Setting Straight Kerry’s War Record (Admiral Zumwalt on Kerry)

New York Sun ^ | February 27, 2004 | Thomas Lipscomb

[Clodia Pulcher]

"Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, told me — 30 years ago when he was still CNO —that during his own command of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam, just prior to his anointment as CNO, young Kerry had created great problems for him and the other top brass,by killing so many non-combatant civilians and going after other non-military targets.‘We had virtually to straitjacket him to keep him under control,’"

[DustyMoment]

This story sounds extremely disingenuous to me. Why would Zumwalt, the CNO, have any particular notice of one Navy Lt. on a Swift boat? If Kerry were a problem, it would have been attended to by his immediate superiors who would have been loathe to pass such information upstream to the CNO.

It just sounds like BS to me by one more person trying to gain notoriety by coat-tailing a hot story.

[JulieRNR21]

We need to keep demanding those medical & military records....as one of the Vietnam Vets said recently: "It's fishy"

[Outraged]

"I committed the same kinds of atrocities as thousands of others," he said, "in that I shot in free-fire zones, fired .50-caliber machine bullets, used harass-and-interdiction fire, joined in search-and-destroy missions and burned villages." -- John "F'n" Kerry

"Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled or hanged" - Abraham Lincoln

Yes, John Kerry is a traitor in war-time Iraq and a traitor in war-time Vietnam...Jakals never change their spots.

[goodnesswins]

Um....maybe because F. Kerry was a friend of the Kennedy family?

[Uncle Miltie]

"Being Kerry was the only officer around, just who put him in for the Silver Star???"

If recollection serves, he put himself in for the Silver Star, for the incident in which he grounded the boat and debarked to finish off a wounded VC. The grounding was arguably contrary to established policy, according to a contemporaneously deployed swift-boat vet. The killing of the wounded VC was arguably a war crime, depending on circumstances (could Charlie have been captured instead of killed?).

Silver Star!

[cynicom]

Might well be some merit to the story...

I have family member that was on the the same boats as Kerry. He was enlisted person, severly wounded twice. The navy refused to allow him to re-enlist after his second tour of Vietnam and 12 years service. He spoke personally with Zumwalt, someone was roundly chewed and he was able to stay until retirement. He carries metal to this day, more than Kerry ever endured.

[Uncle Miltie]

A Vet Questions John Kerry's Military Service
By FrontPage Magazine
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 20, 2004

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12272

The following was sent to a Marine chat net by a retired Marine Master Sergeant who was in S-2, 3rd Bn, 1st Marines, Korea in 1954. It calls into serious question John Kerry's military actions in Vietnam. We present it to give our readers another perspective to the media's one-sided "war hero" adulation, and to open his actions to the light of public discourse. -- The Editors

---

I was in the Delta shortly after John Kerry left. I know that area well. I know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the doctrine used, and 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 that 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) He collected three Purple Hearts but has no limp. All his injuries were so minor that he lost no time 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 were 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 Japanese 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 and requests separation from active duty a few months after that so he can run for Congress. In that election, he finds out war heroes don't sell well in Massachsetts in 1970, so he 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 has Bobby Kennedy's speechwriter to do the heavy lifting. A few years later he winds up in the Senate himself, where he votes against every major defense bill and says the CIA is irrelevant after the Berlin Wall came down. He votes against the Gulf War (a big political mistake since that turned out well), then decides not to make the same mistake twice so votes for invading Iraq -- but that didn't fare as well with the Democrats, 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.

[lilylangtree]

Very interesting. Ole Bud Zumwalt knew Kerry's ambitions from the beginning.

[Z-28]

"Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"

"In a dispute over a young woman's honor during the Spanish Civil War, Dewey challenged the arrogant Gridley, then riding high as political advisor to William Randolph Hearst, to a duel with pistols in Long Island Sound. After considerable rowing and at a distance of three nautical miles, the cowardly Dewey flung his words shoreward. They apparently went unheard, and would have gone unrecorded had it not been for the presence of a Heast paper reporter assigned to cover the story in the boat. Gridley spent the rest of the day at the Gridiron, and Dewey drifted to South Carolina where he entered the Democratic primary under the name "Huey Long."

Posted by Jonathan at January 30, 2004 01:44 PM

[WL-law]

It just sounds like BS to me by one more person trying to gain notoriety by coat-tailing a hot story.

It did to me except that -- the quote is attributed to a professor at the Fletcher School of Diplomacy. That's a VERY prestigious institution, with strong links to the military and the intelligence world -- makes me think this might be accurate.

[lilylangtree]

One question: Why doesn't Kerry release his records? Bush released his that were under question.

[concerned about politics]

RELEASE YOUR MILITARY RECORDS, KERRY!

Someone questioned Bush's military service, and he released his records. He had nothing to hide.

Now it's Kerry's turn to come clean. Will he be fair ????? Will he be honest???? Or will he be the worlds biggest hypocrite because he has so much to hide from the American people ????

I question John Kerry's character.

[thackney]

another "silver star for killing wounded running away" ping

but a different perspective and worthwhile read

[Calvinist_Dark_Lord]

...Why would Zumwalt, the CNO, have any particular notice of one Navy Lt. on a Swift boat? If Kerry were a problem, it would have been attended to by his immediate superiors who would have been loathe to pass such information upstream to the CNO.

Mainly because Admiral Zumwalt was not CNO at the time of Kerry's "service". He was the commander of what is popularly called the "Gator Navy", or brown water navy. Kerry would have been one of his people at the time, and he would have had more direct access to records that were passed on to CinCPAC, Admiral John McCain Sr. Zumwalt was just another link in the chain at that time.

Still, putting words in the mouth of a dead admiral smells fishy, (no pun intended), i'd like to see any evidence of such a quote.

[Clodia Pulcher]

Evidence here--

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/02/11/2003098345

And look up Scotty Thompson's record. He also edited two books with Zumwalt. And there was another source for the story as well.

Doesn't mean Zumwalt was right, just that he said that.

[Steve_Seattle]

Hey, folks, if this stuff is true, we don't want it coming out until after Kerry seals up the nomination. I'm convinced Edwards would be a more formidable opponent.

[Ditto]

If Kerry were a problem, it would have been attended to by his immediate superiors who would have been loathe to pass such information upstream to the CNO.

I agree. This sounds like Bravo Sierra to me.

[Kaslin]

We need to keep demanding those medical & military records....as one of the Vietnam Vets said recently: "It's fishy"

I agree 1000%, also we should demand he release his Purple Heart medical treatment reports

[Outraged]

Still, putting words in the mouth of a dead admiral smells fishy, (no pun intended), i'd like to see any evidence of such a quote.

"I committed the same kinds of atrocities as thousands of others," he said, "in that I shot in free-fire zones, fired .50-caliber machine bullets, used harass-and-interdiction fire, joined in search-and-destroy missions and burned villages." -- John "F'n" Kerry

It seems like the good dead admiral has an eye witness.

[CholeraJoe]

Only the Bronze Star may be awarded with Combat V. The Silver Star may only be awarded for heroism in armed conflict with the enemy and never for meritorious service.