The headline reads, Poll: More Believe Bush Behind Attack Ads, as if to indict President Bush on some sort of malfeasance. Complete ignoring the multitude of times that he has denounced the newly formed campaign monsters called �527 groups�. Since most people don�t read beyond the headlines, many will simply take away from this article the fact that President Bush has somehow acted unethically, illegally and just plain wrong. They�ll think back to the accusations of ties between the Bush campaign and the group funding the ads, totally forgetting that there are at least as many, if not more, direct connections between John Kerry, the Democrats and the liberal 527 groups.

But what about the actual claims made within the ads in question? What if I chose, like those on the Left, to ignore any possible ties between the ad and my side�s campaign and focused on the message itself? The message in the ads themselves point to questions of John Kerry�s integrity, honesty and leadership abilities. Pretty important questions when choosing a leader of the free world. The same group telling us that the messengers are biased and therefore unbelievable also tend to back folks like Michael Moore and his verifiably false claims without regard to motive or bias. I find that pretty telling.

So now we have a he said/he said scenario with Kerry�s accounts of his service. Everyday we�ll hear about a new eyewitness or some evidence leaning one way or the other. Kerry only has himself to blame � he made this campaign about Vietnam � and he must take the good with the bad. Just because he�s running for President doesn�t mean he should be unjustly accused of bad acts, but just because he�s a Vietnam vet doesn�t mean he should escape the criticism either.

Back to the creation of the news. The headline touts the findings that �more believe� Bush is behind the ads. The stats for this finding range from 42-50%. But what about the �silent� stats behind those? If we flip those numbers, it means that the range is from 50-58% that think the Bush campaign isn�t behind the ads. To me, that�s pretty significant. That means that half, or more than half, of the people out there believe the ads were created by an independent group and not a proxy for an obviously biased campaign of the target�s opponent. Add to that the other statistic that �a month ago, Kerry and President Bush were tied on the question of who has the honesty and integrity to serve as president. Bush now has an advantage on that question, 46% to 39%, according to a Los Angeles Times poll released Thursday.�

So half to more than half of the people polled think the Swiftboat ads are independent of the Bush campaign and 13% more people believe Bush has more honesty and integrity � presumably based upon the claims made in the Swiftboat ads. Yet, the journalists want us to remember only that, �More Believe Bush Behind Attack Ads�.