I have never criticised Kerry’s Vietnam service. He was a self promopter and a jerk, but he served. His medals may or may not have been deserved, but that was not uncommon either. He was not liked by many ofd his shipmates. Not uncommon either.

What was unforgivable was what Kerry did after he came back and was still a USN officer. If he had had the honor to resign his commision before he embarked on his anti-war, anti-military, libel of his brothers in arms, he might have been excused as a misguided but somewhat honorable individual. Instead he turned on his brothers in arms while still officially in the military and carried out his treasonous meeting in Paris. Had he been humble enough to apologize for his anti-war activities he still might have redeemed himself. He wasn’t Swift Boated, he defeated himself by his own seditious, arrogant behaviour. The Swift Boat Vets just brought all that out.

…the interviewer was trying to get the old fellows to say that Kerry wasn’t brave and not a one of them did it. He had to be brave, he was on a Swift Boat. Period.

As pointed out above, the apposite issue was Kerry’s leadership and fitness for command, not his bravery, but I think that the interviewees also were doing something that Kerry himself failed to do: stand up for his comrades-in-arms.

Neo: Glad you’re back from vacation. Hope you’re recharged and rested.

IMNSHO, Obama, if elected PotUS, will surpass Jimmy Carter for the most ineptly performed, poorly organized, and incompetently run Presidency in the last century or more. His domestic policicies will fail utterly on every level, and his foreign policies will even lack the success that Carter had at Camp David.

You will see serious inflation, stagnation, and unemployment, as well as gas lines once again.

I really hope I don’t get the chance to be proven correct. Because I’m damned sure I’m not going to be proven incorrect.

I like Robert Heinlein’s response, from Starship Troopers… paraphrased:
“Go ask the city fathers of Carthage what they think of that idea. What? No Carthage? Guess violence settled that argument, didn’t it?”

By no means not the only reason, but one of the reasons, why the Church hearings occurred was because Ted Kennedy wanted to get Kerry’s record upgraded and the government’s surveillance against Kerry and other seditionists exposed. So, in order to advance John Kerry’s career our spy agencies were, in effect, given a nasty vasectomy by Congress and the Senate. His general discharge was upgraded to honorable (but EVERYTHING original stays in his jacket) and eventually even his decorations were restored.

Any one who aspires to be Commander in Chief of the armed forces must be able to stand up against a thorough vetting process. Now, the opposition will say that the only acceptable vetting process is an election. I beg to differ. Both Kerry and Obonga have very shady backgrounds, and are less than honorable men. They also have a history of saying things which would harm our military and our nation’s defense.

Prior to his presidential run, the only things I really new about Kerrey were that he’d been in the Navy during Vietnam, had won his political spurs by being an anti war uber-lib, and was nobody I’d vote for.

The campaign process brought the timelines and transcripts of his record to the forefront, and everything about his military service just stank from a distance, especially to me, with my familiarity with how military culture worked.

The guy came in the Navy “connected” politically He was on a cruiser for a short while, then on Swifts, then suddenly scored more medals per mission than Audie Murphy, then came home early and shoved a knife in the back of every service member who served in Vietnam.

The swifties didn’t testify to his bravery. They testified to his honesty, and fitness for command. When your CO from back in the day has nothing one way or another to say about your qualities, after having signed off on Hearts and a few stars, that’s a signal. And when shipmates take a stand against you… ones who were lead or under fire alongside you… that has a lot of weight.

To this day, when I hear somebody call ‘swift boat” as a pejorative, I assume they are down on points in whatever debate they are involved in.

The term is abused, I think. “Vigilante” is in the same column.

What he clearly was, however, was a self-promoter… which isn’t a crime either, only annoying. But his campaign had presented him as a war hero, which was true only in the sense that anyone who serves at all is a hero. He really didn’t stand out from his peers in the hero department… no matter how rude it is to say so. Except that the very clear implication was that his war hero status and military experience was supposed to bring in the (apparentlly unthinking, lock-step, bruitish) military and veteran vote I’d say that the extreme nit-picking of Kerry’s military record wasn’t… mentally balanced. It was nearly obsessive compulsive.

But what got him, really, were some very simple facts that are not and never were in dispute.

The treatment of vets after Vietnam has left deep, unhealed wounds to this very day. The sense of betrayal for many of those people was fresh and personal and included John Kerry.

He may have been a minor figure then, but running for President made him a major one.

And vets and military were supposed to think nothing at all of Winter Soldier, Jane Fonda, near universal accusations of war crimes, Genghis Khan, throwing away “his” medals in a grand gesture, and meetings in Paris ALL on the basis of 4 months on a Swift Boat.