Ex-comrade slams Kerry (more truth about Kerry in Vietnam)

John Kerry, the Democratic challenger for the White House, is embroiled in fresh controversy over his much-vaunted Vietnam war record, after one of his crew members accused him of cowardice and making strategic mistakes in battle.

The testimony of Steven Gardner, a gunner's mate on the first patrol boat commanded by Kerry in the Mekong delta, contradicts accounts of the senator's military career that depict him as a brave and aggressive lieutenant who won three Purple Hearts.

"He absolutely did not want to engage the enemy when I was with him,'' Gardner said in an interview with the Boston Globe. "He wouldn't go in there and search. That is why I have a negative viewpoint of John Kerry."

Gardner has refused to join the tight-knit group of Vietnam veterans who are passionately supporters of their former comrade's White House bid.

Does anyone know what injuries Kerry sustained to receive the purple hearts.

Snopes has a pretty good take on this. The first two were apparantly awarded for shrapnel flesh wounds that didn't cause him to miss duty. Kerry claims the third one cost him "two days of service". "Kerry declined a request from the Globe to sign a waiver authorizing the release of military documents that are covered under the Privacy Act and that might shed more light on the extent of the treatment Kerry needed as a result of the wounds."

"Although there was no hard-and-fast rule, U.S. military procedure generally allowed any serviceman who received three Purple Hearts to request reassignment away from a combat zone, so Kerry talked to Commodore Charles F. Horne, an administrative official and commander of the coastal squadron in which he served. Four days after Kerry took his third hit of shrapnel, Horne forwarded a request on Kerry's behalf to the Navy Bureau of Personnel asking that Kerry be reassigned to "duty as a personal aide in Boston, New York, or Washington, D.C." Soon afterwards Kerry was transferred to Cam Ranh Bay to await further orders, and within a month he had been reassigned as a personal aide and flag lieutenant to Rear Admiral Walter F. Schlech, Jr. with the Military Sea Transportation Service based in Brooklyn, New York.

Kerry served with Admiral Schlech until the end of 1969, when requested an early discharge from the Navy in order to run for a Massachusetts congressional seat. Admiral Schlech approved the request, and on 3 January 1970 Kerry received an honorable discharge, six months early."

Here is a more detailed article I found after posting this one:

Kerry ran from the enemy, claims former Vietnam crewman of Democrat candidate

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/14/wus14.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/03/14/ixportal.html

John Kerry, the Democratic challenger for the White House, is embroiled in fresh controversy over his much-vaunted Vietnam war record, after one of his crew members accused him of cowardice and making strategic mistakes in battle.

The testimony of Steven Gardner, a gunner's mate on the first patrol boat commanded by Mr Kerry in the Mekong delta, contradicts accounts of the senator's military career that depict him as a brave and aggressive lieutenant who won three Purple Hearts and which are a key element of his campaign against George Bush.

"He absolutely did not want to engage the enemy when I was with him," Mr Gardner said in an interview with the Boston Globe, which contacted him about the presidential candidate. "He wouldn't go in there and search. That is why I have a negative viewpoint of John Kerry.

"His initial patterns of behaviour when I met him and served under him were of somebody who ran from the enemy, rather than engaged it."

Mr Gardner has refused to join the tight-knit group of Vietnam veterans who are passionately supporters of their former comrade's White House bid.

His portrayal of a timid Lt Kerry is at odds with the accounts of other crew members, and Sen Kerry is said to be "angry" about the slur.

John Hurley, the national director of Vietnam Veterans for Kerry, told the Telegraph: "John was shocked by this. Gardner said that John used to take the boat four or five miles offshore 'every single night' so that it would be out of harm's way. John doesn't remember that and neither does the rest of the crew. They all think he's way off base."

In his Boston Globe interview, Mr Gardner also recalled an incident in 1968 in which he was slightly wounded, causing Sen Kerry to abort the boat's mission. "I said: 'Lt Kerry, I'm fine, nothing's wrong. I got a little flesh wound here.' But Kerry was already backing out of the canal, getting ready to run for it," he said.

Relations between the two men reached their low point after a Vietnamese boy was killed in an encounter with a fishing boat. The Kerry crew opened fire believing their craft was under attack. According to Mr Gardner, Lt Kerry blamed him for the tragedy.

"Kerry threatened me with a court-martial, screaming: 'What the hell do you think you're doing?' " said Mr Gardner. "Thankfully the whole crew verified there were weapons being shot at us. That was the end of it."

