Ammo Dump

FOR LETTERS-TO-EDITORS WRITERS
Here are today's Startrib and Pioneerpress articles on the attack ad controversy. Give 'em hell!

Start Tribune, August 24
Bush refuses to condemn anti-Kerry war ads
Scott Shepard, Cox News Service

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- With only 10 weeks before the election, President Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry continued fighting on Monday over a war that ended 30 years ago.

That is largely the result of efforts by anti-Kerry Vietnam veterans and election law loopholes that campaign finance experts bemoaned long before Bush signed the McCain-Feingold reforms into law in 2002.

One week before the start of the Republican National Convention in New York, both campaigns all but ignored the new intensity of combat in Iraq, a clash between U.S. forces and Iraqi militants near the revered Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf.

Instead, Bush and Kerry continued a weekslong argument over television ads, by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, that attack Kerry's combat heroism during the Vietnam War, a key element of the Democratic nominee's challenge of the wartime president.

Bush, who has declined for weeks to denounce the ad, told reporters at his Texas ranch Monday that the veterans group should halt the ad. But Bush did not condemn the ad, as one of his major supporters, Arizona Sen. John McCain, has requested. And Bush's call to halt the ad came after the ad was no longer on the air, though it continued to be the subject of national media attention.

"The moment of truth came and went, and the president still could not bring himself to do the right thing," Kerry running mate John Edwards said.

"Too little, too late," said Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe.

Bush aimed most of his criticism not at the Swift Boat Veterans group or its ads but at 527 groups in general, so called for the section of federal tax statute that allows independent organizations to raise and spend unrestricted amounts of "soft money" to promote the election or defeat of a presidential candidate.

"All of them," Bush said, when asked whether he was speaking specifically of the veterans' group's ad when he called for a halt to the anti-Kerry ad. "That means that ad, every other ad. Absolutely. I don't think we ought to have 527s. I can't be more plain about it, and I wish -- I hope my opponent joins me in saying -- condemning these activities of the 527s. It's -- I think they're bad for the system."

When asked whether he agreed with the veterans' groups charges -- that Kerry lied about his combat experiences and the circumstances surrounding his three Purple Hearts, Silver Star and Bronze Star -- Bush said, "I think Senator Kerry served admirably, and he ought to be proud of his record."

But one of Bush's major supporters, former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, kept the controversy going, even as the charges against Kerry continued to be challenged by eyewitnesses to his wartime heroics.

Still unconvinced

Dole, whose World War II wounds left him without use of his right arm, questioned the severity of Kerry's war wounds during a Sunday appearance on CNN: "Three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they're all superficial wounds."

On Monday, in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Dole said Kerry had telephoned him earlier in the day to complain about those remarks.

"I wasn't trying to be mean-spirited," Dole said Monday. "I was just trying to say that all these guys on the other side just can't be Republican liars. Maybe there's some truth. ..."

But on Monday, the Kerry campaign arranged a conference call with several Vietnam veterans, including Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who defended Kerry's war record.

And at a news conference in Harrisburg, Pa., Del Sandusky, who served on the Swift boat that Kerry skippered during the Vietnam War, recounted that he personally witnessed the battle action for which Kerry received all his military commendations.

"He deserved every one of his medals," Sandusky said. "I was there when he got wounded. I saw the blood. I don't care what Dole said."

Campaigning across Wisconsin Monday before Bush said the Swift boat ads should be pulled from the air, Edwards said the ads "have raised serious character questions about the president."

In a telephone interview with the Star Tribune, Edwards added: "Those false attacks against Senator Kerry are going to backfire because they are false."

Although the controversy over the ads and Kerry's Vietnam War record have tended to drown out nearly all other issues in the presidential campaign for two weeks, Edwards predicted that the issue "will fade after a few weeks. Our message is going to get through and we've still got plenty of time to get it through."
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Pioneer Press Aug. 24, page 1A
Bush faults outsiders' attack ads
He says independent groups should halt spots for both sides
BY RON HUTCHESON, Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — President Bush sought Monday to distance himself from ads attacking Sen. John Kerry's war record and suggested that voters "should be looking forward, not backward."

