And guess what?

He did.

Kerry was awarded the Silver Star for shooting a fleeing VC teenager in the back.

This was not a war-crime. A fleeing soldier is not a surrendering soldier; a soldier who flees is just executing a sound military strategy, and he'll be back to kill you at some other point.

So John Kerry had every right, if not the duty, to shoot the kid in the back.

I'm not suggesting he did anything wrong.

I am, however, suggesting he didn't do anything particularly noteworthy or heroic; a lot of soldiers have, in the line of duty, had to shoot fleeing or unaware enemy soldiers, and they should be commended for doing a duty that they might find distasteful on a human level.

But we don't usually award them the Silver Stars for plugging a kid in the back while not being in any danger themselves. There's a big difference between "acting above and beyond the call of duty" and "just doing what the hell you were supposed to do," after all.

The SwiftVets said that Kerry was in no danger at the time of the shooting; there were no other VC in sight. The liberal media Spirit Squad said, "But he was awarded a Silver Star! Surely there must have been danger!"

The SwiftVets said, "No, not particularly. He wrote the After Action Report, and turned a pedestrian shooting of a fleeing teenager into fraudulent heroic glory."

The liberal media said, "But you have no proof he wrote the After Action Report."

Well, guess what, now we do have the proof. And, who knows, before long perhaps we'll have the other After Action Reports as well.

I expect we'll be hearing that apology from Chris Matthews any day now.

Any. Day. Now.

From Drudge.

Facts About Kerry's Actual Vietnam Record: Visiting Hugh Hewitt's great blog I was tipped to a new blog, and a good post summarizing Kerry's real record.

The writer asks: Did Kerry serve honorably?

I think he did serve honorably. Honorably, but not eagerly, and furthermore with a somewhat indecent haste to stop serving honorably the moment he could cadge his third fakey Purple Heart; and competently and occasionally courageously, but certainly not heroically. He is indeed a "war hero" in the sense that we term almost all veterans of foreign wars "war heroes" just for doing the man's job that is defending our country; but not in the stricter sense of "war hero," the sense he and his supporters actual want us to take "war hero" to mean.

Bob Kerrey was a war hero. If you read about what he did, you're actually taken aback by the grit and guts of his deeds.

John Kerry was a guy who attempted to get a deferrment to go to grad school in Paris (natch) and then, faced with the option of being drafted into the very-dangerous infantry, "volunteered" for what he believed would be non-combat service. And then, after serving only four months of a one year tour, he contrived three bogus Purple Hearts, asskissed his way back home, and began calling his fellow veterans murderers, butchers, and rapists.

He served honorably but not heroically in Vietnam. After returning to the United States, he served monstrously.

Checking My Work Update: A correspondent asks, "Where does it say in the report that it was written by John Kerry?"

Actually, to my eyes, it doesn't. There may be some military sort of code indicating it was composed by the OINC (which would be Kerry), but I know nothing of that.

I guess, with all of the SHOW YOUR WORK demands of the blogosphere I should have been more cautious about that.

Nevertheless, Itznewstome saw the TV report which disclosed the AAF, and he says the reporter's commentary attributed the AAF to John Kerry.

That's not actual first-hand evidence; that's just relying on a reporter's say-so (something we should be pretty cautious about doing). But it does seem that the reporter on the story, at least, determined it was written by John Kerry, though I can't say how or why he determined that.

I'll keep my eye on this. If it turns out the attribution to Kerry is shaky at all, I'll retract and correct and apologize. Unlike Dan Rather, I won't demand "definitive" evidence that I spoke too quickly.