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-   -   Kerry vs. Swift Boat Vets for Truth (https://forums.operationsports.com/fofc//showthread.php?t=29453)

SFL Cat 08-22-2004 01:18 PM
Kerry vs. Swift Boat Vets for Truth
 
Maybe the truth lays somewhere in between the two accounts.

link: hxxp://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1802&u=/washpost/20040822/ts_washpost/a21239_2004aug21&printer=1

Quote:
By Michael Dobbs, Washington Post Staff Writer

When John F. Kerry rescued Jim Rassmann from the Bay Hap River in the jungles of Vietnam in March 1969, neither man could possibly have imagined that the episode would become a much-disputed focus of an American presidential campaign 35 years later.

For Kerry, then a green and gangly Navy lieutenant junior grade and now the Democratic challenger to a wartime Republican president, that tale of heroism under fire has become integral to his campaign. A centerpiece of public rallies, videos and a new campaign advertisement, it has helped distinguish the candidate from his Democratic primary rivals and from President Bush (news - web sites), who spent the war at home as a member of the Texas Air National Guard.

For the Massachusetts senator's critics, who include three of the five Swift boat skippers who were present that day, the incident demonstrates why Kerry does not deserve to be commander in chief. They accuse him of cowardice, hogging the limelight and lying. Far from displaying coolness under fire, they say, Kerry was never fired upon and fled the scene at the moment of maximum danger.

Establishing the facts is complicated not merely by fading memories and sometimes ambiguous archival evidence, but also by the bitterly partisan nature of the presidential campaign.

An investigation by The Washington Post into what happened that day suggests that both sides have withheld information from the public record and provided an incomplete, and sometimes inaccurate, picture of what took place. But although Kerry's accusers have succeeded in raising doubts about his war record, they have failed to come up with sufficient evidence to prove him a liar.

Two best-selling books have formed the basis for public discussion of the events of March 13, 1969, as a result of which Kerry won a Bronze Star and his third Purple Heart. The fullest account of Kerry's experience in Vietnam is "Tour of Duty" by prominent presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. It was written with Kerry's cooperation and with exclusive access to his diaries and other writings about the Vietnam War. "Unfit for Command," by John E. O'Neill, who succeeded Kerry as commander of his Swift boat, and Jerome R. Corsi, lays out a detailed attack on Kerry's record.

The Post's research shows that both accounts contain significant flaws and factual errors. This reconstruction of the climactic day in Kerry's military career is based on more than two dozen interviews with former crewmates and officers who served with him, as well as research in the Naval Historical Center here, where the Swift boat records are preserved. Kerry himself was the only surviving skipper on the river that day who declined a request for an interview.

On the core issue of whether Kerry was wounded under enemy fire, thereby qualifying for a third Purple Heart, the Navy records clearly favor Kerry. Several documents, including the after-action report and the Bronze Star citation for a Swift boat skipper who has accused Kerry of lying, refer to "all units" coming under "automatic and small-weapons fire."

The eyewitness accounts, on the other hand, are conflicting. Kerry's former crew members support his version, as does Rassmann, the Special Forces officer rescued from the river. But many of the other skippers and enlisted men who were on the river that day dispute Kerry's account and have signed up with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a public advocacy group that has aired television advertisements accusing Kerry of lying about his wartime service.

From an outsider's perspective, the flotilla of five 50-foot Swift boats that followed the Bay Hap River that humid March day has spawned two competing bands of brothers. One is fiercely loyal to Kerry and frequently appears with him at campaign events. The other dislikes him intensely and is doing everything it can to block his election.

Many Swift boat veterans opposed to Kerry acknowledge that their disgust with him was fueled by his involvement in the antiwar movement. When they returned from Vietnam, they say, they were dogged by accusations of atrocities. While Kerry went on to make a prominent political career, they got jobs as teachers, accountants, surveyors and oil field workers. When he ran for president, partly on the strength of his war record, their resentment exploded.

At one level, an attempt to establish what happened during a Vietcong ambush on the Bay Hap River 35 years ago is a simple search for facts. At another, it is the story of the divisions that tore the United States, and its armed forces, into two opposing camps at the time of the Vietnam War -- tensions that have resurfaced with a vengeance during the current political campaign.

"The old wounds have been reopened, and they still bleed," said Larry Thurlow, one of Kerry's accusers, who was awarded a Bronze Star for heroism for going to the rescue of a boat that was rocked by a mine explosion that day. He says he got involved with the anti-Kerry campaign organized by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth because Kerry's distortion of the truth about the Vietnam War "makes me madder than hell."

"We decided we aren't going to take it anymore."

Boats Thrown Into Fight

When Kerry signed up to command a Swift boat in the summer of 1968, he was inspired by the example of his hero, John F. Kennedy, who had commanded the PT-109 patrol boat in the Pacific in World War II. But Kerry had little expectation of seeing serious action. At the time the Swift boats -- or PCFs (patrol craft fast), in Navy jargon -- were largely restricted to coastal patrols. "I didn't really want to get involved in the war," Kerry wrote in a book of war reminiscences published in 1986.

The role of the Swift boats changed dramatically toward the end of 1968, when Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., commander of U.S. naval forces in South Vietnam, decided to use them to block Vietcong supply routes through the Mekong Delta. Hundreds of young men such as Kerry, with little combat experience, suddenly found themselves face to face with the enemy.

Taking a 50-foot aluminum boat up a river or canal was replete with danger, ranging from ambushes to booby traps to mines. Kerry and his comrades would experience all these risks on March 13, 1969. The purpose of the mission was twofold: to insert pro-government forces upriver in a group of Vietcong-controlled villages; and more generally to show the flag, keeping the waterways free for commerce.

In some ways, it was a day like any other. The previous day, Kerry had taken part in a Swift boat expedition that had come under fire, and several windows of Kerry's boat were blown out. A friend, Lt. j.g. William B. Rood, almost lost an eye in the ambush. [Now an editor with the Chicago Tribune, Rood yesterday broke three decades of public silence to support Kerry's version of how he won the Silver Star on Feb. 28. Rood has no firsthand knowledge of the Bronze Star incident.]

In other respects, March 13 would mark the culmination of Kerry's Vietnam War career. With three Purple Hearts, he became eligible for reassignment. Within three weeks, he was out of Vietnam and headed home after a truncated four-month combat tour.

As commander of PCF-94, Kerry was responsible for ferrying a group of Chinese Vietnamese mercenaries, known as Nung, eight miles up the Bay Hap River, and then five miles up the winding Dong Cung Canal to suspected Vietcong villages. His passengers included Rassmann, the Special Forces officer, who had run into Kerry at a party a couple of weeks before and remembered him as "a tall, skinny guy with this humongous jaw."

The expedition began to go wrong soon after they inserted the Nung troops into a deserted village off the Dong Cung Canal. As the mercenaries searched from house to house, Rassmann recalled, one reached for a cloth bag at the base of a coconut tree and was blown to pieces. It was a booby trap. Kerry, who arrived on the scene soon after, helped wrap the body in a poncho and drag it back to the boat, diving into a ditch when he thought he was under fire.

"I never want to see anything like it again," Kerry wrote later. "What was left was human, and yet it wasn't -- a person had been there only a few moments earlier and . . . now it was a horrible mass of torn flesh and broken bones."

In "Tour of Duty," these thoughts are attributed to a "diary" kept by Kerry. But the endnotes to Brinkley's book say that Kerry "did not keep diaries in these weeks in February and March 1969 when the fighting was most intense." In the acknowledgments to his book, Brinkley suggests that he took at least some of the passages from an unfinished book proposal Kerry prepared sometime after November 1971, more than two years after he had returned home from Vietnam.

In his book, Brinkley writes that a skipper who remains friendly to Kerry, Skip Barker, took part in the March 13 raid. But there is no documentary evidence of Barker's participation. Barker could not be reached for comment.

Brinkley, who is director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans, did not reply to messages left with his office, publisher and cell phone. The Kerry campaign has refused to make available Kerry's journals and other writings to The Post, saying the senator remains bound by an exclusivity agreement with Brinkley. A Kerry spokesman, Michael Meehan, said he did not know when Kerry wrote down his reminiscences.

As they were heading back to the boat, Kerry and Rassmann decided to blow up a five-ton rice bin to deny food to the Vietcong. In an interview last week, Rassmann recalled that they climbed on top of the huge pile and dug a hole in the rice. On the count of three, they tossed their grenades into the hole and ran.

Evidently, Kerry did not run fast enough. "He got some frags and pieces of rice in his rear end," Rassmann said with a laugh. "It was more embarrassing than painful." At the time, the incident did not seem significant, and Kerry did not mention it to anyone when he got back on the boat. An unsigned "personnel casualty report," however, erroneously implies that Kerry suffered "shrapnel wounds in his left buttocks" later in the day, following the mine explosion incident, when he also received "contusions to his right forearm."

Anti-Kerry veterans have accused Kerry of conflating the two injuries to strengthen his case for a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. Kerry's Bronze Star citation, however, refers only to his arm injury.

At 2:45 p.m., according to Navy records, Kerry was joined by four other Swift boats for the Bay Hap trip. Kerry led the way on the right-hand side of the river, in PCF-94, followed 15 yards behind by one of his best friends in Vietnam, Don Droz, in PCF-43. A procession of three boats on the left side of the river was led by Richard Pees on PCF-3, followed by Jack Chenoweth on PCF-23 and Thurlow on PCF-51.

Ahead of them was a fishing weir, a series of wooden posts across the river. That morning, the Swiftees had noticed Vietnamese children in sampans attaching nets to the posts and had thought little of it. To get through the weir, their boats had to pass to the left or to the right of the fishing nets.

Just as the Kerry and Pees boats reached the weir, there was a devastating explosion, lifting Pees's boat, PCF-3, three feet out of the water.

Witness Accounts Diverge
"My God, I've never seen anything like it," Chenoweth wrote in what he says is a diary recorded soon after the events. "There was a fantastic flash, a boom, then the 3 boat disappeared in a fountain of water and debris. I was only 30 yards behind." Assuming that they had run into a Vietcong ambush, Chenoweth wrote, "we unleashed everything into the banks."

A later intelligence report established that the mine was probably detonated by a Vietcong sympathizer in a foxhole who hit a plunger as the Swift boats passed through the fishing weir.

Aboard the 3 boat, Pees remembered in an interview being "thrown up in the air" into the windscreen of his pilothouse and landing "kind of dazed," his legs numb, lap covered with blood. When it was over, Pees and three members of his crew would be medevaced to a Coast Guard cutter offshore with serious head and back injuries.

"When the mine went off, we were still going full speed," recalled Michael Medeiros, one of Kerry's crew members. Kerry's boat raced off down the river, away from the ambush zone.

It is at this point that the eyewitness accounts begin to diverge sharply. Everybody agrees that a mine exploded under the 3 boat. There is no argument that Rassmann fell into the river and that Kerry fished him out. Nor is there any dispute that Kerry was hurt in the arm, although the anti-Kerry camp claims he exaggerated the nature of his injury. Much else is hotly contested.

When the first explosion occurred, Rassmann was seated next to the pilothouse on the starboard, or right, side of Kerry's boat, munching a chocolate chip cookie that he recalls having "ripped off from someone's Care package." He saw the 3 boat lift out of the water. Almost simultaneously, Kerry's forward gunner, Tommy Belodeau, began screaming for a replacement for his machine gun, which had jammed. Rassmann grabbed an M-16 and worked his way sideways along the deck, which was only seven inches wide in places.

At this point, Kerry crew members say their boat was hit by a second explosion. Although Kerry's injury report speaks of a mine that "detonated close aboard PCF-94," helmsman Del Sandusky believes it was more likely a rocket or rocket-propelled grenade, as a mine would have inflicted more damage. Whatever it was, the explosion rammed Kerry into the wall of his pilothouse, injuring his right forearm.

The second explosion "blew me right off the boat," Rassmann recalled. Frightened that he might be struck by the propellers of one of the boats, he dived to the bottom of the river, where he dumped his weapons and rucksack. When he surfaced, he said, bullets were "snapping overhead," as well as hitting the water around him.

At first, nobody noticed what had happened to Rassmann. But then Medeiros, who was standing at the stern, saw him bobbing up and down in the water and shouted, "Man overboard." Around this time, crew members said, Kerry decided to go back to help the crippled 3 boat. It is unclear how far down the river Kerry's boat was when he turned around. It could have been anywhere from a few hundred yards to a mile.

O'Neill claims that Kerry "fled the scene" despite the absence of hostile fire. Kerry, in a purported journal entry cited in Brinkley's "Tour of Duty," maintains that he wanted to get his troops ashore "on the outskirts of the ambush."

