Remember those Swiftboat ads? The ones smearing John Kerry? The lies he didn’t think were worth responding to? Apparently they cost him the presidency. So naturally, the Swiftboaters are back, this time in an attack on President Obama.
According to a Reuters report this morning, former Special Ops types are launching a media campaign calling the president a liar and worse.
They say he doesn’t deserve credit for getting rid of Osama bin Ladin. And they also accuse him of “endangering American lives” by leaking classified information to the press.
Remember how those Swiftboat liars claimed to have served alongside John Kerry? Remember what a whopper that turned out to be?
Now some jerk identified as Ben Smith (is that the best they can do? Smith?) claims to be a former Navy SEAL and chides President Obama for stealing the credit for bin Ladin’s death. He declares:
“Mr. President, you did not kill Osama bin Laden, America did. The work that the American military has done killed Osama bin Laden. You did not,”
Oh the shame of it! Imagine the president stealing credit from those gallant military men! Give me a break!
Do you believe those “military men” caught and killed bin Ladin by themselves? Didn’t someone have to give the orders? Someone like, say, the commander in chief?
“Smith” doesn’t stop there. He adds:
As a citizen, it is my civic duty to tell the president to stop leaking information to the enemy. It will get Americans killed.
Of course that accusation is false. The charge that the president leaks sensitive information to get good press is so outlandish it would be laughable – if it wasn’t so sick.
The group responsible for the scurrilous attack is one of those PACs that have cropped up in the current election season. Registered as the Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund Inc, it claims to be nonpartisan and unconnected to any political party or presidential campaign. But its president, a one-time SEAL named Scott Taylor, ran unsuccessfully for a Republican congressional nomination (campaign poster above) and another top member, Chad Kolton, used to be a spokesman in the Bush administration.
This is the kind of slime we have come to expect from the Republicans.
They have no persuasive policies so they resort to schoolyard trickery.
Their “campaign” is built on such tactics as editing videotapes to make them say the opposite of what they say, responding to TV interviewers’ questions with “talking points” instead of answers, getting state legislatures to pass laws to keep minorities from voting, and telling bald-face lies over and over until some weak minded people believe them.
And when they’re caught out, they falsely say it’s the president who’s playing the sleaze game that they’re playing.
Then there’s the racist vitriol that spews incessantly from the underbelly of the conservative movement – stuff about the president being born in Kenya, about him being a Muslim, about him being a Nazi and a Communist… those monkey dolls and cartoons… billboards like the one in Elkhart Indiana (pictured above) comparing the president to Osama bin Ladin… and on and on and on…
There’s an old saying that nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American public. But surely American voters aren’t dumb enough to be taken in by this moronic trash?
You would think they would find it so offensive that even if they disagree with the President’s policies they would vote for him anyway – just to send a message to the perpetrators of this vile campaign.
I know I would.
