Mary Anne:

The issue is whether Kerry's advertised military record matches his real one, and it deserves as much attention as Bush's record did.

To hear people talk, and to read Kerry's website, you'd think he'd gone over to Vietnam like Rambo, his knife in his teeth, looking for the heart of the action.

I have documented that he certainly did his duty, but made no deliberate effort to put himself in harm's way, and in fact signed up for swift boat duty because he believed it was safer, not because it was dangerous.

This does not make him a coward. Most reasonable people would do the same thing. I would have.

What it does make him is an embellisher of his own military career for political purposes.

He was not in Cambodia. There are way too many holes in that story, and veterans who actually were in Cambodia are coming up with still more holes every day. Yet he used that for political purposes as well.

This does not make him a coward either.

What it does make him is an embellisher at best, and a liar at worst.

Kerry supporters won't look at the evidence, believing that if you scream loud enough at the accusers, or sue them into oblivion, or crash their websites, or start digging dirt up on them, it will all go away. The media believes that if it simply ignores the story long enough (after having made anti-Bush stories into headlines on far less evidence) that it will all go away.

It isn't going away. Fact are facts. When someone here wants to actually discuss the evidence, something I haven't seen a lot of, let me know.

George W. Bush isn't making his Guard service the be-all and end-all of his campaign. I think there's one sentence mentioning it on his website. Kerry's entire campaign on national security revolves around the fact that he served in Vietnam. If it's going to be the foundation of his campaign, it's going to see a little more scrutiny.

Let me know when Kerry's service questions get the mileage Bush's service questions did from the Los Angeles Times and other mainstream newspapers.