It was generally acknowledged that the ad campaign having the greatest impact on the 2004 U.S. presidential election was that run by the political action group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The group, which counted 275 Vietnam War veterans among its ranks, strongly opposed Senator John Kerry's presidential bid, charging him with being unfit to lead America as its commander in chief. To that end they created, with the help of the Virginia-based advertising agency Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, a series of damning television ads calling into question Kerry's war record, the medals he had been awarded, and even his patriotism. The attacks were direct, personal, and highly effective.
Over the course of six months, from May through October 2004, the Swift Boat Veterans, led by fellow Vietnam veteran John O'Neill, raised $6.7 million, all but $800,000 of which was spent producing and airing its television spots. The ads were simple in design and clear in purpose. Each featured a number of real veterans, all members of the Swift Boat Veterans organization, explaining in their own words why they felt that Kerry was ill-equipped to be president. In one ad the veterans repeatedly used words and phrases such as "not been honest," "lied," "lying," "dishonored," "cannot be trusted," and "betrayed" in reference to Kerry. While most major news outlets debunked or refuted the claims of the Swift Boat Veterans, and although only a very few of their ranks had ever actually served with Kerry in combat, their message was played and replayed throughout the national media, garnering them far more exposure than their limited budget ever could have allowed. Indeed, this was part of their overall strategy.
Regardless of the accuracy of their claims, or perhaps because of their inflammatory nature, the Swift Boat Veterans were successful in casting doubt on one of the cornerstones of Kerry's campaign: his war record. …
… Soon after Kerry returned to the United States, however, he became vocal in his opposition to the war. Despite having served in Vietnam—or perhaps because of what he had witnessed there—he came to feel that the war was both immoral and unwinnable. After meeting with a group of Vietnam veterans in early 1971 to hear their eyewitness accounts firsthand, Kerry testified in April of that year before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as an outspoken member of Vietnam Veterans against the War. His testimony detailed atrocities, war crimes and violations of the Geneva Convention that had taken place during the conflict. Many veterans felt that Kerry was betraying and dishonoring them by making sweeping accusations about the conduct of soldiers in the field. In truth, Kerry's primary goal was not to denigrate the actions of his fellow soldiers but rather to condemn those of higher rank who, he felt, either sanctioned or turned a blind eye to crimes being committed against the civilians of Vietnam. U.S. soldiers, Kerry testified, "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, cut off limbs, [and] randomly shot at civilians." He claimed that these acts "were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."
…
In order to differentiate himself from President Bush, who served in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War but was never called up for active duty, Senator Kerry made his Vietnam service and decorated heroism a cornerstone of his political campaign. He drew as much attention as he could to his wartime conduct, often appearing with fellow veterans at campaign stops and even saluting the audience as he walked onstage at the Democratic National Convention. Unfortunately for Kerry, this served to make the attack of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth on his honor and character all the more potent. By casting doubt on Kerry's war record and by bringing attention to his own antiwar protests in the early 1970s, the Swift Boat Veterans successfully targeted those Kerry supporters for whom his war record and numerous medals were decisive factors in their support (Kolstad 1-3).
Work cited:
Kolstad, Jonathan. “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.” Encyclopedia.com. Net. https://www.encyclopedia.com/marketing/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/swift-boat-veterans-truth
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In 2004, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth started out on the margins of the presidential race. In an era of Old Media domination, they might have stayed there. When the group's founders held a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington on May 4, there was nothing in the next day's Washington Post, and the episode got scant attention elsewhere. A conservative website, FreeRepublic.com, however, covered the news conference and listed the fax numbers of Establishment news organizations, urging readers to send missives demanding to know why they were "blacking out" the event. A day later, the Post and New York Times carried short stories inside the paper. The Post report included the Kerry campaign's response that the Swift Boat Veterans was a "politically motivated organization with close ties to the Bush administration."
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was organized by Vietnam veterans who profoundly resented Kerry's role in the antiwar movement. … The group was funded and promoted by prominent Republicans, several of whom had ties to both President Bush and Karl Rove, though no evidence of a coordinated effort ever emerged.
As it happened, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth need not have worried about the amount of coverage they would receive, in either the New Media or the Old. And the spasm of publicity would come at the worst possible time for Kerry. On July 28, one day before Kerry formally accepted the Democratic nomination at the party's national convention in Boston, [Matt] Drudge touted the imminent release of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. On the morning of Drudge's report, the book was ranked at #1,318 on Amazon.com. The next day it had jumped to #2, and within a couple of days it hit #1.
The book, published by the conservative Regnery Publishing, alleged that key elements of Kerry's account of his Vietnam service were false. Most dramatically, it claimed that Kerry's Bronze Star for heroic service, earned on March 13, 1969, was based on fraud. The group also questioned other aspects of Kerry's versions of his tour of duty and his involvement with the antiwar movement.
