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The concept
of the “Boot Murtha” campaign arose from the experience of Vietnam
Vets for the Truth,” a campaign that successfully brought to the
attention of the American public the falsehoods spoken by John Kerry
about his fellow servicemen in a 1971 US Senate hearing. Vietnam Vets
for the Truth (VVT) arose spontaneously from the angry correspondence
of Vietnam veterans who remembered Kerry’s odious words and saw an
opportunity to throw them back at him in the political arena. This
they did, and in spades.
In fact,
they were so successful in their “Kerry Lied” campaign and its
culminating rally on Capitol Hill that when John Murtha similarly
slandered the US Marines in Iraq, the same core group talked it over
and decided to reprise the 2004 campaign. The new effort was named
“Vets for the Truth,” or VFTT, which is inclusive of veterans of all
generations, and especially of veterans of the Iraq War. As this
effort developed, it became clear that the greatest contribution VFTT
could make would be to bring Murtha’s outrageous lies to the attention
of the voters of the Twelfth Congressional District of Pennsylvania in
the hope that they would “Boot Murtha,” which has become the theme of
our campaign.
A central
feature of the “Boot Murtha” effort is the Operation Street Corner
campaign begun by VVT in 2004. VFTT anticipates that hundreds of
Twelfth District voters who are sick of Murtha’s posturing and lying
will use this means of expressing their displeasure with him.
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