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MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa (AP) - Struggling to reverse a slide in his standing, Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich said Sunday he'd been "Romney-boated" in Iowa and suggested his GOP rival would buy the presidency if he could. The sharp words against Mitt Romney, a multimillionaire many times over who is in strong contention to win Iowa, come two days before voters here weigh in on the Republican field. It was part of a stepped-up effort by Gingrich to contrast himself with Romney, and the candidate said he would adopt an even more aggressive strategy when the race moves to New Hampshire,...

In the summer of 2004 the conservative gadfly Jerome R. Corsi shot to the top of the best-seller lists as co-author of “Unfit for Command,” the book attacking Senator John Kerry’s record on a Vietnam War Swift boat that began the larger damaging campaign against Mr. Kerry’s war credentials as he sought the presidency. Almost exactly four years after that campaign began, Mr. Corsi has released a new attack book painting Senator Barack Obama, the Democrats’ presumed presidential nominee, as a stealth radical liberal who has tried to cover up “extensive connections to Islam” — Mr. Obama is Christian —...

WASHINGTON -It is already easy to imagine the Republican attack ads against Barack Obama. They open with video of his wife, Michelle, saying she was proud of America "for the first time in my adult lifetime" because of her husband's presidential candidacy. Cut to the Illinois Senator explaining that he doesn't wear an American flag lapel pin because it is a "substitute for true patriotism." Then flash a clip of Obama explaining that his Caucasian grandmother was a "typical white person" because she uttered racial epithets and was afraid of black people. Finally, the coup de grace, pictures of Obama's...

If John Kerry had been elected President of the United States in November 2004, especially with the incoming majority Democrat Congress, it is highly likely that Iraq would be in the midst of a civil war, Iran’s regional influence would have increased, Israel would be in more jeopardy than it is now, two Supreme Court seats would be occupied by clones of John Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg instead of by John Roberts and Samuel Alito, judicial decisions would have given even more “rights” to enemy combatants, domestic entitlements and earmarks would have skyrocketed, the Bush tax cuts would be...

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 29 (OneWorld) - U.S. war veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have announced they're planning to descend on Washington, DC this March to testify about war crimes they committed or personally witnessed in Iraq. "The war in Iraq is not covered to its potential because of how dangerous it is for reporters to cover it," said Liam Madden, a former Marine and member of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War. "That's left a lot of misconceptions in the minds of the American public about what the true nature of military occupation looks like." Iraq Veterans Against the...

BOSTON - Sen. John Kerry, whose 2004 presidential campaign was torpedoed by critics of his Vietnam War record, said Friday he has personally accepted a Texas oilman's offer to pay $1 million to anyone who can disprove even a single charge of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In a letter to T. Boone Pickens, the Massachusetts Democrat wrote: "While I am prepared to show they lied on allegation after allegation, you have generously offered to pay one million dollars for just one thing that can be proven false. I am prepared to prove the lie beyond any reasonable doubt."...

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) whose bid for the presidency in 2004 was damaged by attacks on his vaunted Vietnam War record by a group called “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” says he is now ready to refute their allegations. “We have put together a powerful and irrefutable rebuttal to the scurrilous charges made against me by these right wing fanatics,” Kerry asserted. Kerry declined to disclose any of his reputedly irrefutable proof at this time saying that “the American people have not yet shown a sufficient measure of regret and contrition for voting against me. They disrespected me—a decorated veteran—and...

DES MOINES, Iowa --Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry lashed out Sunday against a group that bashed him during his last run at the White House. Kerry, who made a weekend appearance in northwest Iowa, said he is concerned that Swift Vote Veterans for Truth is again resorting to "the politics of fear and smear." The group, financed by Texas conservatives, ran commercials questioning his claim of being a decorated Vietnam veteran -- the centerpiece of his presidential campaign in 2004. "We're not going to give them an ounce of daylight," said Kerry, who is considering another run at the Democratic presidential...

John Kerry recently volunteered that he was prepared to “kick [the Swift Boat Veterans’] ass from one end of America to the other” and that he would “demolish” us. He ought to take a Christmas cruise to Cambodia to calm down. Maybe he could take a side trip to tour “Genghis Khan” ruins. It is a little difficult to imagine Kerry (“I voted for it before I voted against it”) kicking the most decorated living serviceman, Bud Day, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, or our salty commander, Adm. Roy Hoffman, anywhere. Perhaps Kerry had in mind using a “Rice...

