A local John Kerry scandal

Some sound investigative work by prominent Vietnam veteran Ross Miller, has exposed that Far North mayoralty candidate Des Mahoney never served in Vietnam, despite claimaing to have done so. He has pulled out of the mayoralty race.

What an idiot!

Talking of idiots I am hugely enjoying the controversy over John Kerry’s Vietnam record.

You see normally what he did or did not do in Vietnam should be of absolutely no relevance at all to his Presidential campaign. Who cares if he bled or not for his purple hearts. But the delicious karma is that Kerry has done this to himself. I had got sick of the fact that for month after month his campaign deflected almost every question about his flip flopping on issues of national security with statements that as he served in Vietnam and got medals, he can not be questioned on national security. In fact his campaign got quite thuggish and would suggest any attack on Kerry’s voting record on national security was an attack on his war record, and unpatriotic.

So having made his war record almost the centre-piece of his election campaign (remember Candidate Kerry reporting for duty), it is no surprise that his record will come in for scrutiny. And as Kerry’s campaign made such a big fuss over whether Bush turned up for all his national guard duty, then they can’t complain when their own tactics are turned back on them.

It is interesting that the issue of Kerry’s fake claim to have been in Cambodia at Christmas (now sort of retracted) and the claims from his fellow veterans that he lied or exaggerated his service, have all been around the blogosphere for weeks, and the mainstream media didn’t cover them at all.

It was only when the Kerry campaign did polling and discovered that despite the lack of media stories, around 45% of Americans had heard about the claims, that they decided to respond. Then suddenly it has all hit the media big-time.

As I said I don’t think the issue is relevant, but I think it is deeply ironic that Kerry may go on to lose the election on this issue, and if he does will have no-one to blame but his campaign team.

If he had fronted up on the issues and defended his voting record rather than relying on his Vietnam service as a universal answer to all criticism, then no-one would take any notice of the current claims.