Posted on 08/06/2004 8:13:10 PM PDT by Trident/Delta
I have been puzzled about the lack of conversation about the appearance of such opposing views between sKerry's crewmen, and the Swiftvets. It just stands to reason that one of the groups is just flat wrong (I didn't say lied). It intrigued me that so many, who are against sKerry, could be ofset by so few that support him. It is almost as if the media thinks that the public would buy off on a conspiracy of such a grand scale.
I got curious about the motivation of the supporters. While many have postulated about $$$ or some plum position in a sKerry adminitration, those just didn't seem to ring my bell.
I had to ask, what could it be that these men are willing to face up to such an onslaught. If the Swifties case is proven, they (the supporters) will be derided and embarrassed. So I felt that there had to be a more underlying reason.
I think I may have inadvertantly stumbled accross the reason.
While skimming posts on FR yesterday, I came across a link to a web page that was a blog or forum. The link was to a post on the blog (or forum) from someone whose screen namr was "River Rat". Now this was NOT of FR, it was a site that was linked from a thread on FR. This post (on the other board) stated that sKerry's crew got more decorations (I recall 2 other Bronze Stars) than any other boat. This poster said that these were given to the crew (reflected glory from sKerry's Silver Star).
So, if the reason for sKerry's comendation is bogus, then so was theirs!!! Since the Bronze is kinda important to aging warriors, I can see a scenario where some sKerry operative goes to these guys and says something to the effect "If Johnny goes down, you go down too!".
Now I may be off base here, but, if I have had bragging rights to something as prestigious as the Bronze Star, and it appears that I am about to be called a phony, you bet I would try, desparately, to preserve my "legacy" (sound familiar???). That being said, maybe one of the undercover pundits that monitor FR (you listening Hugh???? What about you Sean???) should focus on the "other" awards given in conjunction to the sKerry medals and see where that goes.
I wish I had bookmarked that damn link, but, I am certain that the more talented FREEPERS will find it. I think that it could be interesting.
I have one more hypothesis, based on what I've learned about the Navy as a reservist and based on my reading of John Kerry's personality.
Imagine you're a sailor joining as an enlisted man. During basic training and training in a specialty, you will have personal contact with very few officers. You are taught to salute the officers and say hello, but personal interaction is discouraged beyond the formalities.
You and the other enlisted men will see the officers as living in a different world. You may respect some, and consider others jerks. But your feelings are rarely strong because of the minimal personal interaction. You do have a feeling that the officers have a world where you're not included. You understand the need for the separation, but it's always a bit of a blow to the ego.
For up to a year, you live in this world. Now, you get assigned to a swift boat. This boat is commanded by a man name John Kerry.
John Kerry at that age already knows he wants to be president. John Kerry knows it won't do any good to have a crew that mocks his command. Kerry seeks out the friendship of the enlisted men. The enlisted men, long blocked out of the officer's world, suddenly feel included. Lieutenant Kerry actually cares what I think! Lieutenant Kerry treats me as an equal!
They may have thought it was a little strange when he hauls out the camera and does re-enactments. But Kerry assures everyone it's all in good fun, and fun is a precious commodity in Vietnam. And if some beer was passed around the boat on a slow day, Lieutenant Kerry was hardly going to risk getting anyone mad.
Most enlisted men would take a great liking to such an officer. All Kerry would demand of the enlisted men is that he continue to be the center of attention. That's a small price to pay for having an officer who gives you so much respect. And Kerry probably regularly mentions how lucky you are to serve on his boat, rather than the boats of certain other officers that don't appreciate their crew as much. You believe him, and feel grateful.
But say you're a fellow officer. How would you feel about such a backstabbing prima donna? It becomes obvious to you that Kerry cares more about his ego and future political career than the safety of the fleet. Kerry figures that his fellow officers aren't going to be his route to fame, so he disdains them in favor of making his movies with the enlisted guys.
This hypothesis fits in well with what we're seeing today. Thoughts?
Isn't that the truth! I feel like up is down and down is up! Imagine how I felt when Kerry said "Help is on the way."
I feel like we're fighting the Vietnam War all over again, only this time we are getting the facts.
Trident/Delta,Bump.
Some of this reminds me of the Peter Straub novel Koko...
It's interesting how the swift vets are having their financial ties investigated, yet what about the ones stumping for Kerry? I imagine they were paid room and board while they supported him. Are they also receiving per diem?
