From the Heartland, Dubya Ripped in Editorial.

[JoseCuervo]

It is not looking good for the Sitting president to get ripped for not behaving presidential....

Editorial: Bush an accomplice on ads
From the Journal Sentinel
Posted: Aug. 24, 2004
Strangely, the war in Iraq seems to have receded to the background in the 2004 presidential campaign debate, replaced by partisan quarreling over a conflict that ended more than 25 years ago: the war in Vietnam. The bickering over Vietnam, and particularly over John Kerry's military service in the conflict there, has been far uglier than the disagreements over Iraq, thanks chiefly to a scandalous television ad critical of Kerry and to President Bush's stubborn refusal to specifically repudiate it.

The ad depicts Vietnam veterans claiming that Kerry fabricated the circumstances that led the Defense Department to award him the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts during the Vietnam War. Even former Kansas GOP Sen. Bob Dole, an authentic World War II hero, descended to cheap-shot tactics over the weekend when he went so far as to suggest that the wounds that earned Kerry his Purple Hearts were not serious.

Kerry's record has been subsequently defended by several Navy veterans who served with him on Vietnam War swift boats, including most recently William Rood, now an editor at the Chicago Tribune, who said Kerry's critics were putting out "stories I know to be untrue." Jim Rassmann, another Vietnam vet who served with Kerry there, said Kerry's "courage and leadership saved my life."

Initially, the Bush campaign went into a defense crouch, denying any involvement with the veterans who appeared in the anti-Kerry ad. But this denial, hard to believe when it was first put out, proved to be untenable when it was disclosed that several of those who created and financed the group responsible for the ad have long, strong ties to Texas Republicans, including Bush.

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who spent more than five years in a prison camp in Vietnam, had urged Bush to specifically repudiate this ad. It was, and remains, the honorable course. But on Monday, when reporters repeatedly asked Bush whether he would do so, he refused. Even as he was claiming, "I can't be more plain about it," Bush dodged and weaved, saying only that he condemned all vicious issue ads put out by so-called 527 groups on both sides of the political campaign.

Let it be emphasized that at least one 527 group has been running ads containing brazen and unsupported suggestions that Bush lied about his service in the National Guard during the Vietnam era. Neither side comes to this issue with clean hands. But the ads that defame Kerry are especially repellent, because they are almost certainly based on out-and-out lies, not fact. And Bush's initial attempt to evade at least partial responsibility for this attack and his refusal Monday to specifically disown it make him an accomplice in this smear campaign.