Truth Is Casualty in Fight Over War Record

James “J.J.” Jenkins, who came home from Vietnam with three Purple Hearts, wore a neck brace and walked with a cane as other vets called out hellos and how-ya-doings.

Jenkins, making his way through a plaza at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in West Los Angeles, wore a smile as big as the neck brace allowed. Thirty-six years after shrapnel and bits of his two-way radio were blown into his neck and lodged near his spine, advances in medical technology had finally made possible an operation.

Surgeons took a gram of metal out of Jenkins’ neck. “Man, I felt better immediately,” Jenkins said. “Im-MED-iately.”

I stopped by the hospital after the latest round of attacks on Sen. John F. Kerry by those who say he exaggerated or lied about his experiences as a Swift boat commander, and that he later dishonored vets as an antiwar protester.

A group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, financed in part by a Texan who is a longtime contributor to President Bush and the GOP, is running a TV ad in which veterans challenge Kerry’s record and his honor.

To be fair, Kerry practically invited trouble. The man has all but carried an M-16 with him on the campaign trail, trying to peddle his Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts in return for a few votes.

A Times analysis found inconsistencies in Kerry’s war accounts as well as contradictions in the claims of his critics. We may never know all the facts, now that the debate is framed by gas-bag ideologues in the midst of a presidential political campaign, where truth is always a casualty.

But at the VA, where many vets avoid TV coverage of the war in Iraq because of the haunting memories it brings, J.J. Jenkins finds something particularly foul about the torpedo job on Kerry.

“George Bush used his money and his clout to get into the [Texas Air] National Guard,” said Jenkins, who was shot in the leg in addition to his crippling neck injury. “I’m proud of John Kerry, because he went to Vietnam. He volunteered. I volunteered.”

For some Kerry foes, his worst offenses came after Vietnam, when his criticism of the conflict included accusations of war crimes.

Poor John Kerry. He wins five combat medals while George Bush is flying reconnaissance missions over San Antonio, and all it gets him is comparisons to Jane Fonda.

We don’t need any of this, of course. Instead of wasting breath on what happened in Vietnam, we need to figure out how to get out of the current quagmire.

My problem with Kerry isn’t that he spoke out against the war in Vietnam, but that he didn’t speak out against the war in Iraq. Maybe he’s bought into the politics of the true patriots:

It’s un-American to challenge convention, to question the call to arms, to eat a French fry.

Did you see where a Kerry uncle, living in France, said the family was told to play down the candidate’s connection to the country that had the gall to oppose the war?

At the VA, where military pride and enduring horror co-exist, J.J. Jenkins sat under a tree, set his cane against a bench and recited a poem he wrote.

It’s about being 18 years old and killing a Vietnamese boy who was even younger “without feeling, without thinking, without hesitation.... And I was only obeying orders. God help us soldiers.”

Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com and read previous columns at www.latimes.com/lopez