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A new study shows just how much bang for their buck a group of Vietnam veterans got when it launched its hotly disputed TV ad attacking John Kerry's combat record. The early August ad that touched off a furor and consumed the presidential race for much of the month aired a mere 739 times in just seven TV markets in only three states, according to a new study by Nielsen Monitor-Plus and the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Almost half of those airings were in Wisconsin. Put another way, the now famous "Swift Boat" spot accounted for...

Wade R. Sanders: Forgotten Heroes December 23, 2003 The crucible of war is often the ultimate test of human courage. From that searing process emerge those few who went beyond duty and displayed significant courage. Some of these men and women are recognized for their courage by enlightened leaders and a grateful nation. That recognition often comes in the form of medals, from Commendation Medals, the Bronze Star, and upward to the Medal of Honor. Others receive medals that celebrate their exceptional accomplishment in the completion of their non-combat assignments. A few of these men and women earned their medals...

I have no views on whether one or more of John Kerry’s bemedalled wounds from the Mekong Delta 35 years ago were self-inflicted — though the Kerry campaign, in its second big concession to his chastisers, now says his first Purple Heart-earning wound might have been ‘unintentionally self-inflicted’. But there’s no doubt every wound from the last 35 days is self-inflicted, beginning with the candidate’s disastrous decision at the Democratic Convention to play up Vietnam and play down Iraq, 9/11 and anything else that happened in the last 30 years. Since then Kerry’s shot himself in the foot so many...

The US presidential election could not be tighter as the Republican Party convention gets under way this week. Bush will face off for the presidency in November against Senator John Kerry, he of the lantern jaw, the growling voice and the preposterous hair. The candidates look ever more alike in their policies, and the election looks ever closer. Going in to the Republican convention the polls seem to have Bush just ahead. Assuming he gets a bounce from the convention itself, even of a few points, he's probably narrowly in the lead. But a lot of factors favour the challenger,...

Military veterans in North Carolina solidly back President Bush's bid for re-election, according to a survey conducted this week for The News & Observer. Fifty-seven percent of Tar Heel vets said this week that they would vote for Bush, the Republican, while 35 percent prefer Democratic challenger John Kerry. And after weeks of public focus on Kerry's war record, 40 percent of North Carolina's veterans don't think he is being honest about his Navy service in Vietnam, while 35 percent believe him. The responses varied sharply by party affiliation: 71 percent of the Democratic veterans said they believed Kerry, while...

Vietnam veterans are honored all over the country these days. However, that wasn't the way it was when the war was being waged or even after it ended. There were no welcome home parades. Vietnam vets suffered public scorn in ways that have no parallel anywhere in American history. What happened 35 years ago has dimmed in memory, but as veterans remember, John Kerry's standing among them is slipping every day. Veterans are a respectful group, yet some turn their backs whenever John Kerry addresses them. The record shows that Kerry served in Vietnam four months. During that time, he...

Vet with L.B. roots backs Kerry Sanders says hopeful took enemy fire during Vietnam missions. By Greg Mellen Staff writer LONG BEACH — Before the controversy about John Kerry's service in Vietnam, launched by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, fully runs its course, a swift boat commander with Long Beach connections wants to reiterate that Kerry was a legitimate war hero. Wade Sanders, who attended Long Beach area high schools, Long Beach City College and graduated from Cal State Long Beach, served with Kerry in Vietnam, took on enemy fire alongside the Democratic presidential nominee and...

Throng vocal but well-behaved during visit A Kerry supporter hits a Bush supporter, but the rest of the scuffles are verbal. Maybe he wasn't a swing voter, but a man holding a Kerry sign swung fast - with his fist - and connected with the cheek of a Bush supporter outside the Everett Events Center on Friday. Otherwise, it was a mostly peaceful gathering of hundreds of supporters of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and President Bush drawn by Kerry's private appearance. Police did not report any other disturbances. Everett police Lt. Butch Braley estimated a couple of thousand people...

Campaign '04: The media finally have discovered Swift boat veterans. Not to tell their story, mind you. But to attack them for daring to criticize John Kerry. That's why "Unfit for Command" is such an important book. To listen to the mainstream media, you'd think nothing of note came from "Unfit for Command," the book written by former Navy commander John O'Neill that sums up the case made by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In fact, it's full of damning detail about Kerry's career in Vietnam and his anti-war activity afterward. The overall picture that emerges isn't one that should...

Ben Ginsberg, the Bush campaign counsel who resigned Wednesday, fought back against the media's double standard on the subject of legal counsel overlaps between campaigns, parties and 527 groups. When Nightline anchor Chris Bury on Wednesday said "hold on, Mr. Ginsberg. Jake Tapper in his report just laid out many of those ties" between Democrats, Kerry and Bush-bashing 527 groups, Ginsberg fired back: "Yeah, and this was the first time and they've been running those ads since March, Chris. Where were you?" Near the end of the contentious interview in which Bury pounded away about how the Bush campaign left...

