Bill

Do you honestly believe the "Swift Boat Vets for Truth"? Or do you just want to win so badly that you are willing accept what they say as truth without questioning it?

In other words, are you a journalist or a propagandist at this point?

Bill -

Let me put it another way - do YOU believe that John Kerry is an opportunistic coward (as the "swift boat vets" maintain) who is not worthy of his decorations?

Are you willing to say that the military leaders who presented Kerry with his numerous decorations were mistaken?

If that is the case, perhaps we should evaluate ALL the decarations awarded by the military. Perhaps you and Dean Esmay are suggesting that there are other veterans wounded in combat who don't deserve the recognition they have been given.

If you beleive that purple hearts and other medals have been granted too lightly and that we need higher standards for military valor, you should say so.

Either way, I think you need yo go on the line - do you beleive the "Swift Boat Vets" or not? And , if you do not, you should say so.

One of the SwiftVets' primary charges - that Kerry has lied, repeatedly, about his "Christmas in Cambodia" experience of 1968 - has been shown to be true and Kerry's staff has admitted his claim to have been in combat on Christmas eve/Christmas Day 1968 in Cambodia is not true.

Do I believe all of the SwiftVets' accusations? No. But this first charge has been shown to be true, and Kerry exposed as a self-aggrandizing liar on this story.

It's worth noting that Kerry's "band of brothers" includes EIGHT guys, but the SwiftVets have more than TWO HUNDRED who served with him.

Incidentally, the Christmas in Cambodia lie has nothing to do with his Purple Hearts. But it has everything to do with his credibility, and everything to do with whether he tells lies about his service in order to inflate his image.

a. -- If the charge that John Kerry received three purple hearts, yet did not spend a day in the hospital all told is true, then I for one do not believe he is worthy of those honors.

My father fought in the Battle of the Bulge; my father-in-law was a bomber squadron leader in the Pacific. Sorry, but from my point of view Kerry's military record--real or imagined--doesn't make much of an impression on me. I question his political savvy in make it a focal point of his campaign in the first place.

Are you willing to say that the military leaders who presented Kerry with his numerous decorations were mistaken?

Conversely, a., are you willing to agree that the military leaders who gave Bush an honorable discharge from the National Guard is proof that Bush was not AWOL?

You can't have it both ways on this one.

Anonymous -

I don't really care about Bush's military record. It has never been an issue with me.

I was born in 1970 and can't remember Viet Nam. So I don't care about who served in a misguided war 35 years ago.

What matters most to me about John Kerry is that he is NOT GEORGE BUSH. Bush could have stormed the beach at Normandy and he would still be a lousy president.

What bothers me about the "Swift Boat Veterans” nonsense is that it is such a clear example of knee-jerk political obfuscation.

best,

Where are the Texas Air National Guard Veterans for Truth?

The leader of TANG Vets for Truth currently resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, DC.

Well I have been hanging back on this whole "Christmas in Cambodia" deal and reading a bunch to try to figure out if there is anything substantial here, or if this just partisan foaming at the mouth.

Interestingly, it was two blogs to which Bill linked that helped me decide.

First, Hugh Hewitt gave this quote from the Kerry campaign: "It is an acknowledged fact that Swift Boat crews regularly operated along the Cambodian border from Ha Tien on the Gulf of Thailand to the rivers of the Mekong south and west of Saigon. Boats often received fire from enemy taking sanctuary across the border. Kerry's was not the only United States riverboat to respond and inadvertently or responsibly cross the border. In fact, it was this reality that lead President Nixon to later invade Cambodia itself in 1970."

In depressingly typical partisan fashion, Hugh fixes on the "inadvertantly" and totally blows off the "responsibly."

Was Kerry at least near or at the Cambodian border on that night? Hugh doesn't seem to dispute that. Just whether it was "inadvertant" or "responsibly."

So, Kerry did get himself to Vietnam to take part in the conflict. Nobody disputes that. Nobody seems to be disputing that he was at least at the border.

So, Kerry's thrice repeated Christmas in Cambodia statements a Big Lie seem to at least be somewhat plausible. Could it be that he dramatized what happened? Maybe. But was he in Vietnam at all? Yes. Could he have been at the border or even in Cambodia that night? Maybe.

So not a Big Lie, but partisan ranting.

The other post that has helped me get perspective on this is the Moveon.org ad that Dean links to.

The ad brings up the distortion of evidence that the Bush administration deployed to move us into war in Iraq. That is a way more serious "dramatization" than Kerry's, in my view. Way more serious. And much more definitive. Mushroom cloud my ass.

By the way, Nicholas Kristof had two columns last week about the threat of a terrorist nuclear attack that are worth reading ( see the following link for a listing of his columns -- the two relevant ones are obvous from their titles: http://www.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/nicholasdkristof/index.html) and what we should be doing about it. If you check it out, you will notice that taking out Saddam never should have been a priority with respect to making us safe from such a thing.

So my bottom line on this partisan tempest is this: Nobody died because Kerry said he was in Cambodia at Christmas. And he might well have been there.

bruce