re: #63 HappyWarrior

The thing that has always angered me about the Swift Boat vets that attacked Kerry is many of them had in fact previously spoke highly of him as well as the men who served directly with Kerry being ignored. Kerry was and is a hero.

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These claims caused tremendous controversy during the election, particularly because most of the organization’s members had not been in a place to assess Kerry, while most of the Vietnam veterans who had served with him supported Kerry’s version of events.

en.wikipedia.org

The whole thing was an Astroturf campaign to smear a combat veteran (because that’s what conservatives do):

SBVT characterized itself as a non-partisan group both in the legal sense and in spirit, yet several prominent individuals who assisted SBVT also have had close ties to the Republican Party. According to information released by the IRS on February 22, 2005, more than half of the group’s reported contributions came from just three sources, all prominent Texas Republican donors: Houston builder Bob J. Perry, a longtime supporter of George W. Bush, donated $4.45 million, Harold Simmons’ Contrans donated $3 million, and T. Boone Pickens, Jr. donated $2 million. Other major contributors included Bush fundraiser Carl Lindner ($300,000), Robert Lindner ($260,000), GOP contributor Aubrey McClendon ($250,000), George Matthews Jr. ($250,000), and Crow Holdings ($100,000).

(more on this not-for-profit “non-partisan” 527 group)