The ones supporting Kerry--particularly the "he saved me" one--seem to have just emerged from nowhere and said JK is an upstanding guy. Evidence suggests, though, that Kerry did little to get his medals.
Yet on Hannity I believe, the Rear Admiral said Kerry's was the most-decorated boat around.
Maybe it's not a shared atrocity--maybe it's that they all scratched each other's back and Kerry recommended them for medlas as long as they corroborated his story.
Recently a man who faked being a decorated Vietnam vet was found out and then commited suicide.
So what if you've been bragging to everyone you know for 35 years that you were a decorated vet, and the guy who knows the truth about those awards is running for president--are you going to defy him and have the democrat operatives reveal the truth to the papers?
Just the body language of the pic on the boat, K in the middle...they are not close to him, not leaning in to him. And we know he's a needy, touchy-feely kind of guy, but no one's close to him.
I can't believe he thought of being president back then. Taking videos, but then throwing out your medals and equating the American flag with the flags of "Iraq, Iran, North Korea" (and other evil countries)...no way he was thinking about the presidency.
There are likely several different motives at work, mutually reinforcing each other and varying from one member of Kerry's boat crew to another. Here's another motive to add to the stew: the desire to have a mark of distinction through association with a public figure.
Who would pay much attention to any of Kerry's boat crew unless they told flattering "war stories" about him? He is famous and successful and they have hitched themselves to him, like little sucker fish.
As for the swift boat vets who are hostile to Kerry, I am inclined to believe them on appearances alone. In years of opposition research work, I have found to my surprise that allegations against a candidate from people who know him almost always have an element of truth, even if murky on the facts.
For real whoppers, look to the flattering claims and stories that a candidate tells about himself and their explanations about negative information. Unless the news media dislike a candidate, they rarely give close scrutiny to a candidate's biographical claims.
Oddly, for some candidates and public officials, there is a sense of thrill and a boost to the ego in being able to tell lies and embellishments in public and get away with it. In such cases, a political career is not just something that they do but is integral to their conception of who they are.
The worst liars as candidates tend to be those who from their youth desperately wanted to be in public office and whose campaign pitch has a large element of self-praise and does not put the primary focus on issues. In the worst cases, they seem to have what psychologists call borderline personality disorder and have a nasty underside to them.
Kerry, who is living out his youthful ambition to be president, fits the profile of the self-obsessed politician. In office, his lying, dishonesty, and viciousness toward opponents would be of Clintonian proportions and potentially deadly to the country.
So far, we have a dozen or so Kerry Swift Boat comrades who support him-- they were the ones used as props at the convention.
And we have 250 or so SBV's who challenge Kerry's version of his service time in Vietnam and his fitness to be Comm. in Chief.
This has yet to play out. If Kerry is INDEED telling the truth about his service, we should expect 100's of SBV's out there to surface--maybe not as an organized group--to validate Kerry's version.
If we don't get dozens more if not 100's more coming forth in defense of Kerry, the conclusion one might draw is that the vast majority of those who served with Kerry question Kerry's version of his service experience, i.e. Kerry has not been truthful.
Or we could also conclude that of all the people Kerry served with, only 13 or so are Democrats who would vote for him anyway and the rest are Republicans who wouldn't.
I'm waiting to hear how many men who served with Kerry and support him stick their necks out like the anti-kerry SBV's have done.
The Boston Globe
June 16, 2003
HEROISM, AND GROWING CONCERN ABOUT WAR
BY MICHAEL KRANISH, GLOBE STAFF(snip)
But Kerry went back in the rivers. Indeed, it was after this meeting that he began his most deadly round of combat. Within days of the Saigon meeting, he joined a five-man crew on swift boat No. 94 on a series of missions in which he won the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and two of his three Purple Hearts. Starting in late January 1969, this crew completed 18 missions over an intense and dangerous 48 days, almost all of them in the dense jungles of the Mekong Delta.
