Could a man who serially told an untruth about one critical aspect of his military career ? including on the Senate floor ? be prevaricating as well about other aspects of his service? Before we take the bait, we had better be sure the candidate could not have fabricated after-action and medical treatment reports.
Finally, there is the matter of Senator Kerry?s seemingly desperate bid over the past few days to suppress his former colleagues? criticism. First, he asked the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) to prohibit Swift Boat vets from airing ads questioning his performance before and after he left Vietnam.
Such a stance is preposterous insofar as John Kerry has benefited hugely from ?outside? expenditures spent on vicious attacks on George W. Bush by the likes of Michael Moore and MoveOn.org. On the rare occasion when the Senator has disavowed and denounced such ?independent? expenditures on his behalf, they (or similar ones) continue be aimed like saturation bombing campaigns at key voters, especially in the so-called ?swing states.?
With the FEC unlikely to act, Kerry sought out new character witnesses. The most prominent of these is William Rood, a former fellow Swift Boat commander and currently an editor with the Chicago Tribune. Mr. Rood has given a peculiar explanation for why now, after 35 years of studied silence on the matter, he decided to write a lengthy column in his paper defending John Kerry.
According to the New York Times, he was inflamed by charges that then-Lieutenant Kerry did not deserve the Silver Star awarded him for driving his boat into the line of fire from an enemy onshore, beaching it (in violation of orders and Navy procedure) and disembarking singlehandedly to give chase to and kill a Vietcong. Mr. Rood says, ?What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did.?
The truth is that any unwarranted damage being done to the reputations and sensibilities of John Kerry?s former comrades-in-arms by his critics among the Swift Boat veterans scarcely compares to the wholesale sullying of the Democratic candidate?s former colleagues during his now-infamous congressional testimony in 1971. Indeed, it is the profound affront caused by his charges of daily war crimes by Vietnam-era servicemen and their leaders alike that has given rise to the activism and latest ad of his harshest critics.
John Kerry has made his service in Vietnam the leitmotif of the campaign, in a conscious effort to obscure other behavior that might disqualify him. If, as his post-Vietnam record suggests, this amounts to a bait-and-switch trap for American voters, it is understandable that he would object to close scrutiny of the bait. His objections, however, should only redouble the critical attention that his behavior during and after Vietnam is given by the press and public alike.