But he didn't directly condemn the ads, and the controversy over Kerry's service in Vietnam showed no signs of abating. Sen. John Edwards, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, accused the president of "hiding behind a front group," although the leader of the group behind the ads said it was acting independently.

"I think Senator Kerry served admirably," Bush said when asked about the ads' claim that Kerry lied about his wartime experiences. "He ought to be proud of his record. But the question is, who (is) best to lead the country in the war on terror?"

The closest the president came to a direct condemnation of the ads was when a reporter asked if "ads of this nature are unpatriotic" and "un-American."

"Yes," Bush replied, adding, "I think we ought to be debating who (is) best to be leading this country in the war against terror."

Although the president undercut the central premise of the televised attacks — that Kerry had lied about his war record — he didn't condemn any specific ad. Instead, he put the anti-Kerry ads in the same category as all other ads funded by organizations independent of the official presidential campaigns or the national political parties.

Bush urged Kerry to join him in calling for an end to political ads by independent groups known as "527s," named after the tax-code provision that fosters their creation. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush had been the target of about $63 million worth of ads by independent groups.

"I'm disappointed with all those kinds of ads," the president said at his Texas ranch. "I think they're bad for the system."

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the organization behind the Kerry ads, said it would continue criticizing the senator.

Kerry has declined to join Bush's call for a ban on ads by independent groups, but he has denounced an ad by a liberal group that attacks Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

A ban on independent ads would benefit the president more than Kerry because most 527s are against Bush, and, apart from them, his campaign and the Republican Party have a large fund-raising advantage over Kerry and the Democrats.

Knight Ridder and other news organizations that have investigated Kerry's war record have been unable to substantiate the claims in the ads made by the Massachusetts senator's critics. The documentary evidence supports Kerry's version of the events that led to his receipt of a Bronze Star and a Silver Star for valor and three Purple Hearts for war wounds.

Edwards said the president missed an opportunity to take a clear stand against the anti-Kerry ads.

"The moment of truth came and went, and the president still couldn't bring himself to do the right thing," the North Carolina senator said. "Instead of hiding behind a front group, George Bush needs to take responsibility and demand that the ad come off the air."

Roy Hoffmann, a Vietnam veteran who's leading the effort to discredit Kerry, said Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was "totally independent" of the Republican Party and the Bush re-election campaign. Wealthy Republican donors initially provided most of its funds, but since the ads have run, smaller donations have surged.

On Monday, three veterans who served with Kerry denounced the ads in a conference call arranged by Kerry's campaign. All said they had intended to stay out of the presidential race but were incensed by the ads.

"When those ads came out, when they misrepresented what I knew to be a fact, I knew I had to say something," said former Navy Lt. Jim Russell, 60, of Telluride, Colo.

Rich McCann, also 60, of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, said he had repeatedly asked Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to change a print ad that listed him as "neutral" on the question of whether Kerry was fit to serve as commander in chief.

"I said it in 1969, and I'll say it again today: If I had to go up a river and come under fire, I'd want John Kerry to watch my back," McCann said. "I think they are misrepresenting the true facts."

Hoffmann, who founded Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to discredit Kerry, said he wouldn't back off.

"Our combat experience that occurred right alongside of John Kerry earned us the right to be heard," Hoffmann said. "It was John Kerry who decided to make his military service the centerpiece of his presidential campaign."
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LIES/ CHURCH & STATE/
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/elections/article.adp?id=20040809073009990001&_ccc=3
Churches See Election Role and Spread Word on Bush
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, AOL News 08/09/04

ST. LOUIS, Aug. 8 - Susanne Jacobsmeyer, a member of the West County Assembly of God in a St. Louis suburb, voted for George W. Bush four years ago, but mostly out of loyalty as a Republican and not with much passion.

