John Kerry the war criminal: Unfit to command, part 2

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


Burning villages falls under the concept of firing on anyone and anything in a free fire zone.

First you say "My brother did it too." Now you argue syntax. All are non-arguments.

If you focus on the fact that he burned innocent people's villages, orders or not, you'll realize he's a war criminal.

[Lincoln]

Originally posted by Agathon
Isn't this campaign the most postmodern you've ever seen?

It seems to have abandoned the idea of facts or credibility in favour of the idea that if you repeat the accusations in a stern tone and often enough, it will make them true. Add to that the total disregard for the customary meanings of English words, and it's a slam dunk (unless it isn't).

I mean, you have a spoiled, war-dodging rich boy with the physical courage of a French boxer painting himself as the candidate of courage, as opposed to the decorated war hero who is apparently a moral and physical coward.

Welcome to the United States. Our politicians are some of the best money can buy and we are damned proud of it.

[dannubis]

Originally posted by Wiglaf




First you say "My brother did it too." Now you argue syntax. All are non-arguments.

If you focus on the fact that he burned innocent people's villages, orders or not, you'll realize he's a war criminal.

the same can be said about the bunch of retards that is now leading your country...

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by notyoueither


That's not how those boats operated, according to the people who served on them in that article quoted. Kerry liked to think so though, according to the posted bit.

The excerpt in question does indeed raise this as a difference in operational discretion and does attempt to paint Kerry as even more hypocritical of his anti-war stance in ligth of the fact that he epitomized gun happy commanding.

Given the definition of free fire zones that IMO was not the main gist of the excerpt.

The point about the killed child was moreso to his credibility and the rift between he and Gardner. According to the article, it was Gardner who upon his own initiative (lack of direction from Kerry implied) ended up strafing the sampan with .50 caliber machine gun and thus killing the child. It was Kerry however that lied in his reporting of the incident in an effort to cover up the incident, claiming kills of 5 VC and capture of 2. Further the claims are Kerry threatened the crew with court martial were they to recount the incident otherwise. Gardner has been the one person that served with Kerry on his swift boat that has been steadfastly opposed to Kerry. If this tale is true it IMO speaks volumes not to his bravery or (in)actions (as one needs to read between the lines re: the partisan slanted view of his motivations), but more to his honesty, integrity and his willingness to be accountable.

Heck, tricky Dick likewise didn't order the Watergate break in but he sure as hell was accountable for the coverup that ensued.

[GePap]

I think Che's point is most valid:

The Nixon admin. did set itself out to investigate Kerry becuase they saw him as a threat- in fact, in PBS they had part of a documentary in wich hear tapes of Nixon talking with his Chief of Staff and Kissinger about the protests Kerry was in, talking about him, and they also talk about O'Neil as a counterweight. It was a very good interview, at it also showed that Nixon and his machine was trying to discredit him- if any of these accusations had much validity, they would have begun back then, not now all of a sudden.

[Drake Tungsten]

if any of these accusations had much validity, they would have begun back then, not now all of a sudden.

It's a little hard to question the validity of all these claims when one (the Cambodia issue) has already been proven to be a lie on Kerry's part. Keep on spinning, though. It's tremendously fun to watch.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

It's a little hard to question the validity of all these claims when one (the Cambodia issue) has already been proven to be a lie on Kerry's part. Keep on spinning, though. It's tremendously fun to watch.

Man, you are clueless or what? Must be the distance.

Besides no one beyond you and a bunch of hacks giving a damn about his "Cambodia saying", the real accusations that matter are full of contradictions-more importantly, if Nixon, Kissinger and the government, 2 years at MOST after this occurs don't find anything to discredit Kerry- 30 years later-wow, revelations?

And why didn't these bozos come forward during the primary season? Kerry announced his candidacy last year, in august or so....If I remember, the idea was Dean was the "best candidate to run against"- wouldn't it have been simple to kill a Kerry candidacy back when with these accusations? I mean, if these men are so opposed to a Kerry candidacy, they would not want him even to be the candidate now would they?

