SHERWOOD: My name is Carlton Sherwood and I am a journalist. As an investigative reporter I have written about corruption in government, corporations and the military. I have helped to expose doctors who were actually ordering the starvation of handicapped infants, and charlatans who preached faith from the pulpit, but who practiced greed and deception in their personal lives. In every case the guilty party dishonored their professions and they were made to answer for the hurt they caused.What unbelievable hypocrisy! Sherwood was himself the hireling of the world's worst spiritual charlatan.
Sherwood is a paid apologist for the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, one of the most corrupt and megalomaniacal figures ever to assail the field of religion. Sherwood also worked for Moon's newspaper, the Washington Times, a conservative propaganda sheet that loses an astounding amount of money each year. (Some estimates run as high as $100 million a year.) Where does Moon get that kind of dough? Various exposes have linked Moon's finances to money laundering, organized crime, and Japanese fascists.
Why, I wonder, didn't Sherwood include that info on his televised resume? Why didn't he tell viewers that his egg-and-cheese money has come from Moon's filthy cashbox?
If you think Sherwood is just another crusader for journalistic truth, take a look at this excerpt -- and notice how our host tries to ape Michael Moore's tone:
SHERWOOD: Wait a second, I asked myself, did I hear that right? Was I or my fellow marines being accused of the same atrocities John Kerry had committed? Later in his testimony he claimed that American soldiers in Vietnam were guilty of even more heinous acts of barbarism:"Quotation can be slander, if you gerrymander," as Oscar Wilde once put it. By editing out the first part of Kerry's remarks, Sherwood has -- to put the matter bluntly -- lied.
KERRY PICTURE FROM TESTIMONY
KERRY VOICEOVER: "...they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam."
CSPAN broadcast the complete video record of Kerry's testimony (or almost-complete: some sections exist only as audio). What Carlton neglects to mention is that Kerry did not report that he had personally witnessed these atrocities -- in fact, Kerry made clear that he had not seen such things. Rather, Kerry told the committee that he had attended a rally called "Winter Soldiers," and that during this event various vets described participating in, or being an eyewitness to, war crimes.
Many of the same soldiers told many of the same stories in "Conversations With Americans," a book which made quite an impression on me when I first read it. Over the years, both that book and the "Winter Soldiers" testimony have been questioned. Some critics doubt the bona fides of some of the veterans who reported atrocities. I do not have space here to present both sides of that debate; I would simply point out that Abu Ghraib has reminded us, once again, of what happens in war.
That controversy does not affect the truthfulness of Kerry's testimony to the committee. All he said on that occasion is that he was present at a public gathering where men who announced themselves as Vietnam veterans described certain experiences.
No one denies that such a rally took place. No-one has ever accused Kerry of misreporting what those men said. No-one on that committee expected one private citizen (and that's all Kerry was at that time) to double-check everything he heard from speakers at a public event. That is a job for journalists and government investigators.
Kerry was an observer at that event. He later told Congress what he heard. And that's it. That's the story. Any Republican who tries to tell you otherwise is twisting the testimony.
Whether the "Winter Soldiers" spoke accurately or not, one thing is certain: They did not accuse every American soldier of participating in atrocities. To say "atrocities occurred" is not the same as saying "everyone in the military is guilty." That simple point of logic seems to escape Republicans.
We should also take note of the cute little hoax Sherwood sneaks into the beginning: "Was I or my fellow marines being accused of the same atrocities John Kerry had committed?"
Kerry did not testify that he had personally committed atrocities of this sort. As noted earlier, Sherwood deceptively snipped out the section in which Kerry testified that he had not even seen such things.
True, during a debate with John O'Neill on the Dick Cavitt show -- a debate Kerry was generally thought to have won -- Kerry did say that he later discovered that the rules of engagement under which he operated contravened the Geneva accords. This is a valid criticism of the command structure.
As I recall that era (I was quite young but precocious, and liked to hear from guys who had returned from Vietnam), a lot of soldiers criticized the command structure. I suspect that nearly every soldier in nearly every war has complained about the way the war was run.
None of this substantiates the inane claim that Kerry accused Carlton Sherwood or his Marine buddies of participating in atrocities.
G.O.P. flacks would have you believe that John Kerry attacked his fellow veterans during his testimony. In fact, Kerry's testimony emphasized that the veterans were getting a raw deal from the government -- in particular from the V.A. At the time, few other voices spoke up for veterans' rights.
The reactionary propagandists want you to think Kerry burned babies, while all other Americans acted like angels.
Alas, the above excerpts represent only the opening section of Sherwood's stroll down deception avenue. The rest is just as bad. Salon's piece on "Stolen Honor" does not begin to convey the profundity of this film's lies. Sherwood has once again "Mooned" America -- and in the process of mooning, he has displayed the orifice from which he extracted his facts.
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