Free Republic

George W. Bush ran the most negative presidential campaign in history, and the media never covered the story, an aide to Sen. John Kerry's campaign said last Monday at the journalism department. Marco Trbovich, a United Steelworkers of America employee who advised Kerry on labor policy, told the 20 students gathered at Carter Hall that about 80 percent of Bush's campaign money was spent on negative advertising. "If you can think of a few positive commercials that you saw, you saw all of them that were there," he said. Bush's campaign played upon fear, using patriotic and religious fervor to...

NEW YORK Feeling a bit lost lately? You should, at least according to a compendium posted today at Jay Rosen’s popular PressThink Web log, because the biggest loser on Election Day was not John Kerry but the mainstream media. Daniel Henninger, writing in The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal, put it this way: "It is often said that the only sure winner in American politics is the media. Amid GOP victory parties or the ruined dreams of the Kerry candidacy, the one constant is that the media marches on. Maybe not this time. Big Media lost big." "I was interested...

Thanks to all of our readers who have written offering to make contributions to Steve Gardner or otherwise expressing interest in helping him. We tracked down Mary Laney, the freelance reporter who wrote the Chicago Sun-Times story that Deacon linked to earlier today. Here's her message: I'm glad you picked up my column on Steve Gardner. He certainly deserves better than he's gotten for speaking up about what happened on that Swiftboat those years ago. I'm not at liberty to give out his address or phone number, but he has allowed me to give you his email address: sgardner5@carolina.rr.com. I...

Alexandria, VA, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- The Conservative Political Action Conference said Monday its 2004 Courage Under Fire award would go to the 527 group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. . . . The Swift Boat veterans, most of whom served in Vietnam with Kerry, "could have remained silent, comfortably out of the public eye and the line of fire," Keene said. "But they put the good of their country ahead of their own personal interests." During the 2004 presidential campaign, the Swift Boat organization argued Kerry had fabricated accounts of his combat exploits to get undeserved medals and a...

This is the story of a military veteran whistleblower. He spoke out against someone he thought was dangerous for the nation, talked to local newspapers, and appeared on talk shows. In return, he was vilified by reporters, threatened by a political operative, fired by his company, and now he's broke.His name is Steve Gardner. He's also known as "The 10th Brother," as in Band of Brothers. He's one of two members of Sen. John Kerry's 12 Vietnam swift boat crew members who refused to stand with Kerry at the Democratic Convention. The other man remained silent. "They said I had...

The controversial veterans group that trashed the war record of Democratic Sen. John Kerry during the presidential campaign and helped hand President Bush a second term will remain a potent force, according to an associate of the group. Chris LaCivita, who was a paid political consultant to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the campaign but said he is no longer on the payroll, asserted that the organization, with 280 members nationwide, is pondering its next step. patrick g. ryan An associate of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth says the group, known for attacking Sen. John Kerry’s war record,...

The election is over but the bickering never stopped. Some voters are suffering from "post election stress disorder." Pundits and partisans are stepping up to next face-off: judicial appointments. Yet the country has united on one issue: Vietnam. Ernest Lefever described the American attitude toward Vietnam: "The two diametrically opposed interpretations of Vietnam continue to vie for the American psyche. Until the issue is resolved, we will suffer from a kind of historical schizophrenia." The parade of Vietnam Veterans across the stage at the Democrats National Convention received a standing ovation, the first of its kind from the protesting class....

They Served Twice: the return of the Vietnam Vets ---------- John Kerry's campaign managers could hardly have foreseen the explosion of veteran resentment that would torpedo his cruise to the White House. No comparable opposition had materialized in his previous races, and a sympathetic establishment media could be trusted to spotlight Kerry’s small group of veteran supporters, presumably leaving anti-Kerry vets little opportunity to reach the public. Kerry had ridden his personal mythology of battlefield heroics to victory before, unleashing his "band of brothers" to attack any Senate opponent who dared question his patriotism. When Kerry greeted the Democratic National...

Failed presidential candidate John Kerry is considering filing a libel suit against the leader of the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, John O'Neill, whose book "Unfit for Command" is credited with capsizing Kerry's Vietnam War-based campaign. "I don't know if they will actually go forward," a member of Kerry's inner circle told New York Post's Page Six column, edited by Richard Johnson. "But consideration is serious. If Kerry plans on running again in 2008 — and I'm hearing he will — it would make sense that he'd file the suit." Co-written by Jerry Corsi, "Unfit" sold more than 800,000...

