Supporting the troops, except for John Kerry

This business over smearing John Kerry's service record is simply disgusting. It's disgusting not only because the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth coalition is headed by partisan hack John O'Neill, who has been on the anti-Kerry brigade so long that he met with Nixon about how to damage his credibility. It's disgusting not only because all of the voices represented in the SBVfT attack ad were soldiers who never served with John Kerry, unless you count them being in the same country as Kerry as "serving" with him. It's disgusting not only because the doctor in the ad who claimed to have seen Kerry's war wounds is not listed among the doctors who treated him. It's disgusting because the war record smear doesn't stop with a bunch of partisan veterans who can't get over Kerry's antiwar protesting.

As Atrios sagely notes, the US media has subtly discounted Kerry's service record by confining it to "four months" of service that he ditched at the earliest opportunity. In fact, he served two tours of active duty, which included training, serving on a frigate in coastal waters, and finally the Swift Boat duty. It adds up to multiple years of service in the Navy, and the "four months" claim, parroted by countless news outlets, undermines this service. It also shows how the expectations bar is set so high for Kerry and so low for Bush, which plays right into GOP hands. As DC Democrat put it on Kos:

Subject: I can't say this often enough
Why is it that the guy who volunteers to go to Vietnam and incontrovertibly could have been killed in action is the no account low life while the drug addict alcoholic who can't even show up for National Guard duty in Alabama is the one who did his duty to country?

OK, he didn't have to go all to way to the "drug addict alcoholic" thing to make his point, but it is well taken. Somehow, it's okay to smear a Naval veteran while giving a free pass to a National Guard deserter, who frolicked in swimming pools with ambitious secretaries while the Naval vet was busy getting shot at by the Viet Cong. Furthermore, the people that are doing this smear job inexplicably see themselves as the party for veterans and the military. Well, as long as they're Republican veterans and the Republican military.