Ted Koppel lays egg on Nightline in attacking John O'Neill's words about John Kerry in Unfit for Command-- O'Neill's words, Ted's ears and Dan's eyes.

Oct. 15, 2004 #01: Political Satire/Commentary where satire is always commentary but commentary isn't always satire™
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Ted Koppel lays egg on Nightline in attacking John O'Neill's words about John Kerry in Unfit for Command-- O'Neill's words, Ted's ears and Dan's eyes.

Watching Nightline last night (11:30pm Eastern, Oct. 14, 2004) I witnessed Ted Koppel lay an egg while exhibiting extraordinary deafness to warnings that he was in the process of doing so. Nightline devoted the first half of the program to interviews with Viet Cong survivors of the larger incident surrounding the discreet incident for which John Kerry received a Silver Star. Nightline's presented the surviving Viet Congs' recollections of the incident as one involving an intense firefight ostensibly to "contradict" John O'Neill's assertions in Unfit for Command about Kerry's involvement in a discreet incident within the larger incident.

The Viet Cong survivors said there was an intense firefight between approximately 20 Viet Cong and swift boats that beached at their "village" in response to hostile fire from the Viet Cong. They said a Viet Cong armed with a rocket-launcher was killed in this larger incident and that his body was found some distance away from where the main firefight occurred. They said he was a "26 or 27 years old" wearing the black "pajama-type" uniform worn by Viet Cong.

Ted Koppel kept suggesting that O'Neill ought to concede that the recollections of those Viet Cong survivors "contradicted" the version of this incident described by O'Neill in Unfit for Command even though O'Neill repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, tried to enable Koppel to understand that the survivors' descriptions of an individual armed with a rocket launcher conflicted with the teenager-in-a-loin-cloth description given by Kerry to his biographers, which is the same description quoted by O'Neill (in Unfit for Command) from authorized biographies of Kerry.-- i.e., John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography: By the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best and Tour of Duty by Douglas Brinkley.

Then Koppel kept suggesting that O'Neill ought to concede that the recollections of those Viet Cong survivors "contradicted" the assertions in Unfit for Command that when Kerry killed the individual armed with a rocket launcher, he (Kerry) was facing a single individual rather than a "numerically superior enemy force" as asserted in his Silver Star commendation. Yet those "recollections" did not contradict O'Neill's description of the larger incident, the gist of which is:

That as three swift boats approached the area, they began receiving hostile fire from shore, at which time they began returning fire. When two of the boats headed toward the hostile fire, beached and waged a counter-attack, Kerry's boat continued beyond the hostile fire and then beached, at which point Kerry jumped ashore and chased-down and killed a lone individual armed with a rocket-launcher. O'Neill reiterated that Unfit for Command conceded that Kerry's action required "bravery" but disputed that it warranted a "Silver Star" and disputed the accuracy of the "report" (upon which it was based) stating that Kerry had "charged ashore against a numerically superior enemy force."

In fairness to Kerry, one could infer that his purpose in piloting his boat further before beaching it was to go ashore at a place from which he could maneuver behind the force counterattacked by the other boats. In fairness to Kerry, as he jumped ashore, he could not have known whether he might have encountered a numerically superior force. No doubt his doing so required commendable courage but certainly no greater courage than that routinely exhibited soldiers in combat whenever they move toward, rather than away from, unknown or feared danger. O'Neill's point is that the purpose of the Silver Star is to recognize extraordinary bravery above and beyond ordinary bravery without being intended in any way to minimize or trivialize such routine bravery in combat.

Koppel closed with an argument implying that critics of Kerry ought to consider the military "record" -- i.e., the report on the basis of which Kerry received the Silver Star-- to be presumptively correct and that for other witnesses to question its accuracy is somehow unwarranted. Of course, such argument seems to have been far beyond the intellectual grasp of the dominant media when-- at a time many months before there was any "SwiftBoat" criticism of Kerry-- the same dominant media was mightily interested in the "newsworthiness" of interviewing anyone willing to challenge the "presumptive correctness" of George Bush's honorable discharge from the Air National Guard. Long before there had been any "SwiftBoat" ads, the dominant media gave dignity to allegations by Michael Moore, Terry McAuliffe, and candidates in the Democratic primary that George Bush had been "AWOL."

To this day, the dominant media still refuse to correct their "reports" about Bush's failing to "fly" during his 18-month assignment to the Alabama Air National Guard by including the fact that he wasn't qualified to fly the planes in that unit and couldn't have become qualified to do so without first returning to active duty for at least 18 months. To this day, the dominant media still refuse to correct their "reports" about such matter by including the fact that all National Guard and Reserve units routinely granted for assignment to other units for temporary and/or permanent changes of address and/or employment. It was no big deal. It didn't require any "special favor." Sometimes the result was that the unit nearest to such employment lacked a position matching the training of the person transferred to it.

O'Neill's Words, Ted's Ears and Dan's Eyes.

I'm Ted-- "Mr. Koppel"-- to you,
O'Neill, re: the facts you construed
about Kerry's action--
I'm seeking redaction
of two of the facts you construed.

I'm sorry my hearing's impaired
so much I remain unaware
that you have explained
in words that are plain
that grounds for redaction ain't there.

I'm deaf to the fact that your wording
describing the Cong killed by Kerry
had quoted what John
told authors belonged
in books touting courage by Kerry.

I'm deaf to the fact that the fight,
if Viet Cong mem'ries are right,
occurred the same way
your book has portrayed
and thus shows I'm wrong 'stead of right.

And therefore, O'Neill, I'm proceeding
to trash you instead of conceding
the fact that I'm nearing
impairment in hearing
like Rather's impairment in reading.

In short, Ted Koppel seems to have acquired a hearing impairment as severe as Dan Rather's reading disability. Maybe when Koppel reads the transcript of last night's Nightline he'll be able to see what he was unable or unwilling to hear last night.

--Jim Wrenn, Editor at PoliSat.Com.

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