From The Chicago Tribune …
The commander of a Navy swift boat who served alongside Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry during the Vietnam War stepped forward Saturday to dispute attacks challenging Kerry’s integrity and war record.
William Rood, an editor on the Chicago Tribune’s metropolitan desk, said he broke 35 years of silence about the Feb. 28, 1969, mission that resulted in Kerry’s receiving a Silver Star because recent portrayals of Kerry’s actions published in the best-selling book “Unfit for Command” are wrong and smear the reputations of veterans who served with Kerry.
Rood, who commanded one of three swift boats during that 1969 mission, said Kerry came under rocket and automatic weapons fire from Viet Cong forces and that Kerry devised an aggressive attack strategy that was praised by their superiors. He called allegations that Kerry’s accomplishments were “overblown” untrue.
“The critics have taken pains to say they’re not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It’s gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there,” Rood said in a 1,700-word first-person account published in Sunday’s Tribune.
Rood’s recollection of what happened on that day at the southern tip of South Vietnam was backed by key military documents, including his citation for a Bronze Star he earned in the battle and a glowing after-action report written by the Navy captain who commanded his and Kerry’s task force, who is now a critic of the Democratic candidate.
Rood’s previously untold story and the documents shed new light on a key historical event that has taken center stage in an extraordinary political and media firestorm generated by a group calling itself the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Here’s <$Ad$>the article from which that passage comes. The 1,700 word account apparently comes in tomorrow’s paper.
As I said, I think the Kerry campaign is right to go aggressively on the attack against the president for running his campaign this way and seeking to profit politically from this garbage. But that’s not enough. Kerry’s surrogates have to go aggressively on the attack against the president on all his many points of vulnerability, which are legion — his dishonesty about his own gap-ridden service in the Texas Air National Guard, his White House’s on-going efforts to cover up the Plame leak, the endless record of deceptions tied to the Iraq invasion, all of it.
Counterattacking on the president’s shameless behavior on the Swift Boat matter is necessary, but hardly sufficient. To be successful, Kerry and his team and his surrogates (you know, the folks he’s on a first name basis with but doesn’t know from Adam and can’t control in any way) need to place the president on the defensive across the board.
This whole Swift Boat episode is entirely in keeping not just with the record of George W. Bush, but, to be frank, his whole family. Think back to the 1988 and 1992 presidential races. Partly, it’s in the their political DNA. But it’s also in the nature of blue bloods trying to ape populist politics — for the key example, see the 1992 GOP convention in Houston and the sad antics of Bush family retainer Rich Bond.
I said a few days ago that it was ridiculous to compare the ads run by Moveon to the Swift Boat ones. And it’s true — they’re very soft soap in comparison. But that’s a mistake. They should be hitting much harder.
The president has chosen the ground on which he wants to fight this campaign. And as per usual he’s mobilized friends and family retainers to do the fighting for him. The president is playing tackle football, not touch or flag. If the Dems keep up with the latter they’ll lose.
Back in the primaries John Kerry would say that if the Bushies thought they could pull a Max Cleland on him, he’d say, “Bring it on.” Well, it’s on.
My sense of Kerry is almost entirely defined by watching his 1996 race against Bill Weld up close. So I think he has it in him to fight. But now’s when we find out.