The Republican candidate for the United States Senate in New Jersey, Thomas H. Kean Jr., intends to make a campaign film that accuses his Democratic opponent, Robert Menendez, of "being wrapped up in the rackets for 30 years" despite public records and statements by former federal prosecutors that contradict Mr. Kean's most serious charges. Mr. Kean's chief campaign consultant, Matt Leonardo, a strategist for Republican candidates, disclosed the plans in an interview and said the film would be "very similar" in purpose to the commercials used to attack the military record of John Kerry during the 2004 presidential race. Kean...

As we watch the left of the Democratic Party press its case to return to the top of the heap in American politics, or at least evade the fate of the Dodo, we have ever more evidence validating an insight on which I stake my reputation as a political seer. To wit: partisan politics more often falls under the professional expertise of the psychiatrist than that of the political scientist. A learned shrink can often tell us more about a political issue than any other professional, not excluding a swami or a voodoo priest. Consider the ongoing controversy over Sen....

ASHINGTON, March 31 - With 19 months to go before the elections and no opponent in sight, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign is nonetheless warning her political supporters that she is the prime target of "the right-wing attack machine."In a fund-raising e-mail message sent out on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton's campaign also said her critics were preparing an advertising campaign against her similar to the one orchestrated by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that attacked Senator John Kerry's Vietnam service during the presidential election."The right wing is already getting ready, naming Hillary as their 'No. 1 target' and boasting...

We are pleased with the fact that we were able to effectively bring attention to our issues and raise questions regarding Senator Kerry’s character, leadership ability and qualifications as a potential Commander in Chief. As we have stated since we formed, we believed that John Kerry’s actions in Vietnam, coupled with the reprehensible statements he made after he returned were serious and consequently made him unfit for command. The primary purpose of our organization was to provide a voice for the courageous and honorable veterans of Vietnam, more than 280 Swift Boat Vets, Coast Guardsmen and POWs who served their...

TAMPA - Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, a political organization attacking John Kerry's Vietnam War record, has launched another broadside with a $3.2 million ad buy in Florida - several times the size of a previous purchase. In the final stretch of a bitter race between Kerry and President Bush, the organization is airing two ads locally and plans to continue through Election Day, members said Wednesday in Tampa. The $3.2 million figure cited by the group is unusually large, and it means a typical Florida TV viewer may see either one of the ads about 20 times. An...

Video of Lawrence O'Donnell's interview with Swift Boat veteran John O'Neill last night.

NGUYEN VAN KHOAI....In their story about John Kerry's Silver Star on Thursday, Nightline interviewed a Vietnamese man who said this wasn't the first time he'd been asked about Kerry's medals: Back in Tran Thoi, villager Nguyen Van Khoai said that about six months ago he was visited by an American who described himself as a Swift boat veteran and told him another American from the Swift boats was running for president of the United States. Nguyen said the man was accompanied by a cameraman. When I initially wrote about this, my assumption was that the "Swift boat veteran" in question...

ASHEVILLE - Television station WLOS-TV Channel 13 has received about 2,000 e-mails from both program supporters and protesters commenting on parent company Sinclair Broadcast Group's decision that its affiliates would broadcast "Stolen Honor: Wounds that Never Heal." The program is expected to be critical of Sen. John Kerry's anti- Vietnam War activities and is set to air locally at 9 p.m. Oct. 22. Although Sinclair says the final format for the program hasn't been set yet, the company's decision has set off a nationwide debate. The letters, found in the station's public file, were sent from people around the mountains...

DURING THE Vietnam War, John Kerry testified before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee panel that an investigation conducted by Kerry and his group, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, revealed that U.S. soldiers committed atrocities in Vietnam. The investigation was called Winter Soldier. Now that Kerry wants to be president, some of his former military colleagues say they still resent his allegations. They believe that Kerry slandered his colleagues as war criminals merely as a pretext for gaining support for the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. They believe he was pandering to those who said the "domino theory" was not valid,...

Inside the Swift Boat Veterans Latest Move By: krempasky · Section: Election 2004 Politics is usually an ugly business but every now and then you are privileged to meet some truly exceptional American heroes. Last Saturday Red State was privileged to be the only blog allowed to cover the filming of the last – and most devastating of the Swift Boat ads. (In fact, there was only one other media outlet present) We spent the better part of an hour in an intense conversation with a genuine hero named Dr. Louis Letson. You can not spend more than five minutes...

This is a 25 minute speech by John O'Neil of the Swift Boat Vets for Truth given to the Wednesday Morning Club on Setember 8, 2004.

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. Okay, 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 .....Bill Clinton appointed Coleman to the Pentagon post, in which he served from 1994 to 1998. Somehow, despite our running into each other over the...

