In the media kerfuffle regarding Donald Trump’s stupid remarks about John McCain’s Vietnam service, the ratings-sinking CNN noted that while Jeb Bush had condemned Trump’s boorishness, he had long ago defended the swift boat veterans’ attacks against John Kerry.  Had CNN been content to leave their news article with a passing reference to political history, I wouldn’t be writing this.  But no, they just had to follow with a couple of pernicious lies that have long been poisonous serpents in that increasingly fetid swamp called the Democratic Party.

From the article:

All of the charges were contradicted by official military records and almost all of the men who served with Kerry came out in defense of their former crewmate, praising his courage. Only one of the swift boat critics served with Kerry.

Kerry received several medals for his service in Vietnam, including several Purple Heart medals for injuries he sustained in combat.

The CNN writer, perhaps a student at the time, apparently has no real knowledge of those records, or he would know that John Kerry cherry-picked for release those parts of his military records that were supportive of his heroic fairy tales, while refusing to open his entire records for media examination.  When called out on that by the many men of the swift boat veterans organization who actually did serve with him – not the one man claimed by CNN – Kerry repeatedly promised to sign an authorization form allowing the Navy to release his full records.  The operative words there are repeatedly promised.  And then he promised again.  And again, and again, and again and again, but guess what!  It never happened throughout the course of the campaign, because John Kerry knew that what was in those records would torpedo his prospects as a presidential candidate.

And what might that torpedo be?  Most likely it was a dishonorable or other form of unfavorable discharge given to Lieutenant Kerry for his traitorous behaviors in treating with the enemy.  Kerry was still a commissioned junior naval officer when he met with North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris in May 1970, an action that could have brought charges of treason and a lengthy prison sentence.  During the 2004 campaign, there was speculation by those investigating Kerry’s discharge that Jimmy Carter had reversed Kerry’s bad discharge in 1977 and issued an honorable version.  That would have been an unusually long time between an officer’s separation from service, 1970, and the issuance of his discharge in 1977.

The fact that John Kerry to this day has never released his military records is quite telling when one considers the fact that upon losing the 2004 campaign, he vowed to sue the members of the swift boat veterans organization for defamation.  After all, those sailors who had served with him in Vietnam had publicly challenged virtually every claim to valor and wounds that Kerry had made and ballyhooed during the campaign, effectively calling him a liar and a fraud, a candidate for president who had committed the later to come crime of stolen valor.  Those were serious charges, and they were made quite prominently and quite publicly.  Most importantly, they likely cost John Kerry the presidency of the United States of America.

If those swift boat charges were untrue, then John Kerry had himself the biggest, most publicly and financially damaging case of defamation the world has ever seen.  There were of course the lost prestige and the need for vindication of character and valor, but more importantly, think of the financial losses.  Kerry’s lawyers could point to the tens, maybe hundreds of millions made by Slick Willie since he left office, using that as a template for determining monetary damages.  John Kerry could have won the largest defamation lawsuit in history, except for one thing: discovery.  In any defamation suit against the swift boat veterans, John Kerry knew full well that first among the documents subpoenaed by the lawyers for the swifties would be his full and entire military records.

The primary defense against defamation, libel, or slander, any of those torts against demeaning and damaging a person’s character or performance, is truth.  If what they say about you is true, then you can’t sue them successfully for saying so.  John Kerry knew that not only was truth on the side of the swift boat veterans, but there might also be further disclosures in those records that he did not want to see made public.  That has to be the only reason that John Kerry’s long-promised and repeatedly threatened lawsuit against the swift boat veterans never came to be.

John Kerry is and was a phony hero.  Of course, the fact that he lied about his military service and caused truly good and faithful sailors to be demonized by the liberal media actually qualifies him for heroic status in the Democrat party’s pantheon.