The Kerry/Rassmann version of what happened next has been retold many times, in TV advertisements and campaign appearances: Rassmann struggling to climb up a scramble net, Kerry leaning over the bow of the boat and pulling him up with his injured arm. As Kerry later recalled, in notes cited by Brinkley, "Somehow we got him on board and I didn't get the bullet in the head that I expected, and we managed to move down near the 3 boat that was still crawling a snail-like zig-zag through the river."

Rassmann remembers several boats coming back up the river toward him. But Chenoweth believes that the rescue must have taken place fairly close to the other boats, which had been drifting slowly downriver. In his diary, he said, he wrote that "we spotted a man overboard, started to pick him up, but 94 [Kerry's boat] got there first."

While Kerry was rescuing Rassmann, the other Swift boats had gone to the assistance of Pees and the 3 boat. Thurlow, in particular, distinguished himself by leaping onto the 3 boat and administering first aid, according to his Bronze Star citation. At one point, he, too, was knocked overboard when the boat hit a sandbar, but he was rescued by crewmates.

The Kerry and anti-Kerry camps differ sharply on whether the flotilla came under enemy fire after the explosion that crippled the 3 boat. Everybody aboard Kerry's boat, including Rassmann, says there was fire from both riverbanks, and the official after-action report speaks of all boats receiving "heavy a/w [automatic weapons] and s/a [small arms] from both banks." The Bronze Star citations for Kerry and Thurlow also speak of prolonged enemy fire.

A report on "battle damage" to Thurlow's boat mentions "three 30 cal bullet holes about super structure." According to Thurlow, at least one of the bullet holes was the result of action the previous day, when he ran into another Vietcong ambush.

Thurlow, Chenoweth, Pees and several of their crew members who belong to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth say neither they nor Kerry came under fire. "If there was fire, I would have made some notation in my journal," Chenoweth said. "But it didn't happen that way. There wasn't any fire." Although he read his diary entry to a reporter over the phone, he declined to supply a copy.

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Rassmann said, "are not just questioning Kerry's account, they are questioning my account. I take that very personally. No one can tell me that we were not under fire. I saw it, I heard the splashes, and I was scared to death. For them to come back 35 years after the fact to tarnish not only Kerry's record, but my veracity, is unconscionable."

Until now, eyewitness evidence supporting Kerry's version had come only from his own crewmen. But yesterday, The Post independently contacted a participant who has not spoken out so far in favor of either camp who remembers coming under enemy fire. "There was a lot of firing going on, and it came from both sides of the river," said Wayne D. Langhofer, who manned a machine gun aboard PCF-43, the boat that was directly behind Kerry's.

Langhofer said he distinctly remembered the "clack, clack, clack" of enemy AK-47s, as well as muzzle flashes from the riverbanks. Langhofer, who now works at a Kansas gunpowder plant, said he was approached several months ago by leaders of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth but declined their requests to speak out against Kerry.

Who Initialed Navy Report?
Much of the debate over who is telling the truth boils down to whether the two-page after-action report and other Navy records are accurate or whether they have been embellished by Kerry or someone else. In "Unfit for Command," O'Neill describes the after-action report as "Kerry's report." He contends that language in Thurlow's Bronze Star citation referring to "enemy bullets flying about him" must also have come from "Kerry's after-action report."

O'Neill has said that the initials "KJW" on the bottom of the report "identified" it as having been written by Kerry. It is unclear why this should be so, as Kerry's initials are JFK. A review of other Swift boat after-action reports at the Naval Historical Center here reveals several that include the initials "KJW" but describe incidents at which Kerry was not present.

Other Swift boat veterans, including Thurlow and Chenoweth, have said they believe that Kerry wrote the March 13 report. "I didn't like to write reports," said Thurlow, who was the senior officer in the five-boat flotilla. "John would write the thing up in longhand, and it would then be typed up and sent up the line."

Even if Kerry did write the March 13 after-action report, it seems unlikely that he would have been the source of the information about "enemy bullets" flying around Thurlow. The official witness to those events, according to Thurlow's medal recommendation form, was his own leading petty officer, Robert Lambert, who himself won a Bronze Star for "courage under fire" in going to Thurlow's rescue after he fell into the river. Lambert, who lives in California, declined to comment.

In a telephone interview, the head of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, retired Adm. Roy Hoffmann, who commanded all Swift boats in Vietnam, said he believed that Kerry wrote the March 13 after-action report on the basis of numerical identifiers at the top of the form. He later acknowledged that the numbers referred to the Swift boat unit, and not to Kerry personally. "It's not cast-iron," he said.

Some of the mystery surrounding exactly what happened on the Bay Hap River in March 1969 could be resolved by the full release of all relevant records and personal diaries. Much information is available from the Web sites of the Kerry campaign and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and the Navy archives. But both the Kerry and anti-Kerry camps continue to deny or ignore requests for other relevant documents, including Kerry's personal reminiscences (shared only with biographer Brinkley), the boat log of PCF-94 compiled by Medeiros (shared only with Brinkley) and the Chenoweth diary.

Although Kerry campaign officials insist that they have published Kerry's full military records on their Web site (with the exception of medical records shown briefly to reporters earlier this year), they have not permitted independent access to his original Navy records. A Freedom of Information Act request by The Post for Kerry's records produced six pages of information. A spokesman for the Navy Personnel Command, Mike McClellan, said he was not authorized to release the full file, which consists of at least a hundred pages.

Some Felt Betrayed
Kerry's reunion with Rassmann in January this year, nearly 35 years after he pulled the former Green Beret from the river, was a defining moment of his presidential campaign. Many political observers believed that the images of the two men embracing helped Kerry win the Iowa Democratic caucuses. The "No Man Left Behind" theme has become a recurring image of pro-Kerry advertising.

But many of the men Kerry served with in Vietnam feel betrayed and left behind by him. Soon after Kerry returned to the United States, he began organizing antiwar rallies. Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971, he appeared to endorse accusations that U.S. troops in Vietnam had committed war crimes "with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

The anti-Kerry veterans began mobilizing earlier this year, following publication of the Brinkley biography and the nationwide publicity given to Kerry's emotional reunion with Rassmann. Many of the veterans were contacted personally by Hoffmann, a gung-ho naval officer compared unflatteringly in "Tour of Duty" to the out-of-control lieutenant colonel in the movie "Apocalypse Now" who talked about how he loved "the smell of napalm in the morning."

Hoffmann, who was already angry with Kerry for his antiwar activities on his return from Vietnam, said in an interview that he was "appalled" to find out from reading "Tour of Duty" that Kerry was "considered to be a Navy hero." "I thought there was a tremendous amount of gross exaggeration in the book and, in some places, downright lies. So I started contacting some of my former shipmates," he said.

One of the men Hoffmann contacted was O'Neill, a longtime Kerry critic who debated Kerry on television in 1971. O'Neill put Hoffmann in touch with some wealthy Republican Party contributors. One of O'Neill's contacts was Texas millionaire Bob Perry, who has contributed $200,000 to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Perry has also contributed to the Bush campaign.

"I'd met him three or four times and represented people he knew," said O'Neill, who has practiced law in Houston for nearly 30 years.

In addition to helping to organize the anti-Kerry campaign, O'Neill wrote his own book about the senator's wartime record, which soared to the top of the Amazon.com best-seller list before its publication earlier this month.

With the exception of a sailor named Stephen Gardner, who served with Kerry in late 1968 on PCF-44, Kerry's own crew members have remained loyal to him. "If it wasn't for some of his decisions, we would probably be some of the names in that wall," said Gene Thorson, the engineman on PCF-94, referring to the Vietnam War Memorial. "I respect him very much."

Others who served on boats that operated alongside Kerry on that fateful day in March 1969 say they cannot stand the man who is now challenging George W. Bush for the presidency.

"I think that Kerry's behavior was abominable," said Pees, the commander of the boat that hit the mine. "His actions after the war were particularly disgusting. He distorted the truth when he talked about atrocities. We went out of our way to protect civilians. To suggest otherwise is a grotesque lie. As far as I am concerned, he did not speak the truth about how we conducted operations in Vietnam."

"A lot of people just can't forgive and forget," countered Kerry crew member Medeiros. "He was a great commander. I would have no trouble following him anywhere."

Staff writer Linton Weeks contributed to this report.

Blackadar 08-22-2004 01:42 PM
So let's see...

The facts that aren't in dispute are:

- Someone died
- Everybody agrees that a mine exploded under the 3 boat.
- There is no argument that Rassmann fell into the river and that Kerry fished him out. - - Nor is there any dispute that Kerry was hurt in the arm
- Others were also awarded medals that day

Here's the question I want answered. If nobody was severely wounded, why did Thurlow jump have to jump onto Kerry's boat? Why didn't he renounce in his Bronze Star if there was no enemy fire?

TroyF 08-22-2004 02:22 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blackadar
So let's see...

The facts that aren't in dispute are:

- Someone died
- Everybody agrees that a mine exploded under the 3 boat.
- There is no argument that Rassmann fell into the river and that Kerry fished him out. - - Nor is there any dispute that Kerry was hurt in the arm
- Others were also awarded medals that day

Here's the question I want answered. If nobody was severely wounded, why did Thurlow jump have to jump onto Kerry's boat? Why didn't he renounce in his Bronze Star if there was no enemy fire?


No, the most important question is. . . why does any of this matter to begin with?

He's a war hero and by most accounts a brave soldier. There isn't any need to question how he got his medals or what he did with them after he left. If all we had to go on with Kerry's past was his war history, it would be one thing, but he's been a US senator for awhile now.

We have plenty of information on his record there. People should be making their opinions to vote for or against Kerry based on that record and no matter what their decision is, should always honor the fact that Kerry is a war vet who went to war for this country.

Blackadar 08-22-2004 02:35 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by TroyF
No, the most important question is. . . why does any of this matter to begin with?

He's a war hero and by most accounts a brave soldier. There isn't any need to question how he got his medals or what he did with them after he left. If all we had to go on with Kerry's past was his war history, it would be one thing, but he's been a US senator for awhile now.

We have plenty of information on his record there. People should be making their opinions to vote for or against Kerry based on that record and no matter what their decision is, should always honor the fact that Kerry is a war vet who went to war for this country.

Fair enough. We disagree on much, but I'll...

*shakes Troy's hand over this one*

Blackadar 08-22-2004 02:36 PM
Hey, where'd my ring go?






TROY!!!!!

:)

j/k

Vegas Vic 08-22-2004 02:37 PM
Just released -- Here is a compelling account of the events from William B. Rood, a swift boat commander whose boat was actually with Kerry's on that fateful day:

Quote:
There were three Swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago — three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on Feb. 28, 1969.

One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other.

For years, no one asked about those events. But now they are the focus of skirmishing in a presidential election with a group of Swift boat veterans and others contending that Kerry didn't deserve the Silver Star for what he did on that day, or the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for other actions.

Many of us wanted to put it all behind us — the rivers, the ambushes, the killing. Ever since that time, I have refused all requests for interviews about Kerry's service — even those from reporters at the Chicago Tribune, where I work.

But Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown. The critics have taken pains to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there.

Even though Kerry's own crew members have backed him, the attacks have continued, and in recent days Kerry has called me and others who were with him in those days, asking that we go public with our accounts.

I can't pretend those calls had no effect on me, but that is not why I am writing this. What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it.

I was part of the operation that led to Kerry's Silver Star. I have no firsthand knowledge of the events that resulted in his winning the Purple Hearts or the Bronze Star.

But on Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of PCF-23, one of three Swift boats — including Kerry's PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz's PCF-43 — that carried Vietnamese Regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep in the area.

The approach of the noisy 50-foot aluminum boats, each driven by two huge 12-cylinder diesels and loaded down with six crew members, troops and gear, was no secret.

Ambushes were a virtual certainty, and that day was no exception.



The difference was that Kerry, who had tactical command of that particular operation, had talked to Droz and me beforehand about not responding the way the boats usually did to an ambush.

We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush, we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats' twin .50-caliber machine guns on the attackers and beaching the boats. We told our crews about the plan.

The Viet Cong in the area had come to expect that the heavily loaded boats would lumber on past an ambush, firing at the entrenched attackers, beaching upstream and putting troops ashore to sweep back down on the ambush site. Often, they were long gone by the time the troops got there.

The first time we took fire — the usual rockets and automatic weapons — Kerry ordered a "turn 90" and the three boats roared in on the ambush. It worked. We routed the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The troops, led by an Army advisor, jumped off the boats and began a sweep, which killed another half-dozen VC, wounded or captured others and found weapons, blast masks and other supplies used to stage ambushes.