[Drake Tungsten]

Just like a top.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

The last of 3 exceprts of the book as reported by the Washington Times

John Kerry was involved in his final "combat" in Vietnam on March 13, 1969.
The public has seen it: The incident has been the subject of more than $50 million in paid political advertising.
The incident was featured before the Democratic presidential caucuses in Iowa, where Kerry met in tearful reunion with Jim Rassmann, the Special Forces lieutenant who he "rescued from the water."
Here is Kerry's account of the final episode of his four-month Vietnam cameo, for which he received his third Purple Heart and a Bronze Star:
A mine went off alongside Kerry's Swift Boat, PCF 94. Rassmann was blown into the water. Kerry was terribly wounded from the underwater mine.
Kerry, 25, turned his boat back into the fire zone and, bleeding heavily from his arm and side, reached into the water and pulled Rassmann to safety with enemy fire all around. Kerry then towed a sinking boat out of the action.
There is only one problem with this scenario involving five Swift Boats on the Bay Hap River, described in Douglas Brinkley's biography "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War" (William Morrow, 2004) and elsewhere: It is another gross exaggeration of what actually happened and, in several ways, a fraud perpetrated upon the Navy and the nation.
Kerry's conduct on March 13, 1969, was more worthy of disciplinary action than any sort of medal. The action certainly does not establish his credentials for becoming the president of the United States.
Kerry's report
According to the records, Kerry claimed in the casualty report that he prepared March 13, 1969, that he was wounded as a result of a mine explosion.
Within a short period, he presented his request to go home on the basis of his three Purple Hearts. By March 17, 1969, his short combat career in Vietnam was over.
Notwithstanding the fake submission for his Bronze Star after this incident, Kerry never was wounded or bleeding from his arm.
All reports, including the medical reports, make clear that he suffered a minor bruise on his arm and minor shrapnel wounds on his buttocks. The minor bruise on his arm would never have justified a Purple Heart and is not mentioned in the citation.
This leaves only Kerry's rear-end wound. This wound, like the injury received at Cam Ranh Bay on Dec. 2, 1968, for which he received his first Purple Heart, was of the minor tweezer-and-Band-Aid variety.
How did Kerry receive a shrapnel wound in his buttocks from the explosion of an underwater mine, as his report suggests? Many participants in the incident state that neither weapons fire nor a mine explosion occurred near Kerry.
Larry Thurlow, an experienced, genuine hero and Swift Boat veteran, commanded PCF 51, the boat behind Kerry on March 13, 1969.
Thurlow was on the shore that morning with Kerry and a group of Nung soldiers, who were mercenaries working with the South Vietnamese. Thurlow recalls that Kerry had wounded himself in the buttocks that morning with a grenade that he set off too close to a stock of rice he was trying to destroy.
Boston Globe's account
This rice incident is all too reminiscent of the M-79 grenade that Kerry exploded too close to some rocks on shore at Cam Ranh Bay three months earlier, causing the shrapnel in his arm that resulted in his first Purple Heart.
The rice episode also involved Rassmann, later pulled from the water by Kerry, according to the Boston Globe.
"At one point, Kerry and Rassmann threw grenades into a huge rice cache that had been captured from the Viet Cong and was thus slated for destruction," Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish, Brian C. Mooney and Nina J. Easton write in their "John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography" (PublicAffairs Reports, 2004).
"After tossing the grenades, the two dove for cover. Rassmann escaped the ensuing explosion of rice, but Kerry was not as lucky — thousands of grains stuck to him. The result was hilarious, and the two men formed a bond."
Very probably, the incident that Rassmann described to the Globe that resulted in Kerry's self-inflicted wound also produced the very wound Kerry used to claim his third and final Purple Heart.
Indeed, Kerry's report for that day mentions the rice he destroyed. He dishonestly transferred the time and cause of the injury to coincide with the Swift Boat action later in the day and claimed the cause of the injury was the mine exploding during that later action.
By March 1969, most of Kerry's Swift Boat peers at the tiny An Thoi base were aware of his reputation as an unscrupulous self-promoter with an insatiable appetite for medals. But no one actually understood what Kerry pulled off.
When Thurlow finally realized that the sinking of another skipper's boat, PCF 3, was the same incident described by a Kerry campaign advertisement and in Brinkley's "Tour of Duty," he knew Kerry had used the mine explosion and tragedy for PCF 3's crew as his ticket home.
Thurlow was astounded by the metamorphosis that had taken place in the explanation of Kerry's wound: from Kerry's own grenade as a cause, an incident the Globe described and which Thurlow knew about; to a grenade error by friendly forces in the absence of hostile fire (Kerry's secret Vietnam journal and "Tour of Duty" ); and finally to the mine explosion (Kerry's report and Purple Heart citation).
