Posted on 08/21/2004 8:41:10 AM PDT by Pikamax
Swift Boat Accounts Incomplete And Flawed Clashes Roil Kerry Campaign
By Michael Dobbs Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page A01
When John F. Kerry rescued James Rassmann from the Bay Hap River in the jungles of Vietnam in March 1969, neither man could possibly have imagined that the episode would become a much-disputed focus of an American presidential campaign 35 years later.
For Kerry, then a green and gangly Navy lieutenant junior grade and now the Democratic challenger to a wartime Republican president, that tale of heroism under fire has become integral to his campaign. A centerpiece of public rallies, videos and a new campaign advertisement last week, it has helped distinguish the candidate from his Democratic primary rivals and from President Bush, who spent the war at home as a member of the Texas Air National Guard.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Awesome sumation.
I thought the article was rather fair.
Now if only the New York Times could manage to do the same, maybe some of the media spin would stop,and the truth would be heard.
#9 is mislabeled.
It should read: "Kerry continues to flee but then decides that maybe the coast is clear enough for him to return and try to find that guy who fell overboard. Anyways, the guy might live and start to talk and that would not look good for Kerry, no sir, not at all."
You also might want to visit this site. It shows Alstons head wound. He should have had a shaved head and many bandages in that photo.
http://idexer.com/articles/alston_kerry.htm
No. Rood spoke of a separate incident, the 'killing a fleeing VC' incident.
It was annoying in this respect: The take an event, like the swift vets, as an excuse to simply RERUN that same script from the Kerry convention. They do a 'rowback' like explain how Rassman was on Kerry's boat all along, even though Kerry campaign accounts had him on another boat, and explain how Rassman fell overboard *somewhere else*. When there is a dispute, the article assumes everything in Kerry's favor.
There is still something that doesnt fit. Kerry's boat was hit? how did it manage to speed up then?
So the usual bias. the 'meme' the media will play is: Oh, they just hate the war hero for coming back and telling America about Vietnam.
A few telling points:
-------
KERRY RAN OFF:
At first, nobody noticed what had happened to Rassmann. But then Medeiros, who was standing at the stern, saw him bobbing up and down in the water and shouted, "Man overboard." Around this time, crew members said, Kerry decided to go back to help the crippled 3 boat. It is unclear how far down the river Kerry's boat was when he turned around. It could have been anywhere from a few hundred yards to a mile.
Wait just a sec! Kerry served 4 mos out of a 12 month tour which gives him a 33% accomplishment rating. Kerry attended 11 out of 49 intelligence committee meetings giving him a 22.4% accomplishment rating. These stats clearly show Kerry's advance towards inertia. Performance well beyond the call to duty.
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I've got a problem with the diagram of the fishing weir. I've never seen one span a canal or river. Traffic would tear them up. Usually a weir or fish trap is L shaped or U shaped and placed where fish normally pass. Something spanning a canal would be properly called a barricade.
"JfnK plotted since his youth to run for president someday and his military time was all a part of the plan"
He was born in the west wing of the hospital, you know.
According to the diagram, hard starboard would have run his boat aground.
There was the time we were carrying special forces up a river and a mine exploded under our boat sending it 2 feet into the air. We were receiving incoming rocket and small arms fire and Tommy was returning fire with his M-60 machine gun when it literally broke apart in his hands. He was left holding the pieces unable to fire back while one of the Green Berets walked along the edge of the boat to get Tommy another M-60. As he was doing so, the boat made a high speed turn to starboard and the Green Beret kept going--straight into the river. The entire time while the boat went back to get the Green Beret, Tommy was without a machine gun or a weapon of any kind, but all the time he was hurling the greatest single string of Lowell-Chelmsford curses ever heard at the Viet Cong. He literally had swear words with tracers on them!'
As of today, I'm a 3X donor, Gunney.
Thank you for supporting the Swifties, and thank you for your service to our country, too!
This is tough for Navy to say but SEMPER FI Gunney!
Rassman also seems to have inadvertently made a mockery of Kerry's all-important third Purple, the one he used to get out of Nam. It's clear that the rice injury was a self-inflicted joke. That leaves Kerry with a "contusion" on which to hang his trip home. Let's see the medic report surrounding this event.
I wish someone would look into the circumstances surrounding the "Band of Brothers" return home. I suspect that Kerry helped them get out early as well, which would help explain their loyalty.
Rassman also seems to have inadvertently made a mockery of Kerry's all-important third Purple, the one he used to get out of Nam. It's clear that the rice injury was a self-inflicted joke. That leaves Kerry with a "contusion" on which to hang his trip home. Let's see the medic report surrounding this event.
I wish someone would look into the circumstances surrounding the "Band of Brothers" return home. I suspect that Kerry helped them get out early as well, which would help explain their loyalty.
While returning from a SEA LORDS operation along the Bay Hap River, a mine detonated under another swift boat. Machine-gun fire erupted from both banks of the river, and a second explosion followed moments later. The second blast blew me off John's swift boat, PCF-94, throwing me into the river. Fearing that the other boats would run me over, I swam to the bottom of the river and stayed there as long as I could hold my breath.
When I surfaced, all the swift boats had left, and I was alone taking fire from both banks. To avoid the incoming fire, I repeatedly swam under water as long as I could hold my breath, attempting to make it to the north bank of the river. I thought I would die right there. The odds were against me avoiding the incoming fire and, even if I made it out of the river, I thought I'd be captured and executed. Kerry must have seen me in the water and directed his driver, Del Sandusky, to turn the boat around. Kerry's boat ran up to me in the water, bow on, and I was able to climb up a cargo net to the lip of the deck. But, because I was nearly upside down, I couldn't make it over the edge of the deck. This left me hanging out in the open, a perfect target. John, already wounded by the explosion that threw me off his boat, came out onto the bow, exposing himself to the fire directed at us from the jungle, and pulled me aboard.
For his actions that day, I recommended John for the Silver Star, our country's third highest award for bravery under fire. I learned only this past January that the Navy awarded John the Bronze Star with Combat V for his valor.
It shows a keloid scar. The size of the scar is MUCH greater than the size of the wound. Alston served on the same boat as Kerry, best guess is for about a week. A couple of threads here cover that ground.
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