Sen Kerry described Mr Gardner's version of events as "made up".

"It's sad," he told his biographer, Douglas Brinkley, "but that's the way it goes in war, and especially in politics," a reference to Mr Gardner's apparently Republican sympathies.

"I've spent hours on the phone to him [Gardner]," said Mr Hurley. "But he won't back down on his story, even though the crew disagree with him."

Mr Brinkley, who interviewed Mr Gardner for an hour last week, said afterwards: "It essentially boils down to one word: politics. Gardner is sickened by the idea of Kerry as president."

An angry Mr Gardner, however, insisted: "I never made the first call to anyone. Until someone called me, I kept it all to myself."

AND more detail in the original Boston Globe article, which I found last, but was apparently was written first:

Kerry no hero in ex-crewman's eyes
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/03/11/kerry_no_hero_in_ex_crewmans_eyes/

Kerry no hero in ex-crewman's eyes
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, 3/11/2004

Steven Michael Gardner served side by side with John Forbes Kerry in Vietnam, was wounded under Kerry's command, and was manning twin .50-caliber machine guns on a night that has forever haunted Kerry -- the night his crew killed a young boy in a sampan.

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But unlike many of Kerry's crewmates, Gardner has not appeared at Kerry's side at campaign rallies, and his view of Kerry at war is far different from the heroic view presented by others. "He absolutely did not want to engage the enemy when I was with him," Gardner said in a recent interview. "He wouldn't go in there and search. That is why I have a negative viewpoint of John Kerry."

Gardner's view is dramatically at odds with that of many other crewmates whom the Globe interviewed, who praise Kerry's leadership and say he was one of the most aggressive skippers in the Navy at the time. Gardner, who said he intends to support President Bush for reelection, clashed with Kerry on one of the most memorable and haunting nights that the two sailors spent together in Vietnam. That story, which until recently has been told publicly only in fragmentary form, involved the killing of the young boy.

As Gardner recalls it, he was in the "tub" above the pilot house with the twin machine guns, and Kerry was in command, when the Navy swift boat came upon a sampan in the darkness. Gardner flashed a searchlight and ordered the craft to stop. Then, he said, he saw a figure rise up over the gunwale with a semiautomatic weapon. Spotting tracers in the sky and fearing an attack, Gardner said, he laced the sampan with bullets, and other crew members fired as well. Gardner recalls a man in the sampan falling overboard, presumably dead.

After the shooting had stopped and Kerry had ordered a cease-fire, Gardner said, the crew found a woman in the sampan who was alive. There was also the boy, dead in the bottom of the boat. Gardner said there is no way to know which crewmate fired the shots that killed the boy, but he said Kerry was in the pilot house and did not fire. Kerry was livid when he emerged, Gardner said.

"Kerry threatened me with a court-martial, screaming at the top of his lungs: `What the hell do you think you're doing? I ought to have you court-martialed,' " Gardner recalled. "Thankfully, the whole crew was there in the middle of it . . . they verified there were weapons being shot at us. That was the end of it."

To this day, Gardner said, he wonders whether Kerry had that day in mind when he became an antiwar leader in 1971 and reported that atrocities occurred in Vietnam. But Gardner said "the only atrocity that night was that the parents of that kid had him in that boat while running contraband." He did not know how old the boy was.

When Kerry was interviewed last year for the Globe's "Candidate in the Making" series and discussed what seemed to be the same shooting, he said he could not remember when the killing occurred or which crewmates were with him. But he characterized it like this: "It is one of those terrible things, and I'll never forget, ever, the sight of that child. But there was nothing that anybody could have done about it. It was the only instance of that happening."

"It angered me," Kerry added. "But look, the Viet Cong used women and children. Who knows if they had -- under the rice -- a satchel [containing an explosive], and if we had come along beside them they had thrown the satchel in [our] boat. . . . So it was a terrible thing, but I've never thought we were somehow at fault or guilty. There wasn't anybody in that area that didn't know you don't move at night, that you don't go out in a sampan on the rivers, and there's a curfew."

Gardner, who served on Kerry's first swift-boat crew, Patrol Craft Fast No. 44, said his view of Kerry is based on a comparison with three more-experienced skippers with whom Gardner served earlier in the Vietnam War. He said Kerry was new to combat and thus more tentative.

Gardner served with Kerry the month after the skipper had arrived in Vietnam.

In addition to the killing of the boy, the other combat experience that Gardner vividly recalls was when he was wounded Dec. 28, 1968, while serving as Kerry's gunner.

