Salon/Conason: Smear Boat Veterans for Bush

[kskiska]

The "Swift boat" veterans attacking John Kerry's war record are led by veteran right-wing operatives using the same vicious techniques they used against John McCain four years ago.

The latest conservative outfit to fire an angry broadside against John Kerry's heroic war record is "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," which today launches a campaign to brand the Democrat "unfit to serve as commander in chief." Billing itself as representing the "other 97 percent of veterans" from Kerry's Navy unit who don't support his presidential candidacy, the group insists that all presidential candidates must be "totally honest and forthcoming" about their military service.

These "swift boat vets" claim still to be furious about Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony against the war in which he spoke about atrocities in Indochina's "free fire zones." More than three decades later, facing the complicated truth about Vietnam remains difficult. But this group's political connections make clear that its agenda is to target the election of 2004.

Behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are veteran corporate media consultant and Texas Republican activist Merrie Spaeth, who is listed as the group's media contact; eternal Kerry antagonist and Dallas attorney John E. O'Neill, law partner of Spaeth's late husband, Tex Lezar; and retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffman, a cigar-chomping former Vietnam commander once described as "the classic body-count guy" who "wanted hooches destroyed and people killed."

Spaeth told Salon that O'Neill first approached her last winter to discuss his "concerns about Sen. Kerry." O'Neill has been assailing Kerry since 1971, when the former Navy officer was selected for the role by Charles Colson, Richard Nixon's dirty-tricks aide. Spaeth heard O'Neill out, but told him, she says, that he "sounded like a crazed extremist" and should "button his lip" and avoid speaking with the press. But since Kerry clinched the Democratic nomination, Spaeth has changed her mind and decided to donate her public relations services on a "pro bono" basis to O'Neill's latest anti-Kerry effort. "About three weeks ago, four weeks ago," she said, the group's leaders "met in my office for about 12 hours" to prepare for their Washington debut.

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Next page | The man responsible was another old friend of her late husband's, Theodore Olson
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http://salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/05/04/swift/index.html

[Old and In the Way]

1. I'm going out on a limb and say that Kerry will see O'Neil's bluff

and raise him with a whole bunch more Swift Boat Vets than will sign on to support pResident AWOL. This will backfire on Rove, bigtime.

[whistle]

2. These right wingers have no conscience...

...Creeps from the Dark Side

[DEMVET-USMC]

3. As a fellow Veteran it boggles my mind: War hero Kerry vs Chickenhawk Shru

How anyone can put THE CHICKENHAWK IN CHARGE in a positive position as to military experience against John Kerry is a total denial of the facts. The GOP knows this and are truly grasping at straws filled with chicken s..t. ...Oscar

[flpoljunkie]

4. Conason's closing paragraph sums up GOP modus operandi rather well...

"Arguments about the war in Vietnam seem destined to continue forever. For now, however, the lingering bitterness and ambiguity of those days provide smear material against an antiwar war hero with five medals on behalf of a privileged Guardsman with a dubious duty record. The president's Texas allies -- whose animus against his Democratic challenger dates back to the Nixon era -- are now deploying the same techniques and personnel they used to attack McCain's integrity four years ago. Bush's "independent" supporters would apparently rather talk about the Vietnam quagmire than about his deadly incompetence in Iraq."