Kerry the Swiftee god

[Needa Pass Rush]

For your reading pleasure. Do you suppose Kerry would wound himself in the oval office if we are attacked and he happens to be president?

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kerry's fellow 'Swiftees' dispute his Purple Hearts
Published August 18, 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A number of the combat commanders, fellow officers and other men who served with Sen. John Kerry in Vietnam have challenged his accounts of combat heroism in a new book, "Unfit for Command" (Regnery Publishing), by John E. O´Neill, who took over command of Swift Boat PCF 94 from Lt. Kerry, and Jerome R. Corsi, a political scientist who has written extensively about the Vietnam War protest movement. Each of these excerpts from "Unfit for Command" includes comparisons of Mr. Kerry´s earlier published accounts to recollections of others who served with him.

First of three excerpts
In the history of Swift Boats in Vietnam, all military personnel served a tour of duty of at least one year unless seriously wounded. Among the few exceptions was John Kerry, who requested to leave Vietnam in 1969 after four months, citing a regulation that permitted release of personnel with three Purple Hearts.
Kerry, now the four-term senator from Massachusetts and the Democratic presidential nominee, is also the only known "Swiftee" who received the Purple Heart for a self-inflicted wound.
None of Kerry's three Purple Hearts was for serious injuries. They were minor scratches, resulting in no lost duty time.
Each of these decorations is controversial, with considerable evidence (and in two cases, incontrovertible and conclusive evidence) that the injuries were caused by his own hand and not the result of hostile fire.
Kerry's injuries are a subject of ridicule among fellow Swiftees.
"Many took exception to the Purple Hearts awarded to Kerry," Swift Boat veteran William E. Franke, a Silver Star recipient, wrote to the authors in March. "His 'wounds' were suspect, so insignificant as to not be worthy of the award of such a medal."
Franke and about 200 others, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, came forth in May to question Kerry's deception. These veterans from Kerry's unit signed a petition calling on him to execute Standard Form 180 and allow the public complete access to his service record.
Swiftees have remarked that if Kerry faked even one of these awards, he owed the Navy 243 additional days in Vietnam before running for anything.
In a unit where terribly wounded personnel like Shelton White (now an undersea film producer for National Geographic) chose to return to duty after three wounds on the same day, Kerry's actions were disgraceful.
Indeed, many share the feelings of Adm. Roy F. Hoffmann, to whom all Swiftees reported when he was commander of Coastal Surveillance Force Vietnam in 1968-69: Kerry simply "bugged out" when the heat was on.

Kerry volunteers
The Navy first brought Swift Boats to Vietnam in 1966 to control the coast. The high-speed, 50-foot aluminum boats -- designated PCFs, for Patrol Crafts Fast -- were specifically designed to intercept and inspect offshore traffic. They carried mortars.
Swift Boats, or PCFs, had no armor and relied on speed and firepower. Each boat had a six-man crew and operated as part of a small division.
Kerry volunteered for service on the Swifts. Given his extreme opposition to the Vietnam War and his view that it was an immoral enterprise, Kerry's action has always puzzled most Swiftees. But in the early days, Swift Boats saw infrequent combat, which is apparently why they attracted Kerry.
"Although I wanted to see for myself what was going on, I didn't really want to get involved in the war," Kerry wrote in his 1986 contribution to "The Vietnam Experience: A War Remembered."
In late 1968, the Swift Boat mission was redefined to root out the enemy hiding in the difficult terrain of the canals and rivers of the Mekong Delta.
On Nov. 17, 1968, Kerry reported for duty to Coastal Squadron One, Coastal Division 14, at Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam. He had served a year without seeing combat aboard the USS Gridley, a guided-missile frigate that spent five weeks off the coast of Vietnam doing guard duty for planes.
Cam Ranh, a French tourist town with a well-protected, deep-water harbor and beautiful white beaches, was generally regarded as the safest place in Vietnam. Kerry, promoted five months earlier to lieutenant junior grade, spent one month of his four-month Vietnam tour training in Cam Ranh Bay.
Kerry's campaign Web site, johnkerry.com, presents his first Purple Heart incident in typical heroic fashion: "December 2, 1968 -- Kerry experiences first intense combat; receives first combat related injury."

Kerry's account
Kerry recalled the incident as "a half-assed action that hardly qualified as combat" in Douglas Brinkley's book "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War" (William Morrow, 2004).
As Kerry described the situation to Brinkley, he grew bored in his first two weeks in Vietnam while awaiting assignment of his own boat.
So Kerry volunteered for a "special mission" on a boat the Navy calls a skimmer, but which he knew as a "Boston whaler." The craft was a foam-filled boat, not a Swift Boat.
Kerry and two enlisted men were patrolling along what Kerry described as "the shore off a Viet Cong?infested peninsula north of Cam Ranh" when the action started around 2 or 3 a.m. Here are Kerry's words, quoted by Brinkley:
"The jungle closed in on us on both sides. It was scary as hell. You could hear yourself breathing. We were almost touching the shore. Suddenly, through the magnified moonlight of the infrared 'starlight scope,' I watched, mesmerized, as a group of sampans glided in toward the shore. We had been briefed that this was a favorite crossing area for VC trafficking contraband."
Kerry said he turned off the motor and paddled the Boston whaler out of the inlet into the bay. Then he saw the Vietnamese pull their sampans onto the beach; they began to unload something. As recounted in "Tour of Duty," Kerry decided to light a flare:
"The entire sky seemed to explode into daylight. The men from the sampans bolted erect, stiff with shock for only an instant before they sprang for cover like a herd of panicked gazelles I had once seen on TV's 'Wild Kingdom.' We opened fire ...The light from the flares started to fade, the air was full of explosions. My M-16 jammed, and as I bent down in the boat to grab another gun, a stinging piece of heat socked into my arm and just seemed to burn like hell. By this time, one of the sailors had started the engine, and we ran by the beach, strafing it. Then it was quiet."
That was the entire action. As Kerry explained to Brinkley, he was not about to go chasing after the Vietnamese:
"We were unprotected; we didn't have ammunition; we didn't have cover; we just weren't prepared for that. ... So we first shot the sampans so that they were destroyed and whatever was in them was destroyed."
Kerry and his crew loaded their gear in the Swift Boat that was there to cover them and, with the Boston whaler in tow, headed back to Cam Ranh Bay.
"I felt terribly seasoned after this minor skirmish," Kerry recalled in the Brinkley book, "but since I couldn't put my finger on what we had really accomplished or on what had happened, it was difficult to feel satisfied. I never saw where the piece of shrapnel had come from, and the vision of the men running like gazelles haunted me."

