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Does that mean that, if a Madhi-army idiot fires an RPG at, say, a stryker, and one of the soldiers in the stryker gets out, and chases him down, and shoots him as he's fleeing, he's a murderer? You're forbidden from shooting fleeing enemy soldiers?

Listen, I hate Kerry, I'm not voting for him, but this is one thing about his past where I'm not really bothered. Putting himself in for a Silver Star over the incident is a bit much. I also never said that he was a "hero" for chasing down a wounded VC. I was under the impression that if someone fired at you, and ran, you could still kill them, in context of a war. Now, if it's proven the kid surrended, and Kerry shot him anyway, that's a different story.

Am I wrong? Someone set me straight if I am, please.

The details of the event for which he was given the Silver Star make no sense at all. Supposedly, a B-40 (rocket propelled grenade) was fired at the boat and missed. Charlie jumps up with the launcher in his hand, the bow gunner knocks him down with the twin .50 (caliber machine guns), Kerry beaches the boat, jumps off, shoots Charlie, and retrieves the launcher. If true, he did everything wrong. (a) Standard procedure when you took rocket fire was to put your stern to the action and go (away) balls to the wall. A B-40 has the ballistic integrity of a Frisbee after about 25 yards, so you put 50 yards or so between you and the beach and begin raking it with your .50's. ( Did you ever see anybody get knocked down with a .50 caliber round and get up? The guy was dead or dying. The rocket launcher was empty. There was no reason to go after him (except if you knew he was no danger to you--just flopping around in the dust during his last few seconds on earth, and you wanted some derring-do in your after-action report). And we didn't shoot wounded people. We had rules against that, too.

Kerry got off the boat. This was a major breach of standing procedures. Nobody on a boat crew ever got off a boat in a hot area. EVER! The reason was simple. If you had somebody on the beach your boat was defenseless. It couldn't run and it couldn't return fire. It was stupid and it put his crew in danger. He should have been relieved and reprimanded. I never heard of any boat crewman ever leaving a boat during or after a firefight.

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