The Washington Post has uncovered yet one more Vietnam veteran who has not been heard from yet and who corraborates John Kerry's (and the official) version of the events for which he was awarded the Bronze Star:

Until now, eyewitness evidence supporting Kerry's version had come only from his own crewmen. But yesterday, The Post independently contacted a participant who has not spoken out so far in favor of either camp who remembers coming under enemy fire. "There was a lot of firing going on, and it came from both sides of the river," said Wayne D. Langhofer, who manned a machine gun aboard PCF-43, the boat that was directly behind Kerry's.

Langhofer said he distinctly remembered the "clack, clack, clack" of enemy AK-47s, as well as muzzle flashes from the riverbanks."

Langhofer was approached by the GOP Swift Boat Veterans for "Truth" group several months ago, but declined their invitation to lie about Kerry.

In a relevant article from the conservative The Weekly Standard there is an open admission that George W. Bush and his "ambiguous military record" is a candidate that "relatively few" Republicans "find personally or politically appealing." Which explains why the intense effort to smear the bonefide war hero, John Kerry and John McCain before him. George W. Bush is a hard sell compared to the 1990's when the Democrats ran a draft-dodger against the youngest pilot in the Pacific WWII Theater, and then later against another war hero, Bob Dole.

Republicans have no such luck this time, and so they scramble to reassure themselves that they nevertheless are doing the right thing, voting against a war hero. The simplest way to do this is to convince themselves that the war hero isn't really a war hero. If sufficient doubt about Kerry's record can be raised, we can vote for Bush without remorse. But the calculations are transparently desperate. Reading some of the anti-Kerry attacks over the last several weeks, you might conclude that this is the new conservative position: A veteran who volunteered for combat duty, spent four months under fire in Vietnam, and then exaggerated a bit so he could go home early is the inferior, morally and otherwise, of a man who had his father pull strings so he wouldn't have to go to Vietnam in the first place.

Needless to say, the proposition will be a hard sell in those dim and tiny reaches of the electorate where voters have yet to make up their minds. Indeed, it's far more likely that moderates and fence-sitters will be disgusted by the lengths to which partisans will go to discredit a rival. But this anti-Kerry campaign is not designed to win undecided votes. It's designed to reassure uneasy minds.

Given how Bush has sought to wrap himself in the Bible, and how many conservative Christian churches and leaders have sought to reinforce that impression... if this isn't lying for Jesus I don't know what is. These people aren't stupid. They know that they're lying. And they know that they're doing it in the name of Jesus. Which brings to mind a Biblical passage warning believers to beware sheeps in wolves clothing.