Boston Globe's account
A somewhat different version is recounted in "John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography" (PublicAffairs Reports, 2004), by Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish, Brian C. Mooney and Nina J. Easton.
In this account, Kerry emphasized that he was patrolling with the Boston whaler in a free-fire curfew zone, and that "anyone violating the curfew could be considered an enemy and shot."
Questions had been raised about whether the incident involved any enemy fire, and the Globe reporters covered this point as follows:
"The Kerry campaign showed the Boston Globe a one-page document listing Kerry's medical treatment during some of his service time. The notation said: '3 DEC 1968 U.S. NAVAL SUPPORT FACILITY CAM RANH BAY RVN FPO Shrapnel in left arm above elbow. Shrapnel removed and apply Bacitracin dressing. Ret to duty.'"
The Globe asked the campaign whether Kerry was certain he received enemy fire and whether Kerry remembers the Purple Heart being questioned by a superior officer. The campaign did not respond to those specific questions and, instead, provided a written statement that the Navy did find the action worthy of a Purple Heart.
Two men serving alongside Kerry that night had similar memories. William Zaldonis, who was manning an M-60, and Patrick Runyon, operating the engine, said they spotted some people running from a sampan to a nearby shoreline. When they refused to obey a call to stop, Kerry's crew began shooting.
"When John told me to open up, I opened up," Zaldonis recalled to the Globe.
Zaldonis and Runyon both said they were too busy to notice how Kerry was hit.
"I assume they fired back," Zaldonis said. "If you can picture me holding an M-60 machine gun and firing it -- what do I see? Nothing. If they were firing at us, it was hard for me to tell."
Runyon said he assumed the suspected Viet Cong fired back because Kerry was hit by a piece of shrapnel.
"I can't say for sure that we got return fire or how [Kerry] got nicked," Runyon told the Globe. "I know he did get nicked, a scrape on the arm."
So even in the Globe accounting, it was not clear there was any enemy fire, just a question about how Kerry might have been hit with shrapnel.
The Globe reporters noted that upon the group's return to base, Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, Kerry's superior officer in Coastal Division 14, was skeptical about the injury. The Globe account quoted William Schachte, a lieutenant in command for the operation who went on to become an admiral. "It was not a very serious wound at all," Schachte said in 2003.
Still, on April 18, when NBC correspondent Tim Russert questioned Kerry on national television about the incident, Kerry described it as "the most frightening night" of his Vietnam experience.
The Globe reporters noted that Kerry declined to be interviewed about the incident.

What happened
At the time of this incident, Kerry was an officer in command (OinC) under training. He was aboard the skimmer using the call sign "Robin" on the operation; Schachte, using the call sign "Batman," also was on the skimmer.
After Kerry's M-16 jammed, Kerry picked up an M-79 grenade launcher and fired a grenade too close, causing a tiny piece of shrapnel (one to two centimeters) to barely stick in his arm. Schachte berated Kerry for almost putting someone's eye out.
There was no hostile fire of any kind, nor did Kerry on the way back mention to OinC Mike Voss, who commanded the PCF that towed the skimmer, that he was wounded.
There was no report of hostile fire that day (as would be required), nor do the records at Cam Ranh Bay reveal such hostile fire. No other records reflect hostile fire. There is no casualty report, as would have been required had there actually been a casualty.
To the surprise of both Schachte and the treating doctor, Louis Letson, Kerry managed to keep the tiny hanging fragment barely embedded in his arm until he arrived at sick bay miles away. Kerry was examined by Letson, who never has forgotten the experience and related it to his Democratic county chairman early in the 2004 primary campaign.
Letson, observing Kerry's unimpressive scratch, asked in surprise, "Why are you here?"
Kerry answered, "I've been wounded by hostile fire."
Accompanying crewmen told Letson that Kerry had wounded himself. Letson used tweezers to remove the tiny fragment, which he identified as shrapnel like that from an M-79 (not from a rifle bullet), and put a small bandage on Kerry's arm.
The following morning, Kerry appeared at the office of Cmdr. Hibbard and applied for the Purple Heart. Hibbard turned down the award.

Hibbard's account
When the authors interviewed Hibbard on June 17, he was emphatic that Kerry's slight injury, in his opinion, could not possibly merit the Purple Heart.
Q: When did you first meet John Kerry?
Hibbard: Kerry reported to my division in November 1968. I didn't know him from Adam.
Q: Can you describe the mission in which Kerry got his first Purple Heart?
Hibbard: Kerry requested permission to go on a skimmer operation with Lieutenant Schachte, my most senior and trusted lieutenant, using a Boston whaler to try to interdict a Viet Cong movement of arms and munitions.
The next morning at the briefing, I was informed that no enemy fire had been received on that mission. Our units had fired on some VC units running on the beach. We were all in my office, some of the crew members, I remember Schachte being there.
This was 36 years ago; it really didn't seem all that important at the time. Here was this lieutenant, junior grade, who was saying, "I got wounded," and everybody else, the crew that were present were saying, "We didn't get any fire. We don't know how he got the scratch."
Kerry showed me the scratch on his arm. I hadn't been informed that he had any medical treatment. The scratch didn't look like much to me; I've seen worse injuries from a rose thorn.
Q: Did Kerry want you to recommend him for a Purple Heart?
Hibbard: Yes, that was his whole point. He had this little piece of shrapnel in his hand. It was tiny. I was told later that Kerry had fired an M-79 grenade and that he had misjudged it. He fired it too close to the shore, and it exploded on a rock or something. He got hit by a piece of shrapnel from a grenade that he had fired himself.
The injury was self-inflicted, that's what made sense to me. I told Kerry to "forget it." There was no hostile fire, the injury was self-inflicted for all I knew. Besides, it was nothing really more than a scratch. Kerry wasn't getting any Purple Heart recommendation from me.
Q: How did Kerry get a Purple Heart from the incident, then?
Hibbard: I don't know. It beats me. I know I didn't recommend him for a Purple Heart. Kerry probably wrote up the paperwork and recommended himself, that's all I can figure out. If it ever came across my desk, I don't have any recollection of it. Kerry didn't get my signature. I said "no way" and told him to get out of my office.

