Politics As Usual

A few weeks ago a lot was made of a TV AD by an anti-Kerry group of veterans calling themselves Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In the commercial, they essentially called John Kerry a liar. The group's leading critic was a fellow swift boat skipper named Larry Thurlow. According to him, Kerry had lied about coming under fire during a mission which earned the Senator a Bronze Star. Thurlow said he commanded another swift boat in the group, and there was no hostile fire taken by any of them. He appeared in numerous interviews and even wrote a book further touting this claim.

One small problem: Thurlow himself earned a Bronze Star on the very same mission for taking "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire."

Hmmmm.... To put it politely, Mr. Thurlow appears to have a wee bit of a credibility problem.

Or to put it bluntly, Mr. Thurlow is a lying sack of crap.

I personally don't know what the truth is. I wasn't there on March 13, 1969. I was down in the principal's office for tying Peggy Litton's pigtails into a knot.

But one thing there is no dispute about is that John Kerry volunteered to serve in Vietnam, and earned himself three Purple Hearts in the process. I don't particularly care whether they were awarded for life threatening wounds, or for paper cuts. The indisputable fact remains that Kerry shed more blood in Vietnam on any one of those occasions than George W. Bush did during the entire ten years of the conflict.

The Bush camp has denied being behind Thurlow's group and has said they will not question Kerry's war record. They need to stick to that pledge, for their own man doesn't have as much as a fig leaf to hide behind when it comes to Vietnam.