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The Mission, The River, The Ambush. On March 13, 1969, John F. Kerry participated in the mission that has become a centerpiece of his campaign for the presidency- and his account has been disputed by some fellow Swift boat veterans. The dispute focuses on when and how Kerry was injured on the mission, and whether the force of five Swift boats came under Vietcong fire after one was hit by a mine on the Bay Hap River. Here are the events of the mission and ambush, according to eyewitness accounts and U.S. Navy reports:

Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2004 12:35 p.m. EST McCain: Hanoi Hilton Guards Taunted POWs With Kerry's Testimony These days, former Vietnam War POW Sen. John McCain has nothing but praise for his fellow Vietnam veteran Sen. John Kerry, the Democrats' current presidential front-runner. But after he was released from the Hanoi Hilton in 1973, McCain publicly complained that testimony by Kerry and others before J. William Fulbright's Senate Foreign Relations Committee was "the most effective propaganda [my North Vietnamese captors] had to use against us." "They used Senator Fulbright a great deal," McCain wrote in the May 14, 1973, issue of...

Did anyone else hear Brian Whitman this evening? He spend his entire show defending Kerry as "a genuine war hero" and castigating GW Bush as someone who "checked a box to get into the National Guard." He also mentioned Rood, but failed (by accident or intentionally?) to say that Rood casts no new insight into the Rassman incident. He also implied that critics of Kerry are denying that Kerry saved Rassman's life. The way I look at it, the saving of Rassman's life is not the point. The real question is, did Kerry's mistakes make the rescue of Rassman necessary?

In one of the most-ignored stories surrounding the Swift Boat Vets flap, the head of "Veterans for Kerry" is himself a former Vietnam war protester, who has known Kerry since 1971, and worked on each of his campaigns since 1984. "Veterans for Kerry" was started by, and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of, Kerry for President. It really isn't an organization at all, but the name of the Kerry campaign's outreach program to veterans, and it's head, picked by John Kerry, was indeed a veteran, but he first met Kerry when they were both war protesters. The head of the group,...

Harold Wilson, that British politician more canny than admired, usefully reminded his audience that things can change very quickly in politics. "A week is a long time," he said, in politics, and we have seen this over and over in the American scene these past months. After all, only nine weeks ago former vice president Al Gore blessed the insurgent campaign of Howard Dean and most pundits thought the race was over. All that was needed was the anointing of the former Vermont governor as Democratic party standard-bearer to take on US President George W. Bush in November. Overnight Senator...

Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry Veterans Against Kerry Unfit for Command : Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth POWs Accuse Kerry of Betrayal The Many Faces of John Kerry Intelligence Failure : How Clinton's National Security Policy Set the Stage for 9/11 Veterans Accuse Dems of Distorting Facts About Bush

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Looking at Merrie Spaeth's resume, you might think that co-starring with Peter Sellers was her biggest claim to fame. Lately, though, her days as a child actress, and later as a radio host and aide in the Reagan White House, have been overshadowed, as the Dallas public relations maven has become a central player in the war over John Kerry's war record. "These guys have a mission," Spaeth said of her role with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group of Vietnam veterans who question the senator's claims of heroism. "I believe in them. I'm convinced...

Presidential candidate John Kerry can count on the support of at least one group of Vietnam Veterans – and they're still in Vietnam. Following Kerry's denunciation of the ad by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, criticizing him for exaggerating his war record, a group of former U.S. soldiers gathered in Hanoi to express their support for Kerry and to call President Bush a "draft dodger" for his service in the Texas Air National Guard during the war. And they were selling T-shirts to tourists to raise money for Kerry's campaign. The $5 shirts sport a picture of President Bush with...

THIS was supposed to be the positive campaign. Late last fall, Democrats and Republicans alike predicted that a new campaign rule requiring candidates to appear in their own advertisements and take credit for them would discourage them from making negative ads. Yet it's not even Labor Day and President Bush has spent the majority of the more than $100 million he has spent on television advertisements attacking his Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry. Mr. Kerry and the other Democratic primary contenders seemed to spend the fall and early winter in a contest to see who could jibe Mr. Bush the...