Meanwhile, Kerry ordered our boat to head upstream with his, leaving Droz's boat at the first site.



It happened again, another ambush. And again, Kerry ordered the turn maneuver, and again it worked. As we headed for the riverbank, I remember seeing a loaded B-40 launcher pointed at the boats. It wasn't fired as two men jumped up from their spider holes.

We called Droz's boat up to assist us, and Kerry, followed by one member of his crew, jumped ashore and chased a VC behind a hooch — a thatched hut — maybe 15 yards inland from the ambush site. Some who were there that day recall the man being wounded as he ran. Neither I nor Jerry Leeds, our boat's leading petty officer with whom I've checked my recollection of all these events, recalls that, which is no surprise. Recollections of those who go through experiences like that frequently differ.

With our troops involved in the sweep of the first ambush site, Richard Lamberson, a member of my crew, and I also went ashore to search the area. I was checking out the inside of the hooch when I heard gunfire nearby.

Not long after that, Kerry returned, reporting that he had killed the man he chased behind the hooch. He also had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, which we took back to our base in An Thoi after the operation.

John O'Neill, author of a highly critical account of Kerry's Vietnam service, describes the man Kerry chased as a "teenager in a loincloth." I have no idea how old the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but both Leeds and I recall that he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore.

The man Kerry chased was not the "lone" attacker at that site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who fled. There was also firing from the tree line well behind the spider holes and at one point, from the opposite riverbank as well. It was not the work of just one attacker.

Our initial reports of the day's action caused an immediate response from our task force headquarters in Cam Ranh Bay.

Known over radio circuits by the call sign "Latch," then-Capt. and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the task force commander, fired off a message congratulating the three Swift boats, saying at one point that the tactic of charging the ambushes was a "shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy" and that it "may be the most efficacious method of dealing with small numbers of ambushers."



Hoffmann has become a leading critic of Kerry's and now says that what the boats did on that day demonstrated Kerry's inclination to be impulsive to a fault.

Our decision to use that tactic under the right circumstances was not impulsive but was the result of discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of all three boat officers.

It was also well within the aggressive tradition that was embraced by the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Vietnam. Months before that day in February, a fellow boat officer, Michael Bernique, was summoned to Saigon to explain to top Navy commanders why he had made an unauthorized run up the Giang Thanh River, which runs along the Vietnam-Cambodia border. Bernique, who speaks French fluently, had been told by a source in Ha Tien at the mouth of the river that a VC tax collector was operating upstream.

Ignoring the prohibition against it, Bernique and his crew went upstream and routed the VC, pursuing and killing several.

Instead of facing disciplinary action as he had expected, Bernique was given the Silver Star, and Zumwalt ordered other Swifts, which had largely patrolled coastal waters, into the rivers.

The decision sent a clear message, underscored repeatedly by Hoffmann's congratulatory messages, that aggressive patrolling was expected and that well-timed, if unconventional, tactics like Bernique's were encouraged.

What we did on Feb. 28, 1969, was well in line with the tone set by our top commanders.

Zumwalt made that clear when he flew down to our base at An Thoi off the southern tip of Vietnam to pin the Silver Star on Kerry and assorted Bronze Stars and commendation medals on the rest of us.

My Bronze Star citation, signed by Zumwalt, praised the charge tactic we used that day, saying the VC were "caught completely off guard."

There's at least one mistake in that citation. The name of the river where the main action occurred is wrong, a reminder that such documents were often done in haste, authored for their signers by staffers. It's a cautionary note for those trying to piece it all together. There's no final authority on something that happened so long ago — not the documents and not even the strained recollections of those of us who were there.



But I know that what some people are saying now is wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're saying impugns others who are not in the public eye.

Men like Larry Lee, who was on our bow with an M-60 machine gun as we charged the riverbank; Kenneth Martin, who was in the .50-caliber gun tub atop our boat; and Benjamin Cueva, our engineman, who was at our aft gun mount suppressing the fire from the opposite bank.

Wayne Langhoffer and the other crewmen on Droz's boat went through even worse on April 12, 1969, when they saw Droz killed in a brutal ambush that left PCF-43 an abandoned pile of wreckage on the banks of the Duong Keo River. That was just a few months after the birth of his only child, Tracy.

The survivors of all these events are scattered across the country now.

Jerry Leeds lives in a tiny Kansas town where he built and sold a successful printing business. He owns a beautiful home with a lawn that sweeps to the edge of a small lake, which he also owns. Every year, flights of purple martins return to the stately birdhouses on the tall poles in his backyard.

Cueva, recently retired, has raised three daughters and is beloved by his neighbors for all the years he spent keeping their cars running. Lee is a senior computer programmer in Kentucky, and Lamberson finished a second military career in the Army.

With the debate over that long-ago day in February, they're all living that war another time.

Solecismic 08-22-2004 03:22 PM
So, from what I gather Kerry served with honor, and may not have deserved all of his purple hearts. He royally pissed off a lot of veterans when he returned.

I neither see why Kerry feels the need to mention his service 100 times a day, nor do I see the case for defending the recent anti-Kerry ads.

Both sides should agree to condemn all 527-group ads. Bush has agreed to do so if Kerry joins him. Kerry won't. Point Bush.

Bush says his people have nothing to do with the swift-boat ads, but it's clear some of them do. Point Kerry.

Michael Moore. Point Bush.

Karl Rove. Point Kerry.



I'm still undecided.

GrantDawg 08-22-2004 03:36 PM
I'm with TroyF 100%. His voting record is much more an issue, and Kerry's trumpting his war record/people attacking Kerry's war record doesn't really matter to me. It is taking the focus away from the real issues (things like "what is the canidates position on colossal squid?").

TroyF 08-22-2004 03:40 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blackadar
Fair enough. We disagree on much, but I'll...

*shakes Troy's hand over this one*


You can think what you want of my beliefs Blackadar, but I assure you they are well thought out and that I've read as much as anyone you'll find on the subjects on which I have opinions.

I haven't ever blindly supported either party without putting thought into my beliefs and I never will.

Oh. . . here is your ring back.

JonInMiddleGA 08-22-2004 04:11 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Solecismic
Both sides should agree to condemn all 527-group ads.

Sidebar, but ... Why?

People/groups of people shouldn't have the right to be involved in
political advocacy unless they're directly connected to a specific party/candidate/campaign?

Dutch 08-22-2004 04:24 PM
Because then you have "groups" like Hollywood (Fahrenheit 911) and the mass media (All But Fox) that spends hundreds of millions of dollars on one candidate over the other. Those happen to the two groups that are supposed to give us all the information so we can make an informed decision but instead push their politics on the masses.

Swift Boat Ad's pale in comparison to the Democratic 3rd party juggernaut, yet look which is getting blasted in the news?

Tekneek 08-22-2004 04:35 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by TroyF
No, the most important question is. . . why does any of this matter to begin with?

That is the question I ask myself. I ruled out both Kerry and Bush long before I ever reached the point of considering their military records.

Dutch 08-22-2004 04:43 PM
The campaign only has like 70 days left, and their is this big black void from 3 months of Kerry's life in Vietnam until 2004. That whole area has only been covered by the Bush admin with the Flip-Flop message.

I'm guessing there are many undecides out their waiting to figure out what Kerry's all about. So far, if it doesn't involve Vietnam or anti-Bush, there hasn't been any meat yet. I think that strategy will bite Kerry in the ass in the end.

JPhillips 08-22-2004 11:16 PM
I really wish the press would push the Whitehouse on Bush's newfound love of campaign finance reform. At one point he said all unregulated soft-money speech should be banned. Does he really believe this or did he just speak out of his ass? It seems that advocating the abolition of all non-regulated political speech is something that should get some coverage.

Arles 08-23-2004 01:18 AM
I think what bothers a lot of people is all this time and money went into trying to "fix" campaigns. McCain, Feingold and others said their bill will close these campaign loopholes and make candidates less beholden to special interests. While nice in theory, this was never going to work. But, what makes it more frustrating is the gaping hole left open for these 527s. Both sides have been using them, but I think it's safe to say the "swift boat vets" won't ever begin to scratch the surface of what Moveon.org has raised and spent.

So, not only was it a bad idea to begin with, but it was done poorly. It's like saying a team in the NFL that only scores 10 points a game with Champ Bailey and Ty Law at corner only need two new corners to win the Super Bowl (flawed premise). But then that team goes out and spends its remaining cap room on Otis Smith and Tyrone Williams as those two corners, thus making it not only a flawed premise but a poor execution of a flawed premise.

Buccaneer 08-23-2004 07:27 PM
How come no one mentioned this today? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5797164/

Besides, what is the govt doing controlling Free Speech? Isn't that, like, against the 1st Amendment to the Constitution? I have no problems with the Swift Boats ads, just like I have no problems with MoveOn.org. Anyone can and should exercise their views about candidates without the govt saying what they can or cannot say.

SirFozzie 08-23-2004 08:01 PM
Arles: I don't think the Democrats really LIKE the 527's.. but with Bush getting an extra what, 6 weeks of living off donations before going on public funding.. it would be dumb of them not to try to equalize it..

Arles 08-23-2004 08:23 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by SirFozzie
Arles: I don't think the Democrats really LIKE the 527's.. but with Bush getting an extra what, 6 weeks of living off donations before going on public funding.. it would be dumb of them not to try to equalize it..
Then they shouldn't bitch about the Swift Boat vets. The vets have no more ties to the Bush administration than moveon.org does to Kerry and the DNC.

As they say, what's good for the goose....

Dutch 08-23-2004 08:36 PM
You gotta hand it to Bush, he's put up with a lot of shit for 4 years and hasn't bitched once. Kerry curls up into the fetal position over one stinkin' campaign ad.

What a wimp, it almost makes it believable that he did rig those purple hearts just to get out of combat and get home to call the guys still fighting "baby kilelrs".

Flasch186 08-23-2004 08:38 PM
um, diff. b/w moveon and swift.....Bush campaign volunteer in ad......makes me wonder who was behind the cameras.

johneh 08-23-2004 08:42 PM
I think this whole issue is a waste of everyone's time. Kerry served - regardless of what he did/didn't do he served. Bush was in the Ntl Guard - regardless what he did/didn't do ...

I my feeling is - THIS WAS 30 YEARS AGO - I want to know what each of them plans to do for us between 2005-2009 ! :mad:

I think this whole issue is a waste of time and is taking focus away from what is important - the REAL ISSUES ! ! ! ! ! !

Buccaneer 08-23-2004 08:43 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186
um, diff. b/w moveon and swift.....Bush campaign volunteer in ad......makes me wonder who was behind the cameras.

Are you telling me that no one at MoveOn is actively campaigning for Kerry?

Flasch186 08-23-2004 08:48 PM
dunno, dont care...if they are at least theyre a lil smarter about it.....I agree w/ johneh...this is a non-issue to me, thats why comparatively im a bit less vocal then the important threads, IMO

SFL Cat 08-23-2004 09:13 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by johneh
I think this whole issue is a waste of everyone's time. Kerry served - regardless of what he did/didn't do he served. Bush was in the Ntl Guard - regardless what he did/didn't do ...

I my feeling is - THIS WAS 30 YEARS AGO - I want to know what each of them plans to do for us between 2005-2009 ! :mad:

I think this whole issue is a waste of time and is taking focus away from what is important - the REAL ISSUES ! ! ! ! ! !

Well, then Kerry shouldn't have made his Vietnam service his central theme at the Donkey Convention. He pissed off a lot of vets with what he said after he came home, basically calling them dupes and war criminals (and implicating himself in the process). Now 30 years later, he tried to recast himself as a war hero. Did he think the fellow vets he dissed back in 71 would run to him with open arms crying out, "all is forgiven?" Bush has been getting slammed from all directions for over a year now. I didn't hear anyone from the Bush side demand Kerry condemn the partisanship of Michael Moore's "documentary," and I didn't hear anyone from the Bush side cry foul when Moore parked his sizable ass in a VIP seat at the Donkey Convention. I haven't heard anybody in the media (other than Fox) talk about the $20-$30 million George Soros has contributed to the Democratic 527s with the stated purpose to oust Bush, but the Texas businessman who contributed $200K to the Swift Boat Vets for Truth is the second coming of Satan himself.

