Vietnam Vets for Kerry?
John Kerry is using the image of his Vietnam unit below in his campaign ads.

Current conventional wisdom says that John Kerry is an esteemed war hero, with three purple hearts, and that most veterans who knew him think highly of him.

Well, Swift Veterans for Truth disagrees. They're not so enamored with John Kerry:

Senator Kerry misrepresented his own actions and those of his fellow officers and men. We believe that some of that misrepresentation resulted in him receiving medals to which he was not entitled. While many people might think that is immaterial, it is a matter of great importance to military personnel and veterans. As our chairman, Rear Admiral Roy Hoffman, U.S. Navy (Ret.), has said, “This is not a political issue. It is a matter of his judgment, truthfulness, reliability, loyalty and trust -- all absolute tenets of command.”

It is a matter of public record that John Kerry lied before Congress when he falsely portrayed his fellow service personnel in Vietnam as rapists and baby killers. John Kerry claimed that American troops were guilty of “crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command,” and that we “personally raped” and otherwise brutalized innocent civilians. Kerry specifically accused Swift boat personnel of “showing the flag and firing at sampans and villages along the banks” and “butchering a lot of innocent people.” None of that is true.

We believe Senator Kerry’s irresponsible accusations damaged the U.S. war effort. Whether his testimony was designed to advance a political or personal agenda, we do believe that testimony endangered our prisoners of war, dishonored those injured and killed in action and did irreparable harm to the reputation of servicemen who served honorably in Vietnam only to return home to unwarranted ridicule and abuse.

Drawing on the credibility of a tour of duty in Vietnam, however abbreviated, John Kerry shaped a false, slanderous image of U.S. military personnel as violent, vicious and brutal. U.S. military personnel, Senator Kerry told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, are collectively “a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence.” That is untrue. As with military men and women today, U.S. military personnel in Vietnam went out of their way to safeguard innocent life, often taking casualties themselves rather than putting civilians at risk.

Having lied to the world about his former comrades, it is our view that Senator Kerry is unfit to command our sons and daughters as Commander-in-Chief.

And they're not happy that their visages were used without permission in Kerry's ads, and that only one of those pictured actually supports John Kerry for President. They're providing the more honest photo that Kerry should use:

John Edwards says if you want to know John Kerry, talk to those who served with him. Swift Veterans for Truth took him up on that:

John Kerry has been able to convince about 13 men who served on Swift boats in the Mekong Delta to support him, 7 or 8 of whom were at various times crew members on his own 6-man boat. Those are the men the Kerry campaign so prominently featured at the Democratic Convention. The photograph we have posted at SwiftVets.com shows Kerry with 19 of his fellow Swift boat OICs (Officers In Charge) in Coastal Division 11. Four OICs were not present for the photograph. Only one of his 23 fellow OICs from Coastal Division 11 supports John Kerry.

Overall, more than 250 Swift boat veterans are on the record questioning Kerry's fitness to serve as Commander-in-Chief. That list includes his entire chain of command -- every single officer Kerry served under in Vietnam. The Kerry game plan is to ignore all this and pretend that the 13 veterans his campaign jets around the country and puts up in 5-star hotels really represent the truth about his short, controversial combat tour.

And they produced an anti-Kerry ad that Lorie Byrd at PoliPundit says is the most devestating political ad she has ever seen. Here too -- don't miss it! (Hat tip: Instapundit)

- posted by The Dutchman @ 8:08:00 AM