Posted on 08/05/2004 7:39:18 AM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
Slaughters Animals, Burns Down Tiny Village
**Exclusive**
A veterans group seeking to deeply discredit Democrat John Kerry's military service will charge in the new bombshell book UNFIT FOR COMMAND: "Kerry earned his Silver Star by killing a lone, fleeing, teenage Viet Cong in a loincloth."
"And if Kerry's superiors had known the truth at the time, they would never have recommended him for the medal."
The book also claims to detail how Kerry personally ordered the slaughter of small animals at a small hamlet along the Song Bo De River.
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The book, set for release next week, hit #1 on the AMAZON hitparade after the DRUDGE REPORT revealed details of the book -- a book the Kerry camapign believes is the"the dirtiest of all dirty tricks ever played on a candidate for the presidency."
The Kerry campaign is planning to vigorously counter the charges and will accuse the veteran's groups of being well-financed by a top Bush donor from Texas.
The vets have launched a blistering new TV commercial questioning Kerry's honor and calling him a liar.
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George Bates, an officer in Coastal Division 11, participated in numerous operations with Kerry. In UNFIT FOR COMMAND, Bates recalls a particular patrol with Kerry on the Song Bo De River. He is still "haunted" by the incident:
With Kerry in the lead, the boats approached a small hamlet with three or four grass huts. Pigs and chickens were milling around peacefully. As the boats drew closer, the villagers fled. There were no political symbols or flags in evidence in the tiny village. It was obvious to Bates that existing policies, decency, and good sense required the boats to simply move on.
Instead, Kerry beached his boat directly in the small settlement. Upon his command, the numerous small animals were slaughtered by heavy-caliber machine guns. Acting more like a pirate than a naval officer, Kerry disembarked and ran around with a Zippo lighter, burning up the entire hamlet.
Bates has never forgotten Kerry's actions.
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UNFIT FOR COMMAND, DRUDGE has learned, claims Kerry "earned his Silver Star by killing a lone, fleeing, teenage Viet Cong in a loincloth."
ARE THE VETS TELLING THE TRUTH?
"They hired a goddamn private investigator to dig up trash!" charged a top Kerry adviser traveling with the senator late Tuesday. "This is pay for play... How low can they go?"
Kerry supporters are comparing the effort by the veterans to the Arkansas State troopers tell-all against Bill Clinton.
MORE
John O'Neill, co-author of UNFIT FOR COMMAND, believes that "Kerry's Star would never have been awarded had his actions been reviewed through normal channels. In his case, he was awarded the medal two days after the incident with no review. The medal was arranged to boost the morale of Coastal Division 11, but it was based on false and incomplete information provided by Kerry himself."
According to Kerry's Silver Star citation, Kerry was in command of a three-boat mission on the Dong Cung River. As the boats approached the target area, they came under intense enemy fire. Kerry ordered his boat to attack and all boats opened fire.
He then beached directly in front of the enemy ambushers. In the battle that followed, the crews captured enemy weapons. His boat then moved further up the river to suppress more enemy fire. A rocket exploded near Kerry's boat, and he ordered to charge the enemy. Kerry beached his boat 10 feet from the rocket position and led a landing party ashore to pursue the enemy.
Kerry' citation reads: "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."
Here's what O'Neill and the Swiftees say: "According to Kerry's crewman Michael Madeiros, Kerry had an agreement with him to turn the boat in and onto the beach if fired upon. Each of the three boats involved in the operation was involved in the agreement." O'Neill writes that one crewman even recalls a discussion of probable medals.
Doug Reese, a pro Kerry Army veteran, recounted what happened that day to O'Neill, "Far from being alone, the boats were loaded with many soldiers commanded by Reese and two other advisors. When fired at, Reese's boat--not Kerry's--was the first to beach in the ambush zone. Then Reese and other troops and advisors (not Kerry) disembarked, killing a number of Viet Cong and capturing a number of weapons. None of the participants from Reese's boat received Silver Stars.
O'Neill continues: "Kerry's boat moved slightly downstream and was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade. . . .A young Viet Cong in a loincloth popped out of a hole, clutching a grenade launcher, which may or may not have been loaded. . . Tom Belodeau, a forward gunner, shot the Viet Cong with an M-60 machine gun in the leg as he fled. . . . Kerry and Medeiros (who had many troops in their boat) took off, perhaps with others, and followed the young Viet Cong and shot him in the back, behind a lean to."
O'Neill concludes "Whether Kerry's dispatching of a fleeing, wounded, armed or unarmed teenage enemy was in accordance with the customs of war, it is very clear that many Vietnam veterans and most Swiftees do not consider this action to be the stuff of which medals of any kind are awarded; nor would it even be a good story if told in the cold details of reality. There is no indication that Kerry ever reported that the Viet Cong was wounded and fleeing when dispatched. Likewise, the citation simply ignores the presence of the soldiers and advisors who actually 'captured the enemy weapons' and routed the Viet Cong. . . . [and] that Kerry attacked a 'numerically superior force in the face of intense fire' is simply false. There was little or no fire after Kerry followed the plan. . . . The lone, wounded, fleeing young Viet Cong in a loincloth was hardly a force superior to the heavily armed Swift Boat and its crew and the soldiers carried aboard."
DRUDGE learns from UNFIT FOR COMMAND that if Kerry's superior officers knew the truth, they would never have recommended the award:
"Admiral Roy Hoffmann, who sent a Bravo Zulu (meaning "good work"), to Kerry upon learning of the incident, was very surprised to discover in 2004 what had actually occurred. Hoffmann had been told that Kerry had spontaneously beached next to the bunker and almost single-handedly routed a bunkered force in Viet Cong. He was shocked to find out that Kerry had beached his boat second in a preplanned operation, and that he had killed a single, wounded teenage foe as he fled."
