Ex-Navy Officer Pokes Holes In Kerry's Vietnam Resume

Investor's Business Daily ^ | May 24, 2004 | DAVID ISAAC

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Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, chief of naval operations in Vietnam, prophesied that John Kerry's career there would come back to haunt him.

The prophesy has come to pass.

On May 4, a remarkable, though underreported, press conference took place at the National Press Club in Washington announcing the formation of a new group: Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Its mission: To set the record straight about Sen. John Kerry's service in Vietnam and the accusations he made against his fellow soldiers after returning to the states.

Swift boats — small, mostly aluminum vessels — were used to patrol Vietnam's coastal waterways. The men who served in them say they don't like to be pushed around.

From their remarks last week, it's clear they feel that's just what one of their own, presidential nominee John Kerry, has done.

John O'Neill, co-chairman of the group, says for many the final straw came with Kerry's new biography, "Tour of Duty."

In it, Kerry repeats accusations he made when he came back from Vietnam after serving as a Swift boat officer. Upon returning, Kerry led the anti-war group Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and claimed U.S. forces committed war crimes on a daily basis.

Investor's Business Daily recently spoke with O'Neill, who by coincidence took over as skipper of Kerry's boat, PCF-94, after he left.

IBD: John Kerry's entire chain of command said he is unfit to be commander in chief. Do you feel it was adequately covered by the press?

O'Neill: No. Understand that having spent so many millions and millions of dollars in advertising to portray himself as a war hero, it's very hard for people to even sit and listen to the first-party testimony that we had and realize they've been taken by him.

But the truth is the mainstream press has simply been taken, by which I mean totally duped by him.

IBD: Did The Associated Press cover the event?

O'Neill: A reporter from The Associated Press attended the news conference and then refused to write a story on it.

AP received many inquiries asking, "Why have you not run a story on it?" They simply issued a statement saying they didn't believe it added anything to the dialogue between veterans and John Kerry.

IBD: What about the Kerry camp's charge that your effort was steered and paid for by Republicans?

O'Neill: It's ironic because they've paid for all the veterans supporting them. The people are literally on salary. . . . They're typically flown around on a plane. None of us have been paid by the Republicans; none of our bills or expenses. And in fact none of us has any serious tie of any kind with any party.

I debated Kerry back in 1971 on "The Dick Cavett Show" and I met with Nixon before that debate. I told Nixon I was a Democrat.

IBD: Why have you personally put so much time and effort into this?

O'Neill: I probably knew 15 to 20 people who were killed in Vietnam. When Kerry came forward with the war crimes charges in 1971, it just tore at the soul of all of us.

We went to such elaborate lengths to avoid injuring civilians. In our little unit we lost a number of people because we would go into canals and rivers with loudspeakers instead of shooting. . . .

When you had a guy who actually served with us condemning us en masse as war criminals — the injustice of that tarnished the souls of everybody there, particularly the people in our unit.

IBD: Only one person in your group actually served under Kerry's command. The others who did have joined him. Why?

O'Neill: First, you need to understand these were little boats that operate in clusters. Of the 23 officers who were on those boats with Kerry, 17 of them have signed the letter. We're not dealing with a situation where the only ones who know about him are the five guys on his boat. His little boat operated with these other boats always in joint operations.

With respect to the nine people who are surviving who served under Kerry, one came out in opposition to him, eight were favorable to him. But when you read his book, "Tour of Duty" you learn over half of them were embittered, hated him and wanted nothing to do with him as recently as three or four years ago.

IBD: What happened?

O'Neill: He met with them, assuaged them and they reached the conclusion that whatever their personal friendship was, that overcame the resentment at his activities in the early 1970s.

I guess none of the rest of us feel that way. And we don't begrudge them feeling that way. But it's clear that those people once were also very strongly opposed to him, even off his own boat. And my source for that is his campaign biography.

IBD: Grant Hibbard, one of Kerry's commanders, went into some detail about Kerry's first Purple Heart, received for a scratch on his hand. How could Kerry get a Purple Heart for something like that without his commanding officer knowing?

