It's all the rage in right-wing circles these days to claim that John Kerry's military service is being smeared because he made his service "the centerpiece of his campaign", mainly at the Democratic Convention. This is, of course, nonsense: the smear campaign now underway was in the works as far back as last year. This has nothing to do with Kerry's focus at the convention. In fact, this is classing Bush campaign strategy when facing a combat veteran. Bush's friends know the drill, and whoever it is has his service smeared.

It's worth considering, though, what Bush has made the "centerpiece of his campaign" (besides John Kerry, that is). It's rather hard to decide, as it seems to have changed from week to week. Are we "turning the corner"? Are we seeing "steady leadership in times of change"?

Come to think of it, Bush doesn't seem to have a centerpiece. He seems to be hoping that he can make the focus entirely John Kerry, then sneak into re-election when no one is noticing. George Bush is trying very hard to disappear.

However, there are a few themes showing up, despite the Bush campaign's best efforts. It would appear September 11 is going to be a big one: Bush wants everyone to focus on one speech he gave at Ground Zero, shortly after September 11. But that leads directly into the issue of fighting terrorism (or not fighting it), Iraq, lack of attention on Afghanistan, etc. 9/11 is extremely dangerous ground for Bush to tread upon.

The ol' standby, "compassion", is always there. Just how "compassionate" is he? Was he "compassionate" when he allowed toxic mercury emissions to remain at dangerous levels? Was he "compassionate" when he reworked the tax code such that the burden now falls most heavily on the middle class? How "compassionate" was it to cut Veterans benefits or not go to any soldiers' funerals, even while daring insurgents to attack our troops?

And what about his past? Bush would like very, very much to become the ghost candidate. But it won't be enough to make "John Kerry" the centerpiece of Bush's campaign. Bush can't cruise all the way to election day by beating up on Kerry. As disorganized and flip-flopping as Bush's campaign has been, it simply won't be enough to pretend that this race doesn't have an incumbent, or that the incumbent was born four years ago.

In this day and age of evil lawyers (right, GOP?), Swift Boat Veterans for Truth instigator John O'Neill gives us an example we can all appreciate. After claiming it was "impossible" for John Kerry to have ever been in Cambodia and claiming that he himself had never gotten closer than 50 miles from the boarder, a tape of O'Neill contradicting himself surfaced. In it, he said,

O'NEILL: I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water.
NIXON: In a swift boat?
O'NEILL: Yes, sir.

Of course, since being confronted with his own words, O'Neill has tried to claim (in true Republican fashion) that up is down, black is white and he never claimed he was in Cambodia.

Take a look at this exchange in an online chat at the Washington Post web site:

Dayton, Ohio: Mr. O'Neill, I recently heard a portion of the White House audio tape of your meeting with President Nixon. I heard you tell President Nixon that you had gone to Cambodia on your swift boat.

I also heard you tell a reporter recently(on tape) that you had never been in Cambodia.

Did you lie to President Nixon or did you lie to the reporter?

Have you ever been in Cambodia, and if so, when did you go and did you go more than once?

If you have never been in Cambodia, how close did you ever get to the Cambodian border (in feet or miles)?

John E. O'Neill: I lied to no one. You quote the first half of the statement but ignore the following sentence. I clearly said that I was on the Cambodian border. I was on a canal system known as Bernique's Creek located about 100 yards south of the Cambodian border from which it would have been very difficult to get into Cambodia at least from a boat.

I never went to Cambodia. Unlike the Kerry story you are defensive about I don't believe I can ever fairly be interpreted as saying anything different. John Kerry on many different occasions said that the turning point of his life was being in Cambodia illegally for Christmas Eve and Christmas in 1968. This was in a different area than I was in and close approach to Cambodia was not possible for him in that area. In fact he was more than 50 miles away. How many people invent the turning point of their life and repeat it on the senate floor, in articles and more than 50 times in 35 years?

