BIZARRELY, John Kerry is now clutching onto the document-challenged Dan Rather like a drowning man grabbing onto a sinking ship. Ask outside Democratic strategists, and they all say it makes zero sense for Kerry allies to piggyback on the Rather attacks against Bush's National Guard service now that the anchor's credibility is melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.

"To really understand John Kerry, you have to listen to those who served with him in Vietnam."

-- Sen. John Edwards

Sen. Edwards' invitation for America to get to know John Kerry came with an unspoken caveat -- the Kerry campaign only wants America to listen to a select few of those who served with Kerry in Vietnam. The campaign desperately wants America to ignore the 250 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who served in Vietnam and who openly oppose Kerry's candidacy.

A newly surfaced document from John Kerry's Navy record says he shot a lone, wounded enemy who was running away in the incident that led to his Silver Star, his highest military decoration.

The Night Before Christmas
(Cambodian Version)

Twas the night before Christmas and we were afloat
Somewhere in Cambodia in our little boat.
While the river was lightened by rockets red glare
No one but the President knew we were there.

What a difference a couple of weeks make. Polling during and just after the Republican National Convention, Time and Newsweek have George W. Bush ahead of John Kerry 52 to 41 percent. Post-convention polls show Bush ahead 52 to 45 percent (CNN/ USA Today /Gallup), 49 to 42 percent (CBS), 47 to 43 percent (Fox News), and 52 to 43 percent (ABC/ Washington Post ). Post-convention polls in battleground states show similar results. Gallup shows Bush up 14 points in Missouri and 9 in Ohio, states he carried by 2 and 4 points, respectively, in 2000, and up 1 in Pennsylvania, which he lost by more than 4 points. Kerry is off the air in the battleground states of Missouri, Arizona, Arkansas, and Louisiana. It's too soon to say that this is the last sharp shift in the two candidates' standings. But it is a bigger shift than we have seen since John Kerry clinched the Democratic nomination on March 2.

When Sen. John Kerry, who returned from Vietnam to accuse his fellow soldiers of regular and despicable atrocities, decided to run for president as a ‘war hero,’ Swift Boat Veterans for Truth came together to raise awareness of his activities during and following his time in Vietnam. Our group includes 17 of Kerry’s contemporary swift boat officers in Vietnam, more than 60 frontline unit members who were yards away from him in combat and more than 150 other Swift Vets who support their accounts. It is the firmest conviction of these men that John Kerry is not fit to be commander in chief.

New film may spur backlash

NEW YORK -- It is an image from the Vietnam era that most Americans have never seen: a somber John Forbes Kerry, then 27, speaking with a fellow veteran in 1971 about the violence of warfare that both men had participated in.

"Is there something that you really, kind of want to say in terms of crimes and why they happened?" Kerry gently asks the man, in a quiet moment in a Detroit banquet hall where veterans had come to speak about their own acts of brutality against Vietnamese noncombatants. "What sort of makes you -- what brings you here, what makes you say, 'I want to testify'?"

"I'd almost need a book to answer that now," the man replies wearily. "You're supposed to feel sorry for Americans, but you weren't supposed to feel sorry for the enemy."

Thousands of Vietnam veterans and their families and friends applauded, yelled support and waved signs and flags for more than two hours yesterday at an anti-John Kerry rally outside the U.S. Capitol.

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the organization running controversial television ads against John F. Kerry, yesterday reported a surge of contributions to bring the total raised to $6.7 million.

One of the most important of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth turns out to be a neighbor of mine, and so I've been lucky enough to have a few chats with him this summer. Captain George Elliott is a graduate of Annapolis, his back is still straight, and he deeply loves and honors the United States Navy. I want to keep what we talk about off the record, so as to not mix friendship with work. But there is one point I've learned from him that is so important to the ongoing debate, especially on the Kerry side (that is, the Big Media side), that I asked his permission to present it in public.