Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush condemned campaign television commercials sponsored by independent organizations such as the group of Vietnam veterans who attacked Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's military service.

Bush stopped short of demanding the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth immediately halt its advertising. The group said it will run new commercials this week in New Mexico, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Bush also didn't address Kerry's accusation that he's running a ``smear campaign.''

``I'm disappointed with all those kinds of ads,'' Bush said when asked by reporters about the ads at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. ``That means that ad, every other ad.''

The Swift Boat ads are run by a group of Vietnam veterans and former Navy gunboat officers who say Kerry exaggerated his bravery in combat and question whether he deserved his three Purple Hearts for wounds and Silver and Bronze Stars for valor. Other veterans who served with Kerry are defending him, including Chicago Tribune editor William Rood and Jim Russell, a former Navy lieutenant, and Jim Rassmann, a former U.S. Army Green Beret.

The Bush campaign denies any connection to the ads. The president's only previous response was to call for Kerry to join him in condemning all independently financed campaign ads in an interview with Larry King Aug. 12. Bush has praised Kerry's war record several times and did so again today.

`Served Admirably'

``I think Senator Kerry served admirably, and he ought to be proud of his record'' in Vietnam, Bush told reporters after a meeting with top defense and national security advisers at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Bush said all campaign ads not run by the candidates' own campaigns should be halted, including those sponsored by the Swift Boat Veterans, an advocacy group that largely backs Republicans and Bush. ``I'm denouncing all the stuff,'' he said.

The Kerry campaign said Bush's remarks fell short. ``The moment of truth came and went, and the president still couldn't bring himself to do the right thing,'' Senator John Edwards, Kerry's running mate, said in a statement.

``We need a president with the strength and integrity to say when something is wrong,'' Edwards said. ``Instead of hiding behind a front group, George Bush needs to take responsibility and demand that the ad come off the air. It's funded by his own supporters, and casts one of own campaign officials. President Bush, it's time to do the right thing.''

Bush may benefit by denouncing the ads without stopping them from airing, said Mark Rozell, professor of public policy at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

`Helps Bush'

``It helps Bush because it lets him have it both ways,'' Rozell said. ``In a sense he takes the high road while the negative ads stay on TV and continue to taint Kerry's war record.''

Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona and former Vietnam prisoner of war, two weeks ago called the Swift Boat group's ad dishonest and urged the White House to condemn it.

Campaign finance laws allow special interest groups to raise unlimited money to promote their issues or candidates.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said groups supporting the Kerry campaign have spent $63 million so far running negative ads against Bush.

The campaigns of Bush and Kerry have collected more than $475 million, election records show. That compares with at least $133.1 million raised by the top 20 independent groups, according to Internal Revenue Service records compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.

Seventeen of the top 20 independent groups active in the presidential election support Democrats and are funded by donors with ties to the Democratic Party. The three Republican groups raised $15.5 million, records show.

MoveOn.Org

Kerry has similarly been aided by ads from groups like MoveOn.Org, which have been running attack ads against Bush. Billionaire investor George Soros has given $12.6 million, as of June 30, to MoveOn.org and other anti-Bush groups such as the Media Fund and American Coming Together, election records show.

Soros and Progressive Inc. Chairman Peter Lewis are the biggest financial backers of the MoveOn.org Voter Fund, together donating $5 million of the $9.1 million the group had raised through June 30, according to Internal Revenue Service records.

MoveOn has criticized Bush, running ads on television and in newspapers urging he be censured for allegedly withholding intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The group has demanded Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld be fired.

Records show that so far, MoveOn has spent at least $62 million on TV ads, a sum that dwarfs the amount of money raised and spent so far by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

$1.1 Million

The Swift Boat Veterans group is spending $1.1 million on ads attacking Kerry. Of that, $550,000 was spent on the spots that ran earlier this month in Ohio, Wisconsin and West Virginia, said spokesman Sean McCabe.

The group listed only 10 financial backers in its June 30 filing with the Internal Revenue Service. More than 10,000 new donors gave more than $450,000 in the last two weeks, McCabe said.

The Swift Boat Veterans started running their ads August 5. The controversy they generated has dominated campaign news reports since then.

