Kerry's Records

Yes, Kerry finally released his military records and grades in school. Yes, this is rehashing well-played ground of an election lost.

But kos has the ultimate, and justified complaint against the Kerry campaign, whose passive attention to the Swift Boat Veterans definitely helped him to lose credibility in many Americans' eyes. from kos:

"An earlier release of the full record might have helped his campaign because it contains a number of reports lauding his service. Indeed, one of the first actions of the group that came to be known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was to call on Kerry to sign a privacy waiver and release all of his military and medical records. But Kerry refused, even though it turned out that the records included commendations from some of the same veterans who were criticizing him."

Jesus, they had additional substantive evidence that the Swift Boat Liars were full of shit and refused to release it. The incompetent way that matter was handled knows no bounds. Kerry's excuse?

"On May 20, Kerry signed a document called Standard Form 180, authorizing the Navy to send an ''undeleted" copy of his ''complete military service record and medical record" to the Globe. Asked why he delayed signing the form for so long, Kerry said in a written response: 'The call for me to sign a 180 form came from the same partisan operatives who were lying about my record on a daily basis on the Web and in the right-wing media. Even though the media was discrediting them, they continued to lie. I felt strongly that we shouldn't kowtow to them and their attempts to drag their lies out.' "

Well, releasing those records would've exposed many of those lies and defused the story. By not releasing them, they gave the impression that they were trying to hide something, further fueling the Swift Boat fantasies.

Kos points out the vibrant fact that, here, concerning the malicious lies of the right-wing funded Swift Boaters, who helped lead American politics into ever-more treacherous mudslinging and brutish false-muckraking on a huge scale...

In the end, Kerry's campaign must come to terms that it did not, indeed, do all it could to fight.