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McCain Slams Swiftboat Vets (McCain Scrambles to Control Backers)
Fox News and LGF ^

Posted on 02/27/2008 9:27:03 PM PST by Sir Gawain

McCain Slams Swiftboat Vets

Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 1:19:32 pm PST

Has anyone ever really shown that the allegations made by the Swift Boat Veterans against John F. Kerry were false? If someone has refuted the charges conclusively, I’ve never seen it—which makes John McCain’s continuing antipathy toward the Swiftboaters inexplicable: McCain Scrambles to Control Backers.

Speaking to reporters aboard his campaign tour bus late Tuesday, McCain acknowledged that conservative independent groups pursuing a similar line to Cunningham’s could be impossible to control.

“I think you have to worry about that, particularly the 527s,” McCain said, referring to the independent advocacy groups that are not subject to contributor limits.

“We’re aware of many of the things that 527s have done ... where unlimited amounts of money can pour into negative campaigns such as we saw against John Kerry and his combat record, as we saw against (former Georgia Sen.) Max Cleland ... they’re really very not accountable to anyone. At least I have to say ‘I’m John McCain and I approve this message.’”

And no, I’m not saying ‘down with McCain’ here. But in this case, I think he’s scoring some cheap political points at the expense of people who don’t deserve the bad rap.


TOPICS: Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 527s; betrayed; cfr; deafrino; dramaqueen; highmaintenance; mccainfeingold; mccaint; mccainunfit; mccrazy; mcinsane; mctraitor; mctreason; rinomccain; sbvft; swifities; swiftvets; whino
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To: Sir Gawain
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth wasn’t some dirty trick concocted by professional partisans. When John Kerry chose to make his four months—including 30 days training at Cam Rhan—in Vietnam as the cornerstone of his campaign, these people came forward. Kerry’s campaign rhetoric and his official biography were full of distortions, lies and slander. The Swift Boat Veterans were boycotted by the news media until their best-selling book, “Unfit for Command,” created a stir the media could no longer ignore. The Swift Boat Veterans not only represented their immediate comrades, dead and alive, they spoke for the majority of all Vietnam veterans. Their courage and tenacity in the face of a viciously partisan and hostile press helped unite millions of veterans into a decisive voting bloc. God bless them all.
41 posted on 02/27/2008 10:16:52 PM PST by Brad from Tennessee ("A politician can't give you anything he hasn't first stolen from you.")
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To: The Citizen Soldier

I met a man at our caucus who was a Navy pilot at that time, who hated McCain so much that he couldn’t even say his name. One of my neighbors was in McCain’s class at Annapolis. The story about bumping a pilot isn’t exactly true. They asked for volunteers to train on a different aircraft. My neighbor raised his hand because he was happy to fly something else.


42 posted on 02/27/2008 10:18:52 PM PST by Eva (Benedict Arnold was a war hero, too.)
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To: MrEdd

“It was Republican McCain who called Sampley ‘one of the most despicable people I have ever had the misfortune to encounter’ and said ‘Sampley has a nose for publicity and knack for making money from invented controversies’
*** I think that this is the key to McCain’s denunciation of The Swiftboaters. He had been dogged by Samplely for years with this type of vacuous crap. Kerry had been Sampley’s second target. Samply had tried to align himself with the Swiftboaters and implied that he had a leadership role there. McCain looked at the Swifties and saw Sampley or similar.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

110 posted on 02/22/2008 9:31:16 AM PST by MARTIAL MONK


43 posted on 02/27/2008 10:20:05 PM PST by anglian
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To: The Citizen Soldier

Did you know that not a single member of McCain’s flight class made it out of Vietnam, except McCain? I have to wonder if the information that McCain gave the enemy in exchange for medical treatment, had anything to do with that. It could have been, as my neighbor suggested, just a bad plane.


