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BOSTON, MA - The Navy officer roared out of his position in Vietnam, chasing the North Vietnamese with the heavy weapon that could kill the officer's crew, and he killed him first.

This is not fiction.

This is what John Kerry did during his stay in Vietnam.

It earned him the Silver Star.

He had other decorations, too. Three purple hearts, for instance, indicating he was hurt three times during the fighting.

When he came back home, the Naval officer spoke his mind, telling the United States Congress about the war. Eloquent, soft spoken; he talked like a Roman military man returning from distant wars, giving the legislators first hand truth.

Later, he went on to serve as a lawyer. Then he, himself, tried the legislature. For years, he served as second senator from Massachusetts, serving behind the senior senator, Ted Kennedy, bearer of the most revered name in modern Democratic history. One brother, John, served as president before an assassin shot him. Another, Robert, was striding toward the presidency when still another assassinated him. Ted himself had of course tried and failed to gain the presidency once before, and it is clear he will not try again.

Yet even in the shadow of such a senior, as a United States senator, Kerry did his job well. He piloted bills, argued points and did a great deal of compromising because that is the only thing that will ever get anything achieved in the Senate, where at least 60 of the 100 members are necessary to adopt any major act of legislation.

All these accomplishments - the bravery before enemies, the truth he told Congress while the Vietnam War still raged, the practice of law, the execution his senatorial duties – helped Kerry curry a quiet, very conservative image as a man of the legislature.

But now he is approaching something entirely different.

Kerry has formed a committee to look into whether he should make a run at the United States presidency.

Of course, as everyone knows, only an idiot would form such a committee and not intend to go hell bent for leather in campaigning for America’s top office. And John Kerry is not an idiot.

So Kerry is running.

Now that he is in the political fight for the nation's top leadership spot, there are some new things he must learn in order to win. One of them is a simple lesson he may have already taught himself on the prow of his war boat; that is, if an enemy has the weaponry to do away with you and your crew, you quickly make a kill or risk death. No rocket science here, simple war maneuvers.

Translated into the 2004 campaign, this means finding, flushing out and identifying the problems with the almost-foolish presidency of Republican George W. Bush. These are legion and obvious.

Bush could not pronounce nuclear until he had six months in office under his belt. His fiscal policies are aimed directly at providing better things for the well off and little if anything for the middle-class while entirely forgetting the poor.

The Bush definition of a "Republican" seems to mean everybody-like-Bush, and of course such like-minded people are the ones who will benefit enormously from the Bush Administration policies, which is only right since they are after all everybody-like-Bush and therefore correct in their viewpoints.

Everybody else is a Democrat.

Democrats always try to treat everybody else as equals. Everybody else's ideas, Democrats believe, deserve and get attention. This is utterly unworkable for the same-thinking Republicans.

But this phenomenon becomes more dangerous when Bush, suddenly, engages the power of the world's greatest military machine in a war scenario.

And the machine has been engaged.

Some Muslim zealots turned a fairly stable word into the platform for World War III. These Muslim’s killed 3,018 people in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and on a field in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001. And of course they did it by the simple expedient of hijacking American planes and ramming them into American institutions.

Suddenly, Bush became the military marshal of the world. Terrorists would, he declared, be wiped out of every hiding place, and would be hunted down for all time by American soldiers and agents.

Bone chilling threats were issued against all terrorists. There was some sort of mop up in Afghanistan, but Osama bin Laden, who it was assumed we would surely obliterate, escaped.

Now there is a plan for some sort of mop up in Iraq. The reason seems to be that Saddam Hussein cannot escape quite so easily as bin Laden. Hussein once had an army that seemed impressive by Middle East standards, at least until it met up with American and British forces, together with other allies, and was crushed.

Saddam Hussein was however left in power, and later he tried to kill George Bush Sr. by assassination, earning a special enmity from the current U.S. president.

Interestingly, in the world-wide production of oil, Iraq has the distinction of being number two in bringing the raw black gold out of the earth. This is obviously a tantalizing fact for Pres. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, whose oil-smeared bank accounts attest to their previous success in the petroleum business.

In addition, Hussein might have biological, chemical or even nuclear weapons, so we have decided to change the regime in Iraq.

It is worth recalling that George has said he will nuke people who resist him – you know, given the right reasons. Well, President George has recently toned down the regime change language, yet it seems clear we are still heading toward conflict.

But what has happened to the effort to carry on a constant war on world wide terrorism until the United States is at last free of the threat? Maybe, just maybe, some of George Jr.'s better advisors clued in the chief executive that stamping out terrorism is impossible.

Terrorism is hidden in cells loosely connected, by nature secretive and distinctly inappropriate as a target of America's awesome power. The terrorists are not going to be eliminated with H-bombs or heavy artillery.

Nope.

They will be wiped out by giving to their people what they have sought all along. Those dirt-poor people want some of the oil dollars drawn by the very small minorities in their countries. America will be their enemy as long as all the bucks go to the United States or its area affiliates, the friendly despots and autocrats who leave the vast majority of their people in desperate poverty while taking extremely good care of themselves and their families and key supporters, and of course their military and secret police forces.

The poor also would like to actively participate in their own governments - really participate. That will require a sort of - well - Democratic style of debate, where all of the people get to thrash ideas around and a majority vote decides things; not an easy thing to accomplish in areas that are historically used to totalitarian rule of one sort or another, and where stiff and unbending, and often autocratic religious tenets are intertwined with the given government and its bureaucratic operations.

Nonetheless, that method of "attacking" terrorism - by giving the downtrodden a doorway to opportunity and a chance at a better life - has a chance to win.

The Bush scenario - blow them all away then build anew - is really workable only if everyone is correct in the presumption that everybody thinks like they do. Errr - just like Bush does.

Someone needs to inject some reality into this crazy Bush mentality, a mentality that really could cause World War III.

John Kerry is the top candidate, the person most likely to be able to inject that reality into our political discussions.

He has been a wounded killer in Vietnam.

He is not likely to ignore a true threat or start combat over what is truly politics rather than war.

Kerry also is much more likely to use the nation's great resources to help its poor and stop the ever widening, yawning chasm between the rich and the poor.

He will recognize the true threat of combat.

However, he needs to change to be president.

John Kerry must thrust off the senator's mantle of carefully structured words and statements, designed to gently prod other's viewpoints. Now, to be ready to lead the nation, the presidential candidate must be a man who compels his people to follow by the clarity of his thought.

In Vietnam, addressing the Congress, before juries and finally as a member of the Senate, John Kerry has been exemplary citizen. But being president is more than all that.

Being president means fighting for what you know is right and speaking your philosophy loudly and proudly and rallying the people to the cause. And somehow trying to ensure the nation is on stronger footing when you retire.

Sometimes, John, you'll just have to yell to get it across.