A TALE OF TWO SOLDIERS….Our story so far:
George Bush, fresh out of Yale, uses family connections to join the Air National Guard in order to avoid serving in Vietnam. 
After four years of a six-year term he decides to skip his annual physical, is grounded, and heads off to Alabama, where he blows off even the minimal annoyance of monthly drills for over six months.
Conservative reaction: why are you impugning the patriotism of this brave man? He got an honorable discharge and that’s as much as anyone needs to know.
John Kerry, fresh out of Yale, enlists in the Navy and subsequently requests duty in Vietnam. While there, according to the Boston Globe, 
he wins a Purple Heart and then follows that up with more than two dozen missions in which he often faced enemy fire, a Silver Star for an action in which he killed an enemy soldier who carried a loaded rocket launcher that could have destroyed his six-man patrol boat, a Bronze Star for rescuing an Army lieutenant who was thrown overboard and under fire, and two more Purple Hearts.
Conservative reaction: Hmmm, that first injury wasn’t very serious. This is something that deserves careful and drawn-out investigation, and it would certainly be unfair to impugn “craven or partisan motives” to those doing the impugning.
Are these guys a piece of work, or what?
POSTSCRIPT: Kerry’s military records are here.
