War-record debate stirs questions of character

WASHINGTON — John Kerry's Vietnam War service records run to multiple medal commendations and a notation of "conspicuous gallantry" in combat. President Bush's file tracks the stateside career of a National Guard test pilot.

Yet the combat veteran is the one under attack as a wartime pretender in the race for the White House. It's a controversy — Democrats call it a smear — stirred by the president's allies and aimed at undermining Kerry's truthfulness, personal character and fitness for office as much as his claim to the medals he came home with.

Smear or not, the charges are spreading at the speed of talk radio, cable television and the Internet, and affecting the campaign in unpredictable ways.

"He's lying about his record," said one Vietnam veteran in a commercial by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that aired recently in three battleground states.

"Lying about his first Purple Heart," said a second. "He lied to get the Bronze Star," added a third.

"He dishonored his country, he most certainly did," said another, as the attack takes on a slightly different tone.

"John Kerry cannot be trusted," another vet concluded.

Challenged on trust, truth and credibility, Kerry fought back Thursday, adopting the language of his detractors.

They are spreading "lies about my record," he said; Bush, he said, was allowing front groups to "do his dirty work."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan seized on that to accuse Kerry of "losing his cool" — presumably not a trait the voters seek in a commander in chief.

Democrats concede privately the Massachusetts senator has been slow to recognize the damage being done to his political standing by the attacks by a group of men who hold Kerry's post-combat anti-war activities in contempt. There were hints of it in polling, and a tacit acknowledgment in the strongly worded rejection of the claims and in the decisions of both the Kerry campaign and the Democratic Party to air new ads on the subject.

In a University of Pennsylvania National Annenberg Survey, more than half of those surveyed said they had either seen the ad aired by Kerry's detractors or heard of it. "Unfit for Command," a book detailing the Swift Boat Veterans' accusations, was No. 1 Saturday on Amazon.com's best seller list. A CBS poll said independent voters were split on whether the allegations were believable, and it noted a shift in veterans toward Bush.