The Swift Boat Veterans were my favorite part of that entire campaign.
They gave rise to the jokes about Kerry on clandestine missions up nameless tributaries, rivers, nations.
Just reporting for duty, ya know. :>)
“I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared — seared — in me.”
However seared he was, Kerry’s spokesmen now say his memory was faulty. When the Swift boat veterans who oppose Kerry presented statements from his commanders and members of his unit denying that his boat entered Cambodia
the last 3 lines were a quote from the WaPo
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27211-2004Aug23.html
The Swift-Vets were heroes. We owe them so much. I lived in MA at the time, and listened daily to Howie Carr. He loved to play that “seared, SEARED” quote on his show. He found humorous uses for it.
That was the election cycle I learned that Kerry’s nickname was Rice-Butt. Apparently he fragged himself, accidentally, in the rump with hard rice kernels. Word was he applied for and received a Purple Heart for these hinter ‘injuries.’
He never did make public is physical records to show the ‘war wounds’ that he suffered.