O'Neill: Those are part of the records Kerry's hiding. Kerry claimed he released all records. What he won't do is execute Standard Form 180. That removes Kerry as gatekeeper and lets the Department of Defense actually show up with the records. Kerry will never execute Standard Form 180.

Among the records that are missing are anything on his first Purple Heart except the certificate itself.

We know he made a request for that Purple Heart from Commander Hibbard, who turned it down. We know he appealed that in some fashion. We know there has to be paperwork on how it was granted. All that has now disappeared.

By the way it isn't only Commander Hibbard but also the doctor. Dr. Louis Letson was the doctor who actually treated him. . . .

Letson recalled treating him for that first Purple Heart. The reason he recalled it is that when the crewman came in, they told him he was running for president.

This was in 1969.

He looked at it and said, "Why are you here?" because it was a tiny splinter, and Kerry said, "I've been wounded by hostile fire and I need medical attention."

And the people began making fun of him and they told the doctor, "Look, he just wounded himself with his own grenade." What he'd done is shoot his grenade too close to his boat and a little tiny bit of shrapnel, an infinitesimal amount, came back and hit him.

Letson got tweezers and a small Band-Aid. Pulled the splinter out. Put the Band-Aid on and patted Kerry on the fanny and sent him on his way.

Each of the purported Purple Hearts are for scratches less than a rose prick . . . Each one involves virtually no serious wound of any kind. He then used the three Purple Hearts to escape from Vietnam.

IBD: Your news conference was dramatic. How can people see it?

O'Neill: It can be downloaded at either one of two places, our Web site swiftvets.com and cspan.com. According to the Cspan records, it is the second most watched tape on Cspan in the past three years.

IBD: What effect do you think this will have on the elections?

O'Neill: First of all, my hope is he's not nominated. And my hope is it would have no effect on the election because he wouldn't be the Democratic nominee. . . .

Assuming that doesn't happen and he's nominated I don't believe his candidacy can survive the actual truth of what he did in the '70s.

[Robert Lomax]

"WOW!! Lets hope plenty of RATS are watching it."

Where the heck have you been? Are you serious, the RATS hate Rush Limbaugh but have never heard his show. The RATS hate FOX News but have never watched it. They'll turn the channel when this comes on CSPAN. They do not listen or watch anything that has any thinking involved. Sorry pal, but the RATS have selective hearing. Most of the RATS I know have their dials tuned to NPR and hang on every word that comes through NPR....also CBS, NBC, etc.

[RaceBannon]

Let's keep this issue alive!

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[BluH2o]

But the truth is the mainstream press has simply been taken, by which I mean totally duped by him.

The mainstream liberal media has blinders on when it comes to negative reporting on any candidate who is perceived as one of their own. This was made clear in the early 90's where the "Slickmeister" was concerned ... in spite of rumors circulating at the time about Juanita Broderick, draft dodging, etc., all were ignored. 89% of the Washington press corps voted for Clinton ... not once, but twice. The same will be true when it comes to voting for Kerry.

[Quix]

I'm making this a key doc in handing out to liberal idiots in my network.

THANKS TONS.

[antonia]

IBD: John Kerry's entire chain of command said he is unfit to be commander in chief. Do you feel it was adequately covered by the press?

real Americans in vietnam

Kerry wants it both ways: 1. All the credit in the world for having been in vietnam. ; (including being a 'war hero'). 2. All the credit in the world for being anti-war.

Kerry is beginning his effort to use the blood of servicemen still in the field for his own political advancement by claiming that their blood was shed unnecessarily or in vain. This is astoundingly transparent, and I am surprised his advisors let him take this tack. John Kerry appears to be saying that American soldiers are dying unnecessarily because President Bush should have let the U.N. lead the fight for us, an asinine assertion to say the least. The actual argument, though, is unimportant for his purposes, he merely wants to be on the record blaming President Bush for the deaths of U.S. servicemen, his ugly tactic from the Vietnam War.