Hackworth: Tell Rove to Back Off, Mr. Bush

Col. David Hackworth has a message for the Swift Boat Veterans Against Kerry: Get the hell out of way and get over it.

The muckrakers such as John O'Neill and his Swiftboat snipers - who didn't sail on his boat but served anywhere from 100 meters to 300 miles away - are now coming off like eyewitnesses when in fact not one of their testimonies would hold up in a court of law. A judge would call these men liars and disallow their biased statements.

I've been in a fair number of battles in my lifetime, first fighting for my country in several hot wars, then covering a dozen conflicts as a correspondent. And I've learned that if you can't see the fight right up close, smell it, hear it and touch it, you can't possibly bear witness.

This isn't the first time Kerry's been sniped at. Joe Klein wrote in The New Yorker that Nixon aide Charles Colson formed the Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace in 1971 solely to attack John Kerry.

Colson told Klein that Kerry "was a thorn in our flesh. He was very articulate, a credible leader of the opposition. He forced us to create a counterfoil. We found a vet named John O'Neill and formed a group called Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace. We had O'Neill meet the president, and we did everything we could do to boost his group."

O'Neill and his chorus of haters are still in their get-Kerry mode. I suspect the decades-long fury is still fueled by Kerry's high-profile anti-war stance when he returned home. That was a position that was taken by hundreds of thousands of other Viet vets, including myself in 1971 - which, according to Joe Califono's recent book, Inside: A Public Life, almost cost me my life.

McCain has already asked President Bush to distance himself from this "dishonest and dishonorable" attack. Advice that Bush should take one step further by ordering Vietnam draft-dodger Karl Rove and the rest of the character-assassination squad who zapped McCain and Cleland to back off. And then publicly stand tall and say that this type of behavior insults every vet who's served America in peace and war.

As our commander in chief, Bush also needs to bear in mind that the U.S. Navy and its high standards for handling awards are now on trial as well. Hopefully, the president's righteous actions will expedite that institution's exoneration along with Lt. John Kerry's heroism.

Hopefully, too, these angry, troubled vets still haunted by the Vietnam War will eventually find closure. But one thing I know for sure - it won't come from fratricide.