Old Liberal Soldiers Never Lie

Old liberal soldiers never lie, they just back away. They back away from previous assertions that is. John Kerry has done a lot of backing away lately. But the press will never call the stories he backs away from lies.
So far, John Kerry has had to back away from claims that he spent Christmas of 1968 in Cambodia on a secret mission. He has had to back away from at least one of his purple hearts, as his campaign admitted that the wound was likely self-inflicted. He has adjusted his own recollections to conform to Swift Boat Vets’ accounts that he earned his Silver Star by shooting an already wounded Viet Cong in the back. And there’s no way he earned a Silver Star with a “combat V” as he claims. Navy regulations forbid it.
More than once I’ve heard the term “discredited” attached to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. I’ve read that their accusations against John Kerry were disproved. But, in all of my searching, I could only find one thin shred of evidence that favored John Kerry’s version of events. And that evidence is the official account of Kerry’s supposed rescue of John Rassman under “heavy” enemy fire.
But, how much credence should we give the official record? The original version’s author was probably John Kerry. In his 1971 testimony before the Senate he confessed to grossly inflating such reports. Further, he noted that his whoppers were multiplied by superiors. If the official records from 1969 now conform to John Kerry’s 2004 claims, then that only means that he has puffed up his original exaggerations to match those of the official record.
Douglas Brinkley’s slavish biography of Kerry, “Tour of Doodie,” gives us a taste of Kerry’s capacity of exaggeration. Consider this paragraph from one of Kerry’s letters to his contemporary sweetheart – one who wasn’t rich enough to qualify as marrying material.
“I feel so bitter and angry and everywhere around me there is nothing but violence and war and gross insensitivity. I am really very frightened to be honest because when the news [of the combat death of his college friend, Dick Pershing] sunk in I had no alternatives but to carry on in the face of trivia that forced me to build a horrible protective screen around myself....
The world I'm a part of out there is so very different from anything you, I, or our close friends can imagine. It's fitted with primitive survival, with destruction of an endless dying seemingly pointless nature and forces one to grow up in a fast — no holds barred fashion. In the small time I have been gone, does it seem strange to say that I feel as though I have seen several years experience go by.... No matter [where] one is — no matter what job — you do not and cannot forget that you are at war and that the enemy is ever present — that anyone could at some time for the same stupid irrational something that stole Persh be gone tomorrow.”
Gripping stuff, particularly when one takes into account that that Kerry wrote this letter while in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He was not yet even in the same hemisphere as Vietnam.
Toss out the written record and we have the physical evidence. Kerry claims that Rassman was knocked out of the boat by a mine, but Kerry’s boat suffered no damage. And, if the boats were under “heavy fire,” in a narrow river, then where is the battle damage? Battle damage assessment recorded only three .30 caliber bullet holes in one boat, incurred the previous day in a sniper incident. These were big, thin-skinned targets. Heavy fire would have left them shot through.
Regarding Kerry’s “combat V:” In 1996 Chief of Naval Operation Jeremy Boorda committed suicide rather than face the embarrassment of being exposed for wearing a “combat V” he had not earned.
Senator Kerry had this to say about it at the time. "Is it wrong? Yes, it is very wrong. Sufficient to question his leadership position? The answer is yes."
And, "If you wind up being less than what you're pretending to be, there is a major confrontation with value, self-esteem and your sense of how others view you."
Do you think John Kerry might want to back away from that one too?