Bush campaign lawyer advises swiftboat vets

[busch2008]

Looks like there may be a connection to the Bush Campaign after all...

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/24/veterans.group.ap/index.html

 

[insein]

I still only see a lawyer offering advise. Thats pretty flimsy.

Bush has condemned 527's in general. He has called for an end to ALL 527 groups. How can you be against that? No more Swiftvets. No more Moveon.org. No more Americans For change. No more forcing million dollar ads down people's throats with your own opinions and/or propaganda.

Campaign Finance Reform has been a disaster. This election year has proven it.

 

[Avatar4321]

Looks like there may be a connection to the Bush Campaign after all...

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/24/veterans.group.ap/index.html

Who cares? It doesnt change the fact that John Kerry refuses to deal with them. The he keeps changing his story. refuses to release his military records. etc.

 

[busch2008]

Who cares? It doesnt change the fact that John Kerry refuses to deal with them. The he keeps changing his story. refuses to release his military records. etc.

Well, the Bush campaign said they weren't connected to the group. Wouldn't that mean they are lying?

 

[Jimmyeatworld]

Well, the Bush campaign said they weren't connected to the group. Wouldn't that mean they are lying?

No.

If you read the entire article, you see that this is essentially much ado about nothing.

"Representing campaigns, parties and outside groups simultaneously is legal and allowed under the law and by the FEC, he said."

Almost at the very end of the article, we see: "Joe Sandler, a lawyer for the DNC and a group running anti-Bush ads, MoveOn.org, said there is nothing wrong with serving in both roles at once."

This is just a good example of the liberal media bias that doesn't exists. Big headline making a bold statement, tiny little whisper at the end that says it doesn't really mean anything.

 

[tpahl]

I still only see a lawyer offering advise. Thats pretty flimsy.

Bush has condemned 527's in general. He has called for an end to ALL 527 groups. How can you be against that? No more Swiftvets. No more Moveon.org. No more Americans For change. No more forcing million dollar ads down people's throats with your own opinions and/or propaganda.

Campaign Finance Reform has been a disaster. This election year has proven it.

How can I be opposed to no more ads from swiftvets, moveon, Americans for Change? Are you serious? It is VERY easy to be opposed to no more ads. Those ads are called POLITICAL SPEECH. I am very much in favor of political speech. Even if there was a grou who's plaform called for slavery to all people named travis and death to all pet cats, I would very much want this evil group to have the right to purchase ads.

In fact I have not really seen a 527 ad that I have liked yet. Yet I still support their right to say it and am going to be very upset with Kerry/Bush sign the law in their next term that will further restrict political speech in america.

 

[tim_duncan2000]

Almost at the very end of the article, we see: "Joe Sandler, a lawyer for the DNC and a group running anti-Bush ads, MoveOn.org, said there is nothing wrong with serving in both roles at once."

That says it all right there.

 

[Democrat4Bush]

I think John Kerry should be more concerned with covering his connections to 527.

http://www.blogsforbush.com/mt/images/infographicfull.jpg

 

[busch2008]

Looks like there may be a connection to the Bush Campaign after all...

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/24/veterans.group.ap/index.html

Wow, the Swiftboat fiasco is heating up. Now Cleland is at the Ranch to deliver a letter to Bush demanding he denounce the ads.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/25/cleland.swiftboat/index.html

Also, a second member of the Bush campaign has resigned over the Swiftboat fiasco: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5818431/


Bashing the opponent is one thing, but flat-out lying is not acceptable. Should have stuck with the Senate Record, there was some ammunition there. The swiftboat vets haven't stood up to hard scrutiny from the press, interesting to see how this will develop.

 

[tim_duncan2000]

Bashing the opponent is one thing, but flat-out lying is not acceptable. Should have stuck with the Senate Record, there was some ammunition there.

There also is a lot ammunition in his anti-war/anti-veteran activities that Kerry and the media gloss over when mentioning his Vietnam service. And since you say that "flat-out lying is not acceptable", then I hope you are also outraged about the lies people tell about Bush and Kerry's lies about Cambodia and atrocities.

 

[Democrat4Bush]

You didn't read all of the msnbc article did you?

Neither campaign has produced proof of coordination on the part of its rival.

Joe Sandler, a lawyer for the DNC and a group running anti-Bush ads, MoveOn.org, said there is nothing wrong with serving in both roles at once.

 

[Jimmyeatworld]

Wow, the Swiftboat fiasco is heating up. Now Cleland is at the Ranch to deliver a letter to Bush demanding he denounce the ads.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/25/cleland.swiftboat/index.html

Big whoop. Bush has twice denounced all 527 ads. Kerry has not once denounced ads that bash Bush. They can deliver all the letters the want, people are starting to see through this crap, and that's not good for Kerry.