This year, Ms. Jacobsmeyer is a "team leader" in the Bush campaign's effort to turn out conservative Christian voters. "This year I am voting for him as a man of faith," she said over breakfast after an early morning service. "He has proven that he will do what is right, and he will look to God first."

Jan Klarich, her friend and another team leader, agreed. "Don't you feel it is a spiritual battle?" she asked to nods around the table.

The Bush campaign is seeking to rally conservative churches and their members to help turn out sympathetic voters this fall, and West County Assembly of God, a 600-member evangelical congregation in a Republican district of a pivotal swing state, is on the front lines of the effort.

The church's pastor, John A. Wilson, has led a prayer for the president every Sunday for 10 years. His sermons often extol the importance of opposing abortion, stem cell research and same-sex marriage, and he says he supports Mr. Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq....

... Many conservative pastors bristled at the notion that they are being enlisted by a campaign, instead describing their voter registration efforts as fulfilling biblical obligations....
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LIES/
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/elections/article.adp?id=20040805103009990002
McCain Condemns Anti-Kerry Ad -- Republican Senator Calls Attack 'Dishonest and Dishonorable'
AP 08/05/04
By RON FOURNIER, AP

WASHINGTON (Aug. 5) - 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 to condemn 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.
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PSYCH/
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_4921.shtml
Bush Using Drugs to Control Depression, Erratic Behavior
Capitol Hill Blue
By TERESA HAMPTON, Editor, Capitol Hill Blue, Jul 28, 2004

President George W. Bush is taking powerful anti-depressant drugs to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia, Capitol Hill Blue has learned.

The prescription drugs, administered by Col. Richard J. Tubb, the White House physician, can impair the President’s mental faculties and decrease both his physical capabilities and his ability to respond to a crisis, administration aides admit privately.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” says one aide. “We can’t have him flying off the handle at the slightest provocation but we also need a President who is alert mentally.”

Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters' questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay.

“Keep those motherfuckers away from me,” he screamed at an aide backstage. “If you can’t, I’ll find someone who can.”

Bush’s mental stability has become the topic of Washington whispers in recent months. Capitol Hill Blue first reported on June 4 about increasing concern among White House aides over the President’s wide mood swings and obscene outbursts.

Although GOP loyalists dismissed the reports an anti-Bush propaganda, the reports were later confirmed by prominent George Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Dr. Frank diagnosed the President as a “paranoid meglomaniac” and “untreated alcoholic” whose “lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions and pumping his hand gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad” showcase Bush’s instabilities.

“I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he did and reading what he wrote and watching him on videotape. I felt he was disturbed,” Dr. Frank said. “He fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated.”

Dr. Frank’s conclusions have been praised by other prominent psychiatrists, including Dr. James Grotstein, Professor at UCLA Medical Center, and Dr. Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University Medical School.

The doctors also worry about the wisdom of giving powerful anti-depressant drugs to a person with a history of chemical dependency. Bush is an admitted alcoholic, although he never sought treatment in a formal program, and stories about his cocaine use as a younger man haunted his campaigns for Texas governor and his first campaign for President.

“President Bush is an untreated alcoholic with paranoid and megalomaniac tendencies,” Dr. Frank adds.

The White House did not return phone calls seeking comment on this article.

Although the exact drugs Bush takes to control his depression and behavior are not known, White House sources say they are “powerful medications” designed to bring his erratic actions under control. While Col. Tubb regularly releases a synopsis of the President’s annual physical, details of the President’s health and any drugs or treatment he may receive are not public record and are guarded zealously by the secretive cadre of aides that surround the President.

Veteran White House watchers say the ability to control information about Bush’s health, either physical or mental, is similar to Ronald Reagan’s second term when aides managed to conceal the President’s increasing memory lapses that signaled the onslaught of Alzheimer’s Disease.

