I'll be glad to hold that against him, as long as Kerry lumps Guard duty together with draft dodging.
Kerry made himself fair game when he made a point of saying "many people" like Bush who served in the Guard wished to reduce the odds of their seeing combat in Viet Nam.
Kerry isn't so different than George Bush, after all.
I think Bush's record is being attacked at this time because it diverts attention from Kerry's overinflated record.
That is the meat of this entire sorry episode.
Normally, it would be totally inappropriate to be examining a candidate's military service to see if it was all that heroic.
However, the Democrats put this rotting dead fish on George W. Bush's table and Kerry is smiling like the cat that swallowed the canary about it while claiming that it is a problem "for Bush and the military to address."
The Democrats now accuse Bush of trying to avoiding combat by volunteering for National Guard F-102's.
However, Kerry admitted in his own words that he did exactly the same thing by volunteering for coastal patrol swift boats before he knew that Zumwalt would change the swift boat mission to riverine patrol.
Both men volunteered for duty that they believed would keep them out of combat.
It it only a matter of pure blind luck that Admiral Elmo Zumwalt had the bright idea to change the swift boat mission from coastal patrol to riverine patrol after Kerry volunteered for swift boats and that some Air Force General did not decide to get some of his Air National Guard pilots some Vietnam combat experience after Bush volunteered for the Air National Guard.
You do have a good point there. He opened the can of worms, not us.