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Swift Boat Ad Working Joshua Micah Marshall reluctantly reports: Perhaps the most astonishing demonstration of the Swift Boat ad’s effectiveness, however, is the proportion of potential Kerry voters whose opinions shifted after having watched the ad. Independents intending to vote for Kerry felt considerably less sure of their choice after watching the Swift Boat ad. Before the ad, 41.94% of Independents intending to vote for Kerry felt that they would “definitely” vote for him; 37.10% felt “most likely” to vote for him; 20.97% were “leaning” towards him; and none were “not sure.” These levels of commitment changed markedly after viewing...

Photo caption: " War veterans Jere Hill, middle, from Warham, Mass., and Robert Gibson, right, from Lexington, Ky., stand with their backs turned during Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry (news - web sites)'s speech at the 105th Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention in Cincinnati on Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2004. Man in foreground is unidentified. Kerry received a polite if not overwhelmingly positive reaction from the VFW. But there was a clear divide, with scores of veterans sittings with their arms folded while others clapped. (AP Photo/David Kohl) "

John Kerry's presidential campaign claimed on Tuesday that his Christmas 1968 mission into Cambodia was top, top secret - and that's why there are no documents that verify the implausible claim. "During John Kerry's service in Vietnam, many times he was on or near the Cambodian border and on one occasion crossed into Cambodia at the request of members of a special operations group operating out of Ha Tien," Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan said in a statement. But Meehan told the Boston Globe that there was no paperwork to confirm the claim and he could not supply a date...

Fresh off his 'Christmas in Cambodia' fairy tale, The Poodle has been caught in another whopper, this time regarding one of his Purple Hearts. This is separate from the questions surrounding his being awarded the Purple Heart in the first place. It looks like Kerry has contradicted himself in his own diary. In Douglas Brinkley's "Tour of Duty," which is Kerry's official, approved war biography, The Poodle writes an entry after a mission. In that entry he says that after several missions he has not yet taken any enemy fire. Ok .. big deal. Big whoop, right? Sorry .. but...

Old Crimson Interview Reveals A More Radical John Kerry The Crimson reported Kerry called for U.N. control of troops in 1970. Ten months after returning home from Vietnam, a young John Kerry strolled into the offices of The Harvard Crimson on Feb. 13, 1970 as an obscure underdog in the Democratic Congressional primary. The decorated veteran, honorably discharged after a tour of duty in the Mekong Delta, spoke in fierce terms during his daylong interview with The Crimson’s Samuel Z. Goldhaber ’72. But almost 34 years later, Kerry’s remarks on American military and intelligence operations vastly diverge from opinions expressed...

NEW YORK -- Winston Churchill often repeated Stalin's observation that "in wartime truth is so precious that she should always be attended to be a bodyguard of lies." And now that the Democratic National Convention has ended with Kerry's acceptance speech concentrating on his four month service in the Vietnam War 35 years ago, rather than his service during the past 35 years, it appears particularly appropriate. One of the pesky IRS Code 527 organizations that now buzz through the campaign atmosphere like insatiable horseflies in the aftermath of McCain-Finegold reforms has had the presumption to raise some serious questions...

NEW YORK -- John Kerry is desperately trying to slide safely away from the collapse of his "Christmas in Cambodia" fairy tale. Two embarrassing "failures of memory" now permanently scar Senator Kerry's campaign to gain trust and demonstrate strength as he tries to move from war hero to war president. In March, reliable witnesses came forward who placed John Kerry at a November 1971 Kansas City meeting where the Vietnam Veterans Against the War secretly voted on a proposal to kill six pro-war senators. This appeared especially odd because Kerry had told two historians, Gerald Nicosia and Douglas Brinkley, that...

I was on Mr. Kerry's boat in Vietnam. He doesn't deserve to be commander in chief.

John Kerry has undergone so many contortions to avoid admitting he lied when he told the Senate in 1986 that President Nixon had illegally ordered him to enter Cambodia. (The Dem slogan seems to be: If in doubt, blame Nixon). For John Kerry to have successfully maintained his Cambodian fiction his lie would have had to be difficult or impossible to refute. The Cambodian lie revealed that Kerry really is not that bright. To state that Nixon ordered him into Cambodia when in fact the then-president was L. B. Johnson was an incredibly stupid thing to do. If nothing else...

John Kerry must be feeling the heat because he was forced to wheel out Vietnam vet Jim Rassman to defend him. Rassman devoted about 700 words of a 1000 word article describing how Kerry fished him out of a river, and what a great guy John Kerry is. Rassman devoted the rest of the article to accusing John Kerry's vet critics of being part of a "Republican smear campaign", of being "dishonest and dishonorable", "without decency" and being "vicious" liars. This, readers, is a Democrat's idea of a debate. The tactic is capture the high moral ground by overwheling your...