ABSTRACT
So far the campaign had been as down and dirty as expected. The swift boat veterans’ campaign against Kerry had probably been the sleaziest presidential election campaign ploy in recent history. As we saw in the last chapter, there were significant refutations of the specific claims made against Kerry’s Vietnam record, and by the end of August the swift boat veterans were thoroughly discredited. Yet they had had months to circulate their scurrilous charges and despite some serious investigative reporting, on the whole the corporate media posed the controversy in the mold of two opposing partisan sides, rather than denouncing the campaign as unconscionable outright lies by the Republican attack apparatus.
