SWIFT BOAT VETERANS FOR THE TRUTH (ha ha) ARE INTERESTING CREW

Angry at the smear job the organization "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" is performing on John Kerry and his military service, I looked into a few of the higher-profile signatories. Joe Conason has a good backgrounder on SwiftVets spokesmen John O'Neill and Merrie Spaeth. Here's just a little more on the chain of command above Kerry, all of whom consider him "unfit to be Commander in Chief":

Captain Adrian Lonsdale USCG (retired): Adrian Lonsdale remembers a young John F. Kerry as a naval officer who was a good debater, even back in his days in Vietnam. "He and I and others used to have long discussions at the officers club," said Mr. Lonsdale of Mattapoisett, a former Coast Guard officer who commanded a division in which the Massachusetts senator was attached back in 1969. "They were very spirited discussions about the war and the politics back home. He was opposed to the war but it didn't make any difference in his performance," said the former owner and still instructor at Northeast Maritime Institute in New Bedford. "He was a very good officer." Capt. Lonsdale was among a group of former Vietnam veterans the Massachusetts Democrat brought to the Charlestown navy yard recently to rebut a Boston Globe column that raised questions about Sen. Kerry's Vietnam service, particularly the Silver Star he won.

Well, he's just another flip-flopper. He was a very good officer then, but he's not fit now to be CiC.

Rear Admiral Hoffmann (retired): Captain Roy Hoffman was the commander of the Navy Coastal Surveillance Force, and it was Hoffman's decision to send Navy Swift boats up the narrow rivers in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam -- almost always without support from helicopters or artillery -- where they ran the risk of mines and were fired on almost at will by Viet Cong dug in along the river's banks. A Swift boat mission up a Mekong Delta river was a fool's errand, serving no greater purpose than showing the flag. At one point, Kerry and a fellow skipper named Don Droz protested to Hoffman's immediate superior, Area Commander Adrian Lonsdale, an act of courage in itself. Kerry told the commander: "Sir, I don't see how you can ask American troops to risk their lives when the priority in that area isn't high enough to warrant their getting certain support. I just don't think that's right." A career Navy officer, Lonsdale told Kerry and Droz he was doing what he was told and couldn't fight it.

Admiral Elmo Zumwalt (deceased, represented at SwiftVets by his son, Lt. Col. James Zumwalt): ...the fabled and distinguished chief of naval operations (CNO), Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, told me -- 30 years ago when he was still CNO -- that during his own command of US naval forces in Vietnam...young Kerry had created great problems for him and the other top brass, by killing so many non-combatant civilians and going after other non-military targets. "We had virtually to straight[sic]-jacket him to keep him under control," the admiral said.

[Boston Globe, June 16, 2003:] Under Zumwalt's command, swift boats would aggressively engage the enemy. Zumwalt, who died in 2000, calculated in his autobiography that these men under his command had a 75% chance of being killed or wounded during a typical year. ...

Oh yeah, Kerry ranked up there with Calley and the My Lai massacre, but it's OK to put our men in the kind of danger referred to above for "no better reason than showing the flag."

Veterans who can't forgive John Kerry for his anti-war activities might want to give that a closer look -- looks like he was thinking of the troops' welfare even before he left the service. Certainly more than you can say for our current leadership.