Posted on 08/16/2004 2:41:30 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The passionate debate over John Kerry's war record has become a question of credibility. Who is accurately portraying what the Democratic presidential candidate did in Vietnam 35 years ago? Kerry's designated advocate Lanny Davis has posed a simple test of who was aboard a small boat with the future senator during his baptism of fire.
On Dec. 2, 1968, Lt. j.g. Kerry saw his first action aboard a small boat called a skimmer or Boston whaler, resulting in the first of three Purple Hearts. Two crewmen, among the veterans who stood with Kerry on the podium in Boston, say only three men were aboard. John O'Neill, Kerry's fellow officer, critic and co-author of the newly published Unfit for Command, contends a future admiral who is critical of Kerry also was on the boat.
How many men squeezed into the whaler may seem irrelevant to the dispute over Kerry's war record. But Washington super-lawyer Davis contends nobody in a boat with Kerry when he was wounded has joined veterans opposing him. He poses this as a test of whether O'Neill's book is a tissue of lies intended to destroy a presidential candidate.
When television producers ask Kerry headquarters to discuss this controversy, they have been sending out Davis rather than one of the candidate's swift boat comrades. At Yale long ago, he admired fellow undergrad Kerry from afar as an orator and future leader. Now, outraged by the attack on Kerry's war record, Davis volunteered to help.
The campaign accepted, and he jumped in -- too early. Bill Clinton's calm advocate became a shouter for Kerry who accused critics of being liars. Davis was not ready last Monday when the Kerry campaign placed him on Fox's ''Hannity and Colmes'' program. He had not yet read O'Neill's book, and mixed up an attack on one target, Louis Letson, a former Navy doctor who is quoted in the book as saying the wound was trivial and probably self-inflicted from a ricocheting grenade shell.
On that program, Davis bought into the statement that Kerry was treated by ''another doctor, J.C. Carreon.'' ''This Letson guy never signed a single sheet of paper,'' Davis said. Actually, the now deceased Carreon was a medic who, according to Letson, bandaged Kerry's wound and regularly signed routine medical reports such as Kerry's. I contacted Letson, a retired family doctor, at his home in Scottsboro, Ala. He told me he remembered taking care of Kerry's wound, which was ''only a scratch,'' and also recalled the enlisted men, with some amusement, describing Kerry as promising he would ''come out of the war as the next JFK.''
By the time Davis appeared on CNN's ''Crossfire'' on Thursday, he had read the book and changed his emphasis. Davis was appearing for the first time on television next to O'Neill. He hammered home the point that nobody who ever had been in the same boat with Kerry has criticized his war service. O'Neill reiterated his contention in the book that Lt. William Schachte (later a rear admiral) was aboard the small whaler as Kerry's training officer and ''witnessed Kerry, with an M-79 [grenade launcher], fire and wound himself.'' Davis interrupted, shouting, ''That was a false statement.''
At Davis' suggestion, I telephoned the two crew members who said they were on the whaler that night: Patrick Runyon and William Zaldonis. Each said they did not know whether there was enemy fire and did not know how Kerry was wounded. But each said he was certain that they alone were in the boat with Kerry and did not even know Schachte.
When I called O'Neill, he told me Schachte was sure he was aboard the whaler and would speak out later.
Lanny Davis is a clever lawyer trying to reduce multiple charges against his client to one simple issue where, so far, he has the witnesses and his adversaries do not. Davis is also a decent human being who told me he thought he went over the line shouting at O'Neill and that ''there is a difference here of conceptions.'' That's better than simply crying liar in a fight John Kerry brought on himself.
***....If you were active in the so-called "peace" movement or in the radical wing of the civil rights causes, why would you tell the truth? Why would you tell people that no, you weren't really a "peace activist," except in the sense that you were against America's war. Why would you draw attention to the fact that while you called yourselves "peace activists," you didn't oppose the Communists' war, and were gratified when America's enemies won?
What you were really against was not war at all, but American "imperialism" and American capitalism. What you truly hated was America's democracy, which you knew to be a "sham" because it was controlled by money in the end. That's why you wanted to "Bring the Troops Home," as your slogan said. Because if America's troops came home, America would lose and the Communists would win. And the progressive future would be one step closer.
