JOHN KERRY won a convincing new recruit yesterday to his battle with Vietnam veterans who accuse him of lying about heroics that won him two of his five medals.
William Rood, an editor with the Chicago Tribune’s Metro section, came to Mr Kerry’s defence in a 1,700-word account of his courage when they fought side-by-side on navy Swift boats.
The actions of the veterans, Mr Rood wrote, had hurt other veterans, like him, who were honoured for their part in the same battles that Mr Kerry fought, events they had hoped to forget but were now forced to remember. “While they meant to hurt Kerry, what they’re saying impugns others who are not in the public eye,” he wrote.
The veterans, who are backed by allies of President Bush, had armed themselves with stories “I know to be untrue”, he said.
The charge and counter-charge over Mr Kerry’s war record appears to be having a volatile effect on the polls. The veterans, backed with funds from an old friend of Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s top aide, have launched a bestselling book and a widely viewed series of blistering television advertisements accusing Mr Kerry of lying and not being fit for the presidency.
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At a glitzy weekend fundraiser in East Hampton, New York, Mr Kerry urged the President to “stand up and stop” the attacks. “The President needs to have the courage to talk about it,” he said.
The White House has not condemned the veterans’ advertisements, leaving open the possibility that they are true by saying that their side has never questioned Mr Kerry’s war record.
Criticising the advertisements is risky for Mr Kerry. If he proves that they are illegal he could boost Mr Bush’s demand to end all advertising by groups operating on non-campaign cash, and curtail anti-Bush advertisements being run by liberal groups. But the Republicans also have to tread carefully. On Saturday Ken Cordier, a Bush campaign volunteer and war veteran, was forced to quit after it emerged that he had participated in one of the anti-Kerry advertisemtents.
Mr Kerry filed a complaint with electoral authorities last week, insisting that the advertisements be withdrawn because their makers collaborated with Mr Bush’s campaign in violation of electoral laws. The Republicans deny this.
Mr Rood stepped into the fray after Mr Kerry contacted him to ask him to speak up. But he said that that was not why he was breaking his silence about events of 35 years ago for what he said was the first, and last, time.
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His decision was driven, he wrote, because the debate was “hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honoured for what they did”. As a result of the debate, the survivors were “living that war another time”, he wrote. “Many of us wanted to put it all behind us — the rivers, the ambushes, the killing.”
Until now he has refused all public comment, including interviews with his own newspaper, to which he refused to speak except in the form of the first-person account published yesterday.
The accusation challenged in detail by Mr Rood came in Unfit For Command, the current top seller on www. amazon.com, ahead of the congressional report on the September 11 attacks.
John O’Neill and Jerome Corsi, two veterans of the Swift boats, wrote in the book that Mr Kerry received his silver star after exaggerating his courage on February 28, 1969. Far from being a brave soldier who went into battle face-to-face with the enemy, as his silver star commendation suggested, he had actually chased down a “young Viet Cong in a loincloth”.
Mr O’Neill has been an opponent of Mr Kerry for 30 years, out of anger at the anti-war stance he adopted when he returned to the US. Although he served in the same area on the same boats, he was not with him that day. He has said that the account was based partly on a media report.
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But Mr Rood, who witnessed much of the incident, said that the person the presidential candidate shot dead was “a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore” .
Democrats hope that the article will discredit and silence the veterans, whose campaign threatens to rob them of their key trump card against Mr Bush.
TAKING SIDES IN WAR RECORDS BATTLE