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Finally we have a balance of power in the smear fighting and rumor smiting battles between the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain. A couple of weeks ago, the Obama campaign set up a special web site called Fight the Smears.com to counter a growth in urban legends making the Internet rounds about Obama's patriotism, his wife Michelle's patriotism, his religion (defiantly not Muslim) and even includes his birth certificate for those uncertain if Obama wasn't actually a brother from another planet. As if to combat the patriotic deficient perception even more, Obama gave a major speech on patriotism yesterday in Independence, Mo.

Well, the McCain campaign wasn't going to allow for a perceived smear-fighting gap to emerge. They launched the McCain Truth Squad web site to fight against rumors about his patriotism and military service. This came a day after Obama surrogate Gen. Wesley Clark made his undiginified gaffe (in Washington speak this means unintentionally speaking the harsh truth) about equating McCain's Vietnam War service as a Navy fighter pilot and POW with presidential leadership savvy (actually a case can be made that McCain learned all the wrong lessons from Vietnam -- ones he's repeating with Iraq -- but that's a different conversation altogether). Clark has compounded his gaffe by trying to explain in "in context" but he's digging his own hole deeper (best to give up while he's behind). In in ironic twist, McCain has selected an old Swift Boat friend to be his chief spokesperson -- even though in 2004 McCain criticized the group for attacking the patriotism and decorated Vietnam War military service of then Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry. The Swift Boat hypocrisy was truly off the charts as the group backed a candidate named George Bush who lied and was at best lucky not to have been charged with AWOL and Dereliction of Duty when he bailed out on his Texas Air National Guard commitment in the early 1970s. Ah, but that was situational patriotism at its best.

Be thankful normal readers you are not in this line of fire as we poor pundits and scribes are overwhelmed every day with scores of numbing e-mails from the campaigns about their opponents which no one would confuse with tomes of admiration. Let the truth squads fire away -- the truth itself is usually off to the side in hiding.