The John Kerry Post of the Day

My latest discovery about my favorite cheese-eating surrendermonkey-looking Ketchup King cum Presidential candidate:

This is the bonus post, designed to make up for the travesty of last Friday, when I chose to watch the Eagles prep for the season by suffering another season-ending injury to a starter.

It turns out Kerry may have called one of the Swift Boat Vets to ask them to stop running their ads, according to Drudge...

Kerry reached out to Robert "Friar Tuck" Brant Cdr., USN (RET) Sunday night, just hours after former Sen. Bob Dole publicly challenged Kerry to apologize to veterans.

Brant was skipper of the #96 and # 36 boat and spent time with Kerry in An Thoi. Kerry and Brant slept in the same quarters, and Brant used to put Kerry back to bed at night when Kerry was sleepwalking.

Brant received a call from Kerry at his home in Virginia while he was watching the Olympics on TV. The call lasted 10 minutes, sources tell DRUDGE.

KERRY: "Why are all these swift boat guys opposed to me?"

BRANT: "You should know what you said when you came back, the impact it had on the young sailors and how it was disrespectful of our guys that were killed over there." [Brant had two men killed in battle.]

KERRY: "When we dedicated swift boat one in '92, I said to all the swift guys that I wasn't talking about the swifties, I was talking about all the rest of the veterans."

If this is true, it shows just how clueless Kerry is. He's now seeking to patch up his relationships with the Swift Boat Vets by excluding them from the group of veterans he accused of atrocities in 1971... but he still won't retract the statement for any other soldiers!

Kerry should have seen this coming (or at least, his campaign staff should have seen it coming). Their inability to anticipate that many veterans would be angry about Kerry's wrapping himself in his service records 33 years after denigrating the service of others provides unflattering testimony about how a potential Kerry White House would tackle a crisis. But let's forget that for a second.

Kerry testified before Congress to the following:

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

Now, 33 years later, Kerry has spoken of his heroism in combat, with his campaign blatantly mentioning his many decorations as proof of his character. Don't these statements also provide us with insight into his chracter? Yet the Kerry campaign wants these statements silenced. What the Senator should be doing, as Rich Lowry points out, is explaining why he lied in 1971, and why he won't retract those statements today...

Recounting the work of the so-called Winter Soldier Investigation — a since-discredited project that gathered first-person accounts of alleged atrocities from American vets — Kerry spoke of "war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." In his telling, the American war was simply a criminal undertaking. Kerry said the men "relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do."

Now, of course, Kerry implicitly portrays Vietnam as a noble undertaking, featuring only great acts of bravery by great American men. In his convention speech, Kerry bragged of defending America as a soldier — forgetting that it once was his deeply held conviction that the Vietnam War had nothing to do with defending America. Apparently someone in the Kerry camp thinks that having John Edwards testify to Kerry's gung-ho war exploits has more resonance than celebrating him in this way: "If you want to know John Kerry, spend three minutes with the men who were with him when he threw away his medals and called U.S. soldiers criminals."

Kerry's defenders argue that in 1971 he was only repeating stories told by other veterans. These stories should have been incredible to anyone with the least bit of respect for American soldiers, especially someone who had just served with them. But Kerry repeated the stories anyway in order to cast the war in the worst possible light. Even now he won't disavow them. Pressed on Meet the Press about the testimony, Kerry said, "I'm not going to quibble, you know, 35 years later that I might not have phrased things more artfully at times." Phrased more artfully?

Kerry refuses to admit that he burst onto the national scene by telling a shameful falsehood about American servicemen. In his testimony, he even traded on the notion that the vets had been made into war-damaged freaks — the country has created "a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence." Kerry is perfectly happy to stand with members of this monstrous body of war criminals, victims and misfits now that they suit his political purposes. As for those vets who don't, they are "liars." The Swift Boat veterans seem unfazed by the charge, since they, after all, have been called worse by John Kerry.

