Mound City

It seems that the lawyer who was doing double duty working for the Bush campaign as well as the Swift Boat Veterans groups has decidede to quit the Bush campaign. There were of course parting shots about a double standard, but the repeated Republican denials of connections between the Bush campaign and various GOP 527 groups (mainly the SBVT group, which has launched a now completely discredited smear campaign against John Kerry) prompted a bit of investigation.

The great amount of coverage of this issue stems, perhaps, most from the nature of the attacks on Kerry. While the mainstream media was slow to start looking it quickly became painfully obvious that the individuals quoted in the SBVT ads were at best twisting the truth, but most likely lying.

One of the other factors in this issue is that this is a type of attack that has been seen before from the Bush campaign. In 2000, a shadowy group with ties to Bush and his campaign (bankrolled by prominent Republican billionaire from Texas, Sam Wyly) went after Sen. John McCain, accusing him of turning his back on veterans. McCain naturally took great offense, and were this the days of Hamilton and Burr, he most likely would have challenged him to a showdown, mano-y-mano. When McCain challenged Bush on the issue in a public debate saying, "You should be ashamed," Bush's expression was one of someone who just got caught stealing from the poor box at church.

The types of tactics demonstrated by the Swifties are reprehensible and as more and more of the connections come to light, show the true character of Bush.