The only thing the Swift Boat guys have brought up that seems to hold water is Kerry's time or lack thereof in Cambodia. Everything else has NO BACKUP WHATSOEVER. Did you see Thurlow on Hardball? His explanation for how he knows that Kerry can't be trusted and is making everything about his service up is because Thurlow has theorized that he had a master plan before he went into Vietnam to orchestrate a series of events to portray himself as a war hero and then use that to springboard into office decades later. When pressed for evidence or any support at all, he simply said he had none and that this was based upon his "observations." HE ACTUALLY SAID THIS ON TELEVISION. And people still believe all this crap. It's amazing.
Regardless, it's Kerry's own fault that this is such a big deal, since he played the "I served in Vietnam" card WAAAAAY too much. Whenever you over-rely on one particular issue or trait, the opposition is going to find the soft underbelly to your "greatest strength" and completely destroy you every time. Bush's team is way too good for the Kerry campaign to just give them such a nice juicy angle on a silver platter like that. It doesn't matter if what they say is true or not, just raising the question is more than enough.
Personally, I don't think either side is telling the truth. I think the Swift Boat group's version is more fabricated than Kerry's, but I imagine there is probably much embellishment and possibly flat out lying (like on the Cambodia issue) on the Kerry side too.
In the end, the big problem with this whole mess is that it really shows that campaign finance reform, or at least the way it has been implemented, is almost completely useless. All the same money from all the same people is going to all the same places...they just have different names. Both sides are doing it, it's more out of control than ever before (because now, thanks to the new regulation, it's almost entirely UNregulated so long as you do your original paperwork right), and frankly, it's starting to get ugly. Since there's no regulation of these funds and both campaigns can easily disavow any knowledge or coordination with this groups, they are pretty much free to say whatever they damn well please without regards to whether it is factually correct and without worrying about any backlash having a negative effect on your own candidate. It's a stroke of shady genius, and both sides are using it (the Dems actually even moreso than the Republicans), and frankly it's really dragging this campaign down and away from real issues of current and worldly importance and into the muck and mire of soap opera melodrama and good old fashioned mud-slinging.
In short, this is one of the more important elections in terms of really determining the direction of the nation and the world that we've had in a long time, and all of a sudden it's a pissing contest between two men who may or may not have done something of little relevance to anybody 35 years ago.
That seems like a real good way to decide on a President of the United States. Republican Party, Democratic Party, I salute you both. Job very well done indeed.