Aug. 27, 2004 -- The first time I heard the words "John Kerry" and "president" at the same time was the spring of 1971. John Forbes Kerry, 27 years old, a Yalie, a Navy vet wearing battle ribbons on a rumpled Army fatigue shirt, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he could not support the war in which he and other veterans had risked their lives and killed Vietnamese. "Thirty years from now," he told a rapt audience, "when our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm or a face, and small boys ask why,...