The doctor's account
Kerry somehow "gamed the system" nearly three months later to obtain the Purple Heart that Hibbard had denied. How he obtained the award is unknown, since his continued refusal to execute Standard Form 180 means that whatever other documents exist are known only to Kerry, the Department of Defense and God.
Only a treatment record reflecting a scratch and a certificate signed three months later have been produced. There is no "after-action" hostile fire or casualty report. This is because there was no hostile fire, casualty, or action on this "most frightening night" of Kerry's Vietnam experience.
Letson agreed with Hibbard, in a statement the doctor gave us in April, that Kerry's injury was minor and probably self-inflicted:
"The incident that occasioned my meeting with Lieutenant Kerry began while he was patrolling the coast at night just north of Cam Ranh Bay, where I was the only medical officer for a small support base. Kerry returned from that night on patrol with an injury.
"Kerry reported that he had observed suspicious activity on shore and fired a flare to illuminate the area," Letson continued. "According to Kerry, they had been engaged in a firefight, receiving small arms fire from on shore. He said that his injury resulted from this enemy action.
"The story he told was different from what his crewmen had to say about that night. Some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a grenade round at close range to the shore. The crewman who related this story thought that the injury was from a fragment of the grenade shell that had ricocheted back from the rocks. That seemed to fit the injury I treated.
"What I saw was a small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of Kerry's arm. The metal fragment measured about one centimeter in length and was about two or three millimeters in diameter. It certainly did not look like a round from a rifle," Letson continued.
"I simply removed the piece of metal by lifting it out of the skin with forceps. I doubt that it penetrated more than three or four millimeters. It did not require probing to find it, nor did it require any anesthesia to remove it. It did not require any sutures to close the wound. The wound was covered with a Band-Aid. No other injuries were reported and I do not recall that there was any injury to the boat.
"I remember that Jess Carreon [Letson's corpsman, now dead] was present at the time, and he, in fact, made the entry into Lieutenant Kerry's medical record."
Letson also said: "Lieutenant Kerry's crew related that he had told them that he would be president one day. He liked to think of himself as the next JFK from Massachusetts."
Most fellow Swiftees who were with Kerry at Cam Ranh Bay never knew until Kerry decided to run for president that he had somehow successfully maneuvered his way to this undeserved Purple Heart. But in Coastal Division 14, Kerry's attempt to gain the award through fraud marked him as someone who could never be trusted.
When Kerry was dispatched to go to An Thoi with Lt. Tedd Peck (who would retire as a Navy captain), Peck told him: "Kerry, follow me no closer than a thousand yards. If you get any closer, I'll teach you what a real Purple Heart is."

[CyanatixEvilTwin]

Interesting allegations. But who do you believe?

I looked at FactCheck.org (this site calls B.S. on some of Kerry's campaign claims as well, so they're apparently not just shills for the DNC) and came up with this:

http://factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=231

Republican-funded Group Attacks Kerry's War Record

Ad features vets who claim Kerry "lied" to get Vietnam medals. But other witnesses disagree.

August 6, 2004
Modified: August 15, 2004
Summary
A group funded by the biggest Republican campaign donor in Texas began running an attack ad Aug. 5 in which former Swift Boat veterans claim Kerry lied to get one of his two decorations for bravery and two of his three purple hearts.
But the veterans who accuse Kerry are contradicted by Kerry's former crewmen. One of the accusers says he was on another boat "a few yards" away during the incident which won Kerry the Bronze Star, but the former Army lieutenant whom Kerry plucked from the water that day backs Kerry's account. In an Aug. 10 opinion piece in the conservative Wall Street Journal , Rassmann (a Republican himself) wrote that the ad was "launched by people without decency" who are "lying" and "should hang their heads in shame."
Analysis
"Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" is a group formed March 23 after Kerry wrapped up the Democratic nomination. It held a news conference May 4 denigrating Kerry's military record and his later anti-war pronouncements during the 1970's. The group began running an attack ad Aug. 5 in which 13 veterans variously say Kerry is "not being honest" and "is lying about his record."

Where the Money Comes From
Although the word "Republican" does not appear in the ad, the group's financing is highly partisan. The source of the Swift Boat group's money wasn't known when it first surfaced, but a report filed July 15 with the Internal Revenue Services now shows its initial funding came mainly from a Houston home builder, Bob R. Perry, who has also given millions to the Republican party and Republican candidates, mostly in Texas, including President Bush and Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whose district is near Houston
Perry gave $100,000 of the $158,750 received by the Swift Boat group through the end of June, according to its disclosure report .
Perry and his wife Doylene also gave more than $3 million to Texas Republicans during the 2002 elections, according to a database maintained by the Institute on Money in State Politics . The Perrys also were among the largest Republican donors in neighboring Louisiana, where they gave $200,000, and New Mexico, where they gave $183,000, according to the database
At the federal level the Perrys have given $359,825 since 1999, including $6,000 to Bush's campaigns and $27,325 to DeLay and his political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority, according the a database maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics .

