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Important note from Amazon.com: We've decided to suspend our normal customer review policies and rules for this title. For example, we usually prohibit ad hominem attacks. That policy in particular seems to be incompatible with presidential election year politics. Therefore, short of obscenities, reviews on this book are now a free-for-all. We take no responsibility for the following discussion. Aren't presidential election years great? Have fun!

NEW YORK - This morning, John Kerry used New York City as the launching pad for his latest rounds of attack on President Bush and urged the GOP to abandon the negative attacks of "fear and smear" and to return to the debate on issues. However, it is clear from a reported phone call that Kerry participated in Sunday evening that Kerry sees that the discontentment of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as fundamentally non-related to the Bush campaign. Kerry reportedly placed a call to Robert Brant (Ret.) Commander, United States Navy. Brant had skippered boats #96 and #36...

Kerry's campaign now says is possible first Purple Heart was awarded for unintentional self-inflicted wound... Kerry received Purple Heart for wounds suffered on 12/2/68... In Kerry's own journal written 9 days later, he writes he and his crew, quote, 'hadn't been shot at yet'... Developing...

The current swift boat controversy leaves this grandmother in a weird sort of pain. The pain is a combination of her realization that she was fooled by John Kerry in 1971 and her realization that he is trying to fool her again in 2004. If granddaughter Kaitlyn Mae ever studies a President Kerry in her history book of the future, let this poignant missive from grandmother be her referance to the real truth. Click Here

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Were John Kerry and the veterans organization he led the real reason the Republicans broke into Watergate in 1972, with information on them the target of the espionage? Was doing so an early onset of Republican political paranoia against his work, a harbinger of the pending campaign against him in 2004? Bob Weiner, the 1971-72 Youth Voter Registration director for the Young Democrats office at the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and recently a Clinton White House staffer for six years, is asking these questions after doing a little research to refresh...

Kerry: strange, stuck-up... and stupid By Mark Steyn (Filed: 24/08/2004) According to Francis Harris in Saturday's Telegraph, allegations that John Kerry "lied about his Vietnam record" are "unravelling". Oh, I wouldn't say that. Right now, it looks like the sanity of the Kerry campaign and its pals in the media that's beginning to unravel. Switch on the TV these days and you'll see John O'Neill, principal spokesman for the hundreds of Swift boat veterans who oppose their old comrade Kerry, talking calmly and patiently about the facts, citing chapter and verse and relevant footnotes, while some deranged interviewer is going...

But now some anti-Kerry veterans are saying he was never in Cambodia. John O'Neill, who has been dogging Kerry more than 30 years, told Matt Drudge that the senator's Christmas-in-Cambodia stories "are complete lies." As evidence, he cites Kerry's own wartime diary, as quoted in Douglas Brinkley's Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War. That book—according to Drudge's account of it—places Kerry in Sa Dec, 50 miles away from Cambodia, on Christmas Eve, and seemingly at peace. "Visions of sugarplums really do dance through your head," Kerry wrote in his diary that night, "and you think of stockings...

Editors Grapple With How to Cover Swift Boat Controversy Aya Kawano By Joe Strupp Published: August 24, 2004 12:01 AM EST NEW YORK As the John Kerry swift boat controversy navigates itself from the shoreline of the 2004 presidential campaign into the mainstream, newspapers face a dilemma of how to report on the veterans group attacking the Democratic nominee's record without giving them undue credibility or blowing the issue out of proportion. Alison Mitchell, deputy national editor for The New York Times (Click for QuikCap), points to the changing media landscape and its impact on what newspapers choose to cover....

The Kerry/Edwards response to criticism is censorship. The idea that men who served this country honorably and with distinction would have the gall to question John Kerry’s brief four months in Vietnam is the height of hypocrisy. One Kerry spokesman on the Sunday Fox News program was asked “ what evidence he had of Kerry’s Christmas Day secret mission into Cambodia.” His response was “ if John Kerry say’s it happened, then it happened!” end of discussion. An arrogance that typifies the aristocratic air of John Kerry and the Kerry/Edwards campaign. John Kerry and the Democratic team call for the...