It also brings back memories of Richard Nixon’s final days when the soon-to-resign President wandered the halls and talked to portraits of former Presidents. The stories didn’t emerge until after Nixon left office.

One long-time GOP political consultant who – for obvious reasons – asked not to be identified said he is advising his Republican Congressional candidates to keep their distance from Bush.

“We have to face the very real possibility that the President of the United States is loony tunes,” he says sadly. “That’s not good for my candidates, it’s not good for the party and it’s certainly not good for the country.”
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PSYCH/
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_4930.shtml
Sullen, Depressed President Retreats Into Private, Paranoid World
By TERESA HAMPTON & WILLIAM D. McTAVISH, Capitol Hill Blue Staff, Jul 29, 2004

A sullen President George W. Bush is withdrawing more and more from aides and senior staff, retreating into a private, paranoid world where only the ardent loyalists are welcome.

Cabinet officials, senior White House aides and leaders on Capitol Hill complain privately about the increasing lack of “face time” with the President and campaign advisors are worried the depressed President may not be up to the rigors of a tough re-election campaign.

“Yes, there are concerns,” a top Republican political advisor admitted privately Wednesday. “The George W. Bush we see today is not the same, gregarious, back-slapping President of old. He’s moody, distrustful and withdrawn.”

Bush’s erratic behavior and sharp mood swings led White House physician Col. Richard J. Tubb to put the President on powerful anti-depressant drugs after he stormed off stage rather than answer reporters' questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay, but White House insiders say the strong, prescription medications seem to increase Bush’s sullen behavior towards those around him.

“This is a President known for his ability to charm people one-on-one,” says a staff member to House Speaker Dennis J. Hastert. “Not any more.”

White House aides say Bush has retreated into a tightly-controlled environment where only top political advisors like Karl Rove and Karen Hughes are allowed. Even White House chief of staff Andrew Card complains he has less and less access to the President.

Among cabinet members, only Attorney General John Ashcroft, a fundamentalist who shares many of Bush’s strict religious convictions, remains part of the inner circle. White House aides call Bush and Ashcroft the “Blue Brothers” because, like the mythical movie characters, “both believe they are on a mission from God.”

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, the man most responsible for waging America’s war on terrorism, complains to staff that he gets very little time with the President and gets most of his marching orders lately from Ashcroft. Some on Ridge’s staff gripe privately that Ashcroft is “Bush’s Himmler,” a reference to Heinrich Himmler, Chief of the SS (the German Police) under Adolph Hitler.

“Too many make the mistake of thinking Dick Cheney is the real power in the Bush administration,” says one senior Homeland Security aide. “They’re wrong. It’s Ashcroft and that is reason enough for all of us to be very, very afraid.”

While Vice President Cheney remains part of Bush’s tight, inner circle, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has fallen out of favor and tells his staff that “no matter what happens in November, I’m outta here.”

White House aides say the West Wing has been overtaken by a “siege mentality,” where phone calls and emails are monitored and everyone is under suspicion for “disloyalty to the crown.”

[Examples....]

Psychiatrists say the increasing paranoia at the White House is symptomatic of Bush’s “paranoid, delusional personality.”

Dr. Justin Frank, a prominent Washington psychiatrist and author of the book, Bush on the Couch, Inside the Mind of the President, says the President suffers from “character pathology,” including “grandiosity” and “megalomania” – viewing himself, America and God as interchangeable.

Dr. Frank also concludes that Bush’s years of heavy drinking “may have affected his brain function – and his decision to quit drinking without the help of a 12-step programs puts him at a far higher risk of relapse.”

Whatever the cause for the President’s increasing paranoia and delusions, veteran White House watchers see a strong parallel with another Republican president from 30 years ago.

“From what people who work there now tell me, this White House looks more and more like the White House of Richard M. Nixon,” says retired political science professor George Harleigh, who worked in the Nixon White House. “It may be 2004 but it is starting to seem more like 1974 (the year Nixon resigned in disgrace).”
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