I heard Jim Angle's report on that. It is very curious. One would think they knew whether they were on the boat together or on separate boats.
More and more it appears that much of Kerry's Viet Nam/Cambodia experience may have been fabricated. Kerry is going to have to address these variations. Sending out his mouthpieces with differing versions of the stories just won't do.
Someone posted yesterday that Tony Snow had counted 9 different versions of the Christmas in Cambodia story from the Kerry camp.
9. Wow.
Sauran's tower continues to crumble.
I heard Jim Angle's report on that. It is very curious. One would think they knew whether they were on the boat together or on separate boats.
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But we were on Seperate Boats TOGETHER.
Yes. Here is what I found on the Silver Star incident. Someone with swift boat experience needs to check my analyis, but here it is.
On John Kerry's website is a video called "Brothers in arms". Close to five minutes into the John Kerry video the silver star incident is described. Initially Mike Medeiros starts the narration of the event which occurred on Feb 28. He states that when they went up river they came under fire "from some people with rockets" (note the plural). This is located at around 5 minutes 5 seconds into the video. Del Sandusky then comes in stating "The Viet Cong was shooting at us and had a live b-40 ready to launch towards us." "There was no question in my mind or anyone of the crew that this was a hostile Viet Cong with a live B-40 and he was just waiting for an opportunity to launch it at us." Mike M. then takes over and relates, "Well Lt. Kerry decided we're going to beach the boat and go and get this guy. and He didn't say that, but that was his intentions. So we beached the boat on that starboard shore." Del picks up the story and states, that Kerry, Mike with radio, and Tom Belodeau(remember this name) go ashore. Back to Mike who states that Kerry follows the enemy down the path and around a lean-to where Kerry dispatches him, rightfully earning a silver star.
Now ABC news has a story covering this same incident. Kerry uses incredibly bad judgement. As in the video, the threat is plural. "And this time, another B-40 rocket hit, and maybe a couple more. But this one was close aboard. It blew the windows out of the crew cabin. I see out of a spider hole a Vietcong stand up dressed in a loin cloth, holding a B-40 rocket."
This is the tactic to use. "Protocol at the time would be for Kerry's Swift boat to fire to shore and then take evasive action. But Kerry ordered Sandusky, his second-in-command, to drive the boat onto the beach — directly into the ambush."
Beaching the boat in the face of an indeterminate threat is lunacy. Follow that with splitting your force and taking your heavy weapon operator away from his weapon is stupid, stupid, stupid(or a lie about the situation). This is where Tom Belodeau comes in. Tommy Belodeau was manning the boat's M-60 machine gun, Short said. "Tommy in the pit tank winged him in the side of the legs as he was coming across," he said. "But the guy didn't miss stride. I mean, he did not break stride."
...
The man was still running down a path when they got to the bank. Kerry, Belodeau and Michael McDarris[sic], in hot pursuit, saw the Vietcong soldier.
So the M-60 operator goes chasing after a wounded enemy who was only 30 yards away from an M-60 machine gun. M-60 --->Effective Range (max) - 3,725 meters (max effective range varies with target type and bipod use from 200m to 1100m)
Things almost went against the sailors. "He needed like, 25, 30 yards to arm that rocket, all right," Sandusky said, "and as we beached, he could not aim it at us. So he got up out of the spider hole, started running."
What were they, the gang that couldn't shoot straight?