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!
He was an Army Special Forces officer, not a sailor, who was with a group of South Vietnames troops that the boats were ferrying.
Thanks for the picture of Audie Murphy, the most decorated military during WW2. Who is that other creepy looking guy?
I'm thinking it maybe Rasputin but I think he died sometime earlier. Just Kidding. I really would like to know because usually front rows are reserved for advisers.
And you left out one the biggest, the next previous Dem resident at 1600 Pennsylvania, Lyndon Baines Johnson. Another guy who married well. Which brings thing nicely full circle, since it was LBJ that sent Kerry, and a few million others, to Vietnam. However LBJ's SECDEF, and much of the rest of his adminstration, was a left over JF Kennedy type, Robert Strange MacNamara, which of course also brings us to Kerry again because he was a protege of Ted Kennedy.
"Mr. Rassman: answer the question! Were you, or were you not, eating a cooke at the time you fell overboard!"
"Mr. Rassman: answer the question! Were you, or were you not, eating a cookie at the time you fell overboard!"
Even Rassman's account indicates that Kerry was "pulling back" OUT OF THE FIRE FIGHT when he picked up Rassman. "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.
What's controversial is how Kerry got his wound - During those few minutes right around the mine explosion, or when he blew up the civilian's sampan earlier....
Very good.
Kerry wrote an article for the Boston Herald on October 14, 1979:
"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 killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real."
Wouldn't it be funny if a false statement Kerry made about Nixon brought him down. In a perfect world the media would bring Kerry down for this. Of course the media doesn't care and isn't going to do anything about this.
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In a TV interview conducted by Greta Van Susteren earlier this year with Michael Kranish and Nina Eason of the Boston Globe, the following interchange occurred, which mentioned Kerry's oft stated contention that he spent XMAS Eve in Cambodia in 1968:
VAN SUSTEREN: Michael, did he cooperate at all with this or participate or sit down for interviews?
MICHAEL KRANISH, KERRY BIOGRAPHER: Well, sure. We did a series last year. It was a seven part series that ran 14 pages in the newspaper and he sat down for about ten hours of interviews for this series.
The book was written during the time when he was still running for the nomination right at the height of the Super Tuesday primaries and so forth, so our material for interviews was from the series.
To go back to your question you asked Nina, you know, he's also a skeptic of government. So, you ask why does he go, some people say flip- flop, other people would say why does he question things the way that he does?
A very short anecdote, he was in Vietnam and he was in Cambodia as part of a mission. I don't know if he intended to go but that's where he was but the government that was running the war knew that troops were in Cambodia but Nixon, President Nixon at the time was telling the American public, "We're not in Cambodia."
So, from a very early time, John Kerry is skeptical of government and he came back to protest the war that he participated in, so this is where some of this inner belief comes from. He does -- he did serve but he also questioned.
In a 1992 interview with John Diamond of the AP Kerry again makes the statement that he was sent to Cambodia. Here is an excerpt:
"But for Kerry, who spent six violent months commanding a patrol boat on the Mekong River, there's always been a ring of truth to allegations of abandoned Americans. By Christmas 1968, part of Kerry's patrol extended across the border of South Vietnam into Cambodia.
"We were told, `Just go up there and do your patrol. Everybody was over there (in Cambodia). Nobody thought twice about it," Kerry said. One of the missions, which Kerry, at the time, was ordered not to discuss, involved taking CIA operatives into Cambodia to search for enemy enclaves.
"I can remember wondering, `If you're going to go, what happens to you,"' Kerry said.
I wish I knew. I'm sure it's one of the war protest icons of the day. I can't recall who.
I saw one Swift Boat Vet, I think his name was Van O'Dell, on Hannity. He seems to be more upset that Kerry proclaimed that HE ALONE went back to save fellow vets. Kerry has dissed all others there that day becasue he said they all ran away but he came back to help Rassman. O'Dell said that there were other boats that went back for other soldiers. O'Dell was on a boat that pulled a guy out of the water.
That is Kerry's classmate and lifetime pal from Yale. He was in the DNC bio propaganda flick.
LBJ also got a phony Silver Star for riding as a passenger in a plane that never got into the combat area.
Everyone...of those guys ( sans Dean...) were elected by American's. Maybe some dead American's...but American's nevertheless.
As I said in another thread, John Kerry is to Ronald Reagan as Major Frank Burns is to General Patton.
I felt his true story needed to get out there.
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