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Earlier this week, Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund Inc., a group of former U.S. intelligence and Special Forces personnel, launched a campaign criticizing President Barack Obama for unfairly taking credit for killing Osama bin Laden and leaking national security information for political gain. This is the second high-profile attack on the president from ex-elite military operatives. Last month, Ryan Zinke, a Montana State Senator and former commander of Navy SEAL Team Six, started a super PAC, Special Operations for America, which is dedicated to supporting Mitt Romney and hitting President Obama on leaks and on politicizing Bin Laden’s death. According...

Five years ago, a group of Vietnam veterans came forward at the National Press Club in Washington to dispute the "war hero" stories that formed the basis of candidate John Kerry's presidential campaign, and to challenge the claims of rampant US war crimes Kerry had used to launch his political career 33 years earlier -- false accusations, they said, that helped to poison the reputations of a generation of American troops. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth included Kerry's entire former chain of command from Vietnam and dozens of eyewitnesses to his actions there. Kerry, the veterans said, was not...

Wade Sanders, who pleaded guilty in December to possession of child pornography, was sentenced Monday, and he got off relatively easy. Sanders had argued that he deserved only probation... The Union-Tribune describes Sanders as a "war hero," but he is best known for his service to John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee. Kerry's central campaign claim was that he deserved to be president because his so-called band of brothers, veterans who had served alongside him on Navy Swift boats in Vietnam, vouched for his heroism and his impeccable character. Kerry did not know that one of his fiercest defenders...

Ann Coulter Responds to Media Matters Attacks Wednesday, January 7, 2009 7:50 AM By: Phil Brennan The far left attack dog Media Matters for America is obviously unhappy with Ann Coulter’s new book “Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America.” published a 6,000 word compilation of a dozen alleged lies contained in her book which unmasks some of the left’s sleaziest tactics. Media Matters, according to widely respected pollster Frank Luntz is “one of the most destructive organizations associated with American politics today … They are vicious. They only understand one thing: attack...” Newsmax asked Ms. Coulter to respond...

The media’s ability to shape opinion derives from its power to slant the news―the pervasive activism known as “media bias”―and also from its power to choose what is and is not reported. But 2004 marked a watershed in American political history. That was the year the old media lost control of our national conversation.

Just as they sought to destroy John Kerry in 2004, the founders of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group are aiming their guns at this season's presumptive Democratic presidential candidate. But unlike four years ago, when the Swifties spent millions to discredit Kerry, their hit on Barack Obama so far hasn't cost them a dime. The opening assault came over the weekend in the form of a mass email to would-be sympathizers. "As liberal as Kerry was, America faces an even more liberal threat today: Barack Obama," wrote John O'Neill, a founder of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth...

Barack Obama has published an enemies list and conspiracy web on his presidential campaign website, Fight the Smears.The site lists conservative activists David Bossie, Floyd Brown, Bob Perry, Craig Shirley, Bruce Hawkins and James Lacy.The Obama campaign posted an accompanying graphic that lays out a web of connections between the conservatives, groups they represent and their efforts opposing liberals, including "Swift Boat", "Clinton Impeachment" and "Willie Horton Ad".The text never connects any of those listed to 'smears' against Obama, but instead lists their politcal sins such as working with the Minutemen, Ann Coulter, Gary Aldrich, donating to the Swift Boat...

FALLS CHURCH, Va., July 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As the Presidential campaign heats up, John Kerry and various members of the liberal media continue to wrongly use the term "Swiftboating" as a shorthand reference for false attacks on a candidate's record. Kate Zernike recently demonstrated the tactic in the New York Times: "Swift boat" has become the synonym for the nastiest of campaign smears, a shadow that hangs over the presidential race as pundits wait to proclaim that the Swiftboating has begun and candidates declare that they will not be Swiftboated. In To Set the Record Straight: How Swift Boat Veterans,...

AN INCIDENT ON THE BAY HAP RIVER Instead of "No Man Left Behind," the true story of that day is "One Man Left." — John O’Neill A war hero candidate On January 17, 2004, two days before the crucial Iowa Democratic primary, the Kerry campaign staged a dramatic “reunion” between the candidate and Jim Rassmann, a former U.S. Army Special Forces officer who said Kerry had saved his life in Vietnam 35 years before. The tearful meeting of the two men was presented as spontaneous, though the campaign had paid Rassmann’s way to Des Moines and informed NBC anchor Tom...

