Posted on 10/28/2004 4:15:08 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
TAMPA - Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, a political organization attacking John Kerry's Vietnam War record, has launched another broadside with a $3.2 million ad buy in Florida - several times the size of a previous purchase. In the final stretch of a bitter race between Kerry and President Bush, the organization is airing two ads locally and plans to continue through Election Day, members said Wednesday in Tampa.
The $3.2 million figure cited by the group is unusually large, and it means a typical Florida TV viewer may see either one of the ads about 20 times.
An August barrage of ads by the Kerry critics was exposed by news organizations and independent researchers as inaccurate and inconsistent with eyewitness accounts and U.S. Navy records.
The new ads include sharp character attacks but make fewer factual assertions, some of which appear accurate, according to available records.
The Kerry campaign would not respond in detail to the ads. Spokesman Matthew Miller called the group funded heavily by close associates of Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, a ``shill for the Bush campaign.''
``We're not at this point going to get in a back-and-forth,'' Miller said. ``They've been so discredited so many times in so many news organizations.''
In interviews Wednesday, group members charged Kerry with ``self-serving, self- aggrandizing behavior'' as a Navy officer during the war and ``treachery'' afterward, in the words of Andy Horne, a Houston lawyer and former Navy officer.
``His conduct when he got home was very detrimental to us,'' said Ron Webb, an Air Force retiree from Niceville who was a POW for five years. He and another former POW, Kenneth Cordier of Dallas, said the work of antiwar activists such as Kerry was used against American POWs by captors.
What's In The Ads
In both ads, the Kerry critics stand together in a crowd facing the camera.
In one, an announcer says the group includes Kerry's ``entire chain of command, most of the officers in Kerry's unit, even the gunner from his own boat.''
``With nothing to gain for themselves except the satisfaction that comes with telling the truth,'' the announcer says, the veterans ``have come forward to talk about the John Kerry they know - because to them, honesty and character still matters, especially in a time of war.''
John O'Neill, a group member who wrote an anti-Kerry book, acknowledged that Kerry commanded boats with gunners other than the one in the ad, and those men support Kerry. O'Neill said four officers constituted Kerry's ``entire chain of command.''
The second ad, in the form of questions for Kerry, contends:
* He met ``secretly ... with the enemy in Paris'' and went on to ``promote the enemy's position back home.''
After returning from Vietnam, Kerry publicly opposed it as a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In 1970 he went to Paris, on what campaign spokesmen have previously called a personal trip with his new wife, and while there met members of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese delegations to peace talks.
Kerry didn't hide that; he later described his conversations in testimony to Congress, saying he was careful not to engage in negotiation.
O'Neill said the trip was secret because Kerry, then still in the Navy, didn't notify his superiors, and talking to enemy representatives violated military law.
What's In The Ads
* He accused veterans ``of being war criminals.''
Kerry was involved in Winter Soldier, a gathering of veterans who described war crimes and other misconduct in Vietnam. He later testified about their accounts to Congress.
Kerry, like many war opponents, argued that U.S. destruction of villages and creation of ``free-fire zones'' - areas where any habitation or activity was assumed to be hostile and was fired upon - violated the Geneva Convention, and that he and other troops who participated might be guilty of war crimes by definition.
* He wrongly and repeatedly claimed he was ``illegally sent into Cambodia.''
According to news reports, Kerry has said more than once he was assigned a mission to Cambodia at a time when the United States was undertaking secret combat operations there that violated congressional restrictions.
According to Kerry's journals, cited in a laudatory book about him by Douglas Brinkley, his patrol boat went within yards of the border but not into Cambodia.
Reporter William March can be reached at (813) 259-7761.
Baloney! I'm glad this "unbiased" reporter left his contact information. I just may have to voice my inaccurate and inconsistent opinion.
O'Neill was interviewed on Larry Elder yesterday - fantastic!
Are they running adds in Ohio?
They need to run a correction on this.
His testimony about war crimes claimed rape,blowing up bodies etc.
Naval Records place him 50 miles from cambodia no matter that his diary places him yards from it.
"Baloney! I'm glad this "unbiased" reporter left his contact information. I just may have to voice my inaccurate and inconsistent opinion."
Only JFKerry a weapon of mass deception can answer for his "faith without deeds"!
You and a lot of people, I bet.
....according to Kerry's journals, cited in a laudatory book about him by Douglas Brinkley...
The MSM really wears their politics on their sleeve.
I don't know.
They need to get a check from the DNC.
John O'Neill is the best man in this country!!!
He's done wonders.
I dare say, a lot more people will see the Swift Boat ad than will read this story.
I swear, there is a God inside of him keeping him directed for us and our country. I hope so.
Not nearly enough has been made of the fact that the venue on which Kerry made his 1971 charges of misconduct by his "fellow" soldiers, was the committee chaired by Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas, mentor and guide to the "Former Occupant of the Oval Office, 1993-2001". Sometimes the evil men do lives far beyond their years, and old "Halfbright" falls in this category.
John Kerry has been groomed for years for the Presidency, and had he been put up in 1992, and actively promoted then, he could have been in a position to have promoted WAY more mischief than even the "Former Occupant of the Oval Office, 1993-2001". At the time, Kerry would not have been carrying nearly so much baggage as he is today, having a much shorter record of votes in the Senate that show his pro-socialist, anti-military bias.
Then again, H. Ross Perot did far more to get George H.W. Bush voted out of office, than any positive attribute of the Democrat candidate.
He is a cool one.
Prayer, truth and a lawyer's demeanor helps.
Facts and history are a hard sell.
Its about time!! I havent seen any Swifty ads down here in FL for over a week
I am hoping that they will run one with about Kerry's recent criticism's of the military actions and tie it all together. JOhn Kerry lied about our military in 1971 and he is lying about them again today, reckless disregard to the lives of our men and women in battle.
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