THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE military blog has a roundup of military bloggers’ reactions to the “Bush AWOL” story. Meanwhile reader Amy Denham notes that now that the initial case has collapsed with the appearance of records and eyewitnesses, “The argument is no longer ‘did he serve,’ but ‘how well did he serve?'” Since nothing short of seppuku would satisfy the critics, we know the answer to that one.

There’s a lot of goalpost-moving going on. Pejman Yousefzadeh has some comments on that.

And one of my colleagues who was a Marine in Vietnam (and who is quite unimpressed with Kerry) observed that he’s never before seen such open enthusiasm for military service among liberal academics of his generation. He thinks that they see support for Kerry, and slagging of Bush, on these issues as providing some sort of absolution for their own behavior in that era. I think that’s right.

UPDATE: Reader John Schedler emails: “Put my down as another Marine veteran of Vietnam (A 1/26) who agrees completely.”