THE WORD IN REPUBLICAN CIRCLES [08/23 02:41 PM] Just chatted with a high-ranking Republican tuned in to the Bush campaign. A couple of highlights: * The idea that the Swift Boat Vets ads’ could boomerang on Bush is wishful thinking. Smart Democrats understand there’s nothing good about this for John Kerry. * The Bush campaign isn’t worried that the Swift Boat Vets’ message will step on President Bush’s message during the convention. * Despite Josh Marshall’s charges, Bob Dole wasn’t “sent out” by the Bush campaign. The campaign offered to brief him on some issues, and he turned it down....

John Kerry's former crew mates vouch for his Vietnam war heroics in a documentary being released in the midst of a campaign debate about his actions as a swift boat skipper. "Brothers in Arms," a first film by journalist Paul Alexander, features Kerry and four men who served with him on Patrol Craft 94, the last of three boats he commanded during the war and the one from which he won the Silver Star for chasing down and killing a combatant who threatened his crew with a rocket. . . . In "Brothers in Arms," opening at a New York...

Gen. George S. Patton III, the flamboyant field commander ... came to Boston to blast Kerry for "probably" causing "some of my guys to get killed" by his dissidence. "There's no soap ever been invented that can wash that blood off his hands."

Patton's son died on July 1 this year. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19368-2004Jun30.html Here's what he said about about Kerry according to the Washington Post, October 21, 1984, p. C1.

Continuing on our theme of, "Hey, why is there only outrage when someone questions a Democrat's war record?" we turn back to the archives of the New Republic. Thanks to some assistance from Dorothy McCartney and Kathryn Lopez, we blow off the dust of the October 12, 1992 New Republic (sorry, not online). A familiar name, Sidney Blumenthal, is examining President George Herbert Walker Bush's war record. This is a long excerpt, with a few of Blumenthals' extraneous thoughts about Clinton, Vietnam, and Bush on the campaign trial omitted: Since the first day of the Republican convention there has been...

The McCain-Feingold Act was enacted to correct what many saw as widespread abuses in how elections get financed. Based on the current election campaign, this legislation has had a deleterious effect on the level and quality of public discourse and has only moved the monies that supposedly corrupt our elections into different financial portfolios. President Bush took advantage of circumstance to finally do what he needs to do on the issue of Campaign Finance Reform and denounce the behavior of 527 Groups. He has condemned the behavior of these groups and asked them to pull their offensive ads. This suggests...

Electioneering Communications Published in June 2004 The PDF files on this web site may be viewed or printed using the free Acrobat Reader available from Adobe. Contents Introduction Electioneering Communications Clearly Identified Candidate Publicly Distributed Shortly Before Election Targeted to the Relevant Electorate Exemptions Application Political Committees Corporations and Labor Organizations Qualified Nonprofit Corporations (QNCs) "527" Organizations Individuals and Partnerships Disclosure Requirements When to File Disclosure Date Where to File Content of Disclosure Introduction This brochure focuses on the rules pertaining to electioneering communications—television or radio communications that refer to a clearly identified federal candidate and are distributed to the...

It is time for the Republican Party to hit back hard. Today the President has set the stage for a massive counter-offensive against the Kerry/Edwards smear machine. By once again saying that all 527's need to stop there negative advertising he has in essence taken away from the Democrats there headline for the GOP convention, now while the moment is still hot the RNC or the Bush campaign needs to run a commercial slamming Kerry or backing him further into a corner, my idea for one follows: Imagine a commercial where it starts off with 65 million dollars in negative...

I think we could all benefit from a kind of "play-by-play up-to-date accounting" of the specific claims and evidence in the Swift Boat Veteran's Controversy. I am not trying to make sport of all of this, as I see the conclusions we may draw as very serious and indicative of Kerry's veracity and personal character, and thus his fitness for the Office of President of the United States. I have followed this story since I first heard of the Swift Vets in May, and am anxious to get my copy of “Unfit for Command” in the mail. In the meantime,...

MICHELLE MALKIN ON WHY CHRIS MATTHEWS KICKED HER OFF HARDBALL PLUS SWIFTEE VAN ODELL ON THE BRONZE STAR ISSUE COMING UP NOW WITH KEVIN McCULLOUGH - CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

The mainstream media has done an extremely poor job of covering the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth story. When the group first formed in April, the media largely ignored their explosive charges despite the fact that many of the people involved are vets and war heroes who knew John Kerry in Vietnam. ... 1) Isn't it true that you requested a year long deferment from your local draft board to study in France and only after you were turned down did you actually enlist in the military? ... 4) Back in 2003, you told Laura Blumenfield of the Washington Post...