Advertisement Faulty But Lucrative for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth

John Kerry testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971.
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Weeks after their first TV advertisement aired in August 2004, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are still making headlines.

In his September 21 feature article for the span style="font-style:italic;">Village Voice, writer Nicholas Turse condemns one particular SBVT ad, which accuses Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry of falsely testifying against fellow Vietnam soldiers during a 1971 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. The ad claims Kerry lied to the Senate and, thus, betrayed his fellow soldiers. In his testimony to the Senate, Kerry accuses American soldiers of committing atrocities such as rape, mutilation, and other forms of torture while in Vietnam.
In his article, Turse employs recently released by the National Archives as his primary source in defending Kerry's testimony as truthful. Turse cites specific incidents--a military intelligence interrogator's raping of a 13 year old Vietnamese girl in 1967, six Green Berets' use of electric torture on the genitals of Vietnemese men and women in 1968--where American Soldiers were in fact charged with committing war atrocities, in order to validate Kerry's statements. In his article, Turse effectively rebuts the ad's numerous false implications.

In his September 11 article in The New York Times reporters Glen Justice and Eric Lichtblau calculate the influence of the SBVT on the election in terms of the donations that the organization has received following the airing of this particular ad. Despite the provably false allegations of the SBVT ad in question, the SBVT claims it has raised over $6.7 million in the weeks following the advertisement's airing.
Reporters Justice and Lichtblau quote a Dr. Gelman, who identifies himself as "conservative politically...[though] not a big fan" of Bush, admits he is attracted to the aggressivity of the SBVT advertisements. Gelman says that, while he is not entirely committed to the Bush campaign, "when someone comes out against [Kerry], I get riled up and give another contribution [to Bush]."

Despite the exposure of the SBVT advertisements as intentionally mileading in some aspects and provably false in others, the groups has undeniably been successful in generating donations to the Bush campaign.