Beyond the book, the Swift Boaters started with relatively modest purchases of television advertising time. But their sophisticated political advisers knew that cable TV, talk radio, and, eventually, the Old Media would pick up on the ads themselves as controversial content, and give them the equivalent of millions of dollars in free coverage. This, of course, promoted their message and drove up awareness of their cause, traffic to their website, and donations to their coffers. In the end, the group was able to purchase additional millions' worth of television ads. Democratic polling showed widespread awareness of the group's message, even in places where the advertisements never aired. The group's work also lit up the blogosphere and talk radio for weeks, giving the Old Media another hook in covering the coverage of the story.
The Swift Boaters pointed out authentic flaws and contradictions in some of Kerry's assertions about his war service and protest activity. But their most sensational claims were either unsupported by evidence or contradicted by independent journalistic inquiries. This nevertheless did nothing to diminish the group's significance in the 2004 campaign: It inflicted crippling damage on Kerry. Many of his strategists in retrospect regard the Swift Boat Veterans as the single biggest reason he is not president today. …
…
One reason the controversy moved from the margins to front-and-center was that Bush's reelection team -- which had been watching the story with delight -- helped push it there. While there is no evidence that the Bush campaign orchestrated the group's allegations, surrogates gave the charges respectable validation (Halperin and Harris 24-25).
Work cited:
Halperin, Mark and Harris, John F., Excerpts from The Way to Win and the ABC internet article “ Political Pundits on How to Win the White House.” ABC News, October 30, 2006. Web. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Books/story?id=2517449&page=1
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Early in September 2004 our Florence Area Democratic Club President, Betty Crooks, persuaded Jim Rassmann to speak about his experiences with John Kerry during the Vietnam War and his impressions of the presidential campaigns that Kerry and George Bush were waging. Rassmann was and remains a resident of Dunes City, nine miles south of Florence. Standing in the back of the room, I (Harold Titus, secretary of the Democratic Club) videotaped his presentation. I noticed while doing so that there appeared to be no press coverage. The next morning I phoned the local newspaper, the Siuslaw News, to ask if they had had a reporter at the event. No, they had not. The person they had assigned to cover the event had been unable to attend. “Then it falls upon us to report what was said,” I answered.
The following is what I submitted to the newspaper.
Rassmann Tells Florence Citizens the Facts
Jim Rassmann, former Special Forces officer whose life John Kerry saved in Vietnam, retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy, local resident and international orchid authority, spoke last Friday to interested citizens at the Events Center. His appearance was sponsored by the Florence Area Democratic Club.
Mr. Rassmann became involved in Senator Kerry’s campaign because of his particular concern about the forthcoming election. “I felt for the first time in my life I had to do something [politically].” A registered Republican until this year, Rassmann has always voted for the man he believed was the best presidential candidate. This year George Bush is not that candidate.
Attending orchid conferences throughout the world, Rassmann has witnessed both the apprehension and the disdain that foreigners harbor toward the president. “How have you and the U. S. gotten into this situation? You’ve got a cowboy in the White House. He is incompetent,” Rassmann has been told. In Germany, England, France, Japan, South America, everywhere that he has gone the reaction has been the same. These people are “looking to us for the same sorts of ideals that we’ve put forward ever since World War I. We are a country that stands for justice, … law, … fair play. We are a country that does not torture prisoners.” People are frightened of us. The decision we make Nov. 2 “is going to show the rest of the world what we are all about.” They will “be watching very, very closely.”
Rassmann spoke at length about his Swift Boat experiences.
In March of 1969, in charge of 30 Chinese and Vietnam nationals at the very southernmost tip of South Vietnam, Rassmann conducted military operations for thirty days with Navy Seals and several swift boat commanders, one of whom was John Kerry, with whom he would be associated for two weeks. The boats were operating at the confluence of two large rivers and the many canals running perpendicular to them. The area was largely mangrove swamp. Jungle came right to the edge of the rivers. It was a very dangerous area. “I got ambushed a lot. I got in a lot of fire fights.”
On March 13 Rassmann was on John Kerry’s boat. They discovered amongst a few huts a large cache of rice buried in the ground. He and Kerry blew up much of the cache by dropping into a hole four hand grenades. One of Rassmann’s mercenaries was blown to pieces. “John Kerry among some of his crew policed up all the parts … [He] was not an officer who was afraid to get his hands dirty."
They motored off to an adjacent area and came under fire. The boat to Kerry’s left hit a mine. Five to seven seconds later Kerry’s bow gunner had his M-16 disabled. He yelled for another weapon. Rassmann, carrying a spare, moved toward him along the narrow left side of the boat. A smaller explosion under the boat sent Rassmann sailing into the river and Kerry hurtling across the pilothouse into the bulkhead.
