I think OJ hit the nail on the head about the critical flaw on the "instant spin" approach to attacks. Not all attacks will stick - and responding will either waste critical resources or create attention for your opponent's attacks.

Kerry's lawyers are using the same tactic against the Club For Growth anti-Kerry commercials.

http://www.clubforgrowth.org/blog/archives/013644.php

Pretty obvious to me. The Kerry campaign is offering stations so inclined a free pass on declining the ads, while trying to intimidate those that don't.

Now if the Bush team had sent out letters like this to stations running MoveOn and ACT ads, or to theaters showing F9/11, what would the press be saying?

I think the Kerry camp reaction will probably backfire a bit, but I doubt this issue is going away anytime soon. Remember, the book has not even been released yet!

How this turns out will depend on how the vets' backgrounds check out. While the press was in general completely adverse to looking into the background of ex-government officials like Clark or Wilson when they made their charges against Bush, any taint among those vets stepping fowards will be used by the media to invalidate all the vets.

As for the legal action, it's hard for the media to harp on this and seek reaction from the Bush administration, when they gave MoveOn and the other far left 527s a pass on their ads and on asking Kerry if he disavowed them. But they will use McCain's comment agains the ads as a hammer against the White House, even though the press office said it did not want to make an issue of the senator's war record (and while the press has done little to probe the ties of the liberal 527s to the Kerry campaign, there is no doubt all Bush donor lists are being combed for names of either the swift boat vets or the people who funded the ads and who have also given to Bush, in search of anyone with unusually close ties to the campaign and/or the president).

No one here has even mentioned F-911. Not only does the Dem embrace of Mikey Reifenstahl Moore negate any hint of moral foundation for ctiticizing this ad, if they want to go to court, genuine or public opinion, R's can say (heh) "Bring it on!".

BTW - I was arguing with one of them, as we all are, and I said "Tell me.... given Fahrenheit 911... if Kerry gets elected, you tell me.... what could possibly be off limits in going after President Kerry? Lies? Slander? Going overseas and undermining him in whatever he does, no matter what the cost? Turning the military against him with genuine sounding accusations and arguments of full-bore treason? What? Given F-911, you tell me... what boundries are left? What is 'too far', in that it harms the country, not just the President? What?

The answer is... there is nothing left. There are no boundries. None. It's all fair game, come what may.

How sad for us all.

I blame John Ashcroft.

Somebody is going to run ads based on his anti-war activities.

Someone will run adds of him making great speches surimposed over video of him in prtoest marches or something.

Being reported today that one of the Swift Boat veterans is retracting his statement against Kerry. I don't know if he is one of the ones in the ad. Watch the media use this to discredit the whole thing and the blowback will hurt Bush.

Possibly wishful thinking here AWW, but I think the White House has done a fair job of innoculation. They have said categorically that they have nothing to do with this ad, and they have noted truthfully that these "kinds of things" have been used against the President far more than for him, and the President is no fan of this kind of activity.

Sorry to beat a dead premise, but adding to what I wrote above, F-911 has so "prepared the ground" if you will, that I think the entire population is becoming inured to this kind of stuff. Those who want to loathe Kerry will loathe him more because of this ad, no matter who "retracts" what.
Those who will vote for him will do so regardless of retraction or not.

I think that if it were ALL provably true, this ad would hurt Kerry. If chunks can be taken out of it's truthfulness, then it will likely be neutral, and seen as example #4,857 of the posionous political environment on both sides of 2004. (Thanks, Mike)

Update to my earlier post - Per Drudge the SwiftVet is saying the paper misqouted him (The Boston Globe - a very pro-Kerry paper) and that he firmly stands behind his story.

This ad will be 'illegal' in less than 30 days.

The law which makes it so (CFR) is illegal 365 days a year.

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