Despite O'Neill's assertion his own words "I was in Cambodia" cannot be ever fairly interpreted as saying he was in Cambodia, his rhetoric shows a distinct flair for misleading people. He notes that he was on "Bernique's Creek" (an American nickname for the Giang Thanh river, which at one point actually serves as a boarder demarcation between Cambodia and Vietnam). But, of course, he doesn't say when this was the case, nor does he claim that he was never on any of the other waterways that American swiftboats patrolled, many of which continued into Cambodia.

Furthermore, his claim that his second sentence refuted the first is simply ludicrous. "Along the boarder" can mean on the Cambodia side of the boarder. At the time, O'Neill gave no indication on what waterway he had been travelling. That is, of course, a recent addition.

In short, O'Neill is a clever man and a proven liar. Despite his claims, he is a hard-core Republican partisan and Nixonite smear artist. Nothing he says should be taken at face value.

From the "Ironic Titles" Department:

If Kerry Can't Handle the "Swiftees," How's He Going to Handle the Terrorists?
By Debbie Daniel
August 25, 2004
I've had more people chastise me for defending George Bush. They say they should have the right to say what they want about the President and he should not be above criticism.

Oh, I get it . . . we should have the freedom to besmirch the President of the United States, but how dare anyone malign John Kerry.

Starting a partisan hit piece with such a whiney sniffle is a pretty poor way to lead into the case that it's John Kerry who can't handle the current situation.

This is beyond embarrassing.

Looks like yet another Bush campaign official is also involved with the so-called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth".

Other Bush campaign officials were quick to disavow any coordination between the groups.

"Sure, there are some key people involved with both. But, you see", the official said, "when we think about the campaign, we don't think about the Swift Boat affairs. And if we're thinking about the Swift Boat group, we refuse to think about the campaign. It's quite simple. We only think about one or the other. Never both at the same time."

Coward Watch, Day Five -- rather than do the decent thing and condemn the slanders against John Kerry's war record by surrogates, George Bush today flip-flopped on the issue of free speech. Quite in contrast to his previous statements, he now urged the "condemnation" of all political advertising by outside groups. In other words, George Bush is now against anyone not in one of the political parties buying advertising to express a political opinion. Hey, it's easier than doing the decent thing, right? You can't be too hard on the guy. He's probably not all that sure what the "decent thing" really is.

This, of course, comes on the heels of a new dishonest ad from the Swift Boat Veterans for [Bush], which takes Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony out of context and uses creatively-edited excerpts to paint Kerry as personally accusing all veterans of atrocities, as well as giving Viet Cong nasty ideas about what to do with American POW's. The ad is very misleading, but even so, I doubt its effectiveness on anyone who doesn't already believe opposing a war is evil.

It's also worth commenting on a rationalization making the right-wing rounds regarding attacking Kerry's war record: that Kerry "made his war record the centerpiece of his campaign" (I thought it was "restoring trust and credibility to the White House"), and thus he brought all these dishonest attacks upon himself. This is, of course, baloney. George Bush has a long history of using surrogates to slander and besmirch the heroism of any decorated veterans who get in his way. This is simply par for the course.

Looks like Bob Dole, like all too many Republicans, is making the mistake of assuming his party and those who it calls allies still have good, honest intentions.

"One day he's saying that we were shooting civilians, cutting off their ears, cutting off their heads, throwing away his medals or his ribbons," Dole said. "The next day he's standing there, `I want to be president because I'm a Vietnam veteran.' Maybe he should apologize to all the other 2.5 million veterans who served. He wasn't the only one in Vietnam," said Dole, whose World War II wounds left him without the use of his right arm.

Dole added: "And here's, you know, a good guy, a good friend. I respect his record. But three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they're all superficial wounds. Three Purple Hearts and you're out."

Dole should know better, and if he'd read any of the excellent reporting on this topic over the last week, he'd know that all such allegations are false.

What's worse, by his own admission, Dole's first purple heart wound was for a "sliver of metal" from a grenade he himself threw. Dole is dishonoring himself by speaking ill of another decorated combat veteran without checking the facts.

