group doing?

O'NEILL: The biggest single thing we were doing was composing, checking,
and putting out the book. More than 60 people reviewed it, the people who
were physically involved in the incidents. We did filming for the first and
second ads during that period of time. We raised money from a variety of
sources. We established our Web site. It was crude and immediately hijacked
by the Kerry people. It was hacked and destroyed repeatedly. We were
eventually able to get a Web site that functioned, that could take
communications, where the ads could be downloaded and the like.

TAE: Were you surprised when Senator Kerry focused so much on his Vietnam
record at the Democratic Convention in late July? How do you account for
this when he clearly knew you were out there?

O'NEILL: I think he thought that he had good control over the mainline
media, that they were sympathetic, that they would kill the story. And I
think he was very confident that was the case with the New York Times and
the three major networks and CNN, and that he could intimidate the portions
of the media not already friendly to him. And so he thought the story would
never come out. That had been his experience over and over again in
Massachusetts.

TAE: Everything changed in early August, after your first ad.

O'NEILL: All of a sudden, Kerry and the media were faced with an ad that
was actually showing. There was a time when they controlled the entire
world of communications. That day is over. The Kerry campaign, fortunately
for us, threatened the stations carrying the ad. They had two Washington
law firms write legal letters demanding that the ads not be run. There were
20 stations. We provided a factual package to each of them containing 15
affidavits supporting each of the items. After receiving that, 19 of the 20
stations immediately ran the ad. The twentieth station couldn't do it until
the following Monday because they couldn't process the legal stuff quick
enough. And they did bring up subsequent ads and they invited us to put
additional ads on.

TAE: Did the attempts of Kerry's people to stop your message only help
publicize it more?

O'NEILL: They helped us tremendously. The threats against the station
managers led to extensive publicity, particularly on the "Hannity & Colmes"
show and then on other FOX News shows. Then it spread to CNN and to MSNBC.
More than 1,400,000 people downloaded that first ad, and it swept through
the Internet. It also allowed thousands and thousands of people to start
donating money to us at our Web site. Three weeks after it was put up, half
of all the people in the United States had heard about that ad and about us
and yet there had never been a story about us on ABC, NBC, or CBS or in the
New York Times. At that point, people began laughing, I believe, at the
mainline media. It became obvious they were suppressing the story. The
critical factor was that it was the truth. I think anyone of good faith
would believe Kerry's post-Vietnam activities were clearly a campaign
issue. So once the facts about those came out, the story was almost
impossible to suppress. The media was like the dutch boy, keeping its
fingers in the dike to stop the story from flowing out. It just got to a
point where it got beyond them. There weren't enough fingers.

TAE: Leading journalist David Broder reported that Kerry told him his
Vietnam background would give him double benefit--he would get the votes of
veterans because he served, and of anti-war activists because he had
opposed the war. If you hadn't come along, do you think he would have
succeeded?

O'NEILL: If word hadn't gotten out, if they'd allowed him to get by
portraying himself as a war hero with no genuine revelation from the
veteran community that this was the same guy from 1971 that they all
remember, perhaps he could have gotten by.

TAE: On August 20, your second ad was released featuring a 27-year-old
Kerry testifying in 1971 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
about American war crimes. Later that month, you came out with ads
featuring Kerry's gunner and Kerry throwing away his medals. Can you assess
the impact of the various ads? Did any one of them clearly have the biggest
effect?

O'NEILL: I thought that the first and second ads each had profound impacts,
but in different ways. I thought that the first one, which dealt directly
with Kerry's service in Vietnam, was like a pinprick in a balloon. Kerry
had blown himself up and presented himself as something that he wasn't. So
simply seeing the people who had been with him telling the plain truth had
an impact. The second ad was one that went to the heart of the American
soul. To have accused our guys in Vietnam of committing war crimes on a day-
to-day basis, repetitive and planned, I think was something that all
Americans knew was not the truth. I have always believed that if the
average American knew what he did, it would be impossible for John Kerry
ever to hold high elected office.

TAE: The media establishment finally took notice when Senator Kerry
attacked you publicly on August 19. Then they seemed to see their role as
proving your charges false.

O'NEILL: Yes, that's exactly what occurred. The New York Times functioned
as a newsletter for the Kerry campaign. The Times purported to show that I
was a Republican. I would have been happy to be a Republican if I really
was. The article was ridiculous. It had me married to the wrong person. It
was really a sad article to see from a great newspaper. It should win the
Jayson Blair award. There's never been a piece in the New York Times
examining the factual basis of the Swift Boat vets' charges.

