The Nation

Let's recap the ongoing fight between the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the John Kerry campaign.

One of the main charges of the anti-Kerry veterans group is that John Kerry lied about a March 13, 1969, episode in Vietnam which resulted in his Bronze Star. Kerry, a captain of a Swift boat, says that on that day his boat came under fire while in enemy-controlled territory and that during this battle--as bullets whizzed by--he rescued Jim Rassmann, a Special Forces officer, who had been blown overboard. The Swift Boat gang (which has been financed by Republican donors) claims that Kerry did nothing so heroic because there had been no enemy fire at the time and, moreover, that Kerry actually fled the scene.

It is often hard to sort out competing accounts of events that transpired three decades ago. But the Kerry side today received a big boost...from the military records of one of his chief accusers. The Washington Post reports on the front page that it has obtained the military records of Larry Thurlow, one of the leaders of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Thurlow was the skipper of another Swift boat in the flotilla that day, and he, too, won a Bronze Star for actions taken during the same encounter. The citation for his award says he assisted a damaged Swift boat "despite enemy bullets flying about him." The citation noted that "all units began receiving enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire from the river banks." Yet in an affidavit he signed last month, Thurlow claimed there had been no enemy fire: "I never heard a shot."

How then does Thurlow explain his own Bronze Star? He told the Post, "My personal feeling was always that I got the award for coming to the rescue of a boat that was mined. This casts doubt on anybody's award." He said he lost his Bronze Star citation twenty years ago--how convenient--and added that he now considered his award "fraudulent." He apparently forgot what the citation said but he asks us to believe his memory of that day.

Imagine the hatred Thurlow must feel for Kerry to throw out his own Bronze Star with the bath water in order to do harm to Kerry. Thurlow, a registered Republican, concedes he despises Kerry for having become a leader of the Vietnam veterans against the war. And he is sticking to his guns. In a statement released today, Thurlow said, "To this day, I can say without doubt in my mind...there was no hostile enemy fire directed at my boat or at any of the five boats operating on the river that day."

So here's the scorecard on the enemy-fire-or-no-enemy-fire question:

Kerry says there was enemy fire. So does Rassmann, a Republican, whose life Kerry saved. So do the crew members of Kerry's own Swift boat. So does Kerry's citation. So does Thurlow's citation. Both citations were signed by Lt. Commander George Elliott (a supporter of Swift Boat Veterans who has issued conflicting statements about Kerry's wartime actions).

Thurlow says there was no enemy fire. Two other Swift boat captains involved in the action that day say they do not recall enemy fire. (Another Swift boat skipper there was killed in action a month later.)

Oh, the fog of war. But the evidence--in terms of documents and eyewitness testimony--certainly is more on Kerry's side. I suppose it's possible his crewmates are all lying to help a buddy, that Rassmann is making the story more dramatic to enhance his own importance, and that somehow Kerry, as Thurlow suggests (without offering any evidence), managed to make an end run around Thurlow, the senior skipper in the flotilla, and have a phony account of the day's events accepted by higher-ups. But isn't it more likely that a few vets, still enraged at Kerry, are playing with facts in order to torpedo Kerry's presidential campaign? Perhaps they should change the name of their outfit to Swift Boat Veterans for Politically-Motivated Selective Memories.

But somehow I doubt that such a name change (official or unofficial) will stop the group from being booked on television and radio shows and from being cited by the windbags of the right (many of whom were quick to call George W. Bush's missing days as an Air National Guardsman an old and irrelevant story). The true goal of the Bush-backers brigade is not to win this battle and prove Kerry turned tail and then lied about saving a man. It is to create a battle, to raise questions (legitiamte or not) about Kerry's wartime service, to put him on the defensive.

And Kerry is fighting back. After taking hits from the Swift Boat group for weeks, he today called on Bush to denounce the Swift Boat Veterans campaign against him and said Bush "wants them to do his dirty work." Kerry declared that if Bush wants to "have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: 'Bring it on.'" Such a debate would rebound to Kerry's favor. (Will Bush brag about that tough dental exam he underwent while in Alabama?) Still, the anti-Kerry vets have succeeded in forcing a debate about an issue that Kerry and his aides viewed as a slam-dunk. The mission of Thurlow's gang was to make Kerry's war record episode seem, well, foggy. And thanks to Republican donors and Bushsymps in the media, they have done much to accomplish that mission.

