What is the relationship between the medal and the citation? If the citation is a piece of paper, isn't Kerry likely to maintain that he threw away his ribbons, but not his medals, per his GMA appearance (and in conflict with his earlier statements)? Beyond that, then he'll claim that the citations were lost or eaten by his dog and he had the citations replaced in the 80s?
In other words, the citation is a certificate of paper different from the medal? If that's so, the paper would not have been thrown over the fence? So he just claims it was lost later?
Regardless of how he tries to nuance his explanations, this just reminds people that he threw away some medals and/or ribbons that correspond to the medals. Most people are appalled by that.
If the previously big 3 networks run this story on their newscasts tonight, just the reminder of him throwing away medals (ribbons, whatever he wants to say) makes it harder for him to play the Viet Nam war hero ploy.
If it were just a matter of replacing a piece of paper, I agree with you. However, if he only needed a copy of the citation, there would be no need for Lehman to sign a new one. The citations from Zumwalt and Hyland would have sufficed for the Silver Star and Zumwalt alone for the Bronze Star. Lehman could just have signed a cover letter and forwarded them to Kerry.
Since we don't have the dated cover letters or the actual award nomination forms, it is difficult to figure out exactly what prompted Lehman to sign these citations at least 12 years after Kerry left Vietnam and probably longer. I am speculating that Kerry requested that his medals be reissued, which required SECNAV administratively to reissue the citation. In the case of the Silver Star, the citation wording (last sentence) is slightly different from Hyland's, which could just be a matter of changed wording for some of the boilerplate language.
I agree that throwing away the ribbons versus the medals may just be a semantic difference, but Kerry's problem is that he has stated previously that first he threw away his medals, then he changed the story in the 1980s to say that he threw away his ribbons and someone else's medals. According to Kerry, he kept his medals because he is proud of them. He has them prominently displayed in his office. If we discover that he asked to have the medals replaced, then it is no longer a semantic difference between what he meant between ribbons and medals, like he said on GMA today. A request for replacement would be equivalent of Monica's blue dress with the stain.
It is damaging to throw away one's decorations. Kerry could say that he did it as a matter of principle. But the fact that he lied about it is even more damaging. It is the old business about the cover-up being worse than the crime.