Kerry lies

and

Bush lies

And if anyone here on either side wants to refute for their guy and confirm for the other guy all 3 million links then, and only then, will I be willing to listen how one side is worse than the other.

I agree with your original post in this thread about the swift boat debate being way overdone by both sides.

There are vets who served alongside Kerry who don't like him and vets who served alongside him who think he's great. I bet there were guys that thought George Washington sucked and other guys who thought Custer had it under control too. It's a he said/he said and it really doesn't matter to me anymore either.

Kerry's a decorated veteran. That is indisputable. What that means to individual voters is up to them. To me it means very little. But the rest of this ungoing debate is equally meaningless.

I have absolutely no intention of reading the swift boat vets book, just as I have absolutely no intention of seeing Michael Moore's propaganda. They are on equal footing in my eyes. Politically motivated and of questionable integrity.

It's interesting what happened in a war 30 years ago from a curiosity standpoint, but to me that has no bearing on whether the man is best suited to be President now. I enjoyed the discussion at first because trying to find out what happened was a mental exercise, more like a mystery to be solved out of intellectual curiosity than an issue of importance in determining if he should be President.   What was true? What was made up? What really happened? What was the true intent of some of those actions? I found claims made by both sides that were rife with half-truths and out right lies. But for the issue of being President it matters little to me if he padded his Purple Heart count or got the hell out of Nam as quick as he could - as for the Cambodia claim that's another non-issue in my book.

People grow and change. Their perceptions can be refined by distance in time and place. What matters is what I think of this guy now as far as his stance on the issues relevant today. Sure his trust worthiness enters into it, but for me it's more in the arena of public politics over the last 5-10 years rather than what he did as a young man recently returned from war. I can understand vets who were offended by his testimony 23 years ago, but I wasn't one of them. Although It seems to me that holding a grudge that long for comments not made specifically about me would cause my hands to cramp up.

The same for Bush. Anyone who has ever tried to make it an issue as to whether he missed some time of his guard committment are just making meaningless noise as far as I'm concerned and they are one the same plane as the people trying to dismiss Kerry for what the swift boat vets say. It was an ugly misguided war, an unpopular war. I hold no one to blame who tried to avoid it or who ducked out as quick as they could or pulled strings they were lucky enough to have. It was not WWII.

The threads on this board about both devolove into bitter nasty invective full of rancor and recrimination. Both sides "know" the other is lying when in fact they know no such thing. They weren't there and those who were have offered support for both sides. Claiming to know one is true and the other lies just shows more blind partisanship - believing the people whose story puts your side in the best light. Opinion is offered as fact, and fact is twisted to fit preconceived opinion. It has become quite unseemly and I won't investigate or comment on either side's claims on these issues any further on this board even out of pure monkey curiosity. I'm with you, the issue is closed for me. It has gotten so ugly and ridiculous that there are posters here on both sides who I rarely read unless a subsequent response piques my interest and to whom I no longer respond no matter what. I am saddened to find myself in such a state of affairs on a forum I  support and which shows so much promise. 

Those on the left can say I'm wrong and partisan to ignore Bush being "AWOL" and those on the right can tell me I'm stupid or missing the point about Kerry and his honesty as regards the swift boat claims; but in all seriousness I no longer care about either issue. Further reading on these topics in the Lounge can only result in my facing the same unfortunate fate as this poor woman...