A Kerry Conspiracy?

ebrown_p - Don't know if you are right, but if it was pulled off by Kerry supporters, I would have to admit that it was a brillliant tactic!

"Can anyone be that stupid?"

Karl Rove is not stupid, just desperate. Smart people do stupid things when they are desperate.

The law is worded very vaguely, but it says it is illegal for 527s to "coordinate" efforts with a candidate. Since there have been no court cases yet, no one yet knows what the definition of coordinate is yet and they don't want to be a test case just before the election.

It is well assumed that it is illegal for a candidate to instruct a 527 what ads to run, where to run them, or when to run them, so the question is would it be considered coordination for a candidate to tell a 527 NOT to run an ad?

Oooh, this makes me happy!

I think in this case it's coincidence (less so the MoveOn ad attacking Bush's service, which I do think was set up as a parallel so Kerry could denounce it and Bush's lack of denunciation of the swifties would stand out in stark relief), but your analysis of how it helps Kerry makes me very happy.

The fact is that most of the Swift boat veterans who have been involved in the criticism of Kerry's actiions and alleged self-promotion have been doing this for many years - and started long before the campaign began or even before Kerry's candidacy. The Rove conspiracy theory doesn't comport with the facts.

Three Purple hearts in just 13 weeks of service, with no record of substantial medical treatment and no lost duty time whatever, and no record that anyone else recommended him for them, all followed by a request, based on those awards, to be released from service - does "peg my phoneometer" as we used to say. To do all this and then make a big deal about one's supposed heroism does indeed invite criticism and challenge.

if nothing else, the "statements" of the swiftboat crews allow George Bush the opportunity to publically display his own record of Vietnam service. awaiting anxiously!

Get any info out of the Bush admin? Don't hold your breath.

george

O'Neill first popped up when Nixon's dirty tricks boys went looking to derogate Viet Nam vets protesting the war. O'Neill has been doing his republican slime trick since an appearance on the Dick Cavett show in the late sixties. He's a stooge.

But yes, Rove is behind this, as he was when O'Neill was trotted out against McCain.

This is the worst sort of slime your system evidences.

Dys,

I believe Bush (unlike Kerry) has released all his service records for public scrutiny. And, by the way the Alabama ANG attendance records were recently found, though this was not as widely reported as the supposed "gap".

Overall I would say that flight training and qualifying in F102s was at least the equivalent of 13 weeks of fabricating after action reports in the delta.

I really don't think it is a karl rove thing or a democratic thing. I just think the karl roves' took advantage of their long standing feued with those who were against the war and come back home to tell about it. The fact is that the swift boat thing is funded by republicans. That says it all about the republicans in my opinion. The whole thing just happily backfired big time on them.

well George, all that being true, I suppose we will be hearing from the Bush camp a lot more positive stuff about Bush's military service, Think so?
I kinda doubt it meself.

O'Neill - McCain ???? What is the connection?

LOL, these reports of a backfire are premature, Kerry is resorting to personal attacks to respond to serious and supstntiated charges about his vietnam service.

I remember when clintons affair was being dismissed as hurting the republicans as well, the difference is this will come to a head before the election, and Kery has tough questions to answer now. If he refuses to do more than continue personal attacks he will sink like a rock.

I think that if Sen. Kerry brings this up in a debate:

1 ) Pres. Bush can't tell an independent group what to advertise, or what not to advertise. That would be a perfect example of government censureship...which is prohibited in our country.

2 ) These are eyewitness accounts of Sen. Kerry "in action", during wartime. They refute Sen. Kerry's self-aggrandizing accounts of Vietnam. If this isn't allowed as a topic of debate, then what is the alternative? The alternative is to simply buy, at face value, whatever the candidate (*any* candidate, right or left) says happened. I don't know of a single instance where a Presidential candidate's own recollections of his boasted-about past actions were considered "off-limits" in a Presidential election campaign. That Sen. Kerry can simultaneously boast of his war record, and disallow any refutation thereof, represents hypocrisy of the highest order, to my way of thinking.

When this comes up in debate, as it most certainly must, I think Pres. Bush's appropriate response should be something along the lines of:

"Senator, I have nothing whatsoever to do with these advertisements. I neither support them, nor refute them. I do not know, because I was not there. They are not part of my re-election campaign. Do these advertisements lend support to my campaign for re-election? Yes. Yes, they do. But that is beside the point. It would be contrary to the right of free speech, and the right of freedom of association, for me to pressure independent groups to express - or to not express - their viewpoints regarding their eyewitness accounts of their time in service with you in Vietnam. I personally and deeply respect your service to our nation during that troubled time. Apparently, several of your fellow soldiers have a different recollection of historical events than you portray. It would be wrong - and illegal - for me to tell them to not express their viewpoints."

But that's far too much for Bush to be able to say...

I can't see how Pres. Bush could go wrong with such a stance, so long as his campaign is not in any way connected with the SwiftVets and vise versa on Kerry and MoveOn etc.

Yes, but kerry can ask bush why bush has not condemned the swift boat accusations.

as Ken Lay (or was it Richard Nixon) said, If I don't get caught, I didn't do the crime. Is this a republican credo or is that democrats are lousy cover-ups and it takes longer to catch the republicans?

The problem with the eyewitness thing is that there are eyewitnesses saying different things.

I don't think this is all nefariousness, that someone saw something and then purposely says the opposite -- there is SO much evidence of how faulty memory is, especially oft-recounted memory. I can easily believe that everyone involved has vivid, technocolor memories that they swear by, which are nonetheless not all true. (There are many people who swore by "memories" of sexual abuse in the 80's, at great personal cost, and whose "memories" were entirely false.)

Thurlow, in the interview with Matthews, himself said that it was basically all hearsay, no hard evidence one way or the other.

And Bush most certainly can "tell them not to express their viewpoints", just as Kerry has already told MoveOn not to express its viewpoint -- not by sending G-men in to shut down the operation, but by simply renouncing it. Kerry has done it, why can't Bush? That's what's hurting him most here, IMO, is the perception that he is allowing others to do his dirty work, but that he wants that dirty work done. (If he renounces it, people won't pay as much attention. All he's doing is saying "it wasn't me...")

You may have a career as a speechwriter, tho... ;-)

Oh, revel said it faster and pithier. :-D

Not running very scared of this, are they?