I thought "Freedom of Speech" was sacrosanct to the libbies, especially those who were on the frontline of protesting the War in Vietnam (John Kerry being one), but after the Swifties release one TV ad, the Kerry campaign flips out and his lawyers are doing their best to try to shut them down -- trying to force bookstores not to carry Unfit for Command and threatening to sue TV stations that air the ad. I think this response will blow up in Kerry's face. One friend of mine, who is an Independent inclined to vote for Kerry, responded to the Kerry team's reaction with, "What a pussy." Kerry is self-destructing at the moment, IMO.

Of course, I've felt all along that the Clinton faction still in control of the Democratic machine, is probably doing all it can to covertly cause a drag on the Kerry campain and is probably gleefully rubbing its collective hands together as Kerry makes his mistakes. After all I don't think Hillary wants to wait for up to four terms (two max for Kerry and two max for Edwards) to run for President.

Flasch186 08-23-2004 09:27 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by SFL Cat
Well, then Kerry shouldn't have made his Vietnam service his central theme at the Donkey Convention. He pissed off a lot of vets with what he said after he came home, basically calling them dupes and war criminals (and implicating himself in the process). Now 30 years later, he tried to recast himself as a war hero. Did he think the fellow vets he dissed back in 71 would run to him with open arms crying out, "all is forgiven?" Bush has been getting slammed from all directions for over a year now. I didn't hear anyone from the Bush side demand Kerry condemn the partisanship of Michael Moore's "documentary," and I didn't hear anyone from the Bush side cry foul when Moore parked his sizable ass in a VIP seat at the Donkey Convention. I haven't heard anybody in the media (other than Fox) talk about the $20-$30 million George Soros has contributed to the Democratic 527s with the stated purpose to oust Bush, but the Texas businessman who contributed $200K to the Swift Boat Vets for Truth is the second coming of Satan himself.

I thought "Freedom of Speech" was sacrosanct to the libbies, especially those who were on the frontline of protesting the War in Vietnam (John Kerry being one), but after the Swifties release one TV ad, the Kerry campaign flips out and his lawyers are doing their best to try to shut them down -- trying to force bookstores not to carry Unfit for Command and threatening to sue TV stations that air the ad. I think this response will blow up in Kerry's face. One friend of mine, who is an Independent inclined to vote for Kerry, responded to the Kerry team's reaction with, "What a pussy." Kerry is self-destructing at the moment, IMO.

Of course, I've felt all along that the Clinton faction still in control of the Democratic machine, is probably doing all it can to covertly cause a drag on the Kerry campain and is probably gleefully rubbing its collective hands together as Kerry makes his mistakes. After all I don't think Hillary wants to wait for up to four terms (two max for Kerry and two max for Edwards) to run for President.


Im sure some vets think he was a hero for speaking up when he returned home, just a guess there?

Freedom of speech for sure, the 527's im ok with, as long as theyre legitimately not a part of either campaign, thats all.

Ill bet anyone viewing an implosion with Kerry right now probably leans right.

I think the comment McCain made about Bush's tactics equal it out.

Either way, ill vote on the issues that matter to me.

Buccaneer 08-23-2004 09:32 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186

Either way, ill vote on the issues that matter to me.

Don't BS us, "anti-Bush" is the only issue you have been frothing at the mouth about.

Flasch186 08-23-2004 09:41 PM
I am anti Bush, cuz why? I made it plainly clear that I feel that he has personally lied to me and if the next guyy does the same ill vote him out too. Ive made that clear, to me, Bush is a liar, and I have tons of stuff to make that feeling cementious.

have i not said that that is the most important thing to me, above all?

Buccaneer 08-23-2004 09:46 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186
I am anti Bush, cuz why? I made it plainly clear that I feel that he has personally lied to me and if the next guyy does the same ill vote him out too. Ive made that clear, to me, Bush is a liar, and I have tons of stuff to make that feeling cementious.

Lol. Do I assume then you didn't vote for Clinton in 96 and Gore in 00? Then join me in voting for the Libertarian or Constitutional Party candidate. Those haven't lied to you yet, have they?

Flasch186 08-23-2004 09:47 PM
I voted for Nader in 2000, regrettably. I honestlly thought Gore would walk with it and my vote didnt matter. Clinton i voted for proudly.


EDIT: i will vote for the most viable way to get the liar out of office.

Arles 08-23-2004 09:49 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186
um, diff. b/w moveon and swift.....Bush campaign volunteer in ad......makes me wonder who was behind the cameras.
But Gore and numerous ties to the DNC and moveon.org don't count?

Come on, if the last pres candidate for the republicans was sitting front and center on the swift boat, you don't think the Times and Washington Post would be making a big deal? Yet nary a word about Gore raising millions for moveon.org.

Flasch186 08-23-2004 09:51 PM
I have no problem with that then, it was within the rules. I really dont care much about it now. Im fine with it, Im hoping people will see through the BS.

SFL Cat 08-23-2004 09:52 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186
I voted for Nader in 2000, regrettably. I honestlly thought Gore would walk with it and my vote didnt matter. Clinton i voted for proudly.


EDIT: i will vote for the most viable way to get the liar out of office.


OIC, Clinton was YOUR kind of liar, but Bush isn't. Makes sense to me. :rolleyes:

Flasch186 08-23-2004 09:53 PM
Ill take a lie that any mistaken male might find themselves in and it was a personal issue. Ill take that any day over what I get now. So in answer to your question: a sound resolute, ABSOLUTELY


So funny the right judges someone for adultry, yet the good book says not to judge....but whent he shoe fits....whatever. Bush is full of it and for some reason some people buy it all.

At least i can admit when he does something right, like the recent terror warnings in NY. he handled that right IMO....name me something Clinton did you agreed with, quick!?

Buccaneer 08-23-2004 09:54 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186
I voted for Nader in 2000, regrettably. I honestlly thought Gore would walk with it and my vote didnt matter. Clinton i voted for proudly.


EDIT: i will vote for the most viable way to get the liar out of office.

Ok, I understand now. No. Principles. Just. Hatred.

Flasch186 08-23-2004 09:56 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Buccaneer
Ok, I understand now. No. Principles. Just. Hatred.


Strong principles, a Longing for change. But its so easy to paint it the way that polarizes the most...just like the admin. wants

Buccaneer 08-23-2004 09:57 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186
Ill take a lie that any mistaken male might find themselves in and it was a personal issue. Ill take that any day over what I get now. So in answer to your question: a sound resolute, ABSOLUTELY


So funny the right judges someone for adultry, yet the good book says not to judge....but whent he shoe fits....whatever. Bush is full of it and for some reason some people buy it all.

At least i can admit when he does something right, like the recent terror warnings in NY. he handled that right IMO....name me something Clinton did you agreed with, quick!?

I have been falling into temptation. I have been clicking on View Post even though Flasch186 is on my ignore list. No more. He babbles like a baby.

Flasch186 08-23-2004 09:58 PM
easiest way to duck that head right into the sand....I can honestly say I have no one on my ignore list....that's a huge difference i think....resounds so clearly.

BTW, good answer to the Clinton question...ill give you another one, you can mimic our president: "Name us something youve made a mistake on."

"Well....Im sure there is something......im just not finding it...."

Buccaneer 08-23-2004 09:59 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186
Strong principles, a Longing for change. But its so easy to paint it the way that polarizes the most...just like the admin. wants

Nothing wrong with polarization in a democracy-based republic. But I would definitely choose the current type of polarization than the ones Gore and Nader envisioned.

Damn. I did it again. :mad:

Flasch186 08-23-2004 10:01 PM
what was the one they envisioned? How could it be any more divisive then the one we have today where a General goes to over 20 churches and says the war on terror is a war in which our god is stronger than theirs, and our god is bigger, then try to sell the world its not a war on islam. Well done on the polarization note.

SFL Cat 08-23-2004 10:02 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186
Ill take a lie that any mistaken male might find themselves in and it was a personal issue. Ill take that any day over what I get now. So in answer to your question: a sound resolute, ABSOLUTELY


So funny the right judges someone for adultry, yet the good book says not to judge....but whent he shoe fits....whatever. Bush is full of it and for some reason some people buy it all.

At least i can admit when he does something right, like the recent terror warnings in NY. he handled that right IMO....name me something Clinton did you agreed with, quick!?

I was happy to see Clinton sign on to the Republican Welfare Reform Bill. I was also happy when Hill and Bill botched their government Healthcare Takeover...er Reform and cost the Dems control of Congress for the first time in over 40 years. I was watching ABC news during that election and the terrified expressions of disbelief on Sam Donaldson's and Cokie Roberts' faces as they watched the GOP sweep to victory was priceless!!!

I'll give Clinton credit, I didn't expect him to make it to a second term -- but he rebounded from his early disasters nicely. Of course, having to run against a cupcake like Bob Dole helped tremendously, IMO.

Buccaneer 08-23-2004 10:02 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186
easiest way to duck that head right into the sand....I can honestly say I have no one on my ignore list....that's a huge difference i think....resounds so clearly.

BTW, good answer to the Clinton question...ill give you another one, you can mimic our president: "Name us something youve made a mistake on."

"Well....Im sure there is something......im just not finding it...."

Not sticking my head in the sand, you just don't know how to debate like an adult. I may be a curmudgeon but at least I have experienced more years of political and historical realities.

Flasch186 08-23-2004 10:06 PM
What rule have i broken, i dont curse, i dont get personal, I am not hypocritical and I respond promptly...what more do you want outside sometimes my failure to paragraph well or use proper punctuation. Or should I just agree with everything you say, is that what youre looking for?

Flasch186 08-23-2004 10:07 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by SFL Cat
I was also happy when Hill and Bill botched their government Healthcare Takeover...er Reform and cost the Dems control of Congress for the first time in over 40 years.


what we have now is soo much better, non existent discounts and more people without health insurance then ever since the inception of Medicare....yup, rich get rich poor get stepped on again.


BTW, I do all this debating while playing FOF in the background....in case Jim's reading....

cuervo72 08-23-2004 10:09 PM
Bucc, I'm being convinced that Flasch's main purpose on these forums is to bash Bush and to bait anyone he can into descending into these "discussions" (I don't know, maybe this is one of the provisions of getting a SAG card). Well, that and to use hideous grammar and punctuation.

Anyhow, I've had enough of reading this. Just another of the mounting reasons why I visit this board less and less over time.

Flasch186 08-23-2004 10:12 PM
you know what, im tired too....Im over it...its pointless the nonempathetic wont change and they will always be suckered in by greed and the sales pitch from the right....im through debating about this stuff.....it goes nowhere, i wont change and neither will you...hopefully the world will be a better place come nov.

cuervo feel free to come back....im tired of this mess...it used ot be fun, but while i hate Bush i feel that the right hates everyone under a certain tax bracket and not a certain color.....im thorugh.....everyone knows how i feel and when we do have to be judged, ill feel good about how i helped my fellow man.

SFL Cat 08-23-2004 10:14 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186
yup, rich get rich poor get stepped on again.

You socialists need dump that expression and come up with something new and catchy -- that Democratic mantra was old and tired when Bush I was running.

On a side note, I would have thought that after eight years of Clinton and prosperity, poverty would have been eliminated before Bush II even got into office.

Ksyrup 08-23-2004 10:15 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186
it used ot be fun, but while i hate Bush i feel that the right hates everyone under a certain tax bracket and not a certain color.....im thorugh.....

See, it's shit like that that's completely unnecessary. Where does that come from? Certainly no one on this board.

You should be through... and ashamed of yourself.

GrantDawg 08-23-2004 10:18 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186
you know what, im tired too....Im over it...its pointless the nonempathetic wont change and they will always be suckered in by greed and the sales pitch from the right....im through debating about this stuff.....it goes nowhere, i wont change and neither will you...hopefully the world will be a better place come nov.

cuervo feel free to come back....im tired of this mess...it used ot be fun, but while i hate Bush i feel that the right hates everyone under a certain tax bracket and not a certain color.....im thorugh.....everyone knows how i feel and when we do have to be judged, ill feel good about how i helped my fellow man.
The second you start using paragraphs....:)

It just kills me that people honestly believe this kind of thing of those on the other side of the issue. It is not that they have a different idea of how to solve the same problems, it is they "hate" or "suckered in by the sales pitch." I'm not just picking on you on this because I see the same extremes on the right. No one can come to a different conclusion than mine unless they are brain-washed or evil.

Ksyrup 08-23-2004 10:21 PM
Exactly. We don't believe in solving problems the way you do, so we obviously hate poor people and minorities. That's insulting, but more than that, it's pathetic if you really believe that.

Flasch186 08-23-2004 10:23 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ksyrup
See, it's shit like that that's completely unnecessary. Where does that come from? Certainly no one on this board.

You should be through... and ashamed of yourself.

read the ownership thread, thats where the color comes from and the tax bracket stuff is obvious...