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TO READ DAVID CORN'S NEW ARTICLE ON MUSICIAN STEVE EARLE, HIS NEW ALBUM, AND HIS ANTI-BUSH EFFORTS, CLICK here.

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DON'T FORGET ABOUT DAVID CORN'S BOOK, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! An UPDATED and EXPANDED EDITION is NOW AVAILABLE in PAPERBACK. The Washington Post says, "This is a fierce polemic, but it is based on an immense amount of research....[I]t does present a serious case for the president's partisans to answer....Readers can hardly avoid drawing...troubling conclusions from Corn's painstaking indictment." The Los Angeles Times says, "David Corn's The Lies of George W. Bush is as hard-hitting an attack as has been leveled against the current president. He compares what Bush said with the known facts of a given situation and ends up making a persuasive case." The Library Journal says, "Corn chronicles to devastating effect the lies, falsehoods, and misrepresentations....Corn has painstakingly unearthed a bill of particulars against the president that is as damaging as it is thorough." And GEORGE W. BUSH SAYS, "I'd like to tell you I've read [ The Lies of George W. Bush], but that'd be a lie."

For more information and a sample, go to the official website: www.bushlies.com. And check out Corn's blog on the site.

If you're a recovering Deaniac who believes that Howard Dean's presidential run inspired legions of young people to get involved in politics, leveraged the internet's power to break the grip of big money on politics, and gave the Democratic Party a much-needed spine transplant, you probably already know about the "Dean Dozens" and the newly-formed political action committee, Democracy for America. But, if you don't, here's the early report.

Since May, Dean's DFA, has endorsed more than 60 candidates running in local, state and national races--from school board member in Huntsville, Alabama, to mayor of Salt Lake County, Utah.

For years, progressives have talked about taking a page from the Right's playbook. That means many things--from building think-tanks and media outlets to pioneering new web-based communications. But if our whole is going to equal the sum of our parts, progressives need to recruit, train and support hundreds of candidates at all levels.

In his speeches off the convention floor in Boston, Dean seemed keenly aware of the Right's success in defining our politics over the past generation by building independent institutions and operational capacities. At several points, he even invoked Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition (CC) as an example of how one group had succeeded in changing the GOP by taking over the party's key operations and structures.

At "The Take Back America" conference in Boston during DNC week, a feisty Dean urged supporters to run for local office--even if just the local library board. The centerpiece of his message to progressives: Let's put aside our small differences and take back our party. Or, as Dean said---picking up on what the late Senator Paul Wellstone told us: It's time to strengthen the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party."

Toward that goal, Dean and "Democracy for America"--working with savvy progressive groups such as Progressive Majority (PM), and 21st Century Democrats--are committed to giving back power to citizens, and finding and supporting the next generation of grassroots leaders.

DFA supports candidates who are "socially progressive" but also "fiscally responsible." Some of its more than 60 candidates across the country include Suzanne Williams, running for a seat in the Colorado State Senate, Eddgra Fallin, running for the Huntsville, Alabama, school board, and Mary Jo Kilroy running for reelection as Franklin County, Ohio Commissioner. "They probably won't all win," says a key supporter of Democracy for America, "But the point is that they are almost all new to the political process and they will win eventually."

In fact, several Dean Dozen candidates have already scored victories:

* In Georgia, Judge Gail Tusan fought back a conservative onslaught and won re-election in July.

* Following her support of equal rights for gay and lesbian couples, State Representative Alisha Thomas Morgan was challenged in a primary, and won with 87 percent of the vote.

* In North Carolina, Debra Sasser won her place on the Wake Country District Court general election ballot and State Senate candidate Julia Boseman won the Democratic primary for the 9th District.

* In Missouri, http://www.maria2004.com/index.html "> Maria Chappelle-Nadal won her closely fought primary to become the Democratic nominee for the 72nd State House District.