The fact that Kerry won't disavow those statements says one of two things: either (1) he believes they were true, in which case his conduct in Vietnam should be called into question, because he served with so many war criminals, or (2) he's hoping to wait until it's politically expedient to do so, and only if he's forced to do so by continued media coverage. Thomas Mackubin Owens offered this interesting parallel:

[E]ach episode of the HBO series Band of Brothers, begins with a voiceover in which the narrator says of the World War II soldiers portrayed in the program: "I was not a hero, but I was surrounded by heroes." In contrast, what John Kerry is saying in essence about his "band of brothers" is that "in Vietnam, I was a hero, but I was surrounded by war criminals."

Kerry's insistence on emphasizing his heroism may be one more factor that turns off veterans. Ralph Peters, a fomrer military officer who isn't particularly enamored with Bush, noted the unseemly nature of Kerry's overt use of his war service during his campaign in a column in the New York Post...

As far as the swift-boat controversy goes, it's likely to remain a he-said-she-said issue through Election Day. The red flag to military men and women is that so many swift-boat veterans have come out against John Kerry. Not just one. Not 10. Dozens upon dozens.

This is as rare as humility in the Hamptons. Vets stick together. Kerry likes to play up his "band of brothers" image, but if he's got a band, his opponents have a symphony. And even if the first violinist turns out to be a "Republican stooge," it's nonetheless stunning for so many vets to denounce a former comrade publicly. It just doesn't happen unless something's really wrong.

As for Kerry's support from his own crew, that's normal military psychology. You get the most objective view of a junior leader from his peers — the other swift-boat commanders (and their crews) who had to fear a weak link in the chain.

...Kerry's lies — and they were nothing but lies — about "routine" atrocities committed by average American soldiers and sanctioned by the chain of command were sheer political opportunism. Kerry knew that none of the charges were true.

He'd been there. He may have done some stupid things himself, but atrocities were statistically very rare. Contrary to the myths cherished by film-makers, American troops behaved remarkably well under dreadful conditions.

John Kerry lied. Without remorse. To advance his budding political career. He tarnished the reputation of his comrades when the military was out of vogue.

...Kerry might have won support had he apologized frankly for what he said in the early 1970s. But he no more disavowed his lies than he disclaimed the lies of Michael Moore.

Which brings us to problems two and three.

John Kerry doesn't show a trace of integrity. Those constant flip-flops to suit the prevailing political winds are more troubling to military folks than many of the issues themselves.

Integrity matters to those in uniform. You have to be able to depend on the guy in the next foxhole — or swift boat. Trust is more important than any technology. And John Kerry just doesn't seem trustworthy.

Finally — and this is the one the pundits have trouble grasping, given the self-promoting nature of today's culture — real heroes don't call themselves heroes. Honorable soldiers or sailors don't brag. They let their deeds speak for themselves. Some of the most off-putting words any veteran can utter are "I'm a war hero."

Real heroes (and I've been honored to know some) never portray their service in grandiose terms, telling TV cameras that they're reporting for duty. Real heroes may be proud of the sacrifices they offered, but they don't shout for attention. This is so profoundly a part of the military code of behavior that it cannot be over-emphasized.

The rule is that those who brag about being heroes usually aren't heroes at all. Bragging is for drunks at the end of the bar, not for real vets. And certainly not for anyone who wishes to trade on his service to become our commander-in-chief.

I wish Kerry were better. The truth is that I'm appalled by Bush's domestic policies. I believe that the Cheney-Halliburton connection stinks to high heaven. And I'm convinced that Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld & Co. have done colossal damage to our military and to our foreign policy.

But we're at war. And for all his faults, Bush has proven himself as a great wartime leader. Despite painful mistakes, he's served our security needs remarkably well. And security trumps all else in the age of terror.

Kerry says many of the right things. But I can't believe a word of it. I just can't trust John Kerry. I can't trust him to lead, I can't trust him to fight — and I can't trust him to make the right kind of peace.

I have reservations about voting for George W. Bush. But I have no reservations about voting against John Kerry. And I'm not alone.

Whatever the results of the Swift Boat Veterans controversy, I think it's safe to say Kerry can no longer count on the votes of veterans to put him into the White House.