CRAWFORD, United States (AFP) - Behind the question of the US presidential contenders' Vietnam War records lies another political debate -- whether candidates are flouting US campaign finance law. At issues are "527s" -- political groups that in recent days have acted as attack dogs for Republican President George W. Bush (news - web sites) and Democratic challenger John Kerry (news - web sites) in an increasingly acrimonious presidential campaign. Such groups -- named for the legal code that defines them -- may fund advertisements favoring a candidate so long as they are independent of the candidate. A 527 close...

Text of John F. Kerry's testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 22, 1971.

The second in a series of anti-Kerry ads was released today by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In the new ad, Vietnam-era POWs critically denounce John Kerry for his anti-war activities. Despite today's allegations in the New York Times that the group is a front for Bush political operatives, the harshest words for Kerry in the ad come from Paul Galanti, a former POW who served as Virginia campaign chairman for Bush rival Sen. John McCain (R.) and who was also an active member of Veterans for Mark Warner (the Democratic governor of Virginia) during Warner's 2001 gubernatorial race."John Kerry...

Campaign '04: John Kerry says he'll fight claims he lied about or exaggerated his service in Vietnam. The best way to fight such charges would be to stop calling people names and start providing some answers. He'll have to show that the charges by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are false. That's a tall order. The allegations are numerous, well documented and quite serious. In general, they insist that Kerry has consistently overstated his heroism, that many accounts of his service in Vietnam are not true and that he has slandered his fellow veterans by claiming they...

They’re at it again, the right wing creeps who are happy to smear democrats, and even their own, like John McCain, are now one of their slimeballs, former Gov. Mark Racicot is suggesting that Kerry is losing it, that he’s wild-eyed, irresponsible.... Scott McClelland says Kerry is "losing his cool., should not be an excuse to lash out at the president with false and baseless attacks." Atrios quotes Racicot describing Kerry."I think they have comepletely unhinged..." and suggests that they used the same strategies, in 2000 to attack John McCain and to suggest he was unstable. This labeling of a...

As the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth previewed another ad to air next week, a survey released yesterday said their first controversial attack on John F. Kerry's war record reached more than half the nation with the help of a media buzz created by talk radio and cable news. The first spot, which began airing Aug. 5 and ran only in West Virginia, Ohio, and Wisconsin, triggered a counterattack on several fronts this week. On Thursday, Kerry accused the veterans of doing President Bush's campaign's "dirty work." A front-page story in yesterday's New York Times raised questions about the credibility...

It's not even Labor Day, but we already know what will be the "seminal issue" of this election. No, it's not health care, education, jobs or the economy. It's not even the war in Iraq. It's John Kerry's combat record in Vietnam. That is now the No. 1 issue on cable television and rightwing talk radio, the subject of a new book, "Unfit for Command," and the target of an anti-Kerry commercial sponsored by a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. It is the most vile, despicable brand of politics we've ever seen. Bombarded with so many lies,...

WASHINGTON — Anti-John Kerry veterans unveiled a new ad denouncing Kerry's 33-year-old stance against the Vietnam War, Kerry filed an official complaint against them, and Democrats aired an ad featuring a former Air Force chief lauding Kerry as ready to command. So went yesterday's skirmish in the ongoing war over war ads. The new ad by the Republican-backed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth depicts three former Vietnam POWs condemning Kerry's April 22, 1971, testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where he described alleged U.S. atrocities and called for an end to the war. "He betrayed us in the past....

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To most Americans, the war raging between the John Kerry campaign and Vietnam veterans, especially those who form Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is a bit like walking into the heated domestic argument of a couple in a 30-year marriage. The couple has an emotional bond based on a long-standing, deeply personal shared relationship. To the observer, fathoming who's telling what version of the truth seems either impossible or not worth the effort. Why does it matter? It matters immensely for two reasons.