For most people, “Swift boat” has become a political verb, a synonym for the kind of attack that helped destroy the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry in 2004. But for a group of Vietnam veterans at the center of the attacks, it is still a fresh fight. On Friday, the group, who served with Mr. Kerry in Vietnam, sent a letter to T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas oilman who helped finance the 2004 attack advertisements, taking him up on a challenge he issued last November: that he would give $1 million to anyone who could disprove a single...

"I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty." Who can forget this now-infamous July 29, 2004, Democratic National Convention acceptance speech when the party's nominee publicly set his course for the next few months? "At the heart of the 2004 presidential campaign was a long-deferred national debate over whether American troops had systematically committed war crimes in Vietnam, as John Kerry and other activists had insisted, and as Hollywood, the media and much of the American public had long assumed," begins Chapter One of To Set the Record Straight: How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the New Media Defeated John...

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. - Barack Obama is being endorsed by fellow Sen. John Kerry, the Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee who lost to George W. Bush that year and gave up his own plans for a 2008 run a year ago.[snip]Besides any potential help for Obama, Thursday's endorsement was a slap at Edwards, who was Kerry's running mate in the last election. The two had their differences during the campaign over strategy and spending. In post-mortem interviews, Edwards said he would have been more aggressive in challenging the unsubstantiated allegations of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the Vietnam War veterans...

Sen. John Kerry's 2004 presidential bid became the catalyst for an unprecedented political movement by Vietnam veterans who had long resented his false 1971 testimony that U.S. troops were routinely committing war crimes. Despite the best efforts of the Democratic Party and its media affiliates, they succeeded in reaching out to the public and turning the presidential campaign upside down. Here, for the first time, is the complete story of how - and why - they did it. During the Vietnam War, the original television networks and the leading liberal newspapers were near the peak of their formidable persuasive powers,...

FALLS CHURCH, Va. -- Last week former President Bill Clinton, John Kerry and various members of the media once again used "Swift boating" as a shorthand reference for misrepresenting a candidate's record. In "To Set the Record Straight: How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the New Media Defeated John Kerry," authors Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler counter that assertion in a heavily researched 400 page work that provides the first historical assessment of the 2004 presidential campaign. "To Set the Record Straight" is the definitive account of the ad hoc political movement that dominated the 2004 presidential campaign. Based on...

This is the most important book you’ll buy this year: To Set The Record Straight, How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the New Media Defeated John Kerry, by Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler, with Forward by John O'Neill. Not only will you learn the inside details of the only book – Unfit For Command -- that ever decided a presidential election but, especially for those who have any doubts, you will learn about how the peoples' democracy can still work in the United States. For those inclined toward political science, the book is an important contribution to understanding how political...

11/09/2007 Kerry Spokesman Sets Limbaugh Straight on Swiftboat Smears WASHINGTON D.C. – Kerry spokesman David Wade issued the following statement today in response to Rush Limbaugh, who said on his radio show that Kerry’s Swift Boat attackers in 2004, “were right on the money and nobody has disproven anything they claimed in any of their ads, statements, written commentaries, or anything of the sort.” “At first I thought, that’s not Rush, that’s just the OxyContin talking. Nonetheless, this is a despicable but unsurprising new lie from a man whose closest brush with combat came when customs officials tried to take...

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, perhaps preparing to get back into the presidential ring one day, claims he's now armed with materials that will make war record critics from his 2004 presidential campaign go running tail between legs. The 63-year-old Democratic senator told The Patriot-Ledger on Tuesday that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group of Navy servicemen who served with Kerry and criticized his record in Vietnam, will be revealed as liars. "We have put together a documented portfolio that frankly puts their lies in such a total light of absurdity and indecency, that should they ever rear their...

Does anyone know what happened to them? Their website is gone .. they appear to be Missing In Action.

A Naval veteran who co-founded the group "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" says he will do whatever he can to help Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-California) become the next president of the United States.

Bush bypasses Senate to name ambassador By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer 7 minutes ago President Bush named Republican fundraiser Sam Fox as U.S. ambassador to Belgium on Wednesday, using a maneuver that allowed him to bypass Congress where Democrats had derailed Fox's nomination. Democrats had denounced Fox for his 2004 donation to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The group's TV ads, which claimed that Sen. John Kerry exaggerated his military record in Vietnam, were viewed as a major factor in the Massachusetts Democrat losing the election. Recognizing Fox did not have the votes to obtain Senate confirmation, Bush...