44 posted on 02/27/2008 10:22:15 PM PST by Eva (Benedict Arnold was a war hero, too.)
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To: Sir Gawain
So Senator Obama wants to invade Pakistan and make nice to Iran, while Senator McCain condemns the Swift Boat Vets and reaches across the aisle to make nice with Democrats.

Staying home in November looks better all the time.

45 posted on 02/27/2008 10:23:08 PM PST by Bernard (If you always tell the truth, you never have to remember exactly what you said.)
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To: Sir Gawain

WTF? Why is McCain wasting everybody’s time defending has been ‘Rat candidates from done and over with elections? It sounds like he believes he was competing for the Republican nomination for PC Cop, not presidential candidate.


46 posted on 02/27/2008 10:24:54 PM PST by Post Toasties (It's not a smear if it's true.)
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To: Sir Gawain

Seems that I'm going to have to polish my Paint Shop skills again. I would give my worldly posessions to the Swift Boat Veterans and POW's for truth before I gave McCain a nickel.

47 posted on 02/27/2008 10:41:02 PM PST by MarineBrat (My wife and I took an AIDS vaccination that the Church offers.)
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To: Eva

My uncle was in the same class at Annapolis. I don’t think he was friends with him but knew of him. He didn’t say anything good or bad re: McCain.


48 posted on 02/27/2008 10:41:07 PM PST by Edison (I don't know what irks me more, the lying or the incompetence.)
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To: Post Toasties

Doesn’t McCain comprehend that he’s s#!++!ng in his own bed by personally calling out Republican supporters? If he must do so, he should appoint an underling to do so and not make the news every time by opening his own stupid yap about it.


49 posted on 02/27/2008 10:44:06 PM PST by Post Toasties (It's not a smear if it's true.)
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To: Sir Gawain

Funny how he slams the Swift Boat Vets but not the Congressional Medal of Honor winners who stood with them.


50 posted on 02/27/2008 10:46:05 PM PST by BlessedBeGod
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To: GATOR NAVY

Both.


51 posted on 02/27/2008 10:48:45 PM PST by ARE SOLE (Agents Ramos and Campean are in prison at this very moment.. (A "Concerned Citizen".)
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To: Interesting Times
“We’re aware of many of the things that 527s have done ... where unlimited amounts of money can pour into negative campaigns such as we saw against John Kerry and his combat record, as we saw against (former Georgia Sen.) Max Cleland ... they’re really very not accountable to anyone. At least I have to say ‘I’m John McCain and I approve this message.’”

52 posted on 02/27/2008 10:56:06 PM PST by Syncro
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To: Sir Gawain; Anybody; Everybody; All
McCain has simply been in that "Good ol Boy's Club" of the Senate so long that he believes that Democrat Senators are the moral equivalent of Republican Senators. He believes, however that conservative Republican Senators are somehow a threat to the republic!!!

This is going to end up far worse than Dole's electile disfunctional disaster! And he was at least honorable enough to resign from the Senate to campaign for President, unlike the terrible trio running at present. The GOP frontrunner's wheels are coming completely off, mired in politically correct insipidness!!!

53 posted on 02/27/2008 10:57:29 PM PST by SierraWasp (McCain's NOT a RINO! He's a CONTRA CONSERVATIVE!!! A political hermaphrodite like Schwartzenswindler)
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To: Sir Gawain

“Has anyone ever really shown that the allegations made by the Swift Boat Veterans against John F. Kerry were false? “

Has John Kerry yet released those 100 pages of his service record that he’s promised to release more than once? I know he told Tim Russert that he’d release them well after the 2004 race was over.

And why is McCain even running his mouth about this? Sheeeesh.


54 posted on 02/27/2008 11:14:43 PM PST by Will88 ( The Worst Case Scenario: McCain with a Dhimm majority in the House and Senate)
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To: Mad_Tom_Rackham
And that ain’t sayin’ much.

on the contrary! i think it speaks volumes myself
55 posted on 02/27/2008 11:14:53 PM PST by wafflehouse (How many boards would the Mongols horde if the Mongol hordes got bored?)
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To: Bernard
Staying home in November looks better all the time.