HOWEVER I DO apologize, Im just frustrated. I apologize, I love the FOFC, im sure that that is obvious.

cuervo72 08-24-2004 07:16 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ksyrup
Exactly. We don't believe in solving problems the way you do, so we obviously hate poor people and minorities. That's insulting, but more than that, it's pathetic if you really believe that.

And this is what bothers me the most. I'm tired of being vilified because I'm white and middle to upper middle class (though increasingly I think I'm more in that middle category), or Christian, or Republican, or because I own a home.

cuervo72 08-24-2004 07:20 AM
Dola - Flasch, I'm still here. And you're not the sole source of this, so don't take all of the blame yourself. I'm just sick of it all, from both sides. It's not what I come here for. But if that's what the board is increasingly going to be, then there's less of a reason for me to be as active (not that I haven't toned that down already).

And I stand squarely with Fritz on the 'cuz' issue....

Honolulu_Blue 08-24-2004 07:58 AM
I found a lot of this info on another message board I visit every now and then. Interesting stuff....


Boy, the profiles of the people involved with this book and the SBVT just keeps getting lovelier by the minute.

A few tidbits about William Regnery II, publisher of Unfit For Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, whose family has long-standing white nationalist sentiments.


http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artm...icle_5074.shtml

Quote:
The principals in the company publishing a anti-John Kerry book by the GOP-backed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have a long history of preaching and supporting white supremacy.

William Regnery II, heir to the Regnery publishing fortune, is moving into a new line of business: match-making for "heterosexual whites of Christian cultural heritage."

In an appeal to potential investors titled "Population is Destiny," the famously reclusive Regnery wrote this March that the Caucasian dating service would be no ordinary money-making opportunity, but a chance to ensure "the survival of our race," which "depends upon our people marrying, reproducing and parenting."

Regnery, who says he's long been concerned with a "tendency to bachelorhood" among white men, told the potential investors that his latest effort to save the white race would not stop with match-making.

The dating service, he says, will be only the "first arrow in a business quiver" providing "services and products to whites."

Promoting white nationalism is nothing new for Regnery — or his family. His grandfather, William I, signed incorporation papers for the America First Committee, an organization that opposed fighting Nazi Germany in World War II. His father, Henry, created Regnery Publishing which, besides the anti-Kerry book, publishes right-wing screeds by Anne Coulter and G. Gordon Liddy.



http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intel...le.jsp?aid=479

Quote:

White Supremacists
Reclusive publishing heir to start all-white dating service

William Regnery II, an heir to the Regnery publishing fortune who's a prime mover and shaker in white nationalism publishing, is moving into a new line of business: match-making for "heterosexual whites of Christian cultural heritage."

In an appeal to potential investors titled "Population is Destiny," the famously reclusive Regnery wrote this March that the Caucasian dating service would be no ordinary money-making opportunity, but a chance to ensure "the survival of our race," which "depends upon our people marrying, reproducing and parenting."



http://www.prospect.org/print/V11/5/confessore-n.html

Exerpts:

Welcome to the world of Regnery Publishing--lifestyle press for conservatives, preferred printer of presidential hopefuls, and venerable publisher of books for the culture wars. Call it--gracelessly but more accurately--a medium-sized, loosely linked network of conservative types, with few degrees of separation and similar political aims. Just don't call it a conspiracy.

...

Regnery Publishing's 1993 purchase by newsletter magnate Tom Phillips woke it up. Phillips, one of the Republican National Committee's "Team 100" and a board member of the Claremont Institute, lavished both money and attention on his new acquisition. Leaving Alfred Regnery at the helm, Phillips folded the company into his Eagle Publishing division, an overtly political enterprise with a distinguished stable of conservative media: Human Events, a 56-year-old,ultra-right weekly newspaper; the Evans-Novak Political Report; the 75,000-member Conservative Book Club (founded in 1964 as "America was walking down Lyndon Johnson's path to a socialist 'Great Society'"); and a similar operation called the Christian Family Book Club. But perhaps most significant--given the central role direct mail has played in the conservative resurgence of recent decades--is Eagle's list brokerage operation, which rents out Eagle's own customer lists and those of organizations like Newt Gingrich's GOPAC, Empower America, the Western Journalism Center, and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, not to mention Pat Buchanan's American Cause and the Steve Forbes for President campaign.

By the time Phillips Publishing spun off Eagle last July, an entirely new entity had emerged: a company that treats publishing less as a media enterprise than as a form of political activism. With a new, almost Gingrichian sensibility, Regnery's titles have begun to reflect the particular ideological and policy concerns of foundation-funded, third-wave conservative thinkers.

...

But the Phillips publishing family does not shy away from more direct forms of political engagement: According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Phillips International (then called Phillips Publishing International) gave $125,150 in soft money to the Republican National Committee (RNC) in 1997-1998, while Eagle Publishing gave the RNC another $19,500. (The RNC, notincidentally, was chaired by Regnery author Haley Barbour until January 1997.) The Phillips Publishing PAC has contributed $64,450 to various Republican officeholders and seekers during the same period, while Phillips himself gave $1,000 in contributions to 15 different Republican candidates in 1998. Eagle/Regnery, in other words, is more than just a conservative press--it is a partisan press, with close personal, organizational, and even fundraising ties to the Republican Party. (emphasis added) It should thus come as no surprise that a frequent topic in the Regnery catalogue is one William Jefferson Clinton.

...

The most infamous of the Regnery titles is undoubtedly Gary Aldrich's Unlimited Access, which included such "revelations" as lesbian encounters in the White House's basement showers, Hillary Clinton ordering miniature crack pipes to hang on the White House Christmas tree, and the claim--backed by anonymous sources--that Clinton made frequent trips to the nearby Marriott to shack up with a mistress "who may be a celebrity." That last bit helped catapult Unlimited Access to the top of The New York Times's best-seller list, though Aldrich soon revealed to The New Yorker's Jane Mayer that the Marriott story was "not quite solid" and, indeed, was "hypothetical." But according to Aldrich, it was Regnery editor Richard Vigilante who had moved the Marriott bit out of the epilogue (where it had been presented as a "mock investigation") and into the middle of the book (where it was presented as an actual occurrence). Vigilante, Aldrich told Mayer, threatened not to publish the book if Aldrich didn't agree to the changes.

...

Yet Regnery Publishing seems not just to encourage conspiracy theorizing from its authors, but to demand it. In 1997 Alfred Regnery approached veteran crime reporter Dan Moldea about writing a book on the Vince Foster case. Regnery, says Moldea, hoped that his contacts within the law-enforcement community would shed new light on the case. But Moldea came to the same conclusions as all the official inquiries did. "There were some mistakes, some omissions," says Moldea. "But this was a dead-bang, bona fide suicide." When Moldea turned in A Washington Tragedy: How the Death of Vincent Foster Ignited a Political Firestorm, the editors at Regnery "were less than thrilled. There were some real battles that went on between us, between me and the staff," he says. "Things were being cut out of the book that I was really upset about, like this section on Scaife. It got so bad that I was almost hoping that they would reject the book, because I knew that they were just going to seal it and it would never see the light of day."


All this is more ammunition to portray Unfit for Command as the right-wing pile of sh*t that it is, which fits in comfortably with this company's overtly and aggressive right-wing political agenda.

CentralMassHokie 08-24-2004 08:53 AM
Just sticking my head in for one thought.

Josh Marshall (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/) said it best the other day: if the media wasn't so darn intent on trying to play everything straight down the middle, regardless of the facts involved, this Swift Boat stuff would already be over with.

There's a side that has all of the evidence, all of the eyewitnesses, and all of the provable fact.

And there's a side with no eyewitnesses, only hearsay, and ties that make their intentions at least questionable.

Yet, the national media, for fear of being painted as "liberal" refuses to just come right out and say that this is any more of an issue than the guy who claims Clinton had people murdered or the folks who believe the Bushes are involved in creating a new world order.

It makes good TV. It makes for easy articles. Truth no longer matters. It's all what you can sell. In this case, lies and slander sell.

Glengoyne 08-24-2004 10:05 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by CentralMassHokie
Just sticking my head in for one thought.

Josh Marshall (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/) said it best the other day: if the media wasn't so darn intent on trying to play everything straight down the middle, regardless of the facts involved, this Swift Boat stuff would already be over with.

There's a side that has all of the evidence, all of the eyewitnesses, and all of the provable fact.

And there's a side with no eyewitnesses, only hearsay, and ties that make their intentions at least questionable.

Yet, the national media, for fear of being painted as "liberal" refuses to just come right out and say that this is any more of an issue than the guy who claims Clinton had people murdered or the folks who believe the Bushes are involved in creating a new world order.

It makes good TV. It makes for easy articles. Truth no longer matters. It's all what you can sell. In this case, lies and slander sell.

I don't think this is even an issue. I believe that Kerry is a war hero. Bona fide. Not a doubt in my mind. I also think the Bush served his country honorably in the Air Guard. Oh and speaking of a case where there is no evidence stacked up against an honorable discharge.

Oh and why I posted. Provable? I don't think you read the articles in the first couple of posts. There is NO proving anything here. You pretty much just have to take Kerry at his word, which I do.

The most damning condemnation I have heard of Kerry was from Bob Dole. The "he should apologize to the vets" for his testimony before congress is minor compared to "It was three purple hears, and you are out. He got three purple hearts, and as far as I can tell he never even bled. That last was a paraphrase. It was something I was wondering about when I heard his third Purple Heart was awarded for a contussion on his forearm, a bruise. Now I understand that this was almost definately the norm, and the Purple Hearts were handed out too commonly. I do think that slightly tarnished the unabashed war hero image Kerry is portraying. So that to me says something about his willingness to serve his country. He got out with just a few scrapes and bruises. I would have likely done the same, and a lot of others did as well.

Bee 08-24-2004 10:13 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Glengoyne
He got out with just a few scrapes and bruises.

I'm not a big follower of this whole thing (since it's totally meaningless to me) so I could be wrong, but I thought Kerry still had shrapnel in his leg. I'd consider that more than just a scrape or bruise...

As far as the whole political thing, IMO the Bush campaign has really come out on top concerning this whole thing. I think the Kerry campaign has been outmanuevered at every turn and it's losing them some of the undecided voters.

Honolulu_Blue 08-24-2004 10:24 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bee

As far as the whole political thing, IMO the Bush campaign has really come out on top concerning this whole thing. I think the Kerry campaign has been outmanuevered at every turn and it's losing them some of the undecided voters.

Totally. The people Bush has working for him are excellent. He ran a great compaign in 2000. He has been able to use and manipulate the media at every turn during his administration. And his people are at it again. They have managed to cast doubt and scrutiny over the one thing the Democrats should have been able to rely on without question: the military service record of the two candidates.

Not only does this show you the skill of Bush's team, but it shows you just how pathetic the Democratic party really is. They can't do anything. There doesn't appear to be any organization, any concerted effort, nothing. There just isn't anything happening. They are just standing there, flat-footed, taking these ridiculous shots.

It bodes ill... :(

Arles 08-24-2004 10:26 AM
Just breaking on the political wire service I have forwarded:

"Kerry's campaign now says is possible first Purple Heart was awarded for unintentional self-inflicted wound...

Kerry received Purple Heart for wounds suffered on 12/2/68...

In Kerry's own journal written 9 days later, he writes he and his crew, quote, 'hadn't been shot at yet'"

----

Maybe all 60 of these swift vets aren't shills for the republican party and did actually see this stuff. I wasn't in Vietnam and have no idea on who is right. But when Kerry's already had two major about faces in the past week on this (the "seared" image of Cambodia on Dec 24th when he never went there and now the "unintentional self-injury" for the first part of his three-piece ticket out of combat), it certainly makes you wonder what else he may have embellished - perhaps all the slaughtering and rape was not witnessed by him and he slandered the names of millions of Vietnam vets for his own political gain.

CentralMassHokie 08-24-2004 10:34 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Glengoyne
Oh and why I posted. Provable? I don't think you read the articles in the first couple of posts. There is NO proving anything here. You pretty much just have to take Kerry at his word, which I do.

But that's not really true.

Everyone who was there confirms Kerry's account. All documentation confirms Kerry's account.

The only "evidence" provided by the Swift Boat folk is their word. None of which is backed up by any hard evidence or documentation.

You don't have to take Kerry at his word. You can also take the word of any of the others who were there that day. Or you can look at all of the documentation that is available about the Purple Heart and incidencts involved therein.

The fact that the media is still parroting these charges is ridiculous. The Swift Boat folks have been thoroughly debunked. The fact that a paper such as the Washington Post published an article that insinuates anything else is reprehensible at this point.

