John E. O'Neill, co-founder of the anti-Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (now Swift Vets and POWs for Truth), returned to FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes November 10 to revive several specious attacks against Senator John Kerry and baselessly assert that Kerry “would have lost [the election] by 20 points if there had been real coverage” of Swift Boat Vets.

When Hannity & Colmes co-host Alan Colmes asked O'Neill about SBVT's impact on the election, O'Neill said, “I don't think anybody will claim again that we're war criminals.” But as Media Matters for America has extensively documented, Kerry's 1971 testimony before the Senate foreign relations committee was an indictment of the leaders of the time and did not blame the soldiers who reported having committed atrocities in Vietnam. O'Neill noted that the cable news networks, talk radio, and the Internet had covered SBVT extensively, but claimed that President George W. Bush would have won the election by 20 points if “big media” (which O'Neill defined as “the three big networks and The New York Times”) had not allowed Kerry to duck SBVT's charges.

O'Neill also revived the false claim that Kerry's “accusations had a horrific impact on the prisoners of war.” As MMFA noted when the same assertion was made in the anti-Kerry film Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal, the use of torture against POWs had been drastically decreased -- if not halted entirely -- by the time Kerry testified. NBC News correspondent David Shuster reported in his “Hardblogger” coverage of the 2004 presidential election for MSNBC.com that he found no evidence Kerry's name was used in the interrogation of all American POWs in Vietnam.

Despite O'Neill's and SBVT's lies and distortions regarding Kerry's post-Vietnam record, radio host Rush Limbaugh honored the group on Veterans Day. From the November 11 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: I would like to recognize and offer a special salute to a unit that enlisted for a second tour of duty. This is the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. They essentially took their swift boat back up the river. They never wavered, despite the hostile fire that came at them from the media in an attempt to destroy them yet again. So on Veterans Day, I would like to not single them out, but just offer them a special salute here and consideration.