KERRY FIT TO SUE 'UNFIT' AUTHOR November 18, 2004 -- LIBERAL loser John Kerry might be planning to strike back at John O'Neill, the "Unfit for Command" author who claims some of the credit for Kerry's defeat, sources say. In the book, published by Regnery not long before the election, O'Neill — who, like Kerry, commanded swift boats in Vietnam — attacked Kerry's war record and branded him a traitor. O'Neill sold over 800,000 copies and his group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, raised $25 million to battle the Kerry campaign and ran TV ads trashing the candidate. Former Sen....

Of all the targets of vitriol and attempted ambushes during the presidential campaign, I most admired John O'Neill of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for his calm determination to stand his ground on his charges against John Kerry's Vietnam service in Unfit for Command, the book he co-authored. O'Neill was called a ''liar'' to his face on a number of TV appearances, and, on an Oct. 14 ''Nightline,'' ABC-TV's Ted Koppel actually sent a crew to Vietnam to film alleged eyewitnesses in order to disprove one of the accounts -- how Kerry won his Silver Star -- in Unfit...

I've just returned from the annual Restoration Weekend I put on, this year at the Boca Resort in Boca Raton. The highlight of the event was the Saturday night banquet where we gave our Annie Taylor Award to the men who defeated the party of defeatism and the saboteurs of the war on terror in this last election. Annie Taylor was the first woman to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survive. It is a fitting award for American heroes who were slandered and defamed while they were being tortured in Communist prisons by an American traitor who...

To The Citizens Of Free Republic: We will never ever forget your support and help. Your threads not only encouraged us but kept the truth alive in a period when Big Media sought to suppress the story. Your e-mails and phone calls to Big Media at least shamed them. The thousands of contributions we got from you helped us to organize our website, produce our earliest ads, and keep the light flickering in the darkest of times. The English at Agincourt would have executed Kerry for meeting with the enemy and betraying them. In contrast, we found a true band...

For Republican ad-man Rick Reed, the inaugural press conference of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was less a professional opportunity than a chance to catch up with kin. His uncle, Adrian Lonsdale, had been one of John Kerry's superior officers in Vietnam. The retired Coast Guard captain and more than a dozen other veterans were gathering in public for the first time to challenge various claims Kerry had made about his four-month tour of duty. "I thought those guys had a great story that needed to get out," says Reed. He returned to his office that afternoon, sent out...

Without the information revolution spawned by talk radio and the role it played in this year's election, John Kerry would likely be taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2005. That's the assertion from longtime broadcast veteran Mike Siegel, whose new book "Power Talk!" chronicles his own exploits behind the microphone as perhaps the most pro-active radio host in America. "The Swiftboat veterans would have never gotten the time of day without talk radio," Siegel told NewsMax, citing accounts by the Vietnam vets who served with Kerry as the turning point of the presidential campaign. While elite media venues...

John Forbes Kerry should have easily won the presidential election. Not because he is a good Senator, but because he had everything going for him.I still cannot see how he lost. He had the advice of his dying mother's last words: "Integrity, integrity, integrity."He had backing of The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, Washington Post and a heap of other so-called mainstream newspapers.He had the alphabet networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, supporting him. Dan Rather even offered forged documents to get him elected.He had the billionaires and multi-millionaires throwing money at him. George Soros handed over $26,530,105. Peter...

. Though the election is over, the Swift Boat Vets fight continues. Their primary target had been Sen. John Kerry, but all along there was a secondary fight going on with many elements of the mainstream media, which continually presented their case as “discredited,” though the Vets thought at most their accounts were “disputed” by the Kerry campaign. In their post-election coverage, Newsweek wrote, “When the Swift Boat vets made ads attacking Kerry with images from his 1971 testimony, they used a voice-over, an actor reading Kerry’s words.” Today, Rick Reed, a partner in the Stevens, Reed, Curcio and Potholm...

A special salute to John O'Neill and The SwiftVets

Today's radio guests include Arlen Specter & John O'Neill!!!!!!!

WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 - The McCain-Feingold law, which did more to change how American political campaigns are financed than any legislation since the 1970's, got its first real-world test in this year's election. And now its critics are more emphatic than ever in arguing that the law has fallen short of its goals, and even some supporters are calling for revisions. The 2002 law demolished the system that for more than a decade had allowed political parties to feed on unlimited soft-money contributions from companies, labor unions and donors. But what rose in its place remains the subject of fierce...