Former VVAW leader says Kerry faked wounds for medals, collaborated with enemy

I never met my uncle Will. He was a lieutenant in the Navy during WWII. He was killed in action on his PT boat in the Pacific. For his fatal wounds, he received the Purple Heart posthumously.

The first-captain of my West Point class took a bullet through the heart while leading a South Vietnamese airborne battalion into combat. For this fatal wound, he was awarded the Purple Heart posthumously.

My senior year roommate at West Point became a tunnel rat. A booby trap explosion killed him in the tunnels of Duc Pho. The army awarded him the Purple Heart posthumously. My plebe year roommate lost an eye and became permanently crippled. For his extensive wounds, he received the Purple Heart.

My battalion commander in Viet Nam was one of the bravest men I ever knew. He went out ahead of the troops in his light observation helicopter to find and kill enemy before they had a chance to fire on his men. That's how he died. For his fatal wounds, he received the Purple Heart posthumously.

My words pale in their import compared to the terse comment of a high school classmate of mine. We played lacrosse together in Baltimore. He went to the Naval Academy and upon graduation became a marine. This past July at our annual lacrosse crab feast, I asked him what he thought of your Purple Hearts. He said, "Bob, nine of us lieutenants went over there together, and only three of us came back. All three of us who survived spent at least a month in the hospital recovering from wounds we suffered in combat."

You didn't need any recovery time from your three alleged "wounds." How does one get "wounded" and yet not need to recover from those "wounds"? With wounds comes suffering. Where was your suffering? How could you merit a Purple Heart when you weren't even a casualty? You did not earn your Purple Hearts; you wrangled them from the system through deception so you could go home early and get out of eight months of combat. That is despicable and shameless. During the democratic convention, your flagrant boastful show of your "heroism" gave the impression that you had been a man in the thick of combat, when in fact, you had been a man on the very edge of it, all the while slyly conniving your way out of it. Instead of "Reporting for duty," you should have said, "Derelict in my duty." I marvel at your pomposity, and at the astonishing facility with which you present your phony war record as fact to the American people.

Let's compare your wounds with those of a West Point classmate of mine and his men. As my classmate directed artillery fire onto suspected enemy positions, shrapnel from an enemy mortar ripped into his leg. A medivac chopper took him to the Americal Division field hospital. When he returned to his company two weeks later, many new faces met him: the lieutenant who had taken over had marched the company into a u-shaped ambush resulting in two-thirds of the men being killed or wounded. Those wounded in that battle didn't have to put themselves in for the Purple Heart, Senator Kerry.

You exhibit the characteristics of a Narcissist. Narcissus, for whom this malignant character defect is named, fell in love with his image in a pool of water. As with Narcissus, your image has become the focus of your life. This image of yourself with which you are enamored, so greedy for recognition and praise, is only two dimensional: it has breadth and width, but no depth. And while your image may appear grand and heroic on the surface, there is no substance to it. My high school marine friend and my West Point classmate, true heroes, didn't take movie cameras with them to Viet Nam, but you did-with the express purpose of recording your imaginary exploits and feeding your grandiose image of yourself.

The truth is you faked combat wounds in Viet Nam, and your actions were devious and self-serving. You were a "Purple Heart hunter," just as the Swift Boat Vets say. Narcissus was an actor, and so are you.

I don't understand how any veteran, or any member of a veteran's family, or any sane-thinking American could even consider voting for you—a man who faked Purple Hearts in wartime. A man who will fake Purple Hearts for the sake of glorifying his image has no integrity and misdefines truth as whatever enhances the power and prestige of that image. A man without depth and substance stands for anything and everything-so long as his image is glorified. Narcissists such as you cannot be trusted; and they can be very dangerous, especially when they become paranoid about protecting their image, especially when they occupy positions of great authority and consequence. The issues in this election are truthfulness and character, and you lack both.

In 1971, I became a regional coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) for a short time. I and many other vets were very angry at our government. We had experienced horror, terror, trauma, and grief in a no-win war and couldn't see the reason for it. We felt betrayed by our government and our military leaders. You stepped in and became our spokesman.