I've had more people chastise me for defending George Bush. They say they should have the right to say what they want about the President and he should not be above criticism. Oh, I get it . . . we should have the freedom to besmirch the President of the United States, but how dare anyone malign John Kerry. John Kerry whines to the President, demanding that he make some war veterans stop talking about him; it's okay to impugn George Bush's name, but not his. Well liberals, you've just shown us your colors . . . yellow, yellow, yellow....

There is one thing that has bothered me from day one about this Swift Boat affair. Adm. Hoffman & Commander Elliot in 1996 answered the call to defend Kerry against Weld in the very tight US Senate race in MA. They held their noses, praised him highly, and likely saved him. To prove that no good deed goes unpunished, fast forward to John Kerry's 2004 presidential bid. Kerry gets a historian by the name of Brinkley to do his official biography. In the released book, "Tour of Duty". John Kerry lashes out accusing both Elliot and Hoffman of being near...

...How can this be happening? ...Why didn't one wise head among the Democrats point out the obvious difficulties of the Kerry candidacy once past the party's primary voters? This is a man who would be running as both a hero of Vietnam and a famous accuser of the war's heroes.... The reason... lies in something often asserted but little respected in our politics now -- principle. Alongside support for the civil-rights movement in the 1960s, opposition to Vietnam forms the moral bedrock of the modern Democratic Party. John Kerry (whose fidelity to principle, on the available evidence, is weaker than...

In the midst of the controversy between the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Kerry campaign representatives about Kerry's service in Vietnam, new questions have arisen. The Kerry campaign has repeatedly stated that the official naval records prove the truth of Kerry's assertions about his service. But the official records on Kerry's Web site only add to the confusion.

But Droz, a key witness in the ongoing debate over Kerry's service record, is missing from it, killed in a rocket attack in Vietnam in April 1969 days after Kerry returned home. While Droz cannot defend Kerry, his widow, Judith Droz Keyes, said she feels she must. She said she is confident that her husband would defend both Kerry's record in Vietnam and his antiwar activism. "John Kerry was a good friend, and a loyal friend to my late husband," she said in a telephone interview from her office in San Francisco. "My husband isn't here to speak, and all...

Wow, this latest New York Times article will be really damaging to the the swift boat vets who are accusing Kerry of cowardice. This article will probably bring an end to the swift boat debate. New York sLimes

This morning, a "reporterette" (Jessica Vascellaro) for the DNC media surrogate Boston Globe released a hitpiece on the anti-Kerry Swift Boat veterans. She coordinated her hit with a delegate to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Judith Droz Keyes. Droz Keyes, a San Francisco lawyer and far-left "war hater", was recruited because of her status as "the grieving widow" of one of the Swift Boat veterans. Droz Keyes and Vascellaro put words in the mouth of Keyes' dead husband in order to prop up Senator Kerry's shaky "combat heroism" story. However, the great Ann Coulter's aphorism "Liberals simply can't grasp the...

John Kerry was born in the wrong country; he would be much more at home in Canada than in the United States. He possesses a quality that the majority of Canadians have; that distinguishes us from all other peoples on earth. It’s what unites Canadians from coast to coast to coast. Canadians love to whine. And John F. Kerry is a whiner. This became absolutely apparent after he brought legal action against the Swift Boats Veterans who ran a negative attack ad pointing out that he may not be quite the military hero that he claims to be. As noted...

...........The Republican National Committee is circulating an edited video of Kerry's comments on Iraq, some of which show Kerry arguing that Iraq's efforts to obtain and use weapons of mass destruction and the potential of those weapons flowing from Iraq to terrorist organizations are a basis for removing Hussein. After months of attacking President Bush's motives and credibility during the Democrat presidential primary, going so far as to declare himself the anti-war candidate, John Kerry now says knowing what he knows now he would still have voted for the Iraq war," said Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie at a...

NEW YORK -- Retired Rear Adm. William L. Schachte Jr. said Thursday in his first on-the-record interview about the swift boat veterans dispute that "I was absolutely in the skimmer" in the early morning on Dec. 2, 1968, when Lt. (j.g.) John Kerry was involved in an incident that led to his first Purple Heart. "Kerry nicked himself with a M-79 [grenade launcher]," Schachte said in a telephone interview from his home in Charleston, S.C. He said, "Kerry requested a Purple Heart." Schachte, also a lieutenant junior grade, said he was in command of the small boat called a Boston...