I guess his Ivy League education was good for something!

John Kerry apparently learned that he who writes the minutes, wins the meeting. Or, in this case, wins the "firefight" and the medal despite what actually went on.

But it's not all to the good. His creative writing skills keep leading him to further "embellishments," which while they might have gotten him an "A" in English class at Yale, keep embarassing the unfortunate poseur. Yesterday, the Swift Boat Vets torpedoed the sinking wreck of his "searing" Cambodia excursion, but my favorite is the heartwarming tale of his combat pooch, VC, who, according to Lurch, was launched by an exploding mine to the deck of another Swift Boat. Hugh Hewitt has a laugh about it with Kerry crewman Steve Gardner and notes:

HH: "In the time that you were on the swift boats --totally-- did any of the swift boats have a dog?"

SG: "Never saw one, ever."

HH: "Would it have been a good idea to have a dog on the swift boats?"

SG: "Not likely."

HH: "Why not?"

SG: "Because there was just too much action going on. We had hot brass rolling around there any time we were in a firefight. He would have got beat up."

Yikes, don't tell PETA!

Look. It is possible that Kerry had a dog named VC after Gardner left Kerry's command. And it is possible that VC the combat dog got blown off the boat when the boat hit a mine --even though there's no reference to the mine that would fit the occasion.

Maybe Lurch got the dog confused with his pal, Rassman?

And just because many of my listeners have e-mailed me to note that there was a dog on Martin Sheen's boat in Apocalypse Now doesn't mean that Kerry "borrowed" the dog from the movie.

Plagiarism is against the Honor Code!

But that so many people have concluded just that does underscore John Kerry's massive credibility problem --a problem that grows larger and larger every day he doesn't meet the press. Jon Stewart asked him last night if he'd ever been in Cambodia. Kerry lamely played it for a laugh by not answering --by not saying anything at all. Who is advising him?

My guess is that Lurch speaks only to Teresa and Teresa speaks only to God.

Mark Steyn has a typically hilarious summary. Here are a few snippets:

I have no views on whether one or more of John Kerry’s bemedalled wounds from the Mekong Delta 35 years ago were self-inflicted — though the Kerry campaign, in its second big concession to his chastisers, now says his first Purple Heart-earning wound might have been ‘unintentionally self-inflicted’. But there’s no doubt every wound from the last 35 days is self-inflicted, beginning with the candidate’s disastrous decision at the Democratic Convention to play up Vietnam and play down Iraq, 9/11 and anything else that happened in the last 30 years. Since then Kerry’s shot himself in the foot so many times he ought to put in for a good dozen more Purple Hearts.
...
The Kerry campaign’s bumbling ineptness this last month is a bit of a stunner to those of us who followed Bill Clinton for eight years. The Democrats may not know how to run a school district or a highway department, but they’re supposed to be able to run scandals.

Consider, by way of comparison, James E. McGreevey, Democratic Governor of New Jersey. A couple of weeks ago, Governor McGreevey turned up for a 4 p.m. press conference with his wife loyally standing by his side and declared, ‘My truth is that I am a gay American.’
...
I thought McGreevey’s moment-of-truth press conference performance was completely revolting, even before it emerged that ‘I am a gay American’ was a phrase ‘developed’ by the Governor in consultation with a gay rights group that tested it in focus groups.

At one level, this is utterly contemptible. But at another it’s magnificently professional. The New Jersey Dems have arranged things to deny the people an early chance to vote on McGreevey’s replacement and, by the time they do get their say, the hack machine pol who’ll be taking over from him will be running as an established incumbent.

Dealt an unpromising hand, Garden State Democrats nevertheless defined the scandal on their terms. That’s how I figured Kerry would handle the Swift vets problem. He’d be shameless but effective. He’d have focus-grouped some weaselly form of words that would put him beyond reach, and the whole business would have dribbled away. But instead, cosseted away with Teresa, he’s apparently been running the fightback himself, disastrously.

Bwahaha! Visions of Kerry in the bunker with Teresa. One last thought from Steyn:

But the party that likes to sneer that Bush never had a plan to deal with Iraq’s inevitable insurgents doesn’t seem to mind that Kerry never had a plan to deal with the Swiftees’ equally inevitable insurgents. A guy awash in gazillions from Barbra Streisand and co. who can’t see off a couple of hundred middle-aged ‘liars’ and their minimal ad-buy? Is that really the fellow you want to put up against al-Qa’eda, the ayatollahs and Kim Jong-Il?

Don't worry, he'll write an after action report that blames someone else.