Adding it up
Unfortunately for Kerry, he ended up telling the truth by mistake.
On page 313 of "Tour of Duty," and evidently in Kerry's secret journal written on or about March 13, 1969, quoted in that book, Kerry relates his injury from the rice stock explosion.
However, he tries to place the time and context of the incident later in the day and tries to claim that it resulted from friendly forces (the Nungs), but at a time in which there was no hostile fire:
"The Nung blew up some huge bins of rice they had found, as it was assumed, as always, that these were the local stockpiles earmarked to feed the hungry VC [Viet Cong] moving through the Delta smuggling weapons. '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, firing to our rear as we went,' Kerry related."
Unless one believes in the amazing coincidence that Kerry got two wounds in the same place on the same day and from the same type of incident, then Kerry's wound of March 13 was not the result of hostile fire at all but, once again, simply a self-inflicted, minor wound about which he lied to get a Purple Heart.
Whatever the facts of the March 13 incident, it seems incontrovertible that: (1) Kerry lied in the Bronze Star citation about having any arm wound other than a minor bruise; and (2) Kerry fraudulently secured a Purple Heart by falsely attributing his self-inflicted buttocks wound to the mine explosion hitting PCF 3 or to any other hostile action.
What happened
Kerry falsely described the incident in his 1969 operating report, in his campaign biography, in his advertising and on his 2004 campaign Web site.
Jack Chenoweth commanded PCF 23, the boat in front of Kerry's PCF 94. His gunner, Van Odell, had a clear view of the entire incident. Dick Pease commanded PCF 3, which was blown up by the mine that day.
None of these Swiftees recognized the incident as described by Kerry in his report, by Brinkley in "Tour of Duty" [in which, after the mine exploded under PCF 3 on his port side, Kerry recalls his right arm being "smashed" against a bulkhead when "another explosion went off right beside us"] or on Kerry's Web site. They were furious when they realized Kerry's fraudulent account.
In reality, Kerry's boat, PCF 94, was on the right side of the river when a mine went off on the opposite side under PCF 3. The boat's crewmen were thrown into the water. The officers suffered concussions.
A Viet Cong sympathizer in an adjoining bunker had touched off the mine. There was no other hostile fire and no other mines, according to Chenoweth, Odell, Pease and Thurlow. The boats had begun firing after the mine exploded, but ceased after a short time because of the lack of hostile fire.
Kerry's PCF 94 fled the scene. The remaining three PCFs, in accord with standard doctrine, stood to defend the disabled PCF 3 and its crewmen in the water. Kerry and PCF 94 disappeared several hundred yards away, returning only when it was clear there was no return fire.
Chenoweth (who received no medal) picked up the PCF 3 crewmen from the water. PCF 3's engines were knocked out on one side and frozen on 500 rpm on the other side. The boat weaved dangerously, hitting sandbars, dazed or unconscious crew members aboard.
Thurlow, commanding his own boat, sought a secure hold so he could jump across and board PCF 3. However, he was thrown into the water in his first attempt to board, and the boat hit the sandbars. Later, Thurlow brought PCF 3 to a stop, and the boat slowly began to sink.
Rassmann had fallen or been knocked off either Kerry's boat or the fifth boat, PCF 35. When Rassmann was spotted in the water, Chenoweth's PCF 23, with the PCF 3 crew aboard, went to pick him up.
Kerry's PCF 94, returning to the scene after its flight, reached Rassmann about 20 yards ahead of Chenoweth's boat. Kerry did the decent thing by going to pick up Rassmann, justifiably earning his gratitude. However, the claim that Kerry returned to a hostile fire zone is a lie, according to Chenoweth, Thurlow and others.
Meanwhile, the serious work of saving PCF 3 continued.
A sinking ship
Kerry's false after-action report, prepared to justify his Purple Heart and Bronze Star, reports "5,000 meters" of heavy fire — about 2½ miles, the same distance as a large Civil War battlefield. Not a shot of this fire was heard by Chenoweth, Thurlow, Odell or Pease.
Kerry's after-action report ignores Chenoweth's heroic action in rescuing PCF 3 survivors and Thurlow's action in saving PCF 3, while highlighting his own routine pickup of Rassmann and PCF 94's minor role in saving PCF 3.
When Chenoweth's boat left a second time to deliver the wounded PCF 3 crewmen to a Coast Guard cutter offshore, Kerry jumped into the boat, leaving the remaining officers and men the job of saving PCF 3. It was in terrible condition, sinking just outside the river.
Kerry's eagerness to secure his third and final Purple Heart evidently outweighed any feelings of loyalty, duty or honor with regard to his fellow sailors. Thurlow and the other brave sailors who saved PCF 3 and towed it out did not seek Purple Hearts for their "minor contusions." Indeed, several PCF 3 sailors did not seek or receive Purple Hearts.
Chenoweth, Odell and boatmates who fished out the sailors of PCF 3 likewise had no thought of seeking medals, but only of rescuing comrades and saving PCF 3.