The Silver Star
Several of those who appear in the ad have signed brief affidavits, and we have posted some of them in the "supporting documents" section to the right for our visitors to evaluate for themselves.
One of those affidavits, signed by George Elliott, quickly became controversial. Elliott is the retired Navy captain who had recommended Kerry for his highest decoration for valor, the Silver Star, which was awarded for events of Feb. 28, 1969, when Kerry beached his boat in the face of an enemy ambush and then pursued and killed an enemy soldier on the shore.
Elliott, who had been Kerry's commanding officer, was quoted by the Boston Globe Aug 6 as saying he had made a "terrible mistake" in signing the affidavit against Kerry, in which Elliott suggested Kerry hadn't told him the truth about how he killed the enemy soldier. Later Elliott signed a second affidavit saying he still stands by the words in the TV ad. But Elliott also made what he called an "immaterial clarification" - saying he has no first-hand information that Kerry was less than forthright about what he did to win the Silver Star.
What Elliott said in the ad is that Kerry "has not been honest about what happened in Viet Nam." In his original affidavit Elliott said Kerry had not been "forthright" in Vietnam. The only example he offered of Kerry not being "honest" or "forthright" was this: "For example, in connection with his Silver Star, I was never informed that he had simply shot a wounded, fleeing Viet Cong in the back.
In the Globe story, Elliott is quoted as saying it was a "terrible mistake" to sign that statement:
George Elliott (Globe account): It was a terrible mistake probably for me to sign the affidavit with those words. I'm the one in trouble here. . . . I knew it was wrong . . . In a hurry I signed it and faxed it back. That was a mistake.
In his second affidavit, however, Elliott downgraded that "terrible mistake" to an "immaterial clarification." He said in the second affidavit:
Elliott (second affidavit): I do not claim to have personal knowledge as to how Kerry shot the wounded, fleeing Viet Cong.
Elliott also said he now believes Kerry shot the man in the back, based on other accounts including a book in which Kerry is quoted as saying of the soldier, "He was running away with a live B-40 (rocket launcher) and, I thought, poised to turn around and fire it." (The book quoted by Elliott is John F. Kerry, The Complete Biography, By The Reporters Who Know Him Best.)
Elliott also says in that second affidavit, "Had I known the facts, I would not have recommended Kerry for the Silver Star for simply pursuing and dispatching a single, wounded, fleeing Viet Cong." That statement is misleading, however. It mischaracterizes the actual basis on which Kerry received his decoration.
The official citations show Kerry was not awarded the Silver Star "for simply pursuing and dispatching" the Viet Cong. In fact, the killing is not even mentioned in two of the three versions of the official citation (see "supporting documents" at right.) The citations - based on what Elliott wrote up at the time - dwell mostly on Kerry's decision to attack rather than flee from two ambushes, including one in which he led a landing party.
The longest of the citations, signed by Vice Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, commander of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam, describes Kerry as killing a fleeing Viet Cong with a loaded rocket launcher. It says that as Kerry beached his boat to attack his second set of ambushers, "an enemy soldier sprang up from his position not ten feet from Patrol Craft Fast 94 and fled. Without hesitation, Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY leaped ashore, pursued the man behind a hooch, and killed him, capturing a B-40 rocket launcher with a round in the chamber."
Two other citations omit any mention of the killing. One was signed by Admiral John J. Hyland, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, and the other was signed by the Secretary of the Navy. Both those citations say Kerry attacked his first set of ambushers and that "this daring and courageous tactic surprised the enemy and succeeded in routing a score of enemy soldiers." Later, 800 yards away, Kerry's boat encountered a second ambush and a B-40 rocket exploded "close aboard" Kerry's boat. "With utter disregard for his own safety, and the enemy rockets, he again ordered a charge on the enemy, beached his boat only ten feet away from the VC rocket position, and personally led a landing party ashore in pursuit of the enemy." In these citations there is no mention of enemy casualties at all. Kerry was cited for "extraordinary daring and personal courage . . . in attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire."
Elliott had previously defended Kerry on that score when his record was questioned during his 1996 Senate campaign. At that time Elliott came to Boston and said Kerry acted properly and deserved the Silver Star. And as recently as June, 2003, Elliott called Kerry's Silver Star "well deserved" and his action "courageous" for beaching his boat in the face of an ambush:
Elliott (Boston Globe, June 2003): I ended up writing it up for a Silver Star, which is well deserved, and I have no regrets or second thoughts at all about that. . . . (It) was pretty courageous to turn into an ambush even though you usually find no more than two or three people there.
Elliott now feels differently, and says he has come to believe Kerry didn't deserve his second award for valor, either, based only on what the other anti-Kerry veterans have told him. He told the Globe Aug. 6:
Elliott: I have chosen to believe the other men. I absolutely do not know first hand.
The Bronze Star
The most serious allegation in the ad is that Kerry received both the Bronze Star, his second-highest decoration, and his third purple heart, which allowed him to be sent home early, under false pretenses. But that account is flatly contradicted by Jim Rassmann, the former Army Lieutenant whom Kerry rescued that day.
Van O'Dell, a former Navy enlisted man who says he was the gunner on another Swift Boat, states in his affidavit that he was "a few yards away" from Kerry's boat on March 13, 1969 when Kerry pulled Rassman from the water. According to the official medal citations, Kerry's boat was under enemy fire at the time, and Kerry had been wounded when an enemy mine exploded near his own boat. O'Dell insists "there was no fire" at the time, adding: "I did not hear any shots, nor did any hostile fire hit any boats" other than his own, PCF-3.
Others in the ad back up that account. Jack Chenoweth, who was a Lieutenant (junior grade) commanding PCF-3, said Kerry's boat "fled the scene" after a mine blast disabled PCF-3, and returned only later "when it was apparent that there was no return fire." And Larry Thurlow, who says he commanded a third Swift Boat that day, says "Kerry fled while we stayed to fight," and returned only later "after no return fire occurred."
None of those in the attack ad by the Swift Boat group actually served on Kerry's boat. And their statements are contrary to the accounts of Kerry and those who served under him.
Jim Rassmann was the Army Special Forces lieutenant whom Kerry plucked from the water. Rassmann has said all along that he was under sniper fire from both banks of the river when Kerry, wounded, helped him aboard. Rassmann is featured in an earlier Kerry ad, in fact, (see script at left) saying "he (Kerry) risked his life to save mine."
On Aug. 10, Rassmann wrote a vivid account of the rescue in the Wall Street Journal that contradicts the Kerry accusers. Rassmann said that after the first explosion that disabled PCF-3:
Rassmann: Machine-gun fire erupted from both banks of the river and a second explosion followed moments later. The second blast blew me off John's swift boat, PCF-94, throwing me into the river. Fearing that the other boats would run me over, I swam to the bottom of the river and stayed there as long as I could hold my breath.
When I surfaced, all the swift boats had left, and I was alone taking fire from both banks. To avoid the incoming fire I repeatedly swam under water as long as I could hold my breath, attempting to make it to the north bank of the river. I thought I would die right there. The odds were against me avoiding the incoming fire and, even if I made it out of the river, I thought I thought I'd be captured and executed. Kerry must have seen me in the water and directed his driver, Del Sandusky, to turn the boat around. Kerry's boat ran up to me in the water, bow on, and I was able to climb up a cargo net to the lip of the deck. But, because I was nearly upside down, I couldn't make it over the edge of the deck. This left me hanging out in the open, a perfect target. John, already wounded by the explosion that threw me off his boat, came out onto the bow, exposing himself to the fire directed at us from the jungle, and pulled me aboard.
Rassmann said he recommended Kerry for the Silver Star for that action, and learned only later that the Bronze Star had been awarded instead. "To this day I still believe he deserved the Silver Star for his courage," he wrote. Rassmann described himself as a retired lieutenant with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. "I am a Republican, and for more than 30 years I have largely voted for Republicans," Rassmann said. But he said Kerry "will be a great commander in chief."
"This smear campaign has been launched by people without decency," Rassmann said. "Their new charges are false; their stories are fabricated, made up by people who did not serve with Kerry in Vietnam."
The Third Purple Heart
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth further says Kerry didn't deserve his third purple heart, which was received for shrapnel wounds in left buttocks and contusions on right forearm. The Swift Boat group's affidavits state that the wound in Kerry's backside happened earlier that day in an accident. "Kerry inadvertently wounded himself in the fanny," Thurlow said in his affidavit, "by throwing a grenade too close (to destroy a rice supply) and suffered minor shrapnel wounds."
The grenade incident is actually supported by Kerry's own account, but the shrapnel wound was only part of the basis for Kerry's third purple heart according to official documents. The evidence here is contradictory.
Kerry's account is in the book Tour of Duty by Douglas Brinkley, who based it largely on Kerry's own Vietnam diaries and 12 hours of interviews with Kerry. "I got a piece of small grenade in my ass from one of the rice-bin explosions and then we started to move back to the boats," Kerry is quoted as saying on page 313. In that account, Kerry says his arm was hurt later, after the mine blast that disabled PCF-3, when a second explosion rocked his own boat. "The concussion threw me violently against the bulkhead on the door and I smashed my arm," Kerry says on page 314.
And according to a Navy casualty report released by the Kerry campaign, the third purple heart was received for "shrapnel wounds in left buttocks and contusions on his right forearm when a mine detonated close aboard PCF-94," Kerry's boat. As a matter of strict grammar, the report doesn't state that both injuries were received as a result of the mine explosion, only the arm injury.
The official citation for Kerry's Bronze Star refers only to his arm injury, not to the shrapnel wound to his rear. It says he performed the rescue "from an exposed position on the bow, his arm bleeding and in pain." The description of Kerry's arm "bleeding" isn't consistent with the description of a "contusion," or bruise.
Rassmann's Aug. 10 Wall Street Journal article states that Kerry's arm was "wounded by the explosion that threw me off his boat," which would make that wound clearly enemy-inflicted.
In any case, even a "friendly fire" injury can qualify for a purple heart "as long as the 'friendly' projectile or agent was released with the full intent of inflicting damage or destroying enemy troops or equipment," according to the website of the Military Order of the Purple Heart. All agree that rice was being destroyed that day on the assumption that it otherwise might feed Viet Cong fighters.
Another major discrepancy raises a question of how close Kerry's accusers actually were to the rescue of Rassmann. Tour of Duty describes Rassmann's rescue (and the sniper fire) as happening "several hundred yards back" from where the crippled PCF-3 was lying, not "a few yards away," the distance from which the anti-Kerry veterans claim to have witnessed the incident.
First Purple Heart
Two who appear in the ad say Kerry didn't deserve his first purple heart. Louis Letson, a medical officer and Lieutenant Commander, says in the ad that he knows Kerry is lying about his first purple heart because "I treated him for that." However, medical records provided by the Kerry campaign to FactCheck.org do not list Letson as the "person administering treatment" for Kerry's injury on December 3, 1968 . The medical officer who signed this sick call report is J.C. Carreon, who is listed as treating Kerry for shrapnel to the left arm.
In his affidavit, Letson says Kerry's wound was self-inflicted and does not merit a purple heart. But that's based on hearsay, and disputed hearsay at that. Letson says "the crewman with Kerry told me there was no hostile fire, and that Kerry had inadvertently wounded himself with an M-79 grenade." But the Kerry campaign says the two crewmen with Kerry that day deny ever talking to Letson.
Also appearing in the ad is Grant Hibbard, Kerry's commanding officer at the time. Hibbard's affidavit says that he "turned down the Purple Heart request," and recalled Kerry's injury as a "tiny scratch less than from a rose thorn."
That doesn't quite square with Letson's affidavit, which describes shrapnel "lodged in Kerry's arm" (though "barely.")
Hibbard also told the Boston Globe in an interview in April 2004 that he eventually acquiesced about granting Kerry the purple heart.
Hibbard: I do remember some questions on it. . .I finally said, OK if that's what happened. . . do whatever you want
Kerry got the first purple heart after Hibbard left to return to the US .
McCain Speaks Up
Sen. John McCain -- who has publicly endorsed Bush and even appealed for donations to the President's campaign -- came to Kerry's defense on this. McCain didn't witness the events in question, of course. But he told the Associated Press in an August 5 interview:
McCain : I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable. As it is none of these individuals served on the boat (Kerry) commanded. Many of his crewmates have testified to his courage under fire. I think John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam.
At this point, 35 years later and half a world away, we see no way to resolve which of these versions of reality is closer to the truth.
Sources
Michael Kranish,"Veteran Retracts Criticism of Kerry ," The Boston Globe, 6 August 2004 .
Jodi Wilgoren, "Vietnam Veterans Buy Ads to Attack Kerry," The New York Times, 5 August 2004.
Douglas Brinkley, Tour of Duty, (NY, HarperCollins, 2004).
Jim Rassmann, "Shame on the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush," Wall Street Journal, 10 Aug 2004: A10.
Ron Fournier, "McCain Condemns Anti-Kerry Ad," Associated Press, 5 August 2004.
Michael Kranish, "Kerry Faces Questions Over Purple Heart," The Boston Globe , 14 April 2004: A1.
Michael Kranish, "Heroism, and growing concern about war," The Boston Globe, 16 June 2003.

