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A TAD EXAGGERATED Amid the controversy over “Unfit for Command” and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, it’s worth noting that Senator Kerry’s surrogates continue to overstate their man’s Vietnam record. Last Wednesday, CNN’s Paula Zahn hosted a “town meeting” in Canton, Ohio, where Kerry aide Tad Devine and Bush aide Tucker Eskew answered questions from audience members. One man took a swipe at Mr. Kerry in the course of asking his question. He identified himself as a “former captain and commander of a special forces detachment significantly longer than 4 1 /2 months.” This brought applause from Bush supporters in the audience. Oddly, Ms. Zahn also clapped; presumably the anti-Kerry nature of the remark escaped her and she thought she was just cheering the guy’s service. In any case, Mr. Devine offered the following defense of Mr. Kerry:

When you said you served for more than 4 1 /2 months, I take it that you were alluding to Senator Kerry’s service in Vietnam. John Kerry served two tours of duty in Vietnam, OK: one on a missile frigate, and then secondly, one on a Swift boat. He volunteered to serve there the first time after he got out of Yale. He volunteered to serve there on his first tour of duty. He volunteered to serve on one of the most dangerous assignments in Vietnam, on a swift boat. He was there four-and-a-half months. He won a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. And I think that means that he served this nation well and ably.

In fact, although Mr. Kerry served two tours of duty, only one was in Vietnam; the other was in the Pacific aboard the USS Gridley, which spent part of the tour off the Vietnamese coast. Mr. Devine’s claim that Kerry “volunteered to serve on one of the most dangerous assignments in Vietnam, on a Swift boat,” is contradicted by Mr. Kerry’s own account, as the Washington Post reports:

When Kerry signed up to command a Swift boat in the summer of 1968, he was inspired by the example of his hero, John F. Kennedy, who had commanded the PT-109 patrol boat in the Pacific in World War II. But Kerry had little expectation of seeing serious action. At the time the Swift boats-or PCFs (patrol craft fast), in Navy jargon-were largely restricted to coastal patrols. “I didn’t really want to get involved in the war,” Kerry wrote in a book of war reminiscences published in 1986.

The role of the Swift boats changed dramatically toward the end of 1968, when Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., commander of U.S. naval forces in South Vietnam, decided to use them to block Vietcong supply routes through the Mekong Delta. Hundreds of young men such as Kerry, with little combat experience, suddenly found themselves face to face with the enemy. Mr. Kerry did of course end up doing dangerous duty, but that wasn’t what he volunteered for. Why won’t his campaign simply stick to the truth?

MR. BAD EXAMPLE “Imagine if supporters of Bill Clinton had tried in 1996 to besmirch the military record of his opponent, Bob Dole….The truth, according to many accounts, is that Dole fought with exceptional bravery and deserves the nation’s gratitude. No one in 1996 questioned that record.” -editorial, Boston Globe, August 22, 2004 The truth about Dole’s war record is considerably less than awe-inspiring. Yet the myth endures, and with the candidate running on the contrast between his and Clinton’s military record, his campaign isn’t eager to give a more accurate account. Dole, at the behest of his handlers, is less reticent about his service than in the past, but he mainly speaks about his wound and rehabilitation. He has passed up several opportunities to correct the exaggerated versions in biographies, and in the case of his self-wounding has even approved a sanitized account in which his maladroitly hurled grenade goes unnoted. Journalists continue to portray him as a hero, winner of two Bronze Stars. Joe Klein, for example, writes in Newsweek that Dole knows ‘what guns do. He also knows what politicians do, which is rarely anything quite so dramatic as leading an army into battle.’ Such attempts to make political capital out of Dole’s war service go beyond the respect due him for the role he played as a soldier with the 10th Mountain Division. -Robert B. Ellis, The Nation, August 12, 1996 Hat tip: National Review’s Jim Geraghty.

DIDN’T NIXON DO THAT 30 YEARS AGO? “Kerry Urges Bush to End Vietnam Attacks” -headline, Associated Press, August 22, 2004