A: Easy. John Musgrave, former Kansas VVAW state coordinator at the time of a 1971 meeting - evidently attended by Kerry - at which the group discussed and rejected killing or kidnapping government officials and taking over the Statue of Liberty, thinks Kerry should re-embrace his 1971 Senate Foreign Relations Committee speech, wherein he recounted stories by other veterans that they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads (and) razed villages in (a) fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan. Says Musgrave: "When he gave that speech, he spoke for all of us. He should either stand up for it, or explain why he no longer agrees with it."

Q: But why? Why is that 1971 speech important? And who really remembers it?

A; I'll tell you who remembers it: the U.S. POWs held in Hanoi, a "band of brothers" if ever there was one, taking torture for the things Kerry was saying. Paul Galanti, in Hanoi for nearly seven years, remembers. When in July he learned the voice repeated over the camp PA system was Kerry's, it gave him flashbacks and made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. As he said to me yesterday, "Almost as demoralizing as solitary confinement was hearing a purported naval officer on Radio Hanoi calling me and all other Americans war criminals."

XXX

Q: Okay. But why are Kerry's 1971 anti-war statements and activities important now - in this year's election?

A: Here's why, and it flows directly from what the Swiftvets are saying.

Kerry made his Vietnam story as central to his campaign as John Kennedy made his PT-109 story to his. The Swiftvets are saying, Very well. Let's look at Kerry's story. And they say it may not be - indeed, they insist it is not - all that it seems. Seeking fuller public explication, they even have begged Kerry to allow them to reprint his now-suppressed early-1970s book, "The New Soldier." Kerry refuses to allow republication, and terms any examination of his story "scurrilous."

Yet equally as important as the character issues raised by Kerry's story are his comments and activities after leaving Vietnam. They undermined the integrity of those serving in Vietnam. And they established Kerry's abiding liberalism. Kerry cannot repudiate his early post-Vietnam comments and activities without irretrievably undermining his Democratic base. Yet to have those comments and activities raised now without repudiation goes - again - to his trustworthiness and what he genuinely believes.

Kerry's voting record is one of the Senate's most left-wing; he and his apologists say he actually is more moderate than his record indicates. Kerry famously speaks on every side of every issue, trying to mask his liberalism and appear the centrist he is not. His response to those confused by the disconnect between his voting record and his statements is the refuge of arrogant ideologues - that his highly "nuanced" positions are beyond the ability of mere commoners to comprehend.

And now, along have come the Swiftvets to pick through to the ingredients of the Kerry sausage. Or rather, to slice the baloney.