Last night, I received a campaign email from Mary Beth Cahill, Kerry-Edwards 2004 Campaign Manager. The subject of the email was 'The end of a smear' and in it Ms. Cahill addressed the recent emergence of the Unfit for Command campaign, championed by a group called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. She starts,

Today marks the end of the dishonest and disgusting smear campaign against John Kerry and his crewmates from Vietnam. This morning on the front page of the Washington Post, one of the central figures in the effort to distort John Kerry's military service was completely discredited.

She's talking about Larry Thurlow, who swore under oath that Kerry didn't in fact rescue Jim Rassmann while taking heavy hostile fire (a copy of the signed affadavit is here). He says there was no hostile fire at all. Here's Kerry's account of the event, taken from a Washington Times piece:

"A mine went off alongside Kerry's Swift Boat, PCF 94. [Jim] Rassmann was blown into the water. Kerry was terribly wounded from the underwater mine. Kerry, 25, turned his boat back into the fire zone and, bleeding heavily from his arm and side, reached into the water and pulled Rassmann to safety with enemy fire all around. Kerry then towed the sinking boat [PCF 3] out of action."

The fact remains that Kerry likely saved Jim Rassman's life. This is certainly the opinion of Jim Rassmann himself. But the question is not whether or not Kerry pulled Rassmann out of the water, it's whether he was taking enemy fire while doing so.

Quite frankly, I'd reather leave this issue alone, but the Kerry campaign sent me an email about it, telling me that Thurlow had been "completely discredited". That's the language that bothers me. The Post says this:

But Thurlow's military records, portions of which were released yesterday to The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act, contain several references to "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire" directed at "all units" of the five-boat flotilla. Thurlow won his own Bronze Star that day, and the citation praises him for providing assistance to a damaged Swift boat "despite enemy bullets flying about him."

Yes, he and Kerry both receieved Bronze Stars for bravery under small arms fire, but this is not incontrovertible proof. As the Times points out today,

It seems likely that one after-action report was used for both Navy citations and inevitably would describe the same version of events. No one can now say who wrote this after-action report. In a statement yesterday, Mr. Thurlow said, "I am convinced that the language used in my citation ... was language taken directly from John Kerry's report."

This seems a reasonable enough explanation to me. Is Thurlow's credibility questioned? Surely, but I don't think he's been "completely discredited", as Ms. Cahill's yestereve email suggests. She went on in the email:

The group behind this smear campaign calls itself "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth." But the truth is the last thing they are interested in.

President Bush refuses to condemn this group. He wants them to do his dirty work. But this effort to distract attention from the issues that matter most has failed.

This morning, John Kerry said he learned an important lesson in Vietnam: "When you're under attack, the best thing to do is turn your boat into the attacker."

I will admit that the SBVFT are not looking for the truth as an end in itself. Their end is to hurt Kerry's chances at being elected. So is MoveOn.org, so is Rock against Bush, that's just the way it goes in political campaigns and I would happier if the Swifties called themselves "Swiftboat Veterans who, after having served with and near John Kerry in Vietnam, believe the war service on which he so leans to be grossly exagerrated, highly adulterated and in some cases blatantly false, and therefore believe that he lacks the necessary character required to lead the United States of America". That would be closer to the truth, but it wouldn't be easy to remember.