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WRONG

First, IANAL but I link to a lawyer's blog below.

Second I am a Navy Veteran (FTN & PAPERCLIP awards) whose skin crawled when Kerry gave his lifer "reporting for duty salute" ... something is not right with this dude ... thank you SwiftVets and POWS for Truth for confirming my gut feelings as a Navy Veteran about Kerry

BULLET POINTS: Kerry Lies -vs- SwiftVets Factual Data

why no Kerry libel/slander suit? Because Kerry has no grounds to sue - everything SwiftVets has said/published about Kerry is TRUE. Kerry is terrified of the discovery process that would occur during such a trial ... Kerry's full and complete military service record (except medical records) would be released to the general public.

Swift Vets & POW For Truth have ALL their Tar Baby ducks in a row ... they were and are ready to go to court.

There is a book Unfit For Command referencing:
(1) Kerry's own authorized biography
(2) limited official Navy Records
(3) the Congressional Record
(4) sworn affidavits signed by people who served with Kerry in Vietnam
... documenting Kerry's exaggerations, distortions, and lies regarding his Vietnam-era SwiftBoat naval service and his postwar activities with the enemy

There are now five (5) mini-documentaries, explaining the minutia of the various Kerry combat engagements. Animations, maps and eye-witness voice overs are utilized. These are very useful for explaining to non-Navy types the ins&outs of what was going on during various SwiftBoat naval engagements. Basically Kerry was/is a serial exagerater who "lied while good men died"

please note John Kerry NOT released his naval records to the general public via a signed SF-180. What was published on the Kerry website was a subset of his official records.

CONFIRMED BY WASHINGTON POST

Although Kerry campaign officials insist that they have published Kerry's full military records on their Web site (with the exception of medical records shown briefly to reporters earlier this year), they have not permitted independent access to his original Navy records. A Freedom of Information Act request by The Post for Kerry's records produced six pages of information. A spokesman for the Navy Personnel Command, Mike McClellan, said he was not authorized to release the full file, which consists of at least a hundred pages.From the Washington Post article Swift Boat Accounts Incomplete: Critics Fail to Disprove Kerry's Version of Vietnam War Episode by By Michael Dobbs, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page A01

There is a photograph showing Kerry with 19 of his fellow Swift boat OICs (Officers In Charge) in Coastal Division 11. Only three of Kerry's 23 fellow OICs from Coastal Division 11 support Kerry ... why so few support Kerry ... maybe Kerry has a problem? Perhaps we should pay some attention to these OICs who do not support Kerry? Maybe they kno

WRONG

First, IANAL but I link to a lawyer's blog below.

Second I am a Navy Veteran (FTN & PAPERCLIP awards) whose skin crawled when Kerry gave his lifer "reporting for duty salute" ... something is not right with this dude ... thank you SwiftVets and POWS for Truth for confirming my gut feelings as a Navy Veteran about Kerry

BULLET POINTS: Kerry Lies -vs- SwiftVets Factual Data

why no Kerry libel/slander suit? Because Kerry has no grounds to sue - everything SwiftVets has said/published about Kerry is TRUE. Kerry is terrified of the discovery process that would occur during such a trial ... Kerry's full and complete military service record (except medical records) would be released to the general public.

Swift Vets & POW For Truth have ALL their Tar Baby ducks in a row ... they were and are ready to go to court.

There is a book Unfit For Command referencing:
(1) Kerry's own authorized biography
(2) limited official Navy Records
(3) the Congressional Record
(4) sworn affidavits signed by people who served with Kerry in Vietnam
... documenting Kerry's exaggerations, distortions, and lies regarding his Vietnam-era SwiftBoat naval service and his postwar activities with the enemy

There are now five (5) mini-documentaries, explaining the minutia of the various Kerry combat engagements. Animations, maps and eye-witness voice overs are utilized. These are very useful for explaining to non-Navy types the ins&outs of what was going on during various SwiftBoat naval engagements. Basically Kerry was/is a serial exagerater who "lied while good men died"

please note John Kerry NOT released his naval records to the general public via a signed SF-180. What was published on the Kerry website was a subset of his official records.

CONFIRMED BY WASHINGTON POST

Although Kerry campaign officials insist that they have published Kerry's full military records on their Web site (with the exception of medical records shown briefly to reporters earlier this year), they have not permitted independent access to his original Navy records. A Freedom of Information Act request by The Post for Kerry's records produced six pages of information. A spokesman for the Navy Personnel Command, Mike McClellan, said he was not authorized to release the full file, which consists of at least a hundred pages.From the Washington Post article Swift Boat Accounts Incomplete: Critics Fail to Disprove Kerry's Version of Vietnam War Episode by By Michael Dobbs, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page A01

There is a photograph showing Kerry with 19 of his fellow Swift boat OICs (Officers In Charge) in Coastal Division 11. Only three of Kerry's 23 fellow OICs from Coastal Division 11 support Kerry ... why so few support Kerry ... maybe Kerry has a problem? Perhaps we should pay some attention to these OICs who do not support Kerry? Maybe they kno

In RatherGate, it was blogs like Little Green Footballs and Powerline which actually broke the story, quickly determining that the RatherGate documents where not only frauds, but poor, obvious frauds at that. And it wasn't TV news "experts" who made the determination, but real experts out on the Internet chipping in their particular bits of knowledge about computer typographer, Air Force National Guard procedures, etc. Tens years ago, CBS probably would have gotten away with it. Now they can't.

