Ben Smith reports that Medal of Honor recipient Col. Bud Day, one of the veterans defending McCain's service, was a member of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Smith notes the apparent irony that "The Arizona Republican was among the first to condemn the Swift Boat ads, calling one 'dishonest and dishonorable.'"
But Smith fails to mention is that McCain also told CBS in 2004 that "what John Kerry did after the war is very legitimate, political discussion and controversy."
And if any reporter took the time to watch the actual ads put out by the Swift Vets, he would see that the ads primarily focused on John Kerry's 1971 congressional testimony that American troops tortured, raped, and murdered Vietnamese civilians "on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."
As Vietnam veteran Mackubin Thomas Owens wrote in January of 2004:
If [John Kerry] believes his 1971 indictment of his country and his fellow veterans was true, then he couldn't possibly be proud of his Vietnam service. Who can be proud of committing war crimes of the sort that Kerry recounted in his 1971 testimony? But if he is proud of his service today, perhaps it is because he always knew that his indictment in 1971 was a piece of political theater that he, an aspiring politician, exploited merely as a "good issue." If the latter is true, he should apologize to every veteran of that war for slandering them to advance his political fortunes.
