Edwards challenges Bush on attack ads
ROANOKE, Va. – John Edwards demanded Saturday that President Bush call for television ads attacking John F. Kerry’s military service in Vietnam to be pulled because they are lies funded by Bush allies.
“This is a moment of truth for George W. Bush,” the North Carolina senator told a cheering crowd at a magnet school here, where his campaign stopped for a morning town hall meeting. “We’re going to see what kind of man he is and what kind of leader he is… . We want to hear from the president of the United States. We don’t want to hear rhetoric. We want to hear three words: ‘Stop these ads!’ “
Edwards’ comments represented what the campaign called a systematic effort to aggressively respond to charges by a Republican-backed group of veterans accusing the Massachusetts senator of inflating his military record. The Democrats’ campaign also posted an online ad comparing the attacks to ones leveled against Sen. John McCain of Arizona in his bid for the 2000 GOP nomination.
The video, “Old Tricks,” will be e-mailed to 200,000 veterans activists, posted on veterans Web sites and sent to more than 1 million Kerry supporters. “George Bush is up to his old tricks,” the video says, showing Bush and McCain at a debate in February 2000.
McCain, sitting next to Bush, says that when “fringe veterans groups” attacked him at a Bush campaign function, Bush stood by and did not say a word. He said a group of senators wrote Bush a letter that said: “Apologize. You should be ashamed.”
“I don’t know how you can understand this, George, but that really hurts,” McCain says in the video.
Kerry’s critics also are being challenged by a Chicago Tribune editor who was on the Feb. 28, 1969, mission for which Kerry received the Silver Star.
“There were three swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago – three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on February 28, 1969,” William B. Rood wrote in a 1,700-word story that appeared on the newspaper’s Web site Saturday. “One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other.”
Rood refused requests for interviews, including from his own newspaper. “But Kerry’s critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown,” he wrote. “The critics have taken pains to say they’re not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us.”
Rood said allegations that Kerry’s accomplishments were overblown are untrue and that Kerry devised an attack strategy that was praised by their superiors. The Tribune said Rood’s account was supported by military documents.
On Friday, Kerry accused Swift Boat Veterans for Truth of collaborating with the Bush campaign and asked the Federal Election Commission to force the group to withdraw the ad.
Brian Jones, a Bush campaign spokesman, said, “The president has made it repeatedly clear that he wants to see an end to all” advertising from outside groups.