Here's another point against Kerry: his relatively few SBV allies speak seem to lack the passion of the opposing SBVs.
The Washington Post
April 23, 2004
Keen Focus on Lt. Kerry's Four Months Under Fire
Lois Romano, Washington Post Staff Writer
Throughout the last decade of Kerry's political career, his crewmates have defended him when his credentials and record have been questioned; they are now campaigning for him. In a recent interview, Kerry dismissed the current questions about his first Purple Heart as partisan politics. He also said he left early because he had turned on the war. One of his crewmates, Michael Medeiros, said Kerry ensured that his men were given a non-threatening assignment before he left Vietnam.
(snip)
He arrived in the jungle as a Yalie with a Boston Brahmin résumé and the initials JFK -- a different breed from his crewmen, barely out of their teens and with working-class roots. Kerry would also spend his free time chronicling his experiences in letters home, which historian Douglas Brinkley used in his recently published book "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War."
But the consensus among crewmates is that he bridged the differences and connected with his crew immediately. In combat, eight of nine of them say, he was daring and unflinching, never tentative. The ninth, Stephen M. Gardner, an avowed Bush supporter, recently told Brinkley: "Whenever a firefight started he always pulled up stakes and got the hell out of Dodge." Once, famously, Kerry -- in violation of regulations -- beached his boat and went after the enemy, chasing down and killing a Viet Cong guerrilla carrying a rocket launcher.
"I didn't want to just react and respond. I wanted to win," Kerry said. "I went there with a purpose, and that was to be successful on the missions."
Medeiros, who in 1969 was a crewmate of Kerry's, said Kerry "wanted to be aggressive."
"I liked him immediately. . . . He was a strong leader willing to take calculated risks. We were the seasoned ones; he respected that. He took the approach that we didn't have to prove anything to him. He had to prove something to us," Medeiros said.(snip)
The above part of my analysis has been somewhat debunked. The spokesperson (the Rear Admiral-can't recall his name) from the anti-Kerry SBV's claims their group consists of Republicans PLUS Democrats and Independents (how many of each he didn't say).