***Ketchup Boy Only Served For FOUR MONTHS***

Stardate: 0402.17

[thesummerwind]

They surmised the very same thing you said........ that if Kerry were two years younger, would he have been willing to go off to Vietnam when the war was "hotter" in '68 versus '66.

Before 1966 the war wasn't so dangerous, and the country was mostly for it. Things changed in those next two years. I know, I was in college from 64 to 68.

Anyhow that's what was talked about on The Chrissie Show last night.

[kcvl]

Kerry needs to release his military records. Let's see how he earned all those medals (that are still hanging on his office wall) in 4 MONTHS!

[jackbill]

Read what I said, and then read the following from the Boston Globe and Kerry's own lips, at:

http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061603.shtml

"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."

[antiRepublicrat]

John Kerry didn't "respect" the service then or now. He is a lying POS. Let him release his military records!

You don't know that, maybe it's one monster case of post-traumatic stress disorder and he really believed in his country as he went into Vietnam. I'd like to see the records too, but I'll bet everything will be pretty normal for someone in his situation.

It's strange how much people can change. Kerry was a relative hero in Vietnam while IMO Bush took the easy rich-boy out to avoid getting hurt or interrupting his party schedule. Yet now Kerry's an unpatriotic chicken and Bush is showing some serious patriotic backbone.

[Mo1]

I'm not a military expert .. but I keep wondering how wise it was to beach a boat that size as Kerry did?

Wouldn't beaching a boat like he did put is crew in more dnager and what if there was more of the enemy around .. wouldn't his crew then be a sitting target with having their boat beached??

[Eva]

I have seen remarks from Kerry's superiors that said that Kerry was considered a loose cannon in Vietnam and that they were happy to get him out of there.

Last night on Scarborough, an MSNBC guy called the guy from the VVA a LIAR several times for stating that John Kerry said that ALL Vietnam veterans committed war crimes. I remember reading that a member of congress questioned Kerry as to whether he had committed war crimes and he said, yes, we all did. We need to find this quote and force a public apology. If we are wrong then the VVA and the rest of us owe the apology, but I don't think we are wrong. I just don't have the time to look it up.

[katana]

I'm still waiting to hear about the wounds that earned him his three purple hearts. Not that they weren't honorably earned, but supposedly they were not serious enough to warrant anything more than a bandage and an aspirin. Also, my understanding about his action that garnered a Silver Star commendation is that he jumped off his boat to dispatch an enemy combatant who had just been chewed up by 50 caliber machine gun fire. Merciful? Maybe. Heroic and suitable for a Silver Star? I'm not sure.

I was too young to serve in Viet Nam and was rejected for mid-70's service because of double knee surgeries as a teenager, so I really hesitate to judge anybody who was there. However, a nephew of mine earned a Silver Star for Ranger service in Mogadishu (yes, "Blackhawk Down") so my assessment of what it takes to earn that kind of honor may be skewed to the high side. Can any Vets comment?

[MrsEmmaPeel]

Last year I had the opportunity to fly coast to coast. Seated next to me on one of the flights was gent (mid 50s). We started talking about the country in general, Iraq, Bush and soon he talked about his own Vietnam experience. He has a son in Iraq right now. The son's already been home on leave and back there again. This fellow recalled to me the reception he son received coming home as opposed to the reception he himself got when he returned from Vietnam. He remembered lines of "protesters" waiting to greet him and all of his comrades, being spat on, pelted with rotten eggs and tomatoes and being called many things (baby killers) came to mind. Not only did he blame Jane Fonda for his rude reception, but Senator Kerry as well.

Kerry is no war hero.

[syriacus]

Saying that his assignment was safe is re-writing history.

True enough. But never underestimate an opportunist...

Kerry is on the record saying he chose the swift boat assignment because he thought it would be safe

Heroism, and growing concern about war By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, 6/16/2003

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

[kcvl]

In November 2000, the twilight of his presidency, Bill Clinton traveled to Vietnam, a place that he and thousands of other young Americans tried to avoid in the 1960s. He spoke at the Vietnam National University of Hanoi, and among those in the audience that he singled out for recognition was a tall man from New England who had been to Vietnam many times before.

His name was John F. Kerry, and he had played a key role in bringing about the first visit to Vietnam by an American president since Richard M. Nixon briefly met with U.S. troops there in 1969.

The Vietnam War was the defining event in Kerry's life, as it was for so many others of his generation. Today, as the Massachusetts senator seeks the Democratic presidential nomination, the war provides a critical underpinning for his candidacy. Kerry, a decorated combat veteran, would not easily be portrayed by President Bush and the Republicans as soft on national security issues.

