What Liberal Media??

Atiros provides the info, i supply the Cliffs Notesification. As you may have heard, the GOP have tried to downplay Kerry's war record by repeatedly claiming he only served for 4 months. He volunteered for service, requesting 2 tours of duty and Kerry in fact served in the military for 38 months, starting his training on 8/22/66. no soldier spends their entire time 'in country' as you are trained, etc. when you push for more complicated duty, like Skippering a Swiftboat, there's more training. Kerry served from November to April in actual combat and after his 3rd purple heart was sent stateside where he served for 9 months. (ahem...bush, we know you somehow requested to leave early and got the ok while we were still at war. *ahem*...)

Now the point of this isn't to try and impress you with how much service Kerry had, it is to illustrate the ability of the right/GOP to control the language of what is clearly a positive with Kerry that offers start contrast with Bush's record. please just browse the depth of the 4 Month Myth in our news echo-chamber and thell me the GOP doesn't have talking points that some in the press are using:

AJC, 8/11:
Vietnam communists are advising the Islamic terrorists on howto handle John Kerry: Wound him slightly and often and he'll leave the Middle East in four months.

Cleveland Plain Dealer, Kevin O'Brien, 8/11
Are they truly hoping that Americans will focus so cooperatively on John Kerry’s four months of doing the right thing in Vietnam that they’ll forget that he’s spent the rest of his adult life doing the wrong thing with nearly perfect consistency?

LTTE, St. Petersburg Times, 8/11:
For instance, why did he leave his crew in Vietnam after serving just over four months?

LTTE, LA Times, 08/10:
As far as I can tell the reasons Kerry offers for people to vote for him are that he served in Vietnam for four months on a Swift boat 35 years ago;

Marsha Mercer, Tampa Tribune, 08/09:
Kerry received three Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star during his four months in Vietnam.

Boston Herald, op-Ed, 08/07:
By making his four months of service in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign for the presidency, Sen.John Kerry himself invites further scrutiny of that service.

LTTE, Newsday, 08/06:
He avoided hot topics like abortion, gay marriage and gun control and spent most of his time peddling stories of four months in Vietnam 35 years ago.

AJC, the Vent, 08/05:
John Kerry spent four months fighting communism and then spent the next 30 years fighting capitalism.

Linda Chavez, 08/05/2004:
But Mr. Kerry's insistence on making his four-month tour of duty in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign could backfire as Americans learn more about what he did in that country and, more important, what he did when he returned home.

David Brooks, 07/31:
For though convention viewers may not be aware of it, Kerry has actually had a career since his four months in Vietnam -- mostly in the Senate.

Cal Thomas (Syndicated), 08/03:
Kerry repeatedly brings up his four-month service in Vietnam.

Adam Nagourney, NYT, 08/01, actually reporting Republican spin:
Entering a four week run-up to the unusually late Republican convention, Mr. Bush's aides said they had laid out a week-by-week in plan in which Mr. Bush would talk about his accomplishments and his second-term agenda. But they said they would also try to blunt what Democrats and Republicans said was a successful four-day Democratic convention focused on Mr. Kerry's veteran credentials by turning attention from what they described as his brief four-month tour in Vietnam to his 20 years in Washington.

LTTE, San Diego Tribune, 8/3
He did spend four months in Vietnam. Since his return, the only consistent factors of his life have been undermining our national defense, and promoting himself.

Washington Post put this in their op-ed:
Mr. Kerry's four-plus months in Vietnam made for an unusually short tour.

We have Fred Barnes on Fox Special Report (8/10)
I wonder what John McCain thinks about Kerry using his four-month record in Vietnam as the centerpiece of his campaign?

Fred Barnes Again (8/9)
Now, if he I telling things that are not true about his four months in Vietnam, then that's important.

AGAIN, same day:
Well, it's also part of the record that he left after four months on the basis of three flesh wounds and not many others did that.

David calling into Talk of the Nation on 08/09:
I read in the Boston Web site that Kerry could have only served four months in
Vietnam.

Uncorrected by the host, Neal Conan.Mara Liasson, falsely corrects a
false statement to preserve the spin, on Fox News Sunday, (08/08)
GIGOT: You know, Kerry's got a lot of other legitimate vulnerabilities, including that asterisk he's put next to his 20 years in the Senate in that speech. I mean, that's what really ought to concern people, because I think Kerry has also overdone his
Vietnam record and tried to say, "Look, because I spent four years in Vietnam, therefore I deserve to be president." I think his Senate record is a much better indicator.
LIASSON: Four months in Vietnam.
GIGOT: Four months, yes.

Novak on Crossfire, 08/07:
I have some question whether 30 years later you should be inspecting the minutiae, the record of John Kerry, which is a very questionable record, how he got his decorations, his very short term of duty, four months of combat, one third of the time.

Tucker Carlson, 08/06, Crossfire:
Kerry has turned his four months in Vietnam into the rationale for an entire presidential campaign.

Republican Chris Horner, on Hannity and Colmes, 08/06:
It is his claims, it is his stake to the presidency on not 19 years in the Senate but four months of Vietnam.

Mara Liasson, 08/06, Talk of the Nation:
Indeed he focuses so much on his four months in Vietnam that critics say he has virtually ignored his 20 years as a United States senator.

Hannity, Hannity & Colmes, 08/05:
You were there with John Kerry for three of the four months that he was there, correct?

Horner, again, John Gibson's show 08/05:
let's talk about the two things that John Kerry thinks qualify him for the White House: the four months in Vietnam and the 19 years in the Senate.

Craig Crawford, from Congressional Quarterly, on CNC's Capital Report:
He wants to run on his four months in Vietnam more than his party or his voting record.

Mary Matalin, on Steffie's show, 08/01:
Four months of honorable service in the height of the Cold War where the national strategies, national security strategies were radically different than what we need today, he's trapped in that thinking.

Novak, 07/31, Capital Gang:
that the tremendous attention for that whole convention, Thursday night, for the whole convention, on his four months in Vietnam is -- is...

Craig Crawford, CBS Political Analyst, the Early Show 07/30:
Well, I think John Kerry hopes to run on his four months in Vietnam as
opposed to his many decades in Congress, especially his own votes on the
war.

Jeff Greenfield(CNN analyst), on Aaron Brown's show, 07/30:
The resume is thin. We heard a lot more about his four months in Vietnam than about 20 years in the Senate.