Gardner had looked down and saw blood in the gun tub, dripping over the boxes of bullets stored on the floor. After the momentary shock, he recalled, Gardner realized his injury was "no big deal" and kept on firing. But Gardner said that when Kerry learned of the wound, he ordered the boat turned around to get medical attention for his gunner. Gardner argued that the retreat was unnecessary and worried that leaving the scene might endanger others on the mission. "I said, Lieutenant Kerry, I'm fine, nothing's wrong, I got a little flesh wound here.' But [Kerry] was already backing out of the canal, getting ready to run for it," Gardner said.

Other crewmates who served at the same time have portrayed Kerry in the most admirable terms and praised his aggressiveness. Crewmate Stephen Hatch said Kerry turned back with the injured Gardner because "we didn't know how hurt he was."

James Wasser, who served with Kerry and Gardner, said that while he has great respect for Gardner as a "warrior," he does not agree with Gardner's view of what happened that day. "I would have done the same thing" as Kerry, Wasser said. "You don't stay in harm's way." Wasser does not believe anyone else on the mission was endangered by the way Kerry's boat exited the canal.

On Saturday, a Kerry campaign official told the Globe he had learned that the newspaper had spoken to Gardner for a forthcoming biography of Kerry.

Later, Gardner said, a campaign official working with Kerry's crewmates contacted him to sound him out on his views about Kerry. Then historian Douglas Brinkley, who did not interview Gardner for his recent book about Kerry's Vietnam service, "Tour of Duty," called Gardner over the weekend. Brinkley told him there would be a firestorm if he went public, and the two discussed Gardner's views on Kerry's Vietnam service, Gardner said.

Brinkley then wrote an article, published on the website of Time magazine Tuesday night, in which he said Gardner's criticism was politically motivated. "After interviewing Gardner for over an hour, it essentially boils down to one word: politics," Brinkley wrote. "Gardner is sickened by the idea of Kerry as president."

The story quoted Gardner as saying Kerry is another "Slick Willy," a reference to former President Clinton.

Kerry, who has declined numerous interview requests this year to talk about his Vietnam experiences, was quoted in Brinkley's article as saying Gardner's stories "are made up. It's sad, but that's the way it goes in war, and especially in politics."

Gardner, in his interviews with the Globe, said he was upset with Brinkley's portrayal of him and said his memory of Kerry in Vietnam has nothing to do with his political views. "Absolutely not. I never made the first call to anyone," Gardner said. "Until somebody called me, I kept it to myself." With Gardner's name and viewpoint made public in the Time story, the Globe decided to publish this article, which is based on material in a forthcoming book, "John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography." The book is written by three Globe staff members and based on a seven-part series that ran last June.

Gardner said yesterday that he wonders whether speaking critically about Kerry led to his losing his job as a home inspection field manager. The Brinkley story said Gardner "claims he works at Millennium Services." Within hours of the publication of the article on Time's website, Gardner said, he was fired from his job as a home inspection field manager.

Gardner's former boss, Randy Girton, of Millennium Information Services of Illinois, said Gardner's view about Kerry had nothing to do with it, adding that it was a "weird coincidence" that Gardner and some others were let go yesterday. "He was a great employee, but just in this economic situation we didn't have the volume in that territory to warrant a manager in that territory," Girton said. He said Gardner did not accept an offer to work as an independent contractor.

"Five days later Kerry's boat was on patrol when a supporting helicopter ran out of ammunition. Instead of retreating, Kerry turned his boat directly toward hidden snipers, then beached the boat, and ordered an assault party onshore. This was not standard procedure. The swift boat crews weren't trained to fight on the muddy landscape; their shoes were closer to deck wear than combat boots.

None of that deterred Kerry. With a second swift boat providing support, Medeiros and Kerry rushed ashore and found what they thought was a Viet Cong guerrilla inside a bunker. After Kerry sought a surrender, Medeiros threw a grenade. The two assumed an enemy had been killed, although Medeiros said he never saw the victim and wonders now whether it could have been an animal.

....

This exhausting and harrowing week was only the beginning for Kerry. On Feb. 28, 1969, Kerry's boat received word that a swift boat was being ambushed. As Kerry raced to the scene, his boat became another target, as a Viet Cong B-40 rocket blast shattered a window. Kerry could have ordered his crew to hit the enemy and run. But the skipper had a more aggressive reaction in mind. Beach the boat, Kerry ordered, and the craft's bow was quickly rammed upon the shoreline. Out of the bush appeared a teenager in a loin cloth, clutching a grenade launcher.