Quoting Josh Marshall's really good summary on all this:
"Considering the piece a bit more, though, it strikes me just how clear an example this is of the poverty of what passes as journalistic objectivity -- the effort to find a point of balance when the facts themselves provide no basis for it.

Let me explain.

If you wade through the article, it's easy to lose track of this. But what does the article itself say? Kerry says one thing, his critics say another. But are Kerry and O'Neil really equal in this?

The military records all back up Kerry. Back in the old days -- i.e., last month --official military records used to be considered at least presumptively accurate. Now, everyone knows or should know that every after-action report or medal citation isn't necessarily the product of an exhaustive investigation. Yet, they're not meaningless. At a minimum one would assume that the burden of proof would lie with those who dispute their veracity.

So, as I say, all the Navy records support Kerry's account. On top of that, all the people who were in Kerry's boat support his version of events.

Think about that for a minute. All the people in Kerry's boat means all the people closest to the action in question support Kerry's account. Some others who were tens or hundreds of yards away, or not even present, contradict his account. Is it really so hard to distinguish between the quality of evidence and testimony that both sides are bringing to the table?



If this were a civil suit, and this was accusers' evidence, it wouldn't even pass the laugh test. And yet the Post portrays the two 'sides' as if they have equal standing. As though it were he said, she said."

Bee 08-24-2004 10:40 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arles
Just breaking on the political wire service I have forwarded:

"Kerry's campaign now says is possible first Purple Heart was awarded for unintentional self-inflicted wound...

Couldn't find anything on this other than an assumption on the part of the doctor who supposedly treated the wound (the guy that says he treated it, even though his name isn't on the paperwork for treating it). Do you have a link or anything?

Thanks

Edited for clarity.

Arles 08-24-2004 10:40 AM
If there is nothing to what the Swift Boat vets are saying, why has Kerry not once debunked the meat of their claims and why has he pulled a second reversal in less than a week on his prior record in Vietnam?

I remember when the McAullife and the DNC called on Bush to release his military records to clear up the crazy AWOL charges, I wonder if he will do the same to Kerry on what appears to be an obvious gap between what Kerry said happen and what we are finding out to be true. I mean, signing off on a purple heart on a non line-of-fire injury is against military regulations. There are specific steps taken in the military to make sure that never happens, I think it's time we find out who signed off on that first purple heart.

Bee 08-24-2004 10:44 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arles
If there is nothing to what the Swift Boat vets are saying, why has Kerry not once debunked the meat of their claims and why has he pulled a second reversal in less than a week on his prior record in Vietnam?

What's the meat of their claims and what is the reversal you're talking about.

Thanks...like I said I haven't really been following this.

Arles 08-24-2004 10:48 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bee
Couldn't find anything on this other than an assumption on the part of the doctor who supposedly treated the wound (the guy that says he treated it, even though his name isn't on the paperwork for treating it). Do you have a link or anything?

Thanks

Edited for clarity.

The heart of the wire update I got revolves around a major development. It's that Kerry received the purple heart for service on 12/2/1968. Yet, in his own personal journal log written 9 days later, Kerry says that he and his crew "hadn't been shot at yet".

I did a quick search and couldn't find a link on CBS, NBC or Fox. But I did notice that it just popped up one Drudge with a "Developing" next to it. We'll see how it shakes out today. But, regardless of what Kerry's campaign says, there is an obvious gaff between Kerry's own story.

Arles 08-24-2004 10:52 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bee
What's the meat of their claims and what is the reversal you're talking about.

Thanks...like I said I haven't really been following this.
Basically that Kerry witnessed all these atrocities first hand that he testified on in 1971 and that he was involved in the line of fire on all three purple hearts even though numerous vets in the same mission he was on stated there was no enemy fire at all in two of the instances. Kerry has been silent on the entire issue, instead focusing his efforts on discrediting the vets and trying to threaten bookstores and TV stations into not running the ad or selling the book altogether.

Try to imagine the outcry if Bush threatened media organizations and theatres back in the beginning of the year to not run an ad from Moveon.org, one of the numerous anti-Bush books or Michael Moore's movie. I have a feeling the words "facist", "ashcroft", "nazi" and "shredding constitution" would be on the lips of every liberal out there had that happened.

SlapBone 08-24-2004 11:00 AM
Poor Flasch... it's ashamed that communism has taken such downturn lately.

Flasch186 08-24-2004 11:00 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arles
Just breaking on the political wire service I have forwarded:

"Kerry's campaign now says is possible first Purple Heart was awarded for unintentional self-inflicted wound...

Kerry received Purple Heart for wounds suffered on 12/2/68...

In Kerry's own journal written 9 days later, he writes he and his crew, quote, 'hadn't been shot at yet'"

----

Maybe all 60 of these swift vets aren't shills for the republican party and did actually see this stuff. I wasn't in Vietnam and have no idea on who is right. But when Kerry's already had two major about faces in the past week on this (the "seared" image of Cambodia on Dec 24th when he never went there and now the "unintentional self-injury" for the first part of his three-piece ticket out of combat), it certainly makes you wonder what else he may have embellished - perhaps all the slaughtering and rape was not witnessed by him and he slandered the names of millions of Vietnam vets for his own political gain.


Or perhaps, like some of the swift boat vets, he DID see all that stuff. If you muddy the waters for one side why not muddy them for both.

Again this is all non - issues and a way to get away from the real issues.

Bee 08-24-2004 11:05 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arles
The heart of the wire update I got revolves around a major development. It's that Kerry received the purple heart for service on 12/2/1968. Yet, in his own personal journal log written 9 days later, Kerry says that he and his crew "hadn't been shot at yet".

I did a quick search and couldn't find a link on CBS, NBC or Fox. But I did notice that it just popped up one Drudge with a "Developing" next to it. We'll see how it shakes out today. But, regardless of what Kerry's campaign says, there is an obvious gaff between Kerry's own story.

So exactly how does that equate to the Kerry campaign coming out and saying the first purple heart was self-inflicted? I'm having a hard time following that connection.

Also, I had thought the first purple heart was from some type of hand grenade incident and didn't involve enemy fire. Again, I could be wrong because I haven't kept up with all this stuff that closely.

Flasch186 08-24-2004 11:07 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by SlapBone
Poor Flasch... it's ashamed that communism has taken such downturn lately.

You know that there is a middle ground right? It doesnt have to be one or the other. There are capitalistic countries that have medical care for everyone. Im not making that up, you know?

Bee 08-24-2004 11:08 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arles
Basically that Kerry witnessed all these atrocities first hand that he testified on in 1971 and that he was involved in the line of fire on all three purple hearts even though numerous vets in the same mission he was on stated there was no enemy fire at all in two of the instances. Kerry has been silent on the entire issue, instead focusing his efforts on discrediting the vets and trying to threaten bookstores and TV stations into not running the ad or selling the book altogether.

Try to imagine the outcry if Bush threatened media organizations and theatres back in the beginning of the year to not run an ad from Moveon.org, one of the numerous anti-Bush books or Michael Moore's movie. I have a feeling the words "facist", "ashcroft", "nazi" and "shredding constitution" would be on the lips of every liberal out there had that happened.

Ok...I thought there might be more to the "meat" of the issue that hasn't already been addressed numerous times.

I'm still not following the reversal thing though.

Arles 08-24-2004 11:21 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bee
Ok...I thought there might be more to the "meat" of the issue that hasn't already been addressed numerous times.

I'm still not following the reversal thing though.

Drudge now has a little more on the site involving the Kerry campaign now saying it is possible first Purple Heart was awarded for unintentional self-inflicted wound. And, if that was the case, it would go against Kerry's own claims (and the DNC) that the wounds Kerry received for the first purple heart were the result of enemy fire. As I'm sure you know, you cannot get a purple heart for self-inflicted or non-enemy fire wounds. Therefore, Kerry had to have lied to some CO in order to get his approval for the first purple heart. That, or the person that signed off agreed to lie with Kerry's approval.

Either way, there is no way Kerry could have got his first purple heart legit if it was based on self-inflicted wounds.

Whar 08-24-2004 11:27 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arles
Basically that Kerry witnessed all these atrocities first hand that he testified on in 1971


Kerry never stated he witnessed atrocities. He related to Congress his conversation with eye witnesses and soldiers that claimed they had commited these acts.

"I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command...." - John Kerry 1971

"They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country." - John Kerry 1971

miked 08-24-2004 11:29 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arles
Drudge now has a little more on the site involving the Kerry campaign now saying it is possible first Purple Heart was awarded for unintentional self-inflicted wound. And, if that was the case, it would go against Kerry's own claims (and the DNC) that the wounds Kerry received for the first purple heart were the result of enemy fire. As I'm sure you know, you cannot get a purple heart for self-inflicted or non-enemy fire wounds. Therefore, Kerry had to have lied to some CO in order to get his approval for the first purple heart. That, or the person that signed off agreed to lie with Kerry's approval.

Either way, there is no way Kerry could have got his first purple heart legit if it was based on self-inflicted wounds.

Wow. They should remove this guy from the Senate. He's not fit for anything because some people say he lied and he may not have a clear memory of what happened during a battle. Here's the dead horse...continue to beat it with top secret reports that he may have embellished. :confused:

Bee 08-24-2004 11:32 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arles
Drudge now has a little more on the site involving the Kerry campaign now saying it is possible first Purple Heart was awarded for unintentional self-inflicted wound. And, if that was the case, it would go against Kerry's own claims (and the DNC) that the wounds Kerry received for the first purple heart were the result of enemy fire. As I'm sure you know, you cannot get a purple heart for self-inflicted or non-enemy fire wounds. Therefore, Kerry had to have lied to some CO in order to get his approval for the first purple heart. That, or the person that signed off agreed to lie with Kerry's approval.

Either way, there is no way Kerry could have got his first purple heart legit if it was based on self-inflicted wounds.

Oh if it were self-inflicted (unintentionally), I don't think there's any question that it shouldn't have been awarded. But I also don't think it has to be the result of an injury from direct combat, so his statement about not having been under fire after being awarded the first one really doesn't indicate anything. I'll have to check the Drudge site and see what they are saying since it doesn't seem to be anyplace else.

Edited to make it closer to English...

Addition:

I went to the drudge site and don't see anything other than what you've already posted.

Flasch186 08-24-2004 11:33 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arles
Drudge now has a little more on the site involving the Kerry campaign now saying it is possible first Purple Heart was awarded for unintentional self-inflicted wound. And, if that was the case, it would go against Kerry's own claims (and the DNC) that the wounds Kerry received for the first purple heart were the result of enemy fire. As I'm sure you know, you cannot get a purple heart for self-inflicted or non-enemy fire wounds. Therefore, Kerry had to have lied to some CO in order to get his approval for the first purple heart. That, or the person that signed off agreed to lie with Kerry's approval.

Either way, there is no way Kerry could have got his first purple heart legit if it was based on self-inflicted wounds.

This is from Drudge though....dont be mad that Ill wait for a more legitimate source to confirm.

Glengoyne 08-24-2004 11:36 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by CentralMassHokie
But that's not really true.

Everyone who was there confirms Kerry's account. All documentation confirms Kerry's account.

The only "evidence" provided by the Swift Boat folk is their word. None of which is backed up by any hard evidence or documentation.

You don't have to take Kerry at his word. You can also take the word of any of the others who were there that day. Or you can look at all of the documentation that is available about the Purple Heart and incidencts involved therein.

The fact that the media is still parroting these charges is ridiculous. The Swift Boat folks have been thoroughly debunked. The fact that a paper such as the Washington Post published an article that insinuates anything else is reprehensible at this point.

Some aspects of Kerry's account of at least the bronze star event have been drawn into doubt. There were five boats involved in the incident. Three on one side of the river, two on the other. To this day the men on the two boats on Kerry's side of the river maintain they were under fire from both banks. To a man, at least of those who have weighed in on this, the men on the three boats on the other side of the river say there was no firing beyond the mine. Not all of these guys are part of the Swift Boat Vets.

I believe Kerry. From my limited understanding of combat, I gather that it is confusing. I understand that no single party may be privy to all of the events in an engagement. I don't think these guys have proven anything with regards to their first commercial questioning Kerry's combat citations. But I don't think their claims can be simply dismissed either, not all of them are affiliated with the swift boat vets.