The latest Dean Dozen list includes three candidates for state representative in Hawaii--"running to unseat ultra-conservative Republican incumbents;" a candidate for the Colorado state senate and one running for the state house in Connecticut.

If you're an interested candidate, go to the DFA website for information. A " candidate questionnaire" can be filled out on the site. (Among the questions: "What role will grassroots organizing play in your campaign?") Some candidates receive DFA's endorsement because they are courageous enough to challenge conservative incumbents; others get the nod because of their deep community support, internet savvy, labor ties or links to grassroots organizations.

As Gloria Totten, veteran political organizer and Progressive Majority's director, put it, "The time is right for all the new organizing that is happening. George W. Bush and his wrong-headed policies have galvanized us." But, more importantly, she says, "There is an emerging leadership among progressives that is not willing to continue to be right on the issues and lose elections."

One of the best ways to give muscle to the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, empower citizens, and build a politics of passion and principle--in November and beyond--is by recruiting progressives to take back power--from school boards to Capitol Hill. Howard Dean's "Democracy for America" is one of the key groups doing just that. Click here to learn more about DFA's efforts.

With the stakes so high, this election may well bring a massive surge in voter registration. Sadly, the potential for widespread voter disenfranchisement due to incompetence, fraud and outright intimidation is as high as it was in 2000.

Lessons were learned in the debacle of "Selection 2000," but government has done little to reform the process. In addition to the problems associated with butterfly ballots and "hanging chads," as many as three million Americans were disenfranchised by so-called voter registration "glitches." Applicants never got onto voting rolls; Voters were sent to the wrong polling places; some were given faulty information about ID requirements.

And, although these problems still haven't been corrected three months before the presidential election, there's hope because of the America's Families United Voter Protection Project (AFUVPP), one of several good organizations fighting effectively to avert another 2000 fiasco.

AFUVPP says that monumental roadblocks to voter registration and a clean election remain, including the failures of government agencies to process voter registration forms properly; purges of voters from the rolls; voters appearing at the wrong polling place by mistake; improper and confusing ID requirements; intimidation of voters, and problems with ballots and voting systems. Concrete examples abound: in St. Louis, Missouri, election officials told voter registration workers that of 30,000 applications submitted, two-thirds had been rejected. No reasons were given; the Voter Protection Project is investigating the matter. (Missouri's rolls were wildly inaccurate in 2000, sowing chaos on Election Day.) In another state, watchdog organizations can't verify that "applicants have been placed on the roles" because --astonishingly--the state has a statute prohibiting the copying of registration forms that can be matched against the lists of voter applicants!

There's also the problem of voter intimidation. In Louisiana in 2002, fliers were posted in one African-American community urging people to vote on Tuesday, December 10th even though Election Day was Sunday, December 8th. In Texas, a group of African-American students were told that they weren't eligible to vote in the county where they attended college. Forty years after Freedom Summer, voter registration drives continue to face hostility from local law enforcement and private attempts. AFUVPP points out one voter registration office which "was recently visited by a local sheriff, who inquired into irrelevant matters such as the project's funders and employees." These are only a few of dozens of roadblocks AFUVPP is currently addressing.

These problems--as prevalent and sinister as Florida's infamous butterfly ballots--threaten a fair outcome in November's presidential election and serve to mock and menace the promise of a free and fair election. Under our current jerry-built system, local election boards often get overwhelmed and election workers are underpaid and poorly trained; in many cases applicants aren't placed on the rolls due to sheer human incompetence. The AFU's Voter Protection Project is absolutely essential to ensure that every eligible voter has access to the polls, and that every vote cast in 2004 gets counted.

The folks at the Voter Protection Project understand that they can't wait until Election Day to take action. Therefore, to fix the problems in our system, the Project has already launched a sophisticated campaign in as many as 100 counties (and approximately 20 states). The AFUVPP is monitoring registration efforts to ensure applicants get on the rolls. When problems are reported, the AFUVPP works with and watches local officials to correct the mistake, and it "re-register[s] applicants where necessary." The Project will act to clarify the ID rules and processes, to address their implementation and to educatevoters. And AFUVPP is working with "local monitoring and advocacy coalitions" and lawyers to protect voting rights for all Americans.

