Oh, sure, Kerry was a brave soldier and all in 'Nam. And the nanny-state blowhards will say that Bush NEVER served his country during the 'Nam war since we can assume that his service in the National Guard doesn't measure up to Kerry's service. I do believe Bush is hedging about his 'Nam service/non-service and it could be that his status as a scion of an oil-dynasty kept him out of harm's way but even believing every worst truth about Bush during the 'Nam years, his service/non-service was not a betrayal of his country. Kerry did far worse by throwing his medals/someone else's medals into the White House lawn.

In any event as James Taranto says in the Wall Street Journal:

Whenever anyone brings up President Bush's National Guard service, we yawn. So, we suspect, does most of America. Bush, who has a term as president under his belt, is not running on his National Guard service the way Kerry is running on his Vietnam service. The latter is selling his flattering war record as the proof of his character, leadership and patriotism. That it may be--but if so, why can't he seem to tell the truth about it? This is a crucial question in evaluating Kerry's candidacy, and it is why Medalgate could end up sinking it.

Bravo, James. Now, why don't we consider Kerry's betrayal of America. For that, we should go to Good Morning America, hardly a conservative newsoutlet. From Matt Drudge:

GIBSON: senator, i was there 33 years ago and i saw you throw medals over the fence and we didn't find out until later -

KERRY: no, you didn't see me throw th. charlie, charlie, you are wrong. that's not what happened. i threw my ribbons across. all you have to do -

GIBSON: someone else's medals, correct in?

KERRY: after -- excuse me. excuse me, charlie. after the ceremony was over, i had a bronze star and a purple heart given to me, one purple heart by a veteran in the v.a. in new york and the bronze star by an older veteran of world war ii in massachusetts. i threw them over because they asked me to. i never –

So there you have it. He didn't throw away his ribbons, not his medals. Gibson was there but he was wrong. Right? Ribbons. Medals. What's in a name, after all?

GIBSON: when trying to appeal to the anti-war people in 1971, you said as in that interview, it was the medals and then when the people who supported the war were giving you political problems, you then said i didn't throw the medals away 13 years later.

KERRY: that's the most -- with all due respect, that's the most ridiculous thing i have ever heard. because i stood up in front of the country, in front of cameras, a reporter of the ""boston globe"" got it correct . he wrote about the medals but knew they were my ribbons. everybody understood what we were doing. i even said in that interview we threw away the symbols of what our country gave us for what we had gone through. and if i was -- you know, back then, trying to appeal to somebody, i stood up against richard nixon, stood up against the withar, took a position, and it wasn't popular, and it was polarizing. i didn't have to do it. if i was trying to hide something, i would have never stood there in floment of everybody and thrown them over the fence. i threw my ribbons over. i threw the medals of two veterans who asked me to throw them over, after the ceremony, completely separate, and i'm the one -- if hi something to hide, i'm the one who made it known exactly what happened. to me, it is one in the same. and i'm proud of it.

"He wrote about the medals but knew they were my ribbons." So, if I'm an adulterer I could just as well say, "My wife says I slept with the maid but she knows it was my secretary."

Not being a liberal like Kerry, I guess I lack the IQ, unlike Clinton who has America believing that oral sex is not sex, to understand the deconstruction between throwing ribbons and medals. Kerry calls the ribbons something symbolic, unlike the presumably heavier medals that must be something tangible. Then, I suppose medal-throwing would go beyond something symbolic, you know, like the signifier and the signified, so Kerry didn't throw away that substantial part that goes beyond mere representation, the signified, by throwing away the true weight of the signifier. No, he threw away only the symbol of the war he protested, yet he did throw away someone else's SUBSTANTIAL PART THAT GOES BEYOND MERE REPRESENTATION. Hey, you don't like this kind of writing? What the hell do you think has been shrinking the minds of Leftists of an entire generation for thirty years?

Thus spake Kerry: "[E]verybody understood what we were doing". Not so. Those who supported the war did not and the ones who support the war today do not understand Kerry's actions today. But, then, we have an ontological war brewing. The Democrats want to know what the definition of war is if it is not what we are in now, as opposed to a police action that Kerry prefers. I would like to ask Kerry and those who support him, how can you oppose a war that you claim doesn't even exist?

What does Richard Nixon have to do with these goddamn medals and ribbons any more than Kennedy who got us into 'Nam in the first place? Hey, look, you want to parse your misdeed by saying you threw someone else's medals because they asked you to? I can just as well say that "I had sex with my secretary because she asked me too." For the morally challenged, that means your misdeed is no less a misdeed just because someone asked you to do it. Kerry's got no balls and won't own up to what he did. You want this loser to be president when we are facing the direst threat to our existence. Hell, Hilary's got MORE balls than this man, I don't care he was physically brave in 'Nam. I want someone with moral and ethical courage. He got neither.

Throwing his ribbons and someone else's medals, or whatever, may have been in the heat of the moment and Kerry is entitled to have experienced that heat but I believe his action shows a hatred of our nation so deep that he, and those like him, have never recovered. And that hatred, which is incurable, finds expression in Kerry's foreign policy proposals and biases. That hatred supports the idea of keeping America from being able to defend itself by appealing to "allies" who have proved nefarious. This hatred masks itself as concern for international opinion as if the opposition had none (Hello, Bush went to the U.N. to ask for help on September 12, 2002 and where did that get him?). It reveals a Eurocentric attitude toward how America should be (not Wall Street and Yankee individualism, but Brussels and the stagnating nanny-state). It indulges in hedging about deep moral problems of our day (serving in the National Guard but not in 'Nam is not, dear Libs, a deep moral problem), under the pretense that "gray areas" exist in finding solutions to the overwhelming problem that we are a nation at war and must fight for our survival, and, lastly, this hatred believes that America is always wrong because of Vietnam where American misdeeds, to this day and in no small thanks to Kerry, have been greatly exaggerated, giving the Viet Cong the victory they needed. Baby-killers and rapists, indeed. Horrible lies! No wonder Liberals believe Americans commit atrocities in Iraq as if we are the enemy and do what the enemy does: deliberately killing women and children! Kerry describes the enemy most accurately but calls it American. He hates America.

I take my stand. While I lost my love for Bush, I hate Kerry.