But you never had the honesty-then or now-to admit that. You told the lie then to maintain your influence and increase your power to do good (as only the Chosen can). And you keep on telling the lie for the same reason.
Why would you admit that, despite your tactical support for civil rights, you weren't really committed to civil rights as Americans understand rights? What you really wanted was to overthrow the very Constitution that guaranteed those rights, based as it is on private property and the individual-both of which you despise.
It is because America is a democracy and the people endorse it, that the left's anti-American, but "progressive" agendas can only be achieved by deceiving the people. This is the cross the left has to bear: The better world is only achievable by lying to the very people they propose to redeem.
..........Their cynicism flows from the very perception they have of right and wrong. They do it for higher ends. They do it for the progressive faith. They do it because they see themselves as having the power to redeem the world from evil. It is that terrifyingly exalted ambition that fuels their spiritual arrogance and justifies their sordid and, if necessary, criminal means.
And that is why they hate conservatives. They hate you because you are killers of their dream. Because you are defenders of a Constitution that thwarts their cause. They hate you because your "reactionary" commitment to individual rights, to a single standard and to a neutral and limited state obstructs their progressive designs. They hate you because you are believers in property and its rights as the cornerstones of prosperity and human freedom; because you do not see the market economy as a mere instrument for acquiring personal wealth and political war chests, to be overcome in the end by bureaucratic schemes.
Conservatives who think progressives are misinformed idealists will forever be blind-sided by the malice of the left-by the cynicism of those who pride themselves on principle, by the viciousness of those who champion sensitivity, by the intolerance of those who call themselves liberal, and by the ruthless disregard for the well-being of the downtrodden by those who preen themselves as social saints.
Conservatives are caught by surprise because they see progressives as merely misguided, when in fact they are fundamentally misdirected. They are the messianists of a religious faith. But it is a false faith and a self-serving religion. Since the redeemed future that justifies their existence and rationalizes their hypocrisy can never be realized, what really motivates progressives is a modern idolatry: their limitless passion for the continuance of Them. *** Source
Imagine, one man is picked up for a bank robbery commited by five people.
When asked for an alibi, the man who was picked up names seven friends that he was hanging out with. All seven maintain that he was with them that night. Three of them finally come out and say they are sure he was there, but they went home early and they can't say for sure.
The final four insist that he was with them and that they were at home playing poker.
None of them change their stories.
Then twenty people show up and say that they saw the guy who was picked up near the bank at the time in question.
None of the four remaining friends change their story.
Another 180 people show up and place the first guy near various other bank robberies.
None of the remaining four change their stories.
Perhaps there is a self interest in maintaining the fiction of John Kerry's service. Because if he's lied, they're all implicated in the biggest hoax of any serious candidate's Presidential campaign.
Someone will break under pressure... The pressure just needs to be kept on them to tell the truth.
Bill Clinton (paraphrased): If you deny it, no one can prove it.
I'm sick to death of their lies. And I'm even sicker about the cynical ends-justifies-the-means horse on which they saddle those lies.
sick of thier lies.
remember when kerry was campaigning early on and a left on mike caught him saying " this is the biggest bunch of liers that i have ever seen. we need to beat these guys.
kinda got bit real bad i hope.
This very same thing was said of the Clintonistas, no one in that inner circle ever broke ranks, at least to my knowledge.
This is the first Purple Heart wound. This statement in and of itself lends credence to the Swiftvets charge of a fraudulent PH claim by Kerry.
At Davis' suggestion, I telephoned the two crew members who said they were on the whaler that night: Patrick Runyon and William Zaldonis. Each said they did not know whether there was enemy fire and did not know how Kerry was wounded. But each said he was certain that they alone were in the boat with Kerry and did not even know Schachte.
Somebody's obviously lying. You are going to know who's on a whaler with you. Schachte needs to repond to this, IMO.
In the downloadable chapter of 'Unfit For Command' I remember reading that someone (the OIC?) admonished Kerry that he was going to 'shoot someone's eye out' after Kerry fired and hit an object to close to the boat. Does the book say it was Schachte who said that?
Also, does Schachte speak in the book, or do the Swiftvets speak about him in 3rd person?
longjack
He is ruled by an almost "pagan partisanship" that guides his tortured soul. He will go to any length, say any lie, and break any rule he has to when defending liberalism or its self-appointed demons.
