During the 8 a.m. ET hour of the November 2 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, a commercial ran for “a Hannity & Colmes exclusive,” during which “the Swift Boat veterans react, sounding off about” Sen. John Kerry's (D-MA) recent remarks on Iraq. The segment, which will presumably feature the smear-mongering Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (now Swift Vets and POWs for Truth), will air, according to Fox News, on the November 2 edition of Hannity & Colmes.
But Swift Boat Veterans leader John O'Neill appeared on the November 1 broadcast of Mark Levin's radio show, undermining Fox News' claim to an “exclusive.” On Levin's show, O'Neill called Kerry “a serial offender and slanderer of the military,” a “buzzard,” a “creature,” a “dummy,” and a “locust” who “eats people's honor.”
From the November 2 Fox News teaser:
ANNOUNCER: It's a Hannity & Colmes exclusive. The Kerry controversy set off a political firestorm. Now, the Swift Boat Veterans react, sounding off about the senator's statements. Tonight, only one show has the exclusive -- only Hannity & Colmes. Don't miss it.
From the November 1 broadcast of ABC Radio Networks' The Mark Levin Show:
O'NEILL: There's no question. He's [unintelligible] to win an election than a war. He's a serial offender and slanderer of the military. He's been doing it -- it's been his basic pitch for 35 years. It reflects his hatred of the military, whom he considers to be neither his intellectual nor social equals. He's expressed it openly and often for nearly 35 years.
LEVIN: So when he says that this is a -- you're a Democrat, or at least you were --
O'NEILL: Right.
LEVIN: When he says this is the Republicans twisting what he says, this is the president of the United States who's out of order here, and he's diverting attention and all the rest of it -- more damnable lies.
O'NEILL: The thing I got that I hope every American gets a chance to see, Mark -- I just sent it to you when you asked me to be on this show -- is a message sent by a bunch of Americans in the Army in Iraq, and they have a -- it's hard to describe it, but they have a large banner out, and it misspells all the words to make fun of Kerry. It says, “Halp Us Kerry” -- misspelled H-A-L-P -- “We are stuck here in Iraq.” And of course, they did it to mock Kerry. It's the only way to respond, if you're a kid in Iraq, to some -- to a creature like this. He is truly a locust. He eats people's honor, and that's what he's always done.
[...]
O'NEILL: That's what so terribly cowardly about Kerry, Mark. These kids have no way at all of responding. They're not even allowed to politically comment. They're far away from home, they're volunteers 100 percent, they didn't get stuck anywhere, they volunteered to go there. And they have some buzzard like Kerry back in the United States saying this stuff, and they can't really defend themselves. They have to depend on people like you and me to do that, or there is no defense at all for them.
[...]
O'NEILL: You were talking about Pennsylvania. I had a mother who was from Philadelphia who has two kids who have MBAs, both of whom volunteered to go to Iraq and are right there now with the Marines, call me up. You know -- first of all, both of her kids are a lot smarter than that dummy Kerry, I can promise you that. I debated that guy in 1971, and he is truly a stiff in intellectual ability as well as integrity.