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

[Lincoln]

I hope this doesn't cost Kerry the election.

[Lincoln]

But I guess he could get a job at the AbuGrave prison. I think they need a few more war criminals there...

[Ned]

Lincoln, the more we get to know Kerry, the more we begin to see just how dishonest he really is. He is not "complex" as his defenders would suggest. His Vietnam record of lying to get a chestful of medals is very consistent with his later "flip-flopping" behavior, where his positions on issues blow with public opinion.

[Lincoln]

I just thought of a campaign button for the Kerry campaign:

"KERRY, burning villages for truth, justice and the American way. He came forward when other war criminals are still in denial. Vote for openess and a cushy warm feeling -- vote Kerry!"

I'm not sure if that would all fit on a button though...

[Drake Tungsten]

An updated version of the WaPo piece...

Records Counter a Critic of Kerry
Fellow Skipper's Citation Refers To Enemy Fire

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page A01

Newly obtained military records of one of Sen. John F. Kerry's most vocal critics, who has accused the Democratic presidential candidate of lying about his wartime record to win medals, contradict his own version of events.

In newspaper interviews and a best-selling book, Larry Thurlow, who commanded a Navy Swift boat alongside Kerry in Vietnam, has strongly disputed Kerry's claim that the Massachusetts Democrat's boat came under fire during a mission in Viet Cong-controlled territory on March 13, 1969. Kerry won a Bronze Star for his actions that day.

But Thurlow's military records, portions of which were released yesterday to The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act, contain several references to "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire" directed at "all units" of the five-boat flotilla. Thurlow won his own Bronze Star that day, and the citation praises him for providing assistance to a damaged Swift boat "despite enemy bullets flying about him."

As one of five Swift boat skippers who led the raid up the Bay Hap River, Thurlow was a direct participant in the disputed events. He is also a leading member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a public advocacy group of Vietnam veterans dismayed by Kerry's subsequent antiwar activities, which has aired a controversial television advertisement attacking his war record.

In interviews and written reminiscences, Kerry has described how his 50-foot patrol boat came under fire from the banks of the Bay Hap after a mine explosion disabled another U.S. patrol boat. According to Kerry and members of his crew, the firing continued as an injured Kerry leaned over the bow of his ship to rescue a Special Forces officer who was blown overboard in a second explosion.

Last month, Thurlow swore in an affidavit that Kerry was "not under fire" when he fished Lt. James Rassmann out of the water. He described Kerry's Bronze Star citation, which says that all units involved came under "small arms and automatic weapons fire," as "totally fabricated."

"I never heard a shot," Thurlow said in his affidavit, which was released by Swift Boats Veterans for Truth. The group claims the backing of more than 250 Vietnam veterans, including a majority of Kerry's fellow boat commanders.

A document recommending Thurlow for the Bronze Star noted that all his actions "took place under constant enemy small arms fire which LTJG THURLOW completely ignored in providing immediate assistance" to the disabled boat and its crew. The citation states that all other units in the flotilla also came under fire.

"It's like a Hollywood presentation here, which wasn't the case," Thurlow said last night after being read the full text of his Bronze Star citation. "My personal feeling was always that I got the award for coming to the rescue of the boat that was mined. This casts doubt on anybody's awards. It is sickening and disgusting."

Thurlow said he would consider his award "fraudulent" if coming under enemy fire was the basis for it. "I am here to state that we weren't under fire," he said. He speculated that Kerry could have been the source of at least some of the language used in the citation.

In a telephone interview Tuesday evening after he attended a Swift Boat Veterans strategy session in an Arlington hotel, Thurlow said he lost his Bronze Star citation more than 20 years ago. He said he was unwilling to authorize release of his military records because he feared attempts by the Kerry campaign to discredit him and other anti-Kerry veterans.

The Post filed an independent request for the documents with the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, which is the central repository for veterans' records. The documents were faxed to The Post by officials at the records center yesterday.

Thurlow and other anti-Kerry veterans have repeatedly alleged that Kerry was the author of an after-action report that described how his boat came under enemy fire. Kerry campaign researchers dispute that assertion, and there is no convincing documentary evidence to settle the argument. As the senior skipper in the flotilla, Thurlow might have been expected to write the after-action report for March 13, but he said that Kerry routinely "duked the system" to present his version of events.

For much of the episode, Kerry was not in a position to know firsthand what was happening on Thurlow's boat, as Kerry's boat had sped down the river after the mine exploded under another boat. He later returned to provide assistance to the stricken boat.

Thurlow, an oil industry worker and former teacher in Kansas, said he was angry with Kerry for his antiwar activities on his return to the United States and particularly Kerry's claim before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that U.S. troops in Vietnam had committed war crimes "with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

" 'Upset' is too mild a word," said Thurlow, a registered Republican, of his reaction to Kerry then. "He did it strictly for his own personal political gain, and it directly affected every single one of us as we were trying to put our lives together."