In the case of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, here was a story the MSM didn't want to touch with a ten-foot poll because it went against the narrative the had already decided on ("John Kerry, War Hero Turned Protestor"). (Just imagine if there had been an organization with some 80-odd National Guard vets swearing that they witnessed Bush shirking his duty; there would have been an hour-long prime time special...) Since no media outlet was covering their ads, it was the blogsphere that carried information about the group. It's ironic that the Swift Boat Vets spent about 1/100th what Moveon.org did, and was still 100 times more effective.

So what you are really saying is, never vote for someone like Bill Clinton? Or Hillary in '08, for that matter?

That sounds radical, but you might get support for it.

Now here is an interesting question. If you are only voting for veterans, do you care what their peers say? Imagine, for example, that hundreds of veterans that served with candidate when they were in service, or who knew important deails of their service, protested against the candidate? Shouldn't they be listened to? After all, a candidate's legislative record or business record faces scrutiny, should their military record be considered? Or are you simply engaging in demagoguery for momentary advantage in this election? Are you going to believe this in the next election?

SwiftVets and POWs.

You can learn it now or, as with Jimmy Carter, you can learn it too late and suffer accordingly.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

Hardcore Democrats have been nuts since the Gore-inspired "stolen election" hysteria of 2000. The fact that every objective study of the voting in Florida, including those funded by liberal newspapers, shows Bush won by a small margin means little to these fanatics. If the Democratic party were in more capable hands, it would have put an end to the madness much like Nixon did to legitimate evidence that JFK and the mafia fixed the elections in Illinois. But it isn't. Post-Clinton, the Democratic party is led by integrity-deficient rogues.

Look at recent news. Shots were fired into a Bush-Cheney headquarters in Knoxville, Tennessee. In Orlando, Florida, Democratic fanatics attacked a Republican party headquarters. The same thing happened in West Allis, Wisconsin. All that is a direct product of the "Bush = Hitler" rhetoric coming from the Democratic party leadership and their activist groups. And from someone who lived through it, it is also almost identical to the sort of violence-inspiring rhetoric that came from Democratic politicians (i.e. George Wallace) in the South during the last days of segregation.

This is serious stuff. My greatx4 grandfather and one of his daughters were murdered during the Civil War for opposing Southern succession in NW Alabama. My greatx3 grandfather was murdered for voting Republican in 1874 when Southern Democrats were as rabid about winning by any means as national Democrats are today.

Notice something else. If these attacks had been on Democratic headquarters, Big Media would be all over Bush demanding that he put a stop to it much like they did with the the very decent, honest and non-violent swift boat veterans. Why aren't they all over Kerry demanding action? Could this be bias? Oh no, we all know that Rather is as honest as.... well Clinton.

The chilling effect of these attacks is why, with the two candidates fairly equal in the polls, you see far fewer Bush stickers on cars than Kerry stickers. Bush supporters legitimately fear a rock through their windshield from all these crazed Democrats. Check NationalReview.com for an article on this "Climate of Fear."

Me? Much like my illustrious ancestors no one intimidates me. Despite warnings from my landlord about a smashed windshield, my car still has a homemade "Kerry Kills Babies" sign with a picture of an aborted baby. Oh, the obscene notes it is attracting from my smugly liberal neighbors!

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

Its a term everybody is using about Kerry, except devotees like yourself, because it fits.

So now your speaking for everybody, wow. I never make the claim.

Nice ad hominem attack. You seem to think I'm some kind of sucker for Bush campaign propaganda don't you. Maybe you should read my signature and some of my old posts. I trash him every opportunity I get, at lost worse than I've been trashing Kerry here. The difference between you and me is I dont fall in line with you are either a Democrat or a Republican. I think they are both bad and I'm not going to kid myself into thinking either of them is great, which is what you are doing, because neither of them is great.

Well you are repeating all of the right wing crap,

Not sure I really follow your point. Cheney is the VP he has to follow Bush's policy line because he is on the bottom of the ticket and he serves at Bush's discretion, it has nothing to do with the platform. If he didn't support Bush's position he'd run the risk of Bush dumping him. Bush doesn't like people crossing him...Bush isn't even remotely obligated to follow the party platform...

Cheney made a point of it in his debate, he is still on the ticket. Rumsfeld and Powell have said things that don't agree with 'the party line', and they seem safe (at least for now). Also note that Bush wouldn't be in the Whitehouse unless he was willing to tow the line on some of the party's posititions. As a President looking for another term, he does have considerable 'hold' over what the party considers important, but he doesn't have the complete control that you seem to think he has.

[Yea, I agree, you do have a mind full of political BS]...

My point again, which you didn't answer but rather lept into the ad hominem, is when was the last time Kerry said anything major against the Patriotic Act like he did in nearly every speech during the primaries when he was stealing Dean's thunder on the subject?

I've seen Democratic ads almost every day about the problems with the Patriot Act. Perhaps I am seeing them more because I am in the TV market for a 'swing state'. I am sorry bout the personal attact about 'your mind', it was 'over the top', but the way you worded that it just seemed too easy and I should have said that there. It's clear the you supported Dean in the primaries, personally I perferred Clarke, but the fact is we need to get rid of Bush. You don't like Kerry. I do. He's not perfect, but he good, honest, and can give us a fresh start of creditablity in the world.

I notice you didn't have any comment about Kerry's Kennedy fetish as soon as I pointed you to a voluminous resource on the fact he has had an unnatural Kennedy fetish most of his life. Since you seem to think you are so much better informed than I, I'm shocked I knew something about him you didn't.

No, you didn't quote the article. You just pointed at it an said 'beat this'. It's a book written by someone with an agenda, you might have as well linked the Swift boat vets for truth site. In Mass. the Kennedys have let's say 'quite a following', frankly sometimes it almost scary. I don't know if he was shitting me or not but a guy I once knew from Boston told me that their maid set up a little shrine which included a picture of JFK every time she came to clean the house. John Kerry didn't write the book, Douglas Brinkley did. Attributing those thoughts to John Kerry himself is a misrepresentation worthy of Bush himself.