[Needa Pass Rush]

Originally Posted by CyanatixEvilTwin

Interesting allegations. But who do you believe?

I looked at FactCheck.org (this site calls B.S. on some of Kerry's campaign claims as well, so they're apparently not just shills for the DNC) and came up with this:

Yeah, hard to say unless you were there. Just nasty election year crap. It won't change my vote... any of it. It is rather amusing how childish this campaigns become, though.

[CyanatixEvilTwin]

Originally Posted by Needa Pass Rush

Yeah, hard to say unless you were there. Just nasty election year crap. It won't change my vote... any of it. It is rather amusing how childish this campaigns become, though.

Agreed!

(Uh-oh...another sign of "The End Times": A Broncos fan and a Raiders fan agree on something.)

Nice Av, by the way...normally don't like anything in orange, but I could look at that alllllllllllllllll day long.

[Blueflame]

Looks like Swiftvet Thurlow has some 'splainin' to do...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Aug18.html

[watermock]

Your totally missing the point. Noone has denied that Kerry drove his boats into an ambush or turned round to pick up a soldier blown out.

It's gotten to the point the left won't even discuss the first Purple Heart, and have move on to the second or whatever.

His Christmas in July Apocalypse Now routine is wearing a little thin as well, since his boat wasn't even approved to go into that area and had twin screws, not jet power. It all bends itself into a compulsive LIAR.

WTF are you talking about?

At the time of this incident, Kerry was an officer in command (OinC) under training. He was aboard the skimmer using the call sign "Robin" on the operation; Schachte, using the call sign "Batman," also was on the skimmer.
After Kerry's M-16 jammed, Kerry picked up an M-79 grenade launcher and fired a grenade too close, causing a tiny piece of shrapnel (one to two centimeters) to barely stick in his arm. Schachte berated Kerry for almost putting someone's eye out.
There was no hostile fire of any kind, nor did Kerry on the way back mention to OinC Mike Voss, who commanded the PCF that towed the skimmer, that he was wounded.
There was no report of hostile fire that day (as would be required), nor do the records at Cam Ranh Bay reveal such hostile fire. No other records reflect hostile fire. There is no casualty report, as would have been required had there actually been a casualty.
To the surprise of both Schachte and the treating doctor, Louis Letson, Kerry managed to keep the tiny hanging fragment barely embedded in his arm until he arrived at sick bay miles away. Kerry was examined by Letson, who never has forgotten the experience and related it to his Democratic county chairman early in the 2004 primary campaign.
Letson, observing Kerry's unimpressive scratch, asked in surprise, "Why are you here?"
Kerry answered, "I've been wounded by hostile fire."
Accompanying crewmen told Letson that Kerry had wounded himself. Letson used tweezers to remove the tiny fragment, which he identified as shrapnel like that from an M-79 (not from a rifle bullet), and put a small bandage on Kerry's arm.
The following morning, Kerry appeared at the office of Cmdr. Hibbard and applied for the Purple Heart. Hibbard turned down the award.

[watermock]

What are you people on?

It's not Bush who is making Kerry out to be some great war hero when he was actually an anti-war activist.