Two other Swift boat skippers who were direct participants in the March 13, 1969, mine explosion on the Bay Hap, Jack Chenoweth and Richard Pees, have said they do not remember coming under "enemy fire." A fourth commander, Don Droz, who was one of Kerry's closest friends in Vietnam, was killed in action a month later.

The incident featured prominently in an anti-Kerry television ad produced by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth earlier this month. "John Kerry lied to get his Bronze Star," says Van Odell, a gunner on PCF-23, one of the boats that came to the rescue of the stricken boat. "I know. I was there."

The Bronze Star controversy is also a major focus of an anti-Kerry book by John E. O'Neill, "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry," which will hit No. 2 on The Post's bestseller list this weekend. The book accuses Kerry of "fleeing the scene" and lying repeatedly about his role.

Members of Kerry's crew have come to his defense, as has Rassmann, the Special Forces officer whom he fished from the river. Rassmann says he has vivid memories of being fired at from both banks after he fell into the river and as Kerry came to his rescue. The two had an emotional reunion on the eve of the Iowa Democratic caucuses in January, an event that some political analysts believe helped swing votes to Kerry at a crucial time.

The Bronze Star recommendations for both Kerry and Thurlow were signed by Lt. Cmdr. George M. Elliott, who received reports on the incident from his base in the Gulf of Thailand. Elliott is a supporter of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and has questioned Kerry's actions in Vietnam. But he has refused repeated requests for an interview after issuing conflicting statements to the Boston Globe about whether Kerry deserved a Silver Star. He was unreachable last night.

Money has poured into Swift Boat Veterans for Truth since the group launched its television advertisement attacking Kerry earlier this month. According to O'Neill, the group has received more than $450,000 over the past two weeks, mainly in small contributions. The Dallas Morning News reported yesterday that the organization has also received two $100,000 checks from Houston home builder Bob Perry, who backed George W. Bush's campaigns for Texas governor and for president.

Bush campaign officials have said they have no connection to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which is not permitted to coordinate its activities with a presidential campaign under federal election law.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13267-2004Aug18.html

Hardly an open and shut case. Thurlow seems pretty adamant about his version of events and the other two skippers involved in the incident agree with him.

Props to the Washington Post for further exposing the bias in the media with this piece, though. I guess the reason why they haven't published a piece about Kerry's Cambodia lie or attempted to obtain Kerry's military records is that they were too busy independently obtaining the records of one of Kerry's critics and publishing a story about them on the front page. Behavior like this is going to be almost impossible for even the most partisan of hacks to spin...

[Ned]

Originally posted by Lincoln
I just thought of a campaign button for the Kerry campaign:

"KERRY, burning villages for truth, justice and the American way. He came forward when other war criminals are still in denial. Vote for openess and a cushy warm feeling -- vote Kerry!"

I'm not sure if that would all fit on a button though...

He not only burned villages, he did so when other officers saw no military necessity for doing so. He also machine-gunned innocent civilians and won the silver star by shooting a wounded teenage boy in the back.

[Ned]

Drake, the only stories you are likely to hear on the major press are stories undermining the credibility of Kerry's critics. They appear to be doing everything possible to stop the basic charges from getting any airtime whatsoever.

When the story first broke, for example, I was watching Hannity and Colmes. I believe they had O'Neil on. Hannity went first and asked O'Neil about Kerry's Bronze star. O'Neil was just about to describe what happened when Susan Estrich, who was subbing for Colmes, rudely interrupted O'Neil and began to ask him all sorts of questions about who was backing him, etc. We never got to hear, not once, any of what O'Neil had to say about the incident.

The same thing happened when O'Neil appeared on Crossfire. The Democrats on the panel lit into O'Neil and would let him speak at all.

[Drake Tungsten]

Well, at least the folks in Minneapolis get to know what's really going on...

Unwrapping Kerry's story of Christmas in Cambodia

John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson
August 18, 2004 HINDERACKER0818

On March 27, 1986, John Kerry took the floor of the U.S. Senate and delivered a dramatic oration indicting the foreign policy of the Reagan administration. As is his habit, Kerry drew on his Vietnam experience in explaining his opposition to the policy.

"I remember Christmas of 1968, sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and having the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there."

To emphasize the importance of this incident to his subsequent political development, Kerry asserted: "I have that memory which is seared --seared -- in me, that says to me, before we send another generation into harm's way we have a responsibility in the U.S. Senate to go the last step, to make the best effort possible to avoid that kind of conflict."

The story of his 1968 Christmas in Cambodia is one that Kerry has told on many occasions over the years. He invoked the story in 1979 in the course of his review of the movie "Apocalypse Now" for the Boston Herald. Most recently, Kerry told the story -- with remarkable embellishments involving a CIA man who gave him his favorite hat -- last year on separate occasions to reporters Laura Blumenfeld of the Washington Post and Michael Kranish of the Boston Globe.