I have a suggestion for Lanny--try worshipping God instead.
Powerful analysis of the left. And David Horowitz should know. Thanks.
It's my understanding that Steve Gardner was a gunner on Kerry's boat.
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Page 37 ...When we interviewed Grant HIbbard for this book, he was equally emphatic that Kerry's slight injury, in his opinion, could not possibly merit the Purple Heart:
Q: When did you first meet John Kerry?
GH: Kerry reported to my division in November 1968. I didn't know him from Adam.
Q: Can you describe the mission in which Kerry got his first Purple Heart?
GH: Kerry requested permission to go on a skimmer operation with Lieutenant Schachte, my most senior and trusted lieutenant, using a Boston Whaler to try to interedict a Viet Cong movement of arms and munitions. The next morning at the briefing, I was informed that no enemy fire had been received on that mission. Our units had fired on come VC units running on the beach. We were all in my office, some of the crew members, I remember Schachte being there. This was thirty-six years ago; it really didn't seem all that important at the time. Here was this lieutenant, junior grade, who was saying "I got wounded," and everybody else, the crew that were present were saying, "We didn't get any fire. We don't know how he got the scratch." Kerry showed me the scratch on his arm. I hadn't been informed that he had any medical treatment. The scratch didn't look like much to me; I've seen worse injuries from a rose thorn.
Q: Did Kerry want you to recommend him for a Purple Heart?
GH: Yes, that was his whole point. He had this little piece of shrapnel in his hand. It was tiny. I was told later that Kerry had fired an M-79 grenade and that he had misjudged it. He fired it too close to the shore, and it exploded on a rock or something. He got hit by a piece of shrapnel from a grenade that he had fired himself. The injury was self-inflicted, that's what made sense to me. I told Kerry to "forget it." There was no hostile fire, the injury was self-inflicted for all I knew, besides it was nothing more than a scratch. Kerry wasn't getting any Purple heart from me.
Q: How did Kerry get a Purple Heart from the incident then?
GH: I don't know. It beats me. I know I didn't recommend him for a Purple Heart. Kerry probably wrote up the paperwork and recommended himself, that's all I can figure out. If it ever came across my desk, I don't have any recollection of it. Kerry didn't get my signature. I said, "no way" and told him to get out of my office.
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This seems easy enough to verify by viewing John Kerry's military records.
You have captured the entire essence of lanny in your post! Excellent!
LLS
Here is the chapter of the book that covers the incident:
http://humaneventsonline.com.edgesuite.net/UnfitCh3.pdf
Unfit for Command - page 29 (there is more about Gardner in the book)
....A normal tour of duty in Vietnam was at least one year for all personnel. Many sailors, like Tom Wright (who would later object to operating with Kerry in Vietnam) and Steven Gardner (the gunner's mate who sat behind and above Kerry for most of his Vietnam stay and came to regard him as incompetent and dishonest), stayed for longer periods either because of the special needs of the Navy or because they had volunteered to do so. With very few exceptions in the history of Swift Boats in Vietnam, everyone served a one year tour unless he was seriously wounded. One exception was John Kerry, who requested to leave Vietnam after four months, citing an obscure regulation that permitted release of personnel with three Purple Hearts. John Kerry is also the only known Swiftee who received the Purple Heart for a self-inflicted wound....
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Later in the book, they relate how they WANTED him to leave because he was such a screw-up!
***
..........Their cynicism flows from the very perception they have of right and wrong. They do it for higher ends. They do it for the progressive faith. They do it because
they see themselves as having the power to redeem the world from evil. It is that terrifyingly exalted ambition that fuels their spiritual arrogance and justifies their
sordid and, if necessary, criminal means. *** - Sourced at Post#2
At least no living ones...
Was there an after action report?
I'm tired of these limp-wristed "conservatives", who live in the smirking, flared-nostril elitism of "progressive"-dominated Washington, trying to equivocate about the outrages of their fellow cocktail sippers.
So Davis is a decent, human being, notwithstanding his shrill, blatant lies and obfuscations in front of the camera? Well, Mr. Novak, they say that Hitler was pretty quiet and urbane at the Wolf's Lair - so I guess you'd cut him some slack, huh?
Check Post#12.
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