Also, a second member of the Bush campaign has resigned over the Swiftboat fiasco: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5818431/

Then Joe Sandler needs to resign from the Kerry campaign.

Bashing the opponent is one thing, but flat-out lying is not acceptable.

I agree. So why doesn't Kerry stop?

 

[busch2008]

There also is a lot ammunition in his anti-war/anti-veteran activities that Kerry and the media gloss over when mentioning his Vietnam service. And since you say that "flat-out lying is not acceptable", then I hope you are also outraged about the lies people tell about Bush and Kerry's lies about Cambodia and atrocities.

Kerry's testimony about the atrocities in Nam are public record and have been for a long time. Do you honestly think they were lies? Do you think the things he describe didn't happen in Nam? Whether or not you agree with his decision 35 years ago to publically talk about atrocities commited by American troops is one thing, saying they are lies is another. I think, and I imagine most Americans believe, that those kind of atrocities probably occured. And he never claimed to have witnessed them personally. I think there is some validity in arguing it was in bad taste while we were fighting a war. But in the context of those times, right after the revelation of the Mai lai massacre....I don't hold it against him. Its a judgement call, an opinion, but not lies.

Cambodia, I don't know much about that issue. I guess he claimed he was in Cambodia on Christmas and it turns out he wasn't? What's the story with the Cambodia thing?

 

[5stringJeff]

Kerry's testimony about the atrocities in Nam are public record and have been for a long time. Do you honestly think they were lies? Do you think the things he describe didn't happen in Nam? Whether or not you agree with his decision 35 years ago to publically talk about atrocities commited by American troops is one thing, saying they are lies is another. I think, and I imagine most Americans believe, that those kind of atrocities probably occured. And he never claimed to have witnessed them personally. I think there is some validity in arguing it was in bad taste while we were fighting a war. But in the context of those times, right after the revelation of the Mai lai massacre....I don't hold it against him. Its a judgement call, an opinion, but not lies.

Cambodia, I don't know much about that issue. I guess he claimed he was in Cambodia on Christmas and it turns out he wasn't? What's the story with the Cambodia thing?

Read these threads for the Cambodia story. Bottom Line Up Front: Kerry lied about being in Cambodia during Christmas of 1968.

Why is this important? John Kerry's number one selling point is that he is an honorable vet, and that based on his Vietnam service, he would be a better wartime President than Bush. This ignores many things, specifically:
1. Bush has been a wartime CinC for three years, way more than Kerry's four months in Vietnam.
2. Kerry came back from the war and testified before Congress that troops in Vietnam were committing war crimes "on a daily basis" - yet now he wants to stand up and be counted with them as honorable.
3. Kerry has a long liberal voting record in the Senate, yet he refuses to talk about it.

So if John Kerry wants to make Vietnam the issue, he gets to deal with Vietnam as an issue. Personally, I can't wait until the debate turns back to current issues, like Iraq, the WOT, and the economy, because Bush will beat Kerry like a redheaded stepchild. But as long as Kerry insists on portraying himself as a Vietnam hero (a la the DNC convention speech) his record deserves the scrutiny it's getting.

 

[tim_duncan2000]

Do you honestly think they were lies? Do you think the things he describe didn't happen in Nam? Whether or not you agree with his decision 35 years ago to publically talk about atrocities commited by American troops is one thing, saying they are lies is another. I think, and I imagine most Americans believe, that those kind of atrocities probably occured.

So you agree that thousands of veterans committed atrocities, they were the rule and not the exception, and that they happened "the full awareness of officers at all levels of command" (as Kerry put it)?

Do you agree with this?

Kerry:
"We are probably angriest about all that we were told about Vietnam and about the mystical war against Communism. We found that not only was it a civil war, but that the Vietnamese were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.

Comment:
Was there something 'mystical' about the soldiers he saw dying all around him?
Did he not know that is was because Communist soldiers from the North were
trying to enslave South Vietnam ? While the partition of South Vietnam into two sections makes the charge of "civil war" problematic, the fact remains it
was clearly a war between a South Vietnam seeking freedom, against a
totalitarian aggressor from the North, something neither the Communists nor the anti-war movement ever acknowledged. As for "hard put", few realize that in every campaign, the South Vietamese Army lost over twice as many soldiers as we did. The figures for the five major offensives are as follows: (from "Vietnam in Military Statistics", a major history of the Vietnam War by Micheal Clodfelter.) It was never made know by the media, by the way, just how badly the enemy was mauled during this war.You can see that below.

