"Why do veterans overwhelmingly support Bush when he avoided the draft, cut veterans' benefits, and sat a bsolutely still for 7 minutes while the country was under attack. Sounds like a great war president to me..."

I find this Michael Moorian "7 minutes" argument to be interesting. What exactly did people expect the president to do at that juncture? At that point, we probably didn't even know it was a terrorist attack, neither of the building had fallen, the Pentagon hadn't happened, etc... In that context, what was he supposed to do?...stand up panicked, scare all the kids, and look unravelled in front of the media that was filming him?...NO. Like any president, he maintained his composure, finished what he was doing, and made a calm exit. Anything else would have been plastered all over the media for all the world to see.

Now, to the swiftboat ads. I have actually been following this topic since well before the book was released. Ever since Kerry started stumping with his war record as his foundation, I began to read up on the differing views out there on the subject, which is where I came across these guys' website.

Now, what's starting to piss me off a bit is the fact that the media is pouncing on these guys as partisan assassins without stopping for two seconds and looking at who they are and what they have to say. Hell, last night, Nightline went through a whole story about it focusing solely on their political and financial ties, without spending any time talking about who they were and what they had to say. Again, another pathetic instance where the media demonizes anyone that doesn't swim in the same direction that they do.

Perhaps these guys are getting funded by people that support Bush. Truthfully, I don't really care much about that...they have to get funding somewhere. What I do care about is the fact that this group is made up of fellow swiftboat commanders that served in the same boat group as Kerry, as well as superior officers to Kerry. Kerry supporters have been showing that picture of Kerry with his fellow commanders....What they don't tell you is that only one of the 22 shown are actively supporting Kerry for President. 2 are dead, 4 want nothing to do with this, and the rest are in this group against Kerry. The only ones supporting him are those that worked under him on his boat.

Let's face it, however much you want to paint them as partisan, it's pretty compelling that almost all of his peers in Vietnam think he's either outright lying or just embellishing on all of his stories about Vietnam. Before you go and tow the party line about these guys, you should do a little research into what they are saying.

In the end, the media is going to do it's best to wash this issue away as poor partisan tactics. After all, Kerry's record is the crux of his argument for why he thinks he should be President (notice you haven't heard anything about his many years in Congress). God forbid the media actually do it's job and demand accountability and seek the truth. Then again, to do so would be to possibly torpedo their own candidate. So, all they can do is cry foul and try and bury the story.

How much of this crap do we have to see before people realize how little neutrality exists in mainstream media? No one's asking them to support a particular position here. However, we should expect them to present the entire story for the public to process and form their own opinons....but, that's again asking them to put their agenda to the side and be impartial and fair....not holding my breath.