A general on FNC last night addresssed this issue. Very well I might add. It boils down to the definition of "with." I suspect Kerry learned his lessons from Clintonisms well. If men served in the same group (I don't remember the proper name for it), they considered themselves serving with one another. This general said that he "served with" over 800 other soldiers, but he didn't know all of them. The boats were another situation. More than one almost always went out together to cover for one another. The men in all the boats were in the same group. Also being on the same boat didn't mean that they knew more about someone else on their boat than someone from another one. You might have one man on one side of the boat and the man in question on the other; the first man wouldn't necessarily see him at all, wheras another man on another boat may have that man in his sights during an entire action and know much more about he behaved than the other men on his own boat. So I think we have to be careful and use the language as the men did who served in the armed forces in VN.