What enabled you to rise to the leadership of VVAW? What caused us, back then, to respect a four-month mini-veteran of the war? The answer is your medals: your phony medals for valor and your three phony Purple Hearts. Your congressional testimony about the war began with your own assertions that you had received the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. What better spokesman than an heroic, thrice-wounded veteran! Our mistake was that we all assumed you were an honest and good man. But well before your antiwar days, you had decided to trade your integrity for the spotlight, and to barter your loyalty for vain political ambitions.

Most of us in VVAW expressed our outrage with government war policies through speeches, marches, and protests. We told the truth about what we saw and did in Viet Nam and we demanded from our leaders acknowledgement and change. You usurped the leadership of VVAW under false pretenses and dragged it in the direction of Jane Fonda and collaboration with the enemy. If, God forbid, you are elected president, in what awful direction will you and your foreign-born-and-raised wife drag our country?

Your deceit is an explicit slur upon my uncle Will's Purple Heart award, and you mock all other veterans who made the supreme sacrifice or suffered genuine wounds in combat throughout our nation's history. Your rise to prominence is based upon your abominably perverse desecration of our ideals; you have trivialized and demeaned the sacred and the solemn, and no amount of fluent sophistry or braggart pretense can cover it up.

Your conduct goes far beyond dereliction of duty. You betrayed your comrades in Viet Nam; you betrayed the trust of antiwar veterans, and now your self-fabricated credentials and continued lies contaminate the political process.

Remember the professor a few years ago who lied about being a Viet Nam veteran? His college reprimanded and suspended him for foisting such an abominable sham upon a few hundred students. I ask you in closing, Senator Kerry, what punishment is fitting for a man who fabricates medals as sacrosanct as the Purple Heart, and who continues to lie about his Viet Nam service to the entire world?

Read more about Mr. Kerry's discharge(s):

Kerry Military Discharge Deception
Geoff Metcalf
Monday, Oct. 18, 2004
John Kerry is a thoroughly reprehensible person. When Lynn Cheney commented on Kerry, she said, “This is not a good man.” she was articulating a truism that sadly was a grossly inadequate means of describing the loathsome presidential wannabe.

I recently got a note from my old Battalion Commander asking if there is any substance to the controversy surrounding Kerry’s military discharge. I responded, “You damnbetcha!” I have previously written about questions surrounding Kerry’s discharge (9/10/04 http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/9/9/154130.shtml) and the ginned up DD214 (8/23/04 http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/8/23/95437.shtml). The growing conventional wisdom (in military circles) is that Kerry GOT a discharge but it was other than honorable. He subsequently got Clinton to sign the fix in 2001. HOWEVER, the more egregious aspect is his having been subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice when he met with the commies in Paris. THAT was and is chargeable!
Story Continues Below

Reportedly, after the slug told a Senate hearing about his meetings with enemy agents, some senior Department of Defense types actually wanted to prosecute him. He was a Naval Reserve officer who had violated an excrement pot full of assorted laws and regulations.
However, the paranoid, dysfunctional Nixon White House allegedly didn’t want to fuel the anti-war gang rhetoric and so they made the strategic and tactical error of ignoring the obvious.

The Navy was p.o.-ed too. They yanked Kerry’s security clearance when it became axiomatic he was a Naval Reserve officer not to be trusted. One retired agent reportedly observed, “Lieutenant Kerry wasn’t cleared to know what time it was!”

The reason Kerry refuses to sign Standard Form 180 and release ALL his records (over a hundred pages still under wraps), doesn’t have ‘jack’ to do with medal inflation and hyperbolized heroics.

President Bush, former Vice President Gore, Senator McCain and others have authorized release of their records ... Kerry won’t!

Kerry’s Honorable Discharge some 30 years after his end of service (March 2001) is suspicious because it is so out of the ordinary.

There are five classes of Discharge: Honorable, General, Other than Honorable, Bad Conduct, and Dishonorable. It smells like Kerry’s ‘first’ discharge was probably no better than a ‘General’ discharge.

It has been suggested (and probably true) that the sandbagged records are loaded with appeal efforts and reports of his having provided “aid and comfort” to the enemy.

The mainstream co-conspirator/enablers media will not be able to ignore THIS elephant in the living room forever. Oh, they will try .... but if you think Clinton was harassed for sexual improprieties with an intern; get ready for a coordinated Military community Tsunami over Kerry’s FULL military record. The Monica mess will compare to a small yellow hole in a Montana snow bank when contrasted with the Kerry conundrum.

