On the campaign front, the Kerry and Bush camps clashed Monday over the military record of the two candidates during the Vietnam War. The Republicans have launched a series of attacks on Kerry over the last week questioning whether he earned all three of his Purple Hearts during his two terms in Vietnam. On Monday he was accused of tossing away his service medals to protest the war in 1971. Kerry has long said he threw away ribbons but never his metals. The issue reentered the headlines Monday when ABC News broadcast a 1971 interview that shows Kerry claiming he threw away his medals as well but Kerry said he used the phrases ribbons and medals interchangeably. Kerry responded to the attacks Monday by saying, “This comes from a president who can’t even show or prove that he showed up for duty in the National Guard. And I’m not going to stand for it.” Later in the day Vice President Dick Cheney, who never served in the military, said in a speech at Westminister College in Missouri, “The senator from Massachusetts has given us ample grounds to doubt the judgment and the attitude he brings to bear on vital issues of national security.” The speech was not well received by everyone at the school. The president of the college Fletcher Lamkin took the unusual step in sending a campus-wide letter expressing his displeasure with the partisan tone of the speech. Lamkin wrote that he was “surprised and disappointed that Mr. Cheney chose to step off the high ground and resort to Kerry-bashing for a large portion of his speech.”