ANY VETS OUT THERE? PLEASE ADD YOUR NAME TO OUR LIST:
Posted on 02/16/2004 4:55:52 AM PST by O6ret
Didn't catch the intro so don't know who he is except name (LTC Calhoun) which was flashed across the screen...but he clearly said he knew Bush during the NG days in question and verified that he was there.
"The issue here is, as I have heard it raised, is was he present and active in Alabama at the time he was supposed to be," said Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran. "I don't have the answer to that question and just because you get an honorable discharge does not in fact answer that question."
Kerry Lies.
Absolutely correct.
She's quite a woman!! Ready to fall on the sword (as a disinformer) to help attack Bush.
You're right.
"I've never made any judgments about any choice somebody made about avoiding the draft, about going to Canada, going to jail, being a conscientious objector, going into the National Guard. Those are choices people make," Kerry said.
For someone not in a position to comment, he sure makes a lot of comments!
"But there is a question that's been raised about whether -- about what his service was. And I don't know the answers to those questions," Kerry said.
...Along with Kerry's unquestionable and repeated bravery, he also took an action that has received far less notice: He requested and was granted a transfer out of Vietnam six months before his combat tour was slated to end on the grounds that he had earned three Purple Hearts. None of his wounds was disabling; he said one cost him two days of service and the other two did not lead to any absence.
No period better captures the internal conflicts besetting John Kerry than Vietnam. He enlisted as a Navy officer candidate despite his criticisms as Yale's class orator of America's intervention in Southeast Asia. He would become a war hero, recipient of the Silver and Bronze stars, but would also become an antiwar leader, causing some former crewmates to feel he had betrayed them.
A Dangerous Assignment
Kerry initially thought about enlisting as a pilot. But his father, Richard Kerry - a test pilot who served in the Army Air Corps - warned him that if he flew in combat, he might lose his love of flying. So Kerry, who sought in so many ways to emulate John Fitzgerald Kennedy, took to the water, just as his idol served on a World War II patrol boat, the 109.
Kerry served two tours. For a relatively uneventful six months, from December 1967 to June 1968, he served in the electrical department aboard the USS Gridley, a guided-missile frigate that supported aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin and was far removed from combat.
"I didn't have any real feel for what the heck was going on [in the war]," Kerry has recalled. His ship returned to its Long Beach, Calif., port on June 6, 1968, the day that Robert F. Kennedy died from a gunshot wound he received on the previous night at a Los Angeles hotel. The antiwar protests were growing. But within five months Kerry was heading back to Vietnam, seeking to fulfill his officer commitment despite his growing misgivings about the war.
Kerry initially hoped to continue his service at a relatively safe distance from most fighting, securing an assignment as "swift boat" skipper. While the 50-foot swift boats cruised the Vietnamese coast a little closer to the action than the Gridley had come, they were still considered relatively safe. "I didn't really want to get involved in the war," Kerry said in a little-noticed contribution to a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing."
But two weeks after he arrived in Vietnam, the swift boat mission changed -- and Kerry went from having one of the safest assignments in the escalating conflict to one of the most dangerous. Under the newly launched Operation SEALORD, swift boats were charged with patrolling the narrow waterways of the Mekong Delta to draw fire and smoke out the enemy. Cruising inlets and coves and canals, swift boats were especially vulnerable targets.
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Okay, so now I get it. John Kerry wanted to see some action but he didn't really want to be at risk. He wanted to be like John Kennedy without actually risking his life. He sought and received a relatively cushy assignment but the "cushy" part only lasted a couple of weeks before he realized he was in over his head. Bing, bang, boom, he got his 3 Purple Hearts in the next 4 months and, despite the fact that his injuries amounted to little more than a shaving accident (...or a malfunctioning can opener) he found a loop hole and he fled.
So, this business about Dubya trying to avoid the war by joining the guard is all a bunch of crap. Avoiding the war was exactly what John Kerry was trying to do. He was just too stupid to realize there were other avenues such as the guard. Once he realized what he was up against, he sought the quickest way out. Watching John Kerry talk, I don't believe these Sgt. Fury-esque war stories for one minute. He's gambling on the idea everyone will feel the questioning of a Vietnam Vet is deplorable and beyond the pale. Let's see the medical records on those three purple hearts.
LOL!!
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