Senator Kerry's spinmeisters turned any criticism of his many votes to cut military spending and cut spending on the intelligence agencies into "an attack on his patriotism" -- for which critics should be ashamed, they said, since he was a combat hero wounded in Vietnam. The mainstream media echoed the same party line.
If John Kerry had left the past in the past, there would have been little reason for anyone else to challenge his version of what happened. But he ran shamelessly on his Vietnam record, or at least his version of it. Now that those who served alongside Kerry in the same unit tell a radically different story about the same episodes, it is considered dirty politics.
Media people who went ballistic for months with unsubstantiated charges about George W. Bush's National Guard service -- climaxed by forged documents used on "60 Minutes" -- have never demanded that Kerry sign the same official form that President Bush signed, releasing all his military records.
If Kerry's military record was important enough for him to beat the drums about it at every turn this election year, then it is important enough for the truth to come out. But the mainstream media make no such demands on Kerry as they made incessantly on President Bush.
What Senator Kerry has done in the three decades since he was in Vietnam seems much more consistent with the picture of him painted by those who served in his unit than with the very different picture presented today by the Senator and his campaign.
After voting against gun owners in the Senate, John Kerry has repeatedly gotten himself photographed carrying guns this election year. After being for a weak foreign policy for decades, his speeches now ring out loudly with words like "strong," "strength," and "tough." It looks an awful lot like what a charlatan and a fraud would do.