[AnAmericanMother]

If you want to do battle, Bush vs. Kerry, military service is a poor choice of a battleground. My military service record is more impressive than the president's.

I disagree, here's why: Kerry has made "Did you know I was in Vietnam?" the centerpiece (and practically the only piece) of his campaign, other than bashing Bush every chance he gets. Even the WSJ has started making fun of the fact that he brings it up constantly - when he was down in LA last week, he compared it to the Mekong Delta.

He's fixated on his service in a creepy sort of way, too -- the home movies (imagine taking your dates home to show them a movie re-enactment of your "combat" adventures!), the medals, pix, etc. on his wall.

His military record is interesting because he himself has touted it. When dates don't add up, when papers are revised repeatedly to say completely different things, when his Fitrep comments are only marginally laudatory (in those days of "grade inflation") and he gets 4 less-than-top marks . . . it looks like he was a jerk and a ****bird who even then was (and still now is) revising and re-revising his record to make himself more politically viable.

Aside from the questionable fitness for CinC of any man so self-absorbed and dishonest, it's just creepy and sick . . .

Compare that to Bush, who was like most folks in those days, he did his time and got out - he hasn't spent the rest of his life reliving (and improving) his "glory days".

[MJM59]

Didn't know about the home movies thing. That is pretty wierd. The problem I had with Bush not letting go of his military past was the flightsuit photo op. I can see wanting to put the flightsuit on and taking the controls for old times sake. But it was played up way too much for my taste.

In the end, all of the mud slinging gets old. I would like to see a series of debates between the two so we could get all this filler out of the way and get down to issues.