by Olivier Knox
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania, Aug 21 (AFP) - Democratic White House hopeful John Kerry's efforts to refute charges that he embellished his Vietnam War record got a boost Saturday, as a fellow veteran said some of the accusations were untrue.
At the same time, Kerry's campaign released an Internet commercial aimed at pressuring US President George W. Bush to disavow the group behind the attacks, "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."
The group has accused Kerry of betraying US forces still in Vietnam by opposing the war after he returned home and of lying to get at least two of his five medals, including the Silver Star.
But William Rood, a journalist at the Chicago Tribune, who, like Kerry, commanded a Swift boat during the war, broke a 35-year silence about his service in the controversial conflict to defend the Democratic candidate.
"Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown," Rood said in a first-person account of the February 28, 1969, mission in which Kerry won the Silver Star.
"Their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there," Rood wrote in the Tribune.
Contrary to what Kerry's chief detractor claims, he said, the Vietnamese fighter Kerry chased down and killed was not a "teenager" in a "loincloth" and was not alone.
"He was a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC (Viet Cong) usually wore," he said. "There were others who fled. There was also firing from the tree line well behind the spider holes and, at one point, from the opposite riverbank, as well. It was not the work of just one attacker."
Kerry has used his combat exploits to tout his national security credentials in the first presidential campaign since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
But there were signs that the group's first advertisement, shown in select states but enjoying national media coverage, had taken its toll on his support among fellow veterans he hopes will help him win the November 2 election.
"There were three Swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago -- three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on February 28, 1969," said Rood.
"One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other," he wrote.
Kerry's camp has formally alleged that the group has illegal ties to Bush's re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee, asking the Federal Election Commission to punish all three.
The White House has consistently denied any such links, and said it respects Kerry's wartime service, but categorically refused to repudiate the charges against him.
To buttress its charges, the Kerry campaign gave reporters a flyer it said was obtained at a local Bush re-election headquarters in Florida, which trumpets the presence of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth at a pro-Bush rally.
On Saturday, Kerry's campaign released an Internet advertisement meant to keep the pressure on Bush, whom the senator has accused of using the group to do his "dirty work."
The ad features Senator John McCain, a Vietnam War veteran who lost the Republican presidential nomination to Bush in 2000, telling Bush during a televised campaign debate at the time that he "should be ashamed" for letting his allies assail McCain's record on veterans' issues.