Kerry Keeps On Keeping On

John Hall, a veteran reporter based in DeeCee, is the senior Washington correspondent for Media General News Service. He’s hardly a flaming liberal and his regular columns, which appear in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, are known for their uncluttered and penetrating analysis. In Hall's piece today (Jan. 29) he recalls being in the room in 1971 when a passionate 27-year-old Navy officer in green fatigues, who was the head of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“[John] Kerry was articulate and spoke in complete sentences. A product of St. Paul’s prep school and Yale, Kerry had volunteered for the Navy in the age of the military draft and survived the most hazardous kind of mission that the service had to offer -- leading a five-man crew patrolling the Mekong Delta in a small craft.

“[Senator] Symington identified, one by one, each of the ribbons on Kerry's chest. This was no campus radical, but a highly decorated service member who had turned against the war.”

That was the day now Sen. John Kerry began his career in national politics by asking the gathered senators this question: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”