But Kerry's time as a combatant, and his equally well-known role as a leader of the veterans who returned from Vietnam and opposed the war, account for only part of his personal odyssey involving the war and its aftermath that symbolically culminated in Clinton's visit to Hanoi. More than any other member of Congress, it was Kerry, with his ally Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who cleared the way for normal diplomatic relations between the United States and Vietnam, beginning the process of healing the deep wounds of war.


AND A $950 MILLION business for Kerry's cousin!!!

[StriperSniper]

Eeewww, makes you wonder how long that bottom slug has been in the bottle.

Don't worry, it will never come out. Even if you try, it wil hold on and fight you all the way. It is living the good life with that never ending supply of food they keep giving it. ;-)

[Mo1]

I have seen remarks from Kerry's superiors that said that Kerry was considered a loose cannon in Vietnam and that they were happy to get him out of there.

Last night on Hardball .. Brinkley said, besides Kerry's crew .. he also interviewed other men that knew Kerry during his time in Vietnam and they didn't like him .. Brinkley didn't say who they were or why they didn't like Kerry

[dennisw]

You don't know that, maybe it's one monster case of post-traumatic stress disorder...

Dittos on that. The swift boat mission turned to a more bloody one. He's been acting this out on the political stage ever since then. Now more than ever since it's high stakes bingo compared to liberal Massachusetts where they'll believe any old "hero in Vietnam" jive. This race is part psychotherapy for him

No disrespect to our honorable Viet Vets. Just speaking truth as I see it

[FlatLandBeer]

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[twigs]

I must tell you, after hearing the details of Kerry's service in VN and knowing his protest activities afterwards, I have to wonder if his accusations of American soldiers torturing VN civilians were projections from his own behavior. That said, however, I see no good in resurrecting these incidents from the past. War is difficult and who knows more than 30 years later the circumstances that went into making moment-by-moment decisions, even bad ones? I don't want to second guess Kerry's actions, but I don't see anything that makes me believe he was officer material then, much less cammander-in-chief material now. And the fact that he would dare recall Pres. Bush's war record is beneath contempt.

[kcvl]

In 1991 the Senate created the Select Senate Committee on POW/MIA Affairs to investigate the possibility that U.S. prisoners of war and soldiers designated missing in action were still alive in Vietnam. Acting as chairman, Kerry helped persuade the group to vote unanimously that no American servicemen still remained in Vietnam. In doing so, he helped begin the process of normalizing U.S.-Vietnamese relations.

But Kerry's participation in the Committee became controversial in December 1992 when Hanoi announced that it had awarded Colliers International, a Boston-based real estate company, an exclusive deal to develop its commercial real estate potentially worth billions. Stuart Forbes, the CEO of Colliers, is Kerry's cousin.

[StriperSniper]

Had there been more VC (Say in the tree line) beaching your craft would make it a sitting duck for Mortars and rockets.

I would think so. That account is much different that what I hear people like Chrissy Matthews saying he was taking heavy fire from both banks. Now we see it was one guy with a now empty rocket launcher.

Hmmmmmm......the more information we get, the more questions it seems to raise....

[dennisw]

Agreed on that one. See what this North Vietnamese general has to say about John Kerry's anti war "hijinks"

FROM NEWSMAX:

Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2004 10:25 p.m. EST Gen. Giap: Kerry's Group Helped Hanoi Defeat U.S. The North Vietnamese general in charge of the military campaign that finally drove the U.S. out of South Vietnam in 1975 credited a group led by Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry with helping him achieve victory. In his 1985 memoir about the war, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap wrote that if it weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S. - according to Fox News Channel war historian Oliver North. That's why, he predicted on Tuesday, the Vietnam War issue "is going to blow up in Kerry's face." "People are going to remember Gen. Giap saying if it weren't for these guys [Kerry's group], we would have lost," North told radio host Sean Hannity. "The Vietnam Veterans Against the War encouraged people to desert, encouraged people to mutiny - some used what they wrote to justify fragging officers," noted the former Marine lieutenant colonel, who earned two purple hearts in Vietnam. "John Kerry has blood of American soldiers on his hands," North said.

[tbpiper]

You must be proud of him.

Absolutely and relieved that he's home. You described him as an honorable man. I appreciate that. I never thought of him as a man, he's just my boy and it's a 'dad' thing to look at him that way. He turned 20 in Mosul, but other than adding another year, he's added some experiences alot of us will never have. He tells me some of them when he feels like it. I just listen an marvel at the fact he went through that stuff. We saw alot of 'boys' his age at Ft Campbell last week when we went to pick him up. All of them glad to be back and excited about going on leave. There was still some child like glee in their banterning each other, but there was an unmistakeable air of character also. I'm very proude of the honorable man my son has become and judging by the others of his generation I saw in uniform, our country is in good hands.