Home > The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign is taking on water.

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign is taking on water.

by Open-Publishing - Saturday 28 August 2004
5 comments

Credibility taking hits

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign is taking on water. Hole after hole has been blown in the group’s credibility. We hope the damage is sufficient to finally sink 30-year-old anguish over the Vietnam War as a campaign issue.

The campaign to smear Sen. John Kerry took three more direct hits this week.

Despite repeated assertions that the Bush campaign had no connection to the anti-Kerry group, the campaign’s counsel, Benjamin Ginsberg, resigned, conceding that he’d provided legal advice to the swift boat bunch. One of the group’s founders was commander at the time of a task force whose report confirmed that on March 13, 1969, Kerry’s boat was involved in "an enemy-initiated firefight." And an Oregon lawyer who appeared in a Kerry-bashing ad faces a state bar association complaint that he was misleading in a sworn affidavit alleging that Kerry had not earned his Purple Heart medals.

One man who can — and should — blow this nasty campaign out of the water is President Bush. His recent call to ban all campaign advertising by all such outside groups — known as 527 committees — is not only insufficiently critical of the swift boat campaign but also restraint of free speech.

The answer, Mr. President, is not to restrict the use of political free speech, but to condemn its abuse.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/188078_swiftlied.html

Forum posts

  • DON’T YOU DUMBCRATS EVER GET ANY THING RIGHT.I START WITH YOUR HERO’S
    JOHN KERRY ,GORE THE BOAR,HILLERY, KENNEDY ,HART ,CARTER,SLICK WILLIE,
    JESSY JACKSON,I COULD GO ON FOR EVER BUT YOU GET THE IDEA.OH AND DONT FORGET DEAN
    I REST MY CASE.I NEVER UNDERSTOOD HOW A CONSERVITE COULD VOTE FOF THE DUMBOCRATS
    WHO WANT THE GOVERMENT TO CONTROLL YOUR LIFE.

    • Who wants to control your life? I see far more liberty stifling law supported and passed by conservatives than I do liberals. What do you call the anti "Patriot Act" for example? The "Defense of Marriage" Act?

  • Why don’t you condemn attacks by these other groups against Bush and more so the Democrat attacks against Ralph Nader? Why just 1 gruop? I also think your hole after hole theory has hole after hole.

    DCE

  • Taking on water????

    I would say the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have used well documented information to blow the Kerry propoganda machine out of the water!!!

    • Most of John Kerry’s swift boat crew mates stood by him at the Democratic National Convention. None of the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" served with him. John O’Neill, spokesman for the Swift Boat Veterans for "Truth," accused John McCain of being a Manchurian Candidate. There goes his credibility.

      Finally, how ’Nam is Bush? If Kerry isn’t ’Nam enough, how much Bush blood was spilled on Vietnamese soil? On the one hand you’ve got a man who volunteered to serve the interests of his country, and was decorated for actions in combat. On the other you have a man who evaded service, could not be bothered to show up to fulfill his commitments, and skipped one medical exam altogether—given he has not denied problems with alcohol or drug abuse we can only surmise as to why.

      President Bush has the greatest personal wealth of any president we have had since Lyndon Johnson. This in no way detracts from his ability as Commander in Chief, but it does speak to his ability to identify with the common man on the street. More jobs have been lost during his administration than at any time since the Great Depression. The one trait he DOES share with everyday Joe Handyman is that he is of at best moderate intelligence. Let us not forget that "Gulf War" Bush actually lost the popular election in 2000 to Al Gore.