There is another aspect of Kerry's phoniness and his Kennedy fetish I should point out. Everyone think he is Irish Catholic just like the Kennedy's which is a good thing to be in Boston especially if you have a Kennedy fetish. Well he isn't really. It is another part of his phonine

I'd vote for the guy who got three purple hearts, a silver star, and a bronze star, anytime, over the guy who took the rich boy coward's way out and won't admit there was anything even remotely improper about it.

What you really mean is that you hate Bush and will vote for Kerry despite what dozens of people who actually saw him in action, or the people who suffered because of him, have to say about the very reason you say you are voting for him. (His medals.) If what Bush did was approved by his commanders and allowed by regulation, it was proper. That is why he got an honorable discharge from a component of the armed forces of the United States. (Like Kerry.) Get over it.

Oooooo ... here's the flame I was waiting for. Back it up with facts huh? Read here for an idea on how they are not all that different at all. Not just the comments, follow some of the links.

Kerry was a war hero and "everyone that served with him" says so ... Um, don't think so.

Bush started a war that resluted in over 1000 american deaths ... damn, I could have sworn that someone else started the war by killing 2948 Americans. Guess I was wrong.

Kerry and Bush are both silver-spoon born million/billionares with no grasp on what the common man goes through day to day. Do you think either of them has ever been in a position where they had $5 left in their account and were stuck deciding between getting gas or food for the evening? Think either of them has ever seen red ink in their personal checkbooks and prayed that the paycheck went through before the mortgage check? Open your eyes and stop sucking at the liberal teat of the left-wing.

Damn. Let me guess.... Kerry fan? With a little Moore influence? So, did you choose a glass with the red, or the green kool-aid? Well, if you paid for it, at least you got a full dose. Well, never mind.

If you take a few deep breaths, and read from a wider group of media outlets, you might still have a chance. There are now even antidotes for the F 911 fever swamp. Otherwise, I'm sorry.

And actually, impeachment is essentially an indictment, not an investigation. There actually has to be wrong-doing involved for impeachment to be considered. Anti-Bush fantasies aside, 9/11 didn't involve that. If it did, Clinton would be up for more trouble.

Ta ta, and good luck with all that.

Kerry LIED about some things related to his service some 30 years ago.

BOTH were honorably discharged from the military.

Bush has said Kerry's service was "honorable". Both "sides" have gone at one another with 527 ads. Persons from BOTH campaigns have been proven to have ties with 527s in some way or another. Texans for Truth is now doing the EXACT same thing Swiftboat Veterans for Truth did. Neither side is better or worse here; sorry to anyone who thinks their "side" is.

What I want to know is:

How does someone's experience as a junior officer over three decades ago have any bearing on their ability to be President of the United States?

And before you answer about things like "character" or truthfulness, in defense of either side, be careful, as both side has lied plenty. (Yes, [insert Bush or Kerry here]-supporters, he's lied a LOT about things related to his service, both during and after.)

"My name is Steve Gardner. I served in 1966 and 1967 on my first tour of duty in Vietnam on Swift boats, and I did my second tour in '68 and '69, involved with John Kerry in the last 2 1/2 months of my tour. The John Kerry that I know is not the John Kerry that everybody else is portraying. I served alongside him and behind him, five feet away from him in a gun tub, and watched as he made indecisive moves with our boat, put our boats in jeopardy, put our crews in jeopardy... if a man like that can't handle that 6-man crew boat, how can you expect him to be our Commander-in-Chief?"

-- Steven Gardner

You can read an interview with him regarding the story John Kerry has told about going into Cambodia, supposedly more than 50 times, including on the floor of the Senate, here on the August 10th transcript. The New York Post adds this:

The swift vets are also behind the anti-Kerry best seller, "Unfit for Command," which has already forced Team Kerry to retract his decades-old claim that he was sent on an illegal covert mission to Cambodia on Christmas 1968.

Kerry's own handpicked historian, Douglas Brinkley, told the Washington Post over the weekend that Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia claim is "obviously wrong," backing up a key claim by the swift vets who say it never happened.

6) Are you aware that the doctor who claims to have treated Kerry's wounds wasn't the one listed on the documentation as having treated Kerry, and that the doctor who did treat him affirmed Kerry's report of the wound?

Not quite. The person who signed that was the Navy Corpsman assisting the doctor who treated Kerry:

Only a treatment record reflecting a scratch and a certificate signed three months later have been produced. There is no "after-action" hostile fire or casualty report. This is because there was no hostile fire, casualty, or action on this "most frightening night" of Kerry's Vietnam experience.

Letson agreed with Hibbard, in a statement the doctor gave us in April, that Kerry's injury was minor and probably self-inflicted:
"The incident that occasioned my meeting with Lieutenant Kerry began while he was patrolling the coast at night just north of Cam Ranh Bay, where I was the only medical officer for a small support base. Kerry returned from that night on patrol with an injury.
"Kerry reported that he had observed suspicious activity on shore and fired a flare to illuminate the area," Letson continued. "According to Kerry, they had been engaged in a firefight, receiving small arms fire from on shore. He said that his injury resulted from this enemy action.
"The story he told was different from what his crewmen had to say about that night. Some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a grenade round at close range to the shore. The crewman who related this story thought that the injury was from a fragment of the grenade shell that had ricocheted back from the rocks. That seemed to fit the injury I treated.
"What I saw was a small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of Kerry's arm. The metal fragment measured about one centimeter in length and was about two or three millimeters in diameter. It certainly did not look like a round from a rifle," Letson

I strongly suggest you take a moment to read Salon, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, or The Washington Post.

