Kerry defends Bush on military service
By New York Correspondent PHILLIP COOREY and agencies
19aug04
JOHN Kerry did for US President George W. Bush yesterday what Mr Bush has refused to do for him – denounce criticism of his military service.
The goodwill gesture was offered as Republican Senator John McCain, fed up with attacks on the candidate's service records, declared this "the bitterest, most unsavoury campaign in the nation's history".
Senator Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, condemned yesterday a new TV advertisement that says Mr Bush "used his father to get into the National Guard and, when the chips were down, went missing".
While Senator Kerry volunteered for Vietnam, Mr Bush avoided it by joining the Texan Air National Guard.
He has been accused of not turning up for duty and has not been able to prove he did.
But Senator Kerry called the advertisement, sponsored by pro-Democrat organisation moveon.org, "inappropriate".
"This should be a campaign of issues, not insults," he said.
Two weeks ago, a bunch of disgruntled Vietnam veterans released their own commercial, accusing Senator Kerry of lying about his exploits in Vietnam, for which he was awarded two bravery medals and three purple hearts for being wounded.
The ad was not paid for by the Bush campaign but Mr Bush and the White House pointedly refused to condemn it.
Senator McCain, a Vietnam veteran who ran against Mr Bush in 2000 for the Republican presidential nomination, has been trying to broker peace between the two camps as the campaign descends into a tough-guy competition. Senator McCain was viciously smeared by the Bush campaign during the 2000 primary elections over his war record and false claims he sired an illegitimate black child.
He has urged Mr Bush to condemn the attacks on Senator Kerry's military service and was supportive of Senator Kerry's actions yesterday toward the anti-Bush commercial. "It's the same line of scurrilous attack," he said.
"I wish we would stop opening wounds from a war more than 30 years ago and talk about the war we're fighting now. I believe they both served honourably."
But while Senator Kerry was being respectful, those supporting him are hitting back at the Republicans. On Tuesday, Senior Democrat Senator and former Navy pilot Tom Harkin called vice-president and Vietnam draft dodger Dick Cheney a coward for questioning Senator Kerry's war record and ability to protect the US.
"When I hear this from Dick Cheney, who was a coward, who would not serve during the Vietnam War, it makes my blood boil," Senator Harkin said.
Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania yesterday Mr Bush defended his push for an anti-missile defence system and accused those who oppose the program of not understanding the threats of the 21st century.
The charge brought a counter-attack from Senator Kerry, who accused Mr Bush of favouring missile defence over other measures to blunt the threat posed by terrorists.
Mr Bush made his remarks during an election-year visit to a Boeing military equipment, noting that Boeing engineers had placed "the first ballistic missile interceptor into its silo" at a base in Alaska.
Calling the controversial project "necessary to protect us against the threats of the 21st century", he noted that the late president Ronald Reagan, also a Republican, had sown the seeds of the system.
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