It seems Chicken Pickens has reneged AGAIN on his offer of $1 million to anyone who could prove anything the SBVTers said in 2004 was false.
Yep. He's just responded to Kerry's crewmembers that, despite the fact that his original unrestricted challenge was issued in front of a few hundred people, including two wingnut bloggers (one of whom separately confirmed it), he really meant it was restricted to uhm, well, just the ads. Yeah, the ads, that's the ticket !
Pickens, you deserve to be ridiculed in every way for your dishonesty and cowardice. I hope you are.
On the other hand, I can easily prove a couple of blatant lies in at least one of the SBVT ads.
The difficulty of proving anything at all about the SBVT ads - as Chicken Pickens knows - is that they are almost nothing but blather and opinion.
So it's sort of ironic that one of the only ads that claimed to be setting out any kind of facts is ... a falsehood from start to finish.
Check out Steve Gardner's moment in the sun here:
Steve Gardner Lies His Booty Off
The first words out of his mouth are a lie. Gardner is not even close to having "served the longest" on either one of Kerry's boats. Check out the dates of service for the PCF 44 and PCF 94 crewmembers here:
Swift Boat Crew Directory
We know that Zaladonis, Wasser, and Whitlow were on Gardner's boat, PCF 44, when Kerry took command on Dec. 6, 1968. Zaladonis and Whitlow were in VN at least until April and May of 1969, respectively, according to the crew lists, and it's probable Wasser was there until sometime in the spring of 1969 as well.
That means at least two or three of them served on PCF 44 under Kerry just as long as Gardner did. Heck, Gardner even admits to Whitlow being there the night he supposedly shot at a sampan, which would have been his last mission in VN:
Gardner Lies His Heinie Off
So we know right off that Gardner's lying about serving longer on PCF 44 than any of the other crewmembers.
And of course with the exception of Alston (who was in sickbay for a time) and Short (who temporarily replaced him), ALL of the crewmembers on Kerry's second boat, PCF 94, served longer under Kerry than Gardner.
It's simple math, really. According to all sources, Kerry took command of PCF 44 on Dec. 6, 1968. According to the crew lists, that's when Gardner was assigned to the boat too. The boat was put in for repairs around January 21, 1969, and the crew was broken up. (See Brinkley's "Tour of Duty" for more details.) That means Gardner served under Kerry for no more than 46 days.*
According to all sources, Kerry took command of PCF 94 on January 30, 1969. According to his personnel records and the command history, read together with Brinkley's narrative, he served in that capacity until March 23 or March 26, 1969. That's between 52 and 56 days.
Okay, that was lie number one.
The whole rest of the ad is lie number two. Kerry NEVER claimed to have been sent on a "secret mission" to Cambodia on Christmas Eve (not "Christmas") 1968. Both the Brinkley book and the Boston Globe published long passages of Kerry's journal describing a routine patrol going up to the border and at some point being ambushed. At least two of his crewmembers back this up, and George Elliott wrote about the Christmas truce ambush in Kerry's fitness report. Kerry told the Boston Globe he believed he had crossed the border during the patrol/ambush.
(Kerry did correct the record as to the claim he'd been "five miles across the border" on Christmas Eve 1968, but reiterated his claim that he had indeed been sent on a covert mission at a later date.)
So Mr. Chicken, er I mean Pickens, please make your check out to the veteran's charity of John Kerry's choice.
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* Even Dean Esmay seemed a little bewildered by Gadner's hilarious claim to have served two and a half months under Kerry on PCF 44, meaning starting before Kerry even arrived in Vietnam (Nov. 17, 1968). (See "lying his heinie off" link above.)