(From the diaries -- georgia10)You probably won't be surprised that Jim Webb came out swinging today, in the wake of the Allen campaign's attempts to smear him by taking a few quotes from his books out of context.
The venue was the get out the vote kickoff rally which was held today in Annandale -- and extremely well attended. If the enthusiasm there was any indicator, we're going to win this, with the last couple of percentage points earned by the hard work of thousands of volunteers.
I haven't transcribed the entire speech, but I wanted to post the video, which I hope you will share widely via the "share" button on YouTube and by linking to it from other blogs and comments. If every Virginia voter could see this speech, Jim Webb would win this election hands down. I'm going to post some key quotes here, but do watch the video.
This is one of the most vital elections of the last 30 years. We have to win this election.
We won it [the Virginia Democratic primary] because of people out talking to people, hitting the pavement...
We have run an affirmative campaign. I started off saying that I wanted to focus on those issues which would get the country moving in the direction it needs to be going, and those are -- reorient our national security strategy, solving the war in Iraq, bringing economic fairness back to working people, and standing up to this president...
When George Allen and his campaign took some small excerpts from my novels, and not only criticized them, but used them to question my ethics, my professional writing career, and my character, that's a line that should never be crossed. You can disagree with my politics, but don't question my faith, and don't question my character....
The Houston Post said "Few writers have portrayed men at war with such a ring of steely truth". Time magazine said "the unmistakable sound of truth, acquired the hard way," I'm saying truth, because think of what these people are saying.
[quotes from many reviews of his books]
I'm sorry I had to go through all of that, but I'm proud of what I've written. I've lived in the real world, and I've reported the real world in my writings. I started working when I was 12 years old. I fought in a brutal war. I saw its ugliness while George Allen was hanging out at a dude ranch. I got shot at again, covering the Marines in Beirut in 1983 as a journalist. I went on operations in Afghanistan, not as a pampered government official coming in for his dog and pony show briefings, walking on patrols, combat patrols, and sleeping on the ground. I was reporting from the slums of Bangkok when George Allen was schlepping around in his limo....
The most important point I'm making here is that I have written about what I have seen. And that is the duty of a writer, to help people understand the world around us, with all of its beauty, and all of its flaws. Now maybe George Allen doesn't understand that, since I'm told he doesn't read books. Sombody told me yesterday that I've written more books than George Allen has read, then somebody said well, maybe that was the other George...
The Allen campaign has made smear tactics the centerpiece of their entire effort. Why have they done that? Because George Allen has nothing to report. He has no accomplishments. He has been wrong on foreign policy. He is one of the reasons that we are bogged down right now in a nightmare in Iraq. He's been a key figure in selling out the average American worker, in order to protect the interests of the powerful, who have always paid his way. And by attacking my career and my ethics in this way, if anyone has any doubts from other indicators, he has now shown his true character....
..... if you want to find accountability for this, remember that the fish rots from the head down.
...our government should no longer be in the hands of a group of unprincimpled, small minded, power hungry, character assassins...
I shot the video of this event in the hopes that it would be shared widely over the internet, so that people would be able to see Jim Webb address the Allen campaign's scurrilous smears in his own words. I would urge you to do whatever you can to get this video before as many eyeballs as possible, particularly Virginia voters and the media.
I also filmed the intros by Governor Tim Kaine and Mark Warner. YouTube is still processing them, but I will edit the diary to add links when they become available. Unfortunately, since MiniDV video tapes are only an hour long, and I didn't know how long the speeches would go, I wasn't able to film the excellent speeches by Jim Moran, Judy Feder, and Andrew Hurst.
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