"Commander Geoge Elliott, who wrote up the initial draft of Kerry's Silver Star citation, confirms that neither he, nor anyone else in the Silver Star process that he knows, realized before 1996 that Kerry was facing a single, wounded young Viet Cong fleeing in a loincloth. While Commander Elliott and many other Swiftees believe that Kerry committed no crime in killing the fleeing, wounded enemy (with a loaded or empty launcher), others feel differently. Commander Elliott indicates that a Silver Star recommendation would not have been made by him had he been aware of the actual facts."
Developing....
bump
Look out you were just warned above about "piling on" As for me the bigger pile the better. Of course, al Kerry is a huge pile just by himself.
You can't be serious? LOL
I remember 1992 very well. Immediately after Clinton was elected I predicted he would win reelection in 1996. Free Republic or no FreeRepublic! Fox News or no Fox News!
You're making the same mistakes that many people made in 1992 with Clinton and Bush in 2000. In politics, don't underestimate anyone.
Politically I see more risk than reward here. Yes, Mccain is a loose cannon, and Kerry is phony to trump his Vietnam service without taking some honest criticism too. But Kerry can be beat without this attack, warranted as it may be. There are a lot of people who will listen to McCain and see it as a Bush dirty trick. At best, this should have been saved for closer to the election, to see if it was truly needed.
Compare Kerry's inability to hold a consistent position on any of the days important issues with George McGovern. McGovern believed in his cause, and still does. He does so as a gentlemen, but he does so with passion.He shows a marked difference with the performance of Massachussetts' junior senator. Oh, one other thing, George McGovern was a truly genuine hero flyng B 24s in WWII. He truly earned his Distinguished Flying Cross, and refused to use that wartime performance to compare himself with Richard Nixon. He said of Nixon's supply officer service in the Navy, that Nixon served honorably in the duties he was assigned and one would be wrong to compare his service to Nixon. Quite a diference between a real hero like George McGovern and a wannabe like the JUNIOR senator from Massachussetts.
I believed at the time that this was a pre-emptive effort to keep Kerrey out of the presidential race this time.
The left professed outrage at Kerrey's actions.
Truly the dem party is insane. Schizophrenic to say the least.
This has been in Snopes for months.
I have honestly seen nothing to justify or verify McCain being a hero. Senator John McCain is a POW "survivor" to correctly state his war experience. He was a fighter pilot, shot down and imprisoned. If imprisonment equates to being a hero, I guess one could believe that he might be. Otherwise, he remains a POW survivor. I don't mean to diminish the horror of being a POW and McCain certainly deserves respect for suffering the experience, but surviving a bad experience in war time does not equal heroism.
Say what?!
Who cares? The Bush campaign cares. Republicans care. And this conservative cares. The wishy-washy fencesitters happen to be the undecided voters. Aside from a total meltdown by either campaign, the undecided voters hold the key to election day victory for either Bush or Kerry.
Here are excerpts from Thomas Wright's story that explain exactly how he got the 3rd PH:
Thomas Wright was one of John F. Kerry's fellow Swift boat officers in Vietnam. Since Wright outranked Kerry, he was Kerry's sometime boat group Officer-in-Charge, so Wright had occasion to observe Kerry’s behavior and attitudes, and the circumstances surrounding his early departure from the war zone. The intervening years have not dimmed his memories.
“I had a lot of trouble getting him to follow orders,” recalls Wright. “He had a different view of leadership and operations. Those of us with direct experience working with Kerry found him difficult and oriented towards his personal, rather than unit goals and objectives. I believed that overall responsibility rested squarely on the shoulders of the OIC or OTC in a free-fire zone. You had to be right (before opening fire). Kerry seemed to believe there were no rules in a free-fire zone and you were supposed to kill anyone. I didn’t see it that way.”
It got to a point where Wright told his divisional commander he no longer wanted Kerry in his boat group, so he was re-assigned to another one. “I had an idea of his actions but didn’t have to be responsible for him.” Then Wright and like-minded boat officers took matters into their own hands. “When he got his third Purple Heart, three of us told him to leave. We knew how the system worked and we didn’t want him in Coastal Division 11. Kerry didn’t manipulate the system, we did.”
There. No "blowback"; no damage. Smartly done, I think. :)
"W" should question the timing of the ad.
The most annoying thing about this constant chant is that Kerry's crew thinks that nobody else can have their own opinion. Even if one were to buy into even a small part of Kerry's schpiel, why was he the ONLY one to receive a medal? Was he the ONLY one on the boat? Was he the ONLY one awake? I'm just sick of this whinny-a$$-crybaby-$h*t. Could you imagine what the media would say if every time someone said something about Bush, Bush started crying about the "Democrat Attack Machine"?
The shocking part of this story was that Kerry was actually TELLING THE TRUTH when he said he was a war criminal. I just figured it was more expedient BS to curry favor with the anti-war crowd.
Exactly! What is that old saying -- be careful what you wish for -- or -- you sow what you reap!
Irrelevant, as Snopes has not had access to the newly-revealed testimony of the veterans in question.
Important to remember, always, not to take any single source as being eternally unimpeachable and true, in all things. Snopes is no less fallible an oracle than any other, in that regard.
What a conniving piece of trash this guy is.
Wonder if he had any help from his Kennedy contacts?
Between his Vietnam exploits and his lovely bride TEREEEEZA , the White House would reach a new low if they were to take up occupancy!
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