Book reopens Kerry's war wounds ( New Book questions Kerry's Nam injuries, etc)

VIETNAM has been the defining issue for John Kerry. His status as a decorated war hero has helped to propel him to the front of the pack of Democrat candidates seeking to evict George W.Bush from the White House. Conservative critics believe he has been given a free ride for too long on his war record, however, and are planning a fightback.

Support for their case is expected to come from a book to be published next month by reporters from The Boston Globe in Kerry's home state of Massachusetts. The book, JF Kerry, the Complete Biography, will question the extent of his injuries in Vietnam and whether he was entitled to an early release from the war.

Vietnam, The Washington Post opined at the weekend, "is a double-edged issue" for the 60-year-old Democratic frontrunner. Kerry has not authorised the release of his war records - a strange omission, say his political foes, given the ferocity with which his supporters have demanded to see every last document of Bush's military service in the Texas Air National Guard.

"Vietnam is such a crucial part of his background and his campaign, you would think he would want people to see them," said Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, a conservative journal. "There is going to be pressure on him to release them."

Kerry, who is surrounded on the stump by the "band of brothers" who fought with him in the Mekong Delta, became a fierce public critic of the Vietnam War after he left the navy.

A faked photograph of Kerry sharing a microphone with Jane Fonda was a warning of how his opposition to the conflict would be used against him. There also has been much criticism of the way he threw away another man's medals rather than his own during a 1971 protest demonstration.

Kerry's conduct during the war, however, was until now thought to be sacrosanct. Unlike many of his generation, he volunteered for service in Vietnam. He went on to perform heroically as the skipper of a Swift boat patrolling Vietcong-infested waters, and won a Bronze Star and a Silver Star for bravery.

Kerry served only four months of a year-long tour of duty after he received three Purple Hearts for being wounded in action. The injuries were not serious; by his own account, one shrapnel wound laid him off for two days and the other two did not interrupt his duties.

Five of his friends died in action and his medals show that, at the very least, he had several brushes with death. The future senator then invoked what he insists was a "three and you're out" rule enabling a soldier with three Purple Hearts to be sent home.

He requested a transfer and was given a plum job as an admiral's aide in Brooklyn. He returned to the US a bitter opponent of the war and was released from the army early.

In response to an inquiry from The Sunday Times, Kerry's campaign staff gave the newspaper a copy of naval regulations stating that "all naval personnel" who are "wounded three times, regardless of the nature of the wound or the treatment required for each wound" may be reassigned.

A spokesman for the US Navy said, however, that such redeployment was not automatic: "It would depend a lot on the nature of the injuries."

Ted Sampley, who runs Vietnam Vets Against John Kerry, said if a soldier could be sent home for minor wounds, "there would have been a lot of people claiming scratches, getting their Purple Hearts and getting out of there".

Sampley believes that the well-connected Kerry - photographed with president John F.Kennedy as a young man - simply received favourable treatment. "How many other people were able to get out of Vietnam early and be reassigned to a cushy post?" he said.

His "first tour" was four (or five - his records have never been released - by Kerry;s own orders!) OFFSHORE in the air-conditioned comfort of the USS GRIDLEY (CG-21) as electrical officer.

Kerry was there from Jan-May, with leave and rotations probably to the Philippines in the middle several times as his ship rotated around. Never under fire. Never saw combat.

Certainly not " a year duty" ...
Anyway.... After he got back to Long Beach in May, Kerry abandoned his shipmates to go to the Napa Valley (Mare Island) for 5 months of Swift boat training. Except he left his duty station in Vietnam after only 90 days of service to go play admiral's aid back home!

Further, we know he was protesting in meeting in Saigon in front of both Admiral Zumwalt and Gen. Abrams several times while country ... So we really can't tell how much time he spent fighting. Best estimates are some 18 days of real duty. (Bush, by the way, had more "hours" flight time than Kerry had actually in danger of enemy fire!)

So ... five months (offshore) plus 90 days (in country) isn't very impressive. Particularly since his boss apparently didn't see any problem shipping him home right in the middle of everybody else's war.

Did he simply want to get rid of Kerry? Seems so.

