What I find amazing is that I've found more stories denouncing the Swift Vets as a "Republican hit squad" than I've seen of the Swift Boat Veteran's charges.

Have the liberals at Fox picked this story up? I doubt it. Because there is nothing to back it up. It is all just election year, partisan, mud-slinging. It has nothing to do with liberal bias in the media.

It is all coming from Republicans who have made up this crap about Kerry because they know that Bush's military service is pathetic compared to Kerry's.

Bush is no military hero, and Kerry is. Tough break. But, since the pro-war right has placed such a high premium on military service, they are now in a position of having to pretend that their candidate is somehow more of a "military man" than his opponent.

It is really quite a sad thing to see people who claim to value military service rip into Kerry. The principled thing to do would be to just say, "Hey Kerry may be a war hero, but I think Bush sould be prez because of xyz."

Really, what this all goes to show is that, for conservatives, principles are a stick to hit others with, and that all words and actions by conservatives are justified because they believe their cause to be above all others.

It is all coming from Republicans who have made up this crap about Kerry because they know that Bush's military service is pathetic compared to Kerry's.

Are you sure? These are hundreds of guys, placing their reputations on the line, subjecting themselves to awful smear tactics in order to say publicly that Kerry's war record is questionable. They've been maintaining this for months, trying to dissuade the Democrats from nominating this man.

As for what happened in Vietnam: they were there, and I was not. The least I can do is listen to what they have to say.

Bush is no military hero, and Kerry is. Tough break. But, since the pro-war right has placed such a high premium on military service, they are now in a position of having to pretend that their candidate is somehow more of a "military man" than his opponent.

I don't think that's so. I don't think most of us on the "pro-war right" really give a rip about whether someone served or not. The concern is more, "what can he do for the country now?"

Also: Bush supporters don't have to attack Kerry's war record. Their guy has four years as Commander-in-Chief, vs. a decades-old three-month-long stint on a Swift boat. (A normal "tour of duty" at that time was a year.)

It is really quite a sad thing to see people who claim to value military service rip into Kerry.

Then what do you say to the men who came back from Vietnam to accusations of "Baby Killer!" because of the way Kerry portrayed the conduct of American soldiers/sailors? A lot of Vietnam vets--including Democrats--are livid about that. Many of them feel betrayed.

We're talking about a guy whose picture is hanging in a museum in Ho Chi Minh City, after all. And we know that the men who were captured and tortured were taunted about the testimony of Kerry and guys like him by the Vietnamese up in Hanoi.

And there was that business about how it was "seared, seared" into Kerry's memory that he was in Cambodia on Christmas Eve, when Nixon was President--except that Nixon wasn't President until the following January, and there doesn't appear to be any way Kerry could possibly have been in Cambodia on that day. Let's say obvious lies like this don't engender a lot of trust.

The principled thing to do would be to just say, "Hey Kerry may be a war hero, but I think Bush sould be prez because of xyz."

I would love it if the issues were discussed more in this campaign. But all Kerry seems to want to talk about is Southeast Asia 30+ years ago.

In fact, the "Christmas in Cambodia" story has changed twice in the past few days. First Kerry was "near" Cambodia at Christmas, and then when that one sank, he was in Cambodia "near" Christmas. Like late January, or maybe early February.

Or so we hear from Kerry's spokescritters. Kerry himself hasn't said anything on the subject. And since his entire campaign platform consists of 4 months and 11 days of service in Vietnam, that's kind of a problem. For Kerry, anyway.