I am going to repeat myself, just so I can get my thoughts on this out.
-Kerry served honorably in Vietnam
-Kerry deserved his silver and bronze stars
-Kerry deserved his purple hearts eventhough the wounds appear to have been two scrapes and a bruise.
-Kerry came back to the U.S. and slammed the war and essentially his fellow soldiers.
-That pissed off a bunch of his old commrades.
-I think that the content of his visit to congress in 1971, is strictly "in-bounds" with regards to this campaign.
-Since the second SBV ad squarely addresses this topic, I think it is valid. I do not think the first ad has any merit at all.
-Kerry's account of his time in Cambodia being seared in his memory, has done more to harm his credibility with me than anything these Ads have brought out.
-Dole was critical of the superficial nature of the wounds that led to Kerry's purple hearts, and his exit from combat. This tells me that my thoughts regarding those wounds appear to have some merit with one of the few people in position to criticise Kerry.
-This last bit somewhat Tarnishes the image of War Hero in my mind. Because while I am in no position to draw into question the heroism of someone who has gone under fire, I do have a pretty good idean of what a Hero is. To me a hero doesn't take advantage of bumps and bruises to go home, while his fellow soldiers are left shouldering the burden of combat. That isn't something a hero does, that sounds like something I might do.

Flasch186 08-24-2004 11:36 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Whar
Kerry never stated he witnessed atrocities. He related to Congress his conversation with eye witnesses and soldiers that claimed they had commited these acts.

"I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command...." - John Kerry 1971

"They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country." - John Kerry 1971

wow, this whole time I thought the Bush Campaign was saying that Kerry was THERE and had witnessed this stuff himself. hmmmm, Im glad that this was posted as it clarifys again to me that Kerry hasnt lied.....yet.

Flasch186 08-24-2004 11:39 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Glengoyne
Some aspects of Kerry's account of at least the bronze star event have been drawn into doubt. There were five boats involved in the incident. Three on one side of the river, two on the other. To this day the men on the two boats on Kerry's side of the river maintain they were under fire from both banks. To a man, at least of those who have weighed in on this, the men on the three boats on the other side of the river say there was no firing beyond the mine. Not all of these guys are part of the Swift Boat Vets.

I believe Kerry. From my limited understanding of combat, I gather that it is confusing. I understand that no single party may be privy to all of the events in an engagement. I don't think these guys have proven anything with regards to their first commercial questioning Kerry's combat citations. But I don't think their claims can be simply dismissed either, not all of them are affiliated with the swift boat vets.

I am going to repeat myself, just so I can get my thoughts on this out.
-Kerry served honorably in Vietnam
-Kerry deserved his silver and bronze stars
-Kerry deserved his purple hearts eventhough the wounds appear to have been two scrapes and a bruise.
-Kerry came back to the U.S. and slammed the war and essentially his fellow soldiers.
-That pissed off a bunch of his old commrades.
-I think that the content of his visit to congress in 1971, is strictly "in-bounds" with regards to this campaign.
-Since the second SBV ad squarely addresses this topic, I think it is valid. I do not think the first ad has any merit at all.
-Kerry's account of his time in Cambodia being seared in his memory, has done more to harm his credibility with me than anything these Ads have brought out.
-Dole was critical of the superficial nature of the wounds that led to Kerry's purple hearts, and his exit from combat. This tells me that my thoughts regarding those wounds appear to have some merit with one of the few people in position to criticise Kerry.
-This last bit somewhat Tarnishes the image of War Hero in my mind. Because while I am in no position to draw into question the heroism of someone who has gone under fire, I do have a pretty good idean of what a Hero is. To me a hero doesn't take advantage of bumps and bruises to go home, while his fellow soldiers are left shouldering the burden of combat. That isn't something a hero does, that sounds like something I might do.

i get bruises all the time and not once have i ever had to carry around a piece of shrapnel with me, perhaps youre using the wrong term for "scrapes and bruises". That is exaggeration.

Glengoyne 08-24-2004 11:42 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bee
So exactly how does that equate to the Kerry campaign coming out and saying the first purple heart was self-inflicted? I'm having a hard time following that connection.

Also, I had thought the first purple heart was from some type of hand grenade incident and didn't involve enemy fire. Again, I could be wrong because I haven't kept up with all this stuff that closely.

From what I understand. The incident involving the possibly self inflicted wound from a grenade, was a time when Kerry and another officer threw grenades into a rice bin(deny food to the enemy), and ran like hell. According to the other officer, "John didn't run fast enough, and ended up with rice and some shrapnel in his ass". This however happened on the same day as one of his other combat injuries. He was treated for both conditions at the same time, but only the combat related injury appears on his purple heart application. So I don't think the "self inflicted" dog hunts.

Whar 08-24-2004 11:43 AM
On the issue of 'self-inflicted' not getting a purple heart this is just plain wrong. To recieve a purple heart you basically have to be wounded as result of 'enemy action'. If due to the presense of the enemy you engage in a fire fight and are wounded due to shrapnel from a grenade you threw you are still awarded a purple heart.

Kerry's first purple heart was awarded when he encounter smugglers near Cam Ranh Bay. They surprised the smugglers and fire upon them. In the fire fight Kerry recieved a minor wound to the arm. If the injury was caused by enemy fire or American fire is meaningless. It still resulted from engaging the enemy and therefore qualifies as enemy action.

Flasch186 08-24-2004 11:45 AM
from the AP -

"On April 23, the Kerry campaign allowed 19 reporters who were traveling with him, including one from The Associated Press, to view the 36-page medical file for about 30 minutes while simultaneously interviewing his personal physician on a conference call. The physician wrote a three-page summary of the file that was posted on the Web site.

The Kerry campaign would not allow the AP to have a medical reporter present during that review and denied a request this week for a more substantial review. Kerry also has refused to release a journal he kept during his time in Vietnam, although parts were excerpted in Douglas Brinkley's book "Tour of Duty."

Bush released hundreds of pages of military documents but did not post them on a Web site. Bush also gave reporters limited access to his wartime medical records. "



They both are doing the same damn thing on this non - issue....muddying the waters so we dont have to talk about jobs, or economy, or minimum wages, or labor standard, or trade practices, etc. Neither one has clarified their war time activities and I could not care less. Talk to me about health care. Talk to me about trade issues. Talk to me about security. That si what I want to hear, and not at a convention which is salesmanship, I want to see debates and lots of them.




"On the issue of 'self-inflicted' not getting a purple heart this is just plain wrong. To recieve a purple heart you basically have to be wounded as result of 'enemy action'. If due to the presense of the enemy you engage in a fire fight and are wounded due to shrapnel from a grenade you threw you are still awarded a purple heart.

Kerry's first purple heart was awarded when he encounter smugglers near Cam Ranh Bay. They surprised the smugglers and fire upon them. In the fire fight Kerry recieved a minor wound to the arm. If the injury was caused by enemy fire or American fire is meaningless. It still resulted from engaging the enemy and therefore qualifies as enemy action."



Its incredible that the two sides can be so far apart....unfortunately you have to take the word of the man that was there unless somebody has video of something.

Bee 08-24-2004 11:47 AM
Here's part of an interesting article I found at Drudge while looking for more on the stuff Arles posted:

Quote:
Bob Dole, a prominent Republican and former presidential candidate, defended his criticism of White House hopeful John Kerry (news - web sites)'s war record as "political hardball," saying he had merely "tweaked" the Democratic candidate.

"This is presidential race. We're 70 some days away. It's political hardball, and certainly Senator Kerry understands that," Dole told CNN.

Dole said Kerry called him to express "disappointment" over his comments Sunday that the Massachusetts senator had won "three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they're all superficial wounds."

Dole's suggestion that Kerry "never bled" runs counter to US Navy records showing that Kerry, who also won a Bronze Star and a Silver Star for bravery, still carries shrapnel in his left thigh from a February 1969 firefight.

"There's respect there," Dole said Monady. "We were in the Senate together. But we're talking about the presidential race, and I tweaked him a little on the Purple Hearts."

"I just wanted him to get off Bush's back and have his people get off Bush's back," Dole said.

What I find interesting is not the fact that his comments were "political hardball", but the fact that he's admitting that so quickly.

Glengoyne 08-24-2004 11:57 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186
i get bruises all the time and not once have i ever had to carry around a piece of shrapnel with me, perhaps youre using the wrong term for "scrapes and bruises". That is exaggeration.

The purple hearts as I understand it, were awarded for injuries involving abrasions twice(one including a splinter of shrapnel), and a contussion. Also he never missed a day of duty because of these injuries. If scrapes and bruises is an exaggeration, it isn't that much of one.

SlapBone 08-24-2004 12:01 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186
You know that there is a middle ground right? It doesnt have to be one or the other. There are capitalistic countries that have medical care for everyone. Im not making that up, you know?

Sorry...I just get irritated at WHITE democrats that seem to be so concerned about the POOR people.

How many poor people do you know?

How many kids do you have where medical care is actually an issue for you?

I was born into a lower class white-trash oilfield family (or my father was actually). My grandfather could not even write his own name. My family name will be forever mispelled because my great-grandfather didn't know how to read or write either. These are people who lived through the depression and subsequently 3 major wars. My father learned how to read and write but quit school in the eigth grade to support his brothers (4 of them).

My father went a long way towards making sure that me and my brother never had to deal with those issues. I graduated high school but quit college. I hold a respectable middle-class job and hopefully my kids will be the ones that actually get a degree.

You see where I'm going here? Hand-outs create nothing but needy people. Hard work is where people get their sense of community and freedom. If somewhere along the way I would have come to depend on the government to give me what I need in this world, my family (as a whole) would be right back where we started in the early part of the last century.

Glengoyne 08-24-2004 12:02 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flasch186
... hmmmm, Im glad that this was posted as it clarifys again to me that Kerry hasnt lied.....yet.

Ahem. His memories of Cambodia were seared into his memory. Well maybe that was someone else's memory.

Bee 08-24-2004 12:03 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Glengoyne
The purple hearts as I understand it, were awarded for injuries involving abrasions twice(one including a splinter of shrapnel), and a contussion. Also he never missed a day of duty because of these injuries. If scrapes and bruises is an exaggeration, it isn't that much of one.

Here's what I found from an article based on the actual medical reports:

Quote:
They show Kerry had shrapnel wounds in his left thigh after his boat came under intense fire on Feb. 20, 1969, and he suffered shrapnel wounds in his left buttock and contusions on his right forearm when a mine detonated close to his boat on March 13, 1969.

The campaign could not locate a similar report for Kerry’s original Purple Heart. As evidence that Kerry was wounded, campaign spokesman Michael Meehan showed The Associated Press a “Sick Call Treatment Record” from Kerry’s personal files that included a brief written note dated Dec. 3, 1968, and stamped from the naval support facility at Cam Ranh Bay.

“Shrapnel in left arm above elbow. Shrapnel removed and appl bacitracin dressing. Ret to Duty,” it said. The note is followed by a signature that appears to say “JCCarreon” and some illegible letters that Meehan said probably designate the medical official’s rank.

Looks like all three times it was shrapnel and I suspect anyone receiving such wounds would have them treated.

Flasch186 08-24-2004 12:10 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by SlapBone
Sorry...I just get irritated at WHITE democrats that seem to be so concerned about the POOR people.

How many poor people do you know?

How many kids do you have where medical care is actually an issue for you?

I was born into a lower class white-trash oilfield family (or my father was actually). My grandfather could not even write his own name. My family name will be forever mispelled because my great-grandfather didn't know how to read or write either. These are people who lived through the depression and subsequently 3 major wars. My father learned how to read and write but quit school in the eigth grade to support his brothers (4 of them).

My father went a long way towards making sure that me and my brother never had to deal with those issues. I graduated high school but quit college. I hold a respectable middle-class job and hopefully my kids will be the ones that actually get a degree.

You see where I'm going here? Hand-outs create nothing but needy people. Hard work is where people get their sense of community and freedom. If somewhere along the way I would have come to depend on the government to give me what I need in this world, my family (as a whole) would be right back where we started in the early part of the last century.

Its called empathy, Im glad I have it. My GF's side of the family is poor or lower middle class, regardless.....Empathy does not need to be defended. It is a good thing and I do my best to help those that need it.

Arles 08-24-2004 12:33 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Whar
Kerry never stated he witnessed atrocities. He related to Congress his conversation with eye witnesses and soldiers that claimed they had commited these acts.

I was referring to Kerry's quote on Meet the Press in 1971:

"There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed, in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones, I conducted harassment and interdiction fire, I used .50-caliber machine guns which were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who. . .ordered us. . .are war criminals."