TAE: How did the Kerry campaign react when your story gained traction?

O'NEILL: In terms of attacks by the Kerry campaign, I resented deeply the
picketing at my own house during my daughter's wedding. I also resented the
attacks on Larry Thurlow, who was the greatest hero we ever had in Vietnam.
Only in the New York Times could Kerry be a hero and Thurlow, who saved
everyone's life, who stayed and rescued the people in the boat, end up a
goat. They also leaked to the New York Daily News the suicide attempt of
one of the peripheral signers of our letter, and a story appeared in the
New York Times related to a suicide attempt 15 years before. The very first
ad we filed began with a man named Al French, a very highly decorated
Vietnam veteran, who served as a prosecutor in Clackamas County, Oregon.
Immediately, 23 different complaints were filed with the state bar of
Oregon against Mr. French. In addition, he was fired from his job in Oregon
as an assistant prosecutor supposedly on the basis of a ten-year-old
complaint that had never been processed by his boss before that time.
Bullets were fired over the phone. My wife was monitoring our phone, and
she picks up: "Mr. O'Neill we know where you are." They'd start shooting a
gun. "How many babies did you kill?" And then begin firing a gun. "We're
going to come and hunt you down." The roaches showed up all right. It was a
very hard process for all of us.

TAE: The New York Times didn't get around to reviewing your book until
October although it had been at the top of the Times bestseller list since
August?

O'NEILL: They began the review by saying if Kerry loses the election it
will be because of this book. You would expect that declaration would be
followed by an in-depth review of the book that would indicate whether it
was true or not true. But the review is very short. No fact is refuted
other than the outcome of my debate with John Kerry in 1971. I said I
thought I'd beat him. I quoted from the Boston Globe, the New York Times,
and the San Antonio Express & News, all of which concluded that he lost.
The Times review claimed that debate was the launching point for Kerry's
entire career. The fact is, before the debate John Kerry was a major
national figure. After the debate, his career declined. He was defeated for
Congress and he disappeared from public view. Only in the New York Times
would that debate be the launching point for Kerry's career. When you have
a guy who's very famous in 1971 and then no one hears about him again until
1984, how could this be a launch?

TAE: What was your worst experience with the media?

O'NEILL: I was shouted down the worst by James Carville. The
entire "Crossfire" TV show consisted of James Carville screaming. He
demonstrated a wonderful set of lungs but shed very little light on the
issues.

TAE: On the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" you were matched with Thomas
Oliphant of the Boston Globe who lectured you. He said that your
allegations didn't meet the basic criteria for a real story.

O'NEILL: It was interesting. He said in order to carry a story you had to
have conclusive evidence. Within a few days of that story, the Boston
Globe, his newspaper, was pushing the Dan Rather story, based on phony
documents, that President Bush skirted his National Guard duty. Oliphant
was involved with the story. He should be ashamed of himself, as I think
the entire journalistic establishment should be.

TAE: What were you thinking during that interview?

O'NEILL: About being lectured on journalistic ethics by a journalist from a
newspaper now famous for a lack of ethics? It was truly a remarkable
experience, particularly from someone who was trying to suppress a story
that he knew was the truth. Oliphant, after all, was a friend of Kerry's.
As a matter of fact, the Kerry campaign was asked to send a debate
representative, and I gather Oliphant was their representative. How could a
supposedly independent journalist appear as a debater for the Kerry
campaign? How could James Carville be an independent commentator if he was
retained by the Kerry campaign? I realized they were simply doing openly
what the New York Times was doing secretly.

TAE: There was a discussion at the New York Public Library on October 2
between the top anchors of the three broadcast networks at which Peter
Jennings said of the Swift Boat ads, "We were not quick enough to say they
were demonstrably false."

O'NEILL: Yes, I appeared on "Nightline" hosted by Ted Koppel. He went to
Vietnam to prove that our account of the Silver Star incident involving
Kerry was false. He interviewed five or six former Vietcong, who indicated
that when Kerry beached his boat in the Silver Star incident, there was not
one Vietcong, but as many as 20. Everyone on Kerry's crew said there was a
single Vietcong. Everyone on our crew, our guys, said there was a single
Vietcong. In Tour of Duty, Kerry himself says, "I thought to myself, 'Thank
God there was only one. If there were five or ten we would have all died.'"
Koppel presented all this as a great exposŽ of us. How on earth could
someone believe four Vietcong accompanied by a government handler instead
of us, Kerry's own crew, and every other independent witness? I'm
comfortable that some day people will study the journalism of the three
networks in the same way that they studied the Pulitzer prize the New York
Times got in 1932 for describing Stalin's plan in Russia as a wonderful
idea and the reports of starvation as exaggerated.

