Kerry Settled on Purple Hearts to Get Him out of Unexpected Danger on Swiftboats

In the last week I read a coherent explanation in the New York Times, New York Post, or a conservative web page like The Weekly Standard or Wall Street Journal that makes the entire Kerry medals controversy clear. This blog, in fact, has a discussion about Kerry's first "tour" on a boat kept off shore and facing no danger and not even considered to be a "tour" in Vietnam but his second was more dangerous than he ever expected.

But no one has quite concluded the obvious, that I can find: Kerry found himself in a swiftboat that was facing much more hazardous duty than he ever expected and to get out of it as fast as possible, just like any smart Yalie would do, he checked the rules and discovered that three Purple Hearts would do it. So that's why he started as quickly as possible collecting Purple Hearts for every scratch he endured, and in just FOUR MONTHS he was out of there....and safely back in the US where he could begin his two years as an antiwar protestor, followed by his 20 years attempting to gut the military and CIA. THIS is why his Vietnam service is relevant.

Here's the article in the New York Times....Kristof points to this about Kerry in the NYT this past Saturday (link below:)

Did Mr. Kerry volunteer for dangerous duty? Not as much as his campaign would like you to believe. The Kerry Web site declares, "As he was graduating from Yale, John Kerry volunteered to serve in Vietnam - because, as he later said, 'It was the right thing to do.' "

In fact, as Mr. Kerry was about to graduate from Yale, he was inquiring about getting an educational deferment to study in Europe. When that got nowhere, he volunteered for the Navy, which was much less likely to involve danger in Vietnam than other services. After a year on a ship in the ocean, Mr. Kerry volunteered for Swift boats, but at that time they were used only in Vietnam's coastal waters. A short time later, the Swift boats were assigned exceptionally dangerous duties up Vietnamese rivers. "When I signed up for the Swift boats, they had very little to do with the war,'' Mr. Kerry wrote in 1986, adding, "I didn't really want to get involved in the war."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/18/opinion/18kristof.html

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