The AFUVPP, in conjunction with AFU's registration workers and non-partisan voting rights coordinators, is scrutinizing those states that "purge"ex-felons from the rolls to ensure that people's rights aren't violated. It is monitoring electronic touch-screen voting machines (which 30 percent of voters will use on Election Day) to prevent any tampering and ensure a credible result. And finally, armed with lawyers, poll monitors and other volunteers, the AFUVPP will provide training, guidance and legal support to international election observers in six states to guard the process on Election Day.

In a recent interview, Penda D. Hair, the director of the AFUVPP, underscored the need to "start way before the election with voter registration" to avert another 2000 election debacle. "What happened in communities of color went well beyond chads and butterfly ballots," she said, adding that there was "suppression and lost votes," which had a "ripple effect" that undermined people's confidence in the result. Working with state and local leaders and organizations like ACORN and US Action, the AFUVPP is pleased "to have so many allies" in this broad-based civil rights struggle, but it also understands the hard slog ahead.

The NAACP's Julian Bond and People for the American Way's Ralph Neas recently warned: "The bloody days of violence and retribution following the Civil War and Reconstruction are gone. The poll taxes, literacy tests and physical violence of the Jim Crow era have disappeared. Today, more subtle, cynical and creative tactics have taken their place."

If you want to assist the AFUVPP in the fight against voter disenfranchisement, click here and see how you can make a difference. In 2004, the true lessons of the 2000 debacle--beyond butterflies and "chads" must not be forgotten. At stake, isn't simply our choice for America's next president, but also our faith in our nation's democracy.

[UPDATE: Most Democrats are now saying they will not raise a fuss over the Porter Goss nomination. For yet another reason why Goss is the wrong guy to head the CIA--in addition to the reasons detailed below-- click here....And the reasons why Goss should not get the job keep mounting. For an update to this update, click here.]

In a recent posting at www.davidcorn.com, I noted one big strike against Representative Porter Goss, whom George W. Bush has nominated to be CIA chief. Last year when the House intelligence committee, which he chaired, critiqued the prewar intelligence on Iraq, Goss, a Republican, joined Representative Jane Harman, the senior Democrat on the panel, in blasting the collection efforts of the intelligence community. But Goss, disagreeing with Harman, would not go so far as to assail the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq produced by the CIA and other intelligence agencies in October 2002. This NIE had errantly claimed that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and a reconstituted nuclear weapons program (and Bush subsequently overstated the overstatements of the NIE). Goss's reluctance to denounce the NIE stands in sharp contrast to the recent Senate intelligence committee report, which harshly concluded that "most of the major key judgments" in the NIE "either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting. A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence."

Goss's unwillingness to criticize one of the most flawed NIEs in the history of the US intelligence community is troubling. And as one of the key intelligence policymakers of the last decade, he shares the blame for the recent failures of the CIA and the other intelligence agencies. But also troubling is his partisan record. Several times in recent months he has attacked Senator John Kerry's record on national security. For instance, he co-wrote an op-ed titled "Need Intelligence? Don't Ask John Kerry." It is certainly no big deal for sitting GOP member of the House to throw brickbats at the Democratic presidential nominee. But it seems as if Goss has allowed partisan concerns to interfere with his obligations as one of the few legislators who oversee the intelligence world for the rest of us. He blocked a House investigation into the embarrassing prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib. He also said no to an investigation of the dealings between the Bush administration and Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, who has been accused of leaking US secrets to Iran and whose Iraqi National Congress provided false information about Iraq's WMDs. "I would say," Goss remarked, "that the oversight has worked well in matters relating to Mr. Chalabi."

These decisions indicate Goss is sometimes willing to put partisan needs ahead of national security obligations. And the best evidence to back up that charge is an interview he granted to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune last October. The subject was the administration leak that identified the wife of former ambassador Joe Wilson as a CIA officer. Goss dismissed the Wilson affair as mainly a political matter that did not warrant the attention of his intelligence committee. "I would say there's a much larger dose of partisan politics going on right now than there is worry about national security," he told the newspaper. And he characterized the leak as "inadvertent."

