Form 180

Oh happy day, particularly if you're one of the many right wingers who've spent the last few months screeching for Kerry to release his full Navy records.  Finally, on this glorious Tuesday morning, they arrived.  And just as you suspected, the forms are packed with dirt.  They offer definitive, final proof that the SwiftVets were a bunch of liars.

The records, which the Navy Personnel Command provided to the Globe, are mostly a duplication of what Kerry released during his 2004 campaign for president, including numerous commendations from commanding officers who later criticized Kerry's Vietnam service.

The lack of any substantive new material about Kerry's military career in the documents raises the question of why Kerry refused for so long to waive privacy restrictions. An earlier release of the full record might have helped his campaign because it contains a number of reports lauding his service. Indeed, one of the first actions of the group that came to be known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was to call on Kerry to sign a privacy waiver and release all of his military and medical records.

But Kerry refused, even though it turned out that the records included commendations from some of the same veterans who were criticizing him.

Huh.  So why did he refuse?

Kerry said in a written response: ''The call for me to sign a 180 form came from the same partisan operatives who were lying about my record on a daily basis on the Web and in the right-wing media. Even though the media was discrediting them, they continued to lie. I felt strongly that we shouldn't kowtow to them and their attempts to drag their lies out."

You'd think that lesson would've been learned after Whitewater.  In any case, I fully expect that Kerry's critics will apologize for the lies, slanders, and innuendo they've heaped onto the missing forms.  I fully expect them to wear sack cloth and smear themselves in ashes as they ask repentance for what they had no right to demand.  I won't, however, be holding my breath.