Kerry, however, portrays himself towing the disabled PCF 3 to safety after saving it. Another lie: The damage control on PCF 3 was done by Thurlow. [Thurlow was awarded the Bronze Star as a result of his actions.]
Although Kerry's PCF 94 participated in towing PCF 3, Kerry was no longer on his boat for most of the trip. He was safely on the Coast Guard cutter.
Thurlow and Chenoweth are certain Kerry played no role in saving PCF 3 or its crew. When they, as well as several other Swiftees who were there, first saw the Kerry campaign ads they believed the events portrayed in the ads (as well as in Kerry's campaign biography and the medal citations) had to be different and involve different people. They were horrified when they realized Kerry had received medals for the incident they remembered.
Rassmann appeared for a spontaneous embrace of Kerry at a campaign event in January in Iowa, where Kerry's presidential campaign came back to life.
Rassmann was understandably grateful to Kerry for fishing him out of the river, and he was evidently happy to participate in the "no man left behind" version of the story being told by Kerry in his "war hero" mode. [Rassmann went on to help introduce Kerry when he accepted the Democratic nomination last month in Boston.]
Going home
Swiftees who learned of Kerry's fraudulent citations and ads felt betrayed.
"You've just got to make them understand," William E. Franke, a fellow commander in Coastal Division 11 and Silver Star recipient, wrote the authors. "We weren't thinking of self-promotion like him. Just survival and doing the job. We didn't want him around, and we were happy he was gone."
Kerry has implied that he volunteered for the military right after college. But he petitioned his draft board for a student deferment. His service record indicates that on Feb. 18, 1966, he enlisted in the Naval Reserves, status "inactive," not in the Navy.
These details are conveniently left out of pro-Kerry biographies. Brinkley, in "Tour of Duty," records that Kerry entered Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island; however, he fails to note that Kerry was seeking to be an officer in the Naval Reserves. The duty commitment was shorter, and a larger proportion of the period could be served stateside on inactive duty.
The repeated statements that Kerry was "sent home" by the Navy ignore the fact that Kerry requested to be sent home, invoking a regulation of which most Swiftees were unaware.
Thomas W. Wright, another PCF officer at An Thoi, discussed Kerry with other Swiftees on base after the March 13 incident. They were aware of the "three Purple Hearts" rule that sounded like "three strikes and you're out." Kerry could be sent home.
Wright approached Kerry one night and proposed to him that several fellow Swiftees felt it might be best for everybody if Kerry simply left. The next thing Wright knew, he got the exact result he hoped to achieve: John Kerry was gone.
A postscript
A central drumbeat of the Kerry presidential campaign, as in every Kerry campaign, is that it is relevant and permissible to discuss at infinite length his short Vietnam service. Any effort, however, to examine his service by seeking out the records or truth is discouraged and resisted.
The reality is that Kerry has consistently refused to disclose his Vietnam records, as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have urged. Instead, he has released only those service records he considers favorable while concealing, for example, his own journal and home movies from the period — except for allowing friendly writers to draw from these materials and providing video clips for advertising.
There is a government form — Standard Form 180 — that Kerry could easily execute to permit the Department of Defense to release all his records, including the required records for receiving the Purple Heart or Silver Star.
By selectively releasing information, Kerry has tilted the record in his favor. Self-serving journal entries can be presented to "establish" events and circumstances as Kerry wishes to portray them.
A classic Kerry use of his private photographic cache, some of it self-staged, is his "Lifetime" campaign commercial. Kerry is depicted receiving the Bronze Star from Adm. Elmo Zumwalt III, commander of naval and Coast Guard forces in Vietnam, who later denounced Kerry.
The ad also includes a staged clip of Kerry as an infantryman in Vietnam, in bandoliers, stalking an unknown enemy through the forest in 1969 (and violating Rule No. 1 of the infantry by pointing his weapon down).
Who took this film? When and why? The viewer, typically unskilled in evaluating authentic military images, is left with the impression of Kerry as a fierce warrior engaged in the defense of his country.
John Kerry's name tossed around as "president" and "commander in chief" summoned many of us Swiftees from long political slumber — from games with grandchildren or feet by the fire — to render one last service to the nation.
That service is the hard task of informing an uninformed America — against the wishes of a media sympathetic to Kerry and his myth — of John Kerry's total unfitness to command our armed forces or lead our nation. We are our own small "band of brothers," resolved to sound the alarm.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Just like a top.

