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Obama, the Media, and the Legacy of the Swift Boat Veterans

The puzzle pieces are falling into place, and a chilling picture is emerging:

Barack Obama’s mentor and long-time minister Jeremiah Wright called upon God to “damn America.” Wright also preached that America deserved the 9/11 attacks, and claimed that the US government created AIDS in order to kill black people.

• Obama worked closely for several years with the former Weather Underground bomber Bill Ayers. Ayers hosted the fundraiser that launched Obama’s political career with his wife Bernardine Dohrn, also a communist and a former terrorist.
  
  
• As an attorney in Illinois, Obama represented ACORN, the radical community organizing group that set the stage for the 2008 financial crisis by pressuring banks to make high-risk mortgage loans. Obama later sent millions of dollars to ACORN while working with Bill Ayers at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. In 2007 Obama promised ACORN members that if elected, he would be “calling all of you in” during the post-election transition “to help us shape the agenda.” His presidential campaign paid the group more than $800,000 in 2008. ACORN is currently being investigated for election fraud in more than a dozen states.
  
  
• Obama’s primary financial backer in Chicago, political fixer Tony Rezko, was convicted of 16 felonies including fraud, money laundering and abetting bribery.
  
  
• Archived documents of the Marxist Chicago “New Party” show that Obama was a member in the 1990’s. His campaign had previously denied any connection.
  
  
• In 2006, Obama spent six days in Kenya campaigning for Marxist presidential candidate Raila Odinga. His Senate staff coordinated donations to Odinga’s campaign totaling nearly $1 million. Obama declared at numerous rallies that Kenyans “are now yearning for change.” Meanwhile, Odinga signed a declaration of understanding with Muslim leaders recognizing Islam as Kenya’s “only true religion.” After Odinga’s defeat, his thugs started riots that killed at least 1,000 people and destroyed or damaged 800 Christian churches. More than 50 people, mostly women and children, were burned to death in a single church while men with machetes attacked anyone who tried to escape. Kenya’s elected government was then forced to accept a “power-sharing” agreement with Odinga’s party.
  
  
• Obama has been praised by Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, and the terrorist group Hamas. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan says Obama is “the Messiah.”
  

America’s “mainstream” media organizations have gone out of their way to ignore or dismiss these disturbing facts, protecting the flawed candidate they favor – a man who could not pass the background check required to obtain a basic security clearance.

Instead, they spend their time investigating the life of “Joe the Plumber,” to deflect attention away from Barack Obama’s revealing promise to “spread the wealth around.”

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In 2004, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth showed how to beat the media’s rigged game.

They took their testimony about John Kerry’s past directly to the public, bypassing the outraged old media “gatekeepers.” And the public found their charges to be credible.

A key reason for their success was the rise of a new American media. A host of bloggers, talk radio hosts and cable network interviewers stepped up to investigate the Swift Vets’ remarkable array of charges against Kerry. They did the real journalism that old media organizations had largely abandoned in their zeal to support the Democratic candidate.

The political movement the Swift Vets spearheaded was the key factor in Kerry’s defeat.

After failing to silence or discredit the veterans, the old media adopted the smear phrase “swift boating” to discourage others from following the Swift Vets’ example. Barack Obama also uses the term, to attack anyone who criticizes his actions and associations.

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It was my privilege to work closely with the Swift Vets in 2004. I managed their web site at SwiftVets.com and investigated Kerry’s anti-US propaganda during the Vietnam War. My research was used in the bestseller Unfit for Command and in the devastating TV ad campaign. Afterwards, former Marine Tim Ziegler and I spent two years writing the complete inside story of the effort. The result is our new book, To Set The Record Straight: How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs And The New Media Defeated John Kerry.

It tells how an ad hoc collection of veterans and their supporters were able to deliver the explosive truth about John Kerry's past to the public – despite relentless efforts by the Democratic Party and its media affiliates to silence them. And it tells the story of the long struggle of America's much-maligned Vietnam veterans to make their way home.

To Set The Record Straight also covers the first great battles in the ongoing war between the old and new media. A chapter available online, Rather’s Ruin and the Rise of the Pajamahadeen, describes how the now-infamous CBS News attack on President Bush’s military service using fake National Guard documents was exposed by ordinary citizens.

National Review writes that To Set The Record Straight is “convincing” and “scholarly.” Power Line says it “documents the most dramatic story of the 2004 campaign.” However, major bookselling chains such as Barnes & Noble are unwilling to stock it in their stores.

The 400-page hardcover version of the book is only available online. We are reducing the price from $29.95 to just $19.95 – less than the cost of the paperback at Amazon.

Click here to purchase To Set The Record Straight

If you care about politics, the media or the military, you’ll want to learn the real story of how veterans created a political movement that turned the 2004 election upside down.

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have disbanded, but their legacy continues. It lives on in the form of increased public respect for the honorable service of Vietnam veterans, tarnished for so many years by the misrepresentations of the old media and Hollywood. That legacy includes an important lesson that was overlooked back in 1971: “war crimes” allegations made against American troops by radical leftist agitators cannot be trusted.

In a time when the right to speak out is increasingly under attack, the story of the Swift Vets is an inspiring example of what ordinary Americans can do – when they are free.

Scott Swett
October 2008

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