Must've been one of these...
Posted on 08/06/2004 7:28:08 AM PDT by FlyLow
An intense political firefight broke out this week when a group of U.S. Navy Swift Boat veterans--calling themselves Swift Boat Veterans for Truth--released a television advertisement accusing John Kerry of lying about his record in Vietnam. At the same time, Regnery Publishing, a sister company of HUMAN EVENTS, released excerpts from Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, a book out next week that is deeply critical of Kerry's Vietnam experiences. Both the ad and and a copy of an embargoed chapter were first exclusively available on Human Events Online (see the ad here; get a free chapter here).
The television ad brought a swift response from Kerry's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee. On August 5, two lawyers representing the campaign and the Democratic National Committee, sent a letter to television station managers, which was first revealed here at Human Events Online, claiming some statements in the ad were "demonstrably and unequivocally false, and libelous" and darkly warning station managers that if they ran the ad their stations would be "responsible for the false and libelous charges made by this sponsor."
On the Record
Meanwhile, in the excerpt from Unfit for Command, authors John O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi say Kerry sought a Purple Heart after he fired a grenade from too-close range into a shoreline where it exploded, sending a small piece of shrapnel back to slightly wound his arm.
Kerry's boat did not come under enemy fire the night Kerry received this minor wound, the authors say. Kerry did not require hospitalization or even a single stitch for it. And Kerry's commanding officer refused Kerry's request that the officer recommend Kerry for a Purple Heart as a result of the incident.
That officer told O'Neill and Corsi his story on the record.
O'Neill, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, took command of the very same Swift Boat Kerry had commanded in Vietnam, after Kerry went home in March 1969 after serving only four months of the standard one-year tour in the country. He took advantage of what O'Neill and Corsi call in the book "an obscure regulation that permitted release of personnel with three Purple Hearts." Corsi holds a Ph.D from Harvard.
In Tour of Duty by historian Douglas Brinkley, Kerry described the night he received the shrapnel wound in terms reminiscent of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.
He was paddling down a dark bay, on a mission to stop the Vietcong from moving contraband from one shore to the other. Spying a group of sampans sneaking onto a beach, he fired a flare.
"The entire sky seemed to explode into daylight," Brinkley writes in Tour of Duty. "The men from the sampans bolted erect, stiff with shock for only an instant before they sprang for cover like a herd of panicked gazelles Kerry had once seen on TV's 'Wild Kingdom.'"
"We opened fire," Kerry told Brinkley. "The light from the flares started to fade, the air was full of explosions. My M-16 jammed, and as I bent down in the boat to grab another gun, a stinging piece of heat socked into my arm and just seemed to burn like hell. By this time one of the sailors had started the engine and we ran by the beach, strafing it. Then it was quiet."
But O'Neill and Corsi tell a different story. Kerry went out that night in a Boston Whaler (called a "skimmer" by the Navy) with a more senior officer.
Doctor's Diagnosis
"The truth is that at the time of this incident Kerry was an officer in command (OinC) under training, aboard the skimmer using the call sign 'Robin' on the operation, with now-Rear Admiral William Schachte using the call sign 'Batman,' who was also on the skimmer," the authors write. "After Kerry's M-16 jammed, Kerry picked up an M-79 grenade launcher and fired a grenade too close, causing a tiny piece of shrapnel (one to two centimeters) to barely stick in his arm. Schachte berated Kerry for almost putting someone's eye out. There was no hostile fire of any kind, nor did Kerry on the way back mention to PCF [Swift Boat] OinC Mike Voss, who commanded the PCF that had towed the skimmer, that he was wounded."
The authors quote at length Dr. Louis Letson, who they report treated Kerry after the incident. "It did not require any sutures to close the wound," Letson says. "The wound was covered with a band-aid. No other injuries were reported and I do not recall that there was any injury to the boat."
Letson appears in the TV ad, saying: "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury." In their letter, the Kerry and DNC lawyers accuse Letson of "pretending to be the doctor who treated Senator Kerry for one of his injuries" and say he "was not the doctor who actually signed Senator Kerry's sick call sheet."
In Unfit for Command, however O'Neill and Corsi quote Letson as saying: "I remember that Jess Carreon was present at the time and he, in fact, made the entry into Lt. Kerry's medical record."
A footnote to this quotation states: "Kerry's campaign has tried to deny Dr. Letson's treatment of Kerry by pointing to the different signature on Kerry's medical report. The report was signed by the corpsman assigned to Dr. Letson, Jess Carreon, now deceased, according to U.S. Navy records."
Retired Navy Commander Grant Hibbard, who headed the Naval division to which Kerry was assigned, also spoke to the authors on-the-record.
"The next morning at the briefing, I was informed that no enemy fire had been received on that mission," said Hibbard. "Our units had fired on some VC units running on the beach. We were all in my office, some of the crewmembers, I remember Schachte being there. This was 36 years ago; it really didn't seem all that important at the time. Here was this lieutenant, junior grade, who was saying, 'I got wounded,' and everybody else, the crew that were present were saying, 'We didn't get any fire. We don't know how he got the scratch.' Kerry showed me the scratch on his arm. I hadn't been informed that he had any medical treatment. The scratch didn't look like much to me. I've seen worse injuries from a rose thorn."
The authors asked Hibbard if Kerry wanted Hibbard to recommend him for a Purple Heart. "Yes, that was his whole point," said Hibbard. "He had this little piece of shrapnel in his hand. It was tiny. I was told later that Kerry had fired an M-79 grenade and that he had misjudged it. He fired it too close to the shore, and it exploded on a rock or something. . . . I told Kerry to 'forget it.' There was no hostile fire, the injury was self-inflicted for all I knew, besides it was nothing really more than a scratch. Kerry wasn't getting any Purple Heart recommendation from me."