Kerry's crew included engineman Eugene Thorson, later an Iowa cement mason; David Alston, then the crew's only African-American and today a minister in South Carolina; petty officer Delbert Sandusky of Illinois; rear gunner and quartermaster Michael Medeiros of California; and the late Tom Belodeau, who joined the crew fresh out of Chelmsford High School in Massachusetts. Others rotated in and out of the crew.(snip)
Kerry's early departure meant that he was leaving behind a crew that had suffered through many bloody battles with him. Worried that crew members would be killed, he arranged for them to receive a safer assignment. When one crew member, [Michael] Medeiros, tried to stay, Kerry "came and talked to me and said, 'I really would like you to go. . . . I'd like to know you are safe, or safer.' "
Same kind of thought occurred to me. But I don't think they needed prompting to stick by Kerry. I'm sure that other crews couldn't help noticing how the guys on Kerry's boat kept coming back with stories of stirring action and daring-do worthy of Horatio Hornblower, Admiral of the High Seas while all they did was plink a few scared teenagers who couldn't shoot a rocker launcher straight. While it was dangerous, frightening and unappealing duty, it was not the kind of thing they give medals for, was it?
Everyone probably realized that "grade inflation" had taken over in Kerry's boat, the crew went along with it and no one else wanted to call them liars.
The leader brings the skeleton and gets the others to chain to it as well. They then trade one dark sin for another. And the brotherhood becomes strengthened.
Here's another point against Kerry: his relatively few SBV allies speak seem to lack the passion of the opposing SBVs.
The Washington Post
April 23, 2004
Keen Focus on Lt. Kerry's Four Months Under Fire
Lois Romano, Washington Post Staff Writer
Throughout the last decade of Kerry's political career, his crewmates have defended him when his credentials and record have been questioned; they are now campaigning for him. In a recent interview, Kerry dismissed the current questions about his first Purple Heart as partisan politics. He also said he left early because he had turned on the war. One of his crewmates, Michael Medeiros, said Kerry ensured that his men were given a non-threatening assignment before he left Vietnam.
(snip)
He arrived in the jungle as a Yalie with a Boston Brahmin résumé and the initials JFK -- a different breed from his crewmen, barely out of their teens and with working-class roots. Kerry would also spend his free time chronicling his experiences in letters home, which historian Douglas Brinkley used in his recently published book "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War."
But the consensus among crewmates is that he bridged the differences and connected with his crew immediately. In combat, eight of nine of them say, he was daring and unflinching, never tentative. The ninth, Stephen M. Gardner, an avowed Bush supporter, recently told Brinkley: "Whenever a firefight started he always pulled up stakes and got the hell out of Dodge." Once, famously, Kerry -- in violation of regulations -- beached his boat and went after the enemy, chasing down and killing a Viet Cong guerrilla carrying a rocket launcher.
"I didn't want to just react and respond. I wanted to win," Kerry said. "I went there with a purpose, and that was to be successful on the missions."
Medeiros, who in 1969 was a crewmate of Kerry's, said Kerry "wanted to be aggressive."
"I liked him immediately. . . . He was a strong leader willing to take calculated risks. We were the seasoned ones; he respected that. He took the approach that we didn't have to prove anything to him. He had to prove something to us," Medeiros said.(snip)
The Boston Globe
May 25, 1996, Saturday
Boorda was inspired by Kerry's remarks
By Chris Black, Globe Staff
Adm. Jeremy (Mike) Boorda, the chief of naval operations, was buried at Arlington National Cemetery this week. Last June, he found himself moved by remarks made by Sen. John F. Kerry at the transfer of two Vietnam-era swift boats to the Navy Museum.
Both men served as naval officers in Vietnam: Boorda on a destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin and Kerry as commander of a swift boat, the fast-moving combat vessels used by the Navy to pursue the enemy down the treacherous inland rivers in the Mekong Delta.
In a communication to the top officers of the Navy last June about Kerry's speech, Boorda wrote: "The senator was able to capture the essence of small-unit combat, the dependence of each crew member and each boat upon the others, the trust and love (he used the word love several times in his speech, and it was just right) that grew among those who served, and the honor, courage and commitment (yes, he used those words, too) that is the foundation of what we are all about."
Boorda sent a copy of the speech to every flag officer in the Navy. "Use the thoughts when the opportunities arise to help your people understand what service in this Navy of ours is truly all about," he wrote. "Thanks."
(snip)
The above part of my analysis has been somewhat debunked. The spokesperson (the Rear Admiral-can't recall his name) from the anti-Kerry SBV's claims their group consists of Republicans PLUS Democrats and Independents (how many of each he didn't say).
I'm in the reserves. I have not been in combat yet.
What do you think about Kerry getting the support of the enlisted men but not the officers? If my guess is wrong, it's wrong.
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