Kerry rejects medals disputePage 2 of 3 -- Yet the attacks reflect the enormous importance for the campaign to protect Kerry's biography as a decorated Navy lieutenant-turned-war protester. The Massachusetts senator has portrayed himself as battle-tested yet sufficiently clear-eyed about military conflict to be commander in chief -- understanding war on a personal level that Bush lacks. ''If the president is going to try to do this -- accountability time," Kerry told NBC.
Kerry spokesman David Wade said the senator's medals were probably at his home in Boston. The Globe asked to see the medals yesterday, and Wade said the campaign would consider it. Yet Kerry swatted down the idea of producing them when it was suggested by an NBC interviewer. ''Absolutely not. They're private, and I have no reason to do that whatsoever," Kerry said. Republicans, meanwhile, pounced on Kerry's comments about Bush yesterday, noting his past pledge not to criticize the military service of other members of the Vietnam generation. ''It's another example of John Kerry saying one thing and doing another: He said he would never question the president's honorable service in the National Guard, but now he is lashing out," said Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush campaign. ''It is a purely venomous political attack, and the American people will reject it." At particular issue yesterday was the apparent contradiction between Kerry's comments in 1971 about throwing medals, and from the early 1980s onward -- when he began his career in elective office -- that he threw only his ribbons, as he once told union members in 1984 who were upset that he would make such a spectacle.
Kerry was asked yesterday to reconcile differing explanations for why he did not throw his own medals: In 1985, he told The The Globe reporter covering Kerry at the 1971 protest said yesterday that the senator, standing in a line of 1,000 or so, detached about six ribbons from his shirt, put them in a pocket, then took them out, balled them in his fist, and finally threw them over a fence on Capitol Hill. The reporter, Thomas Oliphant, who is now a Globe columnist, said he originally reported that Kerry lobbed ''his medals" because many people used the word ''medal" interchangeably with ''ribbon." Kerry has said he threw the ribbons for his Silver Star, his Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts, as well as some others, as a protest. Continued... |
