On LIVE Television!
By Brad Friedman on 10/15/2004, 3:30pm PT  

Holy-moly, don't know how many of you saw Nightline last night, but after months of whining that Swift Vet Master Shill, John O'Neill was not getting the network exposure that he thought he somehow deserved (how anyone could suggest that group didn't get enough exposure is beyond me, but anyway)...O'Neill finally got his chance last night. And, man, was it one for the record books!

O'Neill had a complete meltdown on live TV! The Nightline report began with a difficult trip up river into Vietnam to the very location of the disputed Kerry Silver Star incident to speak to the eyewitnesses in the village from that day. They remembered it well. Every witness that Nightline spoke to, none of whom seemed to know who the hell John Kerry was, corroborated every bit of the Navy's original account of the event.

The report completely destroyed O'Neill's thesis on this one particular event (the only one this Nightline report focused on), and his charge that there was no enemy fire on that day, and that Kerry shot some lone little 12 year old kid in the back as he was running away.

O'Neill was interviewed by Koppel after the report and he simply imploded with an incoherent rambling explanation of how Nightline had it all wrong, was trusting in those evil Commie's who love John Kerry (never mind that this village was hours up river into the middle of nowhere, and none of those interviewed had even heard of the man!), and how the accounts of the eye-witnesses had to be wrong because they were at odds with the Boston Globe's story on the matter.

It was amazing. O'Neill kept holding up the opened pages from the Boston Globe book, Kerry's autobiography a Kerry Biography (ed: correction made. O'Neill called it a Kerry autobiography, but he was misleading there.) and his own anti-Kerry polemic. Switching back and forth between the books (at least 5 times each!) flashing the unintelligable-on-television pages that he wanted people to read. No matter what Koppel did, he couldn't bring this guy back to his senses. It was an extraordinary thing to watch! O'Neill, in the bargain, blew any and all credibility he might have had left in a single network interview.

Unfortunately, Nightline doesn't offer free video online (they have it, but it costs money). Their "What They Saw..." report, from the eye-witnesses will have to suffice, if you even care about that story at this point. UPDATE: Full Nightline show from last night available here in Windows Media Player format! O'Neill's implosion is last 10 minutes or so of show.(Thanks, Chuck for the link!)

(Prepare now for the wingnuts to repeat, in comments, the defenses that Rush offered them this morning for last night's embarrassing affair. Ignore them. It's more smoke and mirrors...O'Neill simply blew himself up with a devastating self-inflicted wound. It was a live televised disaster. Period.)

Share article...
                 

Article Categories: (Uncategorized)