The Week

How can we ever learn the truth about John Kerry’s medals? He threw them away.

“Bush smeared John McCain four years ago,” says the new Kerry television ad. “Now he’s doing it to John Kerry.” The Democratic presidential candidate is in high-outrage mode these days, striking back at the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and their book, Unfit for Command, which questions key aspects of Kerry’s Vietnam record. Part of the Kerry counterattack is the claim that George W. Bush stood by and watched approvingly while a “fringe” veteran attacked former POW John McCain during the 2000 South Carolina primary campaign. No one has really examined this charge. Here’s what actually happened. At a Bush rally in South Carolina on February 3, 2000, attended by several Congressional Medal of Honor winners, a man named J. Thomas Burch said of McCain, “He has always opposed all the legislation, be it Agent Orange or Gulf War health care, or frankly the POW/MIA issue. He was the leading opponent in the Senate. He had the power to help these veterans. He came home and he forgot us.” Later, Bush said nothing to contradict Burch. But just how outrageous were Burch’s words? He did, after all, focus his remarks on McCain’s Senate voting record. And they were not without some basis. A week later, Newsday reported on McCain’s “uneasy relationship with some veterans organizations, particularly Vietnam veterans groups.” Newsday discussed McCain’s 1999 vote against a Department of Veterans Affairs funding bill, which, right or wrong, angered some veterans. The paper mentioned that McCain’s work in favor of normalizing relations with Vietnam in 1994 had also angered some veterans. And Newsday noted that while mainstream veterans organizations like the Veterans of Foreign Wars have honored McCain, they have often opposed his voting record. “In 1998, the VFW gave [McCain] a 75 percent favorable rating on their legislative issues, while several other senators scored 80-100,” Newsday said, “and in other years, it has been lower, hitting 27 percent in 1995.” Now, if Bush had stood by while Burch charged that John McCain had had it easy in Vietnam, or had not really been a prisoner of war—that would have been outrageous. But Bush didn’t do that. He let someone slam McCain’s voting record. The alleged “smear” never occurred.

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How can we ever learn the truth about John Kerry’s medals? He threw them away.

“Bush smeared John McCain four years ago,” says the new Kerry television ad. “Now he’s doing it to John Kerry.” The Democratic presidential candidate is in high-outrage mode these days, striking back at the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and their book, Unfit for Command, which questions key aspects of Kerry’s Vietnam record. Part of the Kerry counterattack is the claim that George W. Bush stood by and watched approvingly while a “fringe” veteran attacked former POW John McCain during the 2000 South Carolina primary campaign. No one has really examined this charge. Here’s what actually happened. At a Bush rally in South Carolina on February 3, 2000, attended by several Congressional Medal of Honor winners, a man named J. Thomas Burch said of McCain, “He has always opposed all the legislation, be it Agent Orange or Gulf War health care, or frankly the POW/MIA issue. He was the leading opponent in the Senate. He had the power to help these veterans. He came home and he forgot us.” Later, Bush said nothing to contradict Burch. But just how outrageous were Burch’s words? He did, after all, focus his remarks on McCain’s Senate voting record. And they were not without some basis. A week later, Newsday reported on McCain’s “uneasy relationship with some veterans organizations, particularly Vietnam veterans groups.” Newsday discussed McCain’s 1999 vote against a Department of Veterans Affairs funding bill, which, right or wrong, angered some veterans. The paper mentioned that McCain’s work in favor of normalizing relations with Vietnam in 1994 had also angered some veterans. And Newsday noted that while mainstream veterans organizations like the Veterans of Foreign Wars have honored McCain, they have often opposed his voting record. “In 1998, the VFW gave [McCain] a 75 percent favorable rating on their legislative issues, while several other senators scored 80-100,” Newsday said, “and in other years, it has been lower, hitting 27 percent in 1995.” Now, if Bush had stood by while Burch charged that John McCain had had it easy in Vietnam, or had not really been a prisoner of war—that would have been outrageous. But Bush didn’t do that. He let someone slam McCain’s voting record. The alleged “smear” never occurred.