Sharpieman 08-24-2004 01:22 PM
The whole swift boat thing is ridiculous. I hate this crap, it just distracts the public from the real issues; healthcare, the war on terror, the war in Iraq, social security etc. You know what, I don't care whether John Kerry went to war or not, I don't care whether Bush went to war or not, what matter is what is going on in this country right now. It doesn't matter which side of the political spectrum your on, does it really effect whether Bush went AWOL or Kerry made up stories in Vietnam? I doubt the elderly are more worried about Vietnam than their drug coverage, or a young person is more worried about something that happened before they were born than how much their education is going to cost them. I know it's politics, I'm not stupid. This kind of stuff comes up all the time and I know some of you voters will be influenced by the dirt that the two sides throw at each other. But hopefully, the majority of voters care about what is going on in the present and what has happened in the last 4 years and vote for Bush or Kerry based on that information.

Bee 08-24-2004 01:26 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sharpieman
The whole swift boat thing is ridiculous. I hate this crap, it just distracts the public from the real issues; healthcare, the war on terror, the war in Iraq, social security etc. You know what, I don't care whether John Kerry went to war or not, I don't care whether Bush went to war or not, what matter is what is going on in this country right now. It doesn't matter which side of the political spectrum your on, does it really effect whether Bush went AWOL or Kerry made up stories in Vietnam? I doubt the elderly are more worried about Vietnam than their drug coverage, or a young person is more worried about something that happened before they were born than how much their education is going to cost them. I know it's politics, I'm not stupid. This kind of stuff comes up all the time and I know some of you voters will be influenced by the dirt that the two sides throw at each other. But hopefully, the majority of voters care about what is going on in the present and what has happened in the last 4 years and vote for Bush or Kerry based on that information.

Don't come into this thread throwing your common sense around, it's not appreciated. :D

druez 08-24-2004 01:30 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sharpieman
The whole swift boat thing is ridiculous. I hate this crap, it just distracts the public from the real issues; healthcare, the war on terror, the war in Iraq, social security etc. You know what, I don't care whether John Kerry went to war or not, I don't care whether Bush went to war or not, what matter is what is going on in this country right now. It doesn't matter which side of the political spectrum your on, does it really effect whether Bush went AWOL or Kerry made up stories in Vietnam? I doubt the elderly are more worried about Vietnam than their drug coverage, or a young person is more worried about something that happened before they were born than how much their education is going to cost them. I know it's politics, I'm not stupid. This kind of stuff comes up all the time and I know some of you voters will be influenced by the dirt that the two sides throw at each other. But hopefully, the majority of voters care about what is going on in the present and what has happened in the last 4 years and vote for Bush or Kerry based on that information.


I tried posting something similiar to this earlier in another thread. I don't like Kerry, but I really don't care what he did in Vietnam 30 years ago. Its a moot point and one I think should be dropped by both sides.

Jason

GrantDawg 08-24-2004 01:50 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by druez
I tried posting something similiar to this earlier in another thread. I don't like Kerry, but I really don't care what he did in Vietnam 30 years ago. Its a moot point and one I think should be dropped by both sides.

Jason

Actually, many have said the same thing. Some people just like to argue.

Leonidas 08-24-2004 02:10 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Glengoyne
I don't think this is even an issue. I believe that Kerry is a war hero. Bona fide. Not a doubt in my mind. I also think the Bush served his country honorably in the Air Guard. Oh and speaking of a case where there is no evidence stacked up against an honorable discharge.

Oh and why I posted. Provable? I don't think you read the articles in the first couple of posts. There is NO proving anything here. You pretty much just have to take Kerry at his word, which I do.

The most damning condemnation I have heard of Kerry was from Bob Dole. The "he should apologize to the vets" for his testimony before congress is minor compared to "It was three purple hears, and you are out. He got three purple hearts, and as far as I can tell he never even bled. That last was a paraphrase. It was something I was wondering about when I heard his third Purple Heart was awarded for a contussion on his forearm, a bruise. Now I understand that this was almost definately the norm, and the Purple Hearts were handed out too commonly. I do think that slightly tarnished the unabashed war hero image Kerry is portraying. So that to me says something about his willingness to serve his country. He got out with just a few scrapes and bruises. I would have likely done the same, and a lot of others did as well.

I almost totally agree with you. I've made some snide remarks recently about this stuff, particularly comparing what Michael Moore did in his movie to the Swiftboat dudes, mainly out of my contempt form Moore, not love of the swifties against Kerry. The Navy affirms Kerry's actions, these guys need to leave it alone. As for Bush, there are people who remember him serving and not a shred of proof had come out to prove otherwise. I have reservists working for me and depending on things in their lives these people can disappear for long stretches of time. Nobody holds it against them and they usually make it up with extended service down the line. I think Kerry and supporters have done a grave disservice to the Guard and Reserves by implying these people were draft dodgers and wish someone would call them on just that general point.

But I specifically wanted to point out the Purple Heart comments above. I don't know where you heard about Purple Hearts handed out like candy. Maybe it happened that way in some commands, but that doesn't make it right. I guess it's probably an issue of personal integrity. I'm currently reading the Tommy Franks autobio American Soldier and the General makes his own point about the Purple Heart. He got three himself and said he could have gotten many more, but didn't feel those other wounds were worthy. I also recall reading stories about WWII guys who didn't get Purple Hearts for wounds a lot worse than Kerry's. A shrapnel wound without hospital time didn't get it, and certainly not if it came from accidental discharge of your own weapon. You needed to take a bullet or spend a fair amount of time laid up, and it most definitely had to come from enemy fire to get the award, and people who tried to milk it were certainly looked down upon. I think that's where Dole is coming from. He probably would have been better off keeping it to himself, but I can understand his opinion.

The military award system is open to abuse. There is a lot of integrity involved when writing these awards up. I wrote the decoration from my last assignment, and as the XO at the time I know for a fact my boss did not check any of the facts on it, although I was prepared to offer verification if asked. On the enlisted side somewhere a chief will likely call BS and make you prove something if he smells a rat, but I have never seen it with officers. Integrity is expected.

Kerry was awarded the Purple Hearts and met the letter of the law for them. I'm not in position to pass judgement. I can only assume they are legit. However it is possible to have gamed the system to get awards not earned, but to make such an accusation means you really need to have your ducks in a row on it. This is a huge accusation. I don't think the swift boat vets make a compelling case and should probably stick to attacking Kerry his speech to Congress and admitting to war crimes. Drop the part about his medals. It doesn't play and frankly they demean themselves with it.

SFL Cat 08-24-2004 02:25 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by druez
I tried posting something similiar to this earlier in another thread. I don't like Kerry, but I really don't care what he did in Vietnam 30 years ago. Its a moot point and one I think should be dropped by both sides.

Jason

Again, if Kerry hadn't made his Vietnam service such a big deal at the Convention (look at me, I'm a Vietnam War Hero!), this probably would be a non issue. If the Swifties are lying, all he had to do from the beginning is to request and release the pertinent military and personal documents to show that their charges were completely without merit. However, the fact that he has had to backtrack and change some details from some of his stories that have appeared in his official biography and have been included in statements he has made on the Senate floor doesn't bode well for him -- at least as far as his honesty and integrity goes.

Really, all he had to do at the very beginning of this controversy is say something like, "I fought in Vietnam. I served my country and did what I was asked to do. However, while there, I saw many things that convinced me that this was a war the United States shouldn't be fighting. When I came home, I dedicated myself to speaking out against what I considered an unjust war. It was a polarized time and I can see now how some of the things I said and did were offensive to my fellow countrymen who served with honor in Vietnam. While I still stand by my moral convictions about the war, I do apologize to those who I caused pain with my words and actions." If he had done that rather than having his people try to do a hatchet job on the swifties and make such a big show of trying to shut them down, then his current war record wouldn't be receiving such a close anal probe. It was also a mistake for the Dems to go so hot and heavy after Bush's military service, because let's face it -- what goes around, comes around.

I'm not surprised to see Kerry's campaign begin to implode, because according to my conspiracy theory, the power brokers in the Donkey Party are still loyal to Clinton and don't want Kerry/Edwards to win so Hillary can run in 08. End of story. ;)

Bee 08-24-2004 02:44 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leonidas
I also recall reading stories about WWII guys who didn't get Purple Hearts for wounds a lot worse than Kerry's. A shrapnel wound without hospital time didn't get it, and certainly not if it came from accidental discharge of your own weapon. You needed to take a bullet or spend a fair amount of time laid up, and it most definitely had to come from enemy fire to get the award, and people who tried to milk it were certainly looked down upon.

Could that be because the criteria changed in 1962?

SirFozzie 08-24-2004 02:45 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by SFL Cat
Again, if Kerry hadn't made his Vietnam service such a big deal at the Convention (look at me, I'm a Vietnam War Hero!), this probably would be a non issue. If the Swifties are lying, all he had to do from the beginning is to request and release the pertinent military and personal documents to show that their charges were completely without merit. However, the fact that he has had to backtrack and change some details from some of his stories that have appeared in his official biography and have been included in statements he has made on the Senate floor doesn't bode well for him -- at least as far as his honesty and integrity goes.

the fact that he's made little niggles of errors is troubling sure.. but the Swift Boat guy who swore in an affadavit that he served with Kerry, and turned out he didn't? Or the guy who said he treated Kerry for wounds... but didn't? Or the guy whose bronze star said he was under fire.. but he didn't bother to correct it for thirty years?

That's a HELL of a lot more troubling.

SFL Cat 08-24-2004 02:52 PM
They aren't running for President, Kerry is.

Besides, if the swifties are twisting the facts just to make Kerry look bad, that isn't much different than what Michael Moore has done in his recent "documentaries."

I haven't heard Bush address Moore's movie once in public. The fact that Kerry is going ballistic over the swifties gives the whole thing more staying power than it otherwise would possess IMO.

Glengoyne 08-24-2004 02:57 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bee
Here's what I found from an article based on the actual medical reports:



Looks like all three times it was shrapnel and I suspect anyone receiving such wounds would have them treated.

Regarding "he suffered shrapnel wounds in his left buttock and contusions on his right forearm when a mine detonated close to his boat on March 13, 1969."

The shrapnel in his left buttock apparently came from the explosion of his own grenade(or Jim Rassaman's(sp?), and was specifically NOT listed in the paperwork for his Purple Heart. That purple heart was for the contussion(bruise) on his forearm.

As I understand it the injury for the second purple heart, was termed an abrassion in the paperwork. Your statement that it included shrapnel is the first time I have heard that.

Regarding the first. This is the one inflicted in the fire-fight with the smugglers. I believe it was also termed an abrassion, and there was some small piece of shrapnel removed from the wound. No sutures, the shrapnel was on the surface.

The most significant injury seems to be the shrapnel from the time he and Rassman blew up the rice bin. If he is still carrying it around, it is not because it couldn't be removed surgically, they didn't even try. All three were superficial wounds, not even significant to require sutures.

First I'd like to say I am embarrased to have learned all that I have about something I consider insignificant. At some level, I wanted to learn these things because things I heard about the purple hearts made me wonder what happened. I was actually hoping he had been significantly injured, but as far as can be determined, that just didn't happen.

Second, I still believe he served honorably in Vietnam. I still believe he earned his citations for courage under fire. I think he deserves some "extra-credit" for actually going to Vientam while G.W. was serving in Texas. I think the three purple hearts for superficial wounds tarnishes the "War Hero Image" he is cultivating. Maybe now I consider him a hero with a lower case "H".

JonInMiddleGA 08-24-2004 02:58 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by SFL Cat
They aren't running for President, Kerry is.

Bingo.

Leonidas 08-24-2004 02:58 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by SFL Cat
They aren't running for President, Kerry is.

Besides, if the swifties are twisting the facts just to make Kerry look bad, that isn't much different than what Michael Moore has done in his recent "documentaries."

I haven't heard Bush address Moore's movie once in public. The fact that Kerry is going ballistic over the swifties gives the whole thing more staying power than it otherwise would possess IMO.

Another interesting point in all this, last night Joe Scarborough had Tom Oliphant on his show. Oliphant is a Boston reporter who has known and covered Kerry for almost 35 years and he said this scenario has played out in every single Kerry campaign. And he said every time Kerry has poised himself to make this THE issue of the campaign. He said in every Kerry election his biggest campaign strategy has always been the counterattack to the attacks on his war record and he expected Kerry to only turn the heat up on the issue and to ride it out to the end of the campaign. In a way, these guys are playing right into Kerry's hands. I think he knows he has the goods to back this issue up and by making such an issue of his service in the first place he was almost begging the Republicans to jump on it. So it's not like Kerry is getting bushwhacked here (pun only slightly intended), this is exactly how he wanted this to play out.

SFL Cat 08-24-2004 03:03 PM
I guess we'll see. It certainly hasn't helped him with vets in recent polls.


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