Regarding Kerry's river combat strategy turned campaign metaphor of "turning your boat into the attacker" may succeed, but it ignores a few central issues. First of all, Kerry has a lot of exposed flesh here, and while he may be shooting back, he's still getting shot at. His campaign released a response to the "Christmas in Cambodia" episode that flew in the face of this memory that was "seared...seared" into his mind. From the Chicago Tribune:

"But the Kerry campaign said the group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is wrong and that Kerry was inside Cambodia to drop off commandos on one mission and was at the border on other occasions."

As Hugh Hewitt suggests,

Now this isn't hard. Kerry's on record claiming at least two cross-border missions --running guns and the CIA man drop off. Douglas Brinkley puts the number of "ferry-man" missions at "three or four." Kerry's critics --which include far more than just the Swift Boat vets, argue that there is zero evidence for any such missions, and that Kerry is lying. So the press should press for the details of the one, two, three or four missions Kerry led and the dates on which he led them. Not one crewmate has substantiated the story of "commando drop offs," CIA hats, or gun-running. Each of these stories appears to be a lie.

Again, there may be many who are willing to dismiss Kerry as unfit simply because he opposed the Vietnam war after he served in it. I am not one of these people. I am deeply indebted to this nation's military for protecting my freedoms. This isn't about Vietnam. It's about the notion that John Kerry appears to have fabricated an entire event, or series of events and is trying to weasel out of the mess he's made by changing the subject to the Jim Rassmann episode. The veracity of the Rassmann episode, which even according the the Post article which "completely discredits" Thurlow, is corroborated by other crewman, Dan Odell and Dick Pease (cited by the Post itself), is completely independent from the veracity of the "Christmas in Cambodia" episode.

Don't get me wrong, Bush's military record is nothing to write home about, but he rarely brings it up at all. I just think that there may be too many eggs in Kerry's Vietnam basket, but we'll have to wait and see.

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