It's Kerry that is being made the fool repeatedly.

[Needa Pass Rush]

Part 2. Not recommended reading for LABF.

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'Sampan incident' belies heroic image
By John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi
Published August 19, 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A number of the combat commanders, fellow officers and other men who served with Sen. John Kerry in Vietnam challenge his accounts of combat heroism in a new book, "Unfit for Command" (Regnery Publishing), by John E. O'Neill, who took over command of Swift Boat PCF 94 from Lt. Kerry, and Jerome R. Corsi, who has written extensively about the Vietnam War protest movement. Each of these excerpts from "Unfit for Command" includes comparisons of Mr. Kerry's earlier published accounts to recollections of others who served with him.





Second of three excerpts

John Kerry invented a "war hero" persona in his private journals and in the home movies he filmed and staged in Vietnam. Playing the lead role, he developed a past intended to advance his future political ambitions.
In reality, Kerry was regarded by his Navy peers as reckless with human life. Although Douglas Brinkley's biography "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War" recalls that Kerry used the call sign "Square Jaw" for a short time, it doesn't mention the sign he actually used for most of his four months in Vietnam: "Boston Strangler."
Kerry portrays himself as a Swift Boat officer constantly protesting to his superiors about criminal war policies and inappropriate tactics. In reality, while Kerry constantly complained about the location of assignments to his peers, he hardly ever said a word of protest or spoke out in objection to any superior officer.
Kerry, who skippered two Swift Boats in the Mekong Delta from Dec. 6, 1968, to March 17, 1969, often sported a home-movie camera to record his exploits for later viewing. Fellow "Swiftees" report that Kerry would revisit ambush locations for re-enacting combat scenes where he would portray the hero.
Kerry would take movies of himself in combat gear, sometimes dressed as an infantryman walking resolutely through the terrain. He even filmed mock interviews of himself narrating his exploits.
A joke circulated among Swiftees was that Kerry left Vietnam early not because he received three Purple Hearts, but because he had recorded enough film of himself to take home for his planned political campaigns.
Only after returning home did Kerry argue publicly that war crimes were committed on a daily basis at the direction of all levels of command. He compared his superior officers to Lt. William Calley of My Lai infamy. Kerry's accusations typically relied on impostors who concocted incidents that, when investigated, proved to be exaggerations or fabrications.
On the other hand, the propriety of Kerry's own conduct in Vietnam was and is the subject of serious question.
"Kerry seemed to believe that there were no rules in a free-fire zone, and you were supposed to kill everyone," Swift Boat veteran William E. Franke of Coastal Division 11 told us. "I didn't see it that way. I will tell you in all candor that the only baby killer I knew in Vietnam was John F. Kerry."
The evidence shows John Kerry was a ruthless operator in the field, with little regard for life. One example is the sampan incident in An Thoi in January 1969.

Kerry's account
Kerry recounts that the Swift Boat under his command, PCF 44, and another, PCF 21, were patrolling a shallow channel on a pitch-black night and continually running aground.
For "Tour of Duty" (William Morrow, 2004), Brinkley drew his account from Kerry's journals and subsequent explanations, noting that "neither Swift's search or boarding lights were working properly."
" 'Many minutes of silent patrolling had gone by when one of the men yelled, "Sampan off the port bow," Kerry wrote [in his journal]. 'Everybody froze, and we slowed the engines quickly. But the sampan was already by us and wasn't stopping. It was past curfew, and nothing was allowed in the river. I told the gunner to fire a few warning shots, and in the confusion, all guns opened up. We moved in on the sampan and taking one of the battle lanterns off the bulkhead, shone it on the silhouette of the craft that was now dead in the water.' "
Critical in this account is Kerry's statement that he ordered the gunner to fire "a few warning shots." Brinkley records Kerry's self-justification of the action, one of many versions Kerry would subsequently offer to make the actions he took seem part of standard operating procedure:
"Technically, the two PCFs had done nothing wrong," Brinkley wrote. "The sampan, operating past curfew, was undeniably in a free-fire zone; what's more, there had been more than a few instances of sampans trying to get close enough to U.S. Navy vessels to toss bombs into their pilothouses."
In other words, Kerry is trying to establish that opening fire on the sampan (a flat-bottomed Chinese skiff propelled by oars) was justified -- a pre-emptive attack in self-defense. For Kerry, it was critical to maintain that his actions were taken according to Navy policy; otherwise, he had no defense. A Nuremberg defense -- "just following orders" -- was and is Kerry's chosen line.
Kerry then admitted the civilian casualties he caused, according to the Brinkley biography:
"But knowing that they were following official Navy policy didn't make it any easier to deal with what the crews saw next. 'The light revealed a woman standing in the stern of the sampan with a child of perhaps two years or less in her arms,' Kerry wrote. 'Neither [was] harmed. We asked her where the men from the stern were, as one of the gunners was sure that he had seen someone moving back there. She gesticulated wildly, and I could see traces of blood on the engine mounting. It was obvious that they had been blown overboard.
"'Then somebody said there was a body up front, and we moved in closer to see the limbs of a small child limp on the stacks of rice. She had already covered it, and when one of the men asked me if I wanted it uncovered I said no, realizing that the face would stay with me for the rest of my life and that it was better not to know whether there was a smile or a grimace or whether it was a girl or boy.' "

Boston Globe's find
Coastal Division 11 personnel recall at least two different explanations given for the action by Kerry, in addition to his excuses that it was the crew's fault and that it was a free-fire zone.
Kerry has suggested that, under the rice on the sampan, there might have been a bomb that could have been thrown into the Swift Boat had Kerry allowed the sampan to move close enough.
Additionally, Kerry has suggested that the Viet Cong used women and children to cover their actions and that there could have been Viet Cong in the boat ready to fire on them when they got closer. Another of Kerry's suggestions was that the woman might have been hiding weapons in the sunken boat.
These are strange explanations, since Kerry also says in the Brinkley biography that during his "entire stint in Vietnam, he never found a single piece of contraband" on the hundreds of vessels he searched.
Critically important is the fact that Kerry filed a phony after-action operational report concealing the fact that a child had been killed during the attack on the sampan and inventing a fleeing squad of Viet Cong. The operational report is one of the important missing documents that Kerry neglects to make public on his campaign Web site.
The book written by three Boston Globe reporters, "John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography" (PublicAffairs Reports, 2004), cites a Navy report of "a similar-sounding incident."
"In any case, while Kerry said in a 2003 interview that he wasn't sure when the boy in the sampan was killed, a Navy report says a similar-sounding incident took place on Jan. 20, 1969. The crew of No. 44 'took sampan under fire, returned to capture 1 woman and a small child, one enemy KIA [Killed in Action] ... believe four occupants fled to beach or possible KIA.' "
Kerry was the skipper of PCF 44 at the time. The Kerry campaign was sent a copy of the report, but did not respond when the Boston Globe asked if it matched Kerry's memory of the night the child was killed.
The Globe reporters, who unknowingly uncovered a critical piece of evidence, were skeptical there could have been two such incidents.

