I recently had a conversation with a conservative Republican friend of mine, and he had this to comment on John Kerry's war record:
I suspect that his actions in Vietnam will also come back to haunt him. He murdered 21 unarmed civilians in Vietnam and then claimed that they were Viet Cong. Kerry accepted the Bronze Star for this action. He later pretended to throw that Bronze Star on the steps of the capital in an anti-war protest, but actually he threw someone else's medals. He wore the actual bronze star at a recent campaign appearance.
There you have it folks: the GOP talking points on John Kerry's war record, version 1.0. We can expect more and worse in the next few weeks, and we can expect a lot of it to stick.
I've stated over and over that by the time Karl Rove is done, Kerry will be in Vietnam fighting alongside the VC and shitting on the flag. Sure enough, operation Red Kerry is underway, just as soon as it looks like his nomination is inevitable. People who believed that Rove and company would get torn to peices in the process are dangerously mistaken: just look at what they did to Max Cleland.
The question is, is the Kerry campaign ready to take on the Bush media machine head on? We know they're capable of campaigning dirty, but the fact is also that they're short on cash. My money says that the GOP is already push-polling an anti-Kerry message in battleground states.