One Of Kerry's Accusers Retracts His Charges - Why Not, It's Regnery Publishing

by Steve

One of John Kerry’s former commanders, whom the wrongly named Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group uses in their attack against Kerry, has recanted his affidavit wherein he asserted that Kerry did not deserve the Silver Star. Former Lt. Commander George Elliott said yesterday that he “had made a terrible mistake” in signing an affidavit in a rush to support the anti-Kerry campaign led by a former Nixon White House operative and others.

Elliott is quoted as saying that Kerry ''lied about what occurred in Vietnam . . . for example, in connection with his Silver Star, I was never informed that he had simply shot a wounded, fleeing Viet Cong in the back."

The statement refers to an episode in which Kerry killed a Viet Cong soldier who had been carrying a rocket launcher, part of a chain of events that formed the basis of his Silver Star. Over time, some Kerry critics have questioned whether the soldier posed a danger to Kerry's crew. Crew members have said Kerry's actions saved their lives.

Yesterday, reached at his home, Elliott said he regretted signing the affidavit and said he still thinks Kerry deserved the Silver Star.

''I still don't think he shot the guy in the back," Elliott said. ''It was a terrible mistake probably for me to sign the affidavit with those words. I'm the one in trouble here."

Elliott said he was no under personal or political pressure to sign the statement, but he did feel ''time pressure" from those involved in the book. ''That's no excuse," Elliott said. ''I knew it was wrong . . . In a hurry I signed it and faxed it back. That was a mistake."

The affidavit also contradicted earlier statements by Elliott, who came to Boston during Kerry's 1996 Senate campaign to defend Kerry on similar charges, saying that Kerry acted properly and deserved the Silver Star.

I have several questions here. First, it appears that these “affidavits” were faxed to people, who were then asked to sign them in a hurry in support of the anti-Kerry ad campaign and the soon-to-be-released book by former Nixon operative John O’Neill. So how many of these other affidavits were rush jobs of questionable veracity?

Second, note the publisher for O’Neill’s book, Regnery, is the same right-wing publisher of the likes of Ann Coulter and other right-wing loons, a publisher known for poor editing and nonexistent fact checking, who uses the Mighty Wurlitzer media outlets like Drudge and bulk buying rather than individual sales to inflate their book sales totals. This has already happened with the O’Neill book, which Amazon lists as Number One already on the sales generated by Drudge’s site. Note also that Regnery refuses to release an advance copy of the book presumably so that reviewers cannot challenge the veracity of the book’s claims and undercut initial sales by revealing that much of the book, like most if not all of Regnery’s catalogue, is utter propaganda.