yes, but our spin actually makes sense when you listen to the words.

Your spin is based on never stoping to reason.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

A bit out of order but this is the first of the three excerpts as reported by WaTi

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."

[Sava]

I find it hilarious that Bush supporters are completely incapable of praising Bush's policies. If Bush were a good president, Kerry wouldn't be much of an issue. But Bush supporters know their candidate is weak and a failure, so they resort to baseless personal attacks aimed at what Kerry did during Vietnam. What's even more hilarious is that Bush supporters seem to be completely ignoring what Bush did during those years. I never thought Republicans would attack someone because of their military experience.

This thread title is proof that Bush supporters are pathetic little tools.

But if this is the direction they want the pre-election presidential debate to go in, that's fine by me.

[DinoDoc]

Kerry isn't running on issues, Sava. He's running on what he did for 4 months. People are entitled to question that. If he doesn't like it, he can start running on his Senate record despite MtG's whining.

[GePap]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/politics/campaign/20swift.html?hp

Some important excerpts, as it is a big article:

His decision to take on the group directly was a measure of how the group that calls itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has catapulted itself to the forefront of the presidential campaign. It has advanced its cause in a book, in a television advertisement and on cable news and talk radio shows, all in an attempt to discredit Mr. Kerry's war record, a pillar of his campaign.

How the group came into existence is a story of how veterans with longstanding anger about Mr. Kerry's antiwar statements in the early 1970's allied themselves with Texas Republicans.

The strategy the veterans devised would ultimately paint John Kerry the war hero as John Kerry the "baby killer" and the fabricator of the events that resulted in his war medals. But on close examination, the accounts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' prove to be riddled with inconsistencies. In many cases, material offered as proof by these veterans is undercut by official Navy records and the men's own statements.

Several of those now declaring Mr. Kerry "unfit" had lavished praise on him, some as recently as last year.

In an unpublished interview in March 2003 with Mr. Kerry's authorized biographer, Douglas Brinkley, provided by Mr. Brinkley to The New York Times, Roy F. Hoffmann, a retired rear admiral and a leader of the group, allowed that he had disagreed with Mr. Kerry's antiwar positions but said, "I am not going to say anything negative about him." He added, "He's a good man."

In a profile of the candidate that ran in The Boston Globe in June 2003, Mr. Hoffmann approvingly recalled the actions that led to Mr. Kerry's Silver Star: "It took guts, and I admire that."

