FORD
08-14-2004, 12:47 AM
GOP: KERRY WENT TO VIETNAM TO AVOID SERVING IN ALABAMA NATIONAL GUARD
Guard-Dodging Charges Haunt Campaign
A new Republican-financed negative ad is accusing Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry of fleeing to Vietnam to avoid serving in the Alabama National Guard.
The ad, airing in most of the so-called battleground states, attempts to contrast Sen. Kerry’s alleged guard-dodging with the storied Alabama National Guard heroism of the Republican nominee, President George W. Bush.
In the ad, a narrator asks, "When the Alabama National Guard called young Americans to serve, where was John Kerry? Thousands of miles away, in Vietnam."
The commercial ends with a black-and-white freeze-frame of Mr. Kerry, over which the narrator asks, "John Kerry... reporting for duty?"
The attack ad is hitting the airways just as an organization of Mr. Kerry's former swift boat comrades is holding its first annual anti-Kerry convention in San Diego.
The organization, The Anti-Kerry Boatmates of America, is believed to number over ten thousand members, all of whom openly despise the Democratic nominee.
A spokesman for the Kerry campaign attempted today to discredit the group, saying, "There were a lot of people on John’s boat who hated his guts, but not enough to fill the San Diego convention center."
Such criticisms aside, the organization is moving ahead with plans for negative ads of their own, including one in which they claim Sen. Kerry's swift boat was neither swift nor a boat.
Guard-Dodging Charges Haunt Campaign
A new Republican-financed negative ad is accusing Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry of fleeing to Vietnam to avoid serving in the Alabama National Guard.
The ad, airing in most of the so-called battleground states, attempts to contrast Sen. Kerry’s alleged guard-dodging with the storied Alabama National Guard heroism of the Republican nominee, President George W. Bush.
In the ad, a narrator asks, "When the Alabama National Guard called young Americans to serve, where was John Kerry? Thousands of miles away, in Vietnam."
The commercial ends with a black-and-white freeze-frame of Mr. Kerry, over which the narrator asks, "John Kerry... reporting for duty?"
The attack ad is hitting the airways just as an organization of Mr. Kerry's former swift boat comrades is holding its first annual anti-Kerry convention in San Diego.
The organization, The Anti-Kerry Boatmates of America, is believed to number over ten thousand members, all of whom openly despise the Democratic nominee.
A spokesman for the Kerry campaign attempted today to discredit the group, saying, "There were a lot of people on John’s boat who hated his guts, but not enough to fill the San Diego convention center."
Such criticisms aside, the organization is moving ahead with plans for negative ads of their own, including one in which they claim Sen. Kerry's swift boat was neither swift nor a boat.