So Kerry shot and killed the guerrilla. "I don't have a second's question about that, nor does anybody who was with me," he said. "He was running away with a live B-40, and, I thought, poised to turn around and fire it." Asked whether that meant Kerry shot the guerrilla in the back, Kerry said, "No, absolutely not. He was hurt, other guys were shooting from back, side, back. There is no, there is not a scintilla of question in any person's mind who was there [that] this guy was dangerous, he was a combatant, he had an armed weapon.

When Kerry returned to his base, his commanding officer, George Elliott, raised an issue with Kerry: the fine line between whether the action merited a medal or a court-martial.

"When [Kerry] came back from the well-publicized action where he beached his boat in middle of ambush and chased a VC around a hootch and ended his life, when [Kerry] came back and I heard his debrief, I said, `John, I don't know whether you should be court-martialed or given a medal, court-martialed for leaving your ship, your post,"' Elliott recalled in an interview.

"But I ended up writing it up for a Silver Star, which is well deserved, and I have no regrets or second thoughts at all about that," Elliott said. A Silver Star, which the Navy said is its fifth-highest medal, commends distinctive gallantry in action.

Asked why he had raised the issue of a court-martial, Elliott said he did so "half tongue-in-cheek, because there was never any question I wanted him to realize I didn't want him to leave his boat unattended. That was in context of big-ship Navy -- my background. A C.O. [commanding officer] never leaves his ship in battle or anything else. I realize this, first of all, it was pretty courageous to turn into an ambush even though you usually find no more than two or three people there. On the other hand, on an operation some time later, down on the very tip of the peninsula, we had lost one boat and several men in a big operation, and they were hit by a lot more than two or three people."

Elliott stressed that he never questioned Kerry's decision to kill the Viet Cong, and he appeared in Boston at Kerry's side during the 1996 Senate race to back up that aspect of Kerry's action.

"I don't think they were exactly ready to court-martial him," said Wade Sanders, who commanded a swift boat that sometimes accompanied Kerry's vessel, and who later became deputy assistant secretary of the Navy. "I can only say from the certainty borne of experience that there must have been some rumbling about, `What are we going to do with this guy, he turned his boat,' and I can hear the words, `He endangered his crew.' But from our position, the tactic to take is whatever action is best designed to eliminate the enemy threat, which is what he did."

Indeed, the Silver Star citation makes clear that Kerry's performance on that day was both extraordinary and risky. "With utter disregard for his own safety and the enemy rockets," the citation says, Kerry "again ordered a charge on the enemy, beached his boat only 10 feet from the Viet Cong rocket position and personally led a landing party ashore in pursuit of the enemy. ... The extraordinary daring and personal courage of Lt. Kerry in attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire were responsible for the highly successful mission."

From a Boston Globe article from a year ago -- very detailes about Kerry in Vietnam."

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

Sounds like he was totally reckless, putting his men and boat in danger. This is not heroism, it's recklessness and stupidity -- he just lucked out.

And another quote worth remembering:

“[T]he fabled and distinguished chief of naval operations,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,’ the admiral said. ‘Bud’ Zumwalt got it right when he assessed Kerry as having large ambitions — but promised that his career in Vietnam would haunt him if he were ever on the national stage.” And this statement was made despite the fact Zumwalt had personally pinned a Silver Star on Mr. Kerry.

Mr. Kerry was assigned to Swiftboat 44 on December 1, 1968. Within 24 hours, he had his first Purple Heart. Mr. Kerry accumulated three Purple Hearts in four months with not even a day of duty lost from wounds, according to his training officer. It’s a pity one cannot read his Purple Heart medical treatment reports which have been withheld from the public. The only person preventing their release is Mr. Kerry.

By his own admission during those four months, Mr. Kerry continually kept ramming his Swiftboat onto an enemy-held shore on assorted occasions alone and with a few men, killing civilians and even a wounded enemy soldier. One can begin to appreciate Zumwalt’s problem with Mr. Kerry as commander of an unarmored craft dependent upon speed of maneuver to keep it and its crew from being shot to pieces.

From an earlier Liscomb article.

Setting Straight Kerry’s War Record
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12386

By JEREMIAH DENTON
Special to the Register

Knowing that I served in the U.S. Senate with John Kerry and that, like him, I am a veteran of the Vietnam War, many people have asked me what I think of him, particularly now that he's the apparent presidential nominee of the
Democratic Party.