New York, NY, Sep. 24 (UPI) -- John F. Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley said the Democratic nominee is not the war hero people thought he was, the New York Times reported Friday. Brinkley made the admission as part of a larger point that the debates over Kerry's service in Vietnam and George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard are not nearly as important as the ongoing debate about the U.S. role in Iraq, the issue Kerry appears to have chosen to end the campaign with. A noted historian, Brinkley, whose book on Kerry is cited as the...

On live for teh next hour.

So is John Kerry a war hero or a medal-grabbing phony? Each time that I've written about President Bush's dalliance with the National Guard, conservative readers have urged me to scrutinize the accusations against Kerry. After doing so for a week, here's where I come out: Did Kerry volunteer for dangerous duty? Not as much as his campaign would like you to believe. The Kerry Web site declares, "As he was graduating from Yale, John Kerry volunteered to serve in Vietnam - because, as he later said, 'It was the right thing to do.' " In fact, as Kerry was...

Earlier this year, as he lay in the hospital recuperating from major surgery in which he donated a kidney to his ailing wife, John O'Neill had no aspirations to literary success or political prominence. And if John Kerry had not a few weeks later surged to the front of the pack and in March sewn up the Democratic nomination for president, O'Neill may well have returned to his downtown Houston law practice and a comfortable life of relative obscurity. But the possibility that Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran against whom O'Neill has held a personal grudge for more than...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Navy’s chief investigator concluded yesterday that procedures were followed properly in the approval of Sen. John Kerry’s Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals, according to a Navy memo. Vice Adm. R.A. Route, the Navy’s inspector general, conducted the review of Kerry’s Vietnam-ear awards at the request of Judicial Watch, a public interest group. Judicial Watch also requested in August that the Navy open an investigation of the matter, but Route said in the internal memo that he saw no reason for a full-scale probe. "Our examination found that existing documentation regarding the Silver Star,...

HOW CAN IT be that the Kerry campaign does not understand that the theme of Bush's "draft avoidance" is a nonissue? Large numbers of men who were of draft age during the Vietnam War (today's fiftysomethings) were anti-war, attended college, were left of center in their politics, and avoided going into the draft one way or another. Most applied for and received college deferments (Dick Cheney got several). Another favored method of avoiding the draft was by joining the National Guard. Still others fled to Canada or went to Europe for a wanderjahr or two. Those people don't care about...

Washington, DC, Sep. 17 (UPI) -- Sen. John Kerry's truthfulness on discarding his war medals to protest the Vietnam conflict was targeted Friday by anti-Kerry veterans. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the 527 advocacy group made up of Kerry's former Navy colleagues in Vietnam, said Kerry's conflicting accounts make him unrealiable and that the act itself was a betrayal of veterans and his country. "When John Kerry threw his medals away, he betrayed his fellow veterans, he betrayed his country, and he betrayed every American our armed forces have fought to protect, retired Adm. Roy Hoffmann, founder of the group...

IT looks like George W. Bush. But by god it's unpredictable. The US presidential election on November2 now involves so many independent variables that our Washington embassy won't yet predict the result, although picking election results is one of the key analytical tasks for Australian embassies. The Howard Government dearly wants Bush to be re-elected. On the other hand, Mark Latham would love to start life as prime minister without all the scar tissue he has personally built up with the Bush administration, so he would prefer John Kerry. Australian analysts are saying they don't expect radical changes in US...

Who would have thought that this year's presidential campaign might turn out to be more of a referendum on John Kerry than on President Bush? Who would have thought the campaign would be focusing more on the Vietnam War than on the Iraq war? Who would have thought Kerry would base so much of his convention appeal on four months of service in Vietnam and still be unable to respond to questions raised by Swift boat vets known for years to have been angered by his criticisms of the war they fought together? Who would have thought that Kerry, vulnerable...

TO THE EDITOR: Watching John Kerry's acceptance speech on television, I came to the conclusion that it was the most fundamentally dishonest act that I had ever witnessed. The basic assumption of his speech was that the majority of the American people would not know about his actions after returning early from Vietnam or the fact that he had voted against every defense measure and weapons system that we now depend on in our war against terrorism. However, the most sickening factor to me was that he cloaked himself in a false mantle of patriotism and love for our flag....

Are they self-destructive? This week Democrats will hit the airwaves to continue questioning President Bush's National Guard duty. Their claim: Bush has a pattern of lying about his military service. Is it any wonder John Kerry's poll numbers have plummeted. Ignoring former President Clinton's advice to avoid miring in Vietnam, the Kerry camp apparently believes attacking Bush on what is a non-starter with voters is the best way to counter continued questions about the veracity of Kerry's war time claims and post-war activities. But this tact only reminds voters of the accusations made by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and,...

