I don't believe that the question was baited at all. There is the truth, and there are lies. Kerry has the majority of the people on HIS boat to verify what happened on HIS boat. I assume also that you've read the account by the Chicago Tribune's Rood that also verifies part of Kerry's story.
The accusations about his service in Vietnam are coming largely from people who witnessed what took place from other boats - they had their own lives to protect, own crews to defend and were likely preoccupied. They have also markedly changed their positions since the 35 years have passed. If they had problems with Kerry's awards, then they should have filed their complaints when he recieved them.
I completely agree that people have no right to censor the SBVs in any way, but if ANY group - 527 or not - is lying about one of the candidates for political gain or personal vendetta, then it cheapens the debate for ALL Americans. This brings me to what Pam Johnson was saying - I believe the purpose of this post and of this forum in general is to have an academic debate about the nature of politics and where we are going as a society. I believe that this debate we are having here is a microcosm of a much larger debate that is much more urgent and important - the nature of the media. I found out that the SBV commericials are only playing in about 5-6 cities. Nationwide. If the media hadn't covered this group, we would likely never have heard of them. Certain 527s don't need a megaphone, the megaphone is held to their mouths in the form of CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News.
In closing, I would ask you, BakerStreet, to step back for a moment and analyze both the Democratic leaning MoveOn 527 and the Republican leaning SBV 527. While both have collected millions from private donors, the SBV's sole purpose is to launch attacks at Kerry. MoveOn has a broad organization with many purposes including voter registration - never a bad thing right? When the Pentagon was first rotating troops back from Iraq, they weren't providing trips from military bases to troops' homes and MoveOn had a program where members could donate Frequent Flier miles to provide plane tickets for the new veterans without transportation home. I don't think that blanket characterization of all organizations of a particular type is fair and I would urge you to reconsider before you label all groups unnecessary because the debate goes south for a few weeks. As soon as something new pops up, the SBVs will be out of the picture. The 527s can provide a valuable service or an unvaluable disservice to the debate. I've read some of your other posts about MoveOn and the Hitler-ad debacle. I ask that you read this...
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=51167
Hitler Image Used in Bush Campaign Web Ad
1 hour, 17 minutes ago
By JENNIFER C. KERR, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Adolf Hitler's image has surfaced again in the White House race. President Bush (news - web sites)'s campaign is featuring online video of the Nazi dictator, taken down months ago from a liberal group's Web site and disavowed, in a spot that intersperses clips of speeches by Democrats John Kerry Al Gore and Howard Dean........ Democrats want the video pulled from the site. Campaign aides said it would remain.
Republicans had criticized the group MoveOn.org in January because it briefly posted an ad contest entry that linked Hitler and Bush. It showed images of Bush with text saying, "God told me to strike at al-Qaida," before turning to images of Hitler with the words, "And then He instructed me to strike at Saddam." The submission ended with the words, "Sound familiar?" on a black and white screen.
The 77-second video on the Bush-Cheney re-election site splices footage of Kerry, the presumptive nominee, and his 2004 rival Dean along with 2000 nominee Gore and film director Michael Moore. The spot calls them Kerry's "Coalition of the Wild-eyed." Clips of Hitler's image are seen throughout the spot.
"The use of Adolf Hitler by any campaign, politician or party is simply wrong," said Kerry's campaign, Mary Beth Cahill, who called on the GOP campaign to remove the Web video from its site.........
I saw that ad, and it was one of the most disturbing things to come out of either party.