[Cicero]

As I understand it from earlier articles, which may or may not know what they are talking about, Kerry won three Purple Hearts, one from an artillery fragment and the other two minor unspecified wounds. None of them kept him off his feet or put him out of action for more than a day.

But evidently the rule was that after you collected 3 purple hearts you had done your share and could be rotated out.

I, too, would like to know a lot more about the details behind these awards, the names of the commanders involved, whether political pressure was applied, and so forth.

The Silver Star award was also pretty ambiguous. Normally, the most someone of Kerry's rank would have gotten for very heroic conduct would be a bronze star, according to another article. And he won it for leaping off his boat, running behind a hut, and shooting a wounded man. What we don't know is if the wounded man was still dangerous, or if he was lying in a pool of blood, or maybe even already dead. I'd like to hear more about this one, too, from folks who were there.

[mystery-ak]

You have to remember that since Kerry was the CO of that swift boat, he wrote the after action report.....embellishment?

It seems Kerry kept track of every scratch he recieved...

[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.