It has been clear for some years that the Democratic Party has no pension for truth, and a visibly growing desperation for power. But the American people are witnessing an unbridled Evil within that Party today that is unprecedented, and that’s what makes the blood boil in good old America loving Democrats like Zell Miller. The DNC thought they could get away with running our nations most liberal senator as a war time Presidential candidate on the basis of his four months in Vietnam, until his fellow soldiers came out of the woodwork challenging his self appointed hero status. Then...

FORT WORTH, Texas - (KRT) - Think you've got a right to know the names of the people paying for attack ads in a local congressional race? Curious what the Sustainable World Corp. is and why it cares who the next U.S. president is? Good luck. These mysteries and plenty more are brought to you despite campaign finance reform. This is the first presidential election since Congress tried to limit the influence of big contributors. While reformers can point to some successes, the highly touted effort has done little to tie the hands of wealthy donors, said Southern Methodist University...

WASHINGTON - Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an advocacy group that jolted the presidential race with commercials questioning Sen. John Kerry's military service, said it has raised $6.7 million in a windfall brought about by the group's high profile in recent weeks. Several of the largest donors are longtime supporters of President Bush, according to a financial disclosure report filed on Friday with the Federal Election Commission. The largest contributor was T. Boone Pickens, a famous Texas oilman and longtime Republican supporter who was a major political backer of Bush's father, who contributed $500,000 to the swift boat group. Aubrey...

....................The financial report "proves without a doubt that we have received genuine grass-roots support for our message and, more importantly, touched off a national debate concerning John Kerry's character and leadership ability as a potential commander in chief," said Adm. Roy Hoffmann, founder of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In television commercials, the accuracy of which has been undermined in newspaper articles and disputed by the Kerry campaign, the swift boat group has challenged Kerry's service in Vietnam and the medals he received there. The swift boat anti-Kerry campaign began just over a month ago with a relatively modest $500,000...

“It’s the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place.” Those words from Senator Kerry don’t date back some 30 years to his anti-war protesting days. They weren’t uttered at an anti-American rally, and they’re not in reference to Vietnam. Those words from John Kerry date back to last Monday while campaigning in Pennsylvania and they’re in reference to the Iraq War. The former New York City mayor was right. Senator Kerry still has time to change his position on the war a few more times before the election. With the left-wing media reporting hard on the death...

WASHINGTON - When Vietnam veterans rally on Capitol Hill against Sen. John Kerry's antiwar activities this weekend, John Tabarrini of Moreno Valley will be among them. "He testified that we were all basically war criminals," said Tabarrini, who served in the air wing of the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam from 1972 to 1973. "And I have a problem with that." Kerry testified before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing after returning home from Vietnam. He told the panel that U.S. soldiers had been involved in a series of atrocities during the war, including rape and the random killing of...

If President Bush is re-elected, he needs to make Glenn Reynolds his new attorney general. He is a distinguished law professor at UT, the respected author of numerous books and law review articles, and an expert on hot-button issues like nanotechnology. Unlike John Ashcroft, his particular interests are individual liberty in an age of advanced technology. That alone makes him my candidate. But Reynolds also hosts a web log called Instapundit that’s been called The New York Times of the blogosphere. In addition to original reporting and commentary, Instapundit is also the traffic cop for hundreds of sites that plug...

Local readers on both sides of the political spectrum want to check out "Unfit for Command." Phil Pons of Newport News ordered his copy early, so he was one of the lucky ones. ............Pons pre-ordered his copy through Beck & Stein Books, a locally owned Port Warwick shop that does not ordinarily stock books with an inflammatory political tone. Because Pons ordered early - and perhaps because the shop had requested only one copy - Beck & Stein received his book on its Aug. 15 release date. Local readers who had reserved copies through the larger chain stores had to...

.....In the early 1970s Kerry spoke out vigorously and in unequivocal terms against his government's involvement in the Vietnam War. And his record as a United States Senator has consistently reflected his mistrust of both the U.S. military and the foreign policy of his country. Kerry's inability to see the larger picture, to understand that the United States was, during the 1960s and '70s and beyond, in the throes of a global struggle against the tyrannical and dictatorial foe that international communism had become to the interests of freedom and democracy . . . this blind spot in Kerry's vision...

