In any other circumstance, police harassment of an American gun owner and war vet would become a conservative fable, burnished into a action-packed tale of liberal bureaucrats feasting on the body of a true hero, evidence of American weakness and the triumph of feminism. But Adam Kokesh, a gun owner and war vet and self-described libertarian, is also a critic of Bush’s Iraq war policy. And that makes him a problem–a problem the right-wing smear machine (or one of its trolls, in his underpants, alone at night, etc.) handles through personal destruction on thedistrictweekly.com website. If you’re Raoul Deming, you try to destroy a man like Kokesh through a partial telling of his life’s stories–eliding the heroic bits, exaggerating the facts, making stuff up.

And if you’re Raoul Deming, when you’re pressed for facts, if someone calls you on your bullshit, you send this link about Kokesh.

“There is a kernel of truth to what [Raoul Deming] says that he has grossly distorted,” Kokesh told me. “I brought a pistol back from Iraq and when the Marines found out they busted me down to Cpl and let me out with an honorable when my time was up. I have been open about this since I joined IVAW and even wrote about it in the email I sent to the Marine Major who was investigating me in June for the uniform issue. It’s on my profile on IVAW and my blog.”

Tags: adam kokesh, Bush, gun rights, Iraq Veterans Against the War, iraq war, IVAW, veterans