Certain elements of Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia story were incredible on their face. Kerry attributed responsibility for his illegal 1968 mission to Richard Nixon, despite the fact that Lyndon Johnson was president at the time. The Khmer Rouge who allegedly shot at Kerry during his "secret" mission did not take the field until 1972.

Moreover, there is no record that Swift boats -- the kind of boat under Kerry's command -- were ever used for secret missions in Cambodia. Their size and noise make them unlikely candidates for such missions. Indeed, the authorized biographer of Kerry's Vietnam service -- historian Douglas Brinkley -- omits from his book, "Tour of Duty," any mention of a covert cross-border mission to Cambodia during Kerry's service.

Over the past few weeks, the Christmas in Cambodia tale, a keystone of John Kerry's Vietnam autobiography, has been revealed to be fraudulent. On Christmas 1968, Kerry was docked at Sa Dec, 50 miles from Cambodia, in an area from which the Cambodian border was inaccessible.

Last week, after the falsity of Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia account became public, the Kerry campaign issued a statement "correcting" the story. According to the Kerry campaign, the mission referred to took place in January 1969, when Kerry "inadvertently or responsibly" crossed the border into Cambodia. However, three of Kerry's Swift boat crewmates have denied entering Cambodia at any time, and no one has corroborated Kerry's claim.

The suggestion that Kerry may have "inadvertently" strayed into Cambodia -- leaving aside whether that was even possible -- constitutes a complete retreat from the point of Kerry's original story: that he lost his faith in government because the president lied about having sent American troops into Cambodia. And, of course, it contradicts his story about ferrying a CIA man to Cambodia.

Given the attention lavished on President Bush's service in the Air National Guard earlier this year, we thought that newspapers such as the Washington Post and the New York Times would want to devote comparable attention to John Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia story. We also thought they would want to consider what the falsity of Kerry's story might have to tell us about the uses to which Kerry is putting his Vietnam service in the current presidential campaign.

To date, however, we have been wrong. Neither the influential mainstream newspapers nor the broadcast television networks have reported the meltdown of Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia story. Only readers of Internet blogs such as ours have kept current on the exposure of Kerry's tall tale. Or on the Kerry campaign's lame efforts to resurrect a version of the story that contradicts what Kerry has said for the past 25 years, but allows Kerry to continue using his Vietnam experiences, real and imagined, for his own political purposes.

Whatever the reason -- and we have our suspicions -- when it comes to scrutiny of Sen. Kerry's veracity, the mainstream media are saluting, but they are decidedly not reporting for duty.

John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson are Minneapolis attorneys and proprietors of the Web log "Power Line" (www.powerlineblog.com), one of 13 Web sites given credentials to cover the Republican convention in New York later this month.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/4933509.html

[Gibsie]

So Thurlow admits that he got his Bronze Star for fraudulent reasons. REPUBLICANESQUE REASON OVER-RIDE~ HOW CAN YOU TRUST THIS MAN, HE ADMITS HE OBTAINED AWARDS FRAUDULENTLY?!?!?!

[GePap]

Lord, this crap still.

Lets see who here believe them: Oh wait, the anti-Kerry people and ONLY the anti-Kerry people. Talk about preaching to the choir.

Yawn.

[GePap]

Oh, wow, folks in Minnesotta get to read Op-Eds. Good for them

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by GePap
Lets see who here believe them: Oh wait, the anti-Kerry people and ONLY the anti-Kerry people. Talk about preaching to the choir.

Well it certainly deserves as much press as the Bush was AWOL claim the Dems love to bat around.

[Ned]

Originally posted by GePap
Lord, this crap still.

Lets see who here believe them: Oh wait, the anti-Kerry people and ONLY the anti-Kerry people. Talk about preaching to the choir.

Yawn.

GePap, why of course. Kerry is not the liar. Bush is the liar. We all know this because the "anybody but Bush" crowd have been repeating it for more than an year. It must be true.

When Michael Moore was asked why he says that Bush lied, he explained that there were no WMD. QED.

All this prooves, if Moore is correct, is that Bush had better intel than anyone else on the planet in that he alone among world leaders KNEW that Saddam had no WMD. Wow.

But it clear, GePap, that he real liar is not Bush. It is Kerry. That man has serious, SERIOUS, character flaws.

[GePap]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Well it certainly deserves as much press as the Bush was AWOL claim the Dems love to bat around.

You are correct- and its already gotten more than it deserves. Lets hope the media clean up their act.

[Drake Tungsten]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Well it certainly deserves as much press as the Bush was AWOL claim the Dems love to bat around.

I think I read that the NYT was up to 43 articles on the Bush-AWOL story at last count. It they're really unbiased, we should be reading about Kerry's excellent adventure in Cambodia until the election.