But at this point, he had no evidence to back up his claim that the leak had been accidental. The leak--which was published in the July 14 column of Robert Novak--harmed the career and operations of Valerie Wilson (aka Valerie Plame), who worked in the important field of weapons counterproliferation. That is, the leak, to an unknown degree, undermined CIA efforts to track and block the movement of weapons of mass destruction and WMD-related materials.

CIA officers were outraged by the leak. And the CIA, by the time of Goss's interview with the Sarasota paper, had asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation. Yet Goss downplayed the seriousness of the leak, quipping to the Herald-Tribune, "Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation." He remarked that the controversy was a product of "wild and unsubstantiated allegations, which are being obviously piled on by partisan politics during an election year."

But the Wilson affair was not a matter of "wild and unsubstantiated allegations." The leak had definitely occurred. The story so far was that a CIA officer had been identified by administration officials for what appeared to be political reasons (to discredit or punish Joseph Wilson, who had accused the White House of misrepresenting part of its case for war in Iraq), that the CIA was in an uproar, and that the White House was implicated. In such a scenario, how could the chairman of the House intelligence committee not care and not be interested in discovering the full truth? Unless, of course, he was more interested in protecting the White House because it was occupied by the leader of his party.

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After you read this article, check out David Corn's WEBLOG by going to www.davidcorn.com. And if you haven't yet read David Corn's "Capital Games" column on Bush's recent joke about rich people who dodge taxes, click here.

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Goss rejected the call for an independent counsel. "I am not going to suggest there be any kind of independent counsel until it even rises to the level of coming to our committee's attention, which it hasn't risen to yet," he said. Yet the Justice Department, months later, did hand over the investigation to a quasi-independent prosecutor whom the department termed an independent counsel. And Goss told the paper that all his knowledge of the Wilson leak had come from the news media--meaning he had not bothered to make any inquiries of his own about the episode. How could he have not been curious about the leak and its consequences? He never asked anyone at the CIA whether the leak had caused damage? Or how it had affected the morale of CIA officers?

Leaks are so routine, he told the newspaper, that his committee would only investigate them if the intelligence services regarded them seriously. "You know how much time we would spend doing leaks if we did nothing but leaks?" he said. "That's all we'd do. There's a leak every day in the paper--every single day--of some type or another." But the CIA had considered this leak serious and had requested a criminal probe. Moreover, Goss acknowledged he had taken no steps to determine whether this leak was an important issue for the CIA.

If Goss could not see the difference between the Wilson leak--which was possibly a felony violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act--and the usual leaks that appear in the media and if he was unconcerned about administration officials blowing the cover of a CIA officer engaged in some of the agency's most important work, then he does not deserve easy confirmation--or confirmation at all--as CIA director. After the MIA WMD scandal--in which the CIA not only blew the call but failed to inform Bush that he was exaggerating the intelligence--it is essential that the CIA be led by a person who does not play politics with national security and who does not allow political considerations to color his actions. In Washington, it may be hard to find someone who meets that qualification. With Goss's attitude toward the Wilson leak, he sure doesn't pass that test.

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DON'T FORGET ABOUT DAVID CORN'S BOOK, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! An UPDATED and EXPANDED EDITION is NOW AVAILABLE in PAPERBACK. The Washington Post says, "This is a fierce polemic, but it is based on an immense amount of research....[I]t does present a serious case for the president's partisans to answer....Readers can hardly avoid drawing...troubling conclusions from Corn's painstaking indictment." The Los Angeles Times says, "David Corn's The Lies of George W. Bush is as hard-hitting an attack as has been leveled against the current president. He compares what Bush said with the known facts of a given situation and ends up making a persuasive case." The Library Journal says, "Corn chronicles to devastating effect the lies, falsehoods, and misrepresentations....Corn has painstakingly unearthed a bill of particulars against the president that is as damaging as it is thorough." And GEORGE W. BUSH SAYS, "I'd like to tell you I've read [ The Lies of George W. Bush], but that'd be a lie."

For more information and a sample, go to the official website: www.bushlies.com. And check out Corn's blog on the site.