TAE: What did you say to Koppel?

O'NEILL: I went through exactly what I told you and he had no answer.
Koppel kept asking me to put down the biography of Kerry, to not quote
Kerry anymore. Instead, Koppel repeatedly indicated that he thought that
his Vietcong sources should be the ones to rely on. So it had a quality
that was just hard to believe.

TAE: There are parallels between your own experience in 1971 and today. How
has the media changed in terms of being "balanced" since you debated John
Kerry on "The Dick Cavett Show"?

O'NEILL: I'm Rip Van Winkle when it comes to the media. I happily
disappeared from public life for 32 years. The big difference is that, in
1971, while the media would spin facts on occasion and spin them very
favorably to Kerry and his group, they wouldn't actually suppress the news.
What's happened now is the mainline media, by which I mean the three major
networks, and the New York Times, suppress news stories. It's one thing to
provide opinion, even in the news section. It's another to suppress facts
that are adverse to your views. That is really a brave new world that did
not exist in the 1970s.

TAE: Does your experience suggest the major media have lost their
gatekeeper role?

O'NEILL: Yes, without question. Major networks tried to blacklist us and to
hide the story from the public. In doing so they seemed to follow the
directions of the Kerry campaign. As long as the campaign ignored us, they
ignored us. When the Kerry campaign went on the attack, the big media
attacked us. But the message got out anyway. In my opinion they were
unsuccessful basically because they didn't have very much to work with.
They hadn't anything to sink their teeth into. We were very careful in the
ads and in the book. That's why the attacks on us flailed around.

TAE: Did alternative forms of media make the difference?

O'NEILL: They really did. It would have been impossible to get our story
out if it had been left to the networks and to the New York Times. Nothing
came out on any of those until the story was so widespread that they became
a laughingstock by ignoring it.

TAE: Has your group played a pioneering role in demonstrating old media's
loss of control?

O'NEILL: I'm not enough of an observer to know. I wish we could say we
planned this. It was more something that happened to us and we initially
expected that the media would definitely cover the story.

TAE: Will this lead to media reform?

O'NEILL: I think reform is occurring right now. You've seen a tremendous
drop in the ratings for the networks. There's a tremendous drop going on in
readership for newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago
Tribune. Why are people leaving and seeking their news elsewhere? Because
they start by simply wanting to get a good, factual account of what
occurred. Then they're happy to listen to opinion pieces, but they're not
willing to accept people who simply suppress the underlying facts. That's
why people have gone to the Internet and to other sources for their news.

TAE: Was the 2004 election a defeat for the traditional media?

O'NEILL: Yes, I think that whatever shreds of credibility the major media
had before the election are gone. They operated so clearly as extensions of
the Kerry campaign that it's evident everywhere from Leon, Iowa to Oxford,
Mississippi and all places in between that these folks simply start off
with an opinion and then either gather or manufacture facts to support the
opinion.

TAE: You didn't receive criticism from the media alone. Even President Bush
criticized your group. Were you disappointed by his reaction?

O'NEILL: I would have felt more comfortable if he would have simply
recognized this was an issue between us and Kerry that was not really
related to him. This is about criticism of our unit and fellow veterans. I
didn't think his comment that 527 ads should cease was unreasonable,
although I disagree with it.

TAE: How much do you owe to John McCain's campaign finance reform? Would
you have had equal impact without 527s?

O'NEILL: I think we would have come forward and we would have been able to
solicit contributions in the way we have. We have 274 Swift Boat people.
We're not a shade of any political party. We share a deep experience going
back 35 years. And the reasons we determined to set the record straight are
not political reasons. They relate to our friends who died there, our
service, and our fear of this guy being Commander in Chief. I think that
what is unfortunate about the 527 reform is that there is apparently no
distinction between Moveon.org, really just a part of a political party,
and genuine third-party efforts like ours.

TAE: Neither party likes what happened in this election where they lost
control of the debate to independent 527s. What do you think will be the
effect of the Swift Boat veterans on campaign reform?

