Posted on 08/21/2004 2:08:47 PM PDT by nwrep
In this interview titled "An Angry War Veteran", John Kerry admitted to the NYT reporter that he enlisted in the Swift Boats to avoid the war in Vietnam, since the boats were only used for patrol duty:
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..That first trip to Vietnam piqued his curiosity, - "I wanted to go back and see for myself what was going on, but I didn't really want to get involved in the war." So late in 1968 he volunteered for an assignment on "swift boats" - the short, fast aluminum craft that were then used for patrol duty off the coast of Vietnam.
Two weeks before he arrived in Vietnam as a swift boat commander, he said, "they changed the policy on the used of the boats - decided to send them up the river to prove to the Vietcong that they didn't own the waters."
The river missions involved shooting at sampans and at huts along the banks and suddenly, Mr. Kerry recalls, "we said, 'hey, wait a minute - we don't know who these people are'. So we started to beach our boats to go to ashore and find out what we had been shooting at."
PING
Isn't that against the standard operational orders for Swift Boat Patrols?
Try as he may,this is NOT "1984" and Kerry can't have the damning PROOF eliminated. :-)
Terrific find. Can someone get some of this great research to some people who can broadcast it?
Great Find! Especially in light of the fact that the NYT presumably couldn't find it (wink wink). Gosh, you think that the "Grey Lady" - that bastion of journalistic ethics - would have done a search on their own archives for the name of a Presidential Candidate.
This doesn't surprise me. Great post.
The beaching and checking out the scenery is pure bullship.......
Someone needs to send this to the Swiftvets.
Can someone get a get a link here. nwrep, how and where did you find this?
Link on aisle nine!!
SBVT already know about it. Its all in the book
Kerry admitted as much to the Boston GLobe
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061603.shtml
Kerry initially hoped to continue his service at a relatively safe distance from most fighting, securing an assignment as "swift boat" skipper. While the 50-foot swift boats cruised the Vietnamese coast a little closer to the action than the Gridley had come, they were still considered relatively safe.
"I didn't really want to get involved in the war," Kerry said in a little-noticed contribution to a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing."
A bit more ...
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061603.shtml
... Kerry served two tours. For a relatively uneventful six months, from December 1967 to June 1968, he served in the electrical department aboard the USS Gridley, a guided-missile frigate that supported aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin and was far removed from combat.
"I didn't have any real feel for what the heck was going on [in the war]," Kerry has recalled. His ship returned to its Long Beach, Calif., port on June 6, 1968, the day that Robert F. Kennedy died from a gunshot wound he received on the previous night at a Los Angeles hotel. The antiwar protests were growing. But within five months Kerry was heading back to Vietnam, seeking to fulfill his officer commitment despite his growing misgivings about the war.
Kerry initially hoped to continue his service at a relatively safe distance from most fighting, securing an assignment as "swift boat" skipper. While the 50-foot swift boats cruised the Vietnamese coast a little closer to the action than the Gridley had come, they were still considered relatively safe.
"I didn't really want to get involved in the war," Kerry said in a little-noticed contribution to a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing." ...
Nice work. Good to see you got an applause.
They know. It's mentioned on pages 25 and 26 of "Unfit for Command."
INTERVIEWER: We've had these battle of the ads, from Moveon.org, and the Swift vets Mr. Democratic spokesman, Which do you think is more likely, That George W. Bush is Hitler, or John Kerry exaggerated about his Vietnam experience?
or:
INTERVIWER: Mr. Davis, (or insert name of demonRATS lackey here) you say these 527 ads are terrible, negative campaign tactics that cloud the issues. I don't remember you calling into this network to go on the air to denounce the Moveon.org ads that said Bush was Hitler, yet you called us today to come on and complain about the Swiftboat vets ads. Please tell us why you you waited.
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