Posted on 08/09/2004 12:27:52 PM PDT by tang-soo
The Swift Boat Ad
Susan Estrich
Monday, Aug. 9, 2004
The latest piece of ugliness in this year's presidential race is an ad attacking John Kerry's record as a swift boat captain in the Vietnam War.
In what is shaping up to be the ugliest, slimiest, dirtiest year in presidential history, this one takes the cake - so far.
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The ad is an attack not only on Kerry, but also on the military itself - an attack on the process by which the military awards honors and on the men who vouched for Kerry when he was awarded his.
It is known as the "Swift Boat Ad." If you haven't seen it, you will certainly hear about it. It features men who claim that they served with Kerry, and who argue that he wasn't really the war hero that his shipmates and the Navy say he was.
Some of the men in the ad have been Kerry enemies for years. Most have developed new memories of events that are 30 years old since Kerry emerged as the Democratic nominee.
The White House, defending an incumbent who is still trying to support claims that he fulfilled his military service with dental records from Alabama from the summer of 1972, has contended that it has nothing to do with the ad, but it has refused to demand that its supporters, who financed it, take it off the air.
Consider:
# None of the men who are behind the ad were actually on a swift boat with Kerry. Of the 10 still living who did, nine are supporting Kerry.
# The closest any of the men in the ad came to Kerry and his men was about half a football field away.
# The biggest financial backer of the group is a man named Bob Perry, a major supporter of President Bush and the Republican Party, who gave $100,00 to the group, which accounts for two-thirds of its receipts to date.
# A study in 2002 by Texans for Public Justice ranked Perry No. 2 among Republican donors in that year's Texas elections.
# The press for the group is being handled by the very same people who set out to discredit Sen. John McCain in 2000 when McCain, a former prisoner of war, challenged President Bush for the nomination for president. McCain, who is supporting Bush for the presidency, has denounced the ad.
# The doctor in the ad who claims that John Kerry was lying about his injuries was not the doctor who signed John Kerry's sick call sheet and was not a Kerry crew mate.
This year, because of changes in the law, and the proliferation of independent groups, the presidential candidates have less control than ever over what goes over the airwaves in support of their candidacies. Even so, it is difficult to believe that Bush's friend Perry would ignore a call from the White House requesting him to stop supporting a group that is embarrassing the president.
Last year, Republicans were quick to pounce on Moveon.org, an independent Democratic group, when a public contest included on ad that compared Bush to Hitler. The Republicans were right to be outraged - Democrats denounced the ad, and MoveOn removed it. In the end, it is not unfair to judge a candidate by the company he keeps
The White House has said it does not believe that this election should be run on the issue of John Kerry's Vietnam War record. If it is, George Bush can only lose. He wasn't a hero - like Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney, he did everything he could to avoid service in a dangerous war. He did not save anyone's life but his own.
COPYRIGHT 2004 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
COPYRIGHT 2004 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Anyone have that pic of Ostrich resembling TerAYZah?
Susan Estrogen had no comment about the ad that the NAACP ran in 2000, which implied that George W. Bush dragged a black man behing a truck and killed him.
You can write to her here:
http://www.creators.com/opinion_writetheauthor.cfm?pg=write&columnsname=ses
How can anyone take Susan Ostrich seriously.
Susan Estrogen smells trouble.
Kerry's machine gunner is with the Swift Vets... Steve Gardner. And tell your friend that just because most of these other people weren't on his boat, they were still close... they would be sent on patrols, 2-6 boats at a time, and knew full well of Kerry's behavior. They were right there on patrol with him, and they could see how he acted.
Estrich is the Robert Kingsley Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Southern California Law Center. She serves on the Board of Editorial Contributors for USA Today, as a presidential appointee on U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council and as a mayoral appointee on the City of Los Angeles Ethics Committee.
http://www.creators.com/opinion_Shell.cfm?pg=biography.html&columnsname=ses
That's a lie.
Estrich first gained national prominence as national campaign manager for Dukakis for President in 1988, but she has been at the forefront of the academic and intellectual debate for decades. After graduating as a Phi Beta Kappa scholar with highest honors from Wellesley College in 1974, Estrich went on to attend Harvard Law School. She was selected president of the Harvard Law Review and received her JD magna cum laude in 1977.
After serving as a law clerk for Judge J. Skelly Wright on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, Estrich had her first taste of politics as Deputy National Issues Director with the Kennedy for President campaign in 1979.
In 1981, Estrich began teaching at Harvard Law School, and by 1986, she had received tenure. Her professorial duties did not limit her involvement in political campaigning, however, as she was named executive director for the Democratic National Platform Committee in 1984 and worked as a senior policy adviser to the Mondale-Ferraro presidential campaign.
Estrich also performed some private legal practice, serving as a counsel for the firm of Tuttle & Taylor in Los Angeles from 1986 to 1987. The call of national politics was too strong for her to stay out of the fray for long, however, leading her to accept the job with the Dukakis campaign in October of 1987.
Susan Estrich lives in Los Angeles.
Susan Estrich, Marty Feldman's eyes and the voice of a drunken Carol Channing. What a babarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrf!
But she is so entertaining!
Thank you! But, Susan, where were you when MoveOn.org posted that ad equating Bush to Hitler? Your condemnation of it is a bit late, and very weak.
You got that right! Is there anyone more annoying than listening to her with that aggravating voice?
Susan, convince Kerry to open his military records to the public. That should settle the disputes, once and for all. If Bush did it, Kerry can do it.
Get Susan screaming soon so that we can put here together with Howard Dean. Of course she didn't say that Kerry should have requested MegaMoore to shut down his movie or to shutup the boys at moveon.org.
Go Get him - SwiftBoatVets
Lumping Cheney & Bush into the same category as Clinton is a low blow. She sucks.
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