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Bush top adviser resigns over ads
Second official to quit over links to anti-Kerry group
Vietnam veterans stage protest at president's ranch
TIM HARPER
WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON—A top legal adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush's campaign has become the second official to resign because of links to a group attacking Democratic challenger John Kerry's war record.
Hours after Benjamin Ginsberg quit the Bush-Cheney campaign, Vietnam veteran and Kerry presidential campaign official Max Cleland showed up at the gates of Bush's retreat in Crawford, Texas, to demand the president stop his attacks on veterans.
Bush spokesperson Scott McClellan said the arrival of Cleland, a triple amputee confined to a wheelchair, was a "political stunt," but it drew massive media attention and appeared to rock the Bush campaign back on its heels.
Cleland blames Republican attacks on his patriotism for his defeat in a re-election bid to the U.S. Senate in Georgia in 2002.
Ginsberg resigned after he conceded he had provided legal advice to the group known as "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," a coalition of veterans which has pushed the Kerry campaign off course with the release of two ads, one claiming he had exaggerated his war valour and another condemning his anti-war activities.
The Bush campaign maintains it has no links to the group, but last week it accepted the resignation of Texas backer Ken Cordier, who had been advising the campaign on veterans' affairs. He appears on camera in the second Swift Boat ad.
"I am proud to have given legal advice to American military veterans and others who wish to add their views to the political debate," Ginsberg said in his resignation letter, released by the Bush-Cheney campaign.
"It was done so in a manner that is fully appropriate and legal and, in fact, is quite similar to the relationships between my counterparts at the Democratic National Committee and the Kerry campaign."
The Bush campaign released 10 instances in which they allege Kerry operatives were linked with groups airing tough anti-Bush campaigns, including liberal groups Moveon.org, the Media Fund and Americans Coming Together.
It also accused the media of a double standard because they are not pursuing links between Kerry officials and those groups.
Cleland told reporters it was time for the U.S. president to "put up or shut up."
"This president has gone after three Vietnam veterans in four years," Cleland said. "That has got to stop.
"Where is George Bush's honour? Where is his shame?"
The third instance referred to by Cleland was the Bush campaign attack on Arizona Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who challenged him for the 2000 Republican nomination.
Cleland was accompanied by Jim Rassman, Kerry's swift boat comrade who says the Democratic presidential candidate saved his life in Vietnam.
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are calling him a liar, Rassman said.
"I am not a liar."
Bush would not meet Cleland and the former senator was halted at the security blockade which surrounds the president's retreat.
The letter carried by Cleland was signed by nine Democrats in the U.S. Senate who are military veterans. A second letter released later in the day was signed by 19 military veterans from the party in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"We who wore the uniform and served in different branches of the military join together today to defend a fellow veteran from attacks we know to be false, and politically motivated slander," the letters said. Cleland was instead met by Texas State Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, a Vietnam veteran who backs the president. He was bearing a letter of his own to Kerry, put out by the Bush-Cheney campaign.
"You accused your fellow veterans of terrible atrocities and, to this day, you have never apologized," it said. "We're proud of our service in Vietnam. We served honourably in Vietnam and we were deeply hurt and offended by your comments when you came home."
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This will probably amount to nothing but it appears to be chink in the Republican armour...
In the end, I am just amazed that in this, one of the most important elections of recent history in the US... the focus is on what happened 35 years ago rather than what is happening now...
(yes I know this post doesn't help but then I'm just an interested bystander)