Connections

From NYT Via Kos:

THE definitive takedown of Swift Boats for Gutter Politics, courtesy of the NYT.

A series of interviews and a review of documents show a web of connections to the Bush family, high-profile Texas political figures and President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove.

Records show that the group received the bulk of its initial financing from two men with ties to the president and his family - one a longtime political associate of Mr. Rove's, the other a trustee of the foundation for Mr. Bush's father's presidential library. A Texas publicist who once helped prepare Mr. Bush's father for his debate when he was running for vice president provided them with strategic advice. And the group's television commercial was produced by the same team that made the devastating ad mocking Michael S. Dukakis in an oversized tank helmet when he and Mr. Bush's father faced off in the 1988 presidential election.

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After documenting the group's close ties to prominant Republicans with close ties to Rove and Bush himself, the piece takes on the allegations they've spewed. Among other things, the long piece includes the outing of Jerome Corsi (courtest of Atrios) as a wingnut Freeper (who then cowardly backstabs his Freeper bretheren by apologizing and distancing himself from the site); the claims by Dr. Letson that he treated one of Kerry's wounds, when in fact, his name appears nowhere in any records; how Larry Thurlow claims Kerry's Bronze Star is fraudulent because Kerry encountered no enemy fire the night of his heroics, and so on...

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And this from Atrios:

. . .Michelle "Little LuLu" Malkin suggesting that the shrapnel in Kerry's leg might come from a self-inflicted wound . . . The shrapnel is from a grenade. While it is true that people have wounded themselves in an attempt to get out of combat, it's hard to comprehend that very many of them have chosen to wound themselves with grenades.

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Digby adds:

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The only question I have about all this is when the charges of Kerry fucking Vietnamese child hookers comes in? No ginned up GOP smear campaign is worth its salt unless it features some juicy, voyeuristic tittilation so that Ann Coulter and Lucianne Goldberg can cackle and drool, screeching "pervert, pervert" over and over again. C'mon, there just have to be some faded tapes or fuzzy pictures of something somewhere. A bastard child he abandoned in a rice paddy? A non-stop orgy on his swift boat with the band of brothers? Let's get with it people.

TBogg has something to say too:

Not-Too-Swift Boaters not looking too good and sucking George W. Bush down with them.

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Go read the article.

Unless, of course, you want to go watch the professor flail around in his dinghy shouting "Cambodia! Cambodia!".

And it wouldn't be complete without Josh Marshall:

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As we've noted, these ads are funded by the president's financial backers, put together by his political associates from Texas, and obviously meant to support his campaign.

Just one example from the Austin American-Statesman may serve to illustrate the point ...

The [Swift Boat] group was organized last spring with the assistance of Merrie Spaeth, a Republican public relations executive from Houston, who also was a public relations consultant to independent counsel Kenneth Starr during his investigation of former Democratic President Bill Clinton. Her late husband, Tex Lezar, ran for lieutenant governor of Texas on George W. Bush's GOP ticket in 1994. [my emphasis]

Obviously folks he's never had any contact with at all.

[. . .]

And they laughed at Hillary when she talked about the 'Vast Right Wing Conspiracy'.