It most certainly is not the case that only men who have been in combat can lead a nation at war. History teaches otherwise.

Woodrow Wilson. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Even Abraham Lincoln.

Not one of these wartime American presidents ever stood in an active foxhole with a battle-scarred platoon, fighting to save his buddies as the enemy advanced.

But still.

What on Earth would possess Republican hit squads to trash John Kerry's record of service during the Vietnam War? However you slice it, this is not a comparison that will ever prove flattering to George W. Bush.

Vietnam hero versus wisecracking party boy!

Enemy fire on the Mekong River versus late-night keggers by the apartment-complex pool!

Three Purple Hearts versus take my word for it, I definitely showed up for duty with the Alabama National Guard!

This is really how the hard-driving Karl Rove wants these two men to be judged? By their military service records three decades ago?

Seemingly so.

Suddenly, John Kerry is being pummeled - on the record, off the record and in the lunatic corners of the Internet - for his life-risking performance at the helm of a Navy "swift boat." And he's being pummeled even more for his anti-war activities when he got home.

Were his shrapnel wounds really deep enough to merit the Purple Hearts? Did his valor under sniper fire really earn the Silver Star and the Bronze Star?

These are the kinds of sniveling questions that have been thrust into the center of this year's presidential race, replacing Iraq, replacing the economy, replacing real issues that real Americans care about.

And then the assaults by Bush surrogates turn quickly to Kerry's public opposition to the war. It's painted as somehow un-American, as if a decorated veteran hadn't earned the right to speak his mind. History has fully vindicated the views of Kerry and other outspoken veterans. That war was dreadful, senseless and unwinable.

But listen:

"What he did was nothing short of aiding and abetting the enemy," Sam Johnson, a Republican congressman from Texas, said of Kerry's anti-war protests. "A person like John Kerry does not belong in the White House."

"The senator from Massachusetts has given us ample grounds to doubt the judgment and the attitude he brings to bear on vital issues of national security," adds Dick Cheney, keeping up the hostile drumbeat.

So how did Bush and Cheney spend the war?

While Kerry was volunteering and fighting in Vietnam, the vice president got five student and marriage deferments that kept him out of the military entirely.

And Bush? Well, his own gentle brush with military service is still clouded with unanswered questions. But inspirational it is not.

Despite low pilot aptitude scores, Bush was jumped ahead of 150 other applicants at the Texas Air National Guard, all but guaranteeing he would never see active combat. And he didn't. His unit included such young Texas luminaries as John Connolly III and Lloyd Bentsen III.

Instead of risking his life against Viet Cong fire, Bush was buzzing the beaches of the Texas Gulf Coast, before moving to Alabama to work in a political campaign of a family friend.

So why the attacks? Will they backfire? Won't voters know they're being manipulated here?

Here's hoping. But the sad fact of the matter is that Rove & Co. have had some success attacking the patriotism of genuine war heroes. Just ask John McCain and Max Cleland.

McCain displayed amazing bravery as a POW in Vietnam. Cleland gave two legs and an arm for his country, coming home a triple amputee.

But four years ago, when McCain was gaining ground on Bush in the race for the GOP nomination, Rove launched a vicious assault, all but calling the senator from Arizona a coward and a traitor. Then two years later, when Cleland was in a tough fight for his Georgia Senate seat, the Republican hit squad unleashed a rhetorical howitzer on him, claiming his Senate votes revealed a lack of patriotism.

They beat him. Three limbs, apparently, were not enough.

Kerry was finally fighting back yesterday.

"I think a lot of veterans are going to be very angry at a president who can't account for his own service in the National Guard, and a vice president who got every deferment in the world and decided he had better things to do, criticizing somebody who fought for their country and served," he said on the campaign trail in Ohio.

The old soldier still had some fight in him.

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

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