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(Not yet posted at nytimes.com) Target: John Kerry If John Kerry loses the presidential election, "Unfit for Command," by John O'Neil and Jerome R. Corsi, will go down as a chief reason. The book -- a sort of companion piece to the political attack ad placed by O'Neil's group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth -- is a furious assault on Kerry's character and service in Vietnam. Navy records have discredited the book's claim that Kerry lied to get his Bronze Star and third Purple Heart -- though only after the sensation hijacked cable news for a month. But for all...

SwiftVets and POWs for Truth are running this full-page ad in the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch today and tomorrow, in anticipation of Friday's debate.

...[T]here is a character issue that has firmly attached itself to the Massachusetts senator. An open letter to Mr. Kerry signed by 197 officers and men who served with him in Vietnam -- the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth -- charges that, "you have deceived the public, and in the process have betrayed honorable men, to further your personal political career." It is not nothing to have almost 200 men you served with, of various political persuasions, call you a liar.... "Unfit for Command" ...charges the senator with unprincipled fakery about his Vietnam record, has been flying off the bookshelves....

This arrived via email today... I, for one, am very pleased with the way they spent my last contribution. ...Were you? ...Perhaps it's time to give these Heroes a little more help!!! Thank you for your support of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Your generous response has driven our efforts as we spread the truth about John Kerry.Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is making an historic impact on this presidential election. We have joined forces with a group of American prisoners of war who were held captive by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War and are now called Swift...

"T his is Latch." That's how Roy Hoffmann opened the calls, with a name he hadn't used in 35 years, a name the man at the other end of the line last heard crackling over a radio receiver in Vietnam. He called all the men who'd been under his command there, finding their names in old mimeographed records and photos once stored in his attic and now spread all over his second-floor office. "Latch, remember me?" he would say, transporting them back to those days on the Swift boats, the patrols in the Mekong Delta or even the middle of...

Too much negativity on this board last couple of days. Turn it into positive energy. Make a donation today. I pledged to both Swift Vets and GOP. Link shown below.

Did Kerry write own report of disputed clash? October 1, 2004 BY THOMAS LIPSCOMB A faded 35-year-old operations order recovered from the Naval Historical Center in Washington bears directly on the ongoing dispute between Sen. John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth about who wrote the key after-action report that ended Kerry's service in Vietnam. The report appears in the official Navy records and is posted on Kerry's presidential campaign Web site. The report details Kerry's participation in a naval operation on the Bay Hap River on March 13, 1969, in such glowing terms that he was awarded...

Tom Wright, two tour Swift boat officer in charge who operated with John Kerry, was interviewed on Greg Allen's The Right Balance on 1 October 2004. Tom is mentioned 6 times in Unfit for Command. The interview discusses background, operations with Kerry, and Kerry's false testimony before Congress while a Senator. The complete radio show can be streamed at http://therightbalance.org, or the three segments of the interview itself can be heard at http://skyuka.org

New Document Indicates Kerry Wrote Disputed Vietnam Report BY THOMAS LIPSCOMB - Special to the Sun October 1, 2004 Conclusion: Kerry wrote the disputed after action report that is the basis for his bronze star.

For those who missed the debate, Kerry said, "the president always has the right... for [a] preemptive strike... but if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test." Through some friends at CBS News, I've been able to acquire a rare copy of The Global Test (hat tip: Danny... I owe ya one!). From what I gather, the Global Test was written in 1972 -- on a highly advanced typewriter -- and reads as follows:

WASHINGTON - Almost overnight, it has become an article of faith among members of the mainstream media that the charges leveled against Sen. John Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have been proven to be untrue. David Broder, the dean of Washington columnists, got into the act this week with a column that appeared in the Herald in which he dismissed the Swift Vets as a group peddling a scurrilous and largely inaccurate attack on the Vietnam service of John Kerry. How can the media discount Kerry's betrayal of all U.S. forces fighting in Vietnam, when he testified...

