Re Writing History

John Musgrave, a disabled ex-marine from Baldwin City, Kan., who told The Kansas City Star that Mr. Kerry was at the meeting [where the assassination of US Senators was contemplated], said he got a call from John Hurley, the Kerry campaign's veterans coordinator.

"He said, `I'd like you to refresh your memory,' " Mr. Musgrave, 55, recounted in an interview, confirming an account he had given to The New York Sun. "He said it twice. `And call that reporter back and say you were mistaken about John Kerry being there.' "

The fact is that John Kerry was at that meeting. And another attendee, in fact the man who proposed the assasinations worked for the Kerry campaign until he became an embarassment.

Since the news of the meeting first came out, other attendees have said that Kerry was there and FBI surveillance records place Kerry at the meeting.

"Mr. Kerry says he still has no memory of being there but does not dispute the F.B.I. files. They describe the November meeting as tempestuous, with a showdown between Mr. Kerry and Mr. Hubbard, who it turned out had lied about his rank, claiming to have been an Air Force captain when he had been a sergeant. His actual service in Vietnam was also called into serious question."

John Kerry is trying to rewrite and edit his own history. He reminds people of his Vietnam service so frivolously that he has become a laughing stock. But, he would just as soon everyone forgot that he was a member of the Vietnam Veterans Against The War. He wants people to overlook his slanderous comments about his fellow servicemen.

"When Mr. Kerry appeared on "Meet the Press" last weekend, he disavowed his own remarks on the same program in April 1971, when he said he and thousands of other soldiers had committed "atrocities."

That's what happens when you're a plastic banana from the first. His famous act of pretending to through his own medals away in front of television cameras has become a metaphor for his entire political life.