Dole, in fact, is a perfect example of why the Swift Boat smears work on some people: they hear what they want to hear, they assume "it can't all be a smear", and ignore (or don't bother to listen to) contrary facts and reason. There's nothing special about combat veterans that makes them immune to such dishonesty. And that's too bad: you end up with a good man like Dole being used to spread lies about another good man.

Of course, as Josh Marshall is now noting, it might be worthwhile to find out exactly who is using Dole -- who booked him on CNN's Late Edition today, and who gave him his talking points. This question takes on a special meaning, considering the fact that the White House vehemently denies collaboration with those who question Kerry's war record, and claims to have nothing but the "highest respect" for his actions in Vietnam.

Even as efforts continue to blame the Abu Ghraib scandal on a few bad apples, it's worth reminding ourselves that John Kerry was fighting against such things, and for the common American soldier ordered to engage in un-American, inhumane activites, more than 30 years ago:

I would like to say for the record, and also for the men sitting behind me who are also wearing the uniforms and their medals, that my sitting here is really symbolic. I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of a group of 1,000, which is a small representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at this table, they would be here and have the same kind of testimony. I would simply like to speak in general terms. I apologize if my statement is general because I received notification [only] yesterday that you would hear me, and, I am afraid, because of the injunction I was up most of the night and haven't had a great deal of chance to prepare.

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago, in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis, with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit--the emotions in the room, and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told stories that, at times, they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam,in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
-- John Kerry Senate Testimony, 1971

Note: you won't hear this entire quote in the latest Swift Boat ad. In fact, the quote they used was creatively edited to make it seem like John Kerry was accusing all veterans of engaging in atrocities, rather than relating what some other veterans had told him.

Sort of puts their claims in perspective, when they have to engage in such dishonesty to make their point, doesn't it?

Does this remind you of anything?

In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.
--John Kerry, Senate Testimony, 1971

According to the latest Harris interactive poll, 60% of respondents now believe what the government said before the Iraq war about weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda was misleading.

It's now been four days since John Kerry called George Bush out on his blatantly dishonest ads slandering Kerry's war record, and Bush still hasn't displayed the guts to discuss the subject one-on-one, preferring instead to hide behind surrogates as he once again slanders decorated veterans in his bid for power. The Swift Boat Smear Scandal ("SwiftGate"?) is taking on a life of its own, and the results don't look good for Dubya.

"Once again slanders veterans", I say? Yep. This is part of a pattern going back years. A hard-hitting new ad by the Kerry campaign demonstrates conclusively that Bush is simply up to his old dirty tricks. Every election he's demonstrated that he's willing to do anything to win, and all too frequently that includes dragging the good name of combat veterans through the mud when he himself deliberately chose to remain safely stateside during the Vietnam Conflict. Far from being a plain-spoken, basically good guy, this is an arrogant, mean rich boy who is more than happy to let his surrogates shamelessly slander good men who put their lives on the line for their country.

The Washington Post, New York Times, Associated Press, Knight-Ridder, Chicago Tribune, Cleveland Plain Dealer and others have now run stories either documenting the blatant lies told by Bush's surrogate group or featuring the accounts of men who were in Vietnam, actually serving with Kerry, who back up Kerry and the official Navy position on what happened 30 years ago. The New York Times story cited above goes further, documenting close ties between the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat smear group. "SwiftGate", indeed.

And so there's no doubt that Bush is behind the ads, a Bush campaign advisor has already resigned over his dual role in the campaign and the Swift Boat smear group. Furthermore, several collaborative ties between the Bush campaign/GOP and the smear group have turned up. Far weaker ties are frequently cited by the Bush administration as evidence for Iraq/al Qaeda links.

As Kerry says, "America can do better". We can do better than a lying coward who besmirches America by his very presence in office, and all of conservativsm by his shameless actions against Veterans -- a fact that even the Weekly Standard has now figured out.