1968-the Tet Offensive- U.S.- 1,829 KIA (killed in action), South Vietnam-2,788 KIA, Communist forces- 45,000 KIA
1969- U.S. -9,414 KIA, South Vietnam - 21,833 KIA, Communist forces -156,954 KIA
1970 (includes Cambodian incursion)- U.S. -4,221 KIA, South Vietnam-23,345
KIA, Communist forces- 103,638 KIA
Laos Invasion (Lam Son 719, with U.S. air support only)- SouthVietnam-3,800
KIA, Communist forces, -13,668 KIA
1972 - Easter Offensive (with U.S.air support only) -South Vietnnam 15,000
KIA, Communist forces - 83,000.

http://p208.ezboard.com/fpowmiafreedomfighters47395frm10.showMessage?topicID=149.topic

Or this?

Kerry:
"We found most people didn't even know the difference between Communism and Democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies and without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted the United States of America to leave them alone in peace. and they sided with whichever military force was present, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese, or American."

Comment:
The most devious of all the anti-war arguments. President Thieu
distributed 600,000 weapons to his people. No government in doubt of the yearning for democracy of its people would have dared do this. In the villages and the hamlets the People's Self-Defense Force had mushroomed during 1969. At years end, now organized into a combat arm and a support arm, the PSDHF had more than 1,300,000 men and women in the combat arm, backed up by another 1,735,000 people in the support arm, all ready to stop Communists.
Also, why was there no uprising against the Americans during the Tet
Offensive, or any effort to aid the invaders, and why did the South Vietnamese Army then almost double, largely due to volunteers ? How could an 'uncaring ' people put together an army of over one million, sacrifice over 250,000 soldiers in battle, and fight against Communism, alone, for two years after the Americans had left, when, even with occasional stumbling, there were great victories as in the Easter Offensive, and An Loc."The basic fact of life", said the noted American commander John Vann , "is that the overwhelming majority of the population - somewhere about 95% - prefer the government of Vietnam to a Communist government."
For two years the South Vietnamese held out, until Ted Kennedy, Kerry's
biggest supporter, led anti-war forces in Congress in cutting off all
ammunition to South Vietnam.

http://p208.ezboard.com/fpowmiafreedomfighters47395frm10.showMessage?topicID=149.topic

Granted, the author did interject his opinion in various places, but he did include a lot of factual information about the South Vietnamese forces.

And he never claimed to have witnessed them personally.

Not true. When he claimed to have committed them in addition to hearing about them, he would have been a witness as well as a participant. This is the quote I'm referring to:

"Yes, I committed the same kinds of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed," Kerry said in the sound bite. "I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages."

http://www.ntimc.org/newswire.php?story_id=670&topic=2004elections

I think there is some validity in arguing it was in bad taste while we were fighting a war.

You got that right.

 

[busch2008]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KERRY_VIETNAM_RECORDS?SITE=WDEZ&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

 

[tim_duncan2000]

I noticed that you didn't respond to my last post.

 

[insein]

How can I be opposed to no more ads from swiftvets, moveon, Americans for Change? Are you serious? It is VERY easy to be opposed to no more ads. Those ads are called POLITICAL SPEECH. I am very much in favor of political speech. Even if there was a grou who's plaform called for slavery to all people named travis and death to all pet cats, I would very much want this evil group to have the right to purchase ads.

In fact I have not really seen a 527 ad that I have liked yet. Yet I still support their right to say it and am going to be very upset with Kerry/Bush sign the law in their next term that will further restrict political speech in america.

Let me clarify tpahl. Instead of all these front groups posing as "independent" and not partisan, we will simply have each group saying what they always say and not trying to deceive the public.

 

[busch2008]

Well, you've moved beyond the scope of Kerry's senate testimony at this point, haven't you? At any rate, I don't find anything shocking in his statements. As I said before, given the context of the times, you can nitpick soundbites and statements, but I think his testimony was probably accurate. Not liking what the man says is one thing, saying that he's lying when he's clearly not lying is another. Kerry's senate testimony holds up, and has withstood the test of time. In my opinion, the Vietnam War today is widely viewed in the terms Kerry described.

 

[ajwps]

Looks like there may be a connection to the Bush Campaign after all...

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/24/veterans.group.ap/index.html

John Kerry paraded his Swift Boat 'pals' and doesn't get the connection that he is using them as his only claim to fame. Kerry doesn't hide the fact that his soft money friends are paying for their testimony.

This is a John Kerry issue point to get him sympathy with the Viet veterans whom he called killers of innocent Vietnamese.

Kerry won't release his Vietnam service records. Probably because they prove he is a real hero and doesn't want to brag about his exploits leading his men through rice paddies and fighting to save drowning friend.

There are a lot more Vietnam vets who are alive and who remember this war. Those in Viet cong prisoner camps also remember John Kerry. The Vietnam jailors played Kerry's claims that American captives were not soldiers but murderers.

Many will remember on election day too.

Kerry's poll numbers are falling even before the RNC nomination next week.

Bush is no Vietnam hero or is he right all the time but most people have to decide who is stronger and steadfast in the course to protect America.

They will decide whether its Flipper or GS Bush.

Duh.....