Posted on 08/09/2004 9:12:32 AM PDT by MindBender26
Seems Kerry's "I'm a Swift Boat Hero" story has sprung another leak.
Kerry claimed a Bronze Star with "V" device for rescuing Jim Rassmann, an Army SF 0-2 after a mine exploded under a boat, knocking Rassman into the water.
That Kerry pulled Rassman out of the water is not contested, but the Bronze Star is now being questioned.
According to tro friends at network, not just Rassman but a total of 4 men went into the water that day. Kerry saved Rassman, another boat saved another soldier and a third boat pulled two people to safety!
The problem is, for the other boat skippers, it was all in a day's work. No medals were asked for, recomended or awarded.
Kerry pulls one in four out of the water and gets the Bronze Star!
What does not compute here????
Media types are at DOD Awards Branch, trying to get the documents on this.
Semper Gumby!
Well on the point I would not slam him because he fell off the boat at the start of what was going on ...I.E. he was eating a cookie before any thing happen... then the first enemy fire (and apparel the only enemy fire)was a boat hitting a mine and Rassman and three other went in the water... Whether from the blast or from Kerry's boat bugging out to fast ?
He made the "Nixon" comment in a discussion with a Boston Globe reporter, not in a speech on the floor of the US Senate.
O'Dell said a mine exploded, destroying one of the boats. A friend of his was killed in the blast. The other boats never bolted the way Kerry did. They stayed to rescue survivors, and apparently only the people on Kerry's own boat got any medals...though that's the boat that originally bailed.
..and while there on the prowl for documents...could they get the rest of Kerry's Military records?????
It would be nice.....
redrock
Perhaps. But think: how many people can even IDENTIFY the man on the left?
Is Kerry a puffed-up liar?
Was this picture taken before or after he threw them over the fence?
Odell was on H&C last week and when he started to tell this story about the boat hitting a mine and 4 men going overboard, Susan Ostrich cut him off and didn't let him finish. Hannity let her get away with it.
That question has no business being asked, since it defames the integrity of America's most famous combat veteran! How dare you - you haven't walked the walk!
< /DNC TalkPoint>
THANKS.
HOPEFULNESS IS GREAT.
Kerry also described, for example, for the Boston Herald his vivid memories of his Christmas Eve spent in Cambodia:
I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real.
Interesting...
Pretty good, Yachtsman.
Freud at work. My guess is he made the same statement in the Senate, and a staffer had it corrected in the Record.
http://www.rgj.com/news/stories/html/2004/07/22/76146.php?sp1=rgj&sp2=News&sp3=Local+News&sp5=RGJ.com&sp6=news&sp7=local_news
Instead, Rassmann is recounting the story of March 13, 1969, over and over again to reporters, Kerry supporters and veterans. He is a scheduled speaker July 29 at the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Rassmann, a first lieutenant in the Army special forces, was eating a chocolate chip cookie on Kerry’s patrol boat as it pulled back from a fire fight when a nearby boat hit a mine. During the ensuing combat, Kerry’s boat was rocked by another explosion, which injured Kerry and tossed Rassmann into the water.
Worried that retreating boats would run him over, Rassmann said he swam to the bottom of the river and waited for the fleet to pass. When he surfaced, the boats were gone and the enemy was shooting at him from the riverbanks.
Rassmann said he started a swim for the north bank. But within minutes — a period of time that felt like “six or seven years” — he saw a boat returning for him.
When the boat, captained by Kerry, passed over him, Rassmann grabbed a net hooked to the bow and climbed onto the side of the boat. But he couldn’t manage to get over the railing and into the boat.
“This fire is continuing and I expected I was the perfect target,” he said. “Next thing I know, John comes running out of the pilot house and up toward me up on the bow. And I didn’t get shot. I mean, it was a miracle neither one of us got shot. And he got down on his hands and knees and pulled me over and we got up.”
The act won Kerry a Bronze Star Medal.
Kerry and Rassmann parted that day and didn’t speak again until this year.
The face is familiar, but alas it is too long ago.
Hmmm, but Kerry now sends attack dogs to say that same man is lying.
"But his father, Richard Kerry - a test pilot who served in the Army Air Corps - warned him that if he flew in combat, he might lose his love of flying."
Not to mention go down to his flaming death. Kerry's a coward that wanted to be herioc, which is why he says:
"I didn't really want to get involved in the war. When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing."
But then he was...horror of horros, expected to get involved in the war!
"He was running away with a live B-40, and, I thought, poised to turn around and fire it." Asked whether that meant Kerry shot the guerrilla in the back, Kerry said, "No, absolutely not. He was hurt, other guys were shooting from back, side, back."
So Kerry and the VC were running back to back when Kerry shot him?
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