Did you know that John Kerry served four months on a swift boat in Vietnam? Yes, he did. But if you’ve seen any of Sen. Kerry’s campaign speeches you already knew that.

Kerry has not been shy about parading around his “Band of Brothers” on the campaign tour and depicting himself as a courageous war hero. Of course, as Kerry implied in depositions in 1971 to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, they were mostly busy burning villages and mowing down all innocent men, women and children, while the real Band of Brothers stormed the beaches of Normandy years before as they stared down the barrels of machine guns wielded by Nazis.

Bush critics complain that labeling rogue states the “Axis of Evil” was a poor choice of words [to describe what?]. But of course, many veterans don’t remember all of the atrocities that Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) recounted.

In that case, it might be understandable why Kerry said atrocities were being committed at such an amazing rate. He wanted peace. He also was running for Congress in Massachusetts.

Indeed, Kerry has not been afraid to use imagery from his short tour of duty since the war was long over for rhetoric against his political opponents. In response to President Reagan’s foreign policy in Colombia, Sen. Kerry gave a tear jerking speech on the floor of the Senate in 1986 about the parallels to his deployment into Cambodia for Christmas in ’68 by the corrupt administration of President Nixon.

Of course, Nixon had been elected the next president at the time, but he had yet to enter the White House. Even in the less-than-conservative New York Times, it is reported that that statement was false. So what? Kerry was just telling a little white lie for a literary effect. It was for peace after all.

It also suggested a parallel between Reagan — one of Kerry’s strongest political foes — with Nixon’s administration, the most corrupt administration in American history. And now, in the present, how odd is it that Kerry is running for every political careerist’s ultimate goal, the Presidency of the United States of America, “leader of the free world,” and that he casts himself as a proud Vietnam war hero, not an ashamed Vietnam war criminal?

Kerry has even responded to those who question his truthfulness when it comes to Vietnam with promises of not backing down to those that try to tarnish the records of the brave men he fought with and are also serving on his campaign.

Wait a tic — flashback to Kerry’s testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 22, 1971 where he stated he witnessed American soldiers, “… cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, and blown up bodies.”

Doesn’t that tarnish the record in Vietnam just a tad?

But really, why is this a big deal? Presidents should be picked by policy and vision and not on a brief four months before a very long political career.

Too bad someone didn’t tell Kerry that when he was planning to use his experience in Vietnam as an impenetrable shield against any questions about his history in Congress concerning the military.

President Bush did have to face some rather harsh innuendos and criticism on his experience in the National Guard, even though that was hardly the centerpiece to his campaign for president.

Shouldn’t Kerry have to face criticism about his military career too? It only seems fair.

Especially since roughly two and a half million Vietnam vets had to defend their service when confronted with Kerry’s testimony.