Ah, yes. Salon is a great source of unbiased news. The others aren't nearly as biased as Salon, but they aren't exactly fair and impartial either. Incidentally, I've read most of the articles in the Washington Post and New York Times and their "debunking" of the Swift Boat Veterans claims isn't exactly convincing.

Indeed, Thurlow won a Bronze Star for his actions in rescuing a comrade under enemy fire.

Why don't you go to the source on this one and check out Thurlow's response. In all likelihood the language from his citation came directly from John Kerry's after action report since Kerry seems to be the only one that filed a report describing the incident.

Also, Kerry's citation claims that they were under constant small arms and automatic weapons fire for 5000 meters while they fled the scene. I'm sorry, but if that were true they would probably all be dead. Also, how did they rescue and repair the damaged PCF-3 boat if they were under constant fire?

-- Why won't he (kerry) release all his medical and other service records?

He has. The only records he has not released are his review papers.

Um, no he hasn't. Look for "Standard Form 180" and "FOIA"; the Washington Post only received six of about 100 pages. And "review papers" seem to be pretty important if we're trying to figure out if this guy deserves to be President.

Was Kerry in Cambodia? Almost certainly - Larry Thurlow, one of his chief accusers, was recorded telling Nixon that he (Thurlow) had been in Cambodia.

It was actually John O'Neill, not Thurlow, that was recorded speaking to Nixon. Also, O'Neill, unlike Kerry, does a pretty good job of clarifying the recording. Keep in mind that we don't get to hear the entire conversation from the recording.

Also, the statements you provided are both 1) nothing like what Kerry has said about Cambodia, and 2) don't address Kerry's lies about Cambodia. This isn't just a small, little claim. This is something that Kerry says was "seared -- seared -- in [him]." He has repeated this story many times for over 15 years at least, and now that it has been proven to be a total fabrication, he has been forced to change it.

First, you are stretching the term "served with him". You mean "were also in Vietnam during the war".

No, I mean served WITH him. Like on his boat, next to his boat during combat, and as his commanding officers. While not all of the Swift Boat Veterans served as closely with Kerry, I'm addressing and talking about those that did. These guys (the vocal ones of the SBVT) were eye witnesses to Kerry and their accounts should be heard.

Kerry's campaign has been forced to backtrack on his fraudulent Christmas in Cambodia story and they have now been forced to backtrack on his first Purple Heart, admitting that his wound may have been self-inflicted. From what I've seen the Swift Boat Vets have been solid in their claims and have forced Kerry to backtrack. This goes to show that there is at least some tr

and the journalist ripped the other guy to shreds

Ah, yes, this answers the question by providing an example of how the Swifties are lying. If the "journalist" ripped the guy to shreds then the Swift Boat Veterans must be lying.

he also exposed that the swift boat guy has had an agenda against Kerry for over 20 years (It's actually over 30 years)

So I suppose that George Bush has been secretly behind John O'Neill for over 30 years just so O'Neill could come out against Kerry now, right? Personally I might be upset at Kerry too if he had lied about me and then used his lies for his own personal gain over the last 30 years. Oh, and if you want to see someone "ripping the other guy to shreds," you might want to watch the John O'Neill vs. John Kerry debate of June 30, 1971.

Oh, and just so I can prove my point about providing specific examples, here are a couple from the Swift Boat Veterans:

1) John Kerry lied about Christmas in Cambodia - This is something that even John Kerry's campaign has been forced to acknowledge.

2) John Kerry lied about soldiers committing war crimes, himself included. Though it is true some small number of soldiers committed war crimes, it was not at all common to engage in these acts as Kerry describes it, nor was it fair to condemn the entire military based on the acts of a few. Also, this is an interesting point, either Kerry was truthful about committing war crimes and he, himself is a war criminal (far worse a criminal than those involved in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal I might add), or John Kerry is again lying. Which would you rather have, a pathological liar or a war criminal?

Lastly, for those who will whine and moan about why are we still talking about Vietnam, I'll tell you why. Because John Kerry can't stop talking about it! Kerry can't seem to complete a sentance without mentioning that he served in Vietnam. If Kerry wants us to look at his Vietnam record above his Senate record for the past 20 years then we're going to do it. And we won't back down.

and the journalist ripped the other guy to shreds

Ah, yes, this answers the question by providing an example of how the Swifties are lying. If the "journalist" ripped the guy to shreds then the Swift Boat Veterans must be lying.

he also exposed that the swift boat guy has had an agenda against Kerry for over 20 years (It's actually over 30 years)

So I suppose that George Bush has been secretly behind John O'Neill for over 30 years just so O'Neill could come out against Kerry now, right? Personally I might be upset at Kerry too if he had lied about me and then used his lies for his own personal gain over the last 30 years. Oh, and if you want to see someone "ripping the other guy to shreds," you might want to watch the John O'Neill vs. John Kerry debate of June 30, 1971.

Oh, and just so I can prove my point about providing specific examples, here are a couple from the Swift Boat Veterans:

1) John Kerry lied about Christmas in Cambodia - This is something that even John Kerry's campaign has been forced to acknowledge.

2) John Kerry lied about soldiers committing war crimes, himself included. Though it is true some small number of soldiers committed war crimes, it was not at all common to engage in these acts as Kerry describes it, nor was it fair to condemn the entire military based on the acts of a few. Also, this is an interesting point, either Kerry was truthful about committing war crimes and he, himself is a war criminal (far worse a criminal than those involved in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal I might add), or John Kerry is again lying. Which would you rather have, a pathological liar or a war criminal?

