WASHINGTON - Almost overnight, it has become an article of faith among members of the mainstream media that the charges leveled against Sen. John Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have been proven to be untrue. David Broder, the dean of Washington columnists, got into the act this week with a column that appeared in the Herald in which he dismissed the Swift Vets as a group peddling a scurrilous and largely inaccurate attack on the Vietnam service of John Kerry.

How can the media discount Kerry's betrayal of all U.S. forces fighting in Vietnam, when he testified before the U.S. Congress in 1971, that all U.S. armed forces including his own shipmates committed unspeakable atrocities on a "day to day basis with the participation of all levels of command?" That is simply a lie. Not one alleged atrocity or even a specific accusation has been documented by John Kerry or anyone else to our knowledge.

Now that the memos that called into question President Bush's fulfillment of his National Guard obligations have been discredited, reporters and columnists have seemingly made a tacit bargain to treat the stories as two sides of a single coin. Its a tidy story, one summed up by Kerry's official biographer, Douglas Brinkley, "Every American now knows that there's something really screwy about George Bush and the National Guard, and they know that John Kerry was not the war hero we thought he was."

The only problem is that it's not that simple. Consider the facts.

John Kerry claimed on numerous occasions, including during a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, to have spent Christmas Eve of 1968 in Cambodia: "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared - seared - in me." When the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth challenged Kerry on this story, he was forced to backpedal. His spokespersons now claim, without proof, that Kerry crossed the border on one occasion, but they have conceded that he was not there on Christmas as he claimed.

And yet, in the looking glass world of today's media, Kerry, who lied, is being unfairly attacked, while the Swift Boat Vets, who told the truth, are dishonest.

The Swift Boat Vets have also called attention to the first of Kerry's three Purple Hearts. As an officer-in-training, Kerry took part in a patrol mission that resulted in a brief firefight between Kerry's boat and suspected Viet Cong forces on shore. The problems for Kerry's account of that mission, of course, are that there was no report of any hostile fire that day (as would be required), nor do the records at Cam Ranh Bay reveal any such hostile fire. There is also no casualty report, as would have been required had there actually been a casualty. In addition, no one else on the mission, including Kerry, claim the presence of enemy fire.

This is why Kerry initially was refused the Purple Heart by his commanding officer. It was only after he re-filed three months later, after the individuals involved had all moved on to other duty stations, that his request for a Purple Heart was granted.

In fact, Kerry's injury that day was consistent with shrapnel from an M-79 grenade launcher that he fired at the shoreline too close to his own boat not enemy fire. Kerry's campaign now has even admitted that it is possible this first Purple Heart was awarded for a self-inflicted wound.

So once again, Kerry was forced to change his story in response to questions raised by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. But Kerrys self-aggrandizing, medal-hunting behavior is somehow beyond reproach while the Swift Vets are blasted by media critics.

Whats most striking is that these are not isolated incidents. As stories like whether or not Kerry actually threw his (or someone elses) medals (or ribbons) over the White House fence make clear, this is a man not, strictly speaking, wedded to a single truth.

Hoffmann is a retired Navy rear admiral and the founder of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. As the commander of the Coastal Surveillance Force Vietnam in 1968-1969, Hoffman was the overall commander of U.S. Swift Boats during the period of Kerry's Vietnam coastal service.

This article was published by The Grand Forks Herald.