ALSO VISIT

The non-profit media watchdog organization Media Matters for America has reported that its analysis finds there is no truth to the Matt Drudge allegation that John Kerry's footage of Vietnam combat is inauthentic. According to Media Matters, Drudge deliberately ignored factual reports and evidence of authenticity in order to give priority to unfounded claims made by individuals with a history of distorting Kerry's record in order to benefit Republicans.

The rumor has been circulating among Bush supporters and on conservative weblogs that the Kerry film was designed to promote Kerry's political career, even as Kerry was on the Mekong River, in combat. According to Media Matters, the allegations were made previously by writers who had set out to discredit Kerry, saying "On September 7, 2002, The New York Times' current executive editor and then-columnist Bill Keller took up the issue of Kerry's wartime films and debunked the reenactment charge".

The report says Keller had believed the charges, but after investigating the sources and researching the background on field operations, and after viewing the footage at length, he found the accusations to be false and the language used to describe the film as inaccurate. "The first thing to be said is that the senator's movies are not self-aggrandizing. Mr. Kerry is hardly in the film, and never strikes so much as a heroic pose."

Further research showed that it was common for soldiers to keep souvenir footage of their tour of service and that "both Patterson and O'Neill have a history of issuing false claims about Kerry." Patterson had "severely distorted Kerry's record on defense spending, intelligence spending, and veterans' pay in two recent appearances on the FOX News Channel."

MMFA's report also notes that "O'Neill's own p.r. adviser has described O'Neill as sounding like 'a crazed extremist.' MMFA also noted O'Neill's participation in Republican efforts to smear Kerry, dating back to the Nixon administration" when government reports show Nixon conducted surveillance on Kerry for his post-combat anti-war leadership. [For more: US Newswire]