Character

Of which President Spineless Whore has none. Via WTF Is It Now?? from the Kansas City Star:

The biggest Republican campaign donor in Texas has financed a smear campaign to not only challenge Sen. John Kerry's Vietnam War heroism but also to portray him as a liar and a coward.

This is based on unsupported charges and transparently deceptive tactics. Yet President Bush has failed for days to denounce it, a decision that he knows gives the ad credibility with some poorly informed voters.

Bush talks a lot about the importance of character. This was a good test of his ability to live up to that rhetoric, and so far he has failed it. Consequently, the American public will continue to be subjected to an ad that ignores the serious issues of a presidential race.

[. . .]

A group calling itself “The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” challenges this record with shrill rhetoric but little else. In an ad that began running this month, the deceptions begin immediately with two veterans misrepresenting themselves as having served “with John Kerry.” Unlike the men at the Democratic convention, they were not on Kerry's boat.

[. . .]

(For more detail on the issue see FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan Web site that monitors political statements for factual accuracy.)

Kerry's time in Vietnam convinced him that the American involvement there was a mistake. But his decision to speak out against the war does not justify charges about “betraying the men and women he served with in Vietnam.”

Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican and a Vietnam War veteran himself, denounced the ad against Kerry in the strongest terms: “I deplore this kind of politics. I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable.”

We're still waiting to hear such words from President Bush. [my emphasis]

And this from the Philadelphia Daily News:

Here's an idea: Let's have a debate on the Vietnam-era service of John Kerry and George W. Bush. The men who served with Kerry on his swift boat can tell their stories - and then the men who served with Bush in the National Guard in Alabama can tell theirs. Oh, that's right, there isn't one person who's yet come forward to say he remembers serving with Bush.

Then we can get Jim Rassmann, the man Kerry pulled out from the river under fire (and for which action he was awarded the Bronze Star), to debate the men whom Bush saved... . Guess not.

Instead, we have the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," who have made the loathsome smear ad running in some states. They say that Kerry - and almost all his crew members - lied about absolutely everything that happened in Vietnam. There's also a companion book, published by the right-wing Regnery Press, which goes further, claiming that Kerry came close to being a traitor. [my emphasis]

[. . .]