O'NEILL: I would think that we would be the worst example for someone who
is trying to shut down independent political campaigning efforts. I would
think logically it would be impossible to defend a situation in which John
Kerry could spend millions, or tens of millions, of dollars presenting his
record in Vietnam in a way that was very demeaning to the people he served
with, and we who were actually there would not have the right to respond. I
would think that would be a terrible thing to try and defend legally,
morally, or ethically and I don't think that Americans would permit that to
happen.

TAE: Were you taken aback when Senator John McCain condemned your first ad?

O'NEILL: Yes. I believe that he did that without fully understanding the
circumstances. All of us say things we regret, and I hope he regrets that.
I really hope he apologizes for it. I think that John McCain, candidly,
confused senatorial courtesy with the suppression of free speech. We were
very grateful when his roommate at the Hanoi Hilton, Colonel Bud Day, came
forward to strongly endorse our efforts. Colonel Day was the most decorated
United States soldier since World War II and the winner of the Medal of
Honor. It was good when he and many other POWs came forward to disagree
with McCain.

TAE: What general lessons do you think can be taken from the Swift Boat
vets' experience?

O'NEILL: One thing is that you cannot simply leave the conduct of national
elections to politicians and political parties. It's simply a process
that's too important. And they each have their own reasons for not wanting
to cope with difficult issues or facts. I believe that the cardinal design
of the First Amendment was free political speech. I don't think there would
be a better example of it than our group coming forward. It's obvious that
the materials we dealt with, the record of Kerry in Vietnam, his false war
crimes charges, were very, very important in the selection of a President.
I think a second thing, as naive as this sounds, is that it's possible for
a small number of people to influence things. And I think it indicates that
the truth itself has a certain power that may at times overpower money and
control by the media and the like.

TAE: In retrospect would you have done anything differently?

O'NEILL: Of course, if we had known from the inception that the heavyweight
media would simply ignore our story--that the three networks and the New
York Times were our adversaries--we wouldn't have done the press
conference. Instead, we would have gone immediately to the publication of
the book, to radio, to the ads.

TAE: Shortly before the election, you thought it was a 50-50 deal. You
couldn't predict who would win. Were you surprised by how well Bush did?

O'NEILL: Yes, I was surprised. It's obvious the Democrats were cleaning out
every place that they could find voters, but they didn't realize that they
incited a tremendous reaction from middle America against them. They,
therefore, produced a huge vote on the other side. I think a great deal of
it was a reaction to Kerry; I think people were afraid of Kerry as
President of the United States.

TAE: What contribution did your group make to Kerry's defeat?

O'NEILL: Other political prognosticators could say that better than me. I
think that people got a chance to learn how he had actually dealt with a
terrorist problem. And the only time in his life that he really confronted
it was with the North Vietnamese--who shot people in the back of the head,
executed 4 million people. And he thought that we were the criminals, and
couldn't seem to tell the difference between us and the North Vietnamese.
He thought Ho Chi Minh was George Washington. And of course he met with
them and basically supported them. That would not at all be the type of
leader you would want to confront the current group of terrorists, al-Qaeda.

TAE: Listening to the pundits explain Bush's victory the day after the
election, I didn't hear a single one mention the Swift Boat vets.

O'NEILL: We're happy to fade back into our own jobs and our own places and
none of us did it to try to get credit. So if the commentators conclude
that we had a small role or no role that's fine with us.

TAE: The story of the Swift Boat vets is a powerful one. Many of you hadn't
seen each other in 32 years. You came back together out of a sense of duty
to stop a man you knew to be unfit for the Presidency.

O'NEILL: Have you ever heard the poem "Ulysses" by Alfred Lord Tennyson?
Ulysses is at the end of his life and gets his old crew together and they
sail around for one last great adventure--not too different from Admiral
Hoffmann getting all of us together for one last shot that we thought was
very much in the national interest of the United States. The election
aside, the attention focused on Vietnam has allowed the people who served
there to confront this myth and lie about the Vietnam War and I think it's
made a permanent change in the American psyche in terms of the treatment of
people who served there. I think that the people on the left are now afraid
to repeat the old myths that we were all war criminals. They've lost that
battle.

TAE: You believe what you've done has changed the way the public views the
Vietnam War?

O'NEILL: I do. I think that the change was coming to some degree without
us, but I think that the public now realizes that the Vietnam War was a
lost battle in a war that was won, the Cold War. Vietnam lives in darkness
because we lost, but it's one lonely outpost of what used to be a vast
threat to human freedom. And I think they recognize that our service there,
while in a losing battle, was noble service.

