Commentary: Swift Boaters Lie for Bush

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/m...rticle&sid=839

Commentary: Swift Boaters Lie for Bush

George Bush smeared John McCain?s Vietnam War record in 2000 and got away with it. Will this tactic work now against John Kerry?
By Gerald Rellick

John McCain, you will recall, was a Navy pilot during the Vietnam War. After his plane was shot down during a mission over North Vietnam, he was captured and spent five years in a North Vietnamese POW camp.

Despite this, McCain seldom mentioned his combat or imprisonment. Four years ago, however, during the 2000 Republican primaries, George Bush and his campaign team did decide to talk about McCain?s war experiences. This was after McCain defeated Bush in the New Hampshire primary and the Bush camp had turned desperate.

In what has to be one of the lowest blows in the history of American politics, the Bush team suggested that McCain?s incarceration as a POW had affected him mentally and made him unfit to be president.

Now, four years later, with polls showing Bush is falling behind Kerry, the Bush campaign has again turned desperate and again there are the low-life campaign tactics. The Bush sleaze machine is now zeroing in on Vietnam combat veteran John Kerry. Since a frontal attack by George Bush--a Vietnam War evader and suspected deserter from National Guard service--would be too obvious, the Bush people have turned to a group of men who, like John Kerry, also served aboard swift boats during the Vietnam War.

Calling themselves Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT), they have taken to the airways to claim that John Kerry didn?t deserve the medals he received and that he is dishonest, unreliable, etc.... But the men of SBVT had almost no firsthand experience with John Kerry during their service in Vietnam. For example, USA Today reported that ?None of the 13 men in the TV ads served on either of the two swift boats ... Kerry commanded.... Of the group?s 254 members--out of 3,500 swift boat sailors who served in Vietnam--only one served under Kerry. The rest who served on Kerry?s boats back his record.?

Jim Rassman, the Army Special Forces officer whose life John Kerry saved when Kerry?s swift boat was detonated by a mine in March 1969, and who recommended Kerry for the Silver Star for his action, has written, ?The Swift Boat Veterans [for Truth] should hang their heads in shame.? According to Rassman, ?Some of these Republican-sponsored veterans are the same ones who spoke out against [Kerry] at the behest of the Nixon administration in 1971. But this time their attacks are more vicious, their lies cut deep and are directed not just at John Kerry, but at me and each of his crewmates as well. This hate-filled ad asserts that I was not under fire; it questions my words and my Navy records. This smear campaign has been launched by people without decency....?

And it?s not with a little irony that one of the first men to come to the defense of John Kerry was John McCain. Campaigning with George Bush. no less, McCain said of a malicious TV ad by SBVT, ?I deplore this kind of politics. I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable.? McCain went on to urge Bush to repudiate the men of SBVT. But, just as he did to McCain in 2000, Bush--always the self-inflated coward--walked away from the issue to let it fester and do its dirty work.

Gerald S. Rellick, Ph.D., worked in the defense sector of the aerospace industry. He now teaches in the California Community College system.