Lastly, for those who will whine and moan about why are we still talking about Vietnam, I'll tell you why. Because John Kerry can't stop talking about it! Kerry can't seem to complete a sentance without mentioning that he served in Vietnam. If Kerry wants us to look at his Vietnam record above his Senate record for the past 20 years then we're going to do it. And we won't back down.

Wow, this is news to me. I'm sorry but out of all the news stories and coverage in the so-called "right-wing" mainstream media, all I've seen is attacks on this group of veterans. I've hardly seen ANY attempt at all to discredit even a single claim of theirs.

So far almost every attack on the Swift Boat Veterans has been a personal, ad hominem attack on these veterans' character, not on their claims. The Kerry campaign, and many ex-Clintonistas, keep repeating crap like "Bush is behind it" (patently false), "these men didn't serve on Kerry's boat" (many of them were next to his boat, but hey look, they now have Kerry's gunner, who WAS on Kerry's boat), or "they're funded by Republicans" (so, should Democrats be funding them? Or, how does that change their message?) and lots of other junk like that.

Why doesn't Kerry confront their claims head-on? Why won't he release all his medical and other service records? Why did Kerry lie about spending Christmas in Cambodia? An event that he claims was "seared -- seared -- in [him]," and changed his life. Why do so many people that served alongside and above Kerry (including almost all of his commanding officers) feel that Kerry is not fit to be Commander in Chief? When are we going to get answers from Kerry and not ad hominem attacks?

I'm sorry, but the number of veterans that served with Kerry and don't want him to be president far outnumbers the veterans that served with him and want him to be president. These vets earned their right to speak just as much as Kerry did and they should be allowed to tell their story. This is still America isn't it? We do still have freedom of speech don't we? Or is it only when John Kerry agrees with it?

Of course no one will be able to read what I have to say because Slashdot is so "anybody but Bush" that the moderators here would mod up Satan, Bill Gates or even Darl McBride before they'd allow a right-leaning point of view.

Don't signed affadavits count for anything anymore?

Basically, you've got Kerry with 13 guys who agree with him versus every other man in his unit, including his entire chain of command - about 250 men total. Democrats, Republicans, but all men who absolutely despise Kerry for the way he behaved in Viet Nam.

Sorry, but I can't believe Rove bought off 250 men - especially when they have forced Kerry to admit that he lied about one incident and forced him to quietly retract several items from his website - items like taking credit for other commanders' combat missions.

As others have noted, the military votes heavily Republican and for good reason. Kerry, all too typical of the Democratic elite, voted against the funding to supply our troops in Iraq with ammunition, body armor etc. And that was AFTER voting for the war itself. The only sense you can make of that strange voting is that Kerry doesn't care about the lives of those in the military. Like LBJ during Vietnam, he regards them as disposable commodities.

Compare the NY Time's zeal to publish this allegation with an article, "Editors Grapple with How to Cover Swift Boat Controversy" in the August 24 issue of Editor and Publisher. There Alison Mitchell, deputy national editor for the NY Times is quoted saying, "I'm not sure that in an era of no-cable television, we would have even looked into it."

That embittered editor won't even mention Fox News, whose coverage of the SwiftVets story--along with many websites and blogs--forced the NY Times to cover the story against its will. In the 1960s, it was sometimes remarked that what was "news" in America was what interested Walter Cronkite when he read the NY Times. That is no longer true. A few people in buildings in Manhattan can no longer tell us what the news is. We decide for ourselves. For that we can thank the Internet.

What is fascinating about this tale is how well it illustrates the bias of the Old Media. Bush has never made his National Guard service into the reason he's qualified to be President and has even admitted that he was a bit wild in those days. Yet the Old Media poked and prodded his military files for months, trying to find a scandal, but coming up with nothing worse that his being late getting a medical physical. ("Was he doing drugs?" Gasp, gasp!)

In contrast, Kerry's party convention was a giant celebration of him as a war hero and that claim was the centerpiece of his claim to be qualified for the Presidency. As a number of capable (i.e. not employed by the NY Times) journalists have noted, by the rules of the game, that made his time in Vietnam fair game for critics.

Even when the NY Times was forced to pick up the story, it tried to reduce multiple SwiftVet eyewitness accounts (from those in boats alongside Kerry and the Kerry crewman who served longest with him) to "mostly unsubstantiated accusations." How absurd. Have they ever described what Kerry says that way? You can get the SwiftVet side of the story at:

SwiftVets

And even watch their latest ad.

Alas for the dogmatists at the NY Times, those 'twice brave' SwiftVets are proving quite accurate. The Kerry campaign has now abandoned his oft-repeated "Christmas in Cambodia" remarks and is retreating on whether his first Purple Heart was deserved. If it was the result of Kerry's clumsy use of a grenade launcher, then his trivial wound was a result of 'gross negligence' and thus not qualified for the medal. His third Purple Star faces similar problems, since it seems to have resulted from the clumsy use of a grenade to destroy VietCong rice. That, in turn, raises a serious question. Should we trust our nukes to a guy who can't even handle a grenade carefully?

Kerry's also in trouble for claiming a "V" citation to his Silver Star. There's no such thing.

Finally, behind this attempt by the NY Times to muddy the waters about the voting of those in the military lies the one and only partisan attempt to keep votes from being counted in the close 2000 election in Florida--the Democrats many attempts to keep absentee votes from those in the military from being counted. You can be certain the military has worked to make sure that can't happen again, so the NY Times has been reduced to trying to discredit the vote in advance.

Kerry's friends are also said to be working on their very rich expatriate friends to make sure they vote from their chalets in the south

This Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article has a synopsis of the whole SwiftBoats for Truth internet phenomena.

