The old Leftist warhorse Nat Hentoff has always struck us as uncommonly fair to people who are his ideological rivals. In a recent column he praises John O'Neill and the Swift Vets for their grace under fire and for their ability to defend their attacks on both Senator Kerry's war record and his subsequent involvement with Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
The oft-heard claim that the Swifties had been thoroughly debunked and discredited is arrant nonsense. It's merely a way of dismissing them without having to actually confront their allegations. The claim that they were lying about the young John Kerry was itself never substantiated. Neither Senator Kerry nor his campaign ever really answered the Swiftees' arguments, and Kerry's refusal to release his naval records lent enormous credibility to the charges that he was not what he claimed to be.
Perhaps more than any other single factor, John O'Neill and the Swift Vet campaign undermined Kerry's pretensions to be qualified to serve as president and kept him out of office. That makes them heroes twice over.
