Well, those crazy Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are at it again. This time they are not complaining about Senator John Kerry not having bled enough to get his purple heart. No, their second ad which recently started airing here in Pennsylvania is about how Kerry “sold out” his fellow veterans after returning from Vietnam. The ad plays footage of Kerry’s 1971 testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in which he, speaking about an investigation in Detroit in which 150 veterans testified to war crimes, said the following, “They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.”

As the ad continues, Joe Ponder says, “The accusations that John Kerry made against the veterans who served in Vietnam was just devastating, and it hurt me more than any physical wounds I had.” And former P.O.W. Ken Cordier adds, “That was part of the torture was to sign a statement that you had committed war crimes.”

Yet in the entirety of the ad, not one of the speakers ever questions the veracity of Kerry’s testimony. After all, how could they? By now the fact that the United States committed war crimes in Vietnam is well known. Perhaps not every single American who served was directly involved in such crimes, but there were certainly enough cases to merit concern. That point aside, however, the claims that the Swift Boat Veterans attribute to Kerry are not actually his claims at all. As stated earlier, the section of his testimony in question is relating to the committee claims made by other veterans during an investigation. Thus, the harshest criticism these veterans can make against Kerry is that what he said hurt their feelings. Not that he was dishonest. Just that it wasn’t nice.

Well, of course what he said wasn’t nice. War crimes aren’t nice. But they happened. And in terms of importance, finding out the truth about such horrible crimes far outweighs protecting these men’s ability to maintain their illusion of the U.S. military as a perfect organization completely incapable of immorality or error.

Much more disturbing than the accusations that Kerry is a sellout is the callous attitude these people seem to be eager to take about all of this. They would rather have had Kerry lie to a Senate committee about what happened in Vietnam than risk muddying not even their own image, but that of the military in which they served. And that is simply outrageous.

They may call themselves Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. But they would more appropriately be called Swift Boat Veterans for Their Own Bloated Egos.

I am only relieved that most of the veterans I have seen in my lifetime are far more honorable men than this.