Rassmann went to the bottom of the river to wait for the other swift boats to pass. “As soon as I cleared the surface, I started getting fired at.” He headed under water for one of the banks. “Every time I’d come up for air I’d get shot at … They were AK’s [the enemy’s weapon, not the sailors’ M-16s] … I could hear the AK’s fire [an unmistakable sound]. Five or six breaths later I came up and here are the boats coming back towards me. I distinctly remember two boats. I didn’t see any of the others.”
Critics have claimed that other boats were ten feet to ten yards behind him.
Rassmann swam toward the center of the river. “I didn’t see any other boats other than” the two, Kerry’s boat in the lead. “I grabbed a hold of the boat’s scrabble net on the bow” and started climbing. Because of the shape of the hull, Rassmann was not able to get over the top. Under fire, Kerry ran out of the pilothouse, got down on his hands and knees, reached under the bow and pulled Rassmann aboard. “A lot of things that have been said since then about that incident,” – for instance, that the boat had not been under fire -- have “been shown to be fabrications.”
Rassmann believes that the problem that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and other Kerry critics have has nothing to do with the way Kerry performed his duty in Vietnam. It has to do with “the fact that John … spoke out against [the war and] the Nixon administration’s policies” saying that “American troops had admitted to committing atrocities.”
Certain Vietnam veterans have called Kerry a traitor. Rassmann stated, “Kerry didn’t commit treason. [He] exercised his First Amendment right to criticize our government.” Kerry said that American servicemen were committing war crimes. “He didn’t say that all of them were, like some people would have you believe. He quoted people who had talked to him and told him what they had done themselves. He talked about things he knew about firsthand. He talked about what he had done in regard to free fire zones.”
“We have books [written by] people that have spent years researching all of this and they say to a man that these acts were going on.” Kerry did what needed to be done.
Rassmann spoke about a young MP named Darby who had worked at Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad. Analogous of Kerry’s speech before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Darby had made a copy of the CD containing photographs of prisoner abuse. He slipped it, subsequently, under the door of an investigator charged with uncovering evidence of alleged abuse. Darby’s house and that of his sister have been vandalized. “Terrible things have been said about him in print … Is he a traitor? If you believe he is a traitor, you’re in the wrong country,” Rassmann forthrightly declared.
Last week a group of retired senior officers criticized the investigations about prisoner abuse thus far completed. They said that the findings are essentially “a cover-up.” They say that there is such a thing as command responsibility. About the president’s conduct of the Iraq War, Rassmann stated that “George Bush is directing things for political reasons. And it’s to our detriment. We have 140,000 people over there, and every single one of them is either our son, our daughter, our brother or sister, our father or mother, and we’re responsible for them. The only way we can effect that responsibility is when we vote on Nov. 2.”
Answering questions from individuals in the audience, Rassmann discussed the incident that earned Kerry the Silver Star. An enemy soldier had fired a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) at Kerry’s boat, wounding a crewman. Kerry drove the boat into the bank and chased after, fired at, and killed the retreating soldier. Rassmann explained that an RPG “has to go a certain distance before it becomes armed.” Acting as he did, Kerry had denied the enemy soldier that distance, thereby saving his boat and the lives of his crewmen.
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have lied about that incident, too. They “know that John Kerry lied. [But] none of them were there.”
Former Special Forces friends have told Rassmann that the Republican opposition has targeted him. “People are seeking any possible way … to discredit me.” People looking for discrepancies in what he says have followed him from presentation to presentation. He has been accused of being gay. They have claimed that “Teresa Kerry has paid me a lot of money to do this for John Kerry.” The latest accusation is that thirty-five years ago he and Kerry agreed to “scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,” in other words, that he agreed to put in for Kerry’s citation and Kerry to put in for Rassmann’s purple heart.
Rassmann is understandably angry about the lying. He is additionally upset that people are “not working harder to learn about what’s going on. … They don’t seem to care. A lot of them have made up their minds already. You talk to them and it doesn’t seem to me that they know the issues. We have so few people who read the paper anymore. They get their news from these sound bites on TV and they seem to be perfectly happy with doing that.”
At the beginning of his presentation, Rassmann said that he had toured the Events Center parking lot looking for Bush/Cheney bumper stickers. He had been hopeful that there would be “Bush fans” present for him to attempt to persuade. As this gentlemanly veteran sees it, we are “all in this boat together and the boat is the United States and it is very important that we come to some decision based on a dialogue, or a debate, or even an argument, if you will. I’d hate to be preaching to the choir.”
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The Siuslaw News printed an account of the event September 18. I was very displeased with it. I had expected my long article to be edited but not the way it was. Additions, based (I am assuming) from information provided the newspaper by other people who had attended, were made that I considered unnecessary. The newspaper was careless about its use of quotation marks. Some of the sentences – attempts to paste together statements that I wrote – were clumsy. I especially disliked the newspaper article’s ending. I told Betty Crooks that I was thankful that my name had not been attached.
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