|
|
A band of 'Swifties' says Kerry's no brother
THE NEXT presidential election lies at the end of a road long and low. Republicans, saddled with a candidate who has gone since 9/11 from toast of the town to something more like toast, are spending most of their TV ad dollars attacking John Kerry. The Kerry folks haven't exactly made nice with George W. Bush, either. This space hasn't rushed into the fray or become a myna bird for mudmeisters from either camp. Yet serious charges have been made against Mr. Kerry by serious men, a group of his fellow Vietnam vets, who deserve a larger media platform than they've gotten.
Last month, 18 members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, composed mostly of ex-sailors who served under, above, or in the same Mekong theater as the former patrol-boat leader, stood before a microphone at the National Press Club in Washington to assail Mr. Kerry's wartime service and denounce his later peacenik calumnies against them and all Vietnam veterans.
The criticism was withering. Retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffman, chairman of the group, called then-Lt. (jg) Kerry "a loose cannon" who "in an abbreviated tour of four months and 12 days, bugged out and began his infamous betrayal of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam War." Regarding Mr. Kerry's three Purple Hearts--the requisite number to leave the war zone--retired Cmdr. Grant Hibbard remembers how Kerry allegedly collected one of them after a mission: "The briefing revealed that they [the crew] had not received any enemy fire, and yet Lt. (jg) Kerry informed me of a wound--he showed me a scratch on his arm and a piece of shrapnel in his hand that appeared to be from one of our own M-79s [grenade launchers]. It was later reported to me that Kerry had fired an M-79, and it had exploded off the adjacent shoreline. He later received a Purple Heart for that scratch."
What of young Kerry's combat competence? Steven Gardner, a Swiftie who served with Mr. Kerry, alleges that the boat commander's "indecisive moves put our boats in jeopardy, put our crews in jeopardy." Mr. Hoffman characterized his former underling as "aggressive, but vain and prone to impulsive judgment."
Almost all 18 pilloried Mr. Kerry for his broad-brush smear of GIs who served in Vietnam while he was active in the antiwar movement. "In 1971, '72," charged retired Capt. George Elliott, "he claimed that the 500,000 men and women in Vietnam were all villains--there were no heroes. In 2004, one hero from the Vietnam War has appeared, running for president and commander in chief." Swiftie William Shumandine: "I was in An Thoi from June of '68 to June of '69, covering the whole period John Kerry was there. I operated in every river, in every canal, and every off-shore patrol area in the 4th Corps area. I never saw, even heard of all of these so-called atrocities." Sailor after sailor said the same.
Admittedly, there is another side to Mr. Kerry's military service. Some of his old crew, not to mention a soldier he plucked from the water while under fire, are his ardent boosters. One or two Swift Board Veterans for Truth just a few years ago were inexplicably praising Mr. Kerry's valor. Also, one of those who organized the press conference is a moneyed Texas woman and Bush partisan.
Yet it's hard to write off the group as GOP stooges. Too many are distinguished career officers and successful, settled civilians--not the losers, lickspittles, and amoral ideologues who form the standard pool of dirty tricksters on both sides of the aisle. Because liars say bad things does not mean that all bad things are lies.
Speaking of dirty tricks, the founder of that feast, Richard Nixon, in 1972 ran against another Democratic war hero, George McGovern, who had flown 35 combat missions over Nazi Germany. No one recalls a single sleazy GOP attack on Mr. McGovern's military prowess. Maybe politics has gotten worse since then. Or maybe, in Mr. Kerry's case, there really is something vulnerable to attack.
