Meet the astroturfer planning to swift boat Obama [View all]

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@truthteam2012 "Meet the astroturfer planning to swift boat Obama": http://t.co/fvVnaNwn 5.4.2012, 11:22 a.m.


By Adam Weinstein at Mother Jones on Fri. May 4, 2012

Veterans for a Strong America describes itself "a grassroots action organization committed to ensuring that America remains a strong nation by advancing liberty, safeguarding freedom and opposing tyranny." Founded in 2010, the ostensibly nonpartisan group kept a low profile until earlier this week, when it posted a splashy online ad that uses statements from President Barack Obama to suggest that the commander-in-chief boasted about his role in killing Osama bin Laden, dishonoring America's military in the process . . .

Joel Arends, VFSA's founder, chairman, and sole staffer, tells me he's proud of his organization's viral video, even if it's characterized as swift boating. "Yes, it's the swift boating of the president, in the sense of using what's perceived to be his greatest strength and making it his greatest weakness."

. . . Arends got his start in politics as a South Dakota Bush-Cheney field director in 2000. He's currently the Republican party head in Lincoln County, South Dakota. Though he doesn't list it on his public resume, around 2006 Arends went to work for Craig Dewey, the state director of Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy outfit that's Astroturfed everything from the tea party and the Wisconsin union fight to public-school segregation. (AFP's nonprofit 501(c)3 wing is chaired by David Koch, who founded the Americans for Prosperity Foundation with his brother Charles.)

After leaving AFP, Arends and Dewey went into business starting "grassroots" issue groups whose names tended to overstate their reach. There was Combat Veterans for Congress, a Sarah Palin-endorsed PAC that pushed "fiscally conservative" vets to run for office; the Coalition for Cures Not Cloning, set up to combat stem-cell research; and Children Need Parents, a group that succeeded in altering the South Dakota's mom-friendly divorce and custody laws. They also oversaw efforts to roll back EPA regulations, punish businesses that dealt with Iran, and ban sharia law in South Dakota. "Our strength is grassroots organizing," Arends explains. "I love bringing people together."

In 2007, Arends became the executive director of Veterans for Freedom (VFF), whose members fought Obama's Supreme Court nominations, coordinated campaigns for right-wing candidates like Florida Rep. Allen West, and freaked out about the prospect of Islamic law being implemented in America. Arends' job included recruiting vets and flying them, expenses-paid, to Washington, DC, to attend events like the "Vets Take the Hill" rally with Republican members of Congress and Sen. Joe Lieberman in April 2008.


read more: http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2012/05/swift-boat-obama-bin-laden-video