When Kerry went to Paris in the summer of 1970, he ‘claimed’ it was for his first honeymoon with heiress #1.
He met with assorted communists to engage in extensive discussions about plans, procedures and how to get the U.S. to surrender to Vietnam…WHILE HE WAS CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED AS A NAVAL RESERVE OFFICER.
Kerry’s covert lobbying were never reported to the Navy.
Kerry was also subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
As a commissioned officer, he was prohibited from making adverse statements against his chain of command or statements against his country, especially during time of war.
Kerry lied under oath against fellow soldiers before the US Senate about crimes committed in Vietnam.
Kerry claimed to be a war criminal on national television. The U.S. Constitution's Article 3, Section 3, defines treason as "giving aid and comfort" to the enemy in time of warfare.
The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3, states, "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, [who has] engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemy!”

The details of Kerry’s military record disaster have been floating through cyberspace for a couple of months thanks to A. L. "Steve" Nash, MAC Ret, UDT/SEAL SEAL Authentication Team.

I called Steve to confirm he had authored the initial litany. You can check out his other efforts at http://www.authentiseal.org Thomas Lipscomb is adding to the compendium in the New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/article/3107.

Lipscomb observed Woodrow Wilson sent former presidential candidate Eugene Debs to prison for even demonstrating for peace negotiations with Germany during World War I.

Ambrose Bierce once observed, “The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.” John Kerry’s fall is sure to rival Humpty Dumpty.

Let's compare your wounds with those of a West Point classmate of mine and his men. As my classmate directed artillery fire onto suspected enemy positions, shrapnel from an enemy mortar ripped into his leg. A medivac chopper took him to the Americal Division field hospital. When he returned to his company two weeks later, many new faces met him: the lieutenant who had taken over had marched the company into a u-shaped ambush resulting in two-thirds of the men being killed or wounded. Those wounded in that battle didn't have to put themselves in for the Purple Heart, Senator Kerry.
You exhibit the characteristics of a Narcissist. Narcissus, for whom this malignant character defect is named, fell in love with his image in a pool of water. As with Narcissus, your image has become the focus of your life. This image of yourself with which you are enamored, so greedy for recognition and praise, is only two dimensional: it has breadth and width, but no depth. And while your image may appear grand and heroic on the surface, there is no substance to it. My high school marine friend and my West Point classmate, true heroes, didn't take movie cameras with them to Viet Nam, but you did-with the express purpose of recording your imaginary exploits and feeding your grandiose image of yourself.
The truth is you faked combat wounds in Viet Nam, and your actions were devious and self-serving. You were a "Purple Heart hunter," just as the Swift Boat Vets say. Narcissus was an actor, and so are you.
I don't understand how any veteran, or any member of a veteran's family, or any sane-thinking American could even consider voting for you—a man who faked Purple Hearts in wartime. A man who will fake Purple Hearts for the sake of glorifying his image has no integrity and misdefines truth as whatever enhances the power and prestige of that image. A man without depth and substance stands for anything and everything-so long as his image is glorified. Narcissists such as you cannot be trusted; and they can be very dangerous, especially when they become paranoid about protecting their image, especially when they occupy positions of great authority and consequence. The issues in this election are truthfulness and character, and you lack both.
In 1971, I became a regional coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) for a short time. I and many other vets were very angry at our government. We had experienced horror, terror, trauma, and grief in a no-win war and couldn't see the reason for it. We felt betrayed by our government and our military leaders. You stepped in and became our spokesman.
What enabled you to rise to the leadership of VVAW? What caused us, back then, to respect a four-month mini-veteran of the war? The answer is your medals: your phony medals for valor and your three phony Purple Hearts. Your congressional testimony about the war began with your own assertions that you had received the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. What better spokesman than an heroic, thrice-wounded veteran! Our mistake was that we all assumed you were an honest and good man. But well before your antiwar days, you had decided to trade your integrity for the spotlight, and to barter your loyalty for vain political ambitions.
Most of us in VVAW expressed our outrage with government war policies through speeches, marches, and protests. We told the truth about what we saw and did in Viet Nam and we demanded from our leaders acknowledgement and change. You usurped the leadership of VVAW under false pretenses and dragged it in the direction of Jane Fonda and collaboration with the enemy. If, God forbid, you are elected president, in what awful direction will you and your foreign-born-and-raised wife drag our country?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.