IMAGES OF KERRY: Keith Burgess-Jackson writes, "The flap about John Kerry’s medals is much ado about nothing. But those images!":

Look: This country is still divided about Vietnam. It will be divided for as long as anyone who lived through it is alive. John Kerry may have fought valiantly for his country, but he turned against his fellow soldiers when he came home. Night after night, we see images of John Kerry with long, scraggly hair, wearing military fatigues on the streets of the nation’s capital, in the company of other scruffy protesters, causing trouble. These images are being seared into the nation’s consciousness.

Don’t say Kerry was in the right. That’s irrelevant. Many people think the war was right and that those who protested it gave aid and comfort to the enemy. Images don’t lie. We see how Kerry behaved thirty-odd years ago. We see the crowd he ran with. We see the tension he sought to generate. I’m afraid this election is over, folks. Journalists will do everything they can to make it a horse race (for their own selfish reasons), but it’s over.

Kerry has had numerous opportunities to say, "I was young and stupid. Everybody does stupid, irrational things in their 20s." But he can't ever seem to admit to being wrong, and given the number of flip-flops throughout his career--virtually his entire adult life--some of those positions and statements have to be wrong.

Bill Clinton could make contradictory statements such as his famous riff about smoking pot but not inhaling, because they were usually about minor issues, and there was little photographic evidence of his youth (in between the photo of young Bill with President Kennedy (the original and still best JFK) and his becoming governor of Arkansas. The photographic evidence of Kerry's youth is overwhelming, and damning.