TAE: Does this explain some of the anger directed toward your group by the
Left? In attacking Kerry's war stance, you undermined part of their
mythology?

O'NEILL: I think that is true. They attempted to claim that all Kerry had
done was oppose the Vietnam War. That ignores the actual facts of his
conduct itself, that is, meeting with the North Vietnamese, and
criminalizing the people who disagreed with him. Those are myths so
fanciful that no one can defend them. Another problem those on the left
have is that history has not been kind to them. Kerry said that you can't
stop the march of communism. We did. It is evident to anyone that the North
Vietnamese imposed, as a result of our leaving, a cruel and barbaric
tyranny that has left Vietnam a dark and depressed place compared to all of
its neighbors. On the other hand, it's also clear that communism is now an
ideology of the past that is fading from the Earth.

TAE: Is there an irony that John Kerry, the man who did more than any other
to tarnish the image of the U.S. soldier in Vietnam, may inadvertently have
helped a truer picture of that war spread across the nation in 2004 ?

O'NEILL: It haunts all of us that the first Vietnam veteran nominated for
President would be John Kerry--the very last person most veterans would
pick for high office. But it is ironic that his run for the White House may
have finally initiated some less fictionalized thinking about the war.

TAE: Have you noticed a change among your fellow veterans since this
started? Has it changed the way they feel about themselves?

O'NEILL: I think they're prouder of their service than they were. I've had
many survivors of veterans, wives or children, tell me they felt liberated
by what we did. They have endured the loss of a husband, the loss of a
father, and had this blemish placed on those they lost by the radical
elements of the Left in the late '60s and early '70s. They feel like it's
been removed. They feel very liberated.

TAE: Would you describe the theme of this whole debate as moving from
stolen honor to honor restored?

O'NEILL: Exactly so. Military people don't serve for pay. The kids who
served with us had almost no money. What they had was their lives, their
good names, their honor. The ones who died in Vietnam, who ranged in age
from about 18 to 23, gave up their lives. They really gave them up, in the
words of the Bible, for their neighbor. They had nothing directly to gain.
They did it because the country asked. They did it to try and save Vietnam.
On a personal basis, it's had a tremendous impact on me. When I came back,
I really forgot about everything related to war after the Kerry debate. I
didn't go to any reunions. I was trying to put the whole thing behind me
basically, because of the sadness for my friends who were killed. What I
did in the process was to separate myself from a lot of people who were
really and truly the best people I ever met. And so the spontaneous coming
together of the Swift Boat group has been a great thing for me. Because
I've gotten back together with men I'll be close to the rest of my life.

Dear Moroon;

You only get one chance to make a first impression; and your's spoke volumes
about you. You are an egotistical, self-important, idiot quick on put downs
and slow on intellect. You and your ASA can keep your knowledge; life is too
short to deal with the likes of you. There are other, friendlier, al-beit
smaller, sites on the web.

May your next voyage be to Davie Jones's locker.


--
"Capt. Mooron" wrote in message
news:Pas_d.62239$i6.48786@edtnps90...
I thought that after that embarrassing infantile display by Lanny I should
take time to advise newcomers to this group of some facts they may want to
consider.

1.- ASA has collectively more sailing related knowledge than almost any
other group.
2.-Introductions are appropriate if you require information.
3.-You are welcomed to join in on the antics if you have sufficient brain
cells to not take such behaviour overly serious.
4.-Don't assume we are recruiting, but if you care to join... understand
you will be shown no more mercy than we offer each other.
5.-No crying allowed.... if you can't take it.. grab your ball and bat and
go home.

CM

"anonymous" wrote in message

6. -No long right-wing political crap, like this:

"Live" with TAE
The American Enterprise snip

Shure as long as you label it OT!!!!

CM

"R Lanni" wrote in message
...
Dear Moroon;

You only get one chance to make a first impression; and your's spoke
volumes
about you. You are an egotistical, self-important, idiot quick on put
downs
and slow on intellect. You and your ASA can keep your knowledge; life is
too
short to deal with the likes of you. There are other, friendlier, al-beit
smaller, sites on the web.

May your next voyage be to Davie Jones's locker.

There you go Lanny... much better... I've almost got you swearing like a
sailor and soon you'll get the attitude to maintain command of a vessel....
so it's not like you're going home empty handed... come back anytime!

CM

BTW- go visit Capt. Neal's site..his lessons for sailing novices is superb!
Mind you he is known not to mince words to spare the sensibilities of the
thin-skinned and ignorant.