Money quote ... "The biggest unreported story of this campaign is the extent to which the major media are in the tank for Kerry. But media bias -- which has reached comic proportions in the Swift Boat vet controversy -- may be doing Kerry more harm than good."

Your comment is very strange in light of the gross disparity between cash on-hand by the competing groups. SwiftVets for Truth had ~$250 Thousand while MoveOn & Co had $60 Million

Money quote ... If the "Republican attack machine" were behind the Swifties, it did a lousy job. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had barely $250,000 on hand when they launched their first ad in three mid-sized markets in Ohio, Wisconsin and West Virginia. By contrast, the three largest independent committees have raised and spent nearly $60 million on ads attacking Bush.

This must be why John Kerry has taken the Swift Boat Vets for Truth to court for libel ... NOT ... instead John Kerry is threatening third-party TV Stations & bookstores instead. I guess the real threat to freedom is Kerry not some scarry "Patriot Act" that has harmed zero US Citizens and zero US Permanent Residents that you or anyone else can name

I'm confused about the Kerry in Cambodia thing ... I guess the SwiftVets were telling the turth about Kerry never being in Cambodia @ Christmas ... again you would think Kerry would be taking somebody to court for libel ... am I missing something???

Kerry lied to the US Senate ... Kerry lied to the People of Massachussettes ... Kerry lied to the American People and Kerry may have lied to both of his wives & associated children

"The real issue here is the speed and low cost of astroturf attack campaigns via the net,"

There would appear to be several issues per both the original /. article and the Belmont Club blog article ... perhaps the most interesting story is the power of the internet to overcome an entrenched thought police, group think, what have you ... Mainstream Media vs Kid Internet .

Convenient how you have forgotten about MoveOn and their infamous Hitler ad??? link #1 link #2

(GRIN) Please do not forget to throw George Soros' millions to MoveOn & Co. down the memory hole (/GRIN) while you focus only on the two $100K contributions by a Texas building contractor to the SwiftVets, will you rememember to mention the over 30,000 additional contributions of ~$64 (average) to the SwiftVets for a total of $2 million???

This must be why John Kerry has taken the Swift Boat Vets for Truth to court for libel ... NOT ... instead John Kerry is threatening third-party TV Stations & bookstores instead. I guess the real threat to freedom is Kerry not some scarry "Patriot Act" that has harmed zero US Citizens and zero US Permanent Residents that you or anyone else can name

I'm confused about the Kerry in Cambodia thing ... I guess the SwiftVets were telling the turth about Kerry never being in Cambodia @ Christmas ... again you would think Kerry would be taking somebody to court for libel ... am I missing something???

Kerry lied to the US Senate ... Kerry lied to the People of Massachussettes ... Kerry lied to the American People and Kerry may have lied to both of his wives & associated children

"The real issue here is the speed and low cost of astroturf attack campaigns via the net,"

There would appear to be several issues per both the original /. article and the Belmont Club blog article ... perhaps the most interesting story is the power of the internet to overcome an entrenched thought police, group think, what have you ... Mainstream Media vs Kid Internet .

Convenient how you have forgotten about MoveOn and their infamous Hitler ad??? link #1 link #2

(GRIN) Please do not forget to throw George Soros' millions to MoveOn & Co. down the memory hole (/GRIN) while you focus only on the two $100K contributions by a Texas building contractor to the SwiftVets, will you rememember to mention the over 30,000 additional contributions of ~$64 (average) to the SwiftVets for a total of $2 million???

Friends of Bush Unite!
Post on the forums!

Lets play with the friends of bush forums!
Fun fun!

Fans of Bush!
Not so swift vets. Lets play with their forums!

The essay (snippets below) also 'attempts' to utilize some Object Oriented lingo to describe what is going on (grin).

The undercard in the Kerry vs Swiftvets bout is Mainstream Media vs Kid Internet, two distinctly different fights, but both over information. The first is really the struggle over the way Vietnam will be remembered by posterity; ... But the undercard holds a fascination of its own. The reigning champion, the Mainstream Media, has been forced against all odds to accept the challenge of an [Internet] upstart over the coverage of the Swiftvets controversy.

"There are too many places for people to get information," O'Shea said. "I don't think newspapers can be the gatekeepers anymore -- to say this is wrong and we will ignore it. Now we have to say this is wrong, and here is why." [in other words the USA/European Mainstream Media has a problem with the internet no longer allowing them to control what geeks read & think]

The article is a candid and unconscious description of the actual nature of news. It is not just raw information or pixels pushed onto a screen, but a system of semantic entities: an series of information objects, containing properties and methods containing embedded logic, set loose on society. The power of the Mainstream Media lay in the fact that they controlled the generation of news objects; how they arose, what they did, how they ran their course. They were the news object foundry; able to make them "type safe"; define what they could do, and what they could not. And that power was enormous.

So when the Swiftvets story shouldered its way into the public consciousness despite the best efforts of the "gatekeepers" to consign it to oblivion, it posed an existential challenge to the news foundries. For where one could come, more would follow. The Mainstream Media responded to accusations by Swiftvets that Kerry had misrepresented his combat record in Vietnam by creating their own alternative news object, whose methods were restricted to OutrageAgainstBush( ) and SympathyForKerry( ), with read only properties Responsible and Respectable. They could no longer block the data, but they could still transform it.

Yet for good or ill, the genie is out of the bottle. Before the Gutenberg printing press men knew the contents of the Bible solely through the prism of the professional clergy, who could alone afford the expensively hand copied books and who exclusively interpreted it. But when technology made books widely available, men could read the sacred texts for themselves and form their own opinions. And the world was never the same again.

The essay (snippets below) also 'attempts' to utilize some Object Oriented lingo to describe what is going on (grin).