Eyewitness account
Gunner Steve Gardner sat above Kerry on the double .50-caliber mount that night in January 1969.
PCF 44, engines shut off, lay in ambush near the western mouth of the Cua Lon River. The boat's own generator was operating and its radar was on, with Kerry supposedly in the pilothouse monitoring the radar.
Although the radar was easily capable of picking up the sampan early, Kerry gave no warning to the crew and did not come out of the pilothouse. Instead, first an engine noise and then a sampan suddenly appeared in front of the boat -- still no Kerry.
The PCF lights were thrown on -- still no Kerry. The sampan was ordered to stop by the young gunner, Gardner -- still no Kerry.
According to Gardner, there was no order to fire warning shots, as Kerry claimed. Indeed, there was no Kerry until it was over. When an occupant of the sampan appeared to Gardner to reach for or hold a weapon, he opened up (as did others), killing the father and, unintentionally, a child.
Then Kerry finally appeared; he ordered the crew to cease-fire and then threatened them with courts-martial.
'Bone of contention'
Steve Gardner is the sole crewman not swayed by Kerry during his many post-Vietnam years of solicitation aimed at gaining the support of his own crew.
Today, Gardner asks: "How can Kerry possibly be commander in chief when he couldn't competently command a six-man crew?"
Gardner, a two-tour Swift Boat sailor who sat five feet behind Kerry in Vietnam and who saw many officers during his two years, judges Kerry to be by far the worst.
"Kerry was erratic," Gardner said in an interview June 19. "He hardly ever did what he was supposed to do. His command decisions put us in more peril then he should have. But mostly he just ran. When John Kerry looked out the bow of the boat and he saw tracer fire coming after him, he'd turn and run."
Gardner added: "When he should have been fighting, calling in air support, he was hightailing it. That's always been my bone of contention with Kerry -- his decision-making capabilities. That's what takes him out of contention as far as I'm concerned."
Kerry's failure to pick up the sampan on radar is hard to understand. Harder still to understand is his absence as the officer in charge during the critical part of the episode.
The fog of war can obscure anyone's vision, but there would certainly have been an inquiry at An Thoi to determine what happened and how a small child could have been inadvertently killed. The inquiry would have focused on why the sampan was not detected early and why normal measures like a flare or small-caliber warning shot were not used.

Gardner irks Kerry
To be fair, it is likely the purpose of such an inquiry would not be to fix blame on anyone, but to avoid future miscalculation.
And the major questions would have been: Where was Kerry? Why was there no warning? Why was a gunner's mate making the critical life-and-death decision instead of the officer in charge? Why the different accounts by Kerry?
Kerry avoided any problem by filing an after-action report in which the dead child simply disappeared from the record and was replaced by a fleeing squad of Viet Cong, some likely killed.
According to Gardner, Kerry threatened to court-martial those involved, even though the crew believed they had seen weapons on the sampan. Gardner strongly believes that the sight of potential weapons justified the firing.
In their biography, the Globe reporters note that Kerry supporters have tried to discredit Gardner and dismiss his criticism of Kerry. In March, Gardner was quoted publicly for the first time about his views on Kerry, in the Globe and on Time magazine's Web site.
In the Time article, written by Kerry biographer Brinkley, Kerry was quoted as reacting strongly to Gardner's criticism, saying that Gardner had "made up" stories. Brinkley dismissed Gardner, a supporter of President Bush, as being motivated by "one word: politics." Kerry said he couldn't remember the court-martial threat.
Gardner denied that politics had anything to do with his comments. "Absolutely not," he said, saying he kept his feelings about Kerry to himself for 35 years and responded only when a Globe reporter tracked him down.

Kerry's report
Cmdr. George M. Elliott of Coastal Division 11 never knew of the small child's death because all he received from Kerry was the false report, which found its way up the chain of command.
The Commander Coastal Surveillance Force Vietnam (CTF 115) Quarterly Evaluation Report of March 29, 1969, states: " ... 20 January PCFs 21 and 44 operating in An Xuyen Province ... engaged the enemy with a resultant GDA of one VC KIA (BC) [body count], four VC KIA (EST) and two VC CIA."
This is Kerry's victory: killing in action (KIA) five imaginary Viet Cong, capturing in action (CIA) two Viet Cong (an exaggeration of the mother and baby who were actually rescued from the sampan) and simply omitting the dead child from the body count (BC) and the estimate (EST).
Roy F. Hoffmann, then commander of Coastal Surveillance Force Vietnam, CTF 115, received Kerry's false report of probably killing five Viet Cong and capturing two others. Hoffman sent Kerry a congratulatory message.
Upon learning of what Kerry actually had done, Hoffmann, who retired as a rear admiral, recently expressed his contempt for Kerry as a liar, false warrior and fraud.
"I do not believe John Kerry is fit to be commander in chief of the armed forces of the United States," Hoffman said in May. "This is not a political issue. It is a matter of his judgment, truthfulness, reliability, loyalty and trust -- all absolute tenets of command."
Despite Kerry's written report, rumors of the sampan incident on the Cua Lon River circulated for years.
The vivid memory of the small, bloody sampan haunts Franke, a Silver Star recipient and veteran of many battles.
"Absent clear indications of danger, Swift Boat crews simply did not open fire upon such boats," Franke wrote us in March. "Rather, the vessel would be boarded, searched and let go with a warning."
Yet in "Tour of Duty," Kerry, according to one of his own accounts, appears to have lost control of his boat after crazily ordering that "warning shots" be fired at a small sampan with heavy .50-caliber weapons, instead of the numerous small-caliber weapons on board.
And according to the biography written by the Globe reporters, Kerry simply butchers a small sampan in a free-fire zone because it would have been dangerous to approach.

