If you go to Amazon.com and type: "Bush Lies" into the search engine, you come up with a plethora of left-wing novels: "Big Lies," "The Lies of George W. Bush," "Bushwacked!," "Big Bush Lies," etc., ad infinitum.

Lying is endemic to politicians, but in recent years Democrats have come to believe that only Republicans -- especially President Bush -- lie.

It's taken awhile, but the media is beginning to discover that John Kerry too has "truth" issues.

Contradicting his statements as a candidate for president, Sen. John Kerry claimed in a 1971 television interview that he threw away as many as nine of his combat medals to protest the war in Vietnam.

"I gave back, I can't remember, 6, 7, 8, 9 medals," Kerry said in an interview on a Washington, D.C. news program on WRC-TV's called Viewpoints on November 6, 1971, according to a tape obtained by ABCNEWS.

Throughout his presidential campaign, Kerry has denied that he threw away any of his 11 medals during an anti-war protest in April, 1971.

His campaign Web site calls it a "right wing fiction" and a smear. And in an interview with ABCNEWS' Peter Jennings last December, he said it was a "myth."

But Kerry told a much different story on Viewpoints. Asked about the anti-war veterans who threw their medals away, Kerry said "they decided to give them back to their country."

Kerry was asked if he gave back the Bronze Star, Silver Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for combat duty as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam. "Well, and above that, [I] gave back the others," he said.

The statement directly contradicts Kerry's most recent claims on the disputed subject to the Los Angeles Times last Friday. "I never ever implied that I did it, " Kerry told the newspaper, responding to the question of whether he threw away his medals in protest.

"I'm proud of my medals. I always was proud of them," he told Jennings in December, adding that he had only thrown away his "ribbons" and the medals of two other veterans who could not attend the protest.

John Kerry's record as a sailor in Vietnam is an honorable one. However, his behavior in turning the American public not only against the war, but also against the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen who fought for their country is despicable.