The undercard in the Kerry vs Swiftvets bout is Mainstream Media vs Kid Internet, two distinctly different fights, but both over information. The first is really the struggle over the way Vietnam will be remembered by posterity; ... But the undercard holds a fascination of its own. The reigning champion, the Mainstream Media, has been forced against all odds to accept the challenge of an [Internet] upstart over the coverage of the Swiftvets controversy.

"There are too many places for people to get information," O'Shea said. "I don't think newspapers can be the gatekeepers anymore -- to say this is wrong and we will ignore it. Now we have to say this is wrong, and here is why." [in other words the USA/European Mainstream Media has a problem with the internet no longer allowing them to control what geeks read & think]

The article is a candid and unconscious description of the actual nature of news. It is not just raw information or pixels pushed onto a screen, but a system of semantic entities: an series of information objects, containing properties and methods containing embedded logic, set loose on society. The power of the Mainstream Media lay in the fact that they controlled the generation of news objects; how they arose, what they did, how they ran their course. They were the news object foundry; able to make them "type safe"; define what they could do, and what they could not. And that power was enormous.

So when the Swiftvets story shouldered its way into the public consciousness despite the best efforts of the "gatekeepers" to consign it to oblivion, it posed an existential challenge to the news foundries. For where one could come, more would follow. The Mainstream Media responded to accusations by Swiftvets that Kerry had misrepresented his combat record in Vietnam by creating their own alternative news object, whose methods were restricted to OutrageAgainstBush( ) and SympathyForKerry( ), with read only properties Responsible and Respectable. They could no longer block the data, but they could still transform it.

Yet for good or ill, the genie is out of the bottle. Before the Gutenberg printing press men knew the contents of the Bible solely through the prism of the professional clergy, who could alone afford the expensively hand copied books and who exclusively interpreted it. But when technology made books widely available, men could read the sacred texts for themselves and form their own opinions. And the world was never the same again.

The essay (snippets below) also 'attempts' to utilize some Object Oriented lingo to describe what is going on (grin).

The undercard in the Kerry vs Swiftvets bout is Mainstream Media vs Kid Internet, two distinctly different fights, but both over information. The first is really the struggle over the way Vietnam will be remembered by posterity; ... But the undercard holds a fascination of its own. The reigning champion, the Mainstream Media, has been forced against all odds to accept the challenge of an [Internet] upstart over the coverage of the Swiftvets controversy.

"There are too many places for people to get information," O'Shea said. "I don't think newspapers can be the gatekeepers anymore -- to say this is wrong and we will ignore it. Now we have to say this is wrong, and here is why." [in other words the USA/European Mainstream Media has a problem with the internet no longer allowing them to control what geeks read & think]

The article is a candid and unconscious description of the actual nature of news. It is not just raw information or pixels pushed onto a screen, but a system of semantic entities: an series of information objects, containing properties and methods containing embedded logic, set loose on society. The power of the Mainstream Media lay in the fact that they controlled the generation of news objects; how they arose, what they did, how they ran their course. They were the news object foundry; able to make them "type safe"; define what they could do, and what they could not. And that power was enormous.

So when the Swiftvets story shouldered its way into the public consciousness despite the best efforts of the "gatekeepers" to consign it to oblivion, it posed an existential challenge to the news foundries. For where one could come, more would follow. The Mainstream Media responded to accusations by Swiftvets that Kerry had misrepresented his combat record in Vietnam by creating their own alternative news object, whose methods were restricted to OutrageAgainstBush( ) and SympathyForKerry( ), with read only properties Responsible and Respectable. They could no longer block the data, but they could still transform it.

Yet for good or ill, the genie is out of the bottle. Before the Gutenberg printing press men knew the contents of the Bible solely through the prism of the professional clergy, who could alone afford the expensively hand copied books and who exclusively interpreted it. But when technology made books widely available, men could read the sacred texts for themselves and form their own opinions. And the world was never the same again.

The essay (snippets below) also 'attempts' to utilize some Object Oriented lingo to describe what is going on (grin).

The undercard in the Kerry vs Swiftvets bout is Mainstream Media vs Kid Internet, two distinctly different fights, but both over information. The first is really the struggle over the way Vietnam will be remembered by posterity; ... But the undercard holds a fascination of its own. The reigning champion, the Mainstream Media, has been forced against all odds to accept the challenge of an [Internet] upstart over the coverage of the Swiftvets controversy.

"There are too many places for people to get information," O'Shea said. "I don't think newspapers can be the gatekeepers anymore -- to say this is wrong and we will ignore it. Now we have to say this is wrong, and here is why." [in other words the USA/European Mainstream Media has a problem with the internet no longer allowing them to control what geeks read & think]

The article is a candid and unconscious description of the actual nature of news. It is not just raw information or pixels pushed onto a screen, but a system of semantic entities: an series of information objects, containing properties and methods containing embedded logic, set loose on society. The power of the Mainstream Media lay in the fact that they controlled the generation of news objects; how they arose, what they did, how they ran their course. They were the news object foundry; able to make them "type safe"; define what they could do, and what they could not. And that power was enormous.

So when the Swiftvets story shouldered its way into the public consciousness despite the best efforts of the "gatekeepers" to consign it to oblivion, it posed an existential challenge to the news foundries. For where one could come, more would follow. The Mainstream Media responded to accusations by Swiftvets that Kerry had misrepresented his combat record in Vietnam by creating their own alternative news object, whose methods were restricted to OutrageAgainstBush( ) and SympathyForKerry( ), with read only properties Responsible and Respectable. They could no longer block the data, but they could still transform it.

