No connection :)

We are told President Shrub will not repudiate the Swift Boat Vets fraudulent ads concerning John Kerry's war record because the group has absolutely no ties to the campaign or the Republican party.

This is a lie.

Some polls indicate the false ads are having some effect on the numbers in Shrub's favor. Should that effect dminish or be reversed, the prez and his party will change their tune (flip-flop?) and denounce the ads in the most stentorian of tones.

From the Washington Post.

Bush Campaign Drops Swift Boat Ad Figure
Democrat's Team Says Veteran's Role in Drive to Discredit
Kerry Shows a Link

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page A13


CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 21 -- The Bush campaign said late
Saturday that it dismissed an adviser on veterans issues
after learning that he is part of an independent group that
has been running anti-Kerry ads.

The Bush campaign said Kenneth Cordier, who appears in a new
advertisement to be aired by the anti-Kerry group, Swift
Boat Veterans for Truth, will no longer serve in his
voluntary position on Bush's veterans steering committee. A
Bush spokesman said Cordier had not previously informed the
campaign that he had been involved with the group, but the
Kerry campaign said the matter provides evidence supporting
its complaint to the Federal Election Commission alleging
illegal cooperation between the campaign and the independent
group.

"Col. Cordier did not inform the campaign of his involvement
in the advertisement being run by a 527 organization," Bush
campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt wrote in a statement,
referring to the technical name for independent groups such
as the Swift boat organization. Schmidt said Cordier "will
no longer participate as a volunteer for Bush-Cheney '04."

Cordier's connection to the Bush campaign was made public
yesterday by the Kerry campaign, which found that Cordier
had been named on the Bush Web site earlier this month as a
member of the veterans committee but that his name had
subsequently been removed. A Bush aide said Cordier, who
spent six years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and was a
Bush supporter in 2000, called the campaign to disclose his
involvement on Friday and was told he could no longer serve
as an adviser to the campaign.

The ads by the Swift boat group, named for the type of boat
Kerry commanded during the Vietnam War, has been causing a
furious debate between the campaigns, with Kerry demanding
that Bush condemn the ads that suggest that Kerry did not
earn his war decorations and that he betrayed his fellow
veterans by his later antiwar activity. The Bush campaign
has said it opposes ads by all outside groups but declined
to specifically criticize the Swift boat ads.

The Swift boat veterans ad featuring Cordier, to air this
week in Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada, shows footage
of Kerry's antiwar testimony from 1971. "He betrayed us in
the past -- how can we be loyal to him now?" Cordier said in
the ad.

Cordier could not be reached at his home in Dallas last
night.

Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton said the Cordier
matter added more weight to its complaint filed last week
with the FEC. "This is another brick in the wall of evidence
that the Bush campaign is behind this smear," he said. "No
wonder the president won't condemn the ads."

Under law, political campaigns cannot coordinate with the
527 organizations, which are funded with unregulated "soft"
money and have proved to be an enormous loophole in the new
campaign-finance legislation. Bush aides have said there has
been no coordination with the Swift boat group. "We've
already said we weren't involved in any way in these ads,"
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said last week. "We've
made that clear."

But the Kerry campaign said that claim is put in doubt both
by the Cordier issue and by various news accounts
demonstrating close relationships between the Swift boat
veterans and key Bush advisers. The Kerry campaign also
asserts that a Kerry campaign volunteer picked up a Swift
Boat Veterans for Truth flier at the Bush-Cheney office in
Gainesville, Fla.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company