Hell, Hillary is starting to look better all the time.

56 posted on 02/27/2008 11:24:06 PM PST by NurdlyPeon (New tag line in progress.)
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To: Southack
"I wouldn’t read too much into a man simply wanting to run a clean campaign."

So, speaking the truth about a dishonest traitor is now somehow dirty?

Spoken like a true liberal.

Oh, wait. I forgot. Kerry is a Senator, and is thus above reproach, in the eyes of the self-canonized Saint McCain.

57 posted on 02/27/2008 11:27:50 PM PST by Hunton Peck (McCain: A warrior in a constant state of surrender to the Left.)
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To: MARTIAL MONK

McCain has shown consistently that he is incapable of seeing the difference between good and evil, just as he’s incapable of seeing the difference between soldiers and unlawful enemy combatants, because, in his deranged mind, everything is about him. Let’s face it: McCain is unfit for command, because he is insane.


58 posted on 02/27/2008 11:31:51 PM PST by Hunton Peck (McCain: A warrior in a constant state of surrender to the Left.)
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To: Brad from Tennessee
The Swift Boat Veterans not only represented their immediate comrades, dead and alive, they spoke for the majority of all Vietnam veterans. Their courage and tenacity in the face of a viciously partisan and hostile press helped unite millions of veterans into a decisive voting bloc. God bless them all.

A side benefit that many may not be aware was that the Swift Boat Veterans helped thousands of Viet Nam veterans, like me, finally emerge proud for our service to our country.

Like so many others, I spent 3-1/2 years in the service, including three tours to the Tonkin Gulf, just off the coast of Viet Nam. When I was discharged in 1971, Viet Nam veterans were generally dispised. I put my seabag away and almost never discussed this period of my life. Since 2004, I have spoken to many veterans who told me they felt the same.

My own children, by 2004 in their early 30's, at some point asked me why I never spoke about Viet Nam. Through tears held back for over three decades, I told them how when I came home, the media depicted soldiers and servicemen as war mongers and baby killers. The charge was repeated again and again on the nightly news.

I told them that I just closed that chapter of my life and moved on, though deep inside this hurt more than anyone could know.

Through the 70's the Viet Nam conflict was continually depicted as a mistake by the U.S., even while millions were being killed by the communists in Viet Nam, Cambodia and Loas. John Kerry, a veteran himself, testified that few people would be harmed by our leaving. He could not have been more wrong. His words probably caused more pain and suffering to captured soldiers and sailors than Jane Fonda's, because he had worn the uniform.

Kerry lied about details of his service, and to this very day has refused to sign form 180 and release his service record, which would immediately clear up any misunderstandigs. To call off the Swift Boat Veterans, he promised to sign the form in 2004. He still has not done so. Four years later he is still hiding from his record.

Related, but as an aside, I have always resented Bill Clinton for the way he ridiculed the war effort ...on foreign soil. I have long held that he was a traitor to the very country that elected him President. Seeing his media darling status decline in the past few months gives me hope that his trechery and cowardice in the late 60's and early 70's will yet be openly revealed by those in the media who have protected him all these years. All I can do is hope.

Sorry for the rant. This thread seemed appropriate.

59 posted on 02/27/2008 11:35:06 PM PST by The Citizen Soldier (If I have to vote for a maverick, I'll write in James Garner!)
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To: Sir Gawain

Hey McCain, want a million dollars for your campaign?

Well, then there is a million on the table from T. Boone Pickens for anyone who can prove that anything the Swiftboaters said was demonstrably false.

So go collect the money, but if you CAN’T Prove them false I suggest you SHUT THE F#CK UP smearing them or you won’t have any base to vote for you whatsover.


60 posted on 02/27/2008 11:45:11 PM PST by Wil H
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