Yet for good or ill, the genie is out of the bottle. Before the Gutenberg printing press men knew the contents of the Bible solely through the prism of the professional clergy, who could alone afford the expensively hand copied books and who exclusively interpreted it. But when technology made books widely available, men could read the sacred texts for themselves and form their own opinions. And the world was never the same again.

The third Swiftboat Veterans http://www.swiftvets.com/ ad, released earlier this afternoon, is viewable and downloadable from their web site. It can be downloaded in .mpg, .mov, .wmv, and .rm formats. Kerry's infamous "Christmas in Cambodia" fabrication is disputed by one of his crewmates who ought to know, as are Kerry's claims to have EVER been in Cambodia. Not even the crewmates who stood on the podium with him in Boston will back up his story about Cambodia.

Also, tonight C-SPAN is running Kerry's 1971 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in which he repeats his inexcusable accusations against his "Band of Brothers" as being war criminals. It starts at 8:05 pm Eastern time, right after they show the latest Swiftboat Vets ad.

Or how Malkin can go on TV and say Kerry shot himself for his medals?

You'd never know that from Chris Matthews' shameful attempt to portray her response to Willie Brown's comment about shrapnel circumstances as an accusation that the self-inflicted wounds were deliberate. Having set up this straw man, rather than allowing her to explain the details (he seems unable to allow anyone to speak for five seconds without interrupting them) he followed by cancelling the segment to discuss her book, which would have been good TV.

Consider the veteran's group that recently ran those TV ads flat-out accuse Kerry of lying about his service in Nam.

Yes, please do consider this vet group, because one of their charges has been shown to be true.

The chain noise you hear is Kerry's people furiously trying to backpedal from his many blatant statements concerning this fact.

Fact: Kerry claimed several times to have been in cambodia on christmas delivering a CIA agent, even having a hat that he claimed was given to him.

Fact: The claim is complete, and utter, bullshit. Follow the link i sent you and search for 'christmas in cambodia' and kerry for more.

Much of the press is trying to stonewall it, but as you've seen, the dam is starting to crack.

Here's a short version of Kerry in Vietnam: He spent four months and a couple weeks in vietnam. In that time, he was awarded three purple hearts, for injuries that never cost him a day of service. Using a little-known rule, he applied for transfer out after the third purple heart, and was the only swift boat crewmember who did so the entire war.

Shortly after leaving the Navy, he starts accusing the soldiers & sailors in vietnam of all variety of war crimes in the Winter soldier 'investigation'

In 1979, he first claimed to have spent christmas of 1968 illegally in cambodia. This claim was repeated in 1986, and in 2003 even adds the now-infamous magic hat to the story. It was probably repeated a few times in between.

Now the Kerry campaign is claiming that this memory that was 'seared, seared in me' (Kerry) was mistaken, and he was near cambodia.

Nothing of Kerry's statements about being in or near Cambodia have made any sense from a geographical, tactical, or eye witness point of view. He even screws up the timeline with regards to president Nixon making statements about our people in Cambodia before Nixon was even president.

The entire tale he's always been telling about Cambodia has always been weird, and a little too reminiscent of Apocolypse Now. Perhaps Kerry's seared memory came from watching the movie too many times.

One of the swiftvet's charges is provably true. This makes the others worth at least a serious review.

And, and to the responders who have said GOP groups have been funding the ad- no shit, do you expect George Soros and moveon.org to pay for it?

What the swiftvets are doing could hardly be considered illegal, and unethical would be a faaaarr stretch. Kerry slandered them in the seventies. He's pretending to have their support now, and claims his pitiful four months in vietnam 30 years ago qualify him for president, while glossing over his decades in the senate. Kerry basically asked for this. Now he's got it.

lessor? where were you when they were teaching spulling? Or has Bush cut education spending that far already.

Before one criticizes another for poor spelling, one should know how to spell himself.

He's had out billions in tax breaks

You probably meant to say, "He has handed out..."

...into a truly awe-inspiring defecit.

That would be spelled "Deficit".

And what has Kelly done?

Who the hell is Kelly, and what party are they running on?

If you meant Kerry, he lied about his service, see www.swiftvets.com for details.

Kerry also "Lied" about the war; he saw the same intelligence Bush saw and voted to go to war. In fact Kerry was "lying" about Iraq long before Bush came into office. Kerry even criticized the Clinton administration for not finishing the job in the 90's. The criticism Kerry made about Clinton came at least a year before Bush took office in 2001, to find out the exact date, go to www.kerryoniraq.com.

Clinton only lied about who was sucking his dick...

Yes because the chemical weapons lab in Iraq that he bombed was in fact a chemical weapons lab. Oh wait, no, that was an aspirin factory, but somehow Clinton told the truth.

And Clinton's reason for imposing a regime change in Persia, the mass graves, was the "truth", despite the fact that they never did find mass graves. At least Bush found mass graves in Iraq, but apparently that's only a good reason when it comes from the Democrats.

By the way, did you know that the Clinton administration gave Halliburton a no bid contract as well, but some how when Bush does it, it's newsworthy and a crime.

...(including the freedom to learn how to spell it seems).

You seem to prove that freedom was taken away long before Bush came into office.

Saddam Hussein would be the lesser of two evils

Now you sound like a Michael Moore nut-job. Perhaps you should go read some fundamental truths about Fahrenheit-911 written by a life long Democrat and Ralph Nader supporter, http://www.davekopel.com/Terror/Fiftysix-Deceits-i n-Fahrenheit-911.htm

This is simply not true, and you are an ignorant loudmouth.

The veterans against Kerry's campaign are here and they most certainly did serve along side Kerry. Steve Gardner was his machine gunner.

At least know what you're talking about if your're going to run your gob ...