When asked how Kerry did get a Purple Heart for the incident, Hibbard told the authors: "I don't know. It beats me. I know I didn't recommend him for a Purple Heart."
The "Drudge Report" website, which featured excerpts from the book this week, said that the Kerry campaign believes the book is "the dirtiest of dirty tricks ever played on a candidate for President."
Author O'Neill debated Kerry 33 years ago--rebutting Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony that U.S. forces routinely committed war crimes in Vietnam--on an episode of the Dick Cavett Show that was replayed on CSPAN earlier this year. He is a member of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the non-profit "527" group that produced the television ad attacking Kerry's record that has so excited the ire of the Kerry campaign and the DNC. The group is made up solely of military personnel who served on Swift Boats in Vietnam ("swiftees" as they call themselves) or in affiliated commands. In May, 190 members of this group signed a letter to Kerry asking him to sign a Navy Standard Form 180, which would authorize the independent public release of all Kerry's war records. That would allow them to be reviewed in full by the public and press, and allow people to better judge who is telling the truth in this controversy. Thus far, Kerry has not signed the form.
With a Democratic convention that focused heavily on Kerry's war record, and with the release of the swiftees' TV ad and the O'Neill-Corsi book, Kerry's role in Vietnam and in the anti-war movement is certain to be a burning hot issue as the presidential campaign heads toward the fall.
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He was running with scissors.
I agree. The longer we dwell on this, the longer we delay attacking him on his Senate record, which is where I think the real political gold lies.
This could fit the Hollywood saying of “There’s no such thing as bad publicity”. The more the media hypes it the more people will see it. In their effort to denounce it they are giving it a lot of air time.
He's kinda like the "Whack-a-Mole" - pops up for a second to make some asinine comment, then we whack him down.
Must've been one of these...
How about this for a sign:
MEDIA WHORES
WANTED BUSH'S
MILITARY RECORDS,
WHAT ABOUT KERRY?
I think you may be thinking of some of PhilDragoo's pics?
There is one he has been posting .....
There's the band-aid pic, #65.Good one, PC !
Someone needs to print up a zillion of these things and spread them all over kingdom come, asking for Kerry to sign it.
Yes, amen, the constant reply from the vets should be, "John Kerry should just release his medical records."
Someone needs to print up a zillion of these Navy 180 forms and spread them all around Kerry functions.
He's going to be in No. Arizona tomorrow I think. Drop them by the basketfulls from airplanes!
Good Suggestion re the DD 180.
Your tagline is perfect for this phase of flush the Johns down the drain.
Narby's tagline: (Lt. Kerry - veteran of Me Lie)
Interesting...
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/08/06/veteran_retracts_criticism_of_kerry?pg=3
(snipped)
Naval documents said that Kerry ''received shrapnel wounds in left buttocks and contusions on right forearm when a mine detonated close to PCF 94 while engaged in operations on river. Condition and prognosis excellent. Result of hostile action."
Rassmann, reached by telephone yesterday, said he has never had any question that Kerry deserved the Purple Heart. He said there were two separate events: One was earlier in the day, when he and Kerry blew up a rice cache, and the explosion caused some of the rice to hit Kerry, and perhaps some weapon fragments as well. The second involved a mine explosion as Kerry and Rassmann were on patrol. The explosion, Rassmann said, knocked him overboard and threw Kerry against the pilot house, injuring his arm.
Rassmann said that he has always believed that Kerry got the third Purple Heart solely for the injury to his arm as a result of the explosion in the water.
''If he got fragments in the buttocks due to the mine, that is new information to me," Rassmann said.
''I would say there is confusion. Maybe they did lump it together. It was my understanding he got it for the wound being thrown across the pilot house."
Either way, Rassmann said, Kerry deserved the third Purple Heart because such awards are given for injuries incurred in combat, and Kerry's arm injury qualified. He also stood by his recollection that he was under fire when rescued by Kerry.
In fact, I think Bush should praise Kerry for his service and then move on to his record in the Senate.
"Kerry campaign believes the book is the dirtiest of dirty tricks ever played on a candidate for President."
How does this book from an entity unlrelated to the party or campaign compare to the Chairman of the DNC calling a sitting President a deserter? I am trying to gain insight into how liberals think and just can't figure it out.
Many, many years ago on some TV program I was watching and couldn't remember, they were interviewing some VN POW and I remember they asked or said something about John McCain and wasn't he just a wonderful, brave man and politician. This exPOW just looked slyly at the interviewer and said"Wonderful for who?" At the time I wasn't a polictical junkie and wondered who this McCain was.
The Boston Globe is trying very hard to cover for their man Kerry. So they are trying to find any cracks in the Swift vets story, then trumpet it as if it refutes the whole set of accusations.
I warned of this last night, when it first came out.
If they make 10 charges and 9 are true and 1 is false or has to be retracted, what will the liberal media run?
They'll run the story the Boston Globe just ran.
The Swift Boat accusations have to do with several incidents and the real charge is not that Kerry did bad things in the service - the real charge is that he padded his resume. His medals were for injuries that were far less consequence than injuries that purple hearts are usually given for (he didnt require any hospitalization, and his first purple heart was for a 'scratch'). this allegation that is being debated has to do with circumstance of killing a vietcong fighter - Kerry killed him when he was running away.
yes, but he could have turned and fired his RPG once he took cover. I dont know if it was medal-worthy or not, but we who dont serve combat would be loathe to critique a man's actions in battle.
The pro-kerry non-veteran press therefore will not go there, and not dare question Kerry's actions. And we should be wary of critiquing Kerry's battle record. even his 3 1/2 months is more than most of his generation served. better to simply point out that perhaps he inflated his accomplishments and that his anti-war record is something that deserves more scrutiny and attention.
I agree.
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