Here's another opinion: Letters that have crossed our desk for our military heroes who are renaissance men I've long thought that John Kerry's war record was phoney. We talked about it when you were here. It's mainly been instinct because, as you know, nobody who claims to have seen the action he does would so shamelessly flaunt it for political gain. So I spent a couple of hours on the internet yesterday, made a bunch of notes, and I'm sending them as an attachment. In addition, look at the website http://25thaviation.org/johnkerry/id15htm. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to chronicle Kerry's checkered career. I was in the Delta shortly after he left. I know that area well. I know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the doctrine used. I know the equipment. Although I was attached to CTF-116 (PBRs) I spent a fair amount of time with CTF-115 (swift boats), Kerry's command. Here are my problems and suspicions: (1) Kerry was in-country less than four months and collected, a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three purple hearts. I never heard of anybody with any outfit I worked with (including SEAL One, the Sea Wolves, Riverines and the River Patrol Force) collecting that much hardware so fast, and for such pedestrian actions. The Swifts did a commendable job. But that duty wasn't the worst you could draw. They operated only along the coast and in the major rivers (Bassac and Mekong). The rough stuff in the hot areas was mainly handled by the smaller, faster PBRs. (2) Three Purple Hearts but no limp. All injuries so minor that no time lost from duty. Amazing luck. Or he was putting himself in for medals every time he bumped his head on the wheel house hatch? Combat on the boats was almost always at close range. You didn't have minor wounds. At least not often. Not three times in a row. Then he used the three purple hearts to request a trip home eight months before the end of his tour. Fishy. (3) The details of the event for which he was given the Silver Star make no sense at all. Supposedly, a B-40 was fired at the boat and missed. Charlie jumps up with the launcher in his hand, the bow gunner knocks him down with the twin .50, Kerry beaches the boat, jumps off, shoots Charlie, and retreives the launcher. If true, he did everything wrong. (a) Standard procedure when you took rocket fire was to put your stern to the action and go balls to the wall. A B-40 has the ballistic integrity of a frisbie after about 25 yards, so you put 50 yards or so between you and the beach and begin raking it with your .50's. (b) Did you ever see anybody get knocked down with a .50 caliber round and get up? The guy was dead or dying. The rocket launcher was empty. There was no reason to go after him (except if you knew he was no danger to you just flopping around in the dust during his last few seconds on earth, and you wanted some derring do in your after-action report). And we didn't shoot wounded people. We had rules against that, too. (c) Kerry got off the boat. This was a major breach of standing procedures. Nobody on a boat crew ever got off a boat in a hot area. EVER! The reason was simple. If you had somebody on the beach your boat was defenseless. It coudn't run and it couldn' t return fire. It was stupid and it put his crew in danger. He should have been relieved and reprimanded. I never heard of any boat crewman ever leaving a boat during or after a firefight. Something is fishy. Here we have a JFK wannabe (the guy Halsey wanted to court martial for carelessly losing his boat and getting a couple people killed by running across the bow of a Jap destroyer) who is hardly in Vietnam long enough to get good tan, collects medals faster than Audie Murphy in a job where lots of medals weren't common, gets sent home eight months early, requests separation from active duty a few months after that so he can run for Congress, finds out war heros don't sell well in Massachsetts in 1970 so reinvents himself as Jane Fonda, throws his ribbons in the dirt with the cameras running to jump start his political career, gets Stillborn Pell to invite him to address Congress and Bobby Kennedy's speechwriter to do the heavy lifting, winds up in the Senate himself a few years later, votes against every major defense bill, says the CIA is irrelevant after the Wall came down, votes against the Gulf War, a big mistake since that turned out well, decides not to make the same mistake twice so votes for invading Iraq, but oops, that didn't turn out so well so he now says he really didn't mean for Bush to go to war when he voted to allow him to go to war. I'm real glad you or I never had this guy covering out flanks in Vietnam. I sure don't want him as Commander in Chief. I hope that somebody from CTF-115 shows up with some facts challenging Kerry's Vietnam record. I know in my gut it's wildy inflated. And fishy. Keep smiling, Mike ((Michael Benge is a Foreign Service officer and a former Vietnam POW (1968 to 1973) ))

I havn't ever posted this, but what the hell, I'll post it now. An old PT-Boat man who told me he was in Kennedy's sqadron told me that the truth about what happened that night was very different from the movies.

He said Kennedy was a show off and a "yacht club" snob, who frequently missed briefings. He was already a "somebody" as a rich Bostonian son of an important Ambassador. So he didn't exactly "apply himself" in the PT-boat war. Who needs briefings? Party on!

So the night in question, he missed the mission brief, due to partying, (again.) He took off late to join his squadron, in ambushing an expected column of Jap destroyers.

Because he was late, he arrived at full speed, throwing a huge very visible wake, and making loud engine noise. This comprimised the stealthy ambush by the rest of his squadron, which was already quietly sneaking into position at low speed, while showing no wakes.

Kennedy's noisy and visible late arrival lost the PT boats the element of surprise, and all hell broke loose early. Kennedy was out of position (that missed briefing againg) and got run down by a Jap Destroyer, and the rest is history.

So help me, an old PT-boatman told me that story. He said he's laughed bitterly all these years about how Kennedy levereged that night when he screwed up into the Presidency.

I relay this tale to demonstrate (again) that certain medals must be looked at very carefully, if the medal winner is a ladder-climbing officer who immediately runs for office on the credit given him by that medal. LBJ....JFK1....JFK2

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