This post gets two disclaimers: First, I'm writing this immediately before I go to bed, so it may not have all the benefits of coherance that a normal, shorter, wittier post might. Second, I fully recognize the fact that what I'm saying here is frightfully apparent to everyone who agrees with me and completely preposterous to everyone who doesn't. So, that aside...

I just want to make a quick point about the SwiftVets' ads. Specifically, the one that's supposedly the most damaging of the four they currently have out, "Sellout," which is the one where the three guys say, essentially, "he hurt my feelings with his testimony." Maybe he did, what do I know, but take a look at what he actually says:

"I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

He's recounting stories that he personally heard from "over 150" other people. In fact, the part of his testimony that the Swifties quote actually starts like this:

"They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears..."

(The italics are mine, obviously.) Now, take a look at what the SwiftVets say:

• "The accusations that John Kerry made against the veterans who served in Vietnam were just devastating."
• "That was part of the torture, was to sign a statement that you had committed war crimes."
• "John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I and many of my comrades in north vietnam in the prison camps took torture to avoid saying."

In short, his testimony "betrayed" the veterans and "dishonored his country." But how? Seriously, how?

There are two things he doesn't say, which are both worth noting. First, he doesn't say that all Vietnam veterans were war criminals. Second, he doesn't say that Joe Ponder, Ken Cordier, or Paul Galanti were war criminals. So then what is it these guys have a problem with? Surely they don't think that there should be war criminals? If war crimes were taking place, wouldn't the "honorable" thing to do actually be to stop them?

If Kerry had said anything along the lines of, "The United States Army is entirely composed of war criminals," I'd at least understand where the Swifties were coming from. But for them to take offense at his admission that some war crimes were taking place... That just seems foolish.