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All of his performance evaluations rated him first or nearly first among his peers, and no evidence suggests he ever missed duty because of illness or injuriesm

There was a very interesting post by mindbender26 yesterday concerning the service records. Essentially, he said that service record inflation resulted many getting perfect scores and that anything below a perfect score indictated major problems. Kerry had less than perfect in something like 9 out of 19 categories.

Based on my own experience as a naval officer who served in the same era as Kerry only twice as long, I find Kerry's evaluation reports to be average compared to his peers. The most revealing part of the reports are Section 15 of the earlier reports and section 18 of the revised form, i.e., overall evaluation. This indicates how many officers received similar ratings from the rating officer. It helps put the inflated prose into perspective.
Most of his reports cover very short periods of time. The 1 Sep 1967 - 22 Mar 1968 report on the Gridley puts Kerry in the top 2 of the total of 4 officers. The other Gridley report from another officer covering the period 23 Mar 1968 to 20 July 1968 rates Kerry 1 of 3 officers but he is not rated as outstanding. The rating officer probably just had a different standard.

There are two Vietnam reports. The report covering the period 8 Nov 1968 to 6 Dec 1968 by Hibbard is essentially nothing but unobserved. Hibbard rates 13 officers with Kerry being placed in the not-observed block of the overall evaluation along with another officer. The second major evaluation report by LCDR Elliot covers the period 14 Dec 68 to 26 Mar 69. Kerry's overall evaluation (Section 18) places him among the top 7 officers with 8 other officers being rated in a lower category.

Having written these kinds of reports, nuance and other indications help the promotion panels sort out the water walkers from the rest. I thought it was interesting that Elliot said, "LTJG Kerry was assigned to this division for only a short period of time..."

The Press will eat this stuff up because they are not familiar with the military rating system and what is average or not. Kerry was promoted to LT on January 3, two days after he was discharged and a little less than 4 years after he was commissioned. His promotion rate was average.