Swift Boat Veterans and John Kerry

Did you see the television coverage (cable) of a meeting at which the Swift Boat Veterans Association was given an award for its campaign to defeat John Kerry in his bid for the presidency?
I did, and all I could say was: WOW!
I started seeing the swift boat television commercials blasting John Kerry on several fronts, all relating to his Vietnam service. The commercials generally presented veterans who'd served with Kerry during the war who to a man claimed he, Kerry, was unfit to be the nation's commander in chief. The president of the United States has that title, by the way, commander-in-chief.
When I first saw those commercials, I right away assumed the Republican Party was somehow behind them.
But, the television program about the award to the Swift Boat Veterans Association, proved that was not the case at all.
The rear admiral who commanded the swfit boats at the time Kerry served with them actually claimed to have organized the movement among veterans to oppose Kerry's run for the presidency. He said he did it because Kerry had proven an untrustworthy and incompetent officer when he served under him in Vietnam. The rear admiral went onto say how he put the organization together to oppose Kerry, even to the point of having one man write a book contradicting Kerry's book on his service in Vietnam.
I mean this rear admiral was angry about Kerry's service. Furthermore, he and the others who were present at the event in which the award was bestowed also criticized (as they did in a television ad during the campaign) Kerry's testimony before a Congressional committee while the Vietnam War still waged. Maybe you saw the tv ad about it. In it, Kerry tells of Americans fighting in Vietnam "cutting off heads" and other wise mutilating or killing innocent civilians. Later, we learned he did not present that testimony as something he'd seen, but rather from tales he'd heard from other Vietnam War veterans at a meeting somewhere.
Anyway, the Swift Boat veterans and some Americans who were POWs during the Vietnam War didn't forget Kerry's testimony all those years ago.
That's why the campaign was waged to stop Kerry's run for the presidency, they said.
Curiously, I think they also said they did not go into the advertising campaign until the big three television news networks, NBC, CBS and ABC refused to cover the Swift Boat Veterans campaign against Kerry. That raises the question: why didn't the big three networks cover the swift boats as a stgory? It seems like it was a legitimate story considering the people promoting it.
What a strange story, especially if you recall that John Kerry opened his speech at the Democratic National Convention flanked by people who had served with him in Vietnam. Kerry also saluted and said "reporting for duty" before he began to speak at that convention. Stranger yet.
Then the Swift Boat Veterans started running their television ads. Wow! How strong. One featured a whole lot of veterans, at least two of them wearing Congressional Medals of Honor. A voice-over the ad explained all of those veterans had served with Kerry's US Navy organization in Vietnam--and that all of them did not believe him fit to be president. Wow! Strong stuff!
It makes you wonder why Kerry took such a strong stand on his military service? I mean was he nuts? Were all those veterans nuts? Strange, strange story.