George Elliott, one of the Vietnam veterans in the group, flew from his home in Delaware to Boston in 1996 to stand up for Mr. Kerry during a tough re-election fight, declaring at a news conference that the action that won Mr. Kerry a Silver Star was "an act of courage." At that same event, Adrian L. Lonsdale, another Vietnam veteran now speaking out against Mr. Kerry, supported him with a statement about the "bravado and courage of the young officers that ran the Swift boats."

"Senator Kerry was no exception," Mr. Lonsdale told the reporters and cameras assembled at the Charlestown Navy Yard. "He was among the finest of those Swift boat drivers."

Those comments echoed the official record. In an evaluation of Mr. Kerry in 1969, Mr. Elliott, who was one of his commanders, ranked him as "not exceeded" in 11 categories, including moral courage, judgment and decisiveness, and "one of the top few" - the second-highest distinction - in the remaining five. In written comments, he called Mr. Kerry "unsurpassed," "beyond reproach" and "the acknowledged leader in his peer group."

The Admiral Calls

It all began last winter, as Mr. Kerry was wrapping up the Democratic nomination. Mr. Lonsdale received a call at his Massachusetts home from his old commander in Vietnam, Mr. Hoffmann, asking if he had seen the new biography of the man who would be president.

Mr. Hoffmann had commanded the Swift boats during the war from a base in Cam Ranh Bay and advocated a search-and-destroy campaign against the Vietcong - the kind of tactic Mr. Kerry criticized when he was a spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War in 1971. Shortly after leaving the Navy in 1978, he was issued a letter of censure for exercising undue influence on cases in the military justice system.

Both Mr. Hoffmann and Mr. Lonsdale had publicly lauded Mr. Kerry in the past. But the book, Mr. Brinkley's "Tour of Duty," while it burnished Mr. Kerry's reputation, portrayed the two men as reckless leaders whose military approach had led to the deaths of countless sailors and innocent civilians. Several Swift boat veterans compared Mr. Hoffmann to the bloodthirsty colonel in the film "Apocalypse Now" - the one who loves the smell of Napalm in the morning.

The two men were determined to set the record, as they saw it, straight.

"It was the admiral who started it and got the rest of us into it," Mr. Lonsdale said.

Mr. Hoffmann's phone calls led them to Texas and to John E. O'Neill, who at one point commanded the same Swift boat in Vietnam, and whose mission against him dated to 1971, when he had been recruited by the Nixon administration to debate Mr. Kerry on "The Dick Cavett Show."

Mr. O'Neill, who pressed his charges against Mr. Kerry in numerous television appearances Thursday, had spent the 33 years since he debated Mr. Kerry building a successful law practice in Houston, intermingling with some of the state's most powerful Republicans and building an impressive client list. Among the companies he represented was Falcon Seaboard, the energy firm founded by the current lieutenant governor of Texas, David Dewhurst, a central player in the Texas redistricting plan that has positioned state Republicans to win more Congressional seats this fall.

Ms. Spaeth had been a communications official in the Reagan White House, where the president's aides had enough confidence in her to invite her to help prepare George Bush for his vice-presidential debate in 1984. She says she is also a close friend of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, a client of Mr. Rove's. Ms. Spaeth said in an interview that the one time she had ever spoken to Mr. Rove was when Ms. Hutchison was running for the Texas treasurer's office in 1990.

When asked if she had ever visited the White House during Mr. Bush's tenure, Ms. Spaeth initially said that she had been there only once, in 2002, when Kenneth Starr gave her a personal tour. But this week Ms. Spaeth acknowledged that she had spent an hour in the Old Executive Office Building, part of the White House complex, in the spring of 2003, giving Mr. Bush's chief economic adviser, Stephen Friedman, public speaking advice. Asked if it was possible that she had worked with other administration officials, Ms. Spaeth said, "The answer is 'no,' unless you refresh my memory.''

"Is the White House directing this?" Ms. Spaeth said of the organization. "Absolutely not.''

Another participant is the political advertising agency that made the group's television commercial: Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, based in Alexandria, Va. The agency worked for Senator McCain in 2000 and for Mr. Bush's father in 1988, when it created the "tank" advertisement mocking Mr. Dukakis. A spokesman for the Swift boat veterans said the organization decided to hire the agency after a member saw one of its partners speaking on television.

