This campaign season’s GOP PAC has drifted into view, and let me tell you, they’re no Swift Boats.

The “Vets for Freedom” have launched two attack ads Obama’s way, both of which are thoroughly pathetic.

Even the name of their organization is ambiguous and emotive. Their putative predecessor in ‘04, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, at least were working for their stated cause: Truth. Vets for Freedom’s mission statement is to cram elected offices with candidates - preferably veterans themselves - who “support victory.”

So why the “VFF” are not the “VFV,” “Veterans for Victory,” is beyond me, as is the notion that anybody would take their stated mission - to oppose the growing threat of “anti-victory” politicians - seriously. Yet VFF is not just absurd - it is tragic, for these people truly are veterans, and veterans who are seemingly compelled to conceal their political agenda beneath a veneer of genuine patriotism. As their ads indicate, they do not conceal it well. They don’t even execute it well.

The latest ad - second of two - has this as its basis:

Obama has been to Iraq, but not since the Surge. Ergo, he is not qualified for the Presidency. Even the Incredible Hulk would be hard pressed to make this leap of logic - and that’s speaking to Hulk’s intellect as much as to his physique. Oh, and just to prove they’re bi-partisan, the VFF is makes sure to take a jab at Obama’s promise to talk with our enemies.

After all, nothing says “ready to tackle the toughest problems” like giving someone the silent treatment.

What, no picture of him in a tank with an oversized helmet on? This is the most facile argument we’ve yet heard in this season, and it’s not like Hillary’s been asleep at the mike. It’s like saying that a person can’t be President on the basis of no economic qualifications because they haven’t stood on the floor at Wall Street lately.

VFF’s first ad turns the pathetic into the tragic. In it, we have one Sgt. Garrett Anderson slamming Obama for refusing to help him and other veterans returning home from Iraq with disabilities. Describing the VA as “Obama’s organization,” the ad talks of how Obama is happy to meet with “our enemies,” but not veterans in need or Petraeus.

This is disgustingly disingenuous on a number of levels. First, the Big Picture: Obama and the rest of Congress inherited a VA that was literally crying for help. At every turn, from pay increases to VA benefit funding, the Bush White House has fought the Democrat-controlled Congress, and Senator Obama in particular, in their efforts to rehabilitate the VA. Their efforts - not the Republican Congress, which for five disgusting years slashed benefits and let services like those at Walter Reed literally degenerate to hellish conditions.

After all that, Bush and McCain fail to support Sen. Jim Webb’s GI Bill expansion - presumably because McCain had co-sponsored an alternative, GOP expansion to the GI Bill, but still - and squabble over a few billion dollars in extra pay for the troops when that much is being spent in Iraq weekly. And who does VFF, and Sgt. Anderson, attack? Obama.

The further facts are even more galling, despairing, stomach-turning. I remember Anderson; he was in an article I read about returning veterans who, in 2005, could not manage to receive adequate treatment for his traumatic brain injury and PTSD. By his own admission, he wrote his state Senators for help - Sen. Obama, the junior, and Sen. Durbin, the senior.

Now given that Anderson’s attacking Obama for not seeing him, you would expect that he did not receive the help he needed. Not so, as this CNN interview detailing his case reports.

One year after filing a disability claim, he finally received some good news from the VA. Thanks to pressure from Illinois senator, Dick Durbin.

Garrett is seen here with Durbin, an Obama superdelegate:

Garrett receives about $2,900 a month, $1,000 more than his first award. The VA now acknowledges the traumatic brain injury but still denies his claim for PTSD.

Garrett’s chief complaint at the time he was relying on Durbin to wrest the funds loose to recuperate was, in his own words, “It upsets me that the VA system operates in a way that it takes people with power and who you know and what you know to get what you want.”

Durbin listened. He aggressively pushed legislation to increase the attention paid to traumatic brain injury on every level of veteran care. This culminated in the powerful “Traumatic Brain Injury Act of 2008,” of which he was a co-sponsor.

Know who also was a co-sponsor? Barack Obama. Know who wasn’t? John McCain.

Sgt. Anderson’s case was tragic to begin with. It seems further tragic to me that he has devoted himself to harming those that helped him, and helping those whose political policies brought him harm.

Durbin spoke to Anderson’s ad. He called it bullshit on many levels, and denounced the VFF:

Sgt. Anderson gave a response, which I am not going to link to, in the interest of denying VFF all the traffic I can:

I am very disappointed that Senator Durbin provided credit to Senator Obama, stating that they both worked very hard on my claim, when in fact, Senator Obama was never involved in resolving my claim with the VA.

I would say that Durbin would be a better judge of who was involved in the process of talking to the VA and pushing forward legislation than Sgt. Anderson.

The fact is that the main of VFF’s complaint against Obama is that he won’t meet with them or with Petraeus. Given that Obama has met with Petraeus, that means that their chief complaint is that he won’t meet with them.

Of course, John McCain has met with them, even though he publicly denounces independent PACs.

Soon, surely, the Vets for Freedom will be making more waves. I certainly hope they will pass. I most definitely hope they are not too intimately associated with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an organization that actually had a cause - Vets for Freedom deserve none of the associations of power and import such a comparison would make.

They are, plain and simple, a political voice of a forfeit military agenda, with such paragons of objectivity and military genius as Joe Lieberman, Lindsay Graham and William Kristol in prominent positions. They are most definitely tragic. And in the end, they’re all the more tragic for being so terribly wrong.

After all, as I noted in my last post covering the Petraeus hearings, Obama and Petraeus are identical in many strategic regards. The Vets for Freedom are arguing against the guy who agrees with the future CENTCOM, and fights to increase their benefits and pay.

They should stop asking when Obama’s going to meet with Petraeus, and start asking when McCain’s going to start listening to him.