Of course, if serving in Vietnam were the primary qualification to be president, the United States would need thousands of Oval Offices, but John Kerry, trying to avoid his Senate record, chose to make a four-month stint decades ago the centerpiece of his campaign. And every day now he must be regretting that decision.
Kerry's latest faux pas: calling Vietnam veteran Robert "Friar Tuck" Brant and asking if he knew about that awful group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
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"I said, 'I am one, John,'" Brant said.
The Massachusetts Democrat had failed to note or recall Brant's appearance at a news conference announcing the group in May.
"There was a moment of hesitation, and he said, `I appreciate your honesty.' He said, `Well, why are you?'"
Brant reminded Kerry of his depiction of veterans as war criminals. "I said, `You know that's not true,'" Brant recalled to the Associated Press. "That's been simmering in me about 35 years."
The New York Post reported today: "Sean McCabe, a spokesman for the 264-member organization, said it plans to send a cease-and-desist letter warning Kerry 'to stop calling our members,' because it's an independent '527' group and it's illegal for campaigns to contact them."
The senator was breaking the law and should have immediately ended the call when Brant said he was a member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" reported this morning.
At a Democrat fund-raiser last night in Philadelphia, Kerry tried to defend his anti-U.S. activism even though communist torturers used his discredited congressional testimony in 1971 to add to the suffering of American POWs.
"You can judge my character, incidentally, by that," Kerry
told the Democrat crowd.
Gladly.
Editor's note:
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