So there's a case where the man didn't do anything wrong at all. He was sticking by his principles, and that was turned into an attack on his patriotism
Kerry has principles? Seriously, this was standard politics (which ain't beanbag, as Pogo used to say). It played well into Kerry's not exactly undeserved rep for taking both sides of every tough issue.
What I'd say is that the accusations of a completely fabricated military record have not been proved, or even that well supported, and it really shouldn't be up to Kerry to prove that they are false.
He wasn't charged with a completely fabricated military record. He was charged with certain fabrications, which he used to collect a bunch of medals in a very short four month stint, and to aggrandize himself with afterwards. If the charges were baseless, Kerry didn't have to make a big stink or sue over them. He had an extremely simple course of defense, which should have been effective - release his records. To this day, he has not done so, and has squirmed and promised and lied and done certain half-measures, releasing them to certain reporters, not the public.
Why all the squirming if the facts are as he says? I don't have a huge stake in the true origins of Kerry's medals (neither do the Swiftvets, imo; the real grievance is Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony), but I just go for the simplest explanation of what I see, which is that the Swiftvet charges are more or less true and/or there is something in Kerry's records that would really kill him if it got out. Speculations about an original less-than-honorable discharge, fixed up later under the amnesty, sound plausible to me - and it's Kerry's own actions now that are making the charges plausible. |
