Kerry Signs Form 180 - Records Prove Swifties Were Liars

by Steve

One of the enduring smears perpetrated by the right wing and its blogosphere during last year’s presidential campaign was the notion that John Kerry was hiding something in his war record by refusing to authorize the release of his full military records. Some of the allegations behind John O’Neill’s Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smears and his book “Unfit for Command” centered on allegations that Kerry was being less than truthful about his military record, which the right wing said was demonstrated by Kerry’s supposed refusal to release his records.

Today, the Swifties and the right wing blogosphere ate more shit when Kerry’s records were released, pursuant to his authorization last month on May 20th, and guess what? It turns out that Kerry’s record was better than he disclosed, because the record shows that commanding officers who later became politically-tainted accusers of his through their Swifty association actually issued Kerry commendations. In fact, the record shows that Kerry’s military service record was just as he had said it was, even if lying bastard John O’Neill keeps looking for that pony in a pile of horseshit he created for himself.

Such a revelation does lead to the question why Kerry didn’t release these records during the campaign when they could have lethally defused the Swifties. I’m speculating that perhaps vanity is the answer.

Why? Because the newly-released records also include his academic transcripts from his days at Yale, and these show that Kerry got more D’s in college than George W. Bush did when he was at Yale. So for the sake of not wanting to be seen as just as much a slacker as W, Kerry failed to use a club that could have undercut the Swifties during the critical month of August last year. Kerry of course went on to be a top student at the Naval Candidate School and serve with distinction in Vietnam, while Bush drank himself under the barstools of Alabama.

To be fair to Kerry, it could also be that Kerry knew the media would focus more, like AOL did this morning, on the grade story than they did on the fact that the Swifties were undercut once and for all. And Kerry probably knew that the Boston Globe's love-hate relationship with him, built on years of asking for and not getting what they want from him, would lead to two stories today, one good on the Swifty debunking, and one bad on the "slacker student" angle. But that would have been a transitory obstacle that could have been overcome in the heat of last year's campaign in August with a little bit of self-deprecating humor, a great deal of aggressive pushback and attack against the Swifties upon the release of the records, and some hammering of the media to cover the real issue here, which was Kerry's credibility relative to the right wing liars who were his attackers. But none of this was done last year by the Kerry braintrust of Cahill, Shrum, and Devine; instead the records which could have helped Kerry immensely last August are released the following June ostensibly to help Kerry in a futile second try in 2008.

Which explains why Bush is sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue right now, comfortable in his skin that he wasn’t a great student in college, and Kerry is on the outside looking in, more worried about his intellectual reputation than he was with clubbing the Swifties to death last year.