Support for Kerry, 60, among the country's 26 million veterans fell following the release of the ads, according to a CBS News poll. Kerry's support among veterans fell 9 percentage points last week from an earlier poll completed Aug. 1, CBS said, down to 37 percent from 46 percent.

The ads brought more scrutiny of Kerry's Vietnam record, said Jim Davis, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis. The ads also reminded voters of Kerry's opposition to the war when he returned from Vietnam, he said.

`Preponderance of Evidence'

While there 's ``a preponderance of evidence'' that supports Kerry's story of his service in Vietnam, his subsequent protest ``may have angered some of the veterans who were initially impressed with his story,'' Davis said.

Kerry's campaign started running ads yesterday saying Bush, 58, supports the attacks by this ``front group'' and challenging Bush to denounce them.

The Swift Boat Veterans group issued a statement saying it ``has never coordinated its efforts with any party or any other organization'' and would ``continue to take its message directly to the American people so that they may make their own decisions concerning John Kerry.''

``It would make no difference if John Kerry were a Republican, Democrat or an Independent,'' Admiral Roy Hoffman, founder of the group, said. ``Swift Boat Veterans would still be speaking the truth concerning John Kerry's military service record in Vietnam, his actions after returning home and his lack of qualifications to be the next Commander in Chief.''

Donors to Bush Campaign

Seven of the 10 supporters listed with the IRS are Republicans, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, an Internet site that tracks campaign contributions. Among them is Bob Perry, the largest political donor to Republicans in Texas, who provided $100,000. Perry, chief executive officer of closely held Perry Homes in Houston, has declined to be interviewed.

Bush political adviser Karl Rove told the New York Times through a spokeswoman that he and Perry were longtime friends, though they had not spoken for at least a year. Rove and Perry have been associates since at least 1986, when they both worked on the gubernatorial campaign of Bill Clements, the Times said.

Stepped Down

A member of Bush's veterans' steering committee stepped down from the campaign after appearing in the latest Swift Boat Veterans commercial slated to air beginning tomorrow. The ad criticizes Kerry's anti-war testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. The Bush campaign did not know in advance that Ken Cordier, a former Air Force colonel, would appear in the ad, spokesman Schmidt said.

John O'Neill, a member of Swift Boat Veterans, debated Kerry on the Dick Cavett Show in 1971. O'Neill was enlisted by President Richard Nixon and then-White House counsel Charles Colson, who later went to prison for his role in the Watergate scandal that led to Nixon's 1974 resignation.

The Kerry campaign asked the Federal Election Commission to stop the Swift Boat Veterans ads, saying they were illegally coordinated with the Bush campaign.

The Chicago Tribune's Rood, a Swift boat commander who served with Kerry, supported Kerry's version of events in one Vietnam War incident in a bylined article published Sunday.

``Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown,'' Rood wrote. ``It's gotten harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there.''

Kerry Defenders

Jim Russell, who served on a separate gunboat during a mission with Kerry in Vietnam, disputed claims by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that there was no enemy fire when Kerry earned a Purple Heart and Silver Star for rescuing Jim Rassmann, who had fallen overboard. Rassmann also backs Kerry's story.

``We were under fire off and on while the incident took place,'' Russell, 60, said during a conference call organized by Kerry's campaign. There were no other boats close enough to Kerry during the incident for the other veterans to be able to tell whether there were bullets flying, he told reporters.

Former Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, the Republican presidential candidate in 1996 who was severely wounded in World War II, questioned Kerry's medals -- ``never bled that I know of,'' Dole said -- and he criticized his testimony to a congressional committee in opposition to the Vietnam War.

``One day he's saying that we were shooting civilians, cutting off their heads,'' Dole said in an interview yesterday on Cable News Network. ``The next day he's standing there, `I want to be president because I'm a Vietnam veteran.'''

Dole returned to CNN today, saying he ``never had any contact'' with the Bush campaign suggesting that he question Kerry's credentials to be president.

Kerry called Dole this morning. ``He knows it's hardball, but he said he was disappointed and I said `John, I didn't mean to offend you,''' Dole told CNN.

``I told him that you can't be running just because you're a veteran, because maybe I tried that in '96 and it didn't work very well,'' Dole said. ``I wasn't trying to be mean-spirited.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Jay Newton-Small in Crawford, Texas Jnewtonsmall@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: August 23, 2004 19:10 EDT