PRESTOPUNDIT

THE DEMOCRATS STRIKE BACK -- the Washington Post labels the sworn testimony of Swift Boat veterans a bald smear, falsely insinuating that the Swift vets (many of whom are Democrats) are motivated by partisan interests -- motivated the Post says to lie -- when all and every public appearance makes plain that these men are motivated by moral outrage at the countless lies of John Kerry, and his use of those lies to advance his own career.

So who is smearing whom?

UPDATE: "I was just passing through the room a couple of nights ago, Fox News was on, and there was Lannie Davis, literally screaming ad hominems against John O'Neill, the principal author of ''Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry.'' I thought: ''Wow, that book must really have them.''" -- Jay Bryant.

UPDATE II: InstaPundit points to this commentary by Lead & Gold: "Kerry didn't just use his Vietnam experience to enhance his stature as a man or leader. His campaign used it to shut down debate on his Senate record. They made the biography the issue."

UPDATE III: More reactions here , here, and here . Quotable:

Today, the Washington Post runs an editorial on the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, titled Swift Boat Smears. The editorial is a window into the mindset behind the apparent decision by most of the mainstream media to ignore the Vets' accusations of dishonesty by Kerry. The editorial begins plausibly enough .. But then the editorial changes its tone. All of a sudden, any accusation against Kerry is suspect, while any evidence supporting him becomes unimpeachable. Critical thinking goes out the window. The editorial ignores, or badly misunderstands, many of the principal arguments made by the Vets.

For example, the editorial completely misapprehends the allegations made by Dr. Louis Letson, who says he treated Kerry for a minor shrapnel wound forming the basis for Kerry's first Purple Heart. The editorial pretends that Letson's principal claim is that Kerry's injury was too minor for a Purple Heart .. [The] passage [quoted by the Post] completely misses the point of Letson's accusation that Kerry lied. As a look at the Swift Vets' website shows, Letson's claim is that the evidence shows Kerry's wound was self-inflicted, making it ineligible as a basis for a Purple Heart. The evidence shows that crewmen accompanying Kerry told Letson that Kerry had actually wounded himself, with a grenade launched from an M-79 grenade launcher. Nobody, not even Kerry himself, claimed to have seen enemy fire. The tiny fragment Letson removed from Kerry's arm with a pair of tweezers appeared to be an M-79 fragment, corroborating the account of the crewmen accompanying Kerry. That is the basis for Letson's claim that Kerry lied.

Betsy Newmark calls the Post editorial, "total proof of what we've been saying in the blogosphere about why the media won't cover the SBVT ad."

Powerline asks, "What did we do before God created the blogosphere?."

Well, Who do you trust?

At the Aspen Institute's Conference on Journalism and Society in mid-July, a question was put to executives of major news organizations: Whom do you trust in online media today? Most answered with a list of the usual suspects: the Web sites of The New York Times, NPR, the Los Angeles Times.

Jeff Jarvis, a blogger and president of Advance Internet, gave a different answer: "I have learned to trust the voice and judgment of my fellow citizens."

Patterico charts the spin of the LA Times on the Swift Boat story, and asks, "What's the difference between this and the way that the Kerry campaign would handle this issue, if it ran the Times?" Posted by Greg Ransom