As well, go and ply your way through the archives of the group.... not only
is there a plethora of very useful info... but you'll realize you've been
treated with kid gloves by comparison .

You'll really have to control that temper of yours though!

I don't want to see you get an aneurysm on your first visit here!! :-)

CM



"R Lanni" wrote in message
...
Dear Moroon;

You only get one chance to make a first impression; and your's spoke
volumes
about you. You are an egotistical, self-important, idiot quick on put
downs
and slow on intellect. You and your ASA can keep your knowledge; life is
too
short to deal with the likes of you. There are other, friendlier, al-beit
smaller, sites on the web.

May your next voyage be to Davie Jones's locker.


--
"Capt. Mooron" wrote in message
news:Pas_d.62239$i6.48786@edtnps90...
I thought that after that embarrassing infantile display by Lanny I
should
take time to advise newcomers to this group of some facts they may want
to
consider.

1.- ASA has collectively more sailing related knowledge than almost any
other group.
2.-Introductions are appropriate if you require information.
3.-You are welcomed to join in on the antics if you have sufficient brain
cells to not take such behaviour overly serious.
4.-Don't assume we are recruiting, but if you care to join... understand
you will be shown no more mercy than we offer each other.
5.-No crying allowed.... if you can't take it.. grab your ball and bat
and
go home.

CM

"R Lanni" wrote in message

Dear Moroon;

You only get one chance to make a first impression; and your's spoke
volumes
about you.

Thank You... at least it will be a lasting first impression.

You are an egotistical, self-important, idiot quick on put downs
and slow on intellect.

Can't see how that makes sense Lanny.. if I'm quick..how can I be slow?

You and your ASA can keep your knowledge; life is too
short to deal with the likes of you.

It's not "my" ASA... it's an unmoderated public forum.

There are other, friendlier, al-beit
smaller, sites on the web.

You get what you pay for.....

May your next voyage be to Davie Jones's locker.

Now that speaks volumes about your character..... wishing death to anyone
because you don't agree with what they have to say is loathsome! You are
beneath contempt!

CM

Well, he may be all those things, but he's still ours...go read a boring
group like Yacht-L if you want...the spice is here...


"R Lanni" wrote in message
...
Dear Moroon;

You only get one chance to make a first impression; and your's spoke
volumes
about you. You are an egotistical, self-important, idiot quick on put
downs
and slow on intellect. You and your ASA can keep your knowledge; life is
too
short to deal with the likes of you. There are other, friendlier, al-beit
smaller, sites on the web.

May your next voyage be to Davie Jones's locker.


--
"Capt. Mooron" wrote in message
news:Pas_d.62239$i6.48786@edtnps90...
I thought that after that embarrassing infantile display by Lanny I
should
take time to advise newcomers to this group of some facts they may want
to
consider.

1.- ASA has collectively more sailing related knowledge than almost any
other group.
2.-Introductions are appropriate if you require information.
3.-You are welcomed to join in on the antics if you have sufficient brain
cells to not take such behaviour overly serious.
4.-Don't assume we are recruiting, but if you care to join... understand
you will be shown no more mercy than we offer each other.
5.-No crying allowed.... if you can't take it.. grab your ball and bat
and
go home.

CM

In article Pas_d.62239$i6.48786@edtnps90,
Capt. Mooron wrote:
I thought that after that embarrassing infantile display by Lanny I should
take time to advise newcomers to this group of some facts they may want to
consider.

1.- ASA has collectively more sailing related knowledge than almost any
other group.
2.-Introductions are appropriate if you require information.
3.-You are welcomed to join in on the antics if you have sufficient brain
cells to not take such behaviour overly serious.
4.-Don't assume we are recruiting, but if you care to join... understand
you will be shown no more mercy than we offer each other.
5.-No crying allowed.... if you can't take it.. grab your ball and bat and
go home.

6. Mooron is full of ****.

--
Jonathan Ganz (j gan z @ $ail no w.c=o=m)
http://www.sailnow.com
"If there's no wind, row."

Yeah, just like you are one of us.... a woman with so little going for
her that she feels it is necessary to defend boorish creeps like
Mooron.

In article ,
katysails wrote:
Well, he may be all those things, but he's still ours...go read a boring
group like Yacht-L if you want...the spice is here...
--
Jonathan Ganz (j gan z @ $ail no w.c=o=m)
http://www.sailnow.com
"If there's no wind, row."