Stanley Kurtz makes a great point in this column: The Dangerous Secret.

The discussion about John Kerry’s service records is just the preface to the real debate, now visible just over the horizon and fast approaching, about Kerry’s extreme pacifist views and his appalling Senate record of voting against every military spending bill that ever landed on his desk.

The editorial page of the Washington Post has called for Kerry to release his military records and wartime journals. This would seem to be the right thing to do, and may help to clear things up. It is Senator Kerry’s right to withhold those records; if he had not already chosen to show his biographer, Douglas Brinkley, his journals, I would say that Kerry’s privacy should be respected, despite the accusations. But having chosen to use his private journals for a campaign biography, it’s tough now to keep them from the public, given the fact that Kerry’s account has come into question. And of course, it was Kerry who chose to highlight his wartime past in the first place.

The Swift-boat controversy is not an ancient molehill turned into a mountain. It’s how we’re stumbling toward a debate that the Democrats don’t want to have — but that everyone knows exists anyway. The real issue here is Kerry’s views on war and foreign policy. Kerry is a McGovernite — a long-time member in good standing of his party’s dovish wing. Kerry has hidden that fact, but now the truth is slipping out. When Kerry tried to transform his original radicalism into a hawkish parable, those who knew him better rebelled. The ensuing mess has forced the story of who John Kerry is, and always has been, into the public’s focus. Whatever secrets his journals and military files may hold, the secret of John Kerry’s actual views on war and foreign policy is the more dangerous one — for him, and for us.

Earlier this month, LGF highlighted one of Kerry’s most egregious, suicidally harebrained foreign policy proposals: he wants to send nuclear fuel to Iran. (This is not a joke. He really is proposing this.)