About 10 veterans met in Ms. Spaeth's office in Dallas in April to share outrage and plot their campaign against Mr. Kerry, she and others said. Mr. Lonsdale, who did not attend, said the meeting had been planned as "an indoctrination session."

What might have been loose impressions about Mr. Kerry began to harden.

"That was an awakening experience," Ms. Spaeth said. "Not just for me, but for many of them who had not heard each other's stories."

The group decided to hire a private investigator to investigate Mr. Brinkley's account of the war - to find "some neutral way of actually questioning people involved in these incidents,'' Mr. O'Neill said.

But the investigator's questions did not seem neutral to some.

Patrick Runyon, who served on a mission with Mr. Kerry, said he initially thought the caller was from a pro-Kerry group, and happily gave a statement about the night Mr. Kerry won his first Purple Heart. The investigator said he would send it to him by e-mail for his signature. Mr. Runyon said the edited version was stripped of all references to enemy combat, making it look like just another night in the Mekong Delta.

"It made it sound like I didn't believe we got any returned fire," he said. "He made it sound like it was a normal operation. It was the scariest night of my life."

By May, the group had the money that Mr. O'Neill had collected as well as additional veterans rallied by Mr. O'Neill, Mr. Hoffmann and others. The expanded group gathered in Washington to record the veterans' stories for a television commercial.

Each veteran's statement was written down as an affidavit and sent to him to sign and have notarized. But the validity of those affidavits soon came into question.

Mr. Elliott, who recommended Mr. Kerry for the Silver Star, had signed one affidavit saying Mr. Kerry "was not forthright" in the statements that had led to the award. Two weeks ago, The Boston Globe quoted him as saying that he felt he should not have signed the affidavit. He then signed a second affidavit that reaffirmed his first, which the Swift Boat Veterans gave to reporters. Mr. Elliott has refused to speak publicly since then.

The group's arguments have foundered on other contradictions. In the television commercial, Dr. Louis Letson looks into the camera and declares, "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury." Dr. Letson does not dispute the wound - a piece of shrapnel above Mr. Kerry's left elbow - but he and others in the group argue that it was minor and self-inflicted.

Yet Dr. Letson's name does not appear on any of the medical records for Mr. Kerry. Under "person administering treatment" for the injury, the form is signed by a medic, J. C. Carreon, who died several years ago. Dr. Letson said it was common for medics to treat sailors with the kind of injury that Mr. Kerry had and to fill out paperwork when doctors did the treatment.

Asked in an interview if there was any way to confirm he had treated Mr. Kerry, Dr. Letson said, "I guess you'll have to take my word for it."

The group also offers the account of William L. Schachte Jr., a retired rear admiral who says in the book that he had been on the small skimmer on which Mr. Kerry was injured that night in December 1968. He contends that Mr. Kerry wounded himself while firing a grenade.

But the two other men who acknowledged that they had been with Mr. Kerry, Bill Zaladonis and Mr. Runyon, say they cannot recall a third crew member. "Me and Bill aren't the smartest, but we can count to three," Mr. Runyon said in an interview. And even Dr. Letson said he had not recalled Mr. Schachte until he had a conversation with another veteran earlier this year and received a subsequent phone call from Mr. Schachte himself.

Mr. Schachte did not return a telephone call, and a spokesman for the group said he would not comment.

The Silver Star was awarded after Mr. Kerry's boat came under heavy fire from shore during a mission in February 1969. According to Navy records, he turned the boat to charge the Vietcong position. An enemy solider sprang from the shore about 10 feet in front of the boat. Mr. Kerry leaped onto the shore, chased the soldier behind a small hut and killed him, seizing a B-40 rocket launcher with a round in the chamber.

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth describes the man Mr. Kerry killed as a solitary wounded teenager "in a loincloth," who may or may not have been armed. They say the charge to the beach was planned the night before and, citing a report from one crew member on a different boat, maintain that the sailors even schemed about who would win which medals.

The group says Mr. Kerry himself wrote the reports that led to the medal. But Mr. Elliott and Mr. Lonsdale, who handled reports going up the line for recognition, have previously said that a medal would be awarded only if there was corroboration from others and that they had thoroughly corroborated the accounts.

