Two articles about an attempt to “Swift-boat” the President for the bin Laden mission. The first is about one group, entitled “Veterans For A Strong America”, staffed by one person, supported by such individuals as the Koch brothers and Karl Rove is seeking to use military personnel to criticize Obama’s claim to this accomplishment. The second is an editorial that goes into some more detail and includes comments from both sides. As one commentor to the Think Progress piece suggested, perhaps a group of pro-Obama veterens should be formed calling itself “Veterans For Reality”
What Everyone Should Know About The Secretive Group Trying To Swift Boat Barack Obama
A secretive right-wing group, Veterans For A Strong America, is attempting to do to President Obama what the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth did to Sen. John Kerry in 2004. And they aren’t shy about it. The group’s leader and sole employee, Joel Arends, told Mother Jones, “Yes, it’s the swift boating of the president.”
Arends said his goal is to take “what’s perceived to be [Obama's] greatest strength” — the successful raid on Osama Bin Laden’s Pakistani compound — and make it “his greatest weakness.” The effort started this week with a web video attacking Obama for taking too much credit.
In an interview with ThinkProgress, Arends refused to discuss any information regarding how the group was financed or its leadership.
Will Navy SEALs swift-boat Obama over the bin Laden raid?
A backlash is growing to the victory dance over the terrorist’s death, fueling concerns that Obama’s biggest foreign policy success could be turned against him
Many Navy SEALs are not happy that President Obama is “taking the credit for killing Osama bin Laden,” says Toby Harnden at Britain’s The Daily Mail. Quoting retired and active SEALs, both on the record and off, Harnden makes the case that many SEALs resent Obama for using the group as “ammunition” in his re-election campaign. Some U.S. commentators dismissed the report as a conservative hatchet job, but others aren’t so sure, saying Republicans could use the SEALs’ alleged complaints to undercut Obama’s most visible foreign policy success…
Maybe he deserves to be swift-boated: “When you take too much credit, you open the door to blowback that gives you too little,” says Paul Mirengoff at Powerline. The SEALs’ reaction to Obama’s “campaign of self-congratulation” was utterly predictable, and the president’s real problem is that he doesn’t have much else to brag about.
But Obama is not going to back down: Mitt Romney’s campaign is trying to “push what amounts to a ‘Navy Seals for Truth’ pitch,” but it can’t hide the fact that Mitt is weak on this issue, says Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. Romney says “even Jimmy Carter” would have ordered the raid on bin Laden, but his past statements, in which he played down the possibility of sending troops into Pakistan, legitimately call into doubt what Romney would have done.
And he shouldn’t cave to Republican bullying: The so-called outrage over bin Laden is a transparent effort “to intimidate Democrats into not mentioning” his death at all, says Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast.
