Didja notice the author of the Kerry hatchet job was a writer from the American Enterprise Institute? He says:

But George McGovern also could boast that he was "a decorated combat pilot in World War II," while his opponent "was stationed far from battle," and McGovern nonetheless lost 49 states, largely because the voters thought him weak on national security.

But McGovern DIDN'T boast of his combat service. Most voters probably weren't even aware of it. So much for that lil rhetorical strategem.

As leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Kerry accused American soldiers of "war crimes . . . committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." This hyperbolic rhetoric may be written off against the fevers of the times and his own profoundly painful experience in the war; in subsequent years and on other issues, his tone became appreciably cooler. But the tilt of his positions remained constant.

Kerry was right about the war crimes and the awareness. Here's David Hackworth (America's most-decorated living soldier):

"Vietnam was an atrocity from the get-go," Mr. Hackworth said. "It was that kind of war, a frontless war of great frustration. There were hundreds of My Lais. You got your card punched by the numbers of bodies you counted."

The Vietnam vets in this 2003 story provide partial corroboration:

Tiger Force

Here's Colin Powell in his autobiography, condoning U.S. war crimes in Vietnam:

"I recall a phrase we used in the field, MAM, for military-age male," Powell wrote. "If a helo spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM, the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him. Brutal? Maybe so. But an able battalion commander with whom I had served at Gelnhausen (West Germany), Lt. Col. Walter Pritchard, was killed by enemy sniper fire while observing MAMs from a helicopter. And Pritchard was only one of many. The kill-or-be-killed nature of combat tends to dull fine perceptions of right and wrong."

Powell also condoned the scorched-earth policy the U.S. used, the torching of peasants' homes, the destruction of their food stocks, etc.

The litany of weapons systems that Kerry opposed included conventional as well as nuclear equipment: the B-1 bomber, the B-2, the F-15, the F-14A, the F-14D, the AH-64 Apache helicopter, the AV-8B Harrier jet, the Patriot missile, the Aegis air-defense cruiser and the Trident missile. And he sought to reduce procurement of the M1 Abrams tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Tomahawk cruise missile and the F-16 jet. Time and again, Kerry fought against what he called "the military-industrial corporate welfare complex that has relentlessly chewed up taxpayers' dollars."

HBO had a movie about the Pentagon's development of the Bradley Fighing Vehicle. According to the movie, more than 13 billion dollars were spent just developing it. And then it was a deathtrap.

Kinda funny that the typical refrain from conservatives when talking about education, welfare, etc., is "you can't solve problems by throwing money at them," but when it comes to national defense, conservatives call those who oppose the Pentagon's profligate spending "weak on national defense." By that reasoning, conservatives are weak on education.

Kerry was one of the Senate's strongest critics of President Ronald Reagan's policies of military resistance to Communist inroads in this hemisphere. When U.S. troops intervened in Grenada, Kerry denounced the action as "a bully's show of force." Kerry lent his name to Medical Aid for El Salvador, a political group that brought humanitarian aid to regions of that country held by Communist guerrillas. And he made himself one of the Senate's most vigorous opponents of aiding the anti-Communist contras as a means of pressuring Nicaragua's Sandinista regime. "I see an enormous haughtiness in the United States trying to tell them what to do," said Kerry. He and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) traveled to Managua to try to work their own peace deal with strongman Daniel Ortega and thus undercut U.S. policy. Kerry justified this by saying Reagan had failed "to create a climate of trust" with the Sandinistas.

And Kerry was morally correct in these actions. The contras were terrorists and the U.S. secret minings of Nicaragua's harbors in 1984 were acts of terrorism. Why were the Nicaraguan contras unable to survive without U.S. help, while the Salvadoran guerillas survived despite the efforts of the U.S. and the Salvadoran death squads? Probably because the latter had the backing of the people and the former did not.

Kerry's voting record on some things will probably hurt him, particularly if he allows conservatives to define him. I doubt that'll happen. When Republicans like Chambliss, Delay, etc., try to paint him as weak on national defense, Kerry's answer (Where were you when I was defending the country in Vietnam?) will cut them off at the knees.

I'm surprised you seem to accept the Kerry letter to Bush at face value. I interpret it as a "please don't throw me into the brer patch, farmer George" kinda thing. Kerry wouldn't have surrounded himself with Vietnam vets if it wasn't a cornerstone of his candidacy.