BUSH, KERRY FIGHTING OVER WRONG WAR.

Byline: CHRIS WEINKOPF

IT makes sense that with a presidential election only months away the nation would preoccupy itself with discussions of war. What boggles the mind is the war with which we've become preoccupied: Vietnam.

Last week, Sen. John Kerry toured the Midwest, ostensibly to talk about jobs, but found himself dogged by questions about what he did or didn't do with his war medals some 33 years ago. His response? Asking pointed questions about what President George W. Bush did or didn't do in the Texas National Air Guard some 31 years ago.

Riveting stuff.

This tedious distraction began when, on Monday's episode of ``Good Morning America,'' host Charlie Gibson dragged out 1971 footage of Kerry boasting that he discarded ``six, seven, eight, nine'' of his medals to protest the Vietnam War. That account is but one of many twists in the senator's ever-shifting tale of what happened to those medals - on some occasions, they were merely ``ribbons,'' on others they belonged to someone else.

All of which means, well, very little.

Kerry's medals are his own, and he's entitled to do with them as he pleases. Whatever that is, it in no way takes away from the honorable service he gave his country. Nor do his actions from three decades ago necessarily have any bearing on the national security decisions he'd make as president.

The senator's varying versions of the same story may say something about his credibility, but to seize on the technicalities of ancient indiscretions is to make a capital crime out of a misdemeanor. Those interested in challenging Kerry's credibility would do far better to demand that he make up his mind about whether he supported the invasion of Iraq, or why he first voted for, then against, funding the occupation.

Kerry rightfully resents the questioning about his medals, but he can't have it both ways. If his 1971 antiwar protests are irrelevant, then so, too, is the fact that he served in Vietnam, which his campaign continually tries to cite as evidence that he would make an effective commander-in- chief. Kerry's service is a testament to his sense of patriotic duty; it is not an indicator of how he would govern.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also fought in Vietnam, yet his position on the War on Terror far more closely resembles Bush's than Kerry's. And the designated candidate of the party that twice elected draft-dodger Bill Clinton - over World War II heroes George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole - has little business claiming that combat experience is a moral prerequisite for the presidency.

But that didn't stop Kerry from playing the Vietnam card repeatedly last week, calling Bush ``a president who can't account for his own service in the National Guard.''

Until then, the senator had taken the high road, vowing that he wouldn't make an issue of Bush's service (leaving the job to his supporters). But by breaking that pledge, he descended into the realm of stupid politician tricks. Bush has his honorable discharge, and he's released all the documents pertaining to his service. Barring any actual evidence of wrongdoing, Kerry's suggestions amount to little more than character assassination by way of innuendo.

Then there's that 30-year problem.

There ought to be a statute of limitations on bringing up examples of opponents' youthful failings, especially in a society where youthful failings are all but a rite of passage. So Kerry was an embittered hippie and Bush a drunken frat boy - both are obviously now older and wiser, and both, one hopes, have learned from their pasts. (Both would also improve their prospects immeasurably by periodically saying as much.)

The real measure of the candidates' fitness for office is how they intend to deal with a virulent enemy hellbent on our annihilation, and for that, we have evidence that's far more current and relevant than anything either did in the early 1970s - Bush's first three years in office and Kerry's 19-year voting record in the U.S. Senate.

Moreover, in Bush, we have a president who declares that ``the only way to defeat terrorism ... is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows.'' In Kerry, we have a challenger who says the War on Terror is ``not primarily a military operation (but) an intelligence-gathering, law- enforcement, public-diplomacy effort.''

That tells us a lot more about how each man would lead than any Vietnam flashback.