Richard Holbrooke has a column on Vietnam in yesterday’s WaPo, and how it shaped his (and Kerry’s) generation’s world view. Greg Djerejian has some comments on it (and more importantly, on the potential implications of Kerry’s Senate testimony in 1971–one more reason that he would be a dangerous CinC), but I noticed that he has (at least) one disingenuous sentence in it:

His personal saga embodies the American experience in Vietnam. First he was a good hero in a bad war — a man who volunteered for duty in the Navy and then asked for an assignment on the boats that were to ply the dangerous rivers of Vietnam…

Yes, he volunteered for Swift Boats, and yes, they were (eventually) to ply the dangerous rivers of Vietnam, but my understanding is that at the time he volunteered, he didn’t know that–they were only plying the much less dangerous coastal waters at the time. This is a point that many (all?) Kerry defenders somehow conveniently leave out (just as they ignore the fact that the National Guard in which George Bush enlisted actually was doing duty in Vietnam at the time he signed up).