Kerry-Edwards Press Release - 'Smear Boat Veterans Newsletter'

[GOPAgainstGW]

Kerry-Edwards 2004 Issues 'Smear Boat Veterans Newsletter'
8/31/2004 11:38:00 AM

To: National Desk, Political Reporter
Contact: Chad Clanton or Phil Singer, 202-464-2800, both of Kerry-Edwards 2004, Web site: http://www.johnkerry.com

WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following was released today by Kerry-Edwards 2004:
Smear Boat Veterans Newsletter

The Latest on the Failed Efforts to Smear John Kerry's Military Service
August, 31, 2004 -- Volume I, Edition 2

"By refusing to specifically condemn this smear, George W. Bush is insulting the military service not only of John Kerry but all veterans who have served this nation. President Bush could stop this smear right now. Yet he still refuses to heed Senator McCain's call to specifically condemn it," said Kerry campaign spokesman, Chad Clanton.

$40 Million Memory -- Smear Boat Veteran's Fuzzy Memory Clear Up After Receiving Federal Contract From Bush Administration

Web Of Connections Grows Wider: $40 Million Contract From The Bush Administration And A "Swift
Shift In Stories" Four days ago, retired naval Rear Adm. William L. Schachte Jr. seconded accusations made by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth seeking to discredit Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry's record in Vietnam. But since then, Democrats have discovered that Schachte is also a long-standing supporter of President Bush and a lobbyist whose client FastShip Inc. recently won a $40 million grant from the federal government. According to a March 18 legal filing by Schachtes firm, Blank Rome, Schachte was one of the lobbyists working for FastShip on issues such as the effort to win funding for a new marine cargo terminal. On Feb. 2, Philadelphia-based FastShip announced that it would receive $40 million in federal funding for the project. In addition, David Norcross, Schachte's colleague in the Washington office of Blank Rome, is chairman of this week's Republican convention in New York. Records also show that Schachte gave $1,000 to Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns. (Washington Post, 8/30/04)

RNC Delegates Wear Fake Purple Hearts to Convention in an Effort to Smear John Kerry
Bush Republican Delegates Wear 'Fake Purple Hearts' To Smear Kerry.

"Convention-goers were handed bandages with purple hearts on them Monday night by a GOP delegate in a swipe at Democratic nominee John Kerry's war record. The bandages were handed out by Morton Blackwell, a longtime GOP activist from Virginia, with the message: 'It was just a self-inflicted scratch, but you see I got a Purple Heart for it.' " (AP, 8/31/04)

WEB OF CONNECTIONS CONTINUES TO GROW: - Fake Purple Heart Effort Comes Back to Karl Rove
Fake Purple Heart Organizer Trained Karl Rove. "The Democrats believe that the reason for their late close was an unusually intense and effective get-out-the-vote effort, and there is evidence that Rove agrees. Ten days after the election, Morton Blackwell, a former national executive director of the College Republicans, who had been out of touch with Rove for years, picked up the phone and heard that familiar booming voice on the other end of the line: "Morton, how does it feel to have advocated something for decades and have it come true?" What Blackwell had been advocating for decades, ever since he trained the teen-age Karl Rove to be a field organizer, was that people in politics should pay less attention to consultants, television advertising, polls, and 'message,' and more attention to the old-fashioned side of the business: registering voters, organizing volunteers, making face-to-face contact during the last days of a campaign, and getting people to the polls on Election Day. Soon, Rove had launched a project called the 72-Hour Task Force, which conducted scientific experiments in grassroots political organizing during the three days before Election Day in five geographically scattered races in 2001." (New Yorker, 5/12/03)

Karl Rove Consulted With Blackwell on Political Strategy.
"The demise of the effort of small-state Republicans to substitute sanity for insanity in the way their party selects its presidential nominee was a triumph of self-interest by their large-state counterparts with a decisive boost from a similarly self-interested George W. Bush camp. It seemed headed for the convention floor this week -- until the word was passed by way of chief Bush strategist Karl Rove to one of the plan's supporters, Morton Blackwell of Virginia, that the Bush forces didn't want the so-called Delaware plan letting small states hold primaries first and having the largest states go last." (Baltimore Sun, 7/31/00)

McCain Speaks Out Against These "Garbage" Ads -- Says Questioning Kerry's Medals Questions Everyone's Medals
McCain Says He'll Talk To The President About The Smear: "Mr. McCain's comments on Sunday night were so much more vehement than any I had heard him make before that I asked him whether he thought the president had acted sufficiently boldly on the issue of the commercials. Not yet, he said. In that case, would he bring the matter up again with Mr. Bush? "Yes, I will," he said. (NY Times, 8/31/04)

McCain Finds Swift Boat Ads "Completely Nauseating" Mr. McCain grew agitated about the television commercials sponsored by a group of Vietnam veterans who question the war record of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee, and specifically his entitlement to the medals that he won. He found the advertisements 'completely nauseating' " (New York Times, 8/31/04)

Questioning Kerry's Medals Means Questioning Everybody's Medals. "If they question Kerry's medals," he said, "they question everybody's medals. All those men who found it so hard to come home, who found so little gratitude for their sacrifices when they got here, are going to feel mistreated again. The families of the people whose names are on the monument in Washington will feel wronged, too. The painful wounds we all worked so hard to close will all be reopened. (New York Times, 8/31/04)

"We've Got To Get That Garbage Off the Air As Soon As We Can." -- John McCain (New York Times, 8/31/04)
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Paid for by Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc.
http://www.usnewswire.com/
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/© 2004 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/


* Copyright or Reprint Release in File - BRaBC04, Inc. *
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Beltway and Texas Republicans
Against Bush-Cheney ’04, Inc.
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