When Kerry joined me in the Senate, I already knew about his record of defamatory remarks and behavior criticizing U.S. policy in Vietnam and the conduct of our military personnel there. I had learned in North Vietnamese
prisons how much harm such statements caused.

To me, his remarks and behavior amounted to giving aid and comfort to our Vietnamese and Soviet enemies. So I was not surprised when his subsequent overall voting pattern in the Senate was consistently detrimental to our national security.

Considering his demonstrated popularity during the Democratic primaries, I earnestly hope the American people will soberly consider Kerry's qualifications for the presidency in light of his position and record on
both our cultural war at home and on national security issues.

To put it bluntly, John Kerry exemplifies the very reasons that I switched to the Repub lican Party. Like the majority in his political party, he has proven by his words and actions that his list of priorities -- his ideas on
what most needs to be done to improve this country -- are almost opposite to my own.

Here are two issue areas that I consider top priorities: the war over the soul of America, and national security.

Top priority should be placed on an effort to recover our most fundamental founding belief that our national objectives, policies and laws should reflect obedience to the will of Almighty God. Our Declaration of
Independence, our national Constitution and each of the states' constitutions stress that basic American national principle.

For about 200 years, the entire country, both parties and all branches of government understood that principle and tried to follow it, if imperfectly.

For some 50 years, our nation's opinion-makers, our courts and, gradually, our politicians have been abandoning our historical effort to be "one nation under God" in favor of becoming "one nation without God," with glaringly
unfavorable results.

I believe our political leaders, educational system, parents and opinion-makers must all return to teaching the truth most emphasized by our Founding Fathers.

George Washington called religious belief indispensable to the prosperity of our democracy. William Penn said, "Men must choose to be governed by God or condemn themselves to be ruled by tyrants." And when asked what caused the Civil War, President Lincoln said, "We have forgotten God."

In these days we have not only forgotten God, we are by our new standards of government and culture rejecting him as the acknowledged creator and as the endower of our rights.

As a result, we are suffering cultural decay and human unhappiness. The decline of the institution of the family is the most obvious result.

Perhaps the current movie, "The Passion of the Christ," will help many to come to realize the cost of the redemption of our sins, and the destructiveness of sin.

Let's remember that over 95 percent of Americans during our founding days were Christians, and though our Founding Fathers stipulated that no one was to be compelled to believe in any religion, and also stipulated that there
would be no single Christian denomination installed as a national religion, there was no question that our laws were to be firmly based on the Judean Ten Commandments and on Christ's mandate to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

That setup brought us amazing success as a nation, lifting us from our humble beginnings, through crisis after crisis, to become the leading nation of the world.

Now, though, we are throwing away the very source of our strength and greatness. Yet I am not giving up on our country. I am encouraged at the stand and the attitude of our president, and inspired by his courage. There
are many more of his stripe in Washington now.

Though Rome and other empires have decayed and fallen, the cultural war in the United States can and should be won by the majority of Americans -- a majority to whom Kerry and the Democrats disdainfully refer to as the "far right." They are people who believe in God and in the original concept of "one nation under God."

As a nation, we are now at the point of no return. The good guys are finally angry enough to join the fray, and I pray we are not too late.

John Kerry is not among the good guys. The Democratic Party isn't, either. Indeed, on the subject of national security, John Kerry epitomizes a fatal weakness in the Democratic Party.

During the decisive days of the Cold War, after the Democratic Party changed during the mid-1960s, the party was on the wrong side of every strategic debate on policy regarding Vietnam and the USSR, and is now generally on the wrong side in the war on terrorism.

The truth is that the Cold War was barely won by a narrow margin -- a victory and a margin determined by the political choices made by our government regarding suitable steps to deter Soviet attack and finally win the Cold War.

If the U.S. had followed the Democratic Party line, the Cold War would have concluded with the U.S. having to surrender without a fight, or the U.S. would have been defeated in a nuclear war with acceptable losses to the
USSR.

It was not Johnson and Carter and the Democrats; it was Nixon, Reagan, George Bush and the Republicans who led us to victory in the Cold War. And George W. Bush and the Republican majority -- not John Kerry and the
Democrats -- can lead us to victory in the war on terrorism.

Jeremiah Denton is a retired Navy admiral who served in the U.S. Senate from 1981 to 1987. Readers can phone him at 473-1010, send e-mail to transff1@aol.com, or log on to his Web site at www.nff.org.

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