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McCain condemns anti-Kerry ads, calls on White House to follow suit
- RON FOURNIER, AP Political Writer
Thursday, August 5, 2004


(08-05) 10:20 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --

Republican Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, called an ad criticizing John Kerry's military service "dishonest and dishonorable" and urged the White House on Thursday tocondemn it as well.


The White House declined.

"It was the same kind of deal that was pulled on me," McCain said in an interview with The Associated Press, comparing the anti-Kerry ad to tactics in his bitter Republican primary fight with President Bush.

The 60-second ad features Vietnam veterans who accuse the Democratic presidential nominee of lying about his decorated Vietnam War record and betraying his fellow veterans by later opposing the conflict.

"When the chips were down, you could not count on John Kerry," one of the veterans, Larry Thurlow, says in the ad. Thurlow didn't serve on Kerry's swiftboat, but says he witnessed the events that led to Kerry winning a Bronze Star and the last of his three Purple Hearts. Kerry's crewmates support the candidate and call him a hero.

The ad, scheduled to air in a few markets in Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin, was produced by Stevens, Reed, Curcio and Potham, the same team that produced McCain's ads in 2000.

"I wish they hadn't done it," McCain said of his former advisers. "I don't know if they knew all the
facts."

Asked if the White House knew about the ad or helped find financing for it, McCain said, "I hope not, but I don't know. But I think the Bush campaign should specifically condemn the ad."

McCain, chairman of Bush's campaign in Arizona, later said the Bush campaign has denied any involvement and added, "I can't believe the president would pull such a cheap stunt."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan declined to condemn the ad. He did denounce the proliferation of spending by independent groups, such as the anti-Kerry veterans organization, that are playing on both sides of the political fence.

"The president thought he got rid of this unregulated soft money when he signed the bipartisan campaign finance reform into law," McClellan said. A chief sponsor of that bill, which Bush initially opposed, was McCain.

In 2000, Bush's supporters sponsored a rumor campaign against McCain in the South Carolina primary, helping Bush win the primary and the nomination. McCain's supporters have never forgiven the Bush team.

McCain said that's all in the past to him, but he's speaking out against the anti-Kerry ad because "it reopens all the old wounds of the Vietnam War, which I spent the last 35 years trying to heal."

"I deplore this kind of politics," McCain said. "I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable. As it is,
none of these individuals served on the boat (Kerry) commanded. Many of his crew have testified to his courage under fire. I think John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam. I think George Bush served honorably in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War."

Retired Adm. Roy Hoffmann, head of the Swift Boat group, said they respected McCain's "right to express his opinion and we hope he extends to us the same respect and courtesy, particularly since we served with John Kerry, we knew him well and Sen. McCain did not."

McCain himself spent more than five years in a Vietnam prisoner of war camp. A bona fide war hero, McCain, like Kerry, used his war record as the foundation of his presidential campaign.

The Kerry campaign has denounced the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, saying none of the men in the ad served on the boat that Kerry commanded. Three veterans on Kerry's boat that day -- Jim Rassmann, who says Kerry saved his life, Gene Thorson and Del Sandusky, the driver on Kerry's boat, said the group was lying.

They say Kerry was injured, and Rassmann called the group's account "pure fabrication."

Hoffmann said none of the 13 veterans in the commercial served on Kerry's boat but rather were
in other swiftboats within 50 yards of Kerry's. The group claims that there was no gunfire on the day Kerry pulled Rassmann from a muddy river in the Mekong Delta and that Kerry's arm was not wounded, as he has claimed.

weep? why??

You want the truth? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

Sorry. Jack moment. Got carried away.

Excuse me.

Boo-Frickety-Hoo!

McCain: Hanoi Hilton Jailers Used Kerry Speech Against Us

Sen. John McCain attacked a group of Vietnam veterans on Thursday for their appearance in a campaign ad condemning Sen. John Kerry for betraying his fellow soldiers, calling the commercial "dishonest and dishonorable."

But McCain himself complained about Kerry-led anti-war protests when he was released from the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" 31 years ago.

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In piece he wrote for the May 14, 1973, issue of U.S. News & World Report, the POW-turned-senator charged that testimony by Kerry and others before J. William Fulbright's Senate Foreign Relations Committee was "the most effective propaganda [my North Vietnamese captors] had to use against us."
"They used Senator Fulbright a great deal," McCain wrote - a reference to Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony that U.S. soldiers were committing war crimes in Vietnam as a matter of course.

He said Kerry political ally Sen. Ted Kennedy was "quoted again and again" by his jailers at the Hanoi Hilton.

"Clark Clifford was another [North Vietnamese] favorite," McCain told U.S. News, "right after he had been Secretary of Defense under President Johnson."

"When Ramsey Clark came over [my jailers] thought that was a great coup for their cause," he recalled. Months earlier, Sen. Kerry had appeared with Clark at the April 1971 Washington, D.C., anti-war protest that showcased his testimony before the Fulbright Committee.

"All through this period," McCain told U.S. News, his captors were "bombarding us with anti-war quotes from people in high places back in Washington. This was the most effective propaganda they had to use against us."

McCain biographer Paul Alexander chronicled the Arizona Republican's anger toward Kerry during their early careers in the Senate together.

"For many years McCain held Kerry's actions against him because, while McCain was a POW in the Hanoi Hilton, Kerry was organizing veterans back home in the U.S. to protest the war."

In his 2002 book, "Man of the People: The Life of John McCain," Alexander says that the two Vietnam vets finally reconciled in the early 1990s after having "a long - and at times emotional - conversation about Vietnam" during a mutual trip to Kuwait.

Later, Kerry sought to minimize the rift, telling Alexander: "Our differences occurred when we were kids, or at least close to being kids. It was a long time ago, and we both came back and realized that there were a lot of difficulties in the prosecution of that war."

eleltea

once again you sum it all up in a brief and to the point sentenence.

MACS(SW)

i hope i am always polite when i respond to you.

if, as has been suggested and perhaps documented, bush went awol, and that would make him still awol, that is fair game in this, who served his country during the vietnam action and who ducked out debate. for example, cheney got 3 differments. he said he had other prioroties.

i won't bother to list the other republicans who avoided service by some other techniques.