"Witness reports were reviewed; battle reports were reviewed," Mr. Lonsdale said at the 1996 news conference, adding, "It was a very complete and carefully orchestrated procedure." In his statements Mr. Elliott described the action that day as "intense" and "unusual."

According to a citation for Mr. Kerry's Bronze Star, a group of Swift boats was leaving the Bay Hap river when several mines detonated, disabling one boat and knocking a soldier named Jim Rassmann overboard. In a hail of enemy fire, Mr. Kerry turned the boat around to pull Mr. Rassmann from the water.

Mr. Rassmann, who says he is a Republican, reappeared during the Iowa caucuses this year to tell his story and support Mr. Kerry, and is widely credited with helping to revive Mr. Kerry's campaign.

But the group says that there was no enemy fire, and that while Mr. Kerry did rescue Mr. Rassmann, the action was what anyone would have expected of a sailor, and hardly heroic. Asked why Mr. Rassmann recalled that he was dodging enemy bullets, a member of the group, Jack Chenoweth, said, "He's lying."

"If that's what we have to say," Mr. Chenoweth added, "that's how it was."

Several veterans insist that Mr. Kerry wrote his own reports, pointing to the initials K. J. W. on one of the reports and saying they are Mr. Kerry's. "What's the W for, I cannot answer," said Larry Thurlow, who said his boat was 50 to 60 yards from Mr. Kerry's. Mr. Kerry's middle initial is F, and a Navy official said the initials refer to the person who had received the report at headquarters, not the author.

A damage report to Mr. Thurlow's boat shows that it received three bullet holes, suggesting enemy fire, and later intelligence reports indicate that one Vietcong was killed in action and five others wounded, reaffirming the presence of an enemy. Mr. Thurlow said the boat was hit the day before. He also received a Bronze Star for the day, a fact left out of "Unfit for Command."

Asked about the award, Mr. Thurlow said that he did not recall what the citation said but that he believed it had commended him for saving the lives of sailors on a boat hit by a mine. If it did mention enemy fire, he said, that was based on Mr. Kerry's false reports. The actual citation, Mr. Thurlow said, was with an ex-wife with whom he no longer has contact, and he declined to authorize the Navy to release a copy. But a copy obtained by The New York Times indicates "enemy small arms," "automatic weapons fire" and "enemy bullets flying about him." The citation was first reported by The Washington Post on Thursday.

As serious questions about its claims have arisen, the group has remained steadfast and adaptable.

This week, as its leaders spoke with reporters, they have focused primarily on the one allegation in the book that Mr. Kerry's campaign has not been able to put to rest: that he was not in Cambodia at Christmas in 1968, as he declared in a statement to the Senate in 1986. Even Mr. Brinkley, who has emerged as a defender of Mr. Kerry, said in an interview that it was unlikely that Mr. Kerry's Swift boat ventured into Cambodia at Christmas, though he said he believed that Mr. Kerry was probably there shortly afterward.

The group said it would introduce a new advertisement against Mr. Kerry on Friday. What drives the veterans, they acknowledge, is less what Mr. Kerry did during his time in Vietnam than what he said after. Their affidavits and their television commercial focus mostly on those antiwar statements. Most members of the group object to his using the word "atrocities" to describe what happened in Vietnam when he returned and became an antiwar activist. And they are offended, they say, by the gall of his running for president as a hero of that war.

"I went to university and was called a baby killer and a murderer because of guys like Kerry and what he was saying," said Van Odell, who appears in the first advertisement, accusing Mr. Kerry of lying to get his Bronze Star. "Not once did I participate in the atrocities he said were happening."

As Mr. Lonsdale explained it: "We won the battle. Kerry went home and lost the war for us.

"He called us rapers and killers and that's not true," he continued. "If he expects our loyalty, we should expect loyalty from him."

I think Lonsdale's comments at the end are the most instructive about where these guys are coming from.

[GePap]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Kerry isn't running on issues, Sava. He's running on what he did for 4 months. People are entitled to question that. If he doesn't like it, he can start running on his Senate record despite MtG's whining.

Yes, with actual evidence. They have shown little if any.