SwiftVets.com

[bach04]

I don't think that this has been posted yet, but I have to give Deborah Orin kudos for mentioning how the liberal 527s are spending huge amount of money against our President. I wrote a letter to the Post yesterday asking them to include an editorial regarding the attempts by Kerry et al. to ban the book. I hope that the Post will come through on this as well.

http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/27276.htm



August 21, 2004 -- Vietnam veterans opposing John Kerry are launching a tough new TV ad that uses Kerry's own antiwar testimony to portray him as a man who "dishonored his country" and "sold out" fellow soldiers by painting them as war criminals.
The new ad was unveiled as Kerry — clearly worried about the impact of the ads by a group known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — tried to knock them off the air by filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission.

The anti-Kerry commercial starts with video of Kerry testifying to the U.S. Senate in 1971 that he knew U.S. troops who "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads" and switches to POWs who say Kerry's words were "devastating" for them.

"John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I, and many of my comrades in North Vietnam, in the prison camps, took torture to avoid saying. It demoralized us," says former Vietnam POW Paul Galanti, a highly decorated Navy combat pilot.

Galanti flew 97 combat missions over Vietnam before being shot down and held at the notorious Hanoi Hilton for seven years — including while Kerry testified.

Kerry highlights his four months of Vietnam duty — and rescue of overboard soldier Jim Rassman — as the heart of his campaign but rarely mentions his subsequent role as an outspoken anti-Vietnam war activist.

The new ad, "Sellout," was unveiled the day after Kerry lashed out at the Swift vets' first TV spot, which portrays the would-be commander in chief as a liar who inflated his war record.



In a stunning development, the first Swift vets ad has become a hot issue in the 2004 race even though it ran in just a few markets — 57 percent of Americans have seen or heard about it, according to a new poll yesterday.

The nonpartisan Annenberg Center found that among "persuadable voters" — those likely to decide the election — 46 percent of those who saw the ad say it was "believable" while 39 percent said it was unbelievable.

Kerry's FEC complaint charges the Swift vets, an officially independent "527" group, illegally coordinated their ad with the Bush campaign — which both Bush and the Swift vets deny.

The 527s are barred from any contact with campaigns. Most 527s are anti-Bush and have run over $50 million in TV ads attacking Bush — nearly 100 times as much as the Swift Vets, who say they've spent just $550,000 so far.

Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt dismissed the complaint as "frivolous" and shot back that there is a "revolving door of personnel, coordinated strategies and overlapping fundraising" between groups like MoveOn and Team Kerry.