In case you have tuning out the world over the past month or so, you already know that prominent Houston attorney John O’Neill is the author of the best-selling book “Unfit for Command” and has been at the forefront of the group known as the Swift Boat Veterans that has been waging a public campaign against John Kerry’s candidacy for President. In this Wall Street Journal ($) op-ed today in which he defends the SWV’s right to campaign against Mr. Kerry. First Mr. O’Neill debunks the notion that the SBV’s are a mouthpiece for the Bush-Cheney campaign:

Are we controlled by the Bush-Cheney campaign? Absolutely not. The Swift boat veterans who joined our group come in all political flavors: independents, Republicans, Democrats, and other more subtle variations. Had another person been the presidential candidate of the Democrats, our group never would have formed. Had Mr. Kerry been the Republican candidate, each of us would still be here.
We do not take direction from the White House or the president’s re-election committee, and our efforts would continue even if President Bush were to ask us directly to stop.

Then, Mr. O’Neill explains simply why the SBV’s have come forward:

Why have we come forward? As explained in “Unfit For Command,” Mr. Kerry grossly exaggerated and lied about his abbreviated four-month tour in Vietnam. He disgraced all legitimate Vietnam War heroes when he falsely testified to Congress that we were war criminals, daily engaged in atrocities that had the full approval of all levels in the chain of command. So, once Mr. Kerry decided to apply for the commander in chief’s job with a war-hero resumÈ, we felt compelled to come forward to explain why he is “unfit for command.”

Read the whole piece.
And, in this related WSJ op-ed, the WSJ’s Daniel Henninger shakes his head at the way Mr. Kerry is responding to the SBV’s:

How can this be happening? Why didn’t John Kerry months back — if not years — find some gracious way to make peace with the John O’Neills of the world? Why didn’t one wise head among the Democrats point out the obvious difficulties of the Kerry candidacy once past the party’s primary voters? This is a man who would be running as both a hero of Vietnam and a famous accuser of the war’s heroes. This is an election, not a Shakespearean tragedy. How come John Kerry never worked out, before the final leg of his long odyssey, a let-bygones statement, admitting the hyperbole (at the least) of his accusations of atrocity before Congress in 1971, honoring the service of colleagues who never felt obliged to apologize for Vietnam, but reserving his right to oppose that troubled war?

As I noted in this earlier blog post on Mr. O’Neill from several months ago, John is a highly regarded attorney in Houston legal circles and independent politically. The Kerry campaign’s attempts to discredit him as a Republican shill are doomed to failure.
John Kerry has recently admitted that he used poor judgment and engaged in youthful indiscretion in condemning many of his co-Vietnam veterans publicly during the early 1970’s. Was that earlier criticism truly a product of youthful indiscretion? Or is Mr. Kerry’s response to serious critics such as John O’Neill prove that he simply has poor judgment and that he has not really changed from his earlier indiscretion?
By the way, before commenting, please know that I am also independent politically.