Bored yet?
By Brad Friedman on 8/19/2004, 2:43am PT  

(Blogged by Brad from the road...)

While Bush has not only refused to condemn the ads of the ironically named "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth", he's using them to his advantage wherever possible.

Consider this exchange brought to my attention by a must-read Josh Marshall piece as Bush took this question at an "Ask the President" session in Oregon last week:

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, sir.

Q On behalf of Vietnam veterans --- and I served six tours over there --- we do support the President. I only have one concern, and that's on the Purple Heart, and that is, is that there are over 200,000 Vietnam vets that died from Agent Orange and were never --- no Purple Heart has ever been awarded to a Vietnam veteran because of Agent Orange because it's never been changed in the regulations. Yet, we've got a candidate for President out here with two self-inflicted scratches, and I take that as an insult. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you for your service. Six tours? Whew. That's a lot of tours.

Let's see, who've we got here? You got a question?

In the words of former Congressman Dan Burton in reference to a previous President, what a "scumbag".

Anyway, the SBVT stories are beginning to unravel hard, as reported in this morning's Washington Post. But read Josh's article for a fine summation and analysis of the entire ugly mess that has become become the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign's only pathetic and shameful hope.

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