'Fire discipline'
Thomas W. Wright, another Swift Boat commander in Coastal Division 11, said Kerry "was not a good combat commander."
Wright said he had such "serious problems" working with Kerry that he finally objected to going on patrol with Kerry. Elliott granted Wright's request that Kerry no longer be assigned to operations under his command.
Wright remembers that Kerry would disappear without warning on multiboat operations. He recalls that Kerry's boat had poor fire discipline and would open fire without prior clearance or apparent reason.
"John Kerry's leadership and operational style were different from mine," Wright said in a written statement in April. "I can see how his crew thought he was a hero, but it seemed like he was a hero fighting out of situations he shouldn't have been in to begin with. I had a lot of trouble getting him to follow orders.
"You had to be right, and you had to have fire discipline. You couldn't blame something on the rules of engagement."
George Bates, another officer in Coastal Division 11, participated in numerous operations with Kerry from January 1969 to March 1969.
In Bates' view, Kerry was a coward who overreacted with deadly force when he felt threatened. Bates, a retired Navy captain, believed that Kerry treated the South Vietnamese in an almost criminal manner.
Bates is haunted by a particular patrol with Kerry on the Song Bo De River in early 1969. With Kerry in the lead, their Swift Boats approached a small hamlet with three to four grass huts. Pigs and chickens were milling around.
As the boats drew closer, the villagers fled. There were no political symbols or flags in evidence. It was obvious to Bates that existing policies, decency and good sense required the boats simply to move on.
Instead, Kerry beached his boat. Upon his command, numerous small animals were slaughtered by heavy-caliber machine guns. Acting more like a pirate than a naval officer, Kerry disembarked and ran around with a Zippo lighter, burning up the entire hamlet.
Bates was appalled by the hypocrisy of Kerry's quick shift to the role of a peace activist condemning war crimes upon his return home. Even today, Bates describes Kerry as a man without a conscience.

A fraud
Whether one believes Kerry's or Gardner's version of the sampan debacle, Kerry's boat was ultimately responsible. The fishing vessel could not possibly have escaped given the vast disparity in speed between sampans and Swift Boats.
No discussion of the incident can be found on Kerry's campaign Web site, nor is there any official document of it among those Navy service records that Kerry has made public.
Gardner's testimony and the quarterly report quoted above both indicate Kerry's PCF 44 picked up the surviving woman and her baby, whom Kerry's after-action report described as captured Viet Cong. Yet no record indicates what became of the woman or the child when Kerry's boat returned to shore.
The squad of four fleeing Viet Cong existed only in Kerry's imagination and in his written report. It does not exist in Brinkley's "Tour of Duty," or in Kerry's statements to Boston Globe reporter Michael Kranish, or in Kerry's secret journal, or in any recollection of anyone.
Kerry's victory exists only in Kerry's mind. Nonetheless, he succeeded in pulling off this fraud until the recent comparison of records.

[Exile_In_SJ]

from Betsys Blog....

Congratulations to Captain Ed. The Washington Times picks up on his scoop yesterday that Kerry himself claimed not to have seen combat before on December 11, 1968 when his first Purple Heart was for December 2.
The question is: Was Mr. Kerry actually involved in combat that night? Statements from the men aboard Mr. Kerry's skimmer, though inconclusive, are doubtful. Mr. Kerry himself has always insisted that the encounter qualifies as combat and was one of the most frightening episodes in his life. Over at JohnKerry.com, there are few documents that record exactly what happened on Dec. 2. What amounts to a record of the night are a timeline that states, "December 2, 1968: Kerry experiences first intense combat; receives first combat related injury"; a medical report that reads simply, "Shrapnel in left arm above elbow. Shrapnel removed and appl[ied] bacitracin dressing. Ret[urned] to Duty"; and a citation from the Navy dated Feb. 28, 1969: "On behalf of the Chief of Naval Personnel, the Commander of U.S. Naval Support Activity, Saigon, hereby awards you the Purple Heart for injuries received on 2 December, 1968." And of course Mr. Kerry's own account.
But two weeks after Dec. 2, 1968, Mr. Kerry wrote an entry in his journal that raises questions about his own account of that night. Shortly after being wounded, Mr. Kerry was transferred to Cat Lo on the Mekong Delta and assumed his first command of a swift boat. In his biography of Mr. Kerry, "Tour of Duty," Douglas Brinkley reports on page 189 that soon after Mr. Kerry turned 25 on Dec. 11, 1968, he headed out on his first mission: "[The crew] had no lust for battle, but they also were not afraid. Kerry wrote in his notebook, 'A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn't been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven't been shot at are allowed to be cocky'. "


----------------

the more you look at Kerry's service, the more inconsistencies appear. Very interesting for a man who would become the most powerful man in the world. Pretty frightening

[shakenbake]

Originally Posted by CyanatixEvilTwin

Agreed!

(Uh-oh...another sign of "The End Times": A Broncos fan and a Raiders fan agree on something.)

Nice Av, by the way...normally don't like anything in orange, but I could look at that alllllllllllllllll day long.

This is how it all starts in no time you come over to the good side and be cheering on the Broncos.

[shakenbake]

Originally Posted by watermock

What are you people on?

It's not Bush who is making Kerry out to be some great war hero when he was actually an anti-war activist.

It's Kerry that is being made the fool repeatedly.

Bush's stance on this whole thing is great. All he has to do is sit back and watch Kerry's self distruction.

[Rohirrim]

Yeah, as long as you can claim deniability for the smear attacks on American heroes, it's all good. I guess that's what Bush learned in the ANG - "the Honor Code."

[Hogan11]

Kerry actually should just quit on this stuff while he's ahead....everyone knows he was in Nam, got wounded, etc. the point has been made......yeah, he served, ok...let's move on.

All this service thing is really (like the GOP's thing over gay marriage) is this election years flag burning amendment, this years Willie Horton, this years ACLU, this years Troopergate and so on and so on.....or in other words, this election years non-issue for the smear guys on both sides to use to deflect from real debate upon real issues.

I yawn at the Kerry service thing anymore....I don't wanna hear about Nam, talk to me about Iraq & the economy....the stuff that actually matters....then maybe I'll listen...this debate over his service record has me turning a deaf ear to it anymore.

[Blueflame]

Originally Posted by shakenbake

Bush's stance on this whole thing is great. All he has to do is sit back and watch Kerry's self distruction.

Actually Bush could have "scored more points" with voters if he had made a public (superficial) denouncement of the swiftvets' ad... after all, the negative claims were already out there, and he could have appeared to be taking the high road...

[Needa Pass Rush]

Originally Posted by Blueflame

Actually Bush could have "scored more points" with voters if he had made a public (superficial) denouncement of the swiftvets' ad... after all, the negative claims were already out there, and he could have appeared to be taking the high road...

Exactly. Then he would be like Kerry. Kerry (superficially) denounced a third party attack on Bush's service record. I'm sure he did that in hopes of the dogs being called off him. I smell the smoke in Kerry's case. Reading the account of the gunner on his boat(article above) gives me major pause in regard to Kerry's character.

[Blueflame]

Originally Posted by Needa Pass Rush

Exactly. Then he would be like Kerry. Kerry (superficially) denounced a third party attack on Bush's service record. I'm sure he did that in hopes of the dogs being called off him. I smell the smoke in Kerry's case. Reading the account of the gunner on his boat(article above) gives me major pause in regard to Kerry's character.

Maybe it's just me, but I take anything I read in Sun Myung Moon's newspaper with a barrel of salt. Most of the swiftvets have been caught in at least one lie, NPR...

http://www.eriposte.com/media/liars_inc/swiftboat.htm
http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/r...2004_0819.html

[enjolras]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5751284/

Of course theres the question of the authors credibility as well is there not?