<p>A faded 35-year-old operations order recovered from the Naval Historical Center in Washington bears directly on the ongoing dispute between Sen. John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth about who wrote the key after-action report that ended Kerry's service in Vietnam. The report appears in the official Navy records and is posted on Kerry's presidential campaign Web site.</p>

From this morning's Corrections section of the New York Times: An article on Thursday about political advertising in the presidential campaign, including a commercial that accused John Kerry of having "secretly met with the enemy'' in Paris in the 1970's, misidentified the parties with whom Mr. Kerry said he had met at the Vietnam peace talks. (The error was repeated in articles on Friday and Saturday.) The parties were the two Communist delegations - North Vietnam and the Vietcong's Provisional Revolutionary Government - with whom he discussed the status of war prisoners. He did not say he had met with...

WASHINGTON, D.C. --- Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a non-partisan, non-profit group representing more than 250 Swift Boat veterans who served with Senator John Kerry in Vietnam, announced today they are joining forces with a group of American prisoners of war who were held captive by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. The merger coincides with a new $1.4 million television ad campaign released by the new group Swift Vets and POWs For Truth. “We welcome the POWs to this battle on behalf of truth, the real truth of who John Kerry is and how he betrayed his fellow...

Well, stay tuned today, folks. The Swifties will have another ad, probably tonight - and this one features POW wives talking about John Kerry's testimony and actions when he returned from Vietnam - while their husbands were being held and tortured in North Vietnamese prisons. (We wrote about these women before. Click here to see our first take on their potential impact) Not only will this surpass the last ad buy ($1.4 million), it will also include a "satellite tour" of these brave women. Radio, TV, press conferences - ALL OVER THE COUNTRY. A serious and well-funded grassroots effort. Frankly,...

Next Sunday, Kitty Kelley's anti-Bush book, "The Family," will knock John O'Neill's Kerry-bashing book, "Unfit for Command," off the top spot on the New York Times best-seller list. Perhaps that's good news for the Kerry campaign. But it's more bad news for political discourse. Both books are unfit to read. (I've read them both.) Mr. O'Neill's hatred for John Kerry, nurtured over three decades, oozes out of every page of "Unfit for Command" and makes it difficult to take the book seriously. Perhaps his account of what happened on the Bay Hap River -- he says Mr. Kerry "fled the...

THOSE WHO dismiss critics of John Kerry’s Vietnam service as just a bunch of right-wing Republicans out to advance George W. Bush’s cause don’t know what they are talking about — or they are engaged in wishful thinking. OK, I may have once thought that about the critics, too. But after poring over the large volume of e-mail I received after my Aug. 28 column, “What Matters About Kerry and Vietnam,” I don’t any longer. I had taken to task the authors of the blistering anti-Kerry bestseller “Unfit for Command” for giving readers an unbalanced view of Kerry’s service...

<p>Heather Mocabee can recall seeing her father's Purple Heart in a trunk of momentos from his Navy days in Vietnam...</p> <p>In an election season in which the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have been circulating untruths about candidate John Kerry, Heather talks about her own quest for the truth...</p>

My lawyer readers will immediately recognize this as an invitation to Kerry supporters to make a motion for partial summary judgment on the SwiftVets' claims. This short paragraph from a New York Times article perfectly illustrates the liberal media's widespread characterization of the results to date of the SwiftVets' campaign (boldface added): Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which drew national attention with advertisements making unsubstantiated attacks against Mr. Kerry's military service, has less money and uses several strategies to stretch its dollars, said one of its leaders, John O'Neill. To find a similar example from the blogosphere, one need look...

The decoration has been prominent in the current presidential campaign because of Democratic nominee John Kerry, who received three Purple Heart awards for serving in the Vietnam War. A group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has questioned elements of his military service, alleging that "at least one of Kerry's Purple Heart awards was the result of his own negligence, not enemy fire." Example of injuries "which clearly do not qualify for award of the Purple Heart" include: frostbite or trench foot injuries; heat stroke; chemical, biological or nuclear agents not released by the enemy; accidents not related to or...