Vladimir Bukovsky, the great anti-Soviet dissident, once reproved me for quoting the old joke about the two main official Soviet newspapers: "There's no truth in Pravda [Truth] and no news in Izvestia [News.]" He pointed out that you could learn a great deal of truthful news from both papers if you read them with proper care. In particular, they often denounced "anti-Soviet lies." These lies had never previously been reported by them. Nor were they lies. And their exposure as such was the first that readers had been told of them. By reading the denunciation carefully, however, intelligent readers could...

Since February I have been ranting that the Veteran community would eventually, inevitably, become the prime contributor to the destruction of the John Kerry campaign. For months, I have been the Lone Ranger and viewed as a moderately amusing gadfly. Guess what? I was right in February, and March, and April, and May. I was right in June, July, and August…and despite what smarter, more insightful and ‘connected’ pundits maintain, Kerry is TOAST! In March I wrote, “ Friends and foes in the punditry class have been pontificating ad nauseam, manipulating a kaleidoscope of factoids and data to support whatever...

In 1971, I awakened after three days of unconsciousness aboard a hospital ship off the coast of Vietnam. I could not see, my jaws were wired shut, and my left cheekbone was missing, a gaping hole in its place. Later, while still in that condition at St. Albans Naval Hospital, one of my earliest recollections was hearing of John Kerry's testimony before Congress. I remember lying there, in disbelief, as I learned how Kerry told the world that I served in an Army reminiscent of Genghis Khan's; that officers like me routinely let their men plunder villages and rape villagers...

Bush/Cheney Lead Kerry/Edwards 54 to 43 Percent; in a Three-Way Trial Heat, Bush/Cheney Receive 13-Point Margin Bounce Bush Approval Rating Rises to 52 Percent; First Time Above 50 Since January; Majority (53%) Wants to See Him Re-Elected-Highest Since May 2003 27 Percent of Registered Voters Think Bush/Cheney Campaign Is Behind Swift Boat Ads NEW YORK, Sept. 4 /PRNewswire NEW YORK, Sept. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Immediately following the Republican National Convention in New York, the latest Newsweek Poll shows that, in a two-way presidential trial heat, the Bush/Cheney ticket would win over a Kerry/Edwards ticket by 54 percent vs. 43 percent...

EDITOR’S NOTE: The letter to the editor from Roland Gauvin of Cumberland, which ran Friday on Page B-2 headlined Local vet knows how Kerry feels, prompted this sharp response from another Vietnam veteran. Mr. Gauvin, in 1969, a year after I graduated, I received my draft notice but I did not consider it a dilemma. My country did not draft me for my opinions on a war, it drafted me for my service. I studied history all through high school, and no war is popular but it is the reality of living in a world full of people who hate...

WASHINGTON - Two former Vietnam prisoners of war who appear in ads attacking Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) were appointed by the Bush administration to a panel advising the Department of Veterans Affairs (news - web sites). The former POWs in the ad, Kenneth Cordier and Paul Galanti, serve on the VA's 12-member Former POW Advisory Committee. VA Secretary Anthony Principi appointed Cordier in 2002 and Galanti in 2003. Cordier said the VA panel has nothing to do with the Bush campaign or the anti-Kerry group. "It's totally apolitical, and we meet twice a year to...

Think you're getting unbiased, balanced coverage of politics? Or is there a double standard in the way the media treat Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives? My recent visit to the center of a media storm suggests there is. Consider this: A $500,000 ad buy made by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth brings searing media scrutiny and "proof" of illegal coordination based on a lawyer (me) representing both the Bush-Cheney campaign and the Swift Boat Veterans; on an accountant working for Tom DeLay's political action committee; and on a $200,000 contributor to the group who is not a major donor...

NOTE: John Kerry refuses to sign DD Form 180 or to release his journals, necessary to get at the truth of open questions. The American people deserve the truth. When will the press demand it of Mr. Kerry? I've had many requests for the transcript of my interview with Terry McAuliffe from yesterday, so I've posted it below: HEWITT: Sitting across from me Terry McAuliffe. Strike me dead. It’s so good to see you here Mr. Chairman. It’s good to have you at the Democratic National Convention and at the Republican National Convention MCAULIFFE: Who would have thought that I’d...

NEW YORK — So, there's this guy with a monkey on his shoulder walks into a voting booth. . . No, wait, that's not how it goes. Try this: A Republican, a Democrat and Ralph Nader are out in a rowboat and . . . no, no, that's not it either. But, hey, keep reading because political humor does work. And that helps explain the Internet websites popping up over the past week to spoof what have already become the most notorious political attack ads of this year's presidential race, those featuring the Republican-backed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. While...