Swift Boat Veterans Attacking Kerry

As a bunch of Viet Nam Swift Boat veterans promote their new Kerry-bashing book Unfit for Command (published by an ultra right winger publishing house called Regnery) we're going to hear all sorts of false things about the 4 time medal winner. We're going to hear that he shot an unarmed kid in the jungle, that he lied to get his purple hearts, that he spent the entire war putting his men at risk so that he could someday run for office as a "war hero."

It's all bunk. It's mostly already been debunked. But we will hear it, and hear it and hear it.

The Kerry campaign will probably ignore this. Partly, its because they have to save money for the real fight after the Republican National Convention. Partly it's because you don't stoop to argue with a bunch of nobodies, no matter what they say.

The risk is that the bunk claims of the swift boat veterans will worm into voter's minds. It's amazing, of course, that Kerry is facing a guy who used his connections to get cushy National Guard assignments that he didn't show up for and that it's Kerry's military record that's being questioned. I mean, it's not like the Democrats can assemble a bunch of veterans who will say that Bush was a grandstanding liar in Viet Nam. Cuz Bush, though he supported the war, refused to fight in it and used the power of his Daddy to make sure that he didn't have to go.

Honestly, military service means nothing to me as a voter. But Bush's Viet Nam position is untenable. You don't support a war you won't fight in. Clinton didn't go to Viet Nam. But then, Clinton didn't believe in the war. Here's Bush's position on Viet Nam, plain and simple: Bush thought that we had to fight the war to contain Communism in Asia. And by "we" he meant people who aren't him.

So who's really "Unfit For Command?"