Define: Swiftboating

The Left is now redefining and, therefore, misusing the term swiftboating, and this misuse has become one of the many notable aspects of the 2008 presidential campaign. Democratic candidates and their partisans in the blogosphere use this word to mean smearing their candidates for public office with lies and innuendo. For some blog sites, the word is now synonymous with "screeds," the "politics of smear and fear," and "character assassination of proven effectiveness." Recently, some candidates have angrily declared that they will not be swiftboated.
(...)

To make the definition of swiftboating synonymous with "smears," "lies," and "innuendo" is to declare John Kerry's innocence. Once declared, one may conclude that it is the service of the Swift Vets that is tarnished, and that there may be some truth to Kerry's claims of heroism and charges of genocide in Vietnam. After all, both Kerry and the Swift Vets cannot be telling the truth. Whether explicitly, or implicitly with this newly created derogatory connotation of swiftboating, to declare Kerry's innocence is to do again to the Swift Vets in 2008 what Kerry and cohorts did to them in 1971.

Every time that a candidate today complains of being smeared by calling it swiftboating, he seeks the same exoneration or immunity that this redefined word gives to John Kerry, and, perversely, that candidate reinforces the false impression that the Swift Vets did something dishonorable